An engaging storyteller who writes with wit in an unpretentious style, Wortley's (U. of Manitoba, Canada) interest in the all-consuming trade and devotion to relics has led him to collect and describe
Christian monasticism emerged in the Egyptian deserts in the fourth century AD. This introduction explores its origins and subsequent development and what it aimed to achieve, including the obstacles that it encountered; for the most part making use of the monks' own words as they are preserved (in Greek) primarily in the so-called Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Mainly focussing on monastic settlements in the Nitrian Desert (especially at Scêtê), it asks how the monks prayed, ate, drank and slept, as well as how they discharged their obligations both to earn their own living by handiwork and to exercise hospitality. It also discusses the monks' degree of literacy, as well as women in the desert and Pachomius and his monasteries in Upper Egypt. Written in straightforward language, the book is accessible to all students and scholars, and anyone with a general interest in this important and fascinating phenomenon.
Christian monasticism emerged in the Egyptian deserts in the fourth century AD. This introduction explores its origins and subsequent development and what it aimed to achieve, including the obstacles that it encountered; for the most part making use of the monks' own words as they are preserved (in Greek) primarily in the so-called Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Mainly focussing on monastic settlements in the Nitrian Desert (especially at Scêtê), it asks how the monks prayed, ate, drank and slept, as well as how they discharged their obligations both to earn their own living by handiwork and to exercise hospitality. It also discusses the monks' degree of literacy, as well as women in the desert and Pachomius and his monasteries in Upper Egypt. Written in straightforward language, the book is accessible to all students and scholars, and anyone with a general interest in this important and fascinating phenomenon.
Most of the Tales and Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegms) have survived in Greek and most of them are now available in English, almost 2500 in number. A further six hundred items in six languages have been available in French for some time, but often in second- and even third-hand translations. These have now been newly translated directly from the original languages by scholars skilled in those languages and are presented, alongside an Introduction and brief notes, to the English reader who wishes to know more of those men and some women who rejected 'the world' and went to live in the desert regions of Egypt and elsewhere in the fourth to seventh centuries.
The Tales and Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum) are a key source of evidence for the practice and theory respectively of eremitic monasticism, a significant phenomenon within the ea
Born in Galatia in the 360s, Palladius enrolled as a monk on the Mount of Olives in his early twenties. As a monk, he traveled to Alexandria, the desert of Nitria, the Cells, Palestine, Rome, and the
'I have plucked the finest flowers of the unmown meadow and worked them into a row which I now offer to you', wrote John Moschos as he began his tales of the holy men of seventh-century Palestine and
The 'spiritualy beneficial tales' of Byzantine Christianity grew out of the desert Apophthegmata. Written at a time, and at a social level, not remarkable for its literary output, the spontaneous and
