`Give me a word, Father', visitors to early desert monks asked. The responses of these pioneer ascetics were remembered and in the fourth century written down in Coptic, Syriac, …
The sayings of the desert monks of the fifth and sixth centuries amaze, and startle, readers by their wisdom. They teach us—among other things—that the first step in overcoming our …
All around the Roman world—in the Greek East and the Latin West, in Asia Minor, North Africa, Egypt, the Holy Land, Italy, and Gaul—widows, virgins, and sometimes matrons lived …
