Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Oxford Early Christian Studies)

Extensive details and research done by the Robert Sinkewicz. Evagrius writings are helpful and useful in today's modern world even though written in 300's. Book was expensive, but worth it.

Given the current exchange rates and the limited demand for this book, the price is not surprising or extreme. Production quality, contrary to complaints below, is high. For serious scholarly, monastic or ecclesiastical readers, this is priceless content (with good, concise introductions) in a form that will last and be useful for a lifetime. You're getting "Foundations of the Monastic Life," the letters to Eulogios "On Thoughts" and "On the Vices," "On 8 Thoughts," the Praktikos, "To Monks in Monasteries and Exhortation to a Virgin," "On Thoughts," the chapters on prayer, 'Reflections', 2 exhortations to monks, 3 sets of maxims, and the "33 Ordered Chapters" (more maxims). Also included are ample explanatory notes and comments (included with the appendices), and appendix of variant readings, and an edited Greek text of Eulogios (on thoughts and their confession) from Mt Athos MS . The translations are fluent and formal. A great achievement.

I don't want to spend a lot of space writing a review, but let me just say that this book is the Bible of Evagrian studies and the most comprehensive English translation of Evagrius around. There are many of his works yet untranslated into English, but this book is a great foundation for study of Evagrius Ponticus. Sinkewicz presents an introduction to every work of Evagrius he translates, and those in themselves are quite valuable. Part of the reason I felt the need to write a review is to counteract the one star review that used this as a forum to rip on the price of Oxford publishing. As you can see, all the other reviews are five star, and for good reason. This is an EXCELLENT text, and if you are interested in doing research on Evagrius, it is well worth the paperback price.

Intellectually stimulating

Evagrius of Pontus is a sadly much maligned and demonised figure of the Early Church who it can be argued, was the first monastic theologian of consequence for both East and West. The influence of Evagrius on both Eastern and Western Christianity is immense and rivalled by few others. While he was condemned along with Origen, Didymus the Blind and other Christians at one of the seven ecumenical councils, many of the works of Evagrius were preserved, either under another name or in Syriac, a testament to his spiritual genius and influence.In this work, his Ascetic Corpus (including his writings on the monastic life, prayer, fighting demons and evil thoughts, and virtues) are available in English for the first time. Immediately Evagrius strikes the reader as someone who lived monastic life at a profound level, and at the same time had a rare degree of insight and self-knowledge that few could claim to rival. Evagrius shows a profound understanding of human psychology and the workings of the human mind, and how easily the fallen human mind (or intellect as Evagrius calls it, a more holistic concept in the Greek) can be trapped by the eight 'evil thoughts' which are a mixture of inbuilt 'cracks' due to original and personal sin and aggravated by spiritual forces (called demons) that turn the fallen nous or mind to evil, while God's grace and good angels help the monk to 'apatheia' (stillness of mind), charity and ultimately union with the Trinity.There are heterodox currents in Evagrius, stemming from Origen and also Neo-Platonic Christian spirituality that Evagrius probably acquired from the Cappadocians. As with most of the Greek tradition, Evagrius tends to over-emphasize the mind and spirit at the expense of the material and bodily. As several recently-translated works (the Letter to Melania and the Gnostic Chapters) show, Evagrius like Origen believed the material world arose from a 'fall' of spirits originally united to God, but who somehow fell away from the beatific vision by a free act of will or a cooling of desire. As an act of mercy, some of these spirits incarnated as human beings, for whom God created this world to become incarnate in and lead back to the original unity. These heterodox elements (particularly those denigrating matter and the material incarnation) were rightly condemned as heretical.However, Evagrius himself is somewhat more difficult to classify. While Evagrius is very negative at times about the body and carnal desire, for him the world and the body still have value as God's 'letter' and good work of providence and beauty to lead the Christian back to God. Evagrius at no stage dispensed with the need for grace to be earnestly sought by virtues and prayer (pride is the worst sin for Evagrius) or for the mediating role of the scriptures, the church and the sacraments in salvation. Unfortunately the church and sacraments are not as explicit in Evagrius at perhaps they should be, but the centrality of the Word in all of his works showed Evagrius accepted Orthodox Nicene Christianity and vehemently defended it against heterodox formulations. Sadly, it took some centuries and much work by saintly monastics such as Maximus Confessor to purify Evagrius from the heterodox elements so that what was good could be passed on to future Christians.This work should be read in conjunction with the writings of Augustine Casiday, Gabriel Bunge and Luke Dysinger OSB, whose writings help explain Evagrius's monastic theology and spirituality and make it relevant to the contemporary situation.

I recommend to everybody to have it at home library.

Traduzione eccellente, chiara e aderente all'originale greco. Commenti molto acuti e ben documentati. Lavoro indubbiamente di altissimo livello, per questi e diversi altri aspetti.Peccato per l'edizione: la qualità di stampa è pessima, così come la rilegatura, entrambe degne di una scarsa edizione economica, non di una edizione da 50 euro targata Oxford.

Das Buch ist für Evagrius-Forscher unentbehrlich. Es enthält neben den englischen Übersetzungen der Evagrius-Texte u. a. auch abweichende handschriftliche Versionen, die sonst nicht zugänglich sind.

Adoro Evagrio! Un buon traduzione inglese, introduzioni buone. Anche se è un libro specifico per la letteratura monastica, sarebbe utile anche per queli che vogliono avanzare nella vita spirituale.