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Despite the formidable challenges deserts pose to human endurance, it is precisely this quality that also lies behind their powerful draw on the imagination. With motivations as diverse as spiritual retreat, pursuit of knowledge, search for resources, or the desire to test resilience, the desert has remained a point of fascination for travellers and readers alike throughout history.

In the early centuries of Christianity, the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine became home to communities of ascetics known as the Desert Fathers. By retreating into the desert they sought to draw closer to God with a life of extreme abstinence, focusing their thoughts and desires in an attempt to purify their minds and hearts. The library’s late 13th-century manuscript (MS 234/120) and incunable printed in 1485¹ are both versions of the compilation of writings – known collectively as the Vitae Patrum – that describe the lives of these early Christian hermits and ascetics whose journeys into the desert had an especially profound influence on the development of Christian monasticism.

The fair Urania << Desert Fathers >> Early desert explorations

1. Incipit prologus Sancti Hieronimi cardinalis. Strasbourg: Printer of the 1483 Vitas Patrum, 1485. Lower Library, F.7.15 (G.A.S. 2)