The Roots of Christian Mysticism Session 7
Biographies for Kim Nataraja's "The Desert Fathers and Mothers" talk, The London Christian Meditation Centre, St Mark's, Clerkenwell, 01 November 2005.

Evagrius of Pontus (346 –399)

Evagrius was born on the shores of the Black Sea (Pontus), at Ibora. He received his early formation from the Cappadocian Fathers, St Basil who ordained him reader, and especially St Gregory Nazianzen who conferred the diaconate on him and whom he accompanied to Constantinople. In the capital Evagrius, handsome, cultured, and an outstanding orator, distinguished himself in the struggle against Arianism and embarked on a high ecclesiastical career. However, being swept off his feet by an overwhelming love, he fled to Jerusalem where he fell in with the Origenist circle (Melanian, Rufinus) and was permanently influenced by it. About 383 he withdrew to the Egyptian desert, became a monk, and frequented the greatest of the solitaries, especially Macarius of Egypt, earning his living as a copyist. But he stood out from the rest, first as an intellectual, and then because he belonged to a small group of Origenist monks. He died shortly before persecution descended on the group.
(Olivier Clement – ‘The Roots of Christian Mysticism)

John Cassian (c.350-c.435)

John Cassian was probably born in what today is Rumania. He was equally conversant with Latin and Greek. When still very young he became a monk in Palestine and soon became a spiritual wanderer. About 385 he went to Egypt, where he spent around 15 years visiting monasteries and hermitages. About 400 he arrived in Constantinople and became a disciple of St John Chrysostom who ordained him deacon. When John Chrysostom was persecuted by the imperial power, he charged Cassian with the task of taking to Rome the protest of the clergy who remained faithful to him. At Rome, where he came to know Leo the Great, Cassian was ordained priest. In 415 he was called to Provence as a witness to monasticism. At Marseilles he founded two monasteries, St Victor’s for men and St Saviour’s for women.

In 417 he wrote ‘Cenobitic Institutions’, followed by the ‘Conferences’

Cassian considerably modified St Augustine’s most cherished theses on freedom and grace. In particular he transmitted to the West, with great discernment, the experience of Egyptian and Palestinian monasticism and the best of the spirituality of Origen and Evagrius. He put forward a wise combination of community life and the life of the solitary. He put ascesis at the service of love. His mysticism is a mysticism of light and of the divine light pervading the whole person, including the subconscious mind. It was essentially through St John Cassian that continuity was achieved between the original monasticism, particularly that of Egypt, and the monasticism of the west. The Rule of St Benedict quotes Cassian at length and his Conferences have been read every evening from generation to generation in Western Monasteries.

(Olivier Clement – ‘The Roots of Christian Mysticism’)

Amma Syncletica (270-350)

Amma Syncletica was a native of Macedonia and educated in Egypt. She was a rich young woman of high social status who had many suitors, but refused them all. She eventually sold all that she had, cut her hair as a sign of her consecration to God, and fled her parents' home with her blind sister, moving to the family tomb outside Alexandria. As women disciples began to gather around her, a monastery developed with Amma Syncletica as their spiritual mentor. In great asceticism, with countless hours of vigils and prayers, this holy woman lived to the age of eighty, leaving this life to live forever with her King in about 350. Her counsels to the nuns have always been regarded as true spiritual pearls, the wisdom she attained coming not from reading, but through suffering and pain, through constant meditation and spiritual converse with the divine world. Her feast is celebrated on January 5.
(from Laura Swan, "The Forgotten Desert Mothers," (New York:
Paulist Press, 2001)
Amma Theodora.
She was the wife of a tribune who eventually reached such a state of poverty that she became a recipient of alms and finally died in the monastery of Hesychas near the sea (according to Palladius). It is clear from her life that she was consulted by many monks about the monastic life.
(from Sr. Benedicta Ward, "The Desert Christian," (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1975), pp. 83-84)