The Lives of the Desert Fathers: Volume 34

In the year 394 seven monks from Palestine made a difficult journey through the Egyptian desert, drawn there by stories of remarkable men. What they found in the communities living far up the Nile Valley fully accorded with their expectations, and in the account written by one of their number we have a rare contemporary source of information about the lives of these Desert Fathers.

The witness of the monks in the face of a corrupt and declining, though nominally Christian Empire, and the roo...