In the year 336 Athanasius was in exile at Trèves. He is traditionally held to have there occupied a cave beyond the Moselle. The Bishop Maximinus received him with honour. Early in his episcopate Athanasius had visited the congregation of monks on the Upper Nile, and he was enthusiastic in his admiration of their manner of life. It is supposed that whilst at Trèves he began to write the "Life of S. Anthony," if indeed he was the author of that popular work. Here he is thought to have been visited by Maxentius, Bishop of Poitiers, and brother of the Bishop of Trèves, bringing with him Martin, then a friend and pupil of S. Hilary, this latter at the time a wealthy noble of Poitiers. And from the discourse of Athanasius, if this meeting actually took place, the imagination of Martin was fired with ambition to reproduce in Europe the life of the fathers of the desert in Egypt. Anyhow, to this residence of Athanasius at Trèves, "one may trace the introduction into the Western Church of the principle and laws of ascetic self-renunciation, which, though they had run to great extremes in the Nitrian desert and in the valley of the Nile, assumed noble form when the idea took possession of the more phlegmatic temperament and practical energies of the West. Without discussing the vexed question of the authorship of the 'Life of S. Anthony,' which is referred by many traditional testimonies to Athanasius, we think it obvious, from the 'Confessions' of Augustine, that the religious circles at Trèves had been strongly moved by the self-abandonment and entire consecration to the religious life of the exiled bishops. It was here, while reading the 'Life of S. Anthony' that the friends of Augustine at length yielded themselves to God." [Footnote: Reynolds (H. R.), "Athanasius, his Life and Life-work," Lond., R.T.S., 1889, p. 54.]