The Church Fathers · c. 390–392
The Life of Hilarion
Jerome · c. 347 – 420
What it is
The life of the man who brought monasticism from Egypt to Palestine: sixty-five years of fasting reckoned meal by meal, demons in the form of naked women and howling wolves, a cured chariot horse, and a flight from his own fame that took him across the whole eastern Mediterranean.
Why it lasted
The most readable of Jerome's three monastic lives and the one that carried the desert ideal into Palestine and Cyprus. Its structure — temptation, withdrawal, reluctant fame, flight — became the standard shape of a saint's life.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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