An Introduction to the Desert Fathers

An accessible guide to the lives and teaching of the earliest Christian monks, largely using their own words.

John Wortley (Author)

9781108703727, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 June 2019

208 pages, 2 maps
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.31 kg

'… I commend and recommend this book to anyone interested in discovering more about the early desert monastics.' Tim Vivian, The American Benedictine Review

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.

1. Desert Fathers
2. Beginnings
3. Becoming a monk
4. Impediments to progress
5. The object of the exercise
6. Prayer
7. Discretion
8. Work
9. Eating and drinking
10. Hospitality and neighbourliness
11. Women in the desert
12. Literacy
13. Heresy
14. The Pachomian experiment.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2], The Early Church [HRCC1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]