Abbot John’s answer why he had left the desert.

The system of the anchorites, which you are surprised at my leaving, I not only neither reject nor refuse, but rather embrace and regard with the utmost veneration: in which system, and after I had passed thirty years living in a Cœnobium, I rejoice that I have also spent twenty more, so that I can never be accused of sloth among those who tried it in a half-hearted way. But because its purity, of which I had had some slight experience, was sometimes soiled by the presence of anxiety about carnal matters, it seemed better to return to the Cœnobium to secure a readier attainment of an easier aim undertaken, and less danger from venturing on the higher life of the humble solitary.²¹⁰⁷

2107 The true reading, as given by Petschenig, appears to be the following: Et minus de præsumptæ sublimioris professionis humilitate periculum. It is probably on account of its difficulty that humilitate has been altered into difficultate, as in the text of Gazet (the two humilitate difficultate are found together in some mss.). But the fact appears to be that humilitas is here used for the life of an anchorite, as in Conference XXIV. ix., where Abbot Abraham uses the expression districtionem hujus humilitatis. The word is also used in a similar sense in Conf. I. xx. and XI. ii.

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