c. 375–377
Latin
The Life of Paul the First Hermit
Jerome · c. 347–420
A short and frankly legendary life claiming that an older hermit than Antony had lived unknown in the desert, fed daily by a raven.
Western · BiographyFull text
301–400
The Fourth Century
5 works
c. 390
Greek
The Praktikos
Evagrius Ponticus · 345–399
A hundred short chapters analysing the eight thoughts that assail a monk — gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, listlessness, vainglory, pride — and the discipline that answers each.
Egyptian Monastic · AphorismsRead elsewhere
c. 390–392
Latin
The Life of Hilarion
Jerome · c. 347 – 420
The life of the man who brought monasticism from Egypt to Palestine: sixty-five years of fasting reckoned meal by meal, demons in the form of naked women and howling wolves, a cured chariot horse, and a flight from his own fame that took him across the whole eastern Mediterranean.
c. 393
Greek
Chapters on Prayer
Evagrius Ponticus · 345–399
A hundred and fifty-three brief chapters on prayer stripped of images and concepts, defining the theologian as the one who prays truly.
Egyptian Monastic · AphorismsRead elsewhere
collected c. 350–500
Greek
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers
Apophthegmata Patrum
Anonymous
Short exchanges between monks and their visitors, usually beginning with a request for a word, and answered in one or two sentences that rarely explain themselves.
Egyptian Monastic · SayingsRead elsewhere
401–500
The Fifth Century
5 works
c. 400–404
Greek, and in Rufinus's Latin
The History of the Monks in Egypt
Historia Monachorum in Aegypto
Anonymous, translated by Rufinus
Seven pilgrims travel up the Nile in the winter of 394 and write down what they saw: a monk who kept a lion out of his garden by argument, another who had not looked at a woman in fifty years, and towns where the ascetics outnumbered the citizens.
c. 419–420
Greek
The Lausiac History
Palladius of Galatia · c. 363–c. 430
Portraits of the monks and nuns of Egypt and Palestine by someone who lived among them, including a good deal of frank material about failure, madness, and vanity.
Egyptian Monastic · HistoryFull text
c. 420–425
Latin
The Institutes
De Institutis Coenobiorum
John Cassian · c. 360–435
The customs of Egyptian monasteries adapted for Gaul — dress, the night office, the reception of newcomers — followed by books on each of the eight principal faults.
Western Monastic · RuleFull text
c. 427–428
Latin
In Praise of the Desert
De Laude Eremi
Eucherius of Lyons · c. 380 – c. 449
A letter to Hilary of Arles arguing that the wilderness is not empty but furnished — God met Moses in it, fed Israel in it, and sent his own Son into it — and that the island monasteries of Lérins are its western equivalent.
c. 426–429
Latin
The Conferences
Collationes
John Cassian · c. 360–435
Twenty-four conversations with the elders of Egypt on the goal of monastic life, discernment, unceasing prayer, and the way the mind wanders even at prayer.
Western Monastic · DialogueFull text
601–700
The Seventh Century
2 works
c. 615–619
Greek
The Spiritual Meadow
Pratum Spirituale
John Moschus · c. 550–619
Over two hundred short anecdotes collected on a lifetime of travel between the monasteries of Palestine, Sinai, and Egypt, gathered as the Persian invasion destroyed them.
Byzantine · SayingsRead elsewhere
c. 630; attribution debated
Greek
The Life of Mary of Egypt
Attributed to Sophronius of Jerusalem · c. 560 – 638
A monk crossing the Jordan finds a naked, sun-blackened woman who levitates at prayer and knows scripture she has never read. She tells him she spent seventeen years in Alexandria taking men for pleasure rather than money, was turned back by an invisible force at the church door in Jerusalem, and has been in the desert forty-seven years.