The Cult in the Cell

Abstract Early monastic literature refers to a practice already mentioned for congregational Christians in the Didache: the prayers for different times a day. By late antiquity it is designated as something that could be practiced in the monk’s cell. Individual prayer was probably not restricted to hermits but seems to have been practiced in the cenobia, too. The synaxeis-that is, the individual psalmodising of the hermits-clearly corresponded to services in church settings: both, for example, are called synaxis. A general practice of the Christian cult, that is, was transferred to the cell, so to speak. This transferal was probably due to the rather strong individualization tendencies of early monasticism. Thus it is no surprise that, especially for monks, domestic religiousness played a particularly prominent role.