The life of St Or of the Thebaid
Jerome records that Or was at one time father, that is abbot, over as many as a thousand monks living the common life in the desert, a figure that later tradition has repeated more than it has been able to verify.
What is more securely known of him comes through Palladius, who lived among the monks of Nitria and the nearby cells and later wrote the Lausiac History, naming Or among the fathers he judged foremost for their manner of life. Little else of his personal history has survived; no sayings or particular deeds are reliably attached to his name beyond his place among that first generation of Egyptian desert fathers. He reposed around the year 390, one of the many largely silent founders of a monasticism that would shape the Church far beyond Egypt.
