as to form a hamlet. Hence this term is often used in the same sense as monasterium. The singular, Aavpa, however, answers to the anchoret life. On this nomenclature of monasticism comp. Du Cange, in the Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis, under the respective words. * 'Hyovusvos, apxtft-a-vSpirns, a/8;8aj, i. e. father, hence abbot. A female superin- tendent was called in Syriac afifxas, mother, abbess. ^ From noiina, i. e. casta, chaste, holy. The word is probably of Coptic origin, and occurs as early as in Jerome. The masculine nojinus, monk, appears frequently in the middle age. Comp. the examples in Du Cange, s. v. 158 ■ THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. nobites no little jealousy reigned ; the former charging the lat- ter with ease and conformity to the world ; the latter accusing the former of selfishness and misanthi'opy. The most eminent church teachers generally prefer the cloister life. But the hermits, though their numbers diminished, never becauie ex- tinct. Many a monk was a hermit first, and then a coenobite ; and many a coenobite turned to a hermit. The same social impulse, finally, which produced monastic congregations, led afterward to monastic orders, unions of a number of cloisters under one rule and a common government. In this fourth and last stage monasticism has done most for the difi^iision of Christianity and the advancement of learning,^ has fulfilled its practical mission in the Roman Catholic church, and still wields a mighty influence there. At the same time it became in some sense the cradle of the German reformation. Luther belonged to the order of St. Augustine, and the monas- tic discipline of Erfurt was to him a preparation for evangelical freedom, as the Mosaic law was to Paul a schoolmaster to lead to Christ. And for this very reason Protestantism is the end of the monastic life. § 30. Nahire and Avm of Monasticism. Monasticism was from the first distinguished as the contem- plative life from the practical.^ It passed with the ancient church for the true, the divine, or Christian philosophy,' an unworldly, jDurely apostolic, angelic life." It rests upon an * Heuee Middleton says, not without reason : " By all which I have ever read of the old, and have seen of the modern monks, I take the preference to be clearly due to the last, as having a more regular discipline, more good learning, and less super- stition among them than the first." ^ Bios &€&)p7)T(/cdj, and /8ios irpa«T(Ko'y, according to Gregory Nazianzen and others. Throughout the middle age the distinction between the vita contemplativa and the vita activa was illustrated by the two sisters of Lazarus, Luke x. 38-42. ^ 'H Kara behv or Xpi(rrhv <pt\o(TO(pia, ri in//7j\7j <pi\o(T., i. 6. in the sense of the ancients, not so much a speculative system, as a mode of life under a particular rule. So in the Pythagoreans, Stoics, Cynics, and Neo-Platonists, Ascetic and philosopher are the same. * ' h-iTOTToXiKhs $iov, 6 Twv ay/fXwv