For several hundred years, in the youth of the Church, countless men, and a few women, fled the world and flocked to the deserted places of this earth wishing to found (and to find) their lives in God alone.

Their experiences transformed not only their own lives, but also in many ways, the world they left behind.

The beauty and timelessness of their stories has captured the imagination of men throughout the ages that have followed. To live in search only of God and the eternal verities is a theme that men never weary contemplating and often imitate.

The original of these translations is the Latin of the Vitae Patrum, a vast collection of the lives and sayings of the Desert Fathers, edited by the learned Rosweyde, and printed at the Plantin press in Antwerp in 1615. The original ran to 1600 pages. These extracts assembled by Helen Waddell are among the best.