Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and The Lives of the Eastern Saints

John of Ephesus traveled throughout the sixth—century Byzantine world in his role as monk, missionary, writer and church leader. In his major work,The Lives of the Eastern Saints, he recorded 58 portraits of monks and nuns he had known, using the literary conventions of hagiography in a strikingly personal way. War, bubonic plague, famine, collective hysteria, and religious persecution were a part of daily life and the background against which asceticism developed an acute meaning for a bel...