Evagrius the Monk

Evagrius the monk, the close disciple of the Macarius mentioned above, was educated in sacred and secular literature and was a man of distinction. The book called the Lives of the Fathers mentions him as a man of great self-control and learning. He wrote many things useful to monks, among them these: Suggestions against the Eight Principal Sins. He was the first, or at least among the first, to point these out and to teach about them, setting against them eight books drawn from the testimony of the Holy Scriptures alone, after the example of our Lord, who always met his tempter with quotations from Scripture, so that every suggestion, whether of the devil or of depraved nature, has a testimony against it. I have translated this work into Latin under instructions, translating with the same simplicity that I found in the Greek. [a]

He also composed a book of One Hundred Sayings for those living simply as hermits, arranged by chapters, and one of Fifty Sayings for the learned and studious, which I was the first to translate into Latin. The first of these had been translated before, and I restored it, partly by translating it afresh and partly by correcting it, so as to represent the true meaning of the author, because I saw that the translation had been corrupted and confused by time. He also composed a teaching on the common life suited to cenobites and synodites, and for the virgin consecrated to God a little book suited to her religious life and her sex. He also published a few collections of sayings that are very obscure and, as he himself says of them, can be understood only by the hearts of monks; these too I published in Latin. He lived to old age, mighty in signs and miracles.