f are translated by Newman in
the _Church of the Fathers_, "Basil and Gregory," ss. 4, 5. On leaving
Athens Basil visited the monasteries of Egypt and Palestine; in the latter
country and in Syria the monastic life tended to become more and more
eremitical and to run to great extravagances in the matter of bodily
austerities (see MONASTICISM). When (_c._ 360) Basil formed his monastery
in the neighbourhood of Neocaesarea in Pontus, he deliberately set himself
against these tendencies. He declared that the cenobitical life is superior
to the eremitical; that fasting and austerities should not interfere with
prayer or work; that work should form an integral part of the monastic
life, not merely as an occupation, but for its own sake and in order to do
good to others; and therefore that monasteries should be near towns. All
this was a new departure in monachism. The life St Basil established was
strictly cenobitical, with common prayer seven times a day, common work,
common meals. It was, in spite of the new ideas, an austere life, of the
kind called contemplative, given up to prayer, the reading of the
Scriptures and heavy field-work. The so-called Rules (the Longer and the
Shorter) are catechisms of the spiritual life rather than a body of
regulations for the corporate working of a community, such as is now
understood by a monastic rule. Apparently no vows were taken, but
obedience, personal poverty, chastity, self-denial, and the other monastic
virtues were strongly enforced, and a monk was not free to abandon the
monastic life. A novitiate had to be passed, and young boys were to be
educated in the monastery, but were not expected to become monks.

St Basil's influence, and the greater suitability of his institute to
European ideas, ensured the propagation of Basilian monachism; and Sozomen
says that in Cappadocia and the neighbouring provinces there were no
hermits but only cenobites. However, the eastern hankering after the
eremitical life long survived, and it was only by dint of legislation, both
ecclesiastical (council of Chalcedon) and civil (Justinian Code), that the
Basilian cenobitic form of monasticism came to prevail throughout the
Greek-speaking lands, though the eremitical forms have always maintained
themselves.

Greek monachism underwent no development or change for four centuries,
except the vicissitudes inevitable in all things human, which in
monasticism assume the form of alternations of relaxation a