The Holy Men of the Egyptian Desert

Since I have mentioned the monasteries of Egypt, it may be right to give a short account of them here. They were probably founded at a very early date, but they were greatly enlarged and increased by a devout man named Ammon. In his youth this man had an aversion to marriage. But when some of his relatives urged him not to despise marriage but to take a wife, he gave in and was married. When he had led the bride with the customary ceremonies from the banquet hall to the marriage bed, and their friends had gone, he took a book containing the letters of the apostles and read to his wife Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, explaining to her the apostle’s instructions to married people. Bringing in many other considerations besides, he spoke at length about the inconveniences and discomforts of married intercourse, the pains of childbirth, and the trouble and worry of raising a family. Against all this he set the advantages of chastity. He described the freedom and spotless purity of a life of continence, and he declared that virginity brings a person into the closest relation with God. By these and other arguments like them he persuaded his virgin bride to renounce life in the world together with him, before they had ever had relations with each other. Having made this decision, they withdrew together to the mountain of Nitria. There, in a hut, they lived for a short time in one shared ascetic dwelling, paying no regard to the difference between man and woman, being, as the apostles say, “one in Christ.” But not long afterward the new and untouched bride said to Ammon, “It is not fitting for you, who practice chastity, to look at a woman in so cramped a dwelling. So, if you agree, let us carry on our discipline apart.” This arrangement too satisfied them both. So they separated, and spent the rest of their lives abstaining from wine and oil and eating only dry bread, sometimes going without food for one day, at other times fasting for two, and sometimes longer. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, states in his Life of Antony that Antony, who lived at the same time as this Ammon, saw his soul carried up by angels after his death. As a result, a great number of people imitated Ammon’s way of life, so that little by little the mountains of Nitria and Scetis were filled with monks. An account of their lives would need a work of its own. Still, there were among them people of outstanding devotion, known for their strict discipline and apostolic lives, who said and did many things worth recording. So I think it useful to weave into my history a few details, chosen out of a great many, for my readers’ information. [a]

It is said that Ammon never saw himself naked, for he used to say that “it is not fitting for a monk to see even his own body uncovered.” Once, when he needed to cross a river but did not want to undress, he begged God to let him cross without being forced to break his resolve, and at once an angel carried him over to the other side of the river. Another monk, named Didymus, lived entirely alone until the day of his death, although he reached the age of ninety. Arsenius, another of them, would not cut off young offenders from communion, but only those who were older. “For,” he said, “when a young person is excommunicated, he becomes hardened; but an older one soon feels how miserable it is to be excommunicated.” Pior used to eat his food as he walked along. When someone asked him, “Why do you eat like that?” he said, “So that I may not seem to make eating a serious business, but rather something done in passing.” To another who asked the same question he answered, “So that even while eating my mind may not feel bodily pleasure.” Isidore declared that for forty years he had not been conscious of sin even in thought, and that he had never given in either to lust or to anger.

Pambo, who could not read, went to someone to be taught a psalm. When he had heard the first verse of the thirty-eighth psalm, “I said, I will watch my ways, so that I do not sin with my tongue,” he went away without waiting to hear the second verse, saying, “This one will be enough, if I can actually learn to do it.” And when the man who had given him the verse scolded him because he had not seen him for six months, he answered that he had not yet learned to practice the verse of the psalm. A long time afterward one of his friends asked him whether he had mastered the verse. His answer was, “I have barely managed to carry it out in nineteen years.” A certain man put gold into his hands to be given to the poor, and asked him to count what he had given him. “There is no need for counting,” he said, “but for an honest mind.” This same Pambo, at the request of Athanasius the bishop, came out of the desert to Alexandria, and when he saw an actress there, he wept. When those who were with him asked him why he wept, he replied, “Two things have moved me. One is the ruin of this woman. The other is that I take less trouble to please my God than she takes to please indecent people.” Another said that “a monk who did not work ought to be counted no better than a greedy man.” Piterus was well informed in many branches of natural philosophy, and he often gave expositions of the principles, sometimes of one branch of learning and sometimes of another; but he always began his expositions with prayer.

Among the monks of that time there were also two men of great holiness with the same name, each called Macarius. One of them was from Upper Egypt, the other from the city of Alexandria. Both were famous for their ascetic discipline, the purity of their life and conduct, and the miracles done by their hands. The Egyptian Macarius performed so many cures and cast out so many demons that it would take a separate treatise to record all that the grace of God enabled him to do. His manner toward those who came to him was stern, yet such as to inspire reverence. The Alexandrian Macarius was like his Egyptian namesake in every respect but this: he was always cheerful with his visitors, and by his friendly manner he led many young men to the ascetic life.

Evagrius became a disciple of these men, and from them he learned the philosophy of deeds, whereas before he had known only the philosophy that consists in words. He was ordained deacon at Constantinople by Gregory of Nazianzus, and afterward went with him into Egypt. There he came to know these remarkable men and imitated their way of life, and miracles were done by his hands as many and as great as those of his teachers. He also wrote books of great value. One is titled The Monk, or, On Active Virtue. Another is The Gnostic, or, To the One Who Is Counted Worthy of Knowledge; this book is divided into fifty chapters. A third is called Antirrheticus; it contains passages from the holy Scriptures to use against the tempting spirits, arranged in eight parts to match the number of the arguments. He also wrote Six Hundred Prognostic Problems, and two works in verse, one addressed To the Monks Living in Communities and the other To the Virgin. Whoever reads these works will be convinced of their excellence. I think it will not be out of place to add to what has been said a few things he records about the monks. These are his words:

“We ought to look into the ways of the devout monks who have gone before us, so that we may correct ourselves by their example; for they certainly said and did a great many excellent things. One of them used to say that ‘a drier diet, and not an irregular one, joined with love, will quickly bring a monk into the harbor of peace.’ The same man freed one of the brothers from being troubled by visions at night by telling him to serve the sick while fasting. And when he was asked why he prescribed this, he said, ‘Such troubles are driven away by nothing so well as by the practice of compassion.’ A certain philosopher of those days came to Antony the Just and said to him, ‘Father, how can you bear being deprived of the comfort of books?’ ‘My book, philosopher,’ Antony replied, ‘is the nature of the things that are made, and it is there whenever I want to read the words of God.’ [i]

That ‘chosen vessel,’ the aged Egyptian Macarius, asked me why the strength of the memory is weakened when we hold on to the memory of wrongs done to us by men, while it remains unharmed when we remember the wrongs done to us by demons. When I hesitated, hardly knowing what to answer, and begged him to explain it, he said, ‘Because the first is a feeling contrary to nature, and the second is in keeping with the nature of the mind.’ Once I went to the holy father Macarius about midday, and being overcome by the heat and by thirst, I asked for some water to drink. ‘Be content with the shade,’ was his reply, ‘for many who are traveling by land or sailing on the sea right now do not have even this.’ Afterward, when I was talking with him about abstinence, he said, ‘Take courage, my son. For twenty years I have never eaten, drunk, or slept my fill. My bread has always been weighed, my water measured, and what little sleep I have had I have stolen by leaning against a wall.’

The death of his father was reported to one of the monks. ‘Stop your blasphemy,’ he said to the man who told him. ‘My father is immortal.’ One of the brothers, who owned nothing but a copy of the Gospels, sold it and gave the money for food to the hungry, saying these memorable words: ‘I have sold the book that says, “Sell what you have and give to the poor.”’ There is an island toward the northern part of the city of Alexandria, beyond the lake called Maria, where a monk from Parembole lives who is highly regarded among the gnostics. This man used to say that all the deeds of the monks are done for one of these five reasons: for God’s sake, or from nature, custom, necessity, or manual labor. He also said that there is only one virtue by nature, but that it takes on different characteristics according to the dispositions of the soul, just as the light of the sun has no shape of its own but takes the shape of whatever receives it. Another of the monks said, ‘I hold myself back from pleasures in order to cut off the occasions of anger. For I know that anger always fights for pleasures, disturbing my peace of mind and making me unfit to gain knowledge.’ One of the old monks said that ‘love does not know how to keep a store either of food or of money.’ He added, ‘I do not remember ever being deceived by the devil twice in the same thing.’”

So Evagrius wrote in his book titled Practice. And in the one he called The Gnostic he says: “We have learned from Gregory the Just that there are four virtues, each with its own character: prudence and courage, temperance and justice. It belongs to prudence to contemplate the holy and intelligent powers without words, because these are made known by wisdom. It belongs to courage to hold to the truth against all opposition and never to turn aside to what is unreal. It belongs to temperance to receive seed from the chief farmer, but to drive away the one who would sow seed of another kind over it. And finally, it belongs to justice to suit what is said to each person according to his condition and capacity, stating some things obscurely, others in figures, and explaining others plainly for the instruction of the less intelligent.”

“That pillar of truth, Basil of Cappadocia, used to say that ‘the knowledge which men teach is perfected by constant study and practice, but the knowledge that comes from the grace of God is perfected by the practice of justice, patience, and mercy.’ He said that the first is often developed in people who are still subject to the passions, whereas the second belongs only to those who have risen above their influence, and who in the time of prayer contemplate that special light of the mind which shines on them. That shining light of the Egyptians, holy Athanasius, assures us ‘that Moses was commanded to place the table on the north side. So let the gnostics understand which wind is against them, and so nobly endure every temptation, and serve nourishment with a willing mind to those who come to them.’ Serapion, the angel of the church of Thmuis, declared that ‘the mind is completely purified by drinking in spiritual knowledge,’ that ‘love heals the inflamed impulses of the soul,’ and that ‘the depraved lusts that spring up in it are held in check by abstinence.’ ‘Train yourself continually,’ said the great and enlightened teacher Didymus, ‘in thinking about providence and judgment, and try to keep in your memory the substance of whatever teaching you may have heard on these subjects, for nearly everyone fails in this. You will find reasons concerning judgment in the differences among created forms and in the order of the universe; and teaching on providence is contained in the means by which we are led from vice and ignorance to virtue and knowledge.’”

We thought it would be fitting to include these few extracts from Evagrius here. There was another excellent man among the monks named Ammonius, who cared so little for worldly things that when he went to Rome with Athanasius, he chose not to look at any of the magnificent works of that city, and was content to visit only the church of Peter and Paul. When this same Ammonius was pressed to accept the office of bishop, he cut off his own right ear, so that by maiming his body he might make himself unfit for ordination. Long afterward, Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, wanted to make Evagrius a bishop, and Evagrius escaped without injuring himself in any way. When he later happened to meet Ammonius, he told him jokingly that he had done wrong in cutting off his own ear, since by doing so he had made himself guilty in the sight of God. Ammonius replied, “And do you think, Evagrius, that you will not be punished, when out of self-love you have cut out your own tongue, to avoid using the gift of speech that was entrusted to you?” [p]

There were at that same time in the monasteries a great many other admirable and devout people, whom it would be too tedious to list here. Besides, if we tried to describe the life of each one, and the miracles they did through the holiness they had been given, we would have to stray too far from our purpose. If anyone wants to know their history, both their deeds and experiences and the talks they gave to build up their hearers, as well as how wild beasts became subject to their authority, there is a treatise on the subject written by the monk Palladius, a disciple of Evagrius, which gives all these details minutely. In that work he also mentions several women who practiced the same kind of austerities as the men we have spoken of. Evagrius and Palladius both flourished shortly after the death of Valens. We must now return to the point from which we turned aside.