The Library
1577 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
101–200
4 works
c. 170; survives in fragments
Greek
Julius Cassianus
An argument that marriage itself is the fall, quoted by Clement in order to be demolished. It leans on a saying from the Gospel of the Egyptians in which the Lord answers Salome that death will hold sway as long as women bear children.
c. 160–190
Greek
Anonymous
A young woman of Iconium breaks her engagement after hearing Paul preach chastity, survives fire and wild beasts, baptises herself, and goes off to teach.
c. 150–200; survives in fragments
Greek
Anonymous
The preaching, imprisonment, and crucifixion of Andrew in Patras, framed by long speeches urging converts to withdraw from marriage and the body.
c. 180–200
Greek
Sextus
Around four hundred and fifty one-line maxims on self-mastery, speech, wealth, and desire, adapted from pagan gnomic collections with the seams still showing. A wise man is God's likeness; use the tongue sparingly; possess nothing you cannot lose without grief.
201–300
4 works
c. 200–250
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
The Saviour speaks to Thomas, called his twin, about the fire of lust that keeps souls drunk and bound to visible bodies, and pronounces a long chain of woes on those who hope in the flesh and in the prison that will perish.
c. 249
Latin
De Habitu Virginum
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
Advice to consecrated women on wealth, cosmetics, jewellery, and mixed bathing, arguing that a life given to God should look different from a wealthy woman's ordinary life.
c. 200–275
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
An attack on almost everyone: on catholics who think dying in the arena buys salvation, on those who marry and breed, and on rival gnostic teachers named outright — Valentinus, Basilides, Isidore, and the Simonians.
c. 250–300
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
A father's advice to a son in the manner of Proverbs, urging him to make reason the guide, to know that the mind is a lamp and the passions are wild beasts, and to bring Christ into the house of the soul as a guest.
301–400
10 works
337–345
Syriac
Aphrahat · c. 280–c. 345
Twenty-three treatises by the Persian Sage on faith, love, fasting, prayer, war, humility, and the sons of the covenant — written entirely outside the Greek theological world.
c. 360
Greek
Vita Antonii
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
The life of the Egyptian hermit who heard the gospel read in church, sold everything, and went into the desert — told as a spiritual biography of temptation, discipline, and eventual public authority.
c. 371
Greek
Gregory of Nyssa · c. 335–c. 395
A commendation of the celibate life written, as its author admits with some regret, by a married man who can only describe the country from outside.
377
Latin
De Virginibus
Ambrose of Milan · c. 339 – 397
Three books addressed to his sister Marcellina, praising consecrated virginity and telling the story of Agnes, a girl of twelve who went to her execution as others go to a wedding. Ambrose has to answer parents who were locking daughters up to stop them taking the veil.
c. 381
Greek
Gregory of Nyssa · c. 335–c. 395
A brother's account of his elder sister, who refused marriage, turned the family estate into a community, taught her brothers theology, and died in poverty by choice.
c. 380–385; recovered at Würzburg in 1885
Latin
Priscillian of Ávila · c. 340 – 385
Eleven pieces by a Spanish ascetic accused of Manichaeism and magic: a defence answering the charges point by point, an argument that apocryphal books may be read with discernment rather than banned outright, and instruction on fasting and scripture for a lay movement of men and women studying together.
c. 388–390
Latin
De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
Written soon after his baptism against the Manichaeans he had spent nine years among. It defines the four cardinal virtues as four forms of one love — temperance is love keeping itself whole, courage is love bearing everything — and then contrasts the ascetics he saw in Rome and Milan with the conduct of the Manichaean elect.
393
Latin
Jerome · c. 347–420
A violent reply to a monk who argued that marriage and virginity are equally meritorious — so violent that Jerome's friends tried to withdraw it from circulation.
370–419
Latin
Jerome · c. 347–420
A hundred and fifty letters of scholarship, spiritual counsel, travel, and ferocious quarrel, including the dream in which he is accused of being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian.
c. 380–430
Syriac
Liber Graduum
Anonymous
Thirty discourses distinguishing the upright, who keep the commandments while married and working, from the perfect, who renounce everything — and insisting both are genuinely Christian.
401–500
3 works
c. 410–430; authorship disputed
Latin
Attributed to Fastidius
A demanding call to moral seriousness addressed to a widow, insisting that a Christian who lives like everyone else is a Christian in name only.
c. 444
Greek
Theodoret of Cyrus · c. 393–c. 460
Thirty portraits of Syrian ascetics the author knew personally, including Symeon on his pillar, described without embarrassment and with considerable affection.
c. 460–500
Syriac
Anonymous
The life of the ascetic who spent nearly forty years on a pillar near Antioch, judging disputes, advising emperors, and preaching twice a day to the crowds below.
501–600
1 work
c. 500–510
Syriac
Philoxenus of Mabbug · c. 440–523
Thirteen instructions for monks on faith, simplicity, the fear of God, gluttony and lust, written in a Syriac of unusual clarity and almost no polemic.
601–700
5 works
c. 600–650
Greek
Klimax
John Climacus · c. 579–c. 649
Thirty steps from renunciation to love, each a chapter on one virtue or vice, written by an abbot of Sinai in a compressed and aphoristic Greek.
c. 626
Greek
Maximus the Confessor · c. 580–662
Four hundred short sentences on the passions, self-love, and the love that reaches through the neighbour to God, in the tradition of Evagrius but corrected on the body.
c. 630
Greek
Thalassius the Libyan · 7th century
Four hundred brief sentences on the ascetic life addressed to a fellow monk, closely related to the work of his friend Maximus.
c. 635–650
Syriac
Sahdona · 7th century
A long treatise on the monastic life whose second part turns to prayer, the reading of scripture, and the fear of God with unusual warmth.
c. 640–660
Greek
Leontius of Neapolis · 7th century
The life of a monk who left the desert for the city and feigned madness — dragging a dead dog through the gate, upsetting market stalls — to hide his holiness and shame the respectable.
1301–1400
1 work
c. 1362
Middle High German
Henry Suso · c. 1295–1366
A spiritual autobiography, partly shaped by a nun who took his confidences down without telling him, describing extreme self-mortification later renounced as misguided.
28 of 1577 works