The Encyclopædia Brittanica divides the monastic institutions into five
classes:
1. Monks. 2. Canons Regular. 3. Military Orders. 4. Friars. 5. Clerks
Regular. All of these have communities of women, either actually
affiliated to them, or formed on similar lines.
Saint Benedict distinguishes four sorts of monks: 1. Coenobites, living
under an abbot in a monastery. 2. Anchorites, who retire into the
desert. 3. Sarabaites, dwelling two or three in the same cell. 4.
Gyrovagi, who wander from monastery to monastery. The last two kinds he
condemns. The Gyrovagi or wandering monks were the pest of convents and
the disgrace of monasticism. They evaded all responsibilities and spent
their time tramping from place to place, living like parasites, and
spreading vice and disorder wherever they went.
There were really four distinct stages in the development of the
monastic institution:
1. Asceticism. Clergy and laymen practiced various forms of self-denial
without becoming actual monks.
2. The hermit life, which was asceticism pushed to an external
separation from the world. Here are to be found anchorites, and stylites
or pillar-saints.
3. Coenobitism, or monastic life proper, consisting of associations of
monks under one roof, and ruled by an abbot.
4. Monastic orders, or unions of cloisters, the various abbots being
under the authority of one supreme head, who was, at first, generally
the founder of the brotherhood.
Under this last division are to be classed the Mendicant Friars, the
Military Monks, the Jesuits and other modern organizations. The members
of these orders commenced their monastic life in monasteries, and were
therefore coenobites, but many of them passed out of the cloister to
become teachers, preachers or missionary workers in various fields.