The Desert Fathers

by Helen Waddell (translator), Basil Pennington (Preface)

By the fourth century A.D., devout Christians--men and women alike--had begun to retreat from cities and villages to the deserts of North Africa and Asia Minor, where they sought liberation from their corrupt society and the confining shell of the social self. The Desert Fathers is the perfect introduction to the stories and sayings of these heroic pioneers of the contemplative tradition. Selected and translated by Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers opens a window onto early Christianity while presenting us with touchingly human models of faith, humility, and compassion. With a new Preface by the Cistercian monk, writer, and revered teacher of contemplative prayer M. Basil Pennington, author of O Holy Mountain and Challenges in Prayer .

"God is our home but many of us have strayed from our native land.  The venerable authors of these Spiritual Classics are expert guides--may we follow their directions home."
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Genres: Religion, Spirituality, Christianity, Nonfiction, History, Christian, Theology

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1628

About the author

Helen Jane Waddell was an Irish poet, translator and playwright.

She was born in Tokyo, the tenth and youngest child of Hugh Waddell, a Presbyterian minister and missionary who was lecturing in the Imperial University. She spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan before her family returned to Belfast. Her mother died shortly afterwards, and her father remarried. Hugh Waddell himself died and left his younger children in the care of their stepmother. Following the marriage of her elder sister Meg, Helen was left at home to care for Mrs Waddell, whose health was deteriorating.

Waddell was educated at Victoria College for Girls and Queen's University Belfast, where she studied under Professor Gregory Smith, graduating in 1911. She followed her BA with first class honours in English with a master's degree, and in 1919 enrolled in Somerville College, Oxford, to study for her doctorate. A travelling scholarship from Lady Margaret Hall in 1923 allowed her to conduct research in Paris. It was at this time that she met her life-long friend, Maude Clarke.

She is best known for bringing to light the history of the medieval goliards in her 1927 book The Wandering Scholars, and translating their Latin poetry in the companion volume Medieval Latin Lyrics. A second anthology, More Latin Lyrics, was compiled in the 1940s but not published until after her death. Her other works range widely in subject matter. For example, she also wrote plays. Her first play was The Spoiled Buddha, which was performed at the Opera House, Belfast, by the Ulster Literary Society. Her The Abbe Prevost was staged in 1935. Her historical novel Peter Abelard was published in 1933. It was critically well received and became a bestseller.

Reviews

[Halliday · Rating 4 out of 5]

These guys kicked more booty in an hour than you and all your urbane friends could even think about kicking if you ever even got up off the sofa. Smart, dedicated, and tough as nails -- that's what I'm talking about. Smackdown!!! Desert style.

[Ashley Ritchie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Noble, simple and pure. A delight for the mind and relish for the soul.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as an undergrad and grad student, and it's a fascinating look at early monastic life. Some of the desert fathers (and mothers---a few women are included here, but there is a separate volume of writings by early female monastics) are a bit overboard. It's interesting reading, though, as we see adherents of a new faith trying to find their way and learn how to live consistently with the Gospel. This batch of new Christians has retreated from the world, trying to "work out their salvation with fear and trembling" before going out into the wider society. In an era of intense persecution, it makes perfect sense to go into hiding. But is that the point of faith? Though usually approached as a historical resource, this text raises good questions about time spent on personal sanctification versus time spent living into Christ's commands to feed the poor and heal the sick. We're still trying to get that balance right.

[Adam Carnehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of sayings and stories from the desert monks and nuns who left everything to move into the desolate wastes of Egypt and Palestine from the 4th through 7th centuries.

Helen Waddell originally prepared this translation in 1936, and it has since become something of a classic, with the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor continuing to reprint it. In the introduction she points out that there is no "Urtext" of the sayings of the Desert Fathers. Indeed, their lives and anecdotes are scattered about in a great many different works, the chief of which is a massive tome which collected very many of the Vitae Patrae, dating to the 17th century. From this and several other sources, Waddell prepared an excellent compilation, containing the most famous collections of teachings which could be traced to individual compilers or witnesses. In this translation, several pertinent works by Jerome, Palladius, John Moschus, and Ephrem the Syrian are included. Then, other diverse and various sayings collected by lesser-known figures, mainly deacons, in the service of august bishops, were compiled and attributed to the saints of the desert, many of whom are lost in total obscurity. The chief source is the Historia Monachorum, translated by the monk Rufinus in the late 4th century. Waddell includes this in her book, and, together with the so-called Verba Seniorum, or "Sayings of the Fathers;" these two works form the very core of the desert tradition.

Those austere monks like Abba Antony, Abba Moses, Abba Macarius, and Abba Arsenius, and those faithful nuns like Amma Syncletica and Amma Sarah, in their total renunciation of all material wealth and their rigorous asceticism, have left us treasure upon treasure of word and deed.

This collection of stories and sayings is stunningly powerful. It reads, at times, like the Gospel of Mark: in stark simplicity, with compelling, shocking tales. It is no surprise that, like the Gospel, this collection often drives away as many readers as it attracts. Was the teaching of the Son of Man from Nazareth any different?

Here one finds no scholasticism. Here one senses no hint of theorizing (or theologizing). Here one encounters men and women, stripped of the world, stripped of themselves, following the call of Christ with their whole heart. The tales can be as cold as the desert at night, or as hot as it is under the full, Egyptian sun; they chill the reader with pity and burn her with the light and fire of the Holy Spirit. They deal with fasting and prayer, vigils and patience. The famous monks are famous not for their teaching primarily, but for their holy lives. The teachings flow from lives of repentance and love in simple, humble language that anyone can understand.

Many of these tales and teachings are memorable, such as Abba Moses walking with a bag of sand, perforated by holes. By this he demonstrated to the brothers that his sins follow him wherever he travels. Or, take for example the story from John Moschus of the little dog leading a monk to a monastery that he did not know how to find.

Three teaching themes that stand out in my mind as particularly moving are the fathers' emphasis on judging no one, even obviously bad people, because one's own sins are impossibly great; the focus upon work as necessary to overcome "acedia," or spiritual sloth, as well as pride; and the singular emphasis on love of neighbor before anything else.

The two tales at the end of this collection stand out as especially beautiful. They are the story of St Pelagia, a former prostitute who fell upon a bishop's feet in a crowded city and cried on him until he consented to baptize her, and the story of St Mary, a solitary who became a prostitute and then, after being rescued from her brothel by her uncle, lived a holy life of repentance. Both are immensely moving and interesting.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find that most of the men who lived in the desert all these years ago struggled with the same sins we see today. Most say they never conquered the sins. Some did seem manage to manage them. Luther says to not be so afraid of sinning that you do nothing, so Sin boldly in that it is better in his eyes to do than to not serve your fellow man and thus let them see the savior.

[Chase · Rating 5 out of 5]

The masculine urge to move to the desert and pray all day with your closest homies while dropping the hardest wisdom is strong right now. Will be revisiting this from time to time.

[Joel Cuthbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a challenging book certainly made more so by it’s revered history. There are without a doubt a few absolutely classic and influential tales nestled in here. I also must admit it requires a considerable amount of historical adaptation. There’s a lot of more extreme spiritualizing than perhaps the modern reader would be accustomed to. Also I found a number of the stories or lessons quite befuddling without really understanding their meaning. I have always been drawn to the idea of the “Desert Fathers” but didn’t find this text as richly rewarding as I had hoped. More of an interesting artefact of the early church than a practical read.

A quick shoutout to Helen Waddel specifically for her introduction which was maybe my favourite part! I’ll have to do more digging into her further work.

[Gille Liath · Rating 2 out of 5]

'it hangeth on our own arbitrament'
I find it absolutely baffling that, at this time of day, someone would translate Latin not into the English of their own time, but into the 'Biblical' English of 400-500 years ago. I suppose Helen Waddell felt that this was giving the ancient texts their full dignity. To me, as a child of Vatican II, it is distancing and a little bit ridiculous. You're better off with the modern translations of Thomas Merton (albeit his is only quite a short selection) or Benedicta Ward in Penguins.

[peter m. dubinin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those works gathering wisdom from the past convincing the reader we are not as smart as we think we are.

[Steve Dos Santos CPPS · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was fine, but the translation was not to my liking. It was too flowery and old school.

[‎Seth Studer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a volume of translations of translations within translations by unknown translators. Consequently, the organization can be confusing, the prose can be stilted, and the stories can be hard to follow. But the compelling moments shine so brightly it hurts. A real-life satyr instructs a desert monk on where to find God. A woman assumes the identity of a (male) desert monk, Mulan-style, and she out-monks her male counterparts—she is only discovered to be a woman after she dies, and of course she becomes a saint. The devil has numerous conversations with desert monks, and he usually walks away frustrated that he can’t trick them into screwing up their monkish ways. Two desert monks who live together in a cell decide to quarrel over who owns a specific tile on the floor, not because they care about the tile, but because they’ve never quarreled before, and so they feel insufficiently worthy of repentance (spoiler alert: they suck at quarreling). Two desert monks visit the big city: one fornicates, the other doesn’t, but the non-fornicator confesses to fornicating so that their abbot’s punishment will be lighter on the monk who actually fornicated.

All the desert monks trip over each other trying to confess sins greater than the others' sins, trying to achieve humility, and then failing to achieve humility because they tried too hard.

All the desert monks also seem to have lions as pets, and one desert monk curses his lion for eating meat (which, in case you don’t know, is what lions do).

A lot of these desert monks just give up on being desert monks, because being a desert monk is too difficult for them. But, as the desert monks continually point out, grace abounds.

Then there is my favorite story, the cryptic tale of the abbot Lot. Another abbot, Joseph, came to Lot and asked, “Father, according to my strength I keep a modest rule of prayer and fasting and meditation and quiet, and according to my strength I purge my imagination: what more must I do?” In response, Abbot Lot stood up and held his hands toward the sky, "and his fingers became like ten torches of fire, and he said, ‘If thou wilt, thou shalt be made wholly a flame.”

That’s metal.

I also liked this one: “A brother asked the abbot Alonius, ‘What is contempt?’ And the old man said, ‘To be below the creatures that have no reason, and to know that they are not condemned.’”

If you read nothing else from this volume, read the essays “Of Accidie” and “Of Mortification” by Cassian of Marseilles. They are two of the most honest and accurate accounts of the pains, challenges, boredom, and self-effacement that accompany any serious journey toward God.

In sum: it’s hard out there for a monk.

[Matthew Teplitz · Rating 2 out of 5]

At one time the abbot Arsenius came to a certain place and there was a bed of reeds, and the reeds were shaken by the wind. And the old man said to the brethren, "What is this rustling?" And they said, "It is the reeds." The old man said to them, "Verily, if a man sits in quiet and hears the voice of a bird, he hath not the same quiet in his heart: how much more shall it be with you, that hear the sound of these reeds?"

Disappointing, and I think the primary source of said disappointment was the translations and introductions of Helen Waddell rather than the writings themselves. Waddell's translations feel unnecessarily archaic and stilted, which I suspect is compounded by the fact that she's relying on early Latin translations of the source texts, most of which would have originally been written in Greek or Coptic. Her introductions are often poor and even outright difficult to parse at times. If someone had little to no knowledge of early Christian history and some of its primary figures—Origen, Augustine, Jerome, etc.—Waddell's introductions would do little to provide vital context in a concise, clear manner. Her choice of selections is also odd at times: why choose to excerpt substantially more from "Of Fornication" in Sayings of the Fathers rather than more compelling sections, such as "Of Quiet" or "Of Patience or Fortitude"?

At some point, I plan on reading Benedicta Ward's translations as a point of comparison.

[Cool_guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading a lot of religious works lately. Curiosity or impending mental break? We'll see. Sometimes they bleed into each other.

The Desert Fathers is a collection of stories about the early Christian monks who retreated to Scetis in Egypt, away from the world, so that they could better contemplate Christ. There are beautiful insights on what it means to struggle for something. For example: a monk went to the Abbot Poemen to complain about a fellow brother. This brother fasted six days out of seven. Sadly, as a consequence of the triumph of his spirit over his flesh, he was constantly pissed off. The abbot advised the monk that, "it would become him better to bring greater zeal to a lesser toil".

But there are jarring reminders that what these monks struggled for is something alien to us. They saw sin everywhere; evil, for them, was marbled into the physical world. Best, then, to have as little ties to the temporal as possible

In one story a monk is praised for his self-restraint because, on a long journey with his mother, he wore gloves when he carried the old woman across a river. He did it "because the body of a woman is fire...from touching thee came the memory of other women into my soul". No wonder he chose the monastery: he was too horny to live otherwise.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The little book adds more evidence of the power of isolation and serious meditation as possibilities in understanding the meaning of our existence. Often, I return to these thinkers around the world and through time, from early writings, through middle ages, every period of history included to see our search being broadened and at the moment our place in the spirit world. Thomas Merton opened doors after Pope Francis was selected. The Dalai Lama has contributed deep revelations, even Bridget of Bingham has revived thoughts form the 11th Century. One particular contribution I am including is the "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus", Nabeel Qureshi which brings to light our universal connections so important to include. Pico Iyer, another brilliant mind to appreciate writes profound wisdom to broaden thinking. "The Desert Fathers" simply provides a comfort to the reader, we are all seeking and finding solace, comfort; little nuggets of truth that brighten and enlighten our reason for being.
This genre needs to be front and center as we explore thoughts and words of writers.

[Kyle McFerren · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Desert Fathers is a collection of early Christian writings about those who became monks in the Egyptian desert during the first few centuries of the Church in order to seek God wholeheartedly. Their lives were much different than I had imagined - much more communal and not quite as extreme. Although they definitely had their faults, there is a lot of good stuff here that can help balance out the excesses in the church today, especially their humility, simplicity, desire to draw close to God, and renouncing of worldliness. It's hard to criticize them too much when their lives are still influencing the Church over 1,000 years later.

I think this would probably be best read in small chunks as a devotional. Definitely go with a different edition than this one though - the introductions were incredibly unhelpful and dense.

[Smog · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly interesting, it is a collection of short stories, most of them about one paragraph, related to religious people seeking salvation/closeness to God by retiring into the desert.
Often it goes about their interaction with other less "holy" people, I found it funny at times, ofc those which do not follow virtue always end badly (and not only in the "afterlife"). It's not I book I would randomly recommend, but i liked it.

[Lly_th · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read before Lent.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to the lives and sayings of the Desert Fathers of the Orthodox Church.

[K. P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foundational when cities and societies have gone far in the perverting of humanity, the desert flight reboots the spiritual immune system.

[Duarte Grilo · Rating 2 out of 5]

6h, 4.5/10

[7jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who recommended this to me: Quirkyreader

A collection of texts, of stories and saying of and about the desert fathers (and some mothers too), c.4th century, who retreated to the deserts of the North Africa and Asia Minor to better live their faiths. This collection originally came out in 1936; some of the texts (if not all) also appear in Benedicta Ward's "The Sayings Of The Desert Fathers", and "Harlots Of The Desert", which came out later.

At the start is a chronology, from 150BC to 400 AD, starting with Jewish desert dwellers first. The introduction is done nicely to explain what these Fathers (and Mothers) were like. Generally, they were nice to visitors, and often ate better on these occasions; otherwise the food was sparse, and they must've had some deficiencies... bread and some herbs/fruit the usual food, with some wine and/or water occasionally, brought in long distances. The minimal sleep. The solitude, with prayer and some work; mental struggles (incl. sexual, temptations), and visits to elders to confess, get instruction or disciplining.

Some of the texts are biographies of one or a few people, some are collections of short sayings and life scenes, some describe the mental toll of living like this. I feel the translations in this book were good.
In the end, though, I feel the two books by Ward worked a little better, though this one was also worth the read and was arranged well. It helped me understand the style of life even better, and perhaps like the bravery of these people even more.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful prose translations of the Life of Paul, the Lives of the Desert Fathers, the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. I recommend this as an additional read to Benedicta Ward's Lives of the Desert Fathers since the selection of texts is broader.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/892620.html[return][return]Helen Waddell has selected her favourite bits from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers compiled by Pelagius in the early fourth century, perhaps a third of it, and then added on various other texts, concluding with the Lives of St Pelagia the Harlot and St Mary the Harlot, which are about as exciting as you would expect.[return][return]a fascinating insight into the lives and mentalities of the first Christian monastics - men and women who felt that they must go and live in the desert to get closer to God. There is an uneasy and sometimes consciously very funny tension running through the writings, between on the one hand being deeply devout and determined, and pulling up the other monks who are not trying hard enough; and on the other hand not showing off one's own piety. But at the same time you can't help but be impressed with the seriousness and dedication with which these people tried to develop their understanding of their creator and themselves by cutting themselves off from the world.[return][return]Waddell has written a respectful yet witty introduction to each of the ten pieces, and a longer one for the book of the whole, bemoaning the fact that the reputation of the early Christian monastics has never recovered from being mocked viciously in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. She complains that St Simeon Stylites, who lived on a pillar for thirty years, was not in fact a very important figure in Christian history: "His present reputation, vast as it is, dates largely from the eighteenth century, and balances delicately on a paragraph of Gibbon's prose."

[Hall's Bookshop · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meze plate of early Christian hagiographies, with characterful, almost eccentric introductions drawing attention to the wealth of other material available, both translated and untranslated. Often it seems like Hagiographies all sound the same, but this collection also manages to demontrate how varied and suprising they can be.

JM

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't see it as something where I agreed with the message of every story and saying (some don't agree with each other), but it is a different kind of wisdom than you will get anywhere else in the world.

[Will Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing book. The sayings and stories of the Desert Fathers is insightful I'm not even Catholic and I find these stories about so absolutely inspirational even I am amazed. Perhaps modern churches should head backwards instead of always saying they are forward looking. Just sayin eh!

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

I spent most of 2011 slowly reading the saying of the Desert Fathers as translated in this book. It contains mass amounts of wisdom through direct language and through storytelling. I recommend it to the max.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of great wisdom here. Even if you only have a few minutes, put this book by your bed and you can glean so much just from reading a few of these sayings from the Desert Fathers.

[John Bailey Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

super strange and interesting. sometimes you just gotta become a hermit in the desert.

[Prophet Elijah]

BR1705.A2 V525 1998