Literature and Asceticism in De Laude Eremi by Eucherius of Lugdun

“Praise of the Desert” (“De laude eremi”) is one of the works of Eucherius of Lugdun (present-day Lyon, France) († ca. 450), in which there are many motifs, intriguing for researchers of early Latin Christian literature on the one hand, and for scholars of theology from this period on the other hand. The work of Eucherius is at once a letter, a eulogy, and a Christian sermon. The subject of this study are the literary means of praise, as well as the ascetic ideas in it and the way of their expression, with an answer being sought to the question of its genre. The formulated thesis is that Eucherius wrote in a specific literary genre – a laudatory epistolary sermon, in which, along with the importance of the desert as a place for a solitary prayer to and communication with God, the biblical and patristic teachings on the interaction between grace and free human will is expressed.