"In the late fourth century, the world of Christianity was torn apart by debate over the teachings of the third-century theologian Origen and his positions on the incorporeality of God. In the year 400, Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria convened a council declaring Origen's later followers as heretics. Shortly thereafter, he banished the so-called "Tall Brothers," four Origenist monks who led monastic communities in the western Egyptian Desert, along with hundreds of their brethren. In Death of the Desert, Christine Luckritz Marquis offers a fresh examination of this critical event in Christian history and brings into dialogue narrative strands that have largely been separated in the scholarly tradition"--