01 — Foundations
The ground on which the witness of St. Sisoes the Great (d. c. 429) stands: the desert of fourth- and fifth-century Egypt, his settling on the “Inner Mountain” of St. Antony the Great in the Thebaid after Antony’s death, the tradition that he dwelt there for many decades, and his place among the second and third generation of the desert fathers — together with his disciple Abraham. Almost nothing of his external biography survives; these files establish what the sources permit and how securely.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; model of repentance)
Sisoes belongs to the generation of Egyptian monks who received the desert life from the founders — Antony, Amoun, Macarius — and carried it into the fifth century. He is remembered above all for taking up his solitude on the very mountain that Antony had hallowed, so that his life became, in the memory of the tradition, a deliberate continuation of Antony’s own. This section sets the geography and chronology of Antony’s “Inner Mountain,” weighs the tradition of his long dwelling there, and locates Sisoes among the desert fathers of the Apophthegmata and beside his disciple Abraham, through whom several of his sayings are transmitted.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Hermit of Antony’s Mountain | The Inner Mountain of St. Antony in the eastern desert of the Thebaid; Sisoes settling there after Antony’s death (337); the tradition of ~72 years; the meaning of dwelling on the mountain of the father of monks. |
| The Disciple of the Desert | Sisoes’ place among the second and third generation of desert fathers; his disciple Abraham; the network of fathers — Or, Ammoun, Adelphius, the visitors who came to him — within which his sayings were transmitted. |
See Also
- The Long Ascesis — the decades of solitude that filled those years on the mountain
- The Apophthegmata of Sisoes — the sayings preserved from those years
- The Historical Sisoes — what can be known versus the desert topoi
- St. Antony the Great — the father of the anchorites and of the mountain Sisoes inherited
- Monasticism — the wider theology and history of the monastic life
References
- The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Trans. Benedicta Ward. Rev. ed. Cistercian Studies 59. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984.
- Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
- Harmless, William. Desert Christians. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Athanasius of Alexandria. The Life of Antony. Trans. Robert C. Gregg. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1980.