oled her by saying, "You will see us in the other
world."

But the world is not the only danger for the monk. Every man carried
about with himself an enemy from whom he could not deliver himself as
he had delivered himself from the world--that is, his own body. The
body prevented the soul from rising to God and drew it to worldly
pleasures that came from the devil. And so the solitaries applied
themselves to overcoming the body by refusing to it everything that it
loved. They subsisted only on bread and water; many ate but twice a
week, some went to the mountains to cut herbs which they ate raw. They
dwelt in grottoes, ruins, and tombs, lying on the earth or on a mat of
rushes. The most zealous of them added other tortures to mortify, or
kill, the body. St. Pachomius for fifteen years slept only in an erect
position, leaning against a wall. Macarius remained six months in a
morass, the prey of mosquitoes "whose stings would have penetrated the
hide of a wild boar." The most noted of these monks was St. Simeon,
surnamed Stylites (the man of the column). For forty years he lived in
the desert of Arabia on the summit of a column, exposed to the sun and
the rain, compelling himself to stay in one position for a whole day;
the faithful flocked from afar to behold him; he gave them audience
from the top of his column, bidding creditors free their debtors, and
masters liberate their slaves; he even sent reproaches to ministers
and counsellors of the emperor. This form of life was called
Asceticism (exercise).

=The Cenobites.=--The solitaries who lived in the same desert drew
together and adopted a common life for the practice of their
austerities. About St. Anthony were already assembled many anchorites
who gave him their obedience. St. Pachomius (272-348) in this way
assembled 3,000. Their establishment was at Tabenna, near the first
cataract of the Nile. He founded many other similar communities,
either of men or women. In 256 a traveller said he had seen in a
single city of Egypt 10,000 monks and 20,000 vowed to a religious
life. There were more of them in Syria, in Palestine, in all the
Orient. The monks thus united in communities became Cenobites (people
who live in common). They chose a chief, the abbot (the word signifies
in Syriac "father"), and they implicitly obeyed him. Cassian relates
that in one community in Egypt he had seen the abbot before the whole
refectory give a cenobite a violent blow on the head to try