Consequently, the nuns and monks of the West never went to the fantastic extremes which exhibited in the East a stylite, or a female recluse, dwelling, like an animal, in a hollow tree, or a drove of half wild and wholly maniacal humans who subsisted by browsing on such edible roots as they found in the earth on which they grovelled.
"Women of Early Christianity Woman: In all ages and in all countries, Vol. 3 (of 10)"
Alfred Brittain Mitchell Carroll