Therapeutæ

Therapeutæ (Gr., 'worshippers'), an ascetic sect, mentioned in the De Vita Contemplativa long ascribed to Philo as living chiefly on the Lake Marcotis, near Alexandria. Their discipline resembled that of the Essenes, but was more severe in food and in the preference for the solitary life to the common fellowship. Throughout the week each lived in his lonely dwelling (μοναστήριον), but on the Sabbath they assembled for worship. The sole authority for their existence, the De Vita Contemplativa, is not believed to be Philo's, although Conybeare (in his edition, 1895) and others have defended his authorship. It seems rather to be the work of a Christian, written about 300 A.D.—an imaginative idealisation of the life of Christian monasticism and asceticism of the time. See P. E. Lucius, Die Therapeuten (Strasburg, 1879).