Taoism also has a long history of ascetic and eremitical figures. About 1227 he left the community to lead an austere, eremitical life. In keeping with eremitical tradition, however, Edwin the Hermit claims to "spurn the [opposite] sex". This type of monasticism is called eremitical or "hermit-like". It was the eremitical, not the cenobitical, type of monasticism which went forth from Egypt. The eremitical monasteries, on the contrary, are everywhere, and especially in the North. They lived an eremitical life, based on that of Elijah and Saint John the Baptist.