He sold all his property, distributed it in alms and buried
himself in the desert of Egypt. He first betook himself to an empty
tomb, then to the ruins of a fortress; he was clad in a hair-shirt,
had for food only the bread that was brought to him every six months,
fasted, starved himself, prayed day and night. Often sunrise found
him still in prayer. "O sun," cried he, "why hast thou risen and
prevented my contemplating the true light?" He felt himself surrounded
by demons, who, under every form, sought to distract him from his
religious thoughts. When he became old and revered by all Egypt, he
returned to Alexandria for a day to preach against the Arian heretics,
but soon repaired to the desert again. They besought him to remain: he
replied, "The fishes die on land, the monks waste away in the city; we
return to our mountains like the fish to the water."
Women also became solitaries. Alexandra, one of these, shut herself in
an empty tomb and lived there for ten years without leaving it to see
anybody.
=Asceticism.=--These men who had withdrawn to the desert to escape the
world thought that everything that came from the world turned the soul
from God and placed it in the peril of losing salvation.
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