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Both hermits and cenobites led abstemious lives, taking no food till after sunset, and eating nothing but bread with a little salt and hyssop. Some retired into the desert, and led a still more strange life in some cave or tomb.
No sound was heard but the canticles of repentance, and the words of Isaiah, 'Ye who love Jerusalem, rejoice with me. So sincere and fervent was the devotion which the Crusaders manifested on this occasion, that it seemed as if the stern warriors, who had just taken a city by assault, and committed the most frightful slaughter, were cenobites who had newly emerged from a long retreat and peaceful meditations."
The soldier cenobites of Enryaku-ji yama-hoshi, as they were called showed themselves notably turbulent. They inaugurated the device of replacing the sacred tree with the "divine car," against which none dare raise a hand or shoot an arrow. If their petition were rejected, they would abandon the car in the streets of the capital, thus placing the city under a curse.
The hardships undergone by these monks appear almost insupportable to human nature, and notwithstanding the immense number of deaths occasioned by their rigorous austerities, the Cénobites of La Trappe, at the suppression of their order, amounted to one hundred monks, sixty-nine lay brothers, and fifty-six Frères Donnés.
Inculcating rigid temperance and self-denial among their people, they were known as Enchratites, Nazarites or Abstainers; and the more devout among them retiring to monasteries, or to the solitude of caves and other secluded places, were also designated as Monks, Cenobites, Friars, Eremites, Hermits or Solitaries.
The Nitta chieftain himself retired rapidly to Kyoto with a mere remnant of his army, and effected a union with the forces of the ever-loyal Kusunoki Masashige and Nawa Nagatoshi, who had given asylum to Go-Daigo at the time of the escape from Oki. The cenobites of Hiei-zan also took the field in the Imperial cause.
In the first rank stood the old hermits of the desert, cross in hand, and with long beards that almost touched the ground. The monks, governed by the abbots Ephrem and Serapion, and also all the cenobites of the Nile, formed the second line. Behind them appeared the ascetics, who had come from their distant rocks.
To contemplate is to labor, to think is to act. Folded arms toil, clasped hands work. A gaze fixed on heaven is a work. Thales remained motionless for four years. He founded philosophy. In our opinion, cenobites are not lazy men, and recluses are not idlers. To meditate on the Shadow is a serious thing.
Churches, each surmounted by a cross, stood here and there amongst the huts, and the monks flocked to them at each festival to celebrate the services or to partake of the Communion. There were also, here and there on the banks of the river, monasteries, where the cenobites lived in separate cells, and only met together that they might the better enjoy their solitude.
"How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!" Immediately, from one end to the other of the living wall, like a peal of harmonious thunder, the psalm, "Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord," broke forth. Accompanied by Macarius and Amathas, Anthony passed along the ranks of the old hermits, anchorites, and cenobites.
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