nifying force for Europe within Christianity and, although weakened, this force continued to have some influence in the Middle Ages. Monasticism’s origins lay in the East. The first monks had, in the third century, settled in the Egyptian Dessert near the Nile and the first cenobites, monks grouping into enclosures formed by cells built around a central chapel, were gathered by Pachomius in his monastery at Tabenna. Shortly afterwards Hilarion established a monastery in Syria. These were the roots of the monastic movement. However these were very different to the Western monasteries that would be established in the West in the centuries to come. They were ill organised and withdrawn. Monks were more interested in devising new forms of torture to inflict upon themselves than serving a larger purpose, economic or otherwise. They were recruited from the poorest classes, lived on charity and rarely farmed. From the late fourth century on under the rule of Basil, Bishop of Caesareja, these monasteries became more organised but never really developed from their earliest forms. It was along the trading routes of the Mediterranean that monasticism was transmitted to the West, spreading from Marseilles, up the Rhone valley into Gaul and onto the areas of Celtic dominance, Brittany, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. By the time it reached Ireland monasticism was in a very different form too that in the east. Even when first it reached the West it had already been somewhat modified. Earliest western monks were, like their eastern counterparts, ascetics and eccentrics but were already more actively involved in the life of their society. In the West this new cult was popularised by St. Martin of Tours and the tails of his miracles, as well as by the book Sulpiciouc Severus wrote about his life. St Martin was unlike the Eastern monks in many ways. He was a rural missionary who preached against paganism, worked evangelical miracles and played a ...
