Ethiopic Collectio Monastica

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The Ethiopic Collectio Monastica is a book that includes some original sayings of the Desert Fathers, and which is textually independent of the more well known Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers). It was first published by Victor Arras in 1963, based on two separate manuscripts that were likely based on Greek or Coptic sources. [1] [2]

Desert Fathers

The Desert Fathers were early Christian hermits, ascetics, and monks who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt beginning around the third century AD. The Apophthegmata Patrum is a collection of the wisdom of some of the early desert monks and nuns, in print as Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The most well known was Anthony the Great, who moved to the desert in AD 270–271 and became known as both the father and founder of desert monasticism. By the time Anthony died in AD 356, thousands of monks and nuns had been drawn to living in the desert following Anthony's example—his biographer, Athanasius of Alexandria, wrote that "the desert had become a city." The Desert Fathers had a major influence on the development of Christianity.

The Apophthegmata Patrum is the name given to various collections popularly known as of Sayings of the Desert Fathers, consisting of stories and sayings attributed to the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers from approximately the 5th century AD.

The collection consists of sixty-eight chapter of widely different lengths. Included in the book are collections of Desert Father sayings, most of which have no parallel in the Apophthegmata Patrum. The original work appears to have been written by a 5th-century monk who either lived with the Desert Fathers at Scetis, or knew the monks who lived there. He also appears to have known Abba Poemen, because of several unique stories and sayings attributed to him. [3]

See also

Notes

  1. Arras, Victor (1963). Collectio monastica: Ethiopic text. Secrétariat du CorpusSCO.
  2. Harmless, William (2000). "Remembering Poemen Remembering: The Desert Fathers and the Spirituality of Memory". Church History. American Society of Church History. 15. Archived from the original on 2013-05-18.
  3. Harmless, William (2004). Desert Christians: an introduction to the literature of early monasticism. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. p. Appendix 8.5. ISBN   0-19-516222-6.


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