Monachism took its rise in the East, where a solitary and contemplative life, devoted to the consideration of divine subjects, had always been considered more meritorious than active exertion. This calling was gradually adopted by so many, that at the end of the third century, the Egyptian Antonius, who had cast away his vast possessions, and chosen the desert for his residence, collected together the hitherto dispersed anchorites (monachi) into fenced places (monasteria, caenobia, claustra, cloisters), that they might live together in fellowship; and his disciple, Pachomius, soon gave the brotherhood a rule. Monachism soon extended to the west. In the sixth century, Benedict, of Nursia, established the first monastery on Mount Casius, in Lower Italy, and became, by this means, the founder of the widely-spread order of Benedictines, which rapidly extended itself among all nations, and built many convents. These monasteries, erected, for the most part, in {87} beautiful and remote situations, and the inhabitants of which were obliged to take the three vows of chastity (celibacy), personal poverty, and obedience, proved in those days of lawlessness and barbarism, a blessing to mankind. They converted heaths and forests into flourishing farms. They afforded a place of refuge (asylum) to the persecuted and oppressed. They ennobled the rude minds of men by the preaching of the Gospel. They planted the seeds of morality and civilization in the bosoms of the young by their schools for education. And they preserved the remains of ancient literature and philosophy from utter destruction. Many of the Benedictine monasteries were the nurseries of education, the arts, and the sciences, as St. Gallen, Fulda, Reichenau, and Corvey (in Westphalia), and many others. When the Benedictine order became relaxed, the monastery in Clugny, in Burgundy, separated itself from them in the tenth century, and introduced a more rigid discipline. In the twelfth century the monks of Clugny numbered upward of two thousand cloisters. But this order, also, soon proved insufficient to satisfy the strong demands of the middle age, against the allurements of sin, and the seductions of the flesh; so that, at the end of the eleventh century, the Cistercians, and, a few decades later, the Premonstrants sprang up: the former in Burgundy (Citeaux), the latter in a woody country near Laon (Premontre). The order of Carthusians, founded about the year {88} 1084, which commenced with a cloister of anchorites (Carthusia, Chartreuse) in a rugged valley near Grenoble, was the most austere in its practice. A life of solitude and silence in a cell, a spare and meagre diet, a penitential garment of hair, flagellations, and the rigid practices of devotional exercises, were duties imposed upon every member of this fraternity.