A third cause of the outbreak of asceticism is found in the persecution to which many converts of the growing church were subjected. This soon kindled an intense religious enthusiasm which welcomed martyrdom and glorified the sufferings that attended it. The liberated soul, it was taught, entered at once into eternal blessedness. Pain and torment came thus to be considered meritorious of themselves, and the direct road to salvation; and after the persecutions ceased, the self-torture of the ascetic took their place as a means and measure of human excellence. When once the movement to the deserts was started, the desire to escape from the burdens imposed by corrupt government, from social disorders, and later from the wretchedness that followed the invasions of barbarian hordes from the North, helped to crowd the ranks of the hermits and swell the numbers gathered into monastic communities. It was in the latter half of the third century that the first Christian hermits fled to the deserts of Egypt, where natural caverns, or caves easily hewn out of the rock, supplied the only shelter necessary in such a climate, and a grove of date palms with a spring close by it solved the problem of sustenance without labor. But the movement did not gather much headway until the early part of the next century, when Anthony’s career had given dignity to the solitary life and made it widely popular. At the time of his death, in 365, the deserts on either side of the Nile from the Cataracts to the Delta were dotted with the retreats of hermits, and it is said that Pachomius, who was the first to gather his disciples into organized communities and formulate a monastic rule, had no fewer than 7000 monks under his authority. By the fifth century the numbers had increased to 100,000 in Egypt alone, and the practice had extended into Syria and Palestine, Armenia, Mesopotamia, parts of Asia Minor, and Italy, whence it soon reached the whole of Western Europe. The greatest extravagances are found among the Eastern “saints of the desert,” accounts of whose austerities were collected by wandering pilgrims and excited the admiration of all Christendom. Some dwelt in deserted dens of wild beasts, in tombs and dried-up wells, on the summit of narrow columns, or spent days in the midst of thorn bushes. Others never lay down during months and even years, or they slept naked in swamps, exposed to the stings of insects. Many abstained from food altogether for long periods, or restricted themselves to quantities too small to relieve the pangs of hunger. Bodily cleanliness was frequently abjured, and a long list of strange penances was devised.[5]