Monastic life in the early church

Monks, hermits, and monasteries: their rules and way of life. Part of Asceticism.

Homily on Luke 11Origen · ca. 233–250 · John’s growth “in spirit” is the spiritual growth God commands of all; his upbringing in the desert and his food were as new as his birth; and Christ’s enrolment in Augustus’s census signifies his enrolling believers in the book of life.
Church History 2.17.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Philo (quoted): each house has a sacred room, a “monastery,” where they study only the law, the prophets, and hymns.
Letter 3.4Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony fears that monks wear the habit of the saints without their power, and comforts the brothers with Christ's words that persecution is the lot of those who live according to the spirit.
Demonstration 6.4Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 6.8Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 7.18Aphrahat · 337-345 · The clergy must proclaim, as in Deuteronomy's law of war, that the fearful and those bound to vineyard, bride, or house should withdraw, for battle suits the solitaries.
Demonstration 7.19Aphrahat · 337-345 · Gideon's testing of his army at the water prefigured baptism and the choosing of the few solitaries for the spiritual battle.
Letter 12Ammonas · ca. 340-360 · Elijah and John were first formed in silence and only then sent to heal others; monks who cannot bear silence remain unhealed and cannot receive the divine power.
On Humility and Obedience 1Anonymous · uncertain (4th-6th century?) · Addressing monks, the preacher says the enemy within is overcome only by humility and love, after the example of Christ who humbled himself for love of us; humility makes one obedient to God.
On Humility and Obedience 2Anonymous · uncertain (4th-6th century?) · True humility is shown to God, not paraded before men; it should be followed by obedience and mutual love, as the members of a body help each other.
On Humility and Obedience 4Anonymous · uncertain (4th-6th century?) · The monk under the abbot's light yoke is freed from worldly anxiety; he should accept what the abbot gives as from God, and the brothers should correct one another as abbots to each other.
Letter to Dracontius 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 355 · Athanasius reminds Dracontius of other monks who became bishops, served well, and turned many to Christ.
Life of Antony 0Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Athanasius writes for monks abroad who asked about Antony’s life, telling what he himself saw and learned from Antony.
Life of Antony 3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony placed his sister with consecrated virgins, began an ascetic life near his village, learned from older ascetics, worked, prayed, and memorized the Scriptures.
Life of Antony 11Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · When the old ascetic would not come with him, Antony set out alone for the mountain and saw through the devil’s trick of a silver dish in the road.
Life of Antony 12Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Passing by real gold without a glance, Antony crossed the river and shut himself in an abandoned fort, receiving bread only twice a year.
Life of Antony 14Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · After about twenty years of seclusion Antony emerged unchanged in body and serene in soul, healed and counseled many, and drew many into the monastic life.
Life of Antony 15Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony crossed a crocodile-infested canal unharmed and, by his constant teaching, inspired many new monasteries, which he led as a father.
Life of Antony 16Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony begins his address to the monks: having begun the ascetic life, they should never slacken, for a short life of toil buys an eternal kingdom.
Life of Antony 44Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony’s words strengthened the monks, and the mountain monasteries became like a land of godliness, where Balaam’s blessing on Israel’s tents seemed fulfilled.
Life of Antony 49Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Seeking solitude, Antony was told by a voice to go into the inner desert, and traveling with Saracens he came to a high mountain with a spring and palm trees.
Life of Antony 50Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony made the mountain his home, grew his own grain and vegetables so as not to burden others, and gently commanded the wild beasts to stop damaging his crops.
Life of Antony 55Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony’s counsel to monks: faith, love of God, purity, psalmody, memorizing Scripture, daily self-examination, not letting the sun set on any sin, and writing down one’s thoughts as if others would read them.
Life of Antony 85Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Pressed to stay by a military commander, Antony replied that monks out of the desert are like fish out of water.
Life of Antony 87Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony was like a physician given by God to Egypt, consoling the grieving, reconciling the angry, strengthening monks, and turning soldiers and the rich to the monastic life.
Letter 2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil describes to Gregory of Nazianzus the solitary life: quiet, withdrawal from the world, Scripture reading, prayer, speech, dress, food, and sleep.
Letter 22Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · A list of scriptural rules for monks: speech, obedience, work, poverty, correction of a sinning brother, and forgiveness.
Letter 23Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil commends to an ascetic a man who wishes to renounce the world, asking that he be trained in the monastic life.
Letter 42Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Counsel to a young hermit: persevere to the end, advance gradually, avoid relatives, crowds, and money, read Scripture, and answer the thought that urges a return to the city with the evils seen there.
Letter 44Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil laments the fall of a monk who had been a teacher, and urges him to repent and return, since grace still awaits him.
Letter 45Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil recalls the austere life of a monk he had known in Jerusalem, laments the report of his adultery and perjury, and calls him to repent and return.
Letter 119Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil asks Eustathius of Sebasteia not to believe the slanders of monks who have deserted him, and to restrain Sophronius from widening the breach.
Letter 150Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Written in the name of Heraclidas, a young man turned from public life to the ascetic life, to his friend Amphilochius: he asks for a teacher, and reports bishop Basil's teaching on poverty and almsgiving.
Letter 207Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil answers the clergy of Neocaesarea, who opposed him over doctrine, his monks, and his night psalmody, defending the antiphonal psalmody common to the churches and urging them to keep the faith of Gregory Thaumaturgus.
Letter 223Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil breaks three years of silence to answer Eustathius of Sebaste and his party, describing his own conversion to the ascetic life and his long trust in them, denying their charge of heresy based on an old letter, and exposing their real motive for the breach.
Letter 256Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil sympathizes with a group of monks whose dwellings were burned after Easter by Arian opponents, and asks them to pray night and day for the peace of the Churches.
Letter 295Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil urges monks to encourage one another, to hold fast to the faith of the Fathers, and to join right confession with good works.
Letter 21Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory apologizes to Basil for not joining him in the monastic life, offering to share their time between them; the opening of the next letter is lost.
Letter 27Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory finishes his mockery of Basil's river and retreat, then begins a second teasing letter on its roofless hut and starvation fare.
Letter 29Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory recalls the meagre food and hard labour of his stay with Basil in Pontus and their rescue by Basil's mother.
Letter 171Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory asks the town council to exempt the poor deacon Theotecnus, who serves the martyrs' shrine, from the tax on trades; then he praises Homophronius's retirement.
Letter 335Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory protests to a kinsman who has settled women next to his retreat at Karbala: in effect he is driven out, and he warns him to respect the martyrs' shrine there.
Letter 349Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Short letters to a young monk: to possess God and be possessed by him is the first good; and he must endure the trials he should have expected when he took up the ascetic life.
Letter 353Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory invites a young monk who has quarrelled with Sacerdos to come and accept his mediation; then he rebukes him frankly for acting first and deliberating afterwards.
Letter 357Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory urges the young monk to resist the devil's first assault; then he asks Bishop Helladius to restore Sacerdos to his work, or at least leave him the care of his monastery.
Letter 361Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory, too ill to attend a gathering at Sacerdos's monastery, encourages the community and asks that Sacerdos bear his trial with philosophy and keep serving the bishop.
Letter 381Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory consoles the monks and virgins of Leucadius's community: they should rejoice, and keep his memory alive by copying his virtues in one another; then a short note to Epiphanius.
Oration 6.1Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory breaks his silence for the sake of peace, and describes the ascetic life of the monks whose separation had grieved him.
Oration 12.3Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory describes being torn between longing for contemplative retreat and the Spirit’s call to serve the church, citing Christ’s self-emptying.
Oration 21.19Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory describes Athanasius’s refuge among the Egyptian monks, both hermits and communities, and how he reconciled the solitary life with the communal.
Oration 21.20Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory tells how the monks revered and protected Athanasius in hiding, while George, through bribery and the court eunuchs, spread his power over Egypt and the East.
Oration 25.4Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory tells how Hero chose Christian philosophy, preferred a life among people to solitude, and kept the Cynic dress while rejecting Cynic godlessness and the empty speculations of the schools.
Oration 43.57Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory praises Basil's poverty, frugality and ascetic life, his promotion of virginity and his union of solitary and communal monasticism, and above all the “new city” of charity he built for the poor and the lepers.
Letter 2.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome longs to join the monks of the desert, whose solitude he calls lovelier than any city.
Letter 3.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises their friend Bonosus, who has left wealth and family to live as a hermit on a barren island.
Letter 14.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome invites Heliodorus, as promised, to join him in the desert, trusting Christ to provide.
Letter 14.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome rebukes Heliodorus as a soldier of Christ who has left the battle for home comforts and urges him to let nothing hold him back.
Letter 14.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Heliodorus, who has vowed the perfect life of a monk, to renounce his inheritance and the dangers of the city.
Letter 14.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome argues that a monk cannot be perfect in his homeland, where he will meet contempt and distraction.
Letter 14.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · In a famous closing hymn to the desert, Jerome answers every fear of the ascetic life with the promises of Christ.
Letter 22.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome recounts how, even in the harshest desert life, he was tormented by memories of Rome and sexual temptation, and found relief only in prayer and fasting.
Letter 22.33Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells how the fathers of Nitria had a greedy monk's savings buried with him as a warning.
Letter 22.34Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes the three kinds of Egyptian monks and condemns the third, the undisciplined remnuoth.
Letter 22.35Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes the ordered common life of Egyptian cenobitic monks: obedience, work, silence, prayer, Scripture, and care for the sick.
Letter 22.36Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome briefly mentions the anchorites, whose founders were Paul, Antony, and John the Baptist, and returns to the theme of despising wealth.
Letter 39.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome reminds Paula of her ascetic vows and holds up Naomi, Job, and Melania as examples of patience in bereavement.
Letter 39.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Paula to restrain her grief for the sake of Eustochium and of her own soul, warning that her excess has given occasion to attacks on the monks.
Letter 46.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · They describe the international community of monks and virgins at Jerusalem, united in humility and free of judgment of one another.
Letter 46.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · They contrast the busy, worldly life of Rome, figured as Babylon in Revelation, with the quiet, psalm-singing countryside of Bethlehem.
Letter 51.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Epiphanius explains to John of Jerusalem why he ordained a monk of Jerome's monastery as deacon and presbyter by force, outside John's authority.
Letter 58.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome advises Paulinus that a monk should live in solitude rather than in crowded Jerusalem.
Letter 58.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells Paulinus that clergy belong in cities but monks in solitude, following Elijah, Elisha, and the Rechabites.
Letter 66.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome says that by Paulina's death the church has gained Pammachius as a monk, and many poor as her children.
Letter 66.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises Pammachius, a man of consular family, for wearing the dark dress of a monk and mixing with the poor, unashamed before his peers.
Letter 66.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Pammachius to humility, pointing to Christ's sufferings and to Paula and Eustochium, who now do menial work in their monastery.
Letter 66.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells Pammachius that the crowds at his Bethlehem monastery and hostel have forced him to send Paulinian home to sell the family property.
Letter 71.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warmly welcomes the letter of Lucinius, a rich Spaniard who has turned to the ascetic life, and urges him not to look back.
Letter 82.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome contrasts Theophilus's gentleness, which wins the monks' love, with harsh bishops, citing Moses and Paul as models of meek leadership.
Letter 82.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome protests that John sought an imperial order exiling the Bethlehem monks while leaving Jews, heretics, and Manichees undisturbed, and declares the monks ready to leave.
Letter 92.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus's synodal letter tells the bishops of Palestine and Cyprus that Origenist monks from Nitria have fled to them, and that Origen's books were condemned at a synod in Nitria.
Letter 98.22Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus rebukes the exiled Nitrian monks for slandering the church before the powerful and urges them to silence befitting monks.
Letter 107.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · If Laeta cannot keep these rules at Rome, Jerome urges her to send Paula to her grandmother and aunt at Bethlehem, where he himself will teach her, while Laeta, bound by marriage, gives to God in her daughter what she cannot give in herself.
Letter 108.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Paula travelled to Egypt, visited the monks of Nitria, whom she honoured as images of Christ, and then returned to Bethlehem, where after three years she built monasteries and a pilgrims' hostel.
Letter 108.20Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes the rule of Paula's convent at Bethlehem: three companies of women united in prayer at the set hours, common dress and property, strict separation from men, graded correction, and tender care of the sick.
Letter 118.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Julian to follow Pammachius and Paulinus in giving not only his goods but himself to God, citing the poor widow, Abraham, and the apostles.
Letter 125.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome gives Rusticus rules of monastic life—plain dress, moderate fasting, caution even in visiting his mother’s house—with John the Baptist and the sons of the prophets as models.
Letter 125.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises solitude and urges Rusticus, if he aspires to the clergy, first to learn as a monk before he teaches.
Letter 125.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome advises Rusticus to live in a community rather than alone, since untested solitaries fall into pride and self-will, and reserves the solitary life for those proved in the monastery.
Letter 125.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells Rusticus not to live with his mother, to read and pray constantly, and to keep busy with manual work—gardening, basket-weaving, bee-keeping, copying books—as the Egyptian monasteries require.
Letter 125.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells how an Egyptian abbot cured a young monk’s lust by having him falsely accused and harassed for a year.
Letter 125.15Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Since every art and society needs one head, Jerome urges Rusticus to live in a monastery under one father, and lists the obedience and humility community life teaches.
Letter 125.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome satirizes false monks who keep their wealth, pose in public, trade for profit or fall into melancholy, and says monastery life will train Rusticus out of such habits.
Letter 125.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome says he is instructing a monk, not judging clergy, and urges Rusticus to live so that he may worthily be made a cleric later.
Letter 127.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Marcella was the first noble Roman woman to take up the monastic life, learning of it from Athanasius and Peter of Alexandria; Jerome defends praising women.
Letter 127.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Principia takes Jerome's place as Marcella's companion; their retreat near Rome encourages many monasteries, and Marcella keeps up correspondence with Jerome.
Letter 130.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome advises community life rather than solitude for a virgin, warning against excessive abstinence and self-taught presumption in Scripture.
Ancoratus 107.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · They inspire many to the monastic life.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 29.5.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius claims that Philo's ascetics were Christians.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 29.5.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Philo visited the ascetics of Mareotis.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Eunuchs for the kingdom are the apostles, virgins, and monks.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Countless monks have kept continence.
Life of Paul the Hermit 1Jerome · ca. 375–379 · Jerome explains that Paul of Thebes, not Antony, began the hermit life in the desert, and why he writes about him.
Life of Paul the Hermit 7Jerome · ca. 375–379 · Told in a vision of a holier monk, the ninety-year-old Antony sets out and is shown the way by a centaur-like creature.
Life of Macrina, part 3Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380 · Macrina serves her widowed mother, draws her toward the ascetic life and wins back the proud young Basil to philosophy; Naucratius leaves a public career for solitude on the Iris.
Life of Macrina, part 4Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380 · Naucratius dies suddenly while hunting; Macrina's steadfastness keeps their mother from grief, and mother and daughter take up a common life with their former maids, living like the angels.
Canon 6Anonymous · 380 · A cleric who abandons his office out of vanity to pose as a monk is excluded until long satisfaction.
Liber Orsiesii 7Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · Superiors must care for both the bodies and the souls of the monks and share their labour.
Liber Orsiesii 12Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · The brothers should hold to the founder's precepts, and heads of monasteries should care for their flocks with mercy rather than harshness.
Liber Orsiesii 14Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · The deputies of the monastery must lead in virtue, like the faithful servant rather than the wicked one.
Liber Orsiesii 19Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · The brothers are urged to watch, obey their fathers, keep their bodies chaste as God's temple, and be ready like the wise virgins.
Liber Orsiesii 22Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · The monks should keep only the clothing the rule allows; those who divert common goods to themselves face the rich man's fate.
Liber Orsiesii 26Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · Monks must not keep or lodge private property, not postpone giving up their goods until death, and not profane the monastery as the house of God.
Liber Orsiesii 39Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · A monk may accept nothing from relatives or friends; if he lacks what the rule allows, the superior is to blame.
Liber Orsiesii 47Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · Remembering all that Pachomius did for them, the monks must not let his work decay but cry to the Lord and trust his covenant.
Liber Orsiesii 50Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · The common life of the cenobia comes from God, as in the church of Acts, and leads through suffering with Christ to the fathers' fellowship.
Book of Heresies 9.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Essenes live like monks.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 16.2Egeria · ca. 381-395 · They see a monk's monastery in a valley by a stream.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 20.6Egeria · ca. 381-395 · She is able to see the famous hermits who come down only on this feast.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 20.7Egeria · ca. 381-395 · After the feast the hermits return at once to the desert.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 20.13Egeria · ca. 381-395 · The bishops and monks speak only of Scripture and the deeds of monks.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 21.3Egeria · ca. 381-395 · She visits the monks around the well, who give her blessings.
Letter 1 to Himerius of Tarragona, chapter 6Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Monks and nuns who have broken their vows and had children are to be expelled and do penance, receiving communion only at death.
Letter 1 to Himerius of Tarragona, chapter 13Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Worthy monks may be ordained, but must pass through each grade at the set intervals.
Letter 6 to various bishops, chapter 4Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Wandering men claiming to be monks, whose life, baptism and faith are unknown, must not be ordained deacons, presbyters or bishops; they should be helped with travel money instead.
Letter 48.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges the monks to persevere, not to refuse service to the church out of love of leisure, and to avoid both pride and sloth.
Letter 48.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges the monks to do all their works, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and mutual forbearance, for the glory of God.
Letter 60.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine advises Aurelius against ordaining monks who have deserted their monastery, lest it be said that a bad monk makes a good cleric.
Letter 64.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rebukes Quintianus for having non-canonical scriptures read in church and clarifies the council's rules on receiving clergy and monks.
Letter 78.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine observes that monasteries produce both the best and the worst of men, and urges his people not to despise them for their failures.
Letter 83.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine proposes that in future monks dispose of their property before entering, and that in this case the property be left to Thiave to avoid scandal.
Letter 211.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rebukes the nuns for seeking to replace their long-serving prioress and urges them to repent like Peter rather than Judas.
Letter 211.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine sets out the first rule of the monastery: one heart and soul, common property, and distribution to each according to need.
Letter 211.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine prescribes set times of prayer, reserves the oratory for prayer, and asks that the heart attend to what the voice sings.
Letter 211.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that sisters of delicate upbringing and the convalescent may receive more, and urges all to count frugality as true riches.
Letter 211.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine prescribes a procedure of private warning, witnesses, report to the prioress, and correction or expulsion for sisters who persist in faults.
Letter 211.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rules that clothes be kept in common and work done for the common good, since love puts common things before its own.
Letter 211.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine regulates the washing of clothes, monthly baths, care of the sick, going out in threes, and the duties of those who keep stores, clothes, and books.
Letter 211.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine directs the nuns to obey the prioress and the presbyter, and describes the prioress as one who serves in love and must give account to God.
Letter 211.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine concludes the rule, asking that it be read weekly as a mirror for self-examination.
Letter 216.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Valentinus asks Augustine's prayers, commends Florus to him, and asks him to instruct the monastery on its rule.
Letter 243.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine writes to Laetus, a young monk tempted to leave, urging him as Christ's recruit to build the tower and fight like the king in the Gospel parable.
Letter 243.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that renouncing all one's own includes hating private family ties, since a mother as mother is temporal, but as a sister in Christ is shared eternally.
Letter 243.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine contrasts Laetus's mother, who holds him back from God's service, with the mother of the Maccabees and the Spartan mothers.
Homilies on Matthew 8.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Hos 11:1 is truly fulfilled in Christ, the natural Son, not in idolatrous Israel; Christ's stay in Egypt sanctified it, and now the Egyptian desert, once the home of sorcery, shines with monks and virgins, women contending as bravely as men.
Homilies on Matthew 8.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 8: Egypt, once worshiping cats and onions, now has monks who work with their hands to feed the poor and shame wealthy Christians; Antony's Life proves the truth of the faith; no birthplace or ancestry excuses us from virtue.
Homilies on Matthew 33.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The pagan philosophers and generals are nothing beside the twelve fishermen, who conquered the world and the demons by suffering and changed their enemies; in the mission some things are Christ’s gift and some the apostles’ own virtue.
Homilies on Matthew 55.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom praises the desert monks, who end their one frugal meal with a thanksgiving hymn that recalls the judgment, quotes the hymn, and explains each phrase as teaching trust in God, love for all, spiritual joy and abundance in good works.
Homilies on Matthew 55.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The monks’ hymn ends and begins again in doxology like Paul’s letters, thanks God even for food against the Manichaeans, asks for the Spirit and to escape shame at the judgment; Christians in cities and households, like the apostles’ converts and the married prophets, can share their wisdom.
Homilies on Matthew 68.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Contrasting the theater’s bitter pleasures with the monks’ life, Chrysostom describes the monks of the mountains, free of care, like Adam before the fall and like the angels, rising before dawn to sing hymns and pray for a good defense at the judgment, then working for the poor.
Homilies on Matthew 68.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom contrasts the theater’s choir of harlots, which inflames desire and ruins homes, with the monks’ choir of psalmody, their study of Scripture and their pure speech, and urges his hearers to visit the monks at once and to entrust their affairs to God.
Homilies on Matthew 69.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The desert monks wear the true wedding garment and live like soldiers encamped against the devil, with tents in place of houses and a simple table of bread, water and fruit that angels visit.
Homilies on Matthew 69.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The monks’ life of mutual service, untroubled evenings and heavenly conversation shows them equal to the angels, while worldly Christians are worse than ants or beasts; Chrysostom urges his hearers to go to the monks and put on the clean garment.
Homilies on Matthew 70.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom contrasts the monks’ simple table, where the desires of the belly and of lust lie dead, with the luxurious, unjust and degrading banquets of the rich, and urges his hearers to visit the monks and learn their peace.
Homilies on Matthew 72.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ forbids the disciples to be called Rabbi, father or leader, since God is the true teacher and father and Christ the one leader (which shows the Father and the Son share these titles); humility is the cure, and Chrysostom finds it among the monks, who serve one another with one table and no “mine and yours.”
Homilies on Matthew 72.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Among the monks one soul of love removes all ground for pride: they compete to serve, care for the sick and the poor, and are kept humble by manual work and solitude; Chrysostom urges his hearers, who have the examples of Scripture and of living saints, to visit them often.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.49.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Monks who abandon their monasteries repent of their virtues, not their sins.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Against Manichaean boasts of abstinence, Augustine describes catholic hermits and especially the communities of monks and nuns in the East and Egypt, with their common property, manual work, deans and fathers, fasting, and generous almsgiving.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine describes communities of Christian men and women at Milan and Rome who live by manual work and practice severe fasts, yet, following Paul, never treat food or wine as unclean and make love their rule.
Life of Hilarion 3Jerome · ca. 390–392 · After two months with Antony, Hilarion returned home, gave away his inheritance, and at fifteen settled in the desert near Gaza.
Life of Hilarion 9Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Hilarion lived first in a reed hut, then in a tiny cell like a tomb.
Life of Hilarion 14Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Hilarion heals the three dying children of Aristaenete at Gaza, and many come to him and become monks, the first in Palestine.
Life of Hilarion 24Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Even Antony honoured Hilarion; monasteries multiplied in Palestine and Hilarion urged the monks on.
Life of Hilarion 30Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Fleeing his fame and foreseeing persecution, Hilarion leaves Palestine, visits exiled bishops, and travels to Antony's mountain for the anniversary of his death.
Life of Hilarion 31Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Antony's disciples show Hilarion the places where Antony lived, prayed, and worked, but keep his grave hidden.
Life of Malchus 3Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Malchus tells how he fled marriage to become a monk at Chalcis, and later left the monastery against his abbot's pleading to claim his inheritance.
Life of Malchus 7Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Watching ants cooperate, Malchus longs to return to the common life of the monastery.
Homily 14.3 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges giving alms with one's own hand rather than through church officials, and praises visiting the monasteries, “houses of mourning”, where monks rise before dawn to sing.
Homily 14.4 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom describes the monks' day of night prayer, psalms, Scripture reading, work, fasting, and simple meals, free of the cares of the world.
Homily 14.5 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom describes how monks meet sickness and death, urges respect for hidden saints in the city churches, and teaches secrecy in almsgiving from Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac.
On Illustrious Men 11Jerome · 392–393 · Philo the Jew is included because his book on the Therapeutae was read as praise of the first Christians at Alexandria; his works are listed.
Letter 1.213 (to Sosander)Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · To a man whose wife has died: the Lord has loosed the bond; do not seek another wife (1 Cor 7:27), but save your soul and come to the monastic life.
Historia monachorum, prologueRufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Rufinus’s prologue: at the request of the brothers on the Mount of Olives he will describe the monks of Egypt whom he saw, their virtues and their miracles.
Historia monachorum, chapter 1Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · John of Lycopolis: his prophecies to Theodosius and others, healings, and a long discourse to Rufinus’s party on boasting, purity of heart, and solitude, with stories of monks who fell or repented.
Historia monachorum, chapter 2Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Abba Hor, father of many monasteries, who learned to read by grace, received a promise from an angel, and resisted a demon posing as Christ the King.
Historia monachorum, chapter 3Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Ammon and the Tabennesiot monks, who veil their faces at meals so that their abstinence stays hidden.
Historia monachorum, chapter 4Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Benus, a monk of great gentleness who never swore, lied or grew angry, drove away a hippopotamus and a crocodile in Christ’s name.
Historia monachorum, chapter 5Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Oxyrhynchus, a city full of monks and virgins, with twelve churches and no heretics or pagans, whose people competed to show hospitality.
Historia monachorum, chapter 6Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Theon, a silent recluse near Oxyrhynchus who healed the sick through his window, bound robbers by prayer, knew Latin, and was followed by the desert beasts.
Historia monachorum, chapter 7Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Apollonius of Hermopolis: his call and victory over the demon of pride, his miracles among pagans and in famine, the Easter feast sent from God, and his teaching on joy, hospitality, daily communion and hidden fasting.
Historia monachorum, chapter 12Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · The aged hermit Elijah near Antinoë, who had lived seventy years in a terrible desert cave and still healed the sick.
Historia monachorum, chapter 16Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Paphnutius asks God whom he resembles and is shown a musician who had been a robber, a village headman of upright life, and a merchant; each follows him into the desert, and Paphnutius dies teaching that God has hidden saints in every walk of life.
Historia monachorum, chapter 17Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · The walled monastery of Isidore in the Thebaid, which no one leaves once entered, whose monks work signs and die foreknowing their end without sickness.
Historia monachorum, chapter 18Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Serapion of Arsinoë and his ten thousand monks, whose harvest wages feed the poor of Egypt and Alexandria; the monks of Memphis and Babylon, and the so-called granaries of Joseph.
Historia monachorum, chapter 20Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Dioscorus, a presbyter who examined his monks before communion and taught when nocturnal emissions do or do not involve sin.
Historia monachorum, chapter 21Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Arrival at Nitria, with its fifty dwellings under one father, where the monks run to meet guests with bread and water and excel in love, hospitality and knowledge of the Scriptures.
Historia monachorum, chapter 22Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · The Cells, a desert settlement beyond Nitria where hermits live out of sight and hearing of each other, meeting only on Saturday and Sunday.
Historia monachorum, chapter 23Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Ammonius of Nitria, one of the Tall Brothers, who gave away his own monastery to a newcomer, and the brothers who build and secretly furnish cells for new arrivals.
Historia monachorum, chapter 27Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Evagrius of Pontus, disciple of Macarius, master of the discernment of thoughts, who warned against drinking much water.
Historia monachorum, chapter 29Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Macarius of Alexandria: a paradise in the desert refused as a demonic snare, the bunch of grapes passed round Scetis, his vision of demons distracting monks at prayer and at communion, and a tribune converted by a word.
Historia monachorum, chapter 31Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Paul the Simple, who left his adulterous wife for the desert, learned perfect obedience from Antony, and through his simplicity worked greater healings than his master.
Life of Saint Martin 10Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · As bishop Martin keeps his monastic life and founds a monastery near Tours where eighty monks live in common poverty, prayer, and fasting.
Confessions 8.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Ponticianus tells how two imperial agents at Trier, reading the Life of Antony, left their careers to serve God.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine points to catholic virgins, ascetics, and communities living in common, and insists that married and ordinary believers who serve the saints also belong to the kingdom.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.58Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine applies the story to monks and scholars drawn by the church into ordained ministry, whose labour brings honour to the contemplative life they left.
On the Work of Monks 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Augustine writes at the request of Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, on whether monks who refuse to work, contrary to 2 Thess 3:10, should be tolerated.
On the Work of Monks 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · The monks who refuse manual work argue from Matt 6:25–34 that Paul's command in 2 Thess 3:10 refers only to spiritual work, such as reading, prayer, and encouraging others.
On the Work of Monks 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Those who gave up wealth may be excused from manual work for weakness, but many monks now come from slavery, farming, or crafts and use a misread gospel to avoid work.
On the Work of Monks 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Idle monks become busybodies like the idle younger widows of 1 Tim 5:13 and corrupt vigorous novices by their talk, mocking those who work.
On the Work of Monks 29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Recluses who shut themselves in for days of prayer must store food, which birds do not do; the monks' literal reading would condemn even these admirable ascetics.
On the Work of Monks 32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Leaving the world profits even a monk who works: the rich man's pride is healed by humble labor, and the poor man passes from private gain to a common life, like the Roman heroes who put the commonwealth first.
On the Work of Monks 33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Former rich men in monasteries may be excused manual work but should work if they can, to shame the lazy; those who worked before entering have no excuse, for senators must not labor while peasants live in ease.
On the Work of Monks 36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Augustine appeals to the monks to work so as to answer the wandering hypocrites in monks' habit, who peddle relics and beg, and whose conduct brings the monastic life into disrepute.
On the Work of Monks 37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Augustine insists that he lays no burden he would not bear, for he would rather work with his hands than spend his days judging disputes as bishops must, and he urges the monks to obey Paul.
On the Work of Monks 39Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Some monks wear long hair against Paul's command in 1 Cor 11, claiming the example of Samuel and Samson and a show of humility, though the veil of the old covenant has been removed in Christ.
On the Work of Monks 41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Augustine entreats the long-haired monks, whom he otherwise admires, to stop causing disputes among the brothers, and asks Aurelius to circulate or correct the treatise.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 110–111Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The hundredfold reward is fulfilled in spiritual kin and in the Church's abundance, as when the wealthy supported desert monks; and God, whose power is not measured like nature's, can raise even bodies that have been cut up or burned.
Canon 80 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · A bishop may not ordain or make superior a monk received from another's monastery.
Letter 2, chapter 10Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Monks who become clerics keep their former commitment, and a monk who lost his virginity before baptism may not marry after ordination.
Apology against Rufinus 1.31Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome replies that a dream cannot bind like a waking oath, retorts with the vows of baptism and monastic life, and warns Rufinus with the Psalms.
Apology against Rufinus 3.22Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome narrates his voyage from Rome in 385 by way of Cyprus, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Egypt to Bethlehem, and challenges Rufinus to produce any church document against him.
Dialogues 1.10Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · In the monasteries of the Thebaid the monks live under strict obedience; two boys carry a captured asp back in triumph and the abbot punishes them for boasting.
Dialogues 1.11Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · The hermit refuses food after the boys’ punishment, and after eight days the abbot finds warm heavenly bread hanging at his door.
Dialogues 1.13Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A hermit with a well, an ox, and a garden feeds the travelers; vegetables cook in the sun; at the palm tree he feeds dates to a lion.
Dialogues 1.15Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A lioness brings an anchorite to her blind cubs, he heals them, and she later brings him a skin as a gift.
Dialogues 1.16Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · An anchorite near Syene, poisoned by desert roots, learns from an ibex which plants are safe; Postumianus spent about nineteen months in the desert.
Dialogues 1.17Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Postumianus visits Antony’s monasteries, the place of Paul the first hermit, the Red Sea, and Sinai, where a naked hermit avoided men to be visited by angels; along the Nile thousands of monks live under obedience.
Dialogues 1.18Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A newcomer who promised to obey even if ordered into fire walked into a burning oven at the abbot’s command and was unharmed.
Dialogues 1.19Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A novice ordered to water a dry stick carried water from the Nile for three years until it blossomed; Postumianus saw the tree.
Dialogues 1.22Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A former tribune turned hermit, persuaded by the devil to return to save his family, was possessed until he returned to the desert; Postumianus now asks Sulpicius to speak of Martin.
Dialogues 1.24Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Sulpicius argues that Martin equaled or surpassed the desert saints, for he worked amid hostile clergy and bishops, and he alone raised the dead.
Dialogues 2.11Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A soldier turned monk wants his wife, now a nun, to live with him; Martin answers that no woman stands in the battle line, and that a woman’s victory is not to be seen.
Against Vigilantius 15Jerome · 406 · Jerome answers the objection that monastic withdrawal leaves the churches unserved: the monk's office is to mourn, and virtue is rare.
Against Vigilantius 16Jerome · 406 · Jerome defends flight to the desert as a means of avoiding temptation.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.33.1Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Valens conscripts the monks.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.33.2Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The monks of the Egyptian desert.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.33.3Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Monks are killed in Egypt.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.36.5Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Mascezel takes monks with him and prays.
The Institutes 0.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Castor has asked Cassian to describe in plain words the monastic institutions of Egypt and Palestine for his new monastery.
The Institutes 0.8John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian will correct Gallic monastic customs by the ancient rule of Egypt and Palestine, which he considers the most perfect.
The Institutes 1.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The monk, a soldier of Christ, wears a girdle like Elijah, John the Baptist, Peter, and Paul, as the Scriptures show.
The Institutes 1.2John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · A monk's clothing should be plain and common to all; conspicuous hair shirts are rejected as a source of vanity.
The Institutes 2.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · In Egypt no one may lead a monastery until he has renounced everything, learned obedience, and been trained in the elders' teaching; hence the uniformity of their rule.
The Institutes 2.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The first monks of Alexandria, disciples of Mark, disputed how many psalms to sing, until an angel sang twelve and vanished.
The Institutes 3.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The morning office (Prime) was introduced in Cassian's own monastery at Bethlehem to stop monks sleeping until the third hour; it completes seven daily offices.
The Institutes 4.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian turns to the reception and training of novices, drawing on the Egyptians and on the vast Pachomian community of Tabennesi.
The Institutes 4.16John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Minor faults such as breaking a jar or lateness are atoned by public prostration; grave faults are punished by beating or expulsion.
The Institutes 4.19John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · In the East the monks take weekly turns at kitchen service, ending the week by washing all the brothers' feet and handing over the vessels with care.
The Institutes 4.24John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · John obeyed his elder by watering a dry stick every day for a year, fetching water from two miles away.
The Institutes 4.27John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Patermutus, received with his young son, endured seeing the boy mistreated and obeyed an order to throw him into the river, from which brothers stationed there rescued him.
The Institutes 4.30John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Abba Pinufius, an honoured priest, fled in disguise to Tabennesi to live as a lowly novice until he was recognized three years later and brought back.
The Institutes 4.41John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · In community the monk should be deaf, dumb, and blind to others' faults, and a fool for Christ in unquestioning obedience.
The Institutes 5.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Following Antony, the monk should gather each virtue like a bee from those who excel in it, since Christ is now found in parts among his saints.
The Institutes 5.32John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · A monk burned unopened the letters of his family after fifteen years, lest they disturb his contemplation.
The Institutes 5.36John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · At Diolcos Cassian visited hermits on a barren island between the Nile and the sea who carried their scarce water three miles.
The Institutes 5.38John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Archebius, who had not seen his mother in fifty years, tripled his work for a year to pay off his dead father's debt and free her from creditors.
The Institutes 5.40John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Two boys sent with figs to a sick hermit lost their way in the desert and died of hunger and thirst without touching the fruit.
The Institutes 10.2John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Acedia makes the monk hate his cell and brothers, long for other monasteries, feel hungry and tired at midday, watch the sun, and invent pious reasons to go visiting.
The Institutes 10.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Acedia drives the monk to sleep or to leave his cell, until he forgets contemplation and becomes a deserter entangled in worldly affairs.
The Conferences 1.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Moses explains that every art has a goal and an end, as the farmer, merchant, and soldier show, and asks the visitors what the goal and end of the monk's life are.
The Conferences 1.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Moses teaches that the end of the monk's life is the kingdom of God, but its immediate goal, by which every effort is measured, is purity of heart.
The Conferences 2.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · At a night-long gathering of elders, Antony concludes that discernment, the eye of the soul that keeps the royal road between extremes, is the virtue that most surely leads to God.
The Conferences 2.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abba Serapion told how, as a boy, he secretly stole a biscuit each day until he confessed before his abba, and a burning, sulphurous flame left him; secret thoughts lose their power when confessed to the elders.
The Conferences 2.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Not every old man is a sound elder: Moses tells how an elder crushed a young monk struggling with lust, until Abba Apollo prayed that the elder himself be assailed, teaching him compassion.
The Conferences 3.1John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Cassian introduces Abba Paphnutius, presbyter of Scetis, trained in the coenobium, who withdrew so far into the desert that the anchorites called him “the Buffalo”.
The Conferences 3.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The manner of calling matters less than the end: Abba Moses, a murderer who fled to the monastery, became perfect, while Judas fell though called by Christ, and Paul, called against his will, ended gloriously.
The Conferences 3.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The three renunciations, of possessions, of former vices, and of all visible things for the invisible, are figured in God's call to Abraham, in Ps 45, and in the three books of Solomon.
The Conferences 4.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Daniel describes three states, fleshly, soulish, and spiritual; the lukewarm monk who has left open sins but not his other passions is worse than a worldly person or pagan, and is rarely converted.
The Conferences 4.20John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Many renounce the world outwardly but keep money, seek to rule others as abbots, or show pride in feigned gravity or frivolity; vices disguised as virtues are the hardest to cure.
The Conferences 4.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Monks who renounced great wealth but guard their mats, baskets, and books with the same covetousness have only exchanged, not cut off, their passion.
The Conferences 7.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The demons are less violent than in the early days of the desert, either because of the power of the cross or because monks' negligence makes fierce attacks unnecessary; some monks must be coaxed just to stay in their cells.
The Conferences 7.26John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · As the disobedient prophet was killed but not eaten by a lion, God chastises saints for small faults: Abba Paul, who fled even the sight of a woman, was paralysed and nursed by nuns for four years, while oil touched by his body healed the sick.
The Conferences 8.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Scripture is like a field: some passages nourish plainly by the letter, some must be “cooked” by allegory, some serve in both senses, and the simple historical narrative feeds the simple; literal crosses carried by some monks show the danger of misreading.
The Conferences 9.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Isaac teaches that unceasing prayer is the monk’s goal and is bound up with all the virtues, which must be built like a tower on the foundation of humility and simplicity.
The Conferences 10.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · According to its purity the mind in prayer sees Jesus either in his humility or in his glory; the glory is shown, as at the Transfiguration, to those who withdraw with him to the mountain of solitude, as he himself withdrew to pray.
The Conferences 17.30John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph warns against binding oneself by rigid vows about ascetic practice; Cassian then tells how he and Germanus kept their promise to return to their monastery before going back to Scetis, and closes the second set of Conferences.
The Conferences 18.1John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Cassian and Germanus travel to Diolcos in the Nile Delta, where the aged anchorite and presbyter Abba Piamun receives them and begins to teach.
The Conferences 18.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Piamun names the three kinds of monks in Egypt: cenobites and anchorites, both excellent, and the lukewarm Sarabaites.
The Conferences 18.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Piamun traces cenobitic life to the Jerusalem church of Acts, whose common life was kept by those who withdrew when the church as a whole grew lax.
The Conferences 18.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The anchorites grew out of the cenobites, founded by Paul and Antony, who went into the desert to fight the demons openly, following biblical models of solitude.
The Conferences 18.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Piamun describes the Sarabaites, self-governed monks who work for their own profit, contrasts them with obedient cenobites, and says they are common outside Egypt.
The Conferences 18.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · A fourth, recent kind of monk leaves the coenobium early for solitude to escape correction, and so nourishes hidden vices instead of conquering them.
The Conferences 18.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Piamun explains that “monastery” names any monks’ dwelling, even of one monk, while “coenobium” means a community living under a common discipline.
The Conferences 19.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Cassian and Germanus meet the aged Abba John, who has left the desert for Paul’s coenobium, and ask him why.
The Conferences 19.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · John explains that after fifty years as cenobite and anchorite he returned to the coenobium because desert life had become entangled with material cares, and asks leave to speak freely.
The Conferences 19.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · When the desert grew crowded and hospitality brought material cares, John chose the coenobium, where obedience and freedom from care for tomorrow make up for lost contemplation.
The Conferences 19.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · John lists the cares and luxuries that have crept into the desert and says the coenobium gives him freedom from care, quiet of heart, and the obedience of Christ.
The Conferences 19.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · John says the end of the cenobite is to crucify his own will and take no thought for tomorrow, and the end of the hermit is a mind stripped of earthly things and united to Christ.
The Conferences 19.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Perfection in both lives is rare, but Moses, Paphnutius, and the two Macarii had it, loving solitude yet patiently receiving the crowds who came to them.
The Conferences 19.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Monks who go into solitude before being purified in the coenobium grow wild, cannot bear either visitors or silence, and mistake avoiding people for virtue.
The Conferences 20.1John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Cassian recalls how the famous abbot Pinufius twice fled his honors to live as an unknown novice, first at Tabennesi and then in Cassian’s own monastery in Palestine, and was twice discovered.
The Conferences 21.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas’s wife refuses to join him, warning that she may sin if deserted; he argues from the Gospel that the call to perfection outweighs marriage, and when she will not yield he leaves her for the monastery, later becoming head of the diaconia.
The Conferences 24.1John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Introducing the last conference, Cassian tells how he and Germanus confessed to Abba Abraham their longing to return home, where their pious families would support them and they might convert many.
The Conferences 24.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abraham tells them their longing shows they have not truly renounced the world; the monks of Scete could have had comfort from families, patrons, the Nile, or gardens, but chose hardship for eternal gain, renouncing daily.
The Conferences 24.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · A monk should live where no fertile land tempts him to outdoor work, staying within his cell like a fisherman on a rock, catching and sorting his thoughts.
The Conferences 24.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Even hermits of the remote deserts of Calamus and Porphyrion, who farm in the open, cannot bear the cell and silence of Scete, because outdoor work has let their thoughts run loose.
The Conferences 24.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Going out of the cell to relieve acedia only strengthens restless thoughts, like cold water that inflames a fever.
The Conferences 24.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · As a builder draws an apse from a fixed center, the monk must turn every thought around the love and remembrance of God, or his spiritual house will collapse.
The Conferences 24.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abraham answers that practices safe for some are fatal for others, as Saul’s armor would have been for David; they must weigh whether they could keep such austerity in their colder, less devout homeland.
The Conferences 24.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abba Apollo refused to leave his cell at night to help his brother free an ox, saying he had been dead to the world for twenty years; only those so dead to their families could safely live near them.
The Conferences 24.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Through Abba Macarius’s parable of a barber who left a small steady income for a city of high wages and higher prices, Abraham warns that seeking to convert others at home would cost them the small but real gain of solitude.
The Conferences 24.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Being visited is a sign of love for God, not a fault; the devil lures monks away with dreams of better solitudes and willing converts, only to trap them in worldly cares.
The Conferences 24.26John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abraham explains the promised hundredfold in this life as the far greater spiritual love, possessions, and honor that monks receive in place of what they renounced, and Cassian closes the Conferences commending them to the holy brothers.
In Praise of the Desert 1Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · Eucherius praises Hilary for returning to the desert of Lérins, leaving even Honoratus, whom he had escorted to his bishopric, out of love for God.
In Praise of the Desert 27Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · The desert fathers John and Macarius and many others lived in the desert a heavenly life.
In Praise of the Desert 29Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · God still feeds and clothes the monks of the desert as he did Israel for forty years.
In Praise of the Desert 30Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · The holy man rightly leaves home and family for the desert, which becomes his homeland.
In Praise of the Desert 32Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · Monks practise the true philosophy in the desert, where Moses, Elijah and Christ fasted forty days.
In Praise of the Desert 33Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · In the solitude of the desert one can best be still, see God's sweetness, and cling to him.
In Praise of the Desert 37Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · The silence of the desert stirs the mind to God, broken only by the monks' hymns.
In Praise of the Desert 42Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · Eucherius praises his monastery of Lérins and its founder Honoratus, Maximus, Lupus, Vincent, Caprasius and its hermits.
In Praise of the Desert 43Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · The monks of Lérins already live the blessed life they seek, enjoying Christ and receiving their reward in their labour.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 10Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · The fame of the two brothers' life spread in spite of their efforts to hide it; fearing vanity, they longed for the desert.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 15Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Returning through Italy, Honoratus settled on the island of Lérins near Bishop Leontius of Fréjus; trusting the promises of Scripture, he faced its serpents without harm.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 16Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus founded a monastery at Lérins and, though he had long avoided it, was ordained presbyter, keeping his monastic humility.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 17Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Lérins grew into a great monastery drawing men from every nation; Honoratus transformed their characters by his exhortation, prayer, and discerning guidance.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 18Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus watched over each monk's needs, health, and quarrels with fatherly care, lightening the yoke of Christ for all.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 19Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Monks of many nations were united in love for Honoratus, whose moods, as Salvian wrote, were like a sun to the community.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 24Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus received the converted Hilary with tears, brought him to the desert, and trained him with great love.
Letter to Valerian, paragraph 27Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 432 · If God gives so much to all now, his rewards for the just will be beyond telling; Eucherius urges Valerian to steer from the sea of business into the harbour of the religious life, anchored on the cross, and closes.
Commonitory 1Vincent of Lérins · 434 · Writing as Peregrinus from a monastery, Vincent explains why he sets down in a 'reminder' what he received from the fathers.
Canon 25Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Those who abandon the religious life without penance are excluded from communion and from the clergy; a penitent may not return to secular dress.
Canon 4Anonymous · 451 · Monks are subject to the bishop, may not found monasteries or leave them for outside affairs without his consent, and may not receive slaves without their masters' consent.