In reaction to the lax respectability of the majority church, many hardy souls retreated to the desert or the frontier. So the story goes.

Only the monastery was another form of cultural conformity. RA Markus ( The End of Ancient Christianity ) says that “the ideal of the philosophical life was among the most important of the sources which nourished Christian monasticism . . . . In contrast to Judaism, where asceticism played only a minor role and one confined to the fringes of orthodox circles, the whole Hellenistic and Roman philosophical tradition offered a rich store-house of commonplaces extolling the ascetic life.” Christian monks “were not the first to combine the notions of self-denial and of the life of contemplation; even communal dedication to these ideals had been anticipated in Antiquity.” Athanasius was on the right track in describing Antony’s as a “philosophic” life.