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 on this desert frontier of Empire were the local monks-ascetics, intercessors, comtemplatives, and miracle workers.

Written in the fifth century, during one of the most formative periods of Christian monasticism in Egypt and Palestine, The Ascetic Discourses show a strong influence of the Scripture, both Old and New, and of Early monastic writers. Abba Isaiah has set forth a practical guide for monks, ever aware of the challanges that interpersonal relationships present within monastic communities.

A panorama of Russian Christian spirituality, richly illustrated with passages from formative works.

Eyewitness accounts of the lives and teachings of the fourth-century Desert Fathers from the Historia monachorum in Aegypto.

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, Pseudo-Denis, and Saint Benedict.

At the dividing line between Antiquity and the Middle Ages, scholar-diplomat-pastor-writer-pope Gregory the Great drew on his profound knowledge of Scripture and his personal experience to preach the Gospel. These forty homilies show the practical concerns Gregory faced as well as the theological expectations he had of his flock.

Separated by schism from greek and latin Christians and surviving under arab-islamic suzerainty, the Church of Egypt produced insightful saints and heroic martyrs in a chapter in church history now opened to readers of English for the first time.

The young abbot meditates on the singular role of the Virgin Mother of Christ 'to satisfy [his] own devotion', and in doing so bequeathes his own love of Mary and of Scripture to his Order and to the Church.

Perhaps Bernard's most delightful tract, On Loving God posits that everything good in human persons is an expression of God's love and by love the person may participate in the being of the triune God. In a new analytic commentary, Stiegman examines Bernard's language, logic, and theology, demonstrating the vital importance of reading medieval authors on their own terms, without superimposing categories developed by later generations.

A profound mystic, Bernard sought, above all and in all, to be with God and to bring all persons to the experience of God. His Sermons on the Song of Songs are among the most famous and most beautiful examples of medieval scriptural exegesis. In them the modern reader can catch a glimpse of the genius which an entire generation found irresistible.