The form of religious life in which communities of men and women live under a fixed rule which usually involves vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to a superior.
Monasticism is by no means an exclusively Christian phenomenon (most widespread outside Christianity being the Buddhist tradition) but has almost everywhere developed along similar lines.
Christian monasticism seems to have first arisen in the first centuries of the Church when large numbers of hermits retired to lead a life of contemplation and asceticism in the Egyptian desert.
The development of monasticism in the West was largely the result of the work of St Benedict who composed a Rule which has been the basis of all subsequent Western monastic institutions (in the Eastern Church, most Orders follow the Rule of St Basil).
Monasticism exercised an enormous influence on social life in the early Middle Ages and became the sole safeguard of learning and enlightenment during the invasion of Europe by Barbarians.
The principal existing monastic orders are the Benedictines, Carthusians and Cistercians.
