over, many of them restrained fountains and streams of running water, and walked upon the floods of the river Nile, and destroyed serpents, and worked cures, and wonders, and mighty deeds, even like unto those of the holy Prophets, and the blessed Apostles, by the might of their Lord. And it is a well-known and evident thing to every inhabitant of that country that the world standeth through their prayers, and that through them the life of the children of men is held to be precious by God.
And I have also seen [in Egypt] a numerous nation of monks who could neither be defined nor counted, and among them were men of every sort and condition, and they lived both in the desert and in the villages, and no earthly king hath ever been able to gather together so great a number of men into his service; for there is neither village nor city in Egypt or in the Thebaïd which is not surrounded by monasteries as by walls, and many multitudes of people rest upon their prayers as they do upon God. Some of the monks live quite close [to the towns and villages] in caves and on the waste land, and many of them afar off, and they all in every place make manifest their labour in a marvellous manner as if they were envious of each other. The object of the zeal of those who [live] afar off is that none of their fellows shall surpass them in the labours of the fear of God, and the greatest anxiety of those who [live] near is to vanquish by their life and deeds those who lived at a distance and are famous, even though the things of evil (or wickednesses) vex them from every place. Therefore, as one who hath obtained great benefit from them, and as one who hath examined carefully the labours of the life and deeds, whereby I have also obtained benefit, I now approach this history with the view of making the successful monks [more] zealous by the memorials which I hand on [to them], and for the edification and profit of those who are beginning to emulate strenuously their rules of life. First of all then, by the grace of God, I will write at the beginning of this history the narratives of the lives and deeds of the great and holy fathers, by whose hands our Lord hath wrought at this present time the same kind of things as he wrought by the hands of His Prophets and Apostles; for it is our Lord Himself, Who then, as now, worked, as He still worketh, everything in every man.
