Desert Christians An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism

In this book, William Harmless provides an accessible introduction to early Christian monastic literature from Egypt and beyond. He introduces the reader to the major figures and literary texts, as well as offering an up-to-date survey of current questions and scholarship in the field. The text is enhanced by the inclusion of chronologies, maps, outlines, illustrations, and bibliographies. The book will not only serve as a text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on early Christianity, the Desert Fathers, and Christian asceticism, but it should stimulate further research by making the fruits of recent scholarship more readily and widely available.

William Harmless, S.J. is Professor of Theology at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. From 1996 to 2003, he held the Thomas E. Caestecker Chair of the Liberal Arts at Spring Hill College. He has been a member of the Society of Jesus since 1978 and is the author of Augustine and the Catechumenate (1995). His research on early monasticism has appeared in the journals Theological Studies, Church History, and Studia Patristica.