translated as literally as possible. Thus the reader will then have
no reason to fear a garbled or partial account of personages so
difficult to conceive or understand. He will be able to see the men
as wholes; to judge (according to his light) of their merits and
their defects. The very style of their biographers (which is copied
as literally as is compatible with the English tongue) will teach
him, if he be wise, somewhat of the temper and habits of thought of
the age in which they lived; and one of these original documents,
with its honesty, its vivid touches of contemporary manners, its
intense earnestness, will give, perhaps, a more true picture of the
whole hermit movement than (with all respect, be it said) the most
brilliant general panorama.

It is impossible to give in this series all the lives of the early
hermits--even of those contained in Rosweyde. This volume will
contain, therefore, only the most important and most famous lives of
the Egyptian, Syrian, and Persian hermits, followed, perhaps, by a
few later biographies from Western Europe, as proofs that the
hermit-type, as it spread toward the Atlantic, remained still the
same as in the Egyptian desert.

Against one modern mistake the reader must be warned; the theory,
namely, that these biographies were written as religious romances;
edifying, but not historical; to be admired, but not believed.
There is not the slightest evidence that such was the case. The
lives of these, and most other saints (certainly those in this
volume), were written by men who believed the stories themselves,
after such inquiry into the facts as they deemed necessary; who knew
that others would believe them; and who intended that they should do
so; and the stones were believed accordingly, and taken as matter of