The roots of the great monastic movement which continued for nearly the whole of the Middle Ages run well back into the early Christian centuries. While the beginnings of Monasticism are involved in uncertainty they probably sprang from exaggerated tendencies on the part of individuals, toward lives of privation, hardship, and exposure, of which there were early numerous examples and conspicuous manifestations. These travesties upon devout character and mere abnormalities of religious devotion were not true products of Christian sentiment and ideals but glaring manifestations of morbid self-assertion. This movement was not conterminous nor contemporaneous with the development of Christianity; it existed apart from and prior to Christianity. There were tendencies and examples in the direction here indicated among the Jewish teachers; and it had a large embodiment in the ancient Buddhist as in the modern Indian systems. The central idea of the early ascetics, ever, was that the body is a clog and hindrance to the spirit of man, and hence the assumption of merit in and through the practice of severe austerities and rigid self-abnegation. There were many gross, horrible, and idiotic applications of this practice in the early stages of Christian history as there are in India to-day. The period of its chief ascendency was in the third and fourth centuries. The monastic movement spread in the fourth century into the extreme West. "Many of the islands around Ireland and Scotland," says Professor Thatcher, "were occupied by the monks, a large number of whom were hermits. Many monasteries were established. The movement became immensely popular, and within a hundred and fifty years there were hundreds of monasteries in the West and thousands of monks in them."[72] The order of Benedictines (founded by Benedict of Nursia at the beginning of the sixth century) ran its course and flourished for centuries. The order of Benedictines was followed (not superseded) by a succession of orders modeled somewhat after their earlier precurser. This movement extended its existence and its influence also far into the East as well as to the westward. Syria, Palestine, and Arabia--especially in the region of Mt. Sinai--were thickly studded with monasteries and "literally swarmed with recluses." Jerome, who lived well into the first quarter of the fifth century (died 420 A. D.), wrote at Bethlehem, Palestine, "We daily receive monks from India, and Persia, and Ethiopia."