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 "Het Vaderboek" is a translation of a Latin collection of hagiographies, known as "Vitae Patrum" (the life of the fathers). This collection contains the lives and sayings of the earliest Christian hermits of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries from the Egyptian, Palestine and Syrian deserts. The best-known of these hagiographies are the Life of Antony, the Life of Paul and the Life of Hilarion. The Vitae Patrum were very populair and are extant in hundreds of munuscripts and translated into almost all vernacular European languages. The composition of the collections differs per manuscript and printed edition (a real 'canon' has never been established). The Middle-Dutch collections were partly found in the hands of the religious (mainly women) and semi-religious (among whom the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life, later Devotio Moderna). The book was read as a source of religious inspiration and, in monasteries, because of the regulations it contained on how to live.