Desert Father: In the Desert with Saint Anthony
Anthony of Egypt, one of the great early saints, was an ascetic who, when Christianity was just another cult threatening the Roman way, spiritually and politically thumbed his nose at authority by retreating to the desert to live as a "society of one." Cowan personalizes Anthony's story, beginning at Anthony's monastery in the eastern Egyptian desert, which houses some of the world's earliest ascetic and mystical literature, and besides Anthony, he examines the saint's great biographer, Athanasius. In addition, Cowan recounts his own relations with Lazarus, who lives on Anthony's mountain and is referred to as the last anchorite. Lazarus helped Cowan better understand his own reasons for seeking desert solitude. As he unfolds his and Lazarus' story, Cowan places Anthony in the context of an ascetic history extending from the pre-Christian monks said to have inhabited caves by the Dead Sea to John Cassian, who introduced asceticism to Europe in the fifth century. Cowan's exposition of Christian spirituality as it was and could now be lived is wholly engrossing.June SawyersCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved