IN Lecky’s History of European Morals there is a painful chapter describing the rise of monasticism in the Egyptian desert during the second and third centuries of our era. Lecky is a renowned writer ...

Henry David Thoreau was a crank. He was a prophet. He was full of cant. He was full of wisdom. He wrote what he thought, and he often contradicted himself. This sometimes makes him difficult to read. ...

In a penetrating article in Tablet, Benjamin Brown assessed the growing ascetic tendencies within some Hasidic sects. To begin his analysis, Brown stated: Kedushah (holiness) was developed as a ...

Researchers found the remains of the ascetic individual bound in chains. Small metal plates and a tiny cross were found near the abdomen of the skeleton. A recent archaeological discovery near ...

Scholar and writer Nadya Williams writes this week that those practices have as their root the asceticism practiced by early Christians, some of whom retreated into nearby deserts to forgo convenience ...

In the middle of a muggy summer in southern Indiana, with daytime temperatures near or over 100 degrees, it is hot on our little organic vegetable farm in the Ohio River valley. And although we have ...

Do eating disorders manifest because there is a paucity of symbolic provisions for women's spirituality? Do women thus experience an imbalance between their body's size and their inner life? In 1380, ...

The word 'ascetic,' rooted in ancient Greek for 'to train,' signifies severe self-denial for spiritual growth. It describes a life of simplicity and discipline, rejecting worldly pleasures for inner ...