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The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Peter Brown
Peter Brown
Affiliation:
All Souls, Oxford
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Extract

To study the position of the holy man in Late Roman society is to risk telling in one's own words a story that has often been excellently told before. In vivid essays, Norman Baynes has brought the lives of the saints to the attention of the social and religious historian of Late Antiquity. The patient work of the Bollandists has increased and clarified a substantial dossier of authentic narratives. These lives have provided the social historian with most of what he knows of the life of the average man in the Eastern Empire. They illuminate the variety and interaction of the local cultures of the Near East. The holy men themselves have been carefully studied, both as figures in the great Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries, and as the arbiters of the distinctive traditions of Byzantine piety and ascetic theology.

The intention of this paper is to follow well known paths of scholarship on all these topics, while asking two basic questions: why did the holy man come to play such an important rôle in the society, of the fifth and sixth centuries ? What light do his activities throw on the values and functioning of a society that was prepared to concede him such importance? It is as well to ask such elementary questions. For there is a danger that the holy man may be taken for granted as part of the Byzantine scene. Most explanations of his position are deceptively easy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 61 , November 1971 , pp. 80 - 101
Copyright
Copyright ©Peter Brown 1971. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Baynes, N. H., ‘The Thought World of East Rome’, Byzantine Studies and Other Essays (1960), 24–46Google Scholar; ‘The Pratum Spirituale’, 261–270.

2 e.g. Halkin, F., ‘L'hagiographie byzantine au service de l'histoire’, XIIIth International Congress of Byzantine Studies, (Oxford 1960)Google Scholar, Main Papers XI, 1–10.

3 Patlagean, E., ‘À Byzance: ancienne hagiographie et histoire sociale’, Annales XXIII, 1968, 106–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is the most thought-provoking study.

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7 Libanius, Oratio 1, 2 (ed. A. F. Norman, Libanius' Autobiography (1965), 2–3) shows how the reputation of a local family depended on members who were famous ‘in the oratory which opposes itself to the ill-temper of governors’. The circles around holy men delighted in similar incidents: V. Theod. c. 142: ‘The consul (Bonosus) stood but did not bend his neck, so the saint took hold of the hair of his forehead and pulled it and in this way bent his head down … We who were present were thunderstruck and terrified at the just man's daring’.

8 Macedonius boldly halted the military commissioners on their way to punish the city of Antioch in 387 (H.R. 1404 C); but he had already created a clientèle among the military—he had impressed a general on a hunt, and had prophesied for Count Lupicinus on the outcome of grain-speculations (H.R. 1404 B). Alexander the Sleepless, who attempted to rebuke officials without such preparation, was summarily exiled both from Antioch (V. Alex. c. 39–40, 687–9) and Constantinople (V. Hyp. c. 41).

9 N. H. Baynes, in Baynes and Dawes (o.c., see note *), pp. ix–xii.

10 Gibbon, E., The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ch. 37:Google Scholar ‘If it be possible to measure the interval between the philosophic writings of Cicero and the sacred legend of Theodoret, between the character of Cato and that of Simeon, we may appreciate the memorable revolution which was accomplished in the Roman empire within a period of five hundred years.’

11 This has been rebutted, and most acutely, in only one study known to me: Patlagean, art. cit. (n. 3), 106–10.

12 e.g. Steinleitner, F., Die Beicht im Zusammenhang mit der sakralen Rechtspflege in der Antike (1913), 99Google Scholar. ‘Diese Glaube [on the relation between sin and illness] ist für alle niederen Stufen ethischer Betrachtung charakteristisch’—not surprisingly, therefore, the religious practices of the nineteenth-century Aargau (p. 127, n. 1) conclude a monograph on second-century Asia Minor !

13 Festugière, Les Moines d'Orient 1, 21: ‘Ce que Gilbert Murray a nommé “the failure of nerve” à propos du goût de l'irrationel dans le Bas-Empire, ne doit pas être regardé comme une décadence des esprits cultivés (à preuve Plotin, Ambroise, Augustin, Boèce, Cassiodore) que comme l'apparition, dans la littérature … des croyances et des sentiments du vulgaire.’

14 Grabar, A., Christian Iconography (1969), 65Google Scholar, rightly criticises an account of the growth of the Late Antique portrait by an author who ‘chiefly stressed this simplification, which he attributed to the influence of artisans who came from the masses and to poorly denned “oriental influences“…’ The historians of Late Antique art are, on the whole, more sophisticated in their approach to such problems than are the historians of Late Roman society.

15 V. Alex. c. 6, p. 661.

16 Rectified by Detlef, C.Müller, G., ‘Die koptische Kirche zwischen Chalkedon und dem Arabereinmarsch’, Zft. f. Kirchengesch. LXXXV, 1964, 271–308Google Scholar; Roncaglia, M. P., ‘La chiesa copta dopo il Concilio di Chalcedonia: monofisismo reale o monofisismo nominale ?’, Rend. Ist. Lomb. CII, 1968, 493–514Google Scholar.

17 Bell, H. I., Jews and Christians in Egypt (1924), ch. IIIGoogle Scholar (‘The correspondence of Paphnutius’), 100–20; cf. A.P. Daniel 3 (95), 153C.

18 See recently, Barns, J., ‘Schenute as an Historical Source’, Actes du Xème Congrès International des Papyrologues, 1964, at pp. 153–4 and 157.Google Scholar

19 Tchalenko, G., Villages antiques de la Syrie du Nord I, 1953, 226Google Scholar (on Symeon Stylites): ‘Sa vie est un exemple typique du monachisme syrien qui savait concilier l'isolement et la discipline la plus sévère avec la participation directe à toutes les manifestations de la vie temporelle et religieuse, en contact journalier avec le peuple.’

20 e.g. A.P. Esias 5, 181B—sharecropping; Isidore 7 (20), 221B—sale of pots; John the Persian 2 (50), 237—working flax; Lucius (75), 253C—earns 16 νομίσματα per day; Megethius I, 30D—is totally independent on 3 baskets a day. See P. Brown, ‘The Social Background to the early Ascetic Movement’ (to appear).

21 Veilleux, A., La liturgie dans le cénobitisme pachômien au IVème siècle (Studia Anselmiana 57, 1968), 186, n. 91Google Scholar.

22 See A.P. Zeno 3 (38), 176C on the Egyptian pride in scrupulous self-examination.

23 See Vööbus, o.c. (n. 6), ch. IX, 293–315.

24 H.R. 1305 C.

25 Theodoret, Ep. 42.

26 Poidebard, A., La trace de Rome dans le désert de Syrie; le limes de Trajan à la conquête arabe (1934), 13–16 and Vööbus, o.c. (n. 6), 165Google Scholar, n. 21.

27 Vööbus, o.c. 151, n. 24.

28 Vividly described by Cyril of Scythopolis, esp. V. Cyriaci c. 8 (Festugière, o.c. (n. 13), p. 44).

29 Vööbus, o.c. (n. 6), 25–27; and V. Sab. c. 27.

30 H.R. 1360 C–D; 1476 D (Symeon Stylites and the Beduin); V. Euthym. c. 15; V. Alex. c. 33, p. 683.

31 Sym. Styl. cc. 2–5, ll. 80–2.

32 H.R. 1453B: καὶ τὸν ὕπαιθρον βίον ζηλῶσας κορυφὴν ἑτέραν κατέλαβε κώμης τινὸς ὑπερκειμένην cf. H.R. 1365 B; 1417 C; 1456 D; 1488 A.

33 H.R. 1340 C–D.

34 H.R. 1404 B.

35 M. du Buit, ‘Note sur la Palestine byzantine’, in Festugière, Les Moines (above, n. 13), III/I, 47.

36 Tchalenko, o.c. (n. 19), 70.

37 Ibid. 419–421, n. 3.

38 H.R. 1400 D: Macedonius had to move to avoid the crowds: Έποίει δὲ τοῦτο, οὐ τὰ χωρία δυσχεραίνων ἀλλὰ τῶν ὡς αὐτὸν συνιόντων καὶ πάντοθεν συνθεόντων ἀποδιδράσκων τὰ πλήθη.

39 The miracles of Symeon Stylites are crowd-phenomena: Sym. Styl. c. 61, p. III, 13; 65, p. 113, 34–114, 4 and especially c. 109, pp. 156–8. For the rôle of the crowd in such a situation, see E. Peterson, ΕΙς θεός. Epigraphische, formgeschichtliche und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (1926), esp. 181–95.

40 H.R. 1433 C.

41 See Peters, Le tréfonds …, (cit. n. 4), 124, n. 1, on the great festival at the foot of the column timed for July 27th.

42 Tchalenko, o.c. (n. 19), 373.

43 Libanius, , Or. XI, 230Google Scholar.

44 H.R. 1365 B; Tchalenko, o.c. 23, n. 1; and 93.

45 H.R. 1375 D.

46 L. Harmand (cited below, n. 60), 150–6. These were later maintained to guard the cities from the Isaurian raids: Sym. Styl. c. 8, p. 85, 14 and n. 5. Theodoret, , Comm. in Ezech. 3, 17Google Scholar (PG LXXXI, 848 C) describes watchtowers to give warning of such raids.

47 H.R. 1329 B on the close relations of Marcianus of Cyrrhus with a general at Berrhoea; and Sym. Styl. c. 9, p. 86, 12.

48 H.R. 1308 B.

49 H.R. 1456 B.

50 V. Alex. c. 34–35, pp. 684–6.

51 Vööbus, o.c. (n. 6), 120–123; and Brown, P., ‘The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire’, JRS LIX, 1969, 96Google Scholar (= Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine, 1971, 104).

52 H.R. 1360 C—in a little house by the threshing-floors.

53 H.R. 1365 B.

54 A.P. Macarius the Egyptian I (80), 257 C.

55 Marc le Diacre, Vie de Porphyre, ed. Grégoire-Kugener (1930), c. 19, p. 16 and 95; V. Alex. cc. 11, p. 665 and 40, p. 689.

56 Rémondon, R., La crise de l'empire romain (1964), 302–308Google Scholar, provides an excellent survey of recent studies and discoveries; and, now, Patlagean, E., ‘Sur la limitation de la fécondité dans la haute époque byzantine,’ Annales XXIV, 1969, 1353–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. at p. 1368.

57 Gindaros, H.R. 1313 C, and Sym. Styl. c. 98, 143–4; Nicerta, H.R. 1325 D; Teleda (Tel 'Ade) H.R. 1340 D; Immai (see n. 44) 1365 A.

58 Robert, L., Hellenica XI–XII, 1960Google Scholar, esp. 321–27 on inscriptions in the Hauran.

59 Tchalenko, o.c. (n. 19), 317 and 385 ff.

60 See Libanius, Or. XLVII in L. Harmand, Libanius, Discours sur les patronages. Texte traduit, annoté et commenté, 1955 (cited henceforth in this edition). I owe to W. Liebeschuetz's forthcoming Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire, a different perspective from that adopted by Harmand.

61 Harmand, esp. p. 181, tends to conflate the evidence from Salvian of Marseilles with that of Syrian conditions.

62 Or. XLVII, 6–7 (p. 16, 20–33).

63 Or. XLVII, 11 (p. 17, 24).

64 Harmand, p. 123. This is what the traditional landowners were thought to lack: Or. XLVII, 22 (p. 19, 30): τί οὖν, φησίν, εἰ τῆς χπείας ἐλάττων ὁ τὸν ἄγπον ἔχων εἴη καὶ δέοι δυνατωτέπας κεφαλῆς;

65 Or. XLVII, 13 (pp. 17–8).

66 Or. XLVII, 4 (p. 15, 28–30).

67 See p. on H.R. 1420 C–1421 B.

68 Or. XLVII, 4 (p. 15, 25); 6 (p. 16, 23–7).

69 Or. XLVII, 19 (p. 19, 9–10). It is notable (if not very surprising) that the most memorable miracles of holy men affected just this issue—the rinding, diverting, distributing of water: e.g. H.R. 1389 A ὥσπερ ὑπὸ χεῖρα ἔχων τὴν τῶν ὑδάτων φόραν; 1392 D; Sym. Styl. c. 72, p. 119.

70 Or. XLVII, 19 (p. 19, 10–12); Sym. Styl. c. 57, p. 108, 27.

71 Or. XLVII, 19 (p. 19, 12–4); cf. Bell, H. I., Martin, V., Turner, E. G. and Van Berchem, D., The Abinnaeus Archive. Papers of a Roman Officer in the reign of Constantius II, 1962, no. 28, p. 77Google Scholar: ‘For my intention was to go up to the city … but first of all I have written to you, my master, to do me justice.’ cf. Braunert, H., Die Binnenwanderung. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte Ägyptens (Bonner Historische Forschungen, 28), 1964, 144Google Scholar.

72 Harmand, 148–68, esp. pp. 155–6; cf. Rémondon, R., ‘Militaires et civils dans une campagne egyptienne au temps de Constance II’, Journal des Savants 1965, 132–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73 Libanius, Or. XXXIX, esp. 10 (Förster III, p. 270), where a friend of Libanius is consoled for having as an enemy Mixidemus, a lawyer who had gained his wealth by this and other distasteful means.

74 H.R. 1420 C—1421 B.

75 Rémondon, La crise (above, n. 56), 303–4.

76 Or. XLVII, 13 (pp. 17, 39–18, 10).

77 Or. XLVII, 17 (p. 18, 36).

78 See Redfield, R., The Little Community and Peasant Society and Culture (Phoenix Books, Chicago, 1960), esp. Peasant Society and Culture, pp. 36–8Google Scholar.

79 Tchalenko, o.c. (n. 19), 408–9.

80 Ibid. 142.

81 Braunert, o.c. (n. 71), 291.

82 In this context, it is important to stress that the ascetic movement in Syria was far from being a movement of the lower classes. Its leading figures would have come from families used to exercising the powers of the good patron: e.g. Marcianus of Cyrrhus, a local notable and former courtier, an acquaintance of a general at Berroea, uncle to a τρωτεύων of Cyrrhus (H.R. 1324 D; 1329 B and 1333 D). Symeon was a comfortable farmer, who could feed the village poor off his land, and needed a camel to carry his valuables to a monastery: Sym. Styl. cc. 11–13, pp. 86–87. His impresario, the περιοδευτής Bassus, came from a curial family of Edessa: Sym. Styl. c. 51, p. 104, 26 and n. 4. To speak of the early monks as simple and ignorant peasants, is to forget both that, whatever their former education, they depended for their position precisely on standing outside culture (see below, p. 91 f.), and that many came from a local aristocracy which was well-lettered in Syriac. To prefer the desert to a Late Roman town and Syriac to Greek is quite credible for such a man, and no sign that he is a country bumpkin of low social standing. If anything, the rise of asceticism in Syria is a sign not of a brutal ‘democratization’ of the upper classes, so much as of a ‘fragmentation’ of what had liked to consider itself a homogeneous urban aristocracy, so that generals and abbots came to compete with men like Libanius.

83 See Tchalenko, o.c. (n. 19), 4 6 ff.; Sym. Styl. c. 65, p. 113, 26—a rain-miracle fills these cisterns. Olive-harvesting made cooperation desirable, witout creating year-long habits of communal work; see Tchalenko, 386.

84 See Tchalenko, 317 on the egalitarian tone of the farmhouses at Bamuqqa. Frequent Late Roman inscriptions against envy and the evil eye are not an argument for neighbourliness among Syrian householders: E. Peterson, o.c. (n. 39), 34–6 and Robert, L., Hellenica XI–XII, 1960, 298Google Scholar, n. 1 and p. 299; and XIII, 1965, 265–71.

85 Ammar, Hamed, Growing up in an Egyptian Village. Silwa, province of Aswan, 1954, 80Google Scholar.

86 Peeters, o.c. (n. 4), 95. See also Canivet, P., ‘Theodoret et le Monachisme syrien avant le concile de Chalcedoine’, Théologie de la Vie Monastique cit. n. (6), 241–282Google Scholar; Festugière, A. J., Antioche paienne et chrétienne (1959), part II, esp. 244–506Google Scholar.

87 H.R. 1364 D : it was a power in Heaven that reached its zenith after death: Ἐγὼ δὲ τῆς νῦν δυναστείας αὐτοῦ καὶ πρεσβείας ἀπολαῦσαι ἀντιβολῶ.

88 H.R. 1392 D.

89 H.R. 1312 Cand 1328 D.

90 Weinreich, O., Antike Heilungswunder (1909), 13Google Scholar; 29–30; 49.

91 As assumed in Adnes, A.-Canivet, P., ‘Guérisons miraculeuses et exorcisme dans l'Histoire Philothee de Theodoret’, Rev. Hist. Religions CLXXI, 1967, 53–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 H.R. 1365 D : ἱκανὸν γὰρ ἦν τὸ θαῦμα δεῖξαι τὴν παπὰ τῷ θεῷ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς παρρησίαν.

93 H.R. 1360 C: οἶόν τινα χαρακτῆρα.

94 H.R. 1296 A.

95 H.R. 1297 B.

96 H.R. 1304 D.

97 See esp. A.P. Gelasius 2, 148 CD—on Symeon Stylites.

98 Sym. Styl. c. 77, 124–125—a decision in favour of a poor man's right to his cucumber-patch.

99 H.R. 1486 A.

100 Sym. Styl. c. 55, p. 107, 18.

101 H.R. 1360 C-D.

102 Abinnaeus Archive (cit. n. 71), no. 50, p. 109 : ‘The same Aion, after I had finished winnowing the threshing floor, carried off my own corn and took it away to his own place, and carried off my half share… Having neither fear of God nor of you, my lord …’

103 Sym. Style. 92, p. 135.

104 Sym. Styl. c. 95, pp. 137–8.

105 H.R. 1384

106 s.v. ‘Exorzismus’ (K. Thraede), Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum VII, 1969, 44–117Google Scholar.

107 See most recently, Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa (ed. John Beattie and John Middleton, 1969).

108 See Leiris, M., La possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les Ethiopiens de Gondar (1958)Google Scholar.

109 V. Sym. Jun. c. 118 provides a fascinating exception: the acting out of a woman whose demon thought of itself as more married to her than her husband.

110 H.L. c. XXII, 11–13.

111 e.g. V. Theod. c. 46.

112 e.g. A.P. Daniel 3 (95), 156A; V. Theod. c. 71. That the ‘demon’ is an articulation of a relationship crystallized towards the holy man, is indicated by the way in which it was believed that the same ‘demon’ could ‘pass’ from one client to another, who were strangers to each other: V. Dan. c. 33.

113 V. Theod. c. 84, 108 and 132.

114 H.R. 1329 D, by which the authority of the holy man is shown even at a distance.

115 Shirokogoroff, S. M., The Psycho-Mental complex of the Tungus (1935), esp. 264–268Google Scholar. That it was a genuine group-experience is shown by the articulation of a mass-panic by a possessed man in Trier, and its successful pacification, by St. Martin: Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini c. 18, 2 (CSEL 1, p. 127): ‘tum confessus est decem daemones secum fuisse, qui rumorem hunc per populum dispersissent, ut hoc saltim metu ex illo Martinus oppido fugaretur: barbaros nihil minus quam de irruptione cogitare. ita cum haec immundus spiritus in media ecclesia fateretur, metu et turbatione praesenti civitas liberata est.’ Moments of uncertainty about authority were also pin-pointed: in the late seventh century, a ‘demon’ in Rome would not be expelled; he was called ‘Philippicus’—the name of a usurper at Constantinople against Anastasius II : (the name, also, of the holy man): Analecta Bollandiana XI, 1892, 233–41Google Scholar.

116 See esp. V. Theod. c. 114: ‘They grew mad against the householder and rushed to burn down him and his household as being responsible for their ill-fortune. But as this attempt was foiled by those who held the highest positions in the village and wished to restore peace, they sent to the monastery begging the saint and servant of Christ, Theodore, to come to the village and free them from the evils that had befallen them.’ Cf. V. Theod. c. 116.

117 V. Theod. c. 43.

118 Athanasus, Vita Antonii c. 14 (PG XXVI, 865 A).

119 V Theod. c. 147. Theodore was, for part of his life at least, a bishop. Such was the normal function of the audientia episcopalis: H.R. 1356 D—it was a bishop's life: καὶ νῦν μὲν τῶν ζυγομαχούντων τὰς ἔριδας διαλύων; cf. Possidius, Vita Augustini, c. XIX and P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (1967), 195–6. In the towns, such a duty was a compromising corvée, and the rabbi often did it better, see Chrysostom, John, Adversus Judaeos I, 3Google Scholar (PG XLVIII, 847 ff.). The holy man occasionally fell foul of the clergy through competing with this jurisdiction: V. Alex. c. 40, p. 689. The holy man could offer resolution, even in the towns, on the more intangible tensions articulated by sorcery-accusations, in those areas of society where they were most prevalent: see P. Brown, ‘Sorcery, Demons and the Rise of Christianity’, Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations (Association of Social Anthropologists, no. 9), 1970, 17 ff. at pp. 20–6 and 32–3 ( = Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine, 1971, pp. 123–31). See H.L. XVII, 6–7; Sym. Styl. c. 76, p. 124, 4; V. Hyp. c. 12, 15, 22 and 28; V. Euthym. c. 57 (ended, significantly, with a village-banquet); V. Theod. c. 35 and 38.

120 Sym. Styl. c. 97, 140–3, cf. c. 73, pp. 119–20 and 75, pp. 121–2.

121 V. Euthym. cc. 45 and 57, with Festugière, Moines d'Orient III/1, 121, n. 147 and Robert, L., Hellenica X, 1955, 199–200Google Scholar.

122 Sym. Styl., Vorschriften und Ermahnungen, p. 181, 27.

123 Sym. Styl. cc. 66–70, pp. 114–8; 101–7, pp. 146–56. Further testimony, surely, to the role of the merchant in spreading the reputation of saints: see inf. n. 186.

124 Sym. Styl. c. 72, p. 119—from seven days' journey away; c. 73, pp. 119–20 and c. 75, pp. 121–2.

125 Sym. Styl. c. 55, p. 107, 18 : it was a charisma bestowed on him by the prophet Elijah—some indication of the difficulty of the job ! C. 81, p. 127, 28.

126 Sym. Styl. c. 98, pp. 143–4, cf. H.R. 1313 C and above, n.

127 Compare H.R. 1413 B.

128 Sym. Styl. ‘Brief des Cosmas’, p. 186, 17.

129 Sym. Styl. c. 57, p. 108, 33; ‘Vorschr. und Ermahnungen’, p. 183, 23.

130 Sym. Styl., ‘Brief des Cosmas’, p. 187, 4.

131 Sym. Styl., ‘Brief des Cosmas’, p. 184, 32.

132 Used of God—from Amos, 3, 8: Sym. Styl., Vorschr. und Ermahnungen, p. 180, 14.

133 Sym. Styl. c. 128, p. 173, 6.

134 Justinian, , Nov. 24, 1Google Scholar … κῶμαι μέγισται…καὶ πολυάνθρωποι καὶ πολλάκις πρὸς αὐτοὺς (i.e. τοὺς δημοσίους φόρους) στασιάζουσαι.

135 Robert, L., Etudes anatoliennes (1937), 99–107Google Scholar; see Vita Sancti Johannicii II, 5, Acta Sanctorum Novembris, II (1894), p. 337 A, and commentary at pp. 322–5Google Scholar.

136 H.R. 1481 B : ἄνθρωπος εἶ ἤ ἀσώματος φύσις;

137 See esp. G. Kingsley-Garbett, ‘Spirit Mediums as Mediators in Valley Kore-kore Society’, Spirit Mediumship and Society (o.c. (n. 10), 104–27.

138 Vööbus, o.c. (n. 6), 299 is unduly impressed by the ‘hyperasceticism’ of the Syrian hermits. Rather, men constantly in contact with the surrounding society—see Tchalenko cited in n. 19—needed to act out a more elaborate and dramatically ‘inhuman’ ritual, if they were to maintain their position as ‘the stranger’. Symeon, significantly, would have been ‘ashamed’ had he been seen on ground-level: Sym. Styl., c. 116, p. 163, 16–19.

139 Sym. Styl. c. 38, p. 100, 2.

140 Sym, Styl. c. 17, p. 90, 26: Symeon even rejected the Eucharist if it tied him to his fellow-monks.

141 See the most illuminating discussion of Neusner, J., A History of the Jews in Babylonia IV, 1969, 297–402Google Scholar, whose rabbis resemble the θεῖος ἀνήρ of Late Antique paganism far more than either resemble the holy man.

142 See P. Brown, ‘The Formation of the Holy Man’ (to appear).

143 H.L. XL, 2: Apollonius of Tyana did the same, and, also, as a total ‘stranger’, ‘dissociated’ by the Pythagorean vow of silence: Philostratus, , Vita Apollonii I, 15Google Scholar (Loeb edn. 1, pp. 38–42). Cf. Severinus of Noricum, Eugippius, Vita Severini iii, 2. He, also, was so total a stranger to Noricum, as to be believed by some to be a fugitive slave: ibid., appendix c. 9. Severinus has kept us guessing up to the present: see Lotter, F., Deutsches Archiv XXIV, 1968, 309Google Scholar and F. Prinz, ibid. xxv, 1969, 531.

144 Vööbus, 91.

146 As did the influential Marcianus; H.R. 1332 C—a stroke of diplomacy appreciated by Festugière, o.c. (n. 13), 254. Marcianus even ensured that no one party had his body for burial! H.R. 1336 A.

146 V. Dan. c. 57.

147 The parallel of Rasputin, adduced by Delehaye (o.c. note *, p. LV), is trivial compared with the diplomacy required of Daniel. For the pressures to which a holy man was subject in Constantinople, see V. Hyp. c. 32—trick questions posed by Nestorius; c. 39—tactful lobbying by supporters of Nestorius!

148 V. Dan. c. 17.

149 V. Dan. cc. 31–32 : Cyrus of Panopolis and Gelanios, a supporter of the eunuch Chrysaphius.

150 V. Dan. cc. 55 and 65.

151 V. Dan. c. 49.

152 V.Dan. c. 51.

153 V. Dan. c. 43.

154 On the ‘Hand of God’, see Grabar, A., ‘Recherches sur les sources juives de l'art paléchretien (in)’, Cahiers archéologiques XIV, 1964, 49–57Google Scholar, at 53–7.

155 V. Dan. c. 75.

156 V. Dan. c. 82.

167 V. Dan. c. 83.

158 H.L. xx, 7, 10.

159 H.L. xxv, 4 and Festugière, Les Moines (cit. n. 13) 1, p. 46.

160 Sauneron, S., Bull, de l'Inst. fr. d'Anch. orientate LXVII, 1969, 110Google Scholar, on the hermitages at Esna.

161 I Samuel 10, 6.

162 H.R. 1369 C-1373 A-B, on Aphraat the Persian. His guarded and homely parables, delivered in pidgin-Greek, are rightly relished by Festugière, o.c. (n. 13), 259–60, as part of a long tradition.

163 Salamanes of Capesana, who was transported, cell and all, from his adopted village to his native village and back again, was the ideal of a man impassive but not in a trance: H.R. 1428 D– 1429 C.

164 J. Fontaine, ‘Démons et sibylles: la peinture des possédés dans la poésie de Prudence’, Mélanges Jean Bayet, 1964, 196–213. On the possible implications of such a shift, Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols. Explorations in Cosmology, 1970, 65–98, which forms an admirable starting-point for many trains of thought relevant to the historian of Late Antiquity.

165 See esp. von Heintze, Helga, ‘Vir gravis et sanctus, Bildniskopf eines spätantiken Philosophen’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum VI, 1963, 35–53Google Scholar.

166 Ammianu s Marcellinus, XVI, 10, 10.

167 Sym. Styl. c. 10, p. 86, 20.

168 H.L. XVIII, 28.

169 Closely observed: a layman counted Symeon bending to his toes in prayer 1244 times, then gave up ! H.R. 1481 A. Meticulously recorded: on the circumstantial accounts of the exact periods of asceticism ‘done’ (ἐποίησεν) by the holy men, see Festugière, Moines, cit. (n. 13) III/I, 68, n. 1. This was because a holy man's claims on God—and so on his clientele—depended directly on the πόνοι he had been assumed to have undergone (cf. below, n. 182). H.R. 1417 C ὁ δὲ ἀγωνοθέτης τοῖς πόνοις τὴν χάριν ἐπεμἑτρησεν sums up the backbone of every account of the powers of a Late Roman holy man.

170 H.R. 1452 B, cf. Neusner, o.c. (n. 141), 327 for Jewish parallels.

171 Peterson, E., ‘Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte von Παρρησία,’ Festschrift Reinhold Seeberg I, 1929, 283–97Google Scholar.

172 See Holl, o.c., 185–90 on sixth-century Palestinian usage. This is exactly paralleled in Theodoret, H.R. The newly discovered Manichaean codex, a translation from a Syrian environment, shows the frankly social meaning of the word: Pap. Colon, inv. no. 4780, 102, 5–11, (Zeitsch. für Papyr. und Epigr. V, 2, 1970, 177Google Scholar, n. 201) ἐν τε τῶι πλούτωι αὑτῶν καὶ τῆι παρρησίαι καὶ τοῖς χρήμασι. In Egypt, by contrast, it remained a negative quality: A.P. Agatho I (8), 109 A; Daniel 8, 160 B and Festugière, , Moines III/I, 66Google Scholar, n. 27.

173 Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of John the Hesychast c. 25 (Festugière, op. cit. 111/3, 32).

174 See the career of Flavius Philippus: AJP LXXXIII, 1962, 247–64Google Scholar.

175 Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 7, 7 (CSEL I, 118, 11).

178 V. Dan. c. 75.

177 See esp. MacMullen, Ramsay, ‘Some Pictures in Ammianus Marcellinus’, The Art Bulletin XLVI, 1964, 435–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

178 It was recognized in military manuals that the personnel of the theatre provided the skilled leadership for all public ceremonies: Griechische Kriegsschriftsteller (ed. Köchly, H. and Rüstow, W., 1855) II, 2, 55Google Scholar.

179 A fact almost too large to be seen, and so seldom applied to precise details: now recognized by Grabar, o.c. (n. 14), 16.

180 For the parallels in expression, see Robert, L., Hellenica XI–XII, 1960, 355–8Google Scholar.

181 Canivet, o.c. (n. 86), 247.

182 Le Bas-Waddington, no. 1620, 7–10, discussed, with further examples, by Robert, L., Hellenica XI–XIII, 1960, 347Google Scholar and XIII, 1965, 141. Compare A.P. Arsenius, 5 (49), 89 A, the comment of a cultivated man on Egyptian holy men: ἀπὸ τῶν ἰδίων πόνων ἐκτήσαντο τὰς ἀρετάς. One hardly need add that competition between holy men had a similar full-blooded quality: despite elaborate self-abasement, some hoped to be ‘stars’. In V. Hyp. c. 42, the Devil told one: ‘You are more just than all the others. You have practised ascesis more than they. Jesus loves you and lives in you and speaks by your mouth…’ The Devil, in fact, had revealed to the poor young man the banal recipe for all Byzantine hagiography ! V. sup. n. 169, and P. Brown, ‘The Formation of the Holy Man…’ for rivalry, ‘framing’, sorcery, even attempted assassination by rival holy men.

183 H.R. 1340 A.

184 N. Giron, Légendes coptes, 1907, 51.

185 V. Theod., c. 50.

186 To the examples of Symeon's reputation, spread by Syrian merchants, v. sup. n. 123. We could add that of John of Lycopolis, spread b y members of the family of Theodosius I, see Devos, P., Analecta Bottandiana LXXXVII, 1969, 189–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and of St. Phocas of Sinope, spread throughout th e Mediterranean by Black Sea sailors: Asterus of Amasea, Horn. ix. in S. Phocam (PG XL, 309–312).

187 A.P. Anton. 25, 84 B.

188 A.P. Eucharistos I (24), 169 A.

189 Paul of Monemvasia, Ψυχωφελεῖς ἱστορίαι, see Schirò, G., Riv. di cultura class, e medievale VII, 1965, 1006–16Google Scholar.

190 See P. Brown, o.c. (n. 119), 413–14.

191 See Brown, P., ‘A Dark-Age Crisis: the significance of the Iconoclast Controversy’ (to appear)Google Scholar.

192 As it struck, and misled, Western medieval statesmen: Southern, R. W., Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Pelican History of the Church 2, 1970), 75–6Google Scholar.

193 See esp. Beck, H. G., ‘Byzantinische Gefolgschaftswesen’, Sitzungsberichte d. bayer. Akad. der Wiss. 1955, no. 5.Google Scholar

194 Ambrose, Ep. 41, 28.

195 Nicholas Mysticus, Ep. 5 (PG CXI, 56 C).

196 Theophanes Continuatus, ed. Bonn. 430–440.

197 Mansi, Concilia XVI, 150 D (Synod of A.D. 869).

198 Baynes, ‘The Hellenistic Civilisation and East Rome’, o.c. (n. 1), 5. ‘It was on life's casuistry—on the moral problems of the individual in a dangerous world—that attention was concentrated.’

199 von Lilienfeld, Fairy, ‘Anthropos Pneumaticus—Pater Pneumatophorus’, Studia Patristica v, Texte und Untersuchungen LXXX, 1962, 382–92Google Scholar, is particularly revealing: see p. 282: ‘Begreift man ihn recht (this aspect of the rôle of the holy man), so möchte man die inneren Gründe jener erstaunlichen Blüte des Mönchtums im 4. Jahrhundert erspüren können.’

200 See P. Brown, ‘Holy Men at Work : Cure and therapy in Late Antiquity’ (to appear).

201 e.g. V. Theod. cc. 84, 86 and 108.

202 e.g. Sym. Styl. cc. 27, p. 95; 31, p. 97, 8; 34, P. 98, 14; 35, P. 98, 30.

203 H.R. 1409 C.

204 As Holl, K., ‘Der Anteil der Styliten am Aufkommen der Bilderverehrung’, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, II, 1928, pp. 388–98Google Scholar (at P. 395).

205 C. Binger, The Doctor's Job,

206 The artistic development of the reliquaries associated with the Stylite saints shows the same evolution: see Tchalenko, o.c. (n. 19), III, 17–8: ‘il n'y a probablement dans ses dessins géométriques nulle maladresse, nulle inéxperience primitive, mais, semble-t-il, l'expression finale d'un penchant que les Syriens ont souvent montré pour l'image religieuse abstraite’—and, one might add, for the ‘abstract holy man’; v. sup. n. 163.

207 Haussherr, I., Penthos (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 132), 1944, 81–5Google Scholar.

208 Moschus, John, Pratum Spirituale c. 50, PG LXXXVII, 2905 BGoogle Scholar.

209 Sym. Styl., c. 80, p. 127, 4.

210 e.g. H.R. 1384 A.

211 Hence so many of Symeon's ‘prophecies’ were, rather, ‘explanations’ : a drought of two years was a ‘good beating’ for certain sins; that of 36 days, merely a ‘switching’ by God. H.R. 1486 A.

212 Sym. Styl. cc. 109–110, 156–60—a vivid scene.

213 See Festugière, Les Moines III/1, 107. n. III and Hausherr, o.c. (n. 207), 14–17. Compare the interesting study of P. Rousset, ‘Recherches sur l'émotivité a l'époque romaine’, Cahiers de civilisation mêdiévale II, 1959, esp. pp. 58–65.

213a See now Brown, P., The World of Late Antiquity, 1971, p. 159Google Scholar, ill. 105; p. 187, ill. 126; p. 191.

214 V. Dan. c. 31.

215 V. Hyp. c. 27.

216 See esp. K. Holl, ch. III (‘Die Binde- und Lösegewalt des Mönchtums’), esp. 287–301.

217 A.P. Mios 3 (51) 301 D : εἰ ἄρα δέχεται μετάνοιαν ὁ θεός (the question of a στρατευόμενος).

218 H.L. xxxv, 5–6 : with John of Lycopolis, lay clients were given preference: they were slaves playing truant from their owner, the Devil !

219 e.g. V. Euthym. c. 8.

220 A.P. Lot 2, 256 B—can decide the extent of penance for a caster of love-spells: v. Holl. o.c., 315–8.

221 For not to be blessed by a holy man was a set-back for any Byzantine politician: see the charming story in John of Nikiu, c. 89 (ed. Zotenberg, , Extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale XXIV, I, p. 488Google Scholar)—a holy man refused to bless the future Emperor Anastasius because, as a future Emperor, he no longer needed further blessing.

222 Halkin, F., ‘Saint Antoine le Jeune et Pétronas vainqueur des Arabes en 863,’ Analecta Bollandiana LXII, 1944, 187–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

223 Ibid. c. 10, p. 216.

224 Ibid. c. 20, p. 223.

225 e.g. A.P. Daniel 3 (95); 153 C : the πρωτεύων of Babylon has his favourite monk.

226 Dmitrevsky, A., Opisanie liturgičeskich rukopisej chranjaščichsja v bibliotekach pravoslavnogo vostoka II, 1901, 580Google Scholar.

227 V. Sab. c. 45.

228 e.g. V. Theod. c. 137.

229 See the fascinating series of answers to clients by the sixth-century hermit Varsanuphius cited by Chitty, o.c. (n. 6), 137, whose complete edition is appearing in Patrologia Orientalis.

230 Nilus, , Ep. ad Olympiodorum, PG LXXIX, 577Google Scholar D.

231 e.g. V. Hyp. c. 40.

232 V. Theod. cc. 145–146.

233 H.R. 1380 D.

234 See esp. MacMullen, R., ‘Social Mobility an d the Theodosian Code,’ JRS LIV, 1964, 49–53Google Scholar, on the variety of careers open to quite humble men. See also Epistula Ammonis c. 17 (Sancti Pachomii vitae graecae, ed. F. Halkin, 1932, p. 106)—a Coptic monk wrestling with the temptation to become a soldier. Peasant, monk, soldier—already an embarras de richesse !

235 Porphyry, Vita Pythag., c. 34; cf. F. Cumont, L'Egypte des astrologues, 1937, 118—70.

236 T. Lefort, S. Pachomii vitae sahidice scriptae, 1933, 248–251, from the translation of Peeters, P., ‘A propos de la vie sahidique de S. Pachôme,’ Analecta Bollandiana LII, 1934, p. 303Google Scholar.

237 Robert, L., Hellenica XIII, 1965, 226–7Google Scholar.

239 Ibid. 22.

239 Women as φιλόλογοι: Robert, ibid., 52; cf. Artemidorus, , Oneirocritica IV, 83Google Scholar—a woma n dreams she has a beard on one side of her face: she manages her husband's estates while he is away. Very much the ancestors of St. Monica, and of the mothers of Theodoret and of Cyril !

240 See esp. Gregory Thaumaturgus, In Origenem prosphonetica ac panegyrica oratio (PG x, 1049—1104), a neglected text, now available: Grégoire le Thaumaturge, Remerciement à Origène, ed. H. Crouzel (Sources Chrétiennes, 148), 1969. See H.R. 1384 A— the ‘netting’ of a young man by a spiritual father, with the long classical background of the expression, in Festugière, Antioche o.c. (n. 86), 258, n. 5.

241 Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis c. 3, 408 B–409 A, is especially revealing. (But, as Professor E. R. Dodds has kindly pointed out to me, the trivialization of oracle-questions was no new thing: Plutarch had pitched his demands rather high).

242 See esp. Robert, L., Hellenica XI–XII, p. 546Google Scholar (on their continued stabilizing function in times of religious ferment); and ‘Trois Oracles de la Théosophie et un prophète d'Apollon’, Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr., December 1968, 568–99.

243 Already in the third and early fourth century, a ‘prophet’ had taken on some of the more ‘personalized’ attributes of a holy man: e.g. the priestess Ammias at Thyateira and Athanatos Epitynchanos at Akmoneia, discussed with earlier references in L. Robert, Études anatoliennes, 1937, 131–2.

244 Clearly seen, as the background to the elaborate exorcistic prayers of a holy man, by Robert, , Hellenica XIII, 1965, 267Google Scholar, n. 3.

245 See Neusner, o.c. (n. 141) 348—9 on the rabbi's mother as a source of occult remedies.

246 V. Theod. cc. 124 and 143.

247 See now Claude, D., Die byzantinische Stadt im 6. Jahrhundert (Byzantinisches Archiv 13), 1969Google Scholar, and Grabar, A., ‘La mosaïque de pavement de Qasr el-Lebya’, C.R. Acad. des Inscr., June 1969, 264–82Google Scholar.

248 See now Llewellyn, Peter, Rome in the Dark Ages, 1971, 174.Google Scholar

249 Impressively described by Southern, o.c. (n. 192), 27–33.

250 Simon, M. and Benoit, A., Le judaisme et le christianisme antique (nouvelle Clio), 1968, p. 2.Google Scholar