Topic summary
Scetis
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Wadi El Natrun.
Invasion of Scetis
Scetis was attacked by the Mazices who "came sweeping off the Libyan desert" in 407-408 AD and was decimated, causing many notable Desert Fathers to leave the region, such as Abba Anoub. One of the survivors, St. Arsenius the Great, remarked in 410 that, "The world has lost Rome and the monks have lost Scetis." As the Jesuit historian and Professor Willian J. Harmless said, "Scetis’s destruction marked a turning point in the history of early Christian monasticism. The site would be resettled a few years later, and in fact would suffer other raids, notably in 434, 444, and 570."