"The Paradise of the Fathers" is the classic compilation of the lives and teachings of the early monastic saints. It has been translated from a Syriac manuscript discovered in 1888.

The biographic text of St. Anthony is presented complete in this edition for the reader's absorption and contemplation. First published in the 4th century A.D., Anthony the Great's biography was authored by Christian Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. Since its release, the book has helped spread the beliefs, practices and arduous faith of Anthony the Great. A significant progenitor of the monastic tradition, Saint Anthony lived an ascetic lifestyle in the arid lands of Egypt. Although not the earliest of religious figures committed to this tradition, through actions and preaching Anthony helped popularise and spread principles that would contribute heavily to the establishment of Christian monasteries in Europe and beyond. One event in St. Anthony's life was his encounter with the supernatural in the remote Egyptian desert. This occurrence, where the otherworldly presence tried to tempt him from his spartan philosophy of living, is much recreated in Western art and literature.

2012 Reprint of Original 1934 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This is a one-volume edition of the work published in 1907 in two volumes under the title "The Paradise, or Garden of the Holy Fathers...." The work comprises "The Life of St. Anthony" attributed to Athanasius, "The Paradise" written by Palladius, "The Rule of Pachomius" and "The History of the Monks" by Jerome. The work has long been an important source for the knowledge of Egyptian monasticism. It is a history of the anchorites, recluses, monks, coenobites and ascetic fathers of the deserts of Egypt, between A.D. 250 and A.D. 400.

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Excerpt: PACHOMIUS is the father of monastic institutions. He was born in 292 in the district of Thebes in Egypt, and died in 348. He lived accordingly in that memorable period, when, through Constantine the Greek, the ecclesia pressa became the recognized religion of the empire. This great change in the external status of the Church naturally had a powerful influence on many of her internal features. Not the least was this the case with reference to the anachoritic life, which just then was beginning to stand so high in the favor of Christians. Already at an earlier date the practice of withdrawing from the world, in order to serve God alone, had found many followers, principally, as is quite natural, in Egypt, the land of Philo, the Gnostics and the Therapeutics, of Clemens and Origen.* The father of this separation of the individual from the world and the Church is the holy Antonius. When the ascetic impulses, so powerful in the early Church, could not find expression any longer in martyrdom, they followed the leadership of an Antonius, and the result was that in the degree that external peace became the possession of the Church, the number of monks increased, and soon numbered tens of thousands.