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Bible Encyclopedias
Gyrovagi
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or wandering monks. The monasticism of Occidental Europe at an early period took the form of common life in monasteries. Ascetics and hermits were gradually obliged to connect themselves with their brethren settled in convents. Many of them, however, unwilling to submit to conventional discipline, travelled from place to place, from convent to convent, from abbey to abbey, being entertained a few days at each place, in consequence of the general rule of hospitality in vigor in all convents, but evading all propositions tending to render their stay a permanent one. When they had gone over their whole circuit they began it anew, and from this habit received the name of Gyrovagi. Isidore of Seville gave this name also to the Circumcelliones (q.v.). These wandering monks were the pests of the convents, introducing gossip and vice wherever they went. Vainly did Augustine, in De Opere Monachorum, c. 28, and Cassian, Collatio 18, declare themselves strongly against these vagrant monks; Benedict wrote his rules expressly (cap. i) in view of the Sarabaites and Gyrovagi, whom he seems to have been the first to mention by that name in writing. Columbanus and Isidore of Seville (De eccl. s. officiis, lib. ii, e. 15), in the 7th century, also censured the degeneracy of monachism; but it required the rule of Benedict, in the 8th century, and the efforts of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, and Benedict of Aniane, to bind the Western monks firmly to regular conventional life, thus putting an end to the race of homeless, wandering monks. The later mendicant orders are, to a certain extent, a reproduction of them. The name Gyrovagi has also been applied to unsettled, travelling members of the Roman Clergy. See Martene, Comment. in Reg. S. P. Benedic. ti, p. 53 sq. (Paris, 1690); Herzog, Real- Encykl, v, 433.