Böcker av Philip Rousseau

Charts the ways in which scholarship on early Christian asceticism has developed.

Pachomius, who died in 346, has long been regarded as the "founder of monasticism". This reading of the available texts, first published in 1985, reveals that Pachomius's pioneering enterprise has been consistently misread in light of later monastic practices.

"In this new portrait of Basil of Caesarea, which will certainly win acceptance as the standard work in English, erudition does not blunt perceptiveness: we are brought close to the heart of a man who struggled to reconcile the high calling of his faith with the appalling demands that a fast-changing world imposed on its leaders. This book takes another long stride towards what all Rousseau's earlier work has aimed atan undogmatic and sympathetic understanding of the fourth-century Church, and the presentation of its great spiritual leaders to new, often unsuspecting audiences."Garth Fowden, National Hellenic Research Foundation"

This is a full survey of the first 600 years of Christian history from the world of second-temple Judaism to the Byzantine age, the rise of Islam, and the beginnings of medieval European polities.