The Letter Collection of Isidore of Pelusium

With an attributed corpus of two thousand letters the collection of Isidore of Pelusium is the largest surviving epistolary collection from late antiquity, and yet Isidore plays a relatively limited role in popular recountings of the history of Late Antiquity in general and the emergence of Egyptian “desert monasticism” in particular. Isidore may have had a hand in preserving his letters, but the earliest letter collections were probably compiled by Isidore’s disciples, perhaps as a memorial to his ascetic authority. These first collections are roughly dated to the period immediately following Isidore death and were presumably organized and assembled at the monastery where Isidore resided. There is general agreement that a corpus of two thousand letters served as archetype for the principal Greek manuscripts that circulated in the West, and the published editions of Isidore’s letters appear to derive from the earliest of these manuscripts. Here again, however, the trajectory of transmission, albeit well documented, is less than linear.