Baring-Gould’s sources: Greek Menology and Roman Martyrology. Authorities: — Mention in the Life of S. Antony, by S. Athanasius, Socrates, Sozomen, and the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert] S. Amoun, or Ammon, was an Egyptian of an opulent and noble family. At the age of twenty-two he lost his father and mother. He had long resolved to live to God alone, but his uncle, who had been constituted his guardian, and •S'. Ammon.

…others of his family insisted on his marrying. A young man of two-and-twenty, one would have thought, was beyond the age at which he could be constrained. But Ammon submitted, with the resolution formed in his heart to take a wife only to live separate from her. He accordingly married a young and modest girl, and immediately after the conclusion of the ceremony announced to her that he had taken her hand with reluctance, and that he had no intention of fulfilling the duties he had that day undertaken towards her. So far from purposing to love and cherish her in sickness and in health, he proposed to live as if he was supremely ignorant of her existence. When he informed her that he desired that they should not inhabit the same house, she was naturally indignant, and protested that, though she would submit to be his wife only in name, yet she would not endure the indignity of being turned out of his doors on the very day of their wedding. Ammon consented to let her live in the house, and even to take her meals with him; but otherwise they were to one another as strangers, or friends living on distant terms. He spent his day in the garden cultivating balm, and his night in prayer and psalmody.

Thus passed eighteen years. The gentle wife accommodated her ways to his, adored him as a paragon of excellence, and modelled her mode of life upon his. At the end of these years, at her own suggestion, they separated, and Ammon retired to the deserts of Nitria [a desert monastic settlement west of the Nile Delta] and she transformed his house into a convent of holy virgins. Ammon speedily became renowned in the desert as a master of the solitary life, and was surrounded by disciples. Twice in the year he visited his wife, that he might direct her conduct, and that of the community she had founded. The report of his sanctity having reached S. Antony, a close friendship grew up between the two hermits; they VOL. xi. 5 roct.* visited one another periodically, and took counsel together as to the manner in which they should walk. S. Ammon died at the age of sixty-two, of which twenty-two were spent in the desert Several anecdotes, not however of remarkable interest, are related of the abbot Ammon; but as there were several of the same name, it is not certain to which of them they properly belong. S. Antony is said to have seen his soul borne to heaven by angels.