The Monks of the Thebaid

A Thebaid: Monks and Hermits in a Landscapeabout 1505
Lorenzo Costa (Italian, about 1460 - 1535)

The Commondore by Patrick O'Brian. On page 266 we find the doctor sitting down to breakfast:

". . . being no more particular about washing, shaving and brushing than the monks of the Thebaid."

Thebaid? Getty Museum gives us this explanation of the above image, though it doesn't say anything about their personal grooming habits:

Using only pen and ink, Lorenzo Costa portrayed the cradle of Christian monasticism, the Thebaid, a Roman division of the upper Nile River valley. Beginning with Saint Paul of Thebes and Saint Anthony of Egypt in the 200s, Christian monks retreated to this region, to live a solitary life of ascetism and prayer. Over time, these monks, also known as "desert fathers," organized into communities.

Costa's scratchy, energetic draftmanship created a bustling composition filled with monks and a landscape riddled with the grottoes, huts, and caves they used for prayer and shelter. He portrayed an imaginary scene, incorporating a variety of monastic saints and spanning different periods. In the upper left background, Saints Paul and Anthony are shown seated, receiving bread from a raven through which God provided nourishment. Mary Magdalene, who supposedly lived her later years alone in the desert, stands near the river to the right. The landscape itself appears more European than Egyptian, perhaps reflecting Costa's native countryside around Bologna, Italy, rather than the real Thebaid.

A thousand years later there was also a Northern Thebaid in Russia. Now I wonder which one Stephen was referring to. Personal preference says the Egyptian ones as they were in the domain of the known world. Russia was like beyond the pale.

P. S. In the book, Thebaid has two dots over the i, not one, but every reference I saw on the net has just one.