In the flood of christian ascetics who left the world to seek God alone, Simeon chose a novel withdrawal. He mounted a pillar and remained there the rest of his life. To him came supplicants with all kinds of problems: personal anguish, sickness and pain, infertility, sin, and social transgression. Public issues were mediated at his shrine and slaves manumitted. Three views of the Stylite in three lives.
In the flood of christian ascetics who left the world to seek God alone, Simeon chose a novel withdrawal. He mounted a pillar and remained there the r...
The desert stood in stark opposition to the oikoumene, the inhabited world of the fourth century. Not because the world was a bad place, but because the desert 'understood geographically, religiously, spiritually, and mystically ' was the harsh, uncomprising place where the Christian could be perfected by God. Far from the Christian metropolis of Alexandria, removed from the well-known and much 'visited monastic settlements of the Thebaid, and infintely remote from Rome, lay the garrison towns of Aswan and Philae. There Christians and pagans coexisted. Integral to the christian community...
The desert stood in stark opposition to the oikoumene, the inhabited world of the fourth century. Not because the world was a bad place, but becaus...
Beauty consuming itself like incense burnt before God in solitude: these stories of penitent women from the fourth- century egyptian desert fascinated Christians in antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages.
Beauty consuming itself like incense burnt before God in solitude: these stories of penitent women from the fourth- century egyptian desert fascinated...
Founded 900 years ago by St. Bruno, the Carthusians are the most completely enclosed religious order in the Catholic Church. Living alone and in silence in almost perpetual prayer, the monks are the spiritual heirs to the early Christians, the Desert Fathers. As the only order 'never to have been reformed because never deformed', the Carthusians have been described as 'the most precious jewel in the Church's crown'. There is a Carthusian motto: 'To make saints, not to publicise them'. Indeed because they shut themselves away from the world and shun all publicity, little is known about these...
Founded 900 years ago by St. Bruno, the Carthusians are the most completely enclosed religious order in the Catholic Church. Living alone and in silen...
From the semitic-aramaic spirituality of the early Church to the Hellenized theological Vision of later centuries, the Syrian tradition offers modern Christians an intensity, insights, and an immediacy rare in the West.
From the semitic-aramaic spirituality of the early Church to the Hellenized theological Vision of later centuries, the Syrian tradition offers mode...
The living link through whom the ascetic principles of hellenistic philosophers passed into monasticism, Evagrius molded Christian asceticism through his own works and through his influcence on John Cassian, Climacus, and Saint Benedict.
The living link through whom the ascetic principles of hellenistic philosophers passed into monasticism, Evagrius molded Christian asceticism through ...
'I have spent al my life in this monastery', wrote Bede from his isolated Northumbrian cell, 'applying myself entirely to the study of the Scriptures...I have made it my business, for my own benefit and that of my brothers, to make brief extracts from the works of the Venerable fathers on the holy Scripture, or to add notes of my own to clarify their sense and interpretation.'
From the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, Bede's authority as a scriptural exegete was second only to that of the Doctors of the Latin Church. His influence was enormous. Yet modern readers associate this...
'I have spent al my life in this monastery', wrote Bede from his isolated Northumbrian cell, 'applying myself entirely to the study of the Scriptur...
A shrewd observer, a master psychologist, an accomplished raconteur, Dorotheos is also a learned man with a prodigious capacity for assimiliating in an organized harmony the wisdom of his precedessors in the life of the Spirit. Yet he is far more interested in humbly serving his brethren than in discoursing about the recondite aspects of the hescyhast experience. His genial candor makes him the ideal spiritual master to introduce modern readers to the rich spiritual universe of the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria.
A shrewd observer, a master psychologist, an accomplished raconteur, Dorotheos is also a learned man with a prodigious capacity for assimiliating in a...
A translation of all existing documents from the cenobitic monasteries of Pachomius (292-346). '...a major contribution to patristic scholarship on the highest level of scientific accuracy' -Speculum. '...it is unlikely that these fascinating and unparalleled volumes will be superseded...'-The Catholic Historical Review. 'This series is recommended to anyone interested in early history and spirit of cenobitism and religious life' -Spiritual Life. '...they deserve a place on the bookshelf of every scholar interested in the patristic period' -Patristics.
A translation of all existing documents from the cenobitic monasteries of Pachomius (292-346). '...a major contribution to patristic scholarship on th...
