orthodox company he kept and his contribution to the formation of desert monasticism, many have thrown him out with the Origenist bathwater. Along with Origen and Didymus the Blind, he was posthumously anathematized in the Origenist purges of 553, a charge ratified at three subsequent ecumenical councils. Simon Tugwell explains that Evagrius is ‘one of the greatest masters of the spiritual life and of psychology in ancient monasticism; but his theological and philosophical speculation led him into