greatly astonished when the first Egyptian anchoret whom he visited placed before him and his four companions a half loaf of barley bread and a handful of herbs for a dinner, though they tasted very good after the wearisome journey. " Edacitas," says he, "in Grfccis gida est, in Gallis natura." (Diahi. c. 8, in Gallandi, t. viii. p. 405.) i § 40. MONASTICISM IN TUE WEST. ATHANASIU8. 201 cal instead, and aii important instrument for the cultivation of the soil and tlie diffusion of Christianity and civilization among the barbarians.' Exclusive contemplation was exchanged for alternate contemplation and labor. " A working monk," says Cassian, "is plagued by one devil, an inactive monk by a liost." ■Yet it must not be forgotten that the most eminent represen- tatives of the Eastern monasticism recommended manual labor and studies ; and that the Eastern monks took a very lively, often rude and stormy part in theological controversies. And on the other hand, there were Western monks who, like Martin of Tours, regarded labor as disturbing contemplation. Athajstasius, the guest, the disciple, and subsequently the biographer and eulogist of St. Anthony, brought the fii'st in- telligence of monasticism to the West, and astounded the civil- ized and effeminate Romans with two live representatives of the semi-barbarous desert-sanctity of Egypt, who accompanied him in his exile in 340. The one, Ammonius, was so abstracted from the world that he disdained to visit any of the wonders of the great city, except the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul ; while the other, Isidore, attracted attention by his amiable simplicity. The phenomenon excited at first disgust and con- tempt, but soon admiration and imitation, especially among women, and among the decimated ranks of the ancient Poman nobility. The impression of the first visit was afterward strengthened by two other visits of Athanasius to Pome, and especially by his biography of Anthony, which immediately acquired the popularity and authority of a monastic gospel. Many went to Egypt and Palestine, to devote themselves there to the new mode of life ; and for the sake of such, Jerome afterward translated the rule of Pachomius into Latin. Others founded cloisters in the neighborhood of Rome, or on the ruins of the ancient temples and the forum, and the frugal number " "The monastic stream," says Montalembert, 1. c, "which had been born in the deserts of Egypt, divided itself into two great arms. The one spread in the East, at first inundated everything, then concentrated and lost itself there. The other escaped into the West, and spread itself by a thousand channels over an entire world, which had to be covered and fertilized." 202 THIRD PERIOD, A.D. 311-590. of the heathen vestals was soon cast into the shade bj whole hosts of Christian virgins. From Rome, monastieism gradu- ally spread over all Italy and the isles of the Mediterranean, even to the rugged rocks of the Gorgon and the Capraja, where the hermits, in voluntary exile