List #2: Desert Saints

Primary Sources:

Anthony.  Athanasius: The Life of Saint Anthony, translated by Robert T. Meyer.  Ancient Christian Writers 10.  Westminster, MD:  Newman Press, 1950.

Anthony.  Vita S. Antonii by Athanasius, translated by H. Ellershaw.  In the Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., 5.  Posted independently  in the Medieval Source Book; available online at multiple sites that reproduce the Select Library collection, including The Common Man's Prospective, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, etc.

Athanasius of Alexandria. The Life of Saint Anthony. The Coptic Life and the Greek Life, translated by Tim Vivian and Apostolos N. Athanassakis.  Cisterician Studies Series 202.  Kalamazoo: Cistercian Press, 2003.

Jerome,  Life of Paul the First Hermit, translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

Melania.  Gerontius:  The Life of Melania the Younger, translated by Elizabeth A. Clark.  New York:  E. Mellen Press, 1984.

Pélagie la Pénitente: Metamorphoses d’une légende.  2 vols.  Paris:  Études augustiniennes, 1981, 1984.

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Apophthegmata Patrum (the Anonymous Series), translated by Benedicta Ward.  London: Mowbrays, 1975.

Most of the major lives of the desert fathers are available in simple English translations on various Orthodox Web sites.

Primary Source Collections:

The Desert Fathers, translated by Helen Waddell.  London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1936.

Early Christian Biographies, edited by Roy J. Deferrari.  Fathers of the Church 15.  Washington, DC:  Catholic University of America Press, 1952.               

Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, translated by Sebastian Brock and Susan Harvey.  University of California Heritage Series 13.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1987.

Western Asceticism, translated by Owen Chadwick.  The Library of Christian Classics 12.  Philadelphia:  Westminster Press, 1958.

Secondary Sources

Anson, John.  “The Female Transvestite in Early Monasticism: The Origin and Development of a Motif.” Viator 5 (1974): 1-32.

Anson, Peter.  The Call of the Desert: The Solitary Life in the Christian Church.  London:  S.P.C.K., 1964.

Brakke, D.  Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Brown, Peter.  The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Brown, Peter. “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity.”  Representations 1 (1983): 1-25.

Caner, Daniel.  Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Christian Spirituality:  Origins to the Twelfth Century.  Edited by Bernard McGinn, John Meyendorff, and Jean Leclercq.  World Spirituality:  An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, vol. 16.  New York:  Crossroad, 1988.  Pp. 89-161.

Coliero, E.  “St. Jerome’s Lives of the Hermits.”  Vigiliae Christianae 11 (1957): 161-78.

Cox, Patricia.  Biography in Late Antiquity:  A Quest for the Holy Man.  Transformation of the Classical Heritage 5.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Dijkstra, J. and M. Van Dijk, eds. The Encroaching Desert: Egyptian Hagiography and the Medieval West.  Leiden: Brill, 2006.

Elliott, Alison Goddard.  Roads to Paradise:  Reading the Lives of the Early Saints.  Hanover, NH:  Published for Brown University Press by the University Press of New England, 1988.

Elm, Susanna. 'Virgins of God': The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.

Frank, Georgia. The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity. Transformations of the Classical Heritage 30.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Gould, Graham.  The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.

Hägg, Tomas, and Philip Rousseau.  Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity.  Transformation of the Classical Heritage 31.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Harmless, William. Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Hickey, Anne Ewing.  Women of the Roman Aristocracy and Christian Monasteries. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987.

Howard-Johnston, James, and Paul Antony Hayward, eds. The Cult of the Saints in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Kaplan, St.  The Monastic Holy Man and the Christianization of Early Solomonic Ethiopia. Studien zur Kulturkunde 73.  Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1984. 

Kirschner, Robert.  “The Vocation of Holiness in Late Antiquity.” Vigiliae Christianae 38 (1984): 339-59.

Krawiec, Rebecca.   Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery:  Egyptian Monasticism in Late Antiquity.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Malone, Edward E.  The Monk and the Martyr: The Monk as the Successor of the Martyr. Catholic University of America Studies in Christian Antiquity 12.  Washington, DC:  Catholic University of America Press, 1950.    

Noell, Brian. “Language and the Reevaluation of Class in the Narratives of Early Egyptian Monasticism." American Benedictine Review 56 (2005): 387-91.            

Pietri, Charles.  “Saints et démons:  L’héritage de l’agiographie antique.”  Santi e demoni nell’alto medioevo occidentale (secoli V-XI).  2 vols.  Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 36.  Spoleto:  Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1989.  1:15-90.,

Rousseau, Philip.  Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Rousseau, Philip.  Pachomius:  The Making of a Community in Fourth Century Egypt. The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 6. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

Schein, Sylvia. “The ‘Female-Men of God’ and ‘Men Who Were Women’:  Female Saints and Holy Land Pilgrimage during the Byzantine Period.”  Hagiographica 5 (1998): 1-36.

Stewart, Columba. Cassian the Monk. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Tudor, Adrian P.   “Ėrémitisme et solitude dans la prémière Vies des Pères.”  Le moyen âge 112 (2006): 43-61.

Urbainczyk, Theresa. Theodoret of Cyrrhus: The Bishop and the Holy Man. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

 van Uytfanghe, Marc. “La controverse biblique et patristique autour du miracle et ses répercussions sur l’hagiographie dans l’antiquité tardive et le haut moyen âge latin.”  In Hagiographie, cultures, et sociétés, IVe-XIIe siècles.  Edited by Evelyne Patlagean and Pierre Riché.  Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1981.  Pp. 205-33.

 van Uytfanghe, Marc. 'L'hagiographie en Occident de la Vita Antonii aux Dialogues de Grégoire le Grand: Genèse et occupation du terrain." In Gregorio Magno e l'agiografia fra IV e VII secolo: Atti dell'incontro di studio delle Università degli studi di Verona e Trento, 10-11 dicembre 2004, edited by Antonella deglo'Innocenti, Antonio de Prisco, e Emore Paoli. Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007. Pp. 3-51.

Ward, Benedicta, ed.  Harlots of the Desert:  A Study of Repentence in Early Monastic Sources.  Cistercian Studies Series 106.  Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987. 

Weingarten, Susan.  The Saint’s Saints:  Hagiography and Geography in Jerome.  Leiden: Brill, 2005.