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The Apophthegmata Patrum has come down to us in two basic forms: the Alphabetical Collection and the Systematic Collection. The Systematic Collection contains many of the same sayings and stories as the Alphabetical but gathers them under twenty-one different headings or themes, such as “discernment” and “unceasing prayer.” Two Roman clerics, Pelagius and John, translated this from Greek into Latin, and so it passed to the Latin West under the title Verba Seniorum (Sayings of the Old Men) and as such would powerfully influence the spirituality of medieval monasticism. This chapter focuses on seven key themes from the Apophthegmata: interior stillness (hesychia), thoughts (logismoi), sexuality, anger, compunction (penthos), visions, and the use of scripture.

This chapter examines memory and practices of death in a broad range of literature from and associated with the Egyptian and Judean deserts, from the fourth through sixth centuries. It focuses especially on the Apophthegmata Patrum. Memory of death refers both to awareness of inevitable physical demise, and contemplation of postmortem judgment. With regard to the latter, two sides of contemplation are discernible: fearful imagining of possible condemnation, and hopeful imagining of possible beatitude. Practices of death index a range of behaviors, many of which center on refusal to judge one’s neighbor and the cultivation of dispassion. While many voices in Desert literature laud the usefulness of memory and practice of death, some are more cautious, and some entirely resistant. Evagrius and Mark the Monk share a distrust of the memory of death, while other figures dispute the viability of discourses of dispassion.

This chapter argues that the Gazan Fathers—Barsanuphius, John, and their disciple Dorotheus—expanded and nuanced the memory and practices of death in accordance with their personal emphases on obedience and the cutting off of the will. After a discussion of the memory of death, this chapter shows how Barsanuphius, following a line of thought from Basil of Caesarea’s Asceticon, makes death the limit and requirement of endurance in ascetic practices. Most of the chapter unpacks the practices of renunciation and withdrawal, together with the renovation of relationships within monastic communities, which the Old Men advocated, often in the language of dying. Dying describes a central feature of Gazan spirituality, the cutting off of one’s own will in favor of obedience to God through one’s spiritual father. The chapter closes by discussing the ambiguity and problems presented by the language of death in Gazan literature.

This chapter examines the memory and practice of death in the Ladder in light of the literature surveyed. Beginning with a re-examination of death scenes in Desert literature, it argues that Climacus deliberately subverts the common topos of a good death by applying it to the penitent monks in a monastic prison. Climacus uses the penitents as archetypes of ascetic life, using their death scenes to model the memory of death for other monks. Analysis of several other important stories in the Ladder reveals that the memory of death defines the monk’s perception of his present activities, future hopes, and past failures. Within this perceptual framework, Climacus elaborates the practice of death to take account of ambivalence and ambiguity, modeling it on Christ’s human passions, his death, and resurrection. The monk dies in failure and rises in humility, imitating Christ ever better through failure and frailty.