A variant or related term to coenobite; a member of a religious community living under common rule; a monk or nun in a monastic order.
From Greek 'koinos' (common) + 'bios' (life). This is an older or variant spelling of coenobite, emphasizing the 'shared life' aspect of monastic communities.
A coenobe literally lives the 'common life'—the opposite of a hermit. Medieval coenobites developed some of our first large-scale communities with shared rules, libraries, and work—basically the original institutional organizing.
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