The First Monks.--St. Anthony and his Disciples.--St. Pachomius and St. Athanasius.--St. Eusebius and St. Basilius.--Cenobitism in the East and in the West.--St. Benedict and the Benedictine Code.--Monkish Dress.--St. Columba.--List of the Monasteries in Charlemagne’s Time.--Services rendered by the Monks to Civilisation, Arts, and Letters.--Reform of the Religious Orders in the Twelfth Century.--St. Norbert.--St. Bernard.--St. Dominic.--St. Francis of Assisi.--The Carmelites.--The Bernardines.--The Barnabites.--The Jesuits. During the early days of the Church, monastic life began in the vast solitudes of the Thebais, in Upper Egypt. It soon extended to Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and even beyond the limits of the Roman Empire. St. Jerome, just before the Middle Ages, wrote, “We daily receive troops of monks from India, Persia, and Ethiopia.” The fearful austerities of the first ascetics in the East seem, at first sight, excessive, but they are justified by their results, and may be explained by the state of society at that epoch. A gross sensualism was generally prevalent, and people lived only for pleasure. The slaves, after having accomplished the work necessary for the existence of the free men, further assisted in satiating the disordered appetites of this society, which had exhausted all the refinements of sensuality and luxury. The old world, absorbed in the worship of material things, had no taste for the culture of the mind, and in order to arouse it from its intellectual torpor, it became necessary to impress the senses and the imagination by excessive austerities. Greedy of novelty and anything emotional, the people flocked to visit those wonderful anchorites, who made a study of martyrdom, some shutting themselves up in a den where they could neither stand upright nor lie down; others lying motionless day and night upon a narrow plank, upon the top of a column, exposed to all weathers; all of them refusing meat, drink, and sleep, or only taking just enough to keep body and soul together. These men, who only thought of their body as a target for torture, in order to give themselves up exclusively to penitentiary practices and the contemplation of a future life, attracted general attention. As tender-hearted for others as they were pitiless for themselves, they took an interest in all suffering, they consoled the sorrowful, they prayed for the recovery of the sick at the request of the relatives. Their goodness found them a way to many hearts, and, with the eloquent force of example, they inculcated upon the crowds the vanity of sensual pleasures, they taught them to look to heaven rather than to earth; and they reminded their audience of the immortality of the soul, of its destinies in a better world, and of the duty of earning eternal happiness by the exercise of Christian virtues; in their discourses, as in their lives, they preached the Gospel. They were first listened