The Three Forms

From the Egyptian desert the tradition drew an enduring typology of the monastic life in three forms: the eremitic (the solitary hermit), the coenobitic (the fully communal life), and the semi-eremitic middle way of the lavra and the skete, in which monks live in separate cells but under a common elder and gather for common worship. This file sets out the three forms, their classic descriptions in Cassian and later writers, and their permanence in Orthodox monasticism.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Threefold Typology

Very early, the tradition learned to describe its own life as taking three principal forms, and this typology has proved remarkably durable — it still governs how Orthodox monasticism is organized today, on Athos and beyond. The classic statement is that of St. John Cassian, who carried the Egyptian tradition to the Latin West around 420 and set out the kinds of monk in his Conferences. Cassian distinguishes the coenobites, who live in community under a rule and an elder; the anchorites (hermits), who after long formation in community withdraw to the solitude of the desert; and a third, degenerate kind he calls the sarabaites, who live by their own will without rule or elder — a category Cassian condemns (John Cassian, Conferences 18.4–8; trans. Boniface Ramsey, Ancient Christian Writers 57, Paulist Press, 1997; deferred to St. John Cassian). The Rule of St. Benedict, drawing directly on Cassian, opens with the same schema, adding a fourth bad kind, the wandering gyrovagues, but affirming the coenobites as “the strongest kind” (RB 1.1–13; RB 1980, ed. Timothy Fry, Liturgical Press, 1981).

In the Eastern tradition the enduring positive typology settled into three forms, and it is these three — eremitic, coenobitic, and semi-eremitic — that structure Orthodox monasticism to this day (Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 2015, on the three forms; and Ware’s introduction to the Philokalia, vol. 1, Faber, 1979, on the same threefold pattern in the hesychast tradition).

The Eremitic Life

The eremitic life (from Greek eremos, “desert”) is the life of the solitary hermit, living alone in a cell, cave, or hut, given wholly to prayer, fasting, vigil, and the interior warfare. It is the form associated above all with St. Antony and with the deepest reaches of the desert. The tradition regards it as the highest and most demanding form — the summit of the ascetic life — but precisely for that reason as the most dangerous if entered without preparation. The near-unanimous counsel of the fathers is that solitude is not for beginners: the hermit must first be tested and formed for years in the common life, learning obedience and the discernment of thoughts, before he is fit to face the greater trials of solitude, where without a brother’s help delusion (plani) and despair lie in wait (this is a constant theme of the Apophthegmata and of Climacus, Ladder, Step 27, “On Stillness”; trans. Luibhéid and Russell, Paulist Press, 1982; and of Cassian, Conferences 19, on the respective goods and dangers of the two lives). St. John Climacus warns bluntly that “solitude ruins the inexperienced” and that most who attempt it prematurely are wrecked (Climacus, Ladder, Step 27).

The Coenobitic Life

The coenobitic life (from Greek koinos bios, “common life”) is the fully communal form: monks or nuns living together in one community, under one superior (abbot or abbess) and one rule, sharing a common church, a common refectory (trapeza), common labor, and common obedience, and owning nothing individually. This is the normative and by far the most common form of Orthodox monastic life, and the one the great legislators — Pachomius, Basil, Theodore the Studite — did most to shape. Its spiritual rationale is that community is the true school of charity and humility: it is only among brothers, whose demands and failings continually cross one’s own will, that self-love can be exposed and love of neighbor learned. St. Basil pressed this argument against the solitary life with the famous question, if you live alone, “whose feet will you wash?” (Basil, Great Asketikon, Longer Response 7; trans. Anna M. Silvas, The Asketikon of St Basil the Great, Oxford, 2005; see Saint Basil and the Asketikon). The coenobium subordinates individual ascetic feats to obedience and the common good, and for that reason the tradition often regards it not as a lower form than the eremitic but as the surer road, the ordinary path of salvation for the monk.

The Semi-Eremitic Middle Way: The Lavra and the Skete

Between the solitary and the fully communal stands the semi-eremitic or “middle” way, the form that the desert first embodied in the great colonies of Lower Egypt and that the tradition institutionalized as the lavra and the skete. Here monks live in separate cells or small houses, each with a measure of solitude and self-direction in prayer and work, but bound together under a common elder and gathering — typically on Saturdays, Sundays, and feasts — for the common Eucharist and often a common meal (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 2015; Chitty, The Desert a City, Blackwell, 1966, on the semi-eremitic colonies).

The word lavra (Greek laura, originally “lane” or “alley,” referring to the path linking the scattered cells) came to name this arrangement especially in Palestine, where St. Sabas the Sanctified organized his great Lavra in the Judean desert around 483; the term later became an honorific for certain great monasteries (the Great Lavra of Athos, the Kiev Caves Lavra, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra), even where their life is in fact coenobitic (John Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine 314–631, Oxford, 1994, on the Palestinian lavra; and see Athos, the Monastic Republic). The word skete (Greek skete, from the Egyptian desert region of Scetis) names the small semi-eremitic settlement — a cluster of a few cells around a central chapel, the kyriakon — and remains a living form on Athos and in the Russian tradition, where the skete of Optina Pustyn became famous (see The Optina Elders).

This middle way has often been prized as the wisest form for the pursuit of hesychastic prayer: it grants enough solitude for stillness and interior work while retaining the safeguard of an elder and the anchor of common worship, avoiding both the distractions of a large coenobium and the perils of total solitude. It is the form in which much of the hesychast tradition, from Sinai to Athos to the Russian sketes, has actually been lived (Ware, introduction to the Philokalia, vol. 1, 1979; and see Hesychasm and the Prayer of the Heart).

The Permanence of the Typology

The three forms are not three rival institutions but three settings on a single spectrum, and a monastic life or a single monastery may move along it. The classic pattern, still idealized on the Holy Mountain, is a progression: a monk enters the coenobium and is formed there in obedience for many years; some, tested and mature, may then be blessed to take up the semi-eremitic life in a skete or kellion; and a very few, at the summit, the eremitic solitude of the hermit (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 2015; and the Athonite structure of coenobia, sketes, and hermitages described in the Athos collection). The typology is thus not merely descriptive but pedagogical: it maps a graded ascent, in which solitude is the reward and the risk of a maturity first proven in community. That the same three forms first sketched in fourth-century Egypt still describe the organization of Mount Athos and the Russian sketes in the twenty-first century is a measure of how completely the desert set the pattern for all that followed (Chitty, The Desert a City, 1966; and see The Forms and the Degrees).

References

John Cassian, St. The Conferences. Trans. Boniface Ramsey. Ancient Christian Writers 57. New York: Paulist Press, 1997. (Conf. 18 on the kinds of monk; Conf. 19 on the coenobitic and eremitic lives.)
RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes. Ed. Timothy Fry. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981. (RB 1, the four kinds of monk, following Cassian.)
Basil the Great, St. The Asketikon of St Basil the Great. Trans. Anna M. Silvas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. (Longer Response 7, “whose feet will you wash?”)
John Climacus, St. The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Trans. Colm Luibhéid and Norman Russell. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. (Step 27, “On Stillness”; the dangers of premature solitude.)
Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 2015. (The three forms and the graded progression.)
Ware, Kallistos. Introduction to The Philokalia, vol. 1. Trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber and Faber, 1979. (The threefold pattern in the hesychast tradition.)
Binns, John. Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine, 314–631. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. (The Palestinian lavra; St. Sabas.)
Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. (The semi-eremitic colonies of Egypt; the persistence of the pattern.)