SOURCE: Elm, Susanna. “Athanasius of Alexandria and Urban Ascetism.” In “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity, pp. 331-72. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

In the following excerpt, Elm examines Athanasius's letters to a group of virgins in which he outlines his beliefs on purity and warns against Arianism.

The previous discussions have made it abundantly clear that ascetic life in Egypt was characterized by an extraordinary degree of variety and, consequently, fluidity. Several models of ascetic life coexisted and at times competed with each other. As in Asia Minor, there were three distinct categories: ascetic life within cities and towns, ascetic life in the isolation of the desert or the countryside, and an ascetic life ‘in between’, in areas a little way beyond the boundaries of the village or town though not in the desert proper. The issue here is how our sources conceive of the...