the first great monastic order.

Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, who made
Christianity the predominant religion in the Roman Empire, died in 337
A.D. Three years later Rome heard, probably for the first time, an
authentic account of the Egyptian hermits. The story was carried to the
Eternal City by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, one of the most
remarkable characters in the early church, a man of surpassing courage
and perseverance, an intrepid foe of heresy, "heroic and invincible," as
Milton styled him. Twenty of the forty-six years of his official life
were spent in banishment.

Athanasius was an intimate friend of the hermit Anthony and a persistent
advocate of the ascetic ideal. When he fled to Rome, in 340, to escape
the persecutions of the Arians, he took with him two specimens of
monastic virtue--Ammonius and Isidore. These hermits, so filthy and
savage in appearance, albeit, as I trust, clean in heart, excited
general disgust, and their story of the tortures and holiness of their
Egyptian brethren was received with derision. But men who had faced and
conquered the terrors of the desert were not to be so easily repulsed.
Aided by other ascetic travelers from the East they persisted in their
propaganda until contempt yielded to admiration. The enthusiasm of the
uncouth hermits became contagious. The Christians in Rome now welcomed
the story of the recluses as a Divine call to abandon a dissolute
society for the peace and joy of a desert life.

But before this transformation of public opinion can be appreciated, it
is needful to know something of the social and religious condition of
Rome in the days when Athanasius and his hermits walked her streets.