Saint Benedict distinguishes four sorts of monks:  1.  Coenobites, living under an abbot in a monastery. 2.  Anchorites, who retire into the desert. 3.  Sarabaites, dwelling two or three in the same cell. 4.  Gyrovagi, who wander from monastery to monastery.  The last two kinds he condemns.  The Gyrovagi or wandering monks were the pest of convents and the disgrace of monasticism.  They evaded all responsibilities and spent their time tramping from place to place, living like parasites, and spreading vice and disorder wherever they went.

There were really four distinct stages in the development of the monastic institution: 

1.  Asceticism.  Clergy and laymen practiced various forms of self-denial without becoming actual monks.

2.  The hermit life, which was asceticism pushed to an external separation from the world.  Here are to be found anchorites, and stylites or pillar-saints.

3.  Coenobitism, or monastic life proper, consisting of associations of monks under one roof, and ruled by an abbot.

4.  Monastic orders, or unions of cloisters, the various abbots being under the authority of one supreme head, who was, at first, generally the founder of the brotherhood.

Under this last division are to be classed the Mendicant Friars, the Military Monks, the Jesuits and other modern organizations.  The members of these orders commenced their monastic life in monasteries, and were therefore coenobites, but many of them passed out of the cloister to become teachers, preachers or missionary workers in various fields.

NOTE D

Matins.  One of the canonical hours appointed in the early church, and still observed in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in monastic orders.  It properly begins at midnight.  The name is also applied to the service itself, which includes the Lord’s Prayer, the Angelic Salutation, the Creed and several psalms.

Lauds, a religious service in connection with matins; so called from the reiterated ascriptions of praise to God in the psalms.

Prime.  The first hour or period of the day; follows after matins and lauds; originally intended to be said at the first hour after sunrise.

Tierce, terce.  The third hour; half-way between sunrise and noon.

Sext.  The sixth hour, originally and properly said at midday.

None, noon.  The ninth hour from sunrise, or the middle hour between midday and sunset—­that is, about 3 o’clock.

Vespers, the next to the last of the canonical hours—­the even-song.

Compline.  The last of the seven canonical hours, originally said after the evening meal and before retiring to sleep, but in later medieval and modern usage following immediately on vespers.

B.V.M.—­Blessed Virgin Mary.

NOTE E

The literary and educational services of the monks are described in many histories, but the reader will find the best treatment of this subject in the scholarly yet popular work of George Haven Putnam, “Books and Their Makers During the Middle Ages,” to which we are largely indebted for the facts given in this volume.