Isaiah the Solitary

Isaiah, Abba Isaiah of Scetis, was an Egyptian monk who trained in the desert of Scetis and then, some time around the middle of the fifth century, left Egypt for Palestine. He settled at Beit Daltha, near Gaza, and lived there as a recluse until his death in 491.

He did not receive visitors. Those who came to ask for a word spoke to his disciple Peter, who carried the question in and the answer out. That arrangement lasted for decades, and it is the same pattern later used by Barsanuphius and John in the same region.

His identity is contested, and it should be said plainly. Ancient and modern scholars have argued over whether the monk of Scetis, the recluse of Gaza, and the author of the works that circulate under the name are one man, two, or three. The Syriac tradition, which preserves a great deal of him, treats the Gaza recluse as an opponent of the Council of Chalcedon; Zacharias Scholasticus wrote his life from that side. Greek tradition reads him without that. The question has not been settled.

What survives is the Asketikon, twenty-nine discourses on the monastic life, preserved in Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Latin and Georgian, a spread that tells you how widely he was read.

His teaching is blunt and physical. Guard the heart, because everything begins there. Cut off your own will in the small things. Do not argue, do not justify yourself, do not explain. Keep the memory of your own sins in front of you and you will not have time to inspect anyone else's. He treats anger as the chief enemy and describes exactly how it disguises itself as zeal for what is right.

His short text On Guarding the Intellect, twenty-seven paragraphs, stands at the very beginning of the Philokalia, the anthology of Greek ascetic writing compiled in the eighteenth century that shaped modern Orthodox spirituality. Every reader who opens that book meets Isaiah first.

He was quoted by John Climacus, by Dorotheos of Gaza, and by the whole later hesychast tradition. The sayings collections of the desert also carry material under his name.

Sources: Abba Isaiah of Scetis, Ascetic Discourses, translated by John Chryssavgis and Pachomios Penkett; The Philokalia, vol. 1, translated by Palmer, Sherrard and Ware; Zacharias Scholasticus, Life of Isaiah; Derwas Chitty, The Desert a City (1966).