Desert Ascetics of Egypt by Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom (review)

Reviewed by: Desert Ascetics of Egypt by Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom Tim Vivian Desert Ascetics of Egypt by Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom (Leeds, UK: ARC Humanities Press, 2023. Pp. 132. Paperback, 25. 59; Kindle, 18. 95. ISBN 978-1-641-89167-7). In the conclusion to this excellent volume, appropriately titled "Reassembling a History of the Desert Ascetics of Egypt, " the author speaks of the early monks as "Christian celebrities" (125). Yes—to a point. Not like the clan of Kardashians, or, at a much higher level, Taylor Swift; the early monastics worked hard at being humble, emphasizing prayer, work, and silence. But, the evidence makes clear, numerous people, monastic and not, did travel, often far, to ask for a saving word, that is, counsel on how to live life. "Reassembling" is a perfect choice of words: Darlene Brooks Hedstrom is not, like the historian Edward Gibbon, disassembling, tearing down, the abode of early monasticism; rather, in order to add larger windows and fix some leaks and drafty areas, she is refurbishing a half-finished building, partly assembled by the monastics themselves but also later reassembled first by monastic writers of late antiquity and then by scholars over the past two centuries. (Analogously, near Monastero di Bose outside Milan, a Norman church was later made Baroque and in the 1960s remade Norman. ) "Egypt" in the title here needs nuancing: as the author herself makes clear, most of the sayings of the desert fathers and mothers do come from Egypt, primarily Lower (northern) Egypt, in the fourth End Page 230 to fifth centuries—but the consensus is that they were reassembled, edited, expanded in Palestine in the sixth century. Three examples: (1) the alphabetical sayings use "amma" for a desert mother, like "abba" with a desert father; in the systematic collection "amma" usually disappears. (2) The alphabetical sayings are not strictly alphabetical; an editor has apparently placed first at each letter an eminent monk. The three women—Theodora, Sarah, and Syncletica—find themselves in last place in their sections, Theodora in Theta (TH) and Sarah and Syncletica in Sigma (S). (3) Neilos of Ancyra has ten short sayings in the alphabetical collection; he was not Egyptian, nor Palestinian, but rather, as his cognomen tells us, was from Asia Minor. The reality is, we haven't figured out, and most likely never will, how much or how many or what part of the sayings belong to the earlier, Egyptian, generation. This book is part of the series "Past Imperfect, " and that is a perfect descriptor, inviting humility with our scholarly, and readerly, reconstructions of the past. That said, however, the author's focus is on Egypt—and in a very specific, and beneficial, way. Of the seven brief chapters before the conclusion, the final four focus on documentary and archeological matters. Pages 11–15 offer an "Overview on the Chapters, " and she concludes, "In sum, this book is intended to highlight how recent scholarship complicates our portrait painted by the literary sources of early monasticism in Egypt and to shine a light onto paths of new inquiry in terms of literary, historical, and archaeological evidence for Desert Ascetics" (15). My work in early monasticism has been almost entirely literary—the Lives of the ammas and abbas and the Sayings—but my views began to expand when years ago I read about the apotaktikoí/aí, male and female village ascetics who had withdrawn (apotássō) from much of society, but not all of it (Brooks Hedstrom and others point out that most of the "desert" fathers and mothers weren't in the very deep wildernesses of Egypt; they lived close to cities, towns, and villages). I remember reading about the first papyrological evidence from 325 for the term "monk"; later, I read and wrote about "the holy men and businessmen" of early monasticism; and then I read about the holy businesswomen of early monastic Egypt. (For one contemporary example, the Cistercian monks of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky make a delightful bourbon fudge. ) We now have a gloriously more broad and sustainable understanding of the early monastics. As the author says, "An exciting development in the study of monasticism is the use of. . .