Desert Fathers
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"How often when I was installed in the desert . . . I would imagine myself taking part in the gay life of Rome! . . . Although my only companions were scorpions and wild beasts, time and again I was mingling with the dances of girls. My face was pallid with fasting and my body chill, but my mind was throbbing with desires; my flesh was as good as dead, but the flames of lust raged in it." --Jerome, recalling his life of desert asceticism, quoted in J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings and Controversies, page 52., translation F. A. Wright |
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The Desert Fathers were Christian Hermits, Ascetics and Monks who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt, beginning in about the third century. Very few of the Desert Fathers lived in other deserted regions of Egypt. The original desert hermits were Christians fleeing the chaos and persecution of the Roman Empire's Crisis of the third century. Christians were often scapegoated during these times of unrest, and near the end of the century, this persecution was made systematic by the emperor Diocletian. In Egypt, Christian refugee communities formed at the edges of population centers, far enough away to be safe from Imperial scrutiny, but still close enough to have access to civilization. Records from this time indicate that Christians often lived in tombs and trashheaps on the edges of major cities, more or less protected by their obscurity.
Essential texts
- The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum)
- The Lives of the Desert Fathers (Historia Monachorum in Aegypte)
- The Lausiac History by Palladius of Galatia
- The Life of Saint Antony by St. Athanasius
- Philokalia collection of texts
- The Conferences and The Institutes by John Cassian
See also
- Desert Mothers
- Cappadocian Fathers
- Coptic Monasticism
- Christian monasticism
- Eastern Christian monasticism
- Philokalia
- Theoria
