Peter the Hermit, Anthony, and Pachomius: The Origins of Christian Monasticism

Our story begins two centuries before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth with a fringe Jewish community called the Essenes.

The Essenes were a group of Jews who, wishing to engage in mystical communion with each other and with God, chose to live in desert communities.

Unlike other Jewish groups, the Essenes did not believe that the Jewish temple was necessary for their religious practice.

In fact, the Essenes were apoc- apocalypticists, meaning they believed in an imminent, transformative apocalypse that would end the world as they knew it.

They may have also believed that after the apocalypse, the righteous dead would be resurrected.

The Essenes practiced their unusual form of Judaism by living in a highly communal fashion.

Essenes did not believe in private property, and so all goods in Essene communities were held in common.

Furthermore, Essenes were forbidden from owning slaves, as members of Essene communities were supposed to serve each other in all things.

So there's a culture of mutual service as opposed to traditional slave-master relations.

Essenes were also entirely celibate, which suggests that they did not feel that they needed to preserve their movement for future generations because they believed that the end of the world was imminent.

If the world is going to end in just a few years, there's no need to worry about having babies.

At the heart of Essene and later early Christian philosophy was the desire to rid the self of bodily desires to enhance your focus on spiritual matters.

This impulse is perhaps an effect of Greek philosophy upon Jewish thought, as Greek philosophers like Plato elevated the spiritual life over the life of the body.

Keep in mind that Jewish philosophy was hugely influenced by the Greeks as the Jews were ruled by the descendants of Alexander the Great's generals before they were ultimately subsumed into the Roman Empire.

Unlike other Jewish groups which believed that animal sacrifices had to be offered to God to atone for their sins, the Essenes practiced a form of ritual bathing that may have been believed to cleanse people of their individual sins.

This is a clear precursor of the Christian idea of baptism, and it was this Essene practice of ritual bathing that may have inspired a later wandering preacher by the name of John the Baptist to ritually bathe people in Judea's rivers.

John the Baptist, who is mentioned in the Christian Bible as a precursor to Jesus, is thought by some historians to have been an Essene, or at least highly influenced by the Essenes.

And this is because like the Essenes, John preached a form of extreme piety, he practiced ritual bathing, and he told people that they needed to get right with God because the world was about to end.

There's also evidence that Jesus was influenced by the Essenes.

Jesus called on his followers to give up their material possessions and follow him, and he preached his own apocalyptic message to the people of Judea.

Like the Essenes, Jesus ordered his followers to spurn private property, and he asked them to practice an ascetic lifestyle.

Let's talk about the asceticism of Jesus because it is Jesus' personal ascetic practices that inspired later Christians to become hermits and ascetics themselves.

Before Jesus began his ministry, he was said to have retreated to the desert for 40 days of fasting and prayer.

This practice of going into the desert for solitary religious communion is one that later Christians would fixate on.

And many Christian mystics followed Jesus' example by seeking prolonged isolation in caves, mountains, or deserts.