The Desert Fathers: When Early Christians Fled to the Desert to Out-Suffer Each Other

In the 3rd-5th centuries, thousands of early Christians fled to the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine to escape "worldly corruption" and achieve spiritual purity through extreme self-denial. These Desert Fathers (and Mothers) didn't just live simply - they competed to see who could be the most ascetic, the most uncomfortable, and the most bizarre. Some ate only grass. Others never bathed for decades, their skin black with filth and crawling with lice. Some lived in tombs with rotting corpses. And the most famous, Simeon Stylites, climbed atop a pillar and refused to come down for 37 years, becoming a living spectacle that attracted thousands of pilgrims.

The Desert Fathers believed the body was evil and had to be punished into s ...