How a book about one man's radical quest for God helped to redefine Christian discipleship and launch the monastic movement.
Chris Armstrong | posted 7/01/2006 12:00AM
The man acclaimed as "the father of monasticism" never dreamed of the huge impact he would have. But the new mode of discipleship he helped bring to birth in Egypt in the early 300s A.D. turned out to be one of the most momentous innovations in the church's first thousand years.
The book that started it all
Alexandrian bishop Athanasius (298-373) was exiled five times from his beloved church at the hands of Arian-sympathizing emperors. In one of these exiles, the staunchly orthodox, diminutive firebrand fulfilled a long-time dream by traveling to the desert to share the life of the hermits there. During what became a lengthy ascetic sojourn, he wrote what historian Derwas Chitty correctly calls "the first great manifesto of the monastic ideal." This was not some tidy, orderly rule of life, but rather a biography of the most gripping sort—of the best-known early monk and first "desert father," Antony of Egypt (251-356).
Antony was the son of a prosperous Egyptian peasant-farmer. Shortly ...
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