Jesus and Plato and the India-Tibet Connection

"Heresey might be annoying to the Church, but was not, as such, contrary to the spirit of primitive Christianity." --Bertrand Russell

Did the source of ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Roman spirituality actually originated in India and Tibet? The early Christian Church labeled these religions as "pagan" and heretical and destroyed ancient libraries that contained the texts of these works.

Linda Johnsen in her recent book, LOST MASTERS points to an India connection in ancient Greek and Roman thought:

"Plato was recognized as one of the greatest mystics in the history of Western civilization, and Plotinus (who carried on Plato's tradition five hundred years later in Rome)towered over the centuries as a giant of Western spirituality. These men were not just thinkers--they were considered sages, transmitters of profound and inspired wisdom that paralleled the mystical lineages of India."

"Ironically, it was my Indian researches that led me back to Greece. I learned that a Greek magus named Apollonius of Tyana had visited India in the first century CE and that a fairly detailed account of his travels had actually survived. Reading Apollonius story was a galvanizing experience, revealing astonishing connections between the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Persian and Indian cultures, which most modern historians neglect."

In the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries CE, early Christianity and Greek scholarship, Neoplatonism (essentially an hellenization of eastern religious thought), existed peacefully side by side. This peaceful coexistence continued until the early Christian church and an emerging church doctrine began to take shape in fourth century. In 380 CE, sixty-eight years after Constantine legalized the Christian religion, Roman Emperor Theodosius' decreed, to the exclusion of all other religions, that Christianity was the Religion of the Empire. Before 380 CE, the Roman government was largely tolerant of all religions in the Empire, including, after 312, Christianity. The decree in 380, promoted new attitude of religious intolerance that swept the Empire as the early Christian Church, through a series of ecumenical councils, that started in 325 and began to solidify Christian theology and Christology.

The decree of 380 gave the Christian Church authority to use Roman troops to destroy all non-Christian temples throughout the Empire and murder anyone who stood in the way. According to some accounts the early Church moved quickly to enforce the decree, leaving those individuals who were not Christian with no alternative but to convert to Christianity as their shrines and temples were destroyed. Many non-Christians lost their lives when they rebelled against the destruction of their sacred places. The early Christian Church proved as brutal in carrying out the new decree as the Romans were in persecuting early Christians.

Theodosius's decree in 380 lead to the beginning of the end of classical scholarship and all teaching and research in the Empire. The Alexandrine University, located in Alexandria, Egypt was eventually closed with its faculty and librarians fleeing to higher education institutions and libraries in Persia. Fortunately some classical texts in the libraries were saved from destruction by being transported to libraries in Persia. But in the main, library collections were burned and scholars and librarians who tried to defend their libraries were murdered by Christian fundamentalists.

In assessing the lost of just one of the empire's libraries, the great library at Alexandria, Egypt, J. Harold Ellens in his short book titled, The Ancient Library of Alexandria and Early Christian Theological Development had this observation:

"Undoubtedly, the destruction of the ancient Library at Alexandria was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of tragedies in human history. The loss of scientific knowledge, social order, urban organization, economic stability, political wisdom and freedom, and civilized idealism, concommitant with decline and destruction of the library, had the very palpable consequence of nearly cutting in half the mean life span of Western humankind."

The destruction of these ancients texts, essentially gave the Christian Church an opportunity to rewrite history to serve their own purposes leaving a huge gap in our knowledge about the early mystery religions that were practiced by the Greeks and Romans. However some information has been passed down to us. The remarkable thing about the mystery religions before the rise of the Christian Church and Church doctrine maybe just how universal and really spiritual these religions were. These early religions incorporated ideas from the ancient civilization of India. Today, we recognize the return of general interest in the ancient mystery religions as the New Age movement which many contemporary Christians consider satanic or pagan, just as they did 1,600 years ago.

Ironically, the desert fathers inhabiting the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Arabia and Persia were really tuned into ideas of Plato's mystical message that were a part of these ancient mystery religions. Many of the Christian monks in Egypt were educated in Neoplatonism at the great Alexandria School in Alexandria, Egypt, and their individual pursuit of a mystical union with the Ultimate one in the deserts of Egypt was in the Neoplatonic tradition. Not all the monks in the Egyptian were educated. The Coptic monks were indigenous Egyptians who converted over to Christianity and most were largely uneducated and more likely to be fundamentalists in line with the Alexandrian Church in Alexandria, that was becoming increasingly orthodox in its outlook. This, no doubt, caused some friction within the monastic movement in Egypt.

In the 4th century as Neoplatonism and all classical studies were condemned as heretical, the Alexandrian Church, this was the Coptic Christian Church that declared Christ as fully divine and equal to God the Father, began enforcing their doctrine opposing Neoplatonism. In a coup like fashion, Neoplatonic monks were evicted from the Egyptian monasteries. Those monks fled east into Palestine, Arabia and Persia, and some traveled to Europe giving rise to European monasticism.

What was lost in all this confusion was the largely unknown connection of the western mind with the eastern religions. In fact it might said that if you could trace the primal source of all the world religions today, you would find an India-Tibet connection.

Here are two books that attempt to recreate some of the our missing knowledge about the "mystery religions" of the Romans, the Greeks and even some early Christians.

Plato and the India-Tibet connection

Notes from the book:Lost Masters, by Linda Johnsen.

Research by Ms. Johnsen reveals a connection between ancient Greek philosophy and India's spiritual masters over 2,500 years ago.

"I very much want to introduce you...to the great spiritual masters of our past, Western "gurus" whose traditions, unfortunately, we've forgotten. Their life stories, like those of sages everywhere, are remarkable. And their distinctive approaches to spirituality will remind you of similar Hindu, Buddhist, yogic, and tantric lineages."

Ms. Johnsen presents an interesting new look at the "mystery religions" before Christianity. Were these religions that were branded "pagan" and "heretical" by the early Christian Church, even more spiritual than contemporary Christianity? I think so, because, rather than focusing on the end times, hell and damnation, these mystery religions constructively focused on actually preparing an individual for the next life. Just as the desert fathers were doing for themselves in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Arabia and Persia. And they are continuing to do so in the very same places today.

What were these mystery religions that made the early Christian Church was so afraid? Did the Church destroyed ancient library collections in the 4th century CE, throughout the Roman empire, in an attempt to rid the world of these ideas?

This book is worth a read!

Bio from: Linda Johnsen (Wikipedia)

Chapter 1.

p. 1

...until the modern period, Plato was recognized as one of the greatest mystics in the history of Western civilization, and Plotinus (carried on Plato's tradition five hundred years later in Rome) towered over the centuries as a giant of Western Spirituality. These men were not just thinkers--they were considered sages, transmitters of a profound and inspired wisdom tradition that paralleled the mystical lineages of India. As late as the Renaissance, the stature of the ancient Greek philosopher as spiritual masters of the first magnitude was acknowledge throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds.

p. 2

...my Indian researches...lead me back to Greece. I learned that a Greek magus named Apollonius of Tyana had visited India in the first century CE and that a fairly detailed account of his travels had actually survived. Reading Apollonius'story was a galvanizing experience, revealing astonishing connections between the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Perisan, and Indian cultures, which most historians neglect.... Was Apollonius correct when he claimed that the Greeks had learned their doctrines from the Egyptians--and the Egyptians learned them from India?

p. 3

...The 'mystery religions' that so inspired Greek and Roman Civilization were also clearly related to the wisdom of India, especially in their doctrines of karma, reincarnation, and spiritual transcendence.

Jesus and the India-Tibet Connection

Notes from the book: The Lost Years of Jesus, by Elizabeth Clare Prophet.

bio: Elizabeth Clare Prophet (Wikipedia)

Ms. Prophet provides a well researched account of of a Russian's visit to a Tibet Monastery.

What Jesus did during his so called "lost years", between when he was 13 and 30?
According to one account, written in the late 1800s, he traveled to India and Asia and studied eastern religions and that even today he is known throughout those regions. The Russian who wrote the account told a story of visiting a Tibetan monastery and seeing a scroll about Jesus's visit. He claims that Jesus was called Issa or Saint Issa and was respected and revered by the Tibetan monks. Subsequent followup and research in the early 20th century supports the Russian's story.

The Russian's name is Nicolas Notovitch and his book is: The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ.

Is it any wonder that the account of Jesus' India and Tibetan journey is not generally known. After all, today as was the case 1,600 years ago, anything not Christian is pagan. And pagan is evil. Certainly Jesus' interest in and practice of eastern religious practices blurs the distinction between Christian and non Christian.

So one question that begs to be answered is the modern day Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, really a "pagan" in the Christian sense? And was Jesus's journey to Tibet to study and teach, during his so called "lost years" really an "unChristian" thing to do?

The India-Tibetan connection brings a new life and a new perspective to Christianity.

The individualistic orientation of the eastern religions and the fact that you are going to be returning to earth time after time until you get it right places squarely on the shoulders of the individual the responsibility for their own salvation. Maybe that is what scares Christians today.

Additional Sources

• Early centers of Christianity - India (Wikipedia)

• Christianity in India (Wikipedia)

• Lost years of Jesus (Wikipedia)

• Jesus in India

  "Ahmadi Muslims hold the unique belief that Jesus (peace be upon him) survived the crucifixion and travelled towards India to continue his ministry among the Lost Tribes of Israel. Furthermore, they claim that his tomb, containing his body, has been recently re-discovered in India where it can be seen to this day. Ahmadi Muslims also assert that this belief is not only upheld by the Holy Quran and the Sayings of Muhammad, but even by the Holy Bible itself."

• The Lost Years of Jesus in Tibet (A Tibetan View)

  "The undocumented portion of Jesus’s early life, popularly known as “The Lost Years of Jesus, have aroused many questions about Jesus of Nazareth’s whereabouts and activities during this period. “The Lost Years of Jesus” are generally said to comprise of Jesus’s life after 12 years of age and prior to 30 years of age. These years have been suitably labeled the “Lost Years” since there has been no biblical or middle eastern/western records of Jesus’s activities during this period to date."

• Jesus, the Teenage Years

  A large map of one possible itinerary via ancient roads and trade routes.

• Nicolas Notovitch (Wikipedia)

• The Jesus of the New Age Movement...Ron Rhodes

  "Did Jesus travel to the East to study under gurus? Did He become "the Christ" as a result of what He learned and accomplished there? Are there mystical "gospels" that have been suppressed by the church, keeping us from knowing the real Jesus? In this article, we will look at these and other important questions related to the Jesus of the New Age movement. We begin by examining the claims of a controversial Russian writer."

• Lost years of Jesus (Wikipedia)

• A NEW ECUMENISM BASED UPON REEXAMINATION OF THE "LOST YEARS" EVIDENCE...James W. Deardorff

  "The "lost years" evidence due to Notovitch in 1894 of Jesus being in India during his youth, along with its debunkings, are reexamined and the latter are found not to have been scholarly in any sense. Later evidence fully confirming Notovitch's find is presented. The implications that Jesus taught reincarnation and karma, not resurrection, are summarized and found entirely plausible. The ramifications this has for ecumenism with respect to the Eastern religions cannot be overstated, though for Christianity they remain unacceptable. "

• Was Jesus a Buddhist?...James M. Hanson

  "Twenty-five years prior to Notovitch's expedition Muller had written, "Between the language of the Buddha and his disciples, and the language of Christ and his apostles, there are strange coincidences. Even some Buddhist legends and parables sound as if taken from the New Testament, though we know that many of them existed before the beginning of the Christian era." (13) Muller then was joined by other scholars. De Bunsen stated: "The most ancient of the Buddhistic records known to us contain statements about the life and the doctrines of Gautama Buddha which correspond in a remarkable manner, and impossibly by mere chance, with the traditions recorded in the Gospels about the life and doctrines of Jesus Christ." (14) Doane wrote, "The history of Jesus of Nazareth, as related in the books of the New Testament, is simply a copy of that of Buddha, with a mixture of mythology borrowed from other nations." (15)"

• Jesus in India...by Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

  "Being an account of Jesus' escape from death on the cross and of his journey to India "

• The Missing Years of Jesus...by Aerik Vondenburg

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Exploration of Interior Space: The Parable of the Desert

“The longest journey of any person is the journey inward"

Those who lose themselves in the deep desert discover the secret which Kafka's applicant in his parable “Before the Law” never appreciates. The law's secret is its nothingness. That is its ground, and only those who dare to go outside and beyond the law—to become outlaws in the Badlands—can hope to learn of its “mystical” foundations.
source: The sacred desert: religion, literature, art, and culture...David Jasper

Before the Law by Franz Kafka

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” The gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try going inside in spite of my prohibition. But take note. I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I cannot endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this first one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud; later, as he grows old, he only mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has also come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things considerably to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know now?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”
source: Franz Kafka, Before the Law...translated by Ian Johnston

A Monastic (Contemplative) Contribution to Global Healing
Monasticism, as an organized spiritual journey, is further countercultural because it offers another way to society. Its very existence calls into question the assumptions of society which are usually based on a limited understanding that does not challenge the individual to grow either morally or spiritually or intellectually, but is satisfied with conformity. The masses have become enslaved to conformity through the hypnotic trance of entertainment and pleasure, the chief agent of which is the television and video medium. This medium has helped create a culture that is spiritually illiterate, morally shallow, psychologically dysfunctional, addictive and violent; a society and culture that is inwardly disordered. The monastic or contemplative call challenges this social milieu by offering a vision of peace, holiness, integration and the unmistakable reality of the inner life; it offers clarity and focus on what is essential.

Contemplation changes our perspective. It allows us to see through the illusions and negative patterns of society and ourselves. It holds a mirror to us, revealing our hidden motives. It calls us to change, to metanoia, to conversion, to strive for happiness in a different way; it awakens us and invites us to grow up. As it does this and critiques our society and its myopic values, it performs a critical and necessary prophetic function in the world, and has always done so. It draws our attention to the primacy of the inner journey that we are all meant to make. But it also calls us to change, to transformation of our perspective, our heart and actions, what the inner journey itself demands. As our perspective changes or expands, we are empowered to respond with compassion, kindness and love.
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*The contemplative experience of transformation radically alters our relationship to the natural world, sensitizing us to the goodness, value and role of the created order, its need to be respected and protected by the human family. In the Rule of St. Benedict, an attitude of reverence prevails for the tools, property etc. of the monastery. They are to be treated “ . . . as if they were the sacred vessels of the altar.”(21) This attitude was extended to the natural world, and a great reverence for the land was evident in the operation of monastic farms. A non-exploitive relationship existed over the centuries; a bond of harmony was characteristic of this relationship between monks and the land. Wonder prevailed rather than manipulation. Monks, contemplatives, were and are so awake interiorly that all of nature is a theophany, a place of God’s manifestation. They could see God giving himself in the created world, human life and in the heart. We need this kind of wisdom to heal our relationship with the Earth and with one another. We must regain a sense of reverence for life in all its forms. That is the challenge and the goal for humankind as the third millennium approaches.
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*But in the end, the healing of the Earth requires a new vision of reality, society and the human relationship to the environment. The contemplative dimension, present in all the religious traditions, is a vital resource in calling forth a civilization governed by love, compassion and kindness. As the task before us unfolds, it becomes clear that the religion of the human family equals the religions working together in harmony and mutual respect to implement this monumental transformation in culture, life and international relations.
source: Monastic Dialog...Br. Wayne Teasdale

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Introduction...The Hermits

St. Paphnutius used to tell a story which may serve as a fit introduction to this book. It contains a miniature sketch, not only of the social state of Egypt, but of the whole Roman Empire, and of the causes which led to the famous monastic movement in the beginning of the fifth century after Christ.

Now Paphnutius was a wise and holy hermit, the Father, Abba, or Abbot of many monks; and after he had trained himself in the desert with all severity for many years, he besought God to show him which of His saints he was like.

And it was said to him, "Thou art like a certain flute-player in the city."

Then Paphnutius took his staff, and went into the city, and found that flute player. But he confessed that he was a drunkard and a profligate, and had till lately got his living by robbery, and recollected not having ever done one good deed. Nevertheless, when Paphnutius questioned him more closely, he said that he recollected once having found a holy maiden beset by robbers, and having delivered her, and brought her safe to town. And when Paphnutius questioned him more closely still, he said he recollected having done another deed. When he was a robber, he met once in the desert a beautiful woman; and she prayed him to do her no harm, but to take her away with him as a slave, whither he would; for, said she, "I am fleeing from the apparitors and the Governor's curials (apparitor: an officer who carried out the orders of a civil or ecclesiastical court) for the last two years. My husband has been imprisoned for 300 pieces of gold, which he owes as arrears of taxes; and has been often hung up, and often scourged; and my three dear boys have been taken from me; and I am wandering from place to place, and have been often caught myself and continually scourged; and now I have been in the desert three days without food."

And when the robber heard that, he took pity on her, and took her to his cave, and gave her 300 pieces of gold, and went with her to the city, and set her husband and her boys free.

Then Paphnutius said, "I never did a deed like that: and yet I have not passed my life in ease and idleness. But now, my son, since God hath had such care of thee, have a care for thine own self."

And when the musician heard that, he threw away the flutes which he held in his hand, and went with Paphnutius into the desert, and passed his life in hymns and prayer, changing his earthly music into heavenly; and after three years he went to heaven, and was at rest among the choirs of angels, and the ranks of the just.

This story, as I said, is a miniature sketch of the state of the whole Roman Empire, and of the causes why men fled from it into the desert. Christianity had reformed the morals of individuals; it had not reformed the Empire itself. That had sunk into a state only to be compared with the worst despotisms of the East. The Emperors, whether or not they called themselves Christian, like Constantine, knew no law save the basest maxims of the heathen world. Several of them were barbarians who had risen from the lowest rank merely by military prowess; and who, half maddened by their sudden elevation, added to their native ignorance and brutality the pride, cunning, and cruelty of an Eastern Sultan. Rival Emperors, or Generals who aspired to be Emperors, devastated the world from Egypt to Britain by sanguinary civil wars. The government of the provinces had become altogether military. Torture was employed, not merely, as of old, against slaves, but against all ranks, without distinction. The people were exhausted by compulsory taxes, to be spent in wars which did not concern them, or in Court luxury in which they had no share. In the municipal towns, liberty and justice were dead. The curials, who answered somewhat to our aldermen, and who were responsible for the payment of the public moneys, tried their best to escape the unpopular office, and, when compelled to serve, wrung the money in self-defence out of the poorer inhabitants by every kind of tyranny. The land was tilled either by oppressed and miserable peasants, or by gangs of slaves, in comparison with whose lot that even of the American negro was light. The great were served in their own households by crowds of slaves, better fed, doubtless, but even more miserable and degraded, than those who tilled the estates. Private profligacy among all ranks was such as cannot be described in these or in any modern pages. The regular clergy of the cities, though not of profligate lives, and for the most part, in accordance with public opinion, unmarried, were able to make no stand against the general corruption of the age, because--at least if we are to trust such writers as Jerome and Chrysostom--they were giving themselves up to ambition and avarice, vanity and luxury, intrigue and party spirit, and had become the flatterers of fine ladies, "silly women laden with sins, ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth." Such a state of things not only drove poor creatures into the desert, like that fair woman whom the robber met, but it raised up bands of robbers over the whole of Europe, Africa, and the East,--men who, like Robin Hood and the outlaws of the Middle Age, getting no justice from man, broke loose from society, and while they plundered their oppressors, kept up some sort of rude justice and humanity among themselves. Many, too, fled, and became robbers, to escape the merciless conscription which carried off from every province the flower of the young men, to shed their blood on foreign battle-fields. In time, too, many of these conscripts became monks, and the great monasteries of Scetis and Nitria were hunted over again and again by officers and soldiers from the neighbouring city of Alexandria in search of young men who had entered the "spiritual warfare" to escape the earthly one. And as a background to all this seething heap of decay, misrule, and misery, hung the black cloud of the barbarians, the Teutonic tribes from whom we derive the best part of our blood, ever coming nearer and nearer, waxing stronger and stronger, learning discipline and civilization by serving in the Roman armies, alternately the allies and the enemies of the Emperors, rising, some of them, to the highest offices of State, and destined, so the wisest Romans saw all the more clearly as the years rolled on, to be soon the conquerors of the Caesars, and the masters of the Western world.

No wonder if that, in such a state of things, there arose such violent contrasts to the general weakness, such eccentric protests against the general wickedness, as may be seen in the figure of Abbot Paphnutius, when compared either with the poor man tortured in prison for his arrears of taxes, or with the Governor and the officials who tortured him. No wonder if, in such a state of things, the minds of men were stirred by a passion akin to despair, which ended in a new and grand form of suicide. It would have ended often, but for Christianity, in such an actual despair as that which had led in past ages more than one noble Roman to slay himself, when he lost all hope for the Republic. Christianity taught those who despaired of society, of the world--in one word, of the Roman Empire, and all that it had done for men--to hope at least for a kingdom of God after death. It taught those who, had they been heathens and brave enough, would have slain themselves to escape out of a world which was no place for honest men, that the body must be kept alive, if for no other reason, at least for the sake of the immortal soul, doomed, according to its works, to endless bliss or endless torment.

But that the world--such, at least, as they saw it then--was doomed, Scripture and their own reason taught them. They did not merely believe, but see, in the misery and confusion, the desolation and degradation around them, that all that was in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, was not of the Father, but of the world; that the world was passing away, and the lust thereof, and that only he who did the will of God could abide for ever. They did not merely believe, but saw, that the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men; and that the world in general--above all, its kings and rulers, the rich and luxurious--were treasuring up for themselves wrath, tribulation, and anguish, against a day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who would render to every man according to his works.

That they were correct in their judgment of the world about them, contemporary history proves abundantly. That they were correct, likewise, in believing that some fearful judgment was about to fall on man, is proved by the fact that it did fall; that the first half of the fifth century saw, not only the sack of Rome, but the conquest and desolation of the greater part of the civilized world, amid bloodshed, misery, and misrule, which seemed to turn Europe into a chaos,--which would have turned it into a chaos, had there not been a few men left who still felt it possible and necessary to believe in God and to work righteousness.

Under these terrible forebodings, men began to flee from a doomed world, and try to be alone with God, if by any means they might save each man his own soul in that dread day.

Others, not Christians, had done the same before them. Among all the Eastern nations men had appeared, from time to time, to whom the things seen were but a passing phantom, the things unseen the only true and eternal realities; who, tormented alike by the awfulness of the infinite unknown, and by the petty cares and low passions of the finite mortal life which they knew but too well, had determined to renounce the latter, that they might give themselves up to solving the riddle of the former; and be at peace; and free, at least, from the tyranny of their own selves. Eight hundred years before St. Antony fled into the desert, that young Hindoo rajah, whom men call Buddha now, had fled into the forest, leaving wives and kingdom, to find rest for his soul. He denounced caste; he preached poverty, asceticism, self-annihilation. He founded a religion, like that of the old hermits, democratic and ascetic, with its convents, saint-worships, pilgrimages, miraculous relics, rosaries, and much more, which strangely anticipates the monastic religion; and his followers, to this day, are more numerous than those of any other creed.

Brahmins, too, had given themselves up to penance and mortification till they believed themselves able, like Kehama, to have gained by self-torture the right to command, not nature merely, but the gods themselves. Among the Jews the Essenes by the Dead Sea, and the Therapeutae in Egypt, had formed ascetic communities, the former more "practical," the latter more "contemplative:" but both alike agreed in the purpose of escaping from the world into a life of poverty and simplicity, piety and virtue; and among the countless philosophic sects of Asia, known to ecclesiastical writers as "heretics," more than one had professed, and doubtless often practised, the same abstraction from the world, the same contempt of the flesh. The very Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, while they derided the Christian asceticism, found themselves forced to affect, like the hapless (hapless: unfortunate; unlucky) Hypatia, a sentimental and pharisaic (pharisaic: emphasizing or observing the letter but not the spirit of religious law; self-righteous; sanctimonious; hypocritical) asceticism of their own. This phase of sight and feeling, so strange to us now, was common, nay, primaeval, among the Easterns. The day was come when it should pass from the East into the West. And Egypt, "the mother of wonders;" the parent of so much civilization and philosophy both Greek and Roman; the half-way resting-place through which not merely the merchandise, but the wisdom of the East had for centuries passed into the Roman Empire; a land more ill-governed, too, and more miserable, in spite of its fertility, because more defenceless and effeminate, than most other Roman possessions--was the country in which naturally, and as it were of hereditary right, such a movement would first appear.

Accordingly it was discovered, about the end of the fourth century, that the mountains and deserts of Egypt were full of Christian men who had fled out of the dying world, in the hope of attaining everlasting life. Wonderful things were told of their courage, their abstinence, their miracles: and of their virtues also; of their purity, their humility, their helpfulness, and charity to each other and to all. They called each other, it was said, brothers; and they lived up to that sacred name, forgotten, if ever known, by the rest of the Roman Empire. Like the Apostolic Christians in the first fervour of their conversion, they had all things in common; they lived at peace with each other, under a mild and charitable rule; and kept literally those commands of Christ which all the rest of the world explained away to nothing.

The news spread. It chimed in with all that was best, as well as with much that was questionable, in the public mind. That men could be brothers; that they could live without the tawdry luxury, the tasteless and often brutal amusements, the low sensuality, the base intrigue, the bloody warfare, which was the accepted lot of the many; that they could find time to look stedfastly at heaven and hell as awful realities, which must be faced some day, which had best be faced at once; this, just as much as curiosity about their alleged miracles, and the selfish longing to rival them in superhuman powers, led many of the most virtuous and the most learned men of the time to visit them, and ascertain the truth. Jerome, Ruffinus, Evagrius, Sulpicius Severus, went to see them, undergoing on the way the severest toils and dangers, and brought back reports of mingled truth and falsehood, specimens of which will be seen in these pages. Travelling in those days was a labour, if not of necessity, then surely of love. Palladius, for instance, found it impossible to visit the Upper Thebaid, and Syene, and that "infinite multitude of monks, whose fashions of life no one would believe, for they surpass human life; who to this day raise the dead, and walk upon the waters, like Peter; and whatsoever the Saviour did by the holy Apostles, He does now by them. But because it would be very dangerous if we went beyond Lyco" (Lycopolis?), on account of the inroad of robbers, he "could not see those saints."

The holy men and women of whom he wrote, he says, he did not see without extreme toil; and seven times he and his companions were nearly lost. Once they walked through the desert five days and nights, and were almost worn out by hunger and thirst. Again, they fell on rough marshes, where the sedge pierced their feet, and caused intolerable pain, while they were almost killed with the cold. Another time, they stuck in the mud up to their waists, and cried with David, "I am come into deep mire, where no ground is." Another time, they waded for four days through the flood of the Nile by paths almost swept away. Another time they met robbers on the seashore, coming to Diolcos, and were chased by them for ten miles. Another time they were all but upset and drowned in crossing the Nile. Another time, in the marshes of Mareotis, "where paper grows," they were cast on a little desert island, and remained three days and nights in the open air, amid great cold and showers, for it was the season of Epiphany. The eighth peril, he says, is hardly worth mentioning--but once, when they went to Nitria, they came on a great hollow, in which many crocodiles had remained, when the waters retired from the fields. Three of them lay along the bank; and the monks went up to them, thinking them dead, whereon the crocodiles rushed at them. But when they called loudly on the Lord, "the monsters, as if turned away by an angel," shot themselves into the water; while they ran on to Nitria, meditating on the words of Job, "Seven times shall He deliver thee from trouble; and in the eighth there shall no evil touch thee."

The great St. Athanasius, fleeing from persecution, had taken refuge among these monks. He carried the report of their virtues to Treves in Gaul, and wrote a life of St. Antony, the perusal of which was a main agent in the conversion of St. Augustine. Hilarion (a remarkable personage, whose history will be told hereafter) carried their report and their example likewise into Palestine; and from that time Judaea, desolate and seemingly accursed by the sin of the Jewish people, became once more the Holy Land; the place of pilgrimage; whose ruins, whose very soil, were kept sacred by hermits, the guardians of the footsteps of Christ.

In Rome itself the news produced an effect which, to the thoughtful mind, is altogether tragical in its nobleness. The Roman aristocracy was deprived of all political power; it had been decimated, too, with horrible cruelty only one generation before,{12} by Valentinian and his satellites, on the charges of profligacy, treason, and magic. Mere rich men, they still lingered on, in idleness and luxury, without art, science, true civilization of any kind; followed by long trains of slaves; punishing a servant with three hundred stripes if he were too long in bringing hot water; weighing the fish, or birds, or dormice put on their tables, while secretaries stood by, with tablets to record all; hating learning as they hated poison; indulging at the baths in conduct which had best be left undescribed; and "complaining that they were not born among the Cimmerians, if amid their golden fans a fly should perch upon the silken fringes, or a slender ray of the sun should pierce through the awning;" while, if they "go any distance to see their estates in the country, or to hunt at a meeting collected for their amusement by others, they think that they have equalled the marches of Alexander or of Caesar."

On the wives, widows, and daughters of men of this stamp--and not half their effeminacy and baseness, as the honest rough old soldier Ammianus Marcellinus describes it, has been told here--the news brought from Egypt worked with wondrous potency.

Women of the highest rank awoke suddenly to the discovery that life was given them for nobler purposes than that of frivolous enjoyment and tawdry vanity. Despising themselves; despising the husbands to whom they had been wedded in loveless marriages de convenance, whose infidelities they had too often to endure: they, too, fled from a world which had sated and sickened them. They freed their slaves; they gave away their wealth to found hospitals and to feed the poor; and in voluntary poverty and mean garments they followed such men as Jerome and Ruffinus across the seas, to visit the new found saints of the Egyptian desert, and to end their days, in some cases, in doleful monasteries in Palestine. The lives of such women as those of the Anician house; the lives of Marcella and Furia, of Paula, of the Melanias, and the rest, it is not my task to write. They must be told by a woman, not by a man. We may blame those ladies, if we will, for neglecting their duties. We may sneer, if we will, at the weaknesses--the aristocratic pride, the spiritual vanity--which we fancy that we discover. We may lament--and in that we shall not be wrong--the influence which such men as Jerome obtained over them--the example and precursor of so much which has since then been ruinous to family and social life: but we must confess that the fault lay not with the themselves, but with their fathers, husbands, and brothers; we must confess that in these women the spirit of the old Roman matrons, which seemed to have been so long dead, flashed up for one splendid moment, ere it sunk into the darkness of the Middle Age; that in them woman asserted (however strangely and fantastically) her moral equality with man; and that at the very moment when monasticism was consigning her to contempt, almost to abhorrence, as "the noxious animal," the "fragile vessel," the cause of man's fall at first, and of his sin and misery ever since, woman showed the monk (to his naively-confessed surprise), that she could dare, and suffer, and adore as well as he.

But the movement, having once seized the Roman Empire, grew and spread irresistibly. It was accepted, supported, preached, practised, by every great man of the time. Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzen in the East, Jerome, Augustine, Ruffinus, Evagrius, Fulgentius, Sulpicius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian, Martin of Tours, Salvian, Caesarius of Arles, were all monks, or as much of monks as their duties would allow them to be. Ambrose of Milan, though no monk himself, was the fervent preacher of, the careful legislator for, monasticism male and female. Throughout the whole Roman Empire, in the course of a century, had spread hermits (or dwellers in the desert), anchorites (retired from the world), or monks (dwellers alone). The three names grew afterwards to designate three different orders of ascetics. The hermits remained through the Middle Ages those who dwelt in deserts; the anchorites, or "ankers" of the English Middle Age, seem generally to have inhabited cells built in, or near, the church walls; the name of "monks" was transferred from those who dwelt alone to those who dwelt in regular communities, under a fixed government. But the three names at first were interchangeable; the three modes of life alternated, often in the same man. The life of all three was the same,--celibacy, poverty, good deeds towards their fellow-men; self-restraint, and sometimes self-torture of every kind, to atone (as far as might be) for the sins committed after baptism: and the mental food of all three was the same likewise; continued meditation upon the vanity of the world, the sinfulness of the flesh, the glories of heaven, and the horrors of hell: but with these the old hermits combined--to do them justice--a personal faith in God, and a personal love for Christ, which those who sneer at them would do well to copy.

Over all Europe, even to Ireland, {15} the same pattern of Christian excellence repeated itself with strange regularity, till it became the only received pattern; and to "enter religion," or "be converted," meant simply to become a monk.

Of the authentic biographies of certain of these men, a few specimens are given in this volume. If they shall seem to any reader uncouth, or even absurd, he must remember that they are the only existing and the generally contemporaneous histories of men who exercised for 1,300 years an enormous influence over the whole of Christendom; who exercise a vast influence over the greater part of it to this day. They are the biographies of men who were regarded, during their lives and after their deaths, as divine and inspired prophets; and who were worshipped with boundless trust and admiration by millions of human beings. Their fame and power were not created by the priesthood. The priesthood rather leant on them, than they on it. They occupied a post analogous to that of the old Jewish prophets; always independent of, sometimes opposed to, the regular clergy; and dependent altogether on public opinion and the suffrage of the multitude. When Christianity, after three centuries of repression and persecution, emerged triumphant as the creed of the whole civilized world, it had become what their lives describe. The model of religious life for the fifth century, it remained a model for succeeding centuries; on the lives of St. Antony and his compeers were founded the whole literature of saintly biographies; the whole popular conception of the universe, and of man's relation to it; the whole science of daemonology, with its peculiar literature, its peculiar system of criminal jurisprudence. And their influence did not cease at the Reformation among Protestant divines. The influence of these Lives of the Hermit Fathers is as much traceable, even to style and language, in "The Pilgrim's Progress" as in the last Papal Allocution. The great hermits of Egypt were not merely the founders of that vast monastic system which influenced the whole politics, and wars, and social life, as well as the whole religion, of the Middle Age; they were a school of philosophers (as they rightly called themselves) who altered the whole current of human thought.

Those who wish for a general notion of the men, and of their time, will find all that they require (set forth from different points of view, though with the same honesty and learning) in Gibbon; in M. de Montalembert's "Moines d'Occident," in Dean Milman's "History of Christianity" and "Latin Christianity," and in Ozanam's "Etudes Germaniques." {17a} But the truest notion of the men is to be got, after all, from the original documents; and especially from that curious collection of them by the Jesuit Rosweyde, commonly known as the "Lives of the Hermit Fathers." {17b}

After an acquaintance of now five-and-twenty years with this wonderful treasury of early Christian mythology, to which all fairy tales are dull and meagre, I am almost inclined to sympathise with M. de Montalembert's questions,--"Who is so ignorant, or so unfortunate, as not to have devoured these tales of the heroic age of monachism? Who has not contemplated, if not with the eyes of faith, at least with the admiration inspired by an incontrollable greatness of soul, the struggles of these athletes of penitence? . . . . Everything is to be found there--variety, pathos, the sublime and simple epic of a race of men, naifs as children, and strong as giants." In whatever else one may differ from M. de Montalembert-- and it is always painful to differ from one whose pen has been always the faithful servant of virtue and piety, purity and chivalry, loyalty and liberty, and whose generous appreciation of England and the English is the more honourable to him, by reason of an utter divergence in opinion, which in less wide and noble spirits produces only antipathy--one must at least agree with him in his estimate of the importance of these "Lives of the Fathers," not only to the ecclesiologist, but to the psychologist and the historian. Their influence, subtle, often transformed and modified again and again, but still potent from its very subtleness, is being felt around us in many a puzzle--educational, social, political; and promises to be felt still more during the coming generation; and to have studied thoroughly one of them--say the life of St. Antony by St. Athanasius--is to have had in our hands (whether we knew it or not) the key to many a lock, which just now refuses either to be tampered with or burst open.

I have determined, therefore, to give a few of these lives, translated as literally as possible. Thus the reader will then have no reason to fear a garbled or partial account of personages so difficult to conceive or understand. He will be able to see the men as wholes; to judge (according to his light) of their merits and their defects. The very style of their biographers (which is copied as literally as is compatible with the English tongue) will teach him, if he be wise, somewhat of the temper and habits of thought of the age in which they lived; and one of these original documents, with its honesty, its vivid touches of contemporary manners, its intense earnestness, will give, perhaps, a more true picture of the whole hermit movement than (with all respect, be it said) the most brilliant general panorama.

It is impossible to give in this series all the lives of the early hermits--even of those contained in Rosweyde [The Greek and Latin texts were compiled, edited, and translated into Latin by the Jesuit Heribert Rosweyde and printed by Balthazar Moret in 1615]. This volume will contain, therefore, only the most important and most famous lives of the Egyptian, Syrian, and Persian hermits, followed, perhaps, by a few later biographies from Western Europe, as proofs that the hermit-type, as it spread toward the Atlantic, remained still the same as in the Egyptian desert.

Against one modern mistake the reader must be warned; the theory, namely, that these biographies were written as religious romances; edifying, but not historical; to be admired, but not believed. There is not the slightest evidence that such was the case. The lives of these, and most other saints (certainly those in this volume), were written by men who believed the stories themselves, after such inquiry into the facts as they deemed necessary; who knew that others would believe them; and who intended that they should do so; and the stones were believed accordingly, and taken as matter of fact for the most practical purposes by the whole of Christendom. The forging of miracles, like the forging of charters, for the honour of a particular shrine, or the advantage of a particular monastery, belongs to a much later and much worse age; and, whatsoever we may think of the taste of the authors of these lives, or of their faculty for judging of evidence, we must at least give them credit for being earnest men, incapable of what would have been in their eyes, and ought to be in ours, not merely falsehood, but impiety. Let the reader be sure of this--that these documents would not have exercised their enormous influence on the human mind, had there not been in them, under whatever accidents of credulity, and even absurdity, an element of sincerity, virtue, and nobility.
source: The Hermits by Charles Kingsley

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The Hermits...by Charles Kingsley

Introduction

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Alexandrine Teaching...by R. B. Tollinton

Preface

Lecture I
TRANSCENDENCE pp. 9-41

Alexandrine interest in the Universe--Limits of the period to be considered-Association of the teachers in question with Alexandria—Some characteristics of the city--Alexandrine teaching, eclectic, Platonic, abstract--Order of presentation; from the One to the many--The Transcendence of God--This doctrine in Philo-in Clement-Origen's view differs--Transcendence in Plotinus-Motives for this doctrine--It was in some sense a Theodicy-- It was also a reaction from polytheism--All Anthropomorphism is ruled out--A possible loss thereby

LECTURE II
MEDIATION pp. 42-86

Theories as to the origin of the Cosmic Order--God as the First Cause-After the problem of Being arises the problem of Evil--Intermediate agencies--Such Mediation relieves God of responsibility--And also secures divine action within the world-order --The Gnostic schemes; Marcion, Valentinus--Plotinus criticized the Gnostics--The Powers in Philo--Were these Powers persons or attributes?--Clement's doctrine of the Logos--The Logos was Creator, Revealer, Educator--Origen's theory of Eternal Generation—His interest in the manifold activities of the Word—The Demons in Origen-Plotinus--Two grades of Mediation, Spirit or Mind, and Soul--Spirit is Being--The nature and activity of Soul-Always these intermediate agencies are in a descending order—The Alexandrines anticipated recent teaching on a "Premundane Fall" --Some points of similarity or contrast between ancient and modern views.

LECTURE III
THE UNIVERSE pp.87- 132

Earlier teaching on the Universe--The Book of Genesis--Plato's Timaeus--Stoic theories--In Alexandrine teaching the universe was not self existent--Creation ex nihilo--Emanation--Was matter eternal?--The astronomical scheme--The heavenly bodies as living creatures--The unity of the cosmic order--The spheres as "many mansions"--Plotinus on the revolution of the heavens--The planetary orbits--Astrology-- The nature of Matter--Relation of matter to evil--The universe regulated by Providence—How the problems involved were met--The Alexandrines allowed but undervalued the Beauty of the material world--Contrast our increased interest in physical nature--Also our greater recognition of change and process in the universe--But we share their belief in a reality beyond the world we see.

LECTURE IV
MAN pp. 133-181

Man's place in the Universe--The body-Origin of the soul--Pre-existence--Little emphasis on heredity--The soul descends--Restricted interest in this present life--Original man--Reason in man--Ecstasy--A relatively low estimate of Faith--Human Freedom --Necessity, G race, Salvation in relation to freedom--The Alexandrine estimate of man aristocratic--Depreciation of Woman--Types of excellence--The Statesman in Philo--Clement's Gnostic—Origen's Ideal Teacher--Immortality--It was not conditional--Personality will be retained--The Resurrection in Origen--The rise and fall of souls in many worlds—The end as the beginning--Man's affinity with the universe--A difference of emphasis, then and now—The future hope, for the individual or for the race?--A dramatic element in ancient cosmology—Our greater sense of limitation--Yet the present estimate gives grounds of hope.

Index

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Educating Early Monks...Notes on Alexandrine Teaching

Alexandrine Teaching
Many of the early desert fathers were monks educated at the Alexandrine University and the related Catechetical School, both located in Alexandria, Egypt. Many of these monks were exposed to the teachings of Plato that tended to fuse the writings of Plato and Christianity into Neoplatonism. Two of the early Church Fathers Clement (150 - 215) and Origen (185 – 254), as heads of the Cathechetical School, were instrumental in the education of these monks. The teachings and writings from both these early Church fathers were influenced by Neoplatonism. Origen's writing were declared heretical by the Church in the 6th century.

Alexandrine Teaching...by R B Tollinton

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Educating Early Monks...The Catechetical School of Alexandria

The Desert Fathers were pioneers, with nothing to go on but example of some of the prophets, like St. John the Baptist, Elias, Eliseus, and the Apostles, who also served them as models. For the rest, the life they embraced was "angelic" and they walked the untrodden paths of invisible spirits. Their cells were the furnace of Babylon in which, in the midst of the flames, they found themselves with Christ....Thomas Merton...The Wisdom of the Desert

The Catechetical School also educated many of the monks that later populated the monasteries south of Alexandria. It should be noted that not all of the monks were educated. Some of the monks came from the ranks of poor indigenous Egyptians. The indigenous Egyptian monks were also known as Coptic Christian monks. The Coptic Christian Church is very much alive today.

Both the Catechetical School of Alexandria and the Alexandrian School (a school similar to a contemporary university) worked hand in hand with the Great Library before the 5th century CE when the library was destroyed. It likely that many of the early church fathers, teachers and students used library resources for study and research. What is remarkable is the extent of the Alexandrian educational system that grew up around the Great Library. It is likely that the Alexandrian School faded away when the Great Library was destroyed in the early 5th century CE. Many of its teachers and librarians, who could, fled to Persia (Modern day Iran). Those that stayed were slaughtered for their non-Christian teachings and beliefs.

It would be at least another 1200 years or so before anything like the educational system at Alexandria would be realized again in the west.

It is not difficult to imagine the contribution of the Great Library toward developing an early Christian philosophy and its impact on early Christianity as the library's resources supported early Catechetical School's teaching and learning.

Below from: Catechetical School of Alexandria

The Catechetical School of Alexandria (founded c.a. 190) was a place for the training of Christian theologians and priests in Alexandria. The teachers and students of the school (also known as the Didascalium) were influential in many of the early theological controversies of the Christian church.

The earliest recorded instructor at the school, and the probable founder, was Saint Pantaenus. He was succeeded as head of the school by his student Saint Clement.


Below from: Alexandrian School

The Alexandrian school is a collective designation for certain tendencies in literature, philosophy, medicine, and the sciences that developed in the Hellenistic cultural center of Alexandria, Egypt around the 1st century. Alexandria was a remarkable center of learning due to the blending of Greek and Oriental influences, its favorable situation and commercial resources, and the enlightened energy of some of the Macedonian Dynasty of the Ptolemies ruling over Egypt. Much scholarly work was collected in the great Library of Alexandria during this time.

The name of "Alexandrian school" is also used to describe one of the 2 great schools of biblical interpretation in the early Christian church. They incorporated Greek Pagan philosophical beliefs from Plato's teachings into Christianity (Neoplatonism), and interpreted much of the Bible allegorically. It was established in Alexandria, in the late 2nd century. Many scholars regard Clement as the founder of the Alexandrian school of theology, which emphasized the divine nature of Christ.

If you want to dig deeper into the nature of the Schools at Alexandria check out this site maintained by the Coptic Church.

Catechetical School of Alexandria

Look for the Table of Contents at bottom of the page.

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John Cassian...Conferences and Institutes

"Cassian probably did more than anyone else to translate the desert experience for the West. Following his teacher, Evagrius Ponticus, he stressed wordless prayer and the mystical journey of the soul. St. Benedict, in his Rule, would make Cassian’s memoirs required reading in all his monasteries."...William Harmless

Saint John Cassian (ca. 360 – 435) (Latin: Jo(h)annes Eremita Cassianus, Joannus Cassianus, or Joannes Massiliensis), John the Ascetic, or John Cassian the Roman, was a Christian theologian celebrated in both the Western and Eastern Churches for his mystical writings. He is known both as one of the "Scythian monks" and as one of the "Desert Fathers."

John Cassian wrote two major spiritual works, the Institutes and the Conferences. In these, he codified and transmitted the wisdom of the Desert Fathers of Egypt. These books were written at the request of Castor, Bishop of Apt, of the subsequent Pope Leo I, and of several Gallic bishops and monks. The Institutes (Latin: De institutis coenobiorum) deal with the external organization of monastic communities, while the Conferences (Latin: Collationes patrum in scetica eremo) deal with "the training of the inner man and the perfection of the heart." John Cassian (Wikipedia)

Conferences...John Cassian
Also a version here with extensive contents listing

Institutes...John Cassian
Also a version here with extensive contents listing

THE WORKS OF JOHN CASSIAN. WITH PROLEGOMENA AND NOTES

CONFERENCE 16. THE FIRST CONFERENCE OF ABBOT JOSEPH. ON FRIENDSHIP.

Read chapter 1 to get the background of Abba Joseph. Picture Cassian listening with his friend Germanus (you will notice that it is Germanus who asks the questions!).

Read chapters 2 and 3 in order to find out the various foundations of friendship.

Read chapters 7, 8, and 9 to see the relationship between love and anger.

Read chapters 13 and 14 to find out more about love.

Skim through chapters 15 through 20 in order to see the many ways that seemingly good people are moved by hidden anger.

Read chapter 27 very carefully in order to absorb Joseph's advice about dealing with anger: When fierce storms of passion sweep over us, enlarge our hearts -- one translation tells us to open a wider harbor. What in the world does this metaphor mean? How can we enlarge our hearts or open a wider harbor? In what ways is this a practical way of dealing with anger?
Source: Dee Russell

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Web-based Early Works about the Desert Fathers

• Apophthegmata Patrum
• A Source Book for Ancient Church History: From the Apostolic Age to the Close of the Conciliar Period by Joseph Cullen Ayer
• Christian Authors: Fifth to Twelfth Centuries
• Sayings of the Desert Fathers
• Selections from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers
• John Cassian...Conferences and Institutes
  "Cassian probably did more than anyone else to translate the desert experience for the West. Following his teacher, Evagrius Ponticus, he stressed wordless prayer and the mystical journey of the soul. St. Benedict, in his Rule, would make Cassian’s memoirs required reading in all his monasteries."...William Harmless
• Lausiac History"...conceived as a form of autobiography in the form of a history of monasticism in the fourth century.... A number of persons who appear in the Lausiac History...were associated with Origenism, either directly or indirectly..."...source: COPTIC PALLADIANA I:THE LIFE OF PAMBO
• Medieval Sourcebook: Athanasius of Alexandria: VITA S. ANTONI [Life of St. Antony] (written between 356 and 362)
• Athanasius of Alexandria...The Life of Antony
  "The Life of Antony (Vita Antonii) was one of the great religious best-sellers of ancient world and was responsible for popularizing the desert ideal throughout the ancient world. This work would shape all later lives of the saints."...William Harmless
• Palladius...Lausiac History...Introduction
  "Palladius was a disciple of Evagrius and was ordained bishop by John Chrysostom. He was also one of the earliest historians of Christian monasticism. This work is a set of vignettes of leading Desert Fathers and Mothers."...William Harmless
• Medieval Sourcebook: Palladius: The Lausiac History
• The Ladder of Divine Ascent...Saint John Climacus
  John Climacus (ca. 579 - 649), also known as John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus, and John Sinaites, was a seventh century monk at St. Catherine's monastery at the base of Mount Sinai.
• Lives of the Desert Fathers: The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto...trans by Norman Russell
  "In 394, seven Palestinian monks journeyed to Egypt to visit the great figures there. This is a vivid (and sometimes fanciful) account of what they heard and saw. This edition has a good 40-page introduction by Benedicta Ward."...William Harmless
• The Philokalia
  "The Philokalia is a collection of writings, mostly centering on practicing the virtues and spiritual living in a monastery. In recent decades it has become an important resource for Orthodox Christians, laity and clergy alike, in personal living and in some ways has achieved status as a major secondary spiritual written resource (after the primary one, Holy Scripture) along with St. John Climacus' The Ladder of Divine Ascent."
  
  "The earliest written reference to the practice of the Prayer of the Heart may be in a text from the Philokalia by Abba Philimon, a Desert Father." Desert Fathers (Wikipedia)
  
  The Philokalia, a collection of writings by Fathers living approximately between 300 and 1400 A.D., contains exalted theological writings by some thirty Fathers. These writings are essentially instructions to monks and spiritual aspirants in methods by which, to quote the full title of the collection, "the mind is purified, illumined, and made perfect through practical and contemplative moral philosophy." It contains very advanced teachings ranging from advice on the proper control of the breath during prayerful contemplation to detailed instructions for the attainment of freedom from the passions. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
"If we are asked to sum up the message of the Philokalia in not more than two words, the best way to do so would be to use the terms nepsis and hesychia" "This ideal of theosis, of direct, transforming union with the living God, constitutes a unifying thread throughout the Philokalia as a whole."...The inner unity of the Philokalia
• Excerpts from The Philokalia: Evagrius Ponticus
• Evagrios the Solitary Introductory Note
• Evagrios the Solitary Outline Teaching on Asceticism and Stillness in the Solitary Life
• Evagrios the Solitary Texts on Discrimination in respect of Passions and Thoughts
• Evagrios the Solitary Extracts from the Texts on Watchfulness
• Evagrios the Solitary On Prayer: One Hundred and Fifty-Three Texts
• Excerpts from The Philokalia: Abba Philimon
• The Potential Enigma of Philokalic Spirituality for the Western Mind
• Vitae Patrum
"The Vitae Patrum (literally Lives of the Fathers, also called Lives of the Desert Fathers) is an encyclopedia of hagiographical writings on the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers of early Christianity. The Greek and Latin texts were compiled, edited, and translated into Latin by the Jesuit Heribert Rosweyde and printed by Balthazar Moret in 1615. The bulk of the original texts date from the third and fourth centuries.... The book is a significant part of the much broader work, Acta Sanctorum...."...Vitae Patrum (Wikipedia)
"...a collection the Apophthegmata Patrum, the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, were made available in Latin by the 500s. They had a wide circulation, not only with the Life of St. Antony but also with the Lausiac History and Rufinus’ translation of the Historia Monachorum in Aegypto — all gathered together, these are called the Vitae Patrum. Monks all over Western Europe would continue to read these works down to the Renaissance, seeking wisdom for how to live."...The Impact of the Desert Fathers
"The Vitae Patrum is in Latin and dates from 1628. It was compiled by Heribert Rosweyde SJ from ancient sources dating from the third and fourth centuries, written either in Latin or Greek. Since I retired I have been using a lot of my time translating bits and pieces from the Vitae Patrum. here are a number of books in print with selections from the Lives of the Fathers. It just occurred to me that there might be some people who have no Latin but who would like to have available long chunks of it, which no conventional publisher would want to publish. So I thought I might just as well make a Website out of it, where it will be available for anyone who wants it. I am no scholar so am not able to provide any critical apparatus. It is just that I happened to come across this large and heavy volume in a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye many years ago. It measures 365mm x 240mm x 110mm, and has 1060 pages plus indices. I find the lives of the Fathers of the Desert absolutely fascinating. I enjoy translating the Latin and I am quite happy to share this pleasure with anyone else who is interested."
• Contents of the Vitae Patrum
• De Vitis Patrum, Book II...By Rufinus of Aquileia
• De Vitis Patrum, Book VIII...by Palladius
• De Vitis Patrum...by Rufinus of Aquileia
  "The Vitae Patrum is an encyclopedia of hagiographical writings from early Christianity. The Greek and Latin texts were compiled, edited, and translated into Latin by Heribert Rosweyde. It was published in ten books in 1628. The bulk of the texts date from the third and fourth centuries."...Wikipedia
• Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome
• Jerome...The Life of Paulus the First Hermit

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Eating Habits of the Desert Fathers

Excerpts from James Wellard, Desert Pilgrimage.

Off we went in the dilapidated vehicle to the monastery called Macarius, the oldest of the four surviving convents and the farthest away. From the distance it appears across the rock-strewn sand as a small brown fortress, completely isolated in the wilderness of sand and rock. It had always been like this, the most remote of the great monkish colony of the Wadi Natrun--the most pillaged, and devastated and, as a result, the poorest of the remaining four convents.

The monastery of Macarius commemorates one of the first and greatest of the Desert Fathers who came to this valley in the second half of the fourth century. Macarius personifies in his life and philosophy the ideal of the early Christian ascetics who believed that the road to heaven was by way of total self-abnegation, the philosophical basis, of course, of all mysticism and mystical experience. Thus, during his sixty years' residence in the wasteland, Macarius excelled all the other hermits in the austerities he inflicted upon himself, for we are told that he lived only on raw vegetables and beans for seven years together; and for the following three years subsisted on an additional ration of five ounces of bread a day. I have often been asked when I reported cases of modern hermits I have seen who have survived for decades on a similar diet how this is possible. The answer is not as difficult or complicated as it seems.

First, the European diet, with its enormous quantities of meat, vegetables, fruit, bread, cakes, chocolates, et cetera, is as alien to desert-dwellers as the diet of, say sheep or horses is to us. Millions of people can and do survive on 'a handful of rice' in many parts of the world; and, what is more, they live as long as the European on his enormous and varied quantities of food. Secondly, the climate in Lower Egypt makes far less claim on the constitution than it does in northern Europe. Nobody feels the need for a huge plate of roast beef, two veg, and a suet pudding either at midday or even in the cool of the evening. And thirdly, whether one approves of self-denial or not, it is certain that the mind can control the appetites of the body, especially in poor countries where scarcity is, in any case a fact of life.

So the privations of Macarius in the matter of good are not all that exceptional, and we can well believe the story of Palladius, a disciple of the hermit, of how a present of a bunch of grapes was offered to the saint who personally carried it the cell of a brother who was ill; and how this monk thanked the father and then sent the grapes to another whom he thought had greater need of a little treat; and so from cell to cell until the grapes came back to Macarius.

Advice to the Solitary on Eating
Excerpts from The Philokalia
Evagrius Ponticus...On Asceticism and Stillness in the Solitary Life
Keep to a sparse and plain diet, not seeking a variety of tempting dishes. Should the thought come to you of getting extravagant foods in order to give hospitality, dismiss it, do not be deceived by it: for in it the enemy lies in ambush, waiting to tear you away from stillness. Remember how the Lord rebukes Martha (the soul that is overbusy with such things) when He says: 'You are anxious and troubled about many things: one thing alone is needful' (Luke 10:41-42) - to hear the divine word; after that, one should be content with anything that comes to hand. He indicates all this by adding: 'Mary has chosen what is best, and it cannot be taken away from her' (Luke 10:42). You also have the example of how the widow of Zarephath gave hospitality to the Prophet (cf. 1 Kings 17:9-16). If you have only bread, salt or water, you can still meet the dues of hospitality. Even if you do not have these, but make the stranger welcome and say something helpful, you will not be failing in hospitality; for 'is not a word better than a gift?' (Eccles. 18:17). This is the view you should take of hospitality. Be careful, then, and do not desire wealth for giving to the poor. For this is another trick of the evil one, who often arouses self esteem and fills your intellect with worry and restlessness. Think of the widow mentioned in the Gospel by our Lord: with two mites she surpassed the generous gifts of the wealthy. For He says: 'They cast into the treasury out of their abundance; but she . . . cast in all her livelihood' (Mark 12:44).
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Do not hanker after fine foods and deceitful pleasures. For 'she that indulges in pleasure is dead while still alive', as the Apostle says (1 Tim. 5:6). Do not fill your belly with other people's food in case you develop a, longing for it, and this longing makes you want to eat at their table. For it is said: 'Do not be deceived by the filling of the belly' (Prov. 24:15. LXX). If you find yourself continually invited outside your cell, decline the invitations. For continual absence from your cell is harmful. It deprives you of the grace of stillness, darkens your mind, withers your longing for God. If a jar of wine is left in the same place for a long time, the wine in it becomes clear, settled and fragrant. But if it is moved about, the wine becomes turbid and dull, tainted throughout by the lees. So you, too, should stay in the same place and you will find how greatly this benefits you. Do not have relationships with too many people, lest your intellect becomes distracted and so disturbs the way of stillness.
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Picture both these states: lament and weep for the sentence passed on sinners; mourn while you are doing this, frightened that you, too, may be among them. But rejoice and be glad at the blessings that await the righteous, and aspire to enjoy them and to be delivered from the torments of hell. See to it that you never forget these things, whether inside your cell or outside it. This will help you to escape thoughts that are defiling and harmful. Fast before the Lord according to your strength, for to do this will purge you of your iniquities and sins; it exalts the soul, sanctifies the mind, drives away the demons, and prepares you for God's presence. Having already eaten once, try not to eat a second time the same day, in case you become extravagant and disturb your mind. In this way you will have the means for helping others and for mortifying the passions of your body. But if there is a meeting of the brethren, and you have to eat a second and a third time, do not be disgruntled and surly. On the contrary, do gladly what you have to do, and when you have eaten a second or a third time, thank God that you have fulfilled the law of love and that He himself is providing for you. Also, there are occasions when, because of a bodily sickness, you have to eat a second and a third time or more often. Do not be sad about this; when you are ill you should modify your ascetic labors for the time being, so that you may regain the strength to take them up once more.
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As far as abstinence from food is concerned, the divine Logos did not prohibit the eating of anything, but said: 'See, even as I have given you the green herb I have given you all things; eat, asking no questions; it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man' (cf. Gen. 9:3; 1 Cor. 10:25; Matt. 15: 11). To abstain from food, then, should be a matter of our own choice and an ascetic labour.
Evagrius Ponticus...Texts on Discrimination in respect of Passions and Thoughts
1. Of the demons opposing us in the practice of the ascetic life, there are three groups who fight in the front line: those entrusted with the appetites of gluttony, those who suggest avaricious thoughts, and those who incite us to seek the esteem of men. All the other demons follow behind and in their turn attack those already wounded by the first three groups. For one does not fall into the power of the demon of unchastity, unless one has first fallen because of gluttony; nor is one's anger aroused unless one is fighting for food or material possessions or the esteem of men. And one does not escape the demon of dejection, unless one no longer experiences suffering when deprived of these things. Nor will one escape pride, the first offspring of the devil, unless one has banished avarice, the root of all evil, since poverty makes a man humble, according to Solomon (cf. Prov. 10:4. LXX). In short, no one can fall into the power of any demon, unless he has been wounded by those of the front line. That is why the devil suggested these three thoughts to the Savior: first he exhorted Him to turn stones into bread; then he promised Him the whole world, if Christ would fall down and worship him; and thirdly he said that, if our Lord would listen to him, He would be glorified and suffer nothing in falling from the pinnacle of the temple. But our Lord, having shown Himself superior to these temptations, commanded the devil to 'get behind Him'. In this way He teaches us that it is not possible to drive away the devil, unless we scornfully reject these three thoughts (cf. Matt. 4:1-10).

3. Man cannot drive away impassioned thoughts unless he watches over his desire and incensive power. He destroys desire through fasting, vigils and sleeping on the ground, and he tames his incensive power through longsuffering, forbearance, forgiveness and acts of compassion. For with these two passions are connected almost all the demonic thoughts which lead the intellect to disaster and perdition. It is impossible to overcome these passions unless we can rise above attachment to food and possessions, to self-esteem and even to our very body, because it is through the body that the demons often attempt to attack us. It is essential, then, to imitate people who are in danger at sea and throw things overboard because of the violence of the winds and the threatening waves. But here we must be very careful in case we cast things overboard just to be seen doing so by men. For then we shall get the reward we want; but we shall suffer another shipwreck, worse than the first, blown off our course by the contrary wind of the demon of self-esteem. That is why our Lord, instructing the intellect, our helmsman, says in the Gospels: 'Take heed that you do not give alms in front of others, to be seen by them; for unless you take heed, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.' Again, He says: 'When you pray, you must not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in synagogues and at street-corners, so as to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they get the reward they want. . . . Moreover when you fast, do not put on a gloomy face, like the hypocrites; for they disfigure their faces, so that they may be seen by men to be fasting. Truly I say to you, they get the reward they want' (cf. Matt. 6: 1-18). Observe how the Physician of souls here corrects our incensive power through acts of compassion, purifies the intellect through prayer, and through fasting withers desire. By means of these virtues the new Adam is formed, made again according to the image of his Creator - an Adam in whom, thanks to dispassion, there is 'neither male nor female' and, thanks to singleness of faith, there is 'neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all' (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3: 10:11).

5. When our incensive power is aroused in a way contrary to nature, it greatly furthers the aim of the demons and is an ally in all their evil designs. Day and night, therefore, they are always trying to provoke it. And when they see it tethered by gentleness, they at once try to set it free on some seemingly just pretext; in this way, when it is violently aroused, they can use it for their shameful purposes. So it must not be aroused either for just or for unjust reasons; and we must not hand a dangerous sword to those too readily incensed to wrath, for it often happens that people become excessively worked up for quite trivial reasons. Tell me, why do you rush into battle so quickly, if you are really above caring about food, possessions and glory? Why keep a watchdog if you have renounced everything? If you do, and it barks and attacks other men, it is clear that there are still some possessions for it to guard. But since I know that wrath is destructive of pure prayer, the fact that you cannot control it shows how far you are from such prayer. I am also surprised that you have forgotten the saints: David who exclaims, 'Cease from anger, and put aside your wrath’ (Ps. 37:8. LXX); and Ecclesiastes who urges us, 'Remove wrath from your heart, and put away evil from your flesh' (Eccles. 11:10. LXX); while the Apostle commands that always and everywhere men should 'lift up holy hands, without anger and without quarrelling’ (1 Tim. 2:8). And do we not learn the same from the mysterious and ancient custom of putting dogs out of the house during prayer? This indicates that there should be no wrath in those who pray. 'Their wine is the wrath of serpents' (Deut. 32:33. LXX); that is why the Nazarenes abstained from wine.

It is needless to insist that we should not worry about clothes or food. The Savior Himself forbids this in the Gospels: 'Do not worry about what to eat or drink, or about what to wear' (cf. Matt. 6:25). Such anxiety is a mark of the Gentiles and unbelievers, who reject the providence of the Lord and deny the Creator. An attitude of this kind is entirely wrong for Christians who believe that even two sparrows which are sold for a farthing are under the care of the holy angels (cf. Matt. 10: 29). The demons, however, after arousing impure thoughts, go on to suggest worries of this kind, so that 'Jesus conveys Himself away', because of the multitude of concerns in our mind (cf. John 5:13). The divine word can bear no fruit, being choked by our cares. Let us, then, renounce these cares, and throw them down before the Lord, being content with what we have at the moment; and living in poverty and rags, let us day by day rid ourselves of all that fills us with self-esteem. If anyone thinks it shameful to live in rags, he should remember St Paul, who 'in cold and nakedness' patiently awaited the 'crown of righteousness' (2 Cor. 11:27; 2 Tim. 4:8). The Apostle likened this world to a contest in an arena (cf. 1 Cor. 9:24); how then can someone clothed with anxious thoughts run for 'the prize of the high calling of God' (Phil. 3:14), or 'wrestle against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world' (Eph. 6:12)? I do not see how this is possible; for just as a runner is obstructed and weighed down by clothing, so too is the intellect by anxious thoughts - if indeed the saying is true that the intellect is attached to its own treasure; for it is said, 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be also' (Matt. 6:21).

12. He who has mastery over his incensive power has mastery also over the demons. But anyone who is a slave to it is a stranger to the monastic life and to the ways of our Savior, for as David said of the Lord: 'He will teach the gentle His ways' (Ps. 25:9). The intellect of the solitary is hard for the demon to catch, for it shelters in the land of gentleness. There is scarcely any other virtue which the demons fear as much as gentleness. Moses possessed this virtue, for he was called 'very gentle, above all men' (Num. 12:3). And David showed that it makes men worthy to be remembered by God when he said: 'Lord, remember David and all his gentleness' (Ps. 132:1. LXX). And the Savior Himself also enjoined us to imitate Him in His gentleness, saying: 'Learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart: and you will find rest for your souls' (Matt. 11:29). Now if a man abstains from food and drink, but becomes incensed to wrath because of evil thoughts, he is like a ship sailing the open sea with a demon for pilot. So we must keep this watchdog under careful control, training him to destroy only the wolves and not to devour the sheep, and to show the greatest gentleness towards all men.

21. Whenever unclean thoughts have been driven off quickly, we should try to find out why this has happened. Did the enemy fail to overpower us because there was no possibility of the thought idea of bread persists in a hungry man because of his hunger, and the idea of water in a thirsty man because of his thirst, so ideas of material things and of the shameful thoughts that follow a surfeit of food and drink persist in us because of the passions. The same is true about thoughts of self-esteem and other ideas. It is not possible for an intellect choked by such ideas to appear before God and receive the crown of righteousness. It is through being dragged down by such thoughts that the wretched intellect, like the man in the Gospels, declines the invitation to the supper of the knowledge of God (cf. Luke 14:18); and the man who was bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness (cf. Matt. 22:13) was clothed in a garment woven of these thoughts, and so was judged by the Lord, who had invited him, not to be worthy of the wedding feast. For the true wedding garment is the dispassion of the deiform soul which has renounced worldly desires. [In the texts On Prayer it is explained why dwelling on ideas of sensory objects destroys true knowledge of God.]

23. As we stated at the beginning, there are three chief groups of demons opposing us in the practice of the ascetic life, and after them follows the whole army of the enemy. These three groups fight in the front line, and with impure thoughts seduce our souls into wrongdoing. They are the demons set over the appetites of gluttony, those who suggest to us avaricious thoughts, and those who incite US to seek esteem in the eyes of men. If you long for pure prayer, keep guard over your incensive power; and if you desire self-restraint, control your belly, and do not take your fill even of bread and water. Be vigilant in prayer and avoid all rancor. Let the teachings of the Holy Spirit be always with you; and use the virtues as your hands to knock at the doors of Scripture. Then dispassion of heart will arise within you, and during prayer you will see your intellect shine like a star.
Evagrius Ponticus...Extracts from the Texts on Watchfulness
1. A monk should always act as if he was going to die tomorrow; yet he should treat his body as if it was going to live for many years. The first cuts off the inclination to listlessness, and makes the monk more diligent; the second keeps his body sound and his self control well balanced.

4. Once I visited St Makarios1 at noon and, burning with intense thirst, I asked for a drink of water. But he said: 'Be satisfied with the shade, for at this moment there are many travelers who lack even that.' Then, as I was telling him of my difficulties in practicing self-restraint, he said: 'Take heart, my son; for during the whole of twenty years I myself have never had my fill of bread, water or sleep; but I have carefully measured my bread and water, and snatched some sleep by leaning a little against the wall.

5. Spiritual reading, vigils and prayer bring the straying intellect to stability. Hunger, exertion and withdrawal from the world wither burning lust. Reciting the psalms, long suffering and compassion curb our incensive power when it is unruly. Anything untimely or pushed o excess is short-lived and harmful rather than helpful.

Some of the monks ate very little, like John of Lycopolis who ate only a little fruit each day and Pityrion who had a light diet of a little corn-meal soup each day. At Bawit it was customary to keep the canonical fasts of Wednesday and Friday, days of complete abstinence from food, in memory of the Passion of Christ, but on other days a meal in the evening, usually after Communion, was the norm. Older monks might eat very little simply because of age, but the custom observed by the travelers seems to have been as in this story:

"Abba Joseph asked Abba Poemen, 'How should one fast?'

"Abba Poemen said to him, 'For my part, I think it better that one should eat every day, but only a little, so as not to be satisfied.'

"Abba Joseph said to him, 'When you were younger, did you not fast two days at a time, Abba?'

"The old man said, 'Yes, even for three and four and the whole week. The Fathers tried all this out as they were able, and they found it preferable to eat every day, but just a small amount. They have left us this royal way, which is light.'"...ChristianHistory.net

• SELECTED SAYINGS OF THE DESERT FATHERS ON FASTING
• Oasis of Wisdom: The Worlds of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

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