The Desert Mothers
The women of the desert: the ammas (mothers) whose sayings stand in the Apophthegmata beside the fathers’ — Syncletica, Sarah, and Theodora — and the tradition of the harlot-saints and penitents, the women whose radical repentance made them icons of conversion. This section recovers a half of the desert that the sources record more thinly than the men, and reads the penitent-Lives with due attention to their literary type.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Egyptian desert monasticism)
This section treats the women of the desert in two aspects. The first file, the-ammas.md, treats the desert mothers proper — the three ammas of the alphabetical collection (Syncletica, Sarah, Theodora) and the wider phenomenon of women’s asceticism in and around the desert. The second file, harlots-and-penitents-of-the-desert.md, treats the penitent-saint tradition — Mary of Egypt (deferred to her own collection), Pelagia, Thaïs — and examines the harlot-saint Life as a literary type built on the theme of radical repentance (§3.5).
Contents
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-ammas.md | The desert mothers — Syncletica, Sarah, Theodora; their sayings; women’s asceticism in the desert |
| harlots-and-penitents-of-the-desert.md | The penitent-saints — Mary of Egypt (deferred), Pelagia, Thaïs; radical repentance as a literary type (§3.5) |
See Also
- The Desert Fathers (master README)
- The Sayings and Their Collections — the collection in which the ammas’ sayings stand
- St. Mary of Egypt — the great penitent’s own collection