THE PURPOSE OF THE WILDERNESS AND CELL IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SHAPING OF THE MONK
Anachoreism is a fascinating feature of Eastern monasticism. Many of the ascetic treatises, and especially the philocal collection, come from the heroic world of the anchorite monks who lived in uninhabited territories, wild but, above all, desert places. From the first centuries of the Christian Church, there are emblematic figures of the anchorite monk in the Egyptian space, who retreated to the desert, such as St. Paul of Thebes, the first Egyptian hermit known by name. The premise from which our study starts is that the geographical places chosen by the Christian anchorites, in this case the desert, the mountain, the forests, the isolated places, the caves, etc., predispose them to some psychospiritual transformations that they do not it could acquire (easily, or ever) in a very populated and stirred space. We have chosen for analysis and interpretation two habitats very common in the writings of the Desert Fathers: the desert (desert) and the cell. These two "special" spaces denote some characteristics that imprint special features in the psychology and personality of the needy. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to present the psychological and practical significance of the retreat of anchorites in the desert and in the cell, respectively, proving, at the same time, that loneliness is for the Fathers of the desert, the element without which it would not have achieved so much spiritual performance in the inner space.