Despite its rich history in the Latin tradition, Christian monasticism began in the east; the wellsprings of monastic culture and spirituality can be directly sourced from the third-century Egyptian wilderness.
In this volume John Binns creates a vivid, authoritative account that traces the four main branches of eastern Christianity, up to and beyond the Great Schism of 1054 and the break between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Binns begins by exploring asceticism in.