Christian monasticism predates Benedict by some two centuries, originating with the Desert Fathers and Mothers of third and fourth century Egypt, ascetics such as Anthony the Great who withdrew individually or in loose communities into the desert seeking a more radical form of Christian life than settled congregations could offer; Pachomius, in the same period, is credited with organizing the first structured communal, cenobitic, monasteries, a model Benedict's later Rule drew upon and, through its own clarity, comprehensiveness and moderation relative to some of the desert tradition's more extreme asceticism, eventually came to dominate Western monastic practice almost entirely.
Subsequent centuries produced repeated reform movements seeking a stricter return to the Rule's original spirit as individual monasteries grew wealthy and, in the eyes of reformers, lax: the tenth-century Cluniac reform, the eleventh-century Cistercian reform associated with Bernard of Clairvaux, and the seventeenth-century Trappist reform each represent a distinct congregation within the wider Benedictine family, sharing the same foundational Rule while differing in emphasis, austerity and, in the Cistercian and Trappist cases particularly, architectural and liturgical simplicity. Monasteries today generally belong to one of these congregations or to an independent Benedictine confederation, coordinating through periodic general chapters rather than a single centralized monastic government.