Monks, hermits and asceticism: a little-known female history in desert asceticism

Theodore of Sirius told us that in Syria in the fourth century, when little girls played games, they played monks and demons.

One of the girls in rags will drive away her children to reduce their laughter.

This glimpse of Syria's childhood shows the prestige of the image of monks, which may be a necessary preview of this modern era, as a somewhat strange theme, in the context of the biography of Christian saints and female monks in the desert.

In the first and oldest layer of Byzantine history, it is a recurring theme that women pretend to be monks, hermits or members of male monk groups. 1420.

(Public sphere), with the early Christian church under Constantine in the 4th century, the Greek and Roman world began to flourish, and the asceticism movement also began to flourish.

Early Christian hermits, ascetics and monks were called "the father of desert". They mainly lived in the Seti Desert in Egypt in the 3rd century BC, which had a great influence on the development of Christianity.

This movement was promoted by Saint Anthony the Great, who is regarded as the founder and founder of desert asceticism. Piero di cosimo wrote San Antonio (in the field of public affairs) on 1480. Before Anthony stepped into the desert, he placed his sister in a place where he was respected and trusted. This shows that these monastery communities existed for some time before the father of the monastery set foot on a trip to the desert, which is one of many artistic descriptions that Saint Anthony tried in the desert.

There is little information about the women who take care of Anthony's sister and those who decide to follow his example and call themselves "desert mothers".

However, they exist and some of them are saints.

For a long time, women have been the managers of families. As followers of new movements gather in private houses, women often become natural leaders of the church.

In the middle of the 4th century, when Jerome, a Catholic priest and scholar, arrived in Rome, he found a group of aristocratic women living in beautifully designed houses on Mount Arvindin. They gave up silk clothes and now wear rough robes made of goat hair.

They all converted to Christianity, lived a simple life, lived almost entirely in their own houses, and vowed to be chaste.

However, before the contemporaries began, the laws passed by Emperor Augustus still required all men to get married and all women to have children.

Only divorced, widowed or women with at least three children can be independent. In order to escape this system, some upper-class women even registered as prostitutes to freely control their lives and money. It is in this environment that Christian women began to regard chastity vows as a kind of dedication and legal loopholes.

As a holy virgin, a woman became a free empire, preached many gender laws, led their community, and set an example for her apostles. Read more … This is a free preview of an exclusive article from ancient times.

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Sunset in the Egyptian desert. (CC 2.0), written by Martine Fisher, comes from a family of historical and cultural lovers.

She graduated from Macquarie University in Australia with a degree in ancient history. Read more books.