Later apologists for cenobitic living also recognized a parallel between the polis and the monastic community.

It is in this age, from the late eleventh century on, that we get not only the vast network of Cluniac houses, Cistercian reforms, and attempts to combine the eremetic and cenobitic life (for example, the Camaldolese and the Carthusians), but also dual monastic houses of men and women, as well as various other religious orders which had their moment in history.

The accuracy with which the statutes, the serekh, are formulated does not allow any doubt that its members understood themselves to be anything other than members of an association, not of a cenobitic sect (if this social form can be determined at all).