The Desert Fathers

[ThePenciledOne]

This past semester I got really interested in the Desert Fathers, the hermits that lived in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts in the 3rd century A.D.

I have only found a little bit on them, and its slim. I know there can only be so much known of these guys, but I was wondering if there was anything that I may have missed. I know St. Anthony the Great, is the biggest Desert Father, and Thomas Merton wrote on them as well.

I was just wondering if anyone knew anything else, since I find their life/spirituality quite beautiful and radical.

Thanks! : )

[sistersintigo]

There is a Middle Ages tie-in to the early Christian fathers.
Consider, for example, St Bruno and the order he founded, the Carthusian monks/kind-of-hermits. This was close to 1100 AD, and was many centuries removed from the Desert Fathers; however, the whole movement of monasticism from the Middle Ages draws much inspiration from the early Christian fathers.
Bruno did not write very much down, mostly he lived his vocation of solitude and attracted others to him. The Carthusians who followed Bruno, who stabilized the growth of the Carthusian Order, had to write things down. It is from those early leaders of the Carthusians, such as the fifth Prior of the Grande Chartreuse, known to some as Guigo I (to distinguish him from later Guigos in the Order), that we see customs-books, religious commentaries, and letters which quote or paraphrase extensively from Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, Nilus of Sinai, John Cassian, Clement of Alexandria, and more than I have the expertise to cite by name. So Western Christianity alone goes through historical cycles of returning to the Desert Fathers, then wandering away from them.
Not to mention that Eastern Orthodox Christianity is also rooted in many of these Desert Fathers.
There's a lot here to investigate.

[Fr. Antony Maria OSB]

Sisterintigo mentioned him already, but John Cassian is a great source of the Desert Fathers, while also being one of them. He basically went into the desert and lived with the Fathers, but then also interviewed them. His collected interviews are in a book known as [i]The Conferences[/i]. I would highly recommend reading those. I've only read two of the Conferences (9 and 10), but they are wonderful and contain a lot of wisdom and really open your eyes to how close we can get to God.

May God bless and protect you always in all of your endeavors!

Sincerely,

Joe

[tnavarro61]

I am so much interested with Desert Spirituality but I haven't found any writings of the Desert Fathers. It's hard to locate the books and there are no free ebooks about the spirituality.

[Fr. Antony Maria OSB]

[quote name='tnavarro61' timestamp='1294065256' post='2196143']
I am so much interested with Desert Spirituality but I haven't found any writings of the Desert Fathers. It's hard to locate the books and there are no free ebooks about the spirituality.
[/quote]
Maybe not ebooks, but NewAdvent has a good chunk of the writings of the Church Fathers, if not all of them, [url="http://newadvent.org/fathers/"]here[/url].

[ThePenciledOne]

Thanks guys, I'll be looking some of these up once I get back to school!

I appreciate the input!