1. Salt was used to season dry bread.

2. “Lord have mercy on me a sinner.” This is the basis for the “Prayer of Jesus,” frequently repeated, and universally practised in Oriental monasticism.

3. Evagrius Ponticus, a great mystic, was also one of the most learned men in the desert and the prince of the Origenists at Scete. His treatise on prayer is a classic and has come down to us falsely ascribed to St. Nilus. The bearing of this “verbum” is not clear unless we realize that Evagrius probably had a lot to say when he first came to Scete.