There can be no question as to the sincerity of these cloistered monks, misguided as they were. Chrysostom dwelt in a cavern for two years, without lying down. His penance was so severe, that he was thrown into a fit of sickness, which compelled his return to Antioch. After a life of tireless activity, many persecutions, and efficient devotion to the interests of the Church, he died, as we have mentioned, in exile, in the sixty-third year of his age. “The name of Chrysostom, ‘Golden-mouthed,’ was assigned to him after his death to express the eloquence which he possessed in so much greater a degree than the other fathers of the Church. He never repeats himself, and is always original. The vivacity and power of his imagination, the force of his logic, his power of arousing the passions, the beauty and accuracy of his comparisons, the neatness and purity of his style, his clearness and sublimity, place him on a level with the most celebrated Greek authors. The Greek Church has not a more accomplished orator.”[196] The inclination for monastic seclusion very rapidly increased. Some sought the silence of the desert because they felt unable to resist the temptations of busy life; some, to escape from persecution; some, as a refuge from remorse; some, from the conviction that sin might be atoned for by self-inflicted suffering; some, from disgust at life, or a natural fondness for solitude and contemplation. In the middle of the fourth century, there was a colony of these anchorets upon the Island of Tabenna, in the Nile, numbering fifty thousand persons. They lived in the extreme of abstinence, occupying cheerless cells in very humble huts. Men only at first entered upon this hermit life. About the middle of the fourth century, female monasteries, or convents of nuns, were instituted. This retirement from the world to the cloister in those troublous times proved by no means an unmixed evil. Gradually very solemn monastic vows and extremely rigid rules of discipline were introduced. “These houses now became the dwellings of piety, industry, and temperance, and the refuge of learning driven to them for shelter from the troubles of the times. Missionaries were sent out from them: deserts and solitudes were made habitable by industrious monks. And in promoting the progress of agriculture, and civilizing the German and Sclavonian nations, they certainly rendered great services to the world from the sixth century to the ninth. But it must be admitted that these institutions, so useful in the dark ages of barbarism, changed their character to a great degree as their wealth and influence increased. Idleness and luxury crept within their walls, together with all the vices of the world; and their decay became inevitable.”[197]