author
Alfred Wesley Wishart
1865–1933
A Baptist minister and church historian, he wrote with a talent for turning long religious history into a clear, readable story. His best-known work traces the rise and decline of monastic life from its early roots to the Reformation.
1 Audiobook
A Short History of Monks and Monasteries
by Alfred Wesley Wishart
About the author
Born in New York on September 9, 1865, Alfred Wesley Wishart studied at Colgate University and later did postgraduate work at the University of Chicago, where he was a fellow in church history in the 1890s.
Wishart combined scholarship with ministry. Archival records from the University of Michigan identify him as pastor of Fountain Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and preserve lessons and sermons he delivered there between about 1907 and 1932.
He is best remembered as the author of A Short History of Monks and Monasteries (1900), a compact survey of monastic history written for general readers. He died on April 25, 1933.