The Invention of Western Monastic Literature: Texts and Communities

The words “monk,” “monastery,” “monasticism,” and their derivations, which are still found in contemporary religious discourses and institutions, bear only a slight relationship to the forms of Christian ascetic life that flourished in the second half of the fourth century. At that stage in the movement, these forms were very diverse and closely interwoven with the local environment. The clearest example is the use of the Greek word monachos: not in evidence in non-Christian literature, its first appearance dates to 180, and it was first used as a technical term defining a separated group of persons in an Egyptian papyrus from 324. Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339) and Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373) were probably the writers who first introduced this set of words into literary texts, and, consequently, the earliest known use of the word monachus in Latin is found in the anonymous translation of Athanasius’ Life of Antony (originally written in Greek around 357; available in Latin by 373). The same observation could be made for the word monasterium: this new Latin word appeared for the first time in the translation of this same text made by Evagrius of Antioch (d. after 392), in which the term is always used (except once) to translate the Greek equivalent.