Mystical life in the medieval Eastern Christianity

When we trace monasticism to its source, we discover that it originated with the early Christians in the East, who, powerfully influenced by the dread of persecution, abondened their ordinary avocations, and betook themselves, for safety, to the mountains, the solitary deserts, and gloomy caverns of the eart. But ideal of monasticism as a system is found all the religions of the world almost without exception be they Jewish, Pagan, or Christian. The first doctors of the church praised this ascetic way of life: Clement of Alexandria and Origen in the East. They described the control of a person?s thoughts and passions as a necessary condition for one?s purification and dedication to God. The example of St. Antony one of the first and most famous hermits in Egypt persuaded many to take up solitary life. Many follewed this path of ascetics and solitude in the desert and soon monasteries born in the mountains of Egypt where the desert became a city of monks who left their own people and registered themselves for citizenship in the heavens.Eastern monasticism developed under two different forms: the life of the cenobitic; and the life of the anchorite, strictly so called. The former so called from the circumstance of their living under regular rules and discipline; the latter from their extraordinary fanaticism in regulating their own individual observances and holding no intercourse with each other. St. Antony was the founder of the life of the anchorite. The life of the cenobitic was begun by St. Pachomius, who instituted the first monastic ?Rule?. A little later on St. Basil the Great drew up another ?Rule? which was adopted throughout the East and supplanted the ?Rule? of St. Pachomius. In Asia Minor, under the influence of St. Basil, Eastern monasticism completed its development and took its final shape. The monks of Syria and Mesopotamia for a long time lived apart from one another and in his own way without rule of superior. The spreading of monastic life in Asia Minor, Syria, Paletsine brought with it abundant literature.Before Christianity and in the early eastern Christianity, what does means of ascetic life makes up the subject of this study.