§ 3. The influence of the monachism of the east naturally spread westward. No general rule of life was followed at first. Each collection of monks was governed by its own special observances, aiming generally at the ascetic ideal of separation from the world pursued by the early anchorites. Monachism, however, was a powerful agent in the Christianising of the west. Each monastery under its abbot or father became a training-ground for monk-bishops who ruled dioceses in new monastic centres of missionary effort. The beginnings of organised monachism in Ireland may be traced to the monastery of Lerins, on an island near Cannes, where St Patrick received his training. The success of Irish monasticism soon reacted upon Gaul and Italy, when St Columban founded the monasteries of Luxeuil and Bobbio upon a rule derived from Irish practice. About the same time St Columba at Iona established the vogue of the Irish system in northern Britain. § 4. Meanwhile, a new development of the principle arose. St Benedict, a native of Norcia near Spoleto, retired about the beginning of the sixth century to a hermitage at Subiaco. Here he attracted a number of followers, and several monasteries arose in the neighbourhood under his direction. It was for the monastery of Monte Cassino, which he ruled for some thirty years, that he composed the rule which became the law of the monastic life of western Europe. The success and the general adoption of the rule of Monte Cassino in the west were due to the statesmanship with which its injunctions were adapted to climate and physical capacity. The Benedictine monk entered upon a life of work and prayer, which needed the habitual exercise of self-control; but his bodily health ran no risk of being ruined by pious excess. Isolated devotion was superseded by religious life in a common church and cloister. This was the end to which Pachomius and Basil had contributed; but the mystical temperament of the east fostered a contemplative and ascetic tendency which modified the conception of a common life of uniform duty. The early monasteries of Gaul, such as that of St Martin at Tours, followed the model of the _laura_ rather than the _coenobium_; and the separate cell and the practice of self-imposed austerities seem to have been general in early Celtic monasteries. The voluntary hardships of St Cuthbert in his cell on the Farne islands, the prayers and visions of the Saxon Guthlac at Croyland, were western survivals of the ideals of St Anthony and St Simeon Stylites. St Benedict, on the contrary, while casting no reflexions on a life which he himself had at first adopted, recommended to the aspirant for salvation no heroic tasks of prayer and fasting. His aim was the growth in grace of a brotherhood, living under a common rule in obedience to an abbot to whom considerable discretion was given. The natural tendency of the solitary life was to produce an emulation in religious endeavour; and monasteries which were little