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 called Pachomius, who pioneered cenobitism, or the custom of ascetics living together in what became known as monasteries; a reformed bandit called Moses the Black; an anchorite, or female hermit, called Syncletica of Alexandria; and one Theodora, also of Alexandria, who joined a community of male ascetics, living undetected as a man until her death.
