The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1–100
1 work
c. AD 30–45
Greek
De Vita Contemplativa
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
An account of the Therapeutae, a community of men and women outside Alexandria who lived in separate cells, ate once a day after sunset, studied allegory, and kept an all-night vigil of antiphonal singing every fiftieth day.
301–400
11 works
c. 330–345
Coptic
Pachomius · c. 292–348
Regulations for a walled community of monks living, working, eating, and praying together under a superior, with detailed provision for admission, clothing, meals, and correction.
c. 360
Greek
Vita Antonii
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
The life of the Egyptian hermit who heard the gospel read in church, sold everything, and went into the desert — told as a spiritual biography of temptation, discipline, and eventual public authority.
c. 358–375
Greek
Asketikon
Basil the Great · c. 330–379
Questions and answers on the common life, arguing that solitude makes the commandment to love one's neighbour unpracticable, and binding monks to hospitals, orphanages, and schools.
c. 375–377
Latin
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.
c. 390
Greek
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.
c. 390–392
Latin
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
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.
c. 393–399; unexpurgated text survives only in Syriac
Greek, surviving in Syriac
Kephalaia Gnostica
Evagrius Ponticus · 345 – 399
Six centuries of dense, deliberately obscure sentences on contemplation, ninety to a hundred rather than a hundred each, so that the reader notices the gaps. Behind them is a doctrine of minds that fell from unity into bodies and will be restored to a state where even the distinction between them dissolves.
collected c. 350–500
Greek
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.
c. 396–397
Latin
Vita Martini
Sulpicius Severus · c. 363–c. 425
The soldier who cut his cloak in half for a beggar, left the army because he was Christ's soldier and could not fight, and became a reluctant bishop of Tours.
c. 397
Latin
401–500
12 works
c. 400–404
Greek, and in Rufinus's Latin
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. 412–435
Syriac
Rabbula of Edessa · d. 435
Short, hard commands for the monks and the covenanters of Edessa: no monk is to own two tunics, none to enter a village without cause, clergy are not to lend at interest or take part in lawsuits, and no woman is to live in a cleric's house.
c. 419–420
Greek
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.
c. 420–425
Latin
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.
426
Latin
De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
Written for monks at Hadrumetum who had read Augustine on grace and concluded that correction was pointless, since nothing they did was theirs. He answers that scripture plainly commands and plainly promises, so both the will and the grace that moves it must be real, and that God crowns his own gifts in us.
c. 427–428
Latin
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
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.
c. 400–430
Greek
Nilus of Ancyra · d. c. 430
Over a thousand short letters to monks, officials, and bishops, most only a few lines: what to do about a brother who talks in chapel, why an official should not decorate a church he oppresses a province to pay for, how to read a psalm.
c. 444
Greek
Theodoret of Cyrus · c. 393–c. 460
Thirty portraits of Syrian ascetics the author knew personally, including Symeon on his pillar, described without embarrassment and with considerable affection.
c. 443–450
Greek
Sozomen · c. 400–c. 450
A parallel history covering much the same period as Socrates, with far more attention to monasticism and to the conversion of peoples beyond the empire.
c. 385–465
Coptic
Shenoute of Atripe · c. 348 – c. 465
The vast output of the abbot of the White Monastery, who ruled thousands of monks and nuns for eight decades: sermons against pagan landowners and their household shrines, letters disciplining his own communities, and rules enforced by beating.
c. 465–475
Coptic
Besa
Written by Shenoute's successor: the miracles, the journeys, the confrontations with officials, and an old man who could be heard arguing with God. It is frank about how frightening he was to live under.
501–600
13 works
c. 500–510
Syriac
Philoxenus of Mabbug · c. 440–523
Thirteen instructions for monks on faith, simplicity, the fear of God, gluttony and lust, written in a Syriac of unusual clarity and almost no polemic.
511
Latin
Eugippius · c. 465–c. 535
The life of a monk who organised the defence, provisioning, and eventual evacuation of the Roman towns along the Danube as the frontier collapsed.
c. 512–534
Latin
Regula Virginum
Caesarius of Arles · c. 470–542
A rule for a community of women written for his sister's monastery, requiring strict enclosure, insisting every nun learn to read, and forbidding the acceptance of dowries.
c. 515–520
Latin
Excerpta ex Operibus Sancti Augustini
Eugippius · c. 460 – c. 533
Three hundred and forty-eight passages cut from Augustine and arranged for monks who would never see the originals, made at a monastery near Naples by the abbot who also wrote the Life of Severinus.
c. 500–530
Latin
Regula Magistri
Anonymous
An enormously detailed and controlling rule for an Italian monastery, prescribing everything from the abbot's absolute authority to who inspects the loaves.
c. 530
Latin
Regula Benedicti
Benedict of Nursia · c. 480–c. 547
Seventy-three short chapters ordering a monastery's day around prayer, reading, and manual work, with a striking moderation about food, sleep, and the failings of ordinary people.
c. 534
Latin
Regula ad Monachos
Caesarius of Arles · c. 470 – 542
A short rule for a men's community, notably milder than the one he wrote for his sister's nuns: no absolute enclosure, no punishment specified beyond correction, and a working day arranged around the office rather than the other way round.
c. 525–545
Greek
Barsanuphius and John of Gaza · 6th century
Around eight hundred and fifty replies from two enclosed elders to monks and laypeople who wrote to them with questions, from prayer and doubt to lawsuits and illness.
c. 555–559
Greek
Cyril of Scythopolis · c. 525–c. 559
Seven lives of the founders of the Judean desert monasteries, written by a monk who interviewed survivors and consulted archives, with dates given precisely.
c. 550–565
Greek
Dorotheus of Gaza · c. 505–c. 565
Seventeen talks to his own monks on humility, refusing to trust one's own judgement, and bearing with people — including the image of God as the centre of a circle from which all lives are radii.
c. 560–562
Latin
Institutiones
Cassiodorus · c. 485–c. 585
A reading programme for the monks of his own foundation: first the books of scripture and their commentators, then the seven liberal arts, with instructions on copying accurately.
c. 587
Latin
Venantius Fortunatus · c. 530 – c. 609
A Thuringian princess taken as war booty by the Frankish king who had killed her family, married to him, and eventually escaped to found a monastery at Poitiers. Fortunatus, her friend, describes the fasting, the iron chains, and the burns she inflicted on herself.
c. 583–600
Latin
Leander of Seville · c. 534 – c. 600
A rule written for his own sister Florentina, closing with an unguarded page asking her to pray for him and grieving that their brother died before the conversion; and the sermon preached at Toledo when the Goths came over, which is pure jubilation.
601–700
7 works
c. 615–619
Greek
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.
c. 600–650
Greek
Klimax
John Climacus · c. 579–c. 649
Thirty steps from renunciation to love, each a chapter on one virtue or vice, written by an abbot of Sinai in a compressed and aphoristic Greek.
c. 620
Greek
Antiochus of Palestine · 7th century
A hundred and thirty short chapters on the virtues and vices, compiled at the monastery of Mar Saba for monks scattered by the Persian sack of Jerusalem.
1–40 of 80 matching · 1780 in the Library