On the Sayings Sayings of Abba Arsenius
Editor's note
Arsenius was a Roman of senatorial family, a learned man whom the emperor Theodosius the Great chose as tutor to his sons Arcadius and Honorius. About the year 394 he left the palace in secret for Egypt and became a monk of Scete, where he lived for some fifty-five years in silence and tears, and reposed about 449. His sayings are among the best loved of the Desert Fathers. These are taken from the Syriac collection of the monk Anan-Isho, which Budge translated as The Paradise of the Holy Fathers.
Summary by PurifyWritten by Purify, not St. Arsenius the Great's words.
The sayings are given verbatim below in the public-domain English of E. A. Wallis Budge, The Paradise or Garden of the Holy Fathers (1907), vol. 2, a selection of those that tell of Arsenius himself. The headings and the order are ours; Budge's Abbâ is printed Abba.
The call: flee, keep silence
The next chapter opens when you reach the end.