Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

now call asceticism emerged in the deserts of the near east, and especially in Egypt. Among the most famous of the Egyptian Christian ascetics was Saint Anthony the Great. Anthony was himself quite literally a rich young man—the son and heir of a wealthy family who at the age of twenty went to church and heard Christ’s exhortation to poverty and promptly “sold all he had, gave the proceeds to the poor and from then on lived the life of a hermit.”6 His devotion to self-denial was a legendary model for generations of monks who came after him. Anthony’s contemporary Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, recorded the hermit’s struggles and deeds in an entertaining (and enduringly popular) hagiography. According to this, Anthony was regularly bothered in his cave by demons disguised as small children, vicious wild beasts, piles of treasure, or gigantic monsters.* Thanks to the strength of his forbearance and faith, he defied them all. Meanwhile, he set a fine example to the other hermits and disciples who gravitated to him, inspired by his life of hard manual labor and rigorous, searching prayer. Despite the harshness of his existence, Anthony lived—or so it was said—to the age of 105, and after his death he became known as the Father of All Monks.7 However, he was by no means the only prominent ascetic of his day. The formative age of Christianity produced a whole host of “desert fathers” and “desert mothers.” They included Anthony’s leading disciple, Macarius; a Roman soldier cal...