Now that everyone had become Christian, and bad or worldly people were not afraid to belong to the Church for fear of persecution, there was often sin and evil among them.  Many who grieved at this shut themselves up from the world in the most lonely places they could find—little islands, deep woods, mountain tops, or rocks, and the like.  When they lived alone they were called hermits, when there were many together they were called monks, and the women who thus lived were nuns.  Many such monasteries there were in Greece, especially one upon Mount Athos—that peninsula that Xerxes tried to cut off—and most of these have continued even to our own time.