Cenobitic

Saint Pachomius

Cenobitic monks were also different from their eremitic predecessors and counterparts in their living arrangements. Whereas eremitic monks (hermits) lived alone in a monastery consisting of merely a hut or cave (cell), cenobitic monks lived together in monasteries comprising one or a complex of several buildings. In the latter case, each dwelling would house about twenty monks, and within the house there were separate rooms or cells that would be inhabited by two or three monks. To early generations of historians, the style of housing maintained by cenobitic monks was attributed to the man usually hailed the "father of cenobitic monasticism," Saint Pachomius, who was believed to have found the idea for such quarters during the time he spent in the Roman army, as the style was "reminiscent of army barracks." While this impression may have been to some extent mythologized by the bishop and historian Palladius of Galatia, communal barracks-like desert dwellings known as cenobia came to exist around the early 4th century.