I found this today in a book I was reading:
Brother Aegidius Pfister was a wandering holy man, a missionary monk, who travelled all over north-eastern Zimbabwe planting churches.
The first challenge in the colonial period began in 1908. In this year a new holy man, different from those who preceded him, made his way north. He was a German Trappist monk, Brother Aegidius Pfister, who stood in the South African Mariannhill tradition which privileged the missionary ideal over the monastic one (Baur 1994: 194-5). From Triashill mission in Makoni district Aegidius travelled throughout the unevangelised north as a mendicant preacher. Taking a stick and a bag, he travelled on foot, living with the people and sharing their food with them. as the first monks in Europe had done.Aegidius was a central figure in the founding of popular Christianity in Manicaland. Every Catholic outstatyion constructed before 1929owed its existence to him. He would spend six months away at a time, catechising and looking for new sites, only returning to Triashill for significant festivals like Pentecost and Easter. Once the festivities were finished he would leave the mission accompanied by a group of mission-trained catechists to the site of a planned outstation. The subsequent ‘village Christianity’ was left in the hands of local chiefs, and he would proceed further (Maxwell 1999:59)
I think that’s cool. Are there any like that today?
2 Comments
20 July 2007 at 7:02 am
“Are there any like that today?”
I have often wondered that myself. I found your blog by searching “crazy missionary”. I hope to be wandering around the Middle East doing such things though, so if you hear of anyone that’s interested, let me know
20 July 2007 at 10:07 am
Before you go, try to read From the Holy Mountain by William Dlarymple, and the book he diescribes, The spiritual meadow.
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