Valens turned many orthodox bishops (that is to say, bishops _of the right faith_) out of their sees, and meant to turn out Athanasius, who hid himself for a while in his father's tomb. But the people of Alexandria begged earnestly that their bishop might be allowed to remain with them, and the emperor did not think it safe to deny their request, lest there should be some outbreak in the city. And thus, while the faith of which Athanasius had so long been the chief defender, and for the sake of which he had borne so much, was under persecution in all other parts of the eastern empire, the great bishop of Alexandria was allowed to spend his last years among his own flock without disturbance. He died in the year 373, at the age of seventy-six. CHAPTER XIII. THE MONKS. In the story of St. Athanasius, _monks_ have been more than once mentioned, and it is now time to give some account of these people and of their ways. The word _monk_ properly means one who leads a _lonely_ life; and the name was given to persons who professed to withdraw from the world and its business that they might give themselves up to serve God in religious thoughts and exercises. Among the Jews there had been whole classes of people who practised this sort of retirement: some, called _Essenes_, lived near the Dead Sea; and others, called _Therapeutæ_, in Egypt, where a great number of Jews had settled. Among the heathens of the East, too, a like manner of living had been common for ages, as it still continues to be; and many of them carry it to an excessive strictness, as we are told by travellers who have visited India, Thibet, and other countries of Asia. Nothing of the kind, however, is commanded for Christians in the New Testament; and when Scripture warrant for the monkish life was sought for, the great patterns who were produced were Elijah and St. John the Baptist--the one of them an Old Testament prophet; the other, a holy man who lived, indeed, in the days when our Lord Himself was on the earth, but who was not allowed to enter into His Church, or to see it fully established by the coming of the Holy Ghost at the day of Pentecost. But still it was very natural that the notion of a life of strict poverty, retirement from the world, and employment in spiritual things, should find favour with Christians, as a means of fulfilling the duties of their holy calling; and so it seems that some of them took to this way of life very early. But the first who is named as a _hermit_ (that is to say, a _dweller in the wilderness_) was Paul, a young man of Alexandria, who, in the year 251, fled from the persecution of Decius into the Egyptian desert, where he is said to have lived ninety years. Paul, although he afterwards became very famous, spent his days without being known, until, just before his death, he was visited by another great hermit, St. Antony. But Antony himself was a person of great note and importance in his own lifetime.