The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (review)

It is likely that more than a few readers of early monastic literature have felt the stab of E. R. Dodds’ question: “where did all this madness come from”? Indeed it is difficult to avoid this impression if one focuses attention primarily on the spectacular solitary feats of asceticism in the literature or on the most deeply hellenized sources such as the Historia Lausiaca (on which Dodds relied most heavily). But if one shifts the focus of inquiry to the role and function of relationships in the ascetic life and to a primary source such as The Apophthegmata Patrum [AP], a very different picture of desert asceticism emerges, one characterized by balance, communal responsibility and personal generosity. Gould’s fine study of personal relationships among the desert fathers helps to show how central these qualities were to the early monastic ethos and as such makes an important contribution to our growing understanding of the ascetic world in late antiquity.