Lausiac History

In the fourth and fifth centuries, thousands of men and women fled the Roman world to live in the Egyptian desert, seeking God through fasting, silence, and extreme self-denial. Palladius of Galatia visited them, lived among them, and recorded what he saw in this collection of biographical sketches, some reverent, some startlingly candid, all unforgettable. Here you'll meet Anthony the Great, the father of monasticism, alongside lesser-known figures like Paul the Simple, who became a great desert father despite being considered simpleminded, and Isidora the Fool, a wealthy woman who disguised herself as a man to live among monks undetected. These stories capture an era when ordinary people attempted the impossible: to strip away everything human and touch the divine. Written around 420 CE at the request of a court official named Lausus, the Lausiac History remains our most vivid portrait of early Christian monasticism, its saints, its struggles, and its holy fools whose sanctity looked remarkably like madness.