The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer

Evagrius Ponticus was a fourth century monk of the Egyptian desert, and the Praktikos, together with the Chapters on Prayer, is his own foundational treatise on ascetic practice and contemplative prayer, translated here by John Eudes Bamberger for Cistercian Publications, an academic press specializing in monastic texts. Its authority as a primary source is direct: Evagrius is the originator of the scheme of eight tempting thoughts, logismoi, from which the later Western tradition of the seven capital vices descends, so this text is the place to check what he actually argued rather than a later restatement of it. Its limit is genre and audience, it is a practical monastic manual written for fellow ascetics, so its terse, aphoristic chapters are traditionally read with a guide or commentary rather than in isolation.