Monastic Rules for Cloistered Life.

From the earliest days of Christianity, there have been men and women who have withdrawn from the world to seek solitude in order to devote themselves to prayer and meditate upon God. For some, this spiritual quest was a solitary endeavor, but in many cases the holy hermit attracted groups of followers who sought to emulate the ascetic lifestyle, and this formation of groups eventually necessitated the development of specialized architecture. Beginning in the fourth century, life in these religious communities was ordered by rules that divided the day into periods of work, prayer, and reading. Basil the Great (c. 330–379) wrote the first set of rules that became the basis of monasticism in the Orthodox church in eastern Mediterranean regions, and this was followed in the West by the Rules of St. Augustine in the late fourth century, and the Rule...