History and Hermits - The Desert Fathers of Egypt

The Desert Fathers of ancient Egypt were some of the world's first hermits. Despite the modern ideal of the hermit, these didn't live in total isolation. However, they did live a sparse, hard life in the country's early Christian monasteries. If women chose to enter their sphere, they would do so dressed as men. Who were these scholastic men of the desert, and how did their form of worship influence Christianity for millenia to come?

In the fourth century AD, Egypt was a province of the Roman Empire (in modern terms, an occupied territory) vital to Roman security, since the Nile valley supplied most of the grain for the "bread and circuses" that kept Rome's proletariat quiet. But that didn't get Egypt any preferential treatment. It was rigorously controlled, ruthlessly taxed; many small farmers, too poor to pay, abandoned their land, and Egypt's economy slowly deteriorated.

By then Rome itself was an empty shell, threatened from within by corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, from without by Teutonic tribes hungry for land. The one self-confident force was the Christian Church. Less than a century before, its followers had fled, apostasised or suffered agonising deaths in the final persecutions.  Now Christianity was the official religion, its Church a rich, powerful, strictly hierarchical institution. Where, in all this pomp and circumstance, were Christ's teachings?

To a small but significant number, inside Egypt and beyond, Church and Empire were now mirror images, and within their stifling embrace it seemed virtually impossible to live a truly Christian life. The solution – inspired by the lone pioneer who became St Anthony – was to retreat to the fringes of the desert and live either as hermits or in a monastery (the world's first Christian monastery was founded by the Egyptian Pachom, just north of Thebes). The choice would often have been determined by temperament. Monasteries were rigidly disciplined, with uniform rules and a fixed 24/7 schedule of activities. Hermits set their own rules, guided solely by tradition and their own consciences.

Hermits in Community

In practice, hermits were seldom true solitaries. A few early ones, like Anthony, lived alone, but later hermits clustered in loose settlements, of which the largest lay west of the Nile Delta: Nitria, the Cells, and Scetis, the last-named having the highest reputation for holiness. The hermits who came to be known as the Desert Fathers lived mainly in these three, each inhabiting his own 'cell'; this might mean a cave (natural or, in part at least, artificial) or a tiny hut of rough-hewn stone that one built oneself.

Such settlements were governed by an informal council of elders who met only when some specific issue had to be discussed. There were a few priests among them, but these had no special authority; they were there simply to perform functions, such as absolution for the dying or conducting divine service, that only the ordained could properly perform.

The attitude of the hermits towards the religious establishment, while outwardly respectful, was wary, even suspicious. Suspicion often focused, not without reason, on the highest religious official in Egypt, Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, who diverted money meant for widows and orphans to the building of opulent churches, and brought false charges of sodomy against the priest who blew the whistle on him. The hermit Arsenius, when asked by Theophilus for a word of spiritual counsel, said "If you hear Arsenius is anywhere – don't go there!"

Such was their distaste for the official Church that hermits often resisted attempts to ordain them, sometimes by flight, in at least one case by self-mutilation – Ammonius cut off his own ear, and threatened to cut out his own tongue if Theophilus persisted. A contemporary joke: What are the only two things a hermit flees from? Answer, a woman and a bishop.

As the joke suggests, and despite modern, politically-correct attempts to emphaside the contributions of 'Desert Mothers', hermit communities were overwhelmingly masculine and misogynistic. Of the handful of women who braved the rigours of desert living, some came disguised as men; even the others regarded themselves as male in spirit. Mother Sarah said, "According to nature I am a woman, but not according to my thoughts."

The Hermit Way of Life

So who were the Desert Fathers? A majority were native Egyptians, mostly from the poorer classes, but others, from all parts of the Roman world, included men of high rank and high intelligence. Arsenius, for example, had been tutor to the sons of Emperor Theodosius; Evagrius was a subtle theologian; John Cassian, a well-travelled Rumanian, carried the desert traditions to southern France. One at least was black; Moses, first a slave, then leader of a gang of bandits, finally one of the holiest men in Scetis.

Differences of rank or profession ceased to exist in the desert. There were, however, two levels, based on experience: Brother, a neophyte who needed to spend a few years as a disciple of some more seasoned hermit, and Father, or Old Man – not necessarily old in years – a hermit grown wise and virtuous enough to live alone and give guidance to others.

A hermit's day typically began before dawn; sleep, though necessary, was an enemy stealing time from devotions. A father would meet with his disciples to recite psalms; all would then return to their individual cells and spend most of the day in solitary work and prayer ("Your cell will teach you everything," Moses said.) Work consisted mostly of weaving reeds or palm-fronds into ropes, mats and baskets which would subsequently be sold in the Delta villages; most hermits prided themselves on their independence and scorned charity.  Sometimes hermits would hire out as laborers at harvest time, but this was frowned on, since it involved too much contact with the secular world.

Around the ninth hour (3pm our time), father and brothers would gather again for the day's only meal, usually consisting of bread (one loaf per person was a normal week's ration) and vegetables such as beans and lentils.  After the meal, hermits would visit with one another or ask more experienced elders for 'a word' – some nugget of wisdom, specially designed to apply to the individual concerned, on which one could subsequently meditate.  Then they would return to their cells, rigorously examine their conduct over the preceding day, recognise and seek to eradicate their shortcomings, and finally, by the feeble light of an oil-lamp, continue working and praying until sleep overwhelmed them.

Desert Spirituality

The goal of the Desert Fathers was to live as Christ had taught regardless of consequences. Central to their faith was what they called simply "THE Commandment" – to love God with all your heart and love your neighbour as yourself. Isolation and ascetic practices were simply means to this end; to prize them for their own sake, or worse, to compete in them or boast about them, were sins as bad as gluttony or lechery. If Christ's law and man's law conflicted, man's law must yield. Alonius taught that even if a murderer hid in your cell, you should not report him, for you would cause his suffering and death; judgment was God's business, not man's. Moses came to a council of elders, convened to discuss punishment for some erring brother, carrying a leaky bucket full of sand: "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, yet you call me here to judge the sin of another."  The council immediately forgave the sinner.

The Desert Fathers' most striking innovation – if indeed it was an innovation – was that of contemplative prayer.  There are striking similarities between the practices of the Desert Fathers and those of Buddhist monks and hermits; both sought to quiet the constant inner chatter of the mind so as to achieve closer union with the divine.

Historically, there are tantalising hints of possible contact between Christians and Buddhists on the fringes of the Empire, but so far these remain no more than hints. What is certain is that the Desert Fathers were the originators of this type of spiritual quest within the Christian community.

The Fate of the Fathers

Hermits tried to keep aloof from the religious controversies and heresy-hunting of the fourth century. They preferred seeking closer contact with God to nitpicking over the precise nature of the Trinity. Yet one debate over God's nature exploded at the end of the century. Was God a spirit or a physical being?

The Genesis phrase, "made in His image", seemed to many to support the latter opinion. Theophilus, having supported the first view, recanted under threat of death from an irate mob and espoused the second even more vigorously. Nitria contained many followers of Origen, a theologian who had supported the "spirit" view but was now declared a heretic. Incredibly, in 401 AD, Theophilus attacked Nitria with a ragtag army of monks, circus fans and Roman soldiers, destroying many cells and driving the Origenist hermits into exile.

Six years later, a nomadic desert tribe, the Mazices, attacked and devastated Scetis. Many hermits were killed, others fled to settle elsewhere, in Syria, Palestine or what is now Turkey. A second attack in 434 AD left the site virtually deserted, though to this day one or two small monastic communities survive in the area.

However, though the Desert Fathers of Egypt disappeared, their memory and traditions lived on, a permanent source of inspiration to fellow-Christians that is now enjoying a resurgence in the "Emerging/Emergent Church" movement. 

 

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About The Author

Derek Bickerton

Derek Bickerton is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii. He is author of acclaimed works including Roots of Language, Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans and Bastard Tongues. Although his career has concentrated on linguistics, hs first degree was in history, and he has a lifelong fascination with the history of the Roman Empire. In the 1990s, he became interested in the Desert Fathers, and carried out extensive research on their period in preparation for writing historical novels about them; the first of these, The Desert and the City, was recently published.

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