Hyperechios
Hyperechios or Hyperechius was a Christian ascetic and monastic writer who was active during the late 4th century or early 5th century A.D. He most likely lived in Egypt or Roman Palestine. He is known from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, as well as a collection of 160 sayings known as the Exhortation to the Monks.
Name
The name Hyperéchios is derived from the Greek hyperéchein , meaning, ‘to be above,’ ‘to rise over,’ or ‘to transcend.’Life
Very little is known about Hyperechios. Based on his writings, Vivian deduces that he was from an upper-middle class Greek-speaking family and lived close to an urban setting. He likely lived in a coastal city, which could have been Alexandria, Ashkelon, or even Tyre. Hyperechios would have lived sometime between the late 300s and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D.Writings
The Exhortation to the Monks is an alphabetically organized compilation of 160 maxims from Hyperechios. The Greek text of the Exhortation is can be found in the Patrologia Graeca. An English translation was published by Tim Vivian in 2024.Tirot contains 18 more alphabetically organized sayings from MS Vatican grec 440 and MS Cambridge, Trinity College, O.9.17.