Introduction
Given the impact of early Christian asceticism on later events, institutions, and developments in the West to which it gave rise, no wonder there has been so much interest in the subject. Students trained in classical philology or theology, or both together, or in archeology, have certainly had their say about it. For historians, however, it is a prime rule of art (not to mention, a rule of common sense) that whatever one says about the past should rest on a data-base of matching size; if it’s a broad statement or generalization, nothing less than lots of supporting facts and instances will do. It is my aim, here, to show how this rule may be applied to the study of the holy man.
Mistaken Method and Its Costs
The importance of the rule can be illustrated through Peter Brown’s essay on my subject appearing in the journal at the center of Roman studies for over a century: the venerable JRS, in its web-site advertising Brown’s article as its most famous publication.Footnote 1 There (its page-numbers in parentheses) he accounts for the appearance of the holy man on the stage of history by positing two “crises.” The first, cultural (99), was the “religious revolution” of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity (99, thrice; 93; and 100). This revolution, however, was not the victory of Christianity over polytheism in itself (100); the essence of it was rather “the rise of the holy man,” constituting a “leitmotiv” (99), which happened to “coincide” with the “natural death” of polytheism (100) and of the polytheists’ belief in “divinity” and “great temples” (98, 99).Footnote 2 Into the place and faith that had been the gods’ for so long (93) now stepped this new being in a crucial role, thanks to his ascendancy, attaining “such eminence” (81). “The predominance of the holy man” can even be taken as a boundary-marker to distinguish “late antiquity as a distinct phase” in history (100).
The flow of explanation here is presented in sweeping terms, descriptive of the entire empire (81–82) and its fifty or sixty millions. Historians and their readers are of course familiar with broad-brush statements serving the flow of an argument if the underpinning has been properly established through conventional treatment, that is, with adequate challenges and response and proportionate documentation. A person trained in languages and literature may be less demanding.Footnote 3 Brown takes as his admired “model” the work of E. R. Dodds a few years prior, where the mind of “the West,” that is, of the Roman Empire, is to be read through the writings of the intellectual elite and of no more than nine or ten among them scattered across more than four hundred years. Their readership cannot be imagined above a few thousand in any decade. This sampling, however, is used to justify a general conclusion that some half-billion persons were noticeably anxious across this very considerable stretch of time.Footnote 4 Unsupported, how can this proposition be taken seriously?
As to what the holy man did—his function in society—it was to fill a gap in local leadership. Brown discerns a second “crisis,” a profound change in the relations of dependency and influence or power binding together the Have-nots and the Haves. He detects “a seismic shift in social relations” induced by “rising prosperity” (87), in turn producing a “crisis of leadership” (85), to be remarked in “the tendencies of later Roman agricultural life” (90). It is a turning point transforming the whole “Roman world,” “the later Roman empire,” “the empire” as a whole (86, 87), its society (99), and general human “needs” in “the Later Empire” (92, 93). “It is precisely at this point that the holy man comes to the fore as a figure in village society and in the relation between the village and the outside world” (87). It is a “crisis,” however, like the cultural one, above, that has somehow escaped notice. If the two crises cannot be established, it is not easy to see how they can serve as the foundation for further argument and understanding.
The fact remains, however, that Brown’s essay still represents the scholarly consensus, at least in English.Footnote 5 It is thus no antiquarian whim that prompts my critical interest in it and my attempt to sketch out something better.Footnote 6
Further criticisms may be left for my concluding pages, since constraints on the length of my own essay prevent a review of prior scholarship. My notes and an appendix must suffice. But at the outset of my alternative treatment, I do draw attention to my intended focus, not on ascetical experiences so much discussed, but on what contemporaries and near-contemporaries observed from the outside and wondered at in the behavior of the holy man. This, his “external” history as opposed to “internal,” is what Brown focuses on also: “the role of the holy man.… his position” (80), his historical importance.
Ideas Governing Ascetic Routines
The earliest holy man known by name was Antony “of the desert.” In his late teens, he is said to have discovered ascetics already living a solitary life away from their villages in his part of Egypt. They had evidently been settled in the area from the mid-third century. Others like them were in time established elsewhere throughout the Fertile Crescent, from Cairo to northern Mesopotamia, some ordained as bishops like Rabbula of Edessa or Theodore of Dara; some to Constantinople with Daniel the Stylite among others. This much defines my subject in space; the sources in my Appendix define the period studied, roughly from 275 to 575.
As to the region, it had a distinct character in regard to asceticism as in other ways. This disciplined manner of life had long attracted favorable notice. It was a dictum of a very traditional non-Christian that “the one who loves god cannot love pleasure or body.”Footnote 7 In Christian times, post-Constantine, “ascetics”—the term used interchangeably for holy men in modern treatments—were also called “devotees” (that is, of God) by their neighbors, both terms being applied to them in a letter of the 340s to a certain Paphnutius and further explained by another term, philoi, applied more often by Greek-speakers to “adherents” and “supporters” in secular contexts; and this meaning underlay still another term very common among ascetics for one of themselves, philotheos, “God-devoted” (the chummy translation, “Friend of God,” misreads the Greek).Footnote 8 Individuals like these, from a few score at their earliest mention, grew in numbers through the attraction of followers and the formation of them into communities throughout the Fertile Crescent, eventually to a considerable total. A good handful of exact figures about them survive. These are offered by contemporaries in self-definition, obviously rounded but most of them not implausible. They suggest an aggregation over the course of my three chosen centuries amounting to some hundreds of thousands in communities mostly of monks; some, of nuns.Footnote 9
Describing ascetics brought to our attention, almost all by name, there also survive at least a few lines for their characterization or anecdotes, or more, into the tens or scores of pages, for more than 170 of them. An appendix indicates the individuals considered here, a majority found in John of Ephesus, in Palladius’ Lausiac History with 16 more non-duplicative in the History of the Monks in Egypt, still more in Paphnutius’ Histories, and smaller numbers to be found scattered through other texts.
The governing idea among them was a fear-full thing, spurred by the fourth beatitude, “blessed are the sorrowful.” Sorrow for one’s irremediable faults was expressed in a thousand practices or fragments of self-explanation: for example, “I am bent down beneath many sins, and, believing in the threatened punishments, I have conceived this manner of life and invented its pains, so far as I could endure them, so as to reduce the weight of punishments I can foresee.” So a certain Thalelaios tells his visitors. As another says, “I have spent forty years in this cell caring for my salvation”; another says, “I am an ocean of sins”; similarly, the voice of a penitent for a full thirty years, whose “wailings throughout the night left his neighbors no peace.”Footnote 10
No worshipper who took such convictions to heart could simply ignore them; but response that could be rightly called theophilia, “devotion,” was as various as one can imagine. Denial of normal physical needs and impulses was always an individual matter, modified by the physical environment, sometimes with self-hurt superadded in one form or another, sometimes unambitious, sometimes nearly lethal. Hermits in their little cells tried to minimize human contacts, seen as temptations to misconduct, and distractions from prayer or other worshipful practices; they might choose even to accentuate their isolation by having themselves walled in, leaving only a little window for conversation’s sake and sustenance. Complete isolation, however, might yield to the sharing of religious meals and services in loosely clustered groups; and even for hermits, help from a local village was needed for the supply of food and drink in exchange for simple manufactures, baskets or rope. Sometimes, too, ascetics made visits to others of their kind or to a city, even long residence there. The more celebrated were often under pressure from church authorities to be engaged more fully in lay society, and so, to be ordained as priests or monastery-heads (higoumenoi), to serve as head of many monasteries (archimandrites) or even as bishops; and they reluctantly or willingly took on such official duties. Sometimes like Pachomius they maintained the rigor of their ascesis undiminished. “The ascetic movement” as it is sometimes called thus could lead into many various careers.
Ascetics’ Relations with Lay Society
As to their place in lay society as a whole, one group of holy men chose to court crowds and fame itself through their extraordinary routines of supplication. In the district near Beroea (Aleppo) in a local, pre-Christian tradition, ascetics went to the length of perching themselves atop pillars thereby better to seek aid from on high for petitioners below. Their ambition found a match in Christian doctrines of that region, later personified in the stylite saints. In the shaping of their lives for acclaim, these Syrians differed from their Egyptian brothers; they remained a tiny if spectacular minority, and the doctrine supporting them, a theoretical thing without effect on the governing ideas of the ascetic movement elsewhere.Footnote 11
For the generality of them, the rules of life were surprisingly uniform across all of the region, making it difficult for the modern reader unassisted by some give-away detail to guess whether an individual receiving biographical treatment was mostly based in Palestine or (modern) Iraq, Syria or Egypt.Footnote 12 This degree of uniformity can be explained partly by the annual or almost annual meetings of the church hierarchy in its provincial councils, and exchanging information, but more, by the traveling about or emigrating and re-settling of disciples and the more confident and educated solitaries, occasionally whole monkish communities, from one place to another, not always welcome but making a place for themselves.
Among all the populations of the Fertile Crescent where the phenomenon originated, we find attested in documents of the second millennium down to the period of my focus two further governing ideas long known at least among scholars. These were, first, a social ethic, that is, a set of beliefs about how to behave toward persons in need, the Haves toward the Have-nots; and second, acceptance of demonic causation thought to underlie afflictions of any sort, most especially of one’s health. The first of these two ideas was communicated from the top down to the subjects of early monarchies in the region, including those smaller kingdoms overwhelmed by conquest in the Holy Land, where it was embodied in so-called Wisdom Literature, Jewish moral teachings, and eventually in the teachings of Jesus.Footnote 13 As to the second idea, demonic causation, over those same millennia there had been, or was, hardly a doubt anywhere that supernatural beings, most often malevolent, were the agents behind plagues and famines or storms at sea on a grand scale, as also on a small scale serving to explain a malformed limb, infertility, paralysis, recurrent fever, depression, scoliosis, or the like.Footnote 14 The first Christian holy man explains, in words assigned to him by his biographer, what everyone believed anyway: Evil spirits are everywhere, filling the air we breathe, close besetting us all.Footnote 15
One could only bring one’s serious problems to some supernatural agent(s), for help. Home-medicines and wise women had failed. We have abundant testimony of prayers, of which there survive many hundreds in the period of interest to me; but of these, only a small number indicate just what supplication or thanks were for, whether in inscriptions, or carven thank-offerings, supplicant letters, or literary mentions in various genres. No data-base has been attempted in any good fashion, to my knowledge. Quite numerous prayer-texts are scratched on walls beneath Saint Peter’s basilica; eastern provinces provide representations of afflicted body-parts, letters to holy men on papyri, lists from martyrs’ shrines, wives worried about absent husbands or generals about some coming campaign, in biographies; mentions, too, in other types of written document.Footnote 16 All these causes of anxiety are to be added to many others listed in the second Table, below. But at the core of life’s concerns was ever, health (Table 1).
Table 1. Miracles Health-related (Occurrences/Mentions)
Table 2. Miracles Unrelated to Health
In summary as his biographer saw him, Theodore of Sykeon (d. 613) was “the blessed man, who overcame the Devil’s wiles, put demons to flight, and cured the sick.” It was the fulfillment of Jesus’ instructions to his disciples.Footnote 17 At greater length, a monastery-member at Amida in Mesopotamia recalled during the nights
the unceasing sighs, and copious tears, and crying and severe sobs, because everyone was looking at his fellow and everyone was emulating his neighbor and learning and acting, and was practicing and imitating and was eager to pass his fellow in the race of righteousness; so that many among them had the power of performing signs, and by faith were used to driving out fiends before our eyes.Footnote 18
In the rivalry thus described, expanding on the words of another ascetic (Thalelaios quoted above at n. 10), a miraculous power of healing might be the reward, at least on this earth, gained by the devotee through his control of his natural impulses. It was the hope of those in turn who sought him out: that “he performed many miracles and healed many,” or “thousands,” or even “too many thousands to be counted.” Such praises are common. In the Thebaid in Isidore’s monastery every one of the monks, all “saints,” were wonder-workers.Footnote 19
Of the two supporting ideas, beyond salvation, that governed the ascetic’s very essence—one, the social-ethical and the other, explanatory of afflictions—our surviving accounts inevitably assigned lesser urgency to the social-ethical; for recruits to the ascetic movement were overwhelmingly drawn from the agricultural masses, without riches. Whether as solitaries or most often in groups and clusters, they could hardly seek the fulfillment of Jesus’ injunction (Matt 19:21) to give all they had to the destitute. In fact they had nothing to give. The other supporting idea, however, addressed to demon-born afflictions, lay within every individual’s power without need of material possessions. Indeed, the poorer one was, the better! Divine rewards attended one’s caring for others who had even less of this world’s goods than one’s self.Footnote 20
Miracle-Working Powers
A quotation, above, indicated keen rivalry in penitence among the monks of Amida. Ascetics certainly invented extreme regimens of self-denial, whether in prayer or physical suffering. But if they thus won thaumaturgic powers, how did the fact come to be recognized? Not by the say-so of some higher-up among the hierarchy. Only one answer seems imaginable, fitting naturally into the region at the time and supported by a prevailing familiarity with the notion of holy men, Christian or not.Footnote 21 It is revealed when healing favor has been sought by a supplicant almost at random, as in the letter earlier quoted to the holy Paphnutius, and he responds, and a cure actually results; or some comforting prediction is sought, and gained, and the event in fact turns out happily.Footnote 22 So, confirmation! The word spreads. Yet there was no predicting whose ascetic efforts would be rewarded, or when: as an instance, a certain Gabrielius, head of a church near Jerusalem, only toward the end of his long life “having become a worker of miracles.”Footnote 23 Before, he had been for decades an ascetic but not so empowered. Out of so many thousands, he at last counted as a “saint” and “blessed,” earning a place in our sources.
Miracles had been wrought by the relics of martyrs from Polycarp in the second century on, through Euphemia’s relics at Chalcedon or Crispina’s in North Africa thereafter (but, to my knowledge, only one Christian woman was thought to receive thaumaturgic gifts during her lifetime).Footnote 24 Cures were also wrought post-mortem by ascetics on the model of the martyrs, as, for example, by Simeon Stylites or by Hilarion and his biographer Epiphanius of Salamis, at their tombs.Footnote 25 During their lifetime, such heroes had worked miracles from a distance by their prayers or by the touch of their clothing, perhaps, or drops of water or oil or both of these mixed together.Footnote 26
With these particular persons we are among the “saints” as they are designated today; but in the centuries and eastern provinces of interest to me, formalities of titulature had not yet become established. The most devoted of God’s devotees were more often called “the blessed,” makarios, than “saint,” hagios, and there are other terms applied evidently without rules and without any act of ennoblement by the hierarchy.Footnote 27 Nevertheless, among the named ascetics, a substantial minority were sought out for some ecclesiastical rank, most of these only as priests, deacons, or heads of monasteries; and with promotion, still more ended up as bishops. The ladder of offices thus favored and gave an institutional structure to the ascetic movement. The fact should not obscure a more important reality, that, as the world saw it, asceticism itself was what counted, not ecclesiastical title. As a monk explained the departure of a certain brother, “he became a bishop, for he was a wonder-worker.”Footnote 28 True, one could rise partly by social position, partly by education; but the most honored path lay through a life lived as a devotee, philotheos, proven in daily practices and by the evidently resulting gift of powers.Footnote 29 This primacy was recognized both by ecclesiastical officialdom and by the general public.
Perceptions bestowing celebrity were of two sorts, external and internal. As to the internal: within organized Christianity, one’s fellow monks or bishops naturally observed one another’s conduct of life, admired for reasons often explained at great length, edifying or eulogistic. They noted the holy man’s humbleness and self-control. They gave prominence to theology, too, since the leadership rightly focused on such matters as orthodoxy and, by extension, on conversion. A good example is the choice of topics offered in letters attributed to the first great figure, Antony himself.Footnote 30
As to external perceptions, they were Brown’s target of interest declared on his opening page, as they are my choice, too—a focus on the “position in society” or place of the holy man. Ascetics would most naturally become known for their puzzling behavior; much more, however, through the notion that this might empower them to help with one’s own afflictions. Appeal could be made to Jesus’ message, to give to those in need, raise the cripple from his bed, heal the afflicted. As an illustration of the response, perhaps the earliest known, there is an entry in the calendar of Alexandria: “In this year, too, Anthony, the great leader, came to Alexandria and, though he remained there only two days, showed himself wonderful in many ways and healed many.”Footnote 31
The healings were true miracles, beyond the powers of ordinary mortals. Embarrassment about them is common in modern times, for example, in Cardinal Newman’s dismissal of a “stupid credulity” among the believers of those ancient times; and sometimes indeed the inventiveness of the ascetic community and the gullibility of visitors will surprise us.Footnote 32 Miracles thus might need a special interpretation—Newman may be quoted to that end—but they remain still a reality for many, affirmed by anyone like myself who has watched a new family member at baptism insufflated to protect the child against the evil Spirits that permeate our world. It is realities as understood by the observer that dictate thoughts and actions; and the thoughts and actions in the past are what historians must work with.Footnote 33
Granted, there remain some realities of doubt. Even in those ancient times as now there were sceptics about signs and wonders, thaumata; but they were few and far between, outnumbered by the most reliable eye-witnesses.Footnote 34 Consider the centuries of my special interest, ending in the run-up from the long-drawn-out Greek enlightenment, to the Dark Ages. In the interval between these two, obviously a very consequential change took place, the tracing of which may be left to a separate study. It was in any case characterized by “irrationalism” and “credulousness,” as so many scholars have agreed.Footnote 35 Beyond that, in the second place, it was a period of accelerated Christianizing. And in the third place, it was a period of destruction of pagan temples, beginning in 326 with that of Asclepius at Aigeae, to which, as to others like it all over the empire, sufferers had been accustomed to resort for healing of mind and body alike.Footnote 36 Bearing in mind these three historical facts, is it not natural that so major a phenomenon as the ascetic movement might originate in their concatenation? Within it—a perfect storm—might one not expect to find some type like the holy man emerging? In fact, the various peoples native to the Fertile Crescent and Near East had been for many centuries open to the notion of a “divine man,” gaining more than mortal powers.
This openness appears in the papyrus letter which I quote once more, written by a person otherwise unknown to a certain Paphnutius, a local holy man equally obscure, seeking health aid; for it was common knowledge (the letter says) that people so devoted as he to a higher Power might share it with others. Such was the belief that occasioned the letter; here was its motivation; and in motivation we have the bedrock of historical interpretation. Further, we have Gregory of Nyssa writing about a wonder-worker famous locally in times long past. The bishop concludes with a rebuke to any doubters, thus acknowledging the difference in beliefs about miracles that divided people like himself from the masses. Together, the two documents are perhaps enough to illustrate the broad base of belief that supported the holy-man type.Footnote 37
Without now attempting any formal treatment of the matter, but only to suggest how the transition to post-Constantinian times might be understood, I turn first to Ludwig Bieler’s study titled “ΘΕΙΟΣ ΑΝΗΡ,” as the holy man was hailed by followers. Here the evidence is gathered very fully, drawing on both Greek and Jewish texts from Homer to the prophets, to the historical Jesus and beyond, with parallels found also in saints’ biographies. In reading the life-story of such a person, details about his conception, parentage, birth, naming and re-naming can be seen to be touched with some portent or prodigy.Footnote 38 The sequel to Bieler is Morton Smith’s equally full and careful study of New Testament times referred to above (n. 14), in which he makes good use of evidence in papyri and especially clarifies perceptions of wonder-workers among the population in general both in Palestine and Egypt.
Egypt by itself alone, through its papyri but also through other material evidence for religious beliefs, affords unique depths of detail. In a study a decade later than Smith’s, Françoise Dunand (1990) could thus discern and make clear how central in religious life were concerns for health; and this was all the more sharply the case as the population’s familiar deities and temples were dishonored or destroyed. It accounted for those appeals to the province’s various immemorial deities, whether supplicants were “pagans” (in her scare-quotation marks) or Christians. The latter response, the Christian, with more than probative texts, both Greek and Coptic, can be used to show how “the practices [of the holy man] are quite like those employed in ‘pagan’ healing shrines.”Footnote 39 Was that a sign of “Christianizing,” or of “conversion,” or “syncretism,” or “semi-Christianity”? A generation later, David Frankfurter in a wide-ranging volume treated these lexical/theoretical questions, and others more briefly discussed by Dunand; he, too, discovered a gradual melding of accepted practices from the traditional into that of the hierarchically approved supernatural powers—the Christian—granted to the holy man by God.Footnote 40
Powers Profiled in Tabular Form
In the three Tables below, the first item (1) underscores what distinguished and explained the salience of wonder-workers among all holy men. They healed. Even when they had been torn from their monasteries by a certain persecutor in the 360s and driven into the wastelands, there they could be found “going about their usual practices, praying, healing diseases, driving out demons.”Footnote 41 It was this that got them talked about and remembered in biographies and in the stories told to religious tourists; this, that enucleated their claim on reverence and gratitude when their life-stories were summed up; this, in single mentions that tell us not of individuals but of whole families, whole groups that are healed, villages or crowds, or “numbers too great to be counted.” On that very account they cannot be represented in any calculations. My own choice to count item (1) in the individual profiles as one single thing is thus hyper-conservative.
Within that healing power, as the next item (2) in my first Table indicates, it was exorcism that stood out. Nothing was so spectacular or so lovingly reported as the conversation between demons resident in the possessed and the saint who drove them out. Adding five more items (3–7), to finish with health, brings that wonderworking area or focus to almost double the number (items 9–19) of miracle-mentions bearing on other needs. All that should be pointed out regarding those other needs is that we are dealing with a largely agricultural population for whom draft animals were a major asset (item 8) and pest-control, meteorology, and hydrology (items 14, 17, and 18) were especially important kinds of knowledge.
In the third Table (items 20–24) we turn from ascetics’ interaction with nature to their interaction with the secular world around them. Here, the region’s immemorial social ethic showed its force: as a minimum, against the starving of the poor. Here, ascetics as individuals could certainly help; though denied the worldly means, they could work miracles (20).Footnote 42 Monks too, ascetic in their own way but without need of special powers, indeed much more effectively, could show compassion for the destitute, reaching out and sharing their common surplus. Increasingly their own resources included gifts, among them, gigantic ones from that multi-millionaire Melania. Increasingly they gained a place for themselves, locally, in their institutional form; the heads of houses, figures of authority, were asked to intervene around them in conflicts between the poor and their oppressors.Footnote 43 They won much praise for this. Even more often and on a larger scale, bishops could act. By the lifetime of Antony “of the Desert” and the converted Constantine, they had had many generations to solidify their power, to acquire property and the rights to land-rents; they had gained social position, too, and open-handed friends. Now, in their duty as they perceived it to succor the poor, they could at last deal effectively with the secular world and its realities on its own terms, realities so often involving money.
As an illustration of power, though extreme, we have the largest sum of money ever recorded in the hands of a single person other than the ruler himself during the Roman Empire’s many centuries: the cash that Cyril bishop of Alexandria could command in 433 when he needed it. His contemporary in the see of Edessa could count annually on an income above two million of today’s dollars.Footnote 44 Figures like these, however unusual, suggest the gulf that divided Haves from Have-Nots, in an economy in which much was wrung from the many by the few. It was this that demanded “social justice” as it is bluntly termed by Rabbula’s modern biographer—this justice, one of the governing ideas underlying the ascetic movement.Footnote 45
The Haves and Have-Nots
In action can be seen three players. Most obvious was the emperor through his soldiers at the interface with his subjects, enforcing his will above all in tax collection; also, landowners (including bishops) who might as such be the owners of entire villages, collecting rents or crop-shares; and caught between the two big figures, other lesser ones: small farmers and landless peasantry—in all, a power structure about which the sources for the eastern empire are fortunately not too bad.Footnote 46 The overall structure very often allowed the intervention just reviewed, by hermits, monks, and bishops. Illustrating the role of these latter, passages of description that are hostile toward too-greedy landowners duly appear in the sermons of Basil and John Chrysostom. They were presumably inspired by the real stories they heard from farmers all around, that is, in (modern) Turkey and Syria.
Besides the two sermonizers, a third voice around 390 was raised against the greed of the powerful. Libanius spoke out against the commander of troops billeted at Antioch who, for a price, promised to shield the local peasantry against any rent-collection by landowners. The Greek in Libanius’ speech has been misread to turn the situation upside-down: in fact, the “protection” offered to the peasantry was a cruel bargain, a shake-down as Libanius saw it and as the villagers did, too; but they were caught in the middle.Footnote 47
In such a situation, the Have-nots might have appealed to a bishop, if known for his sense of justice: to Theodore of Sykeon, for example. On a visit to one of the villages belonging to the cathedral, he ran into both its avaricious “protector” and the villagers’ complaints against the man, who, by a miracle, within a day, presented himself to Theodore to report a vision he had had. An angelic epiphany had warned him he’d better behave; so now he begged the bishop’s forgiveness and promised reform.Footnote 48
Another anecdote serves to show how the realities worked: this one, concerning young Abraham of a good family. Like John Chrysostom or Rabbula, not to mention Jerome and many others less known in their early years, he went off by himself for a test of asceticism.Footnote 49 In the nearby village were nothing but non- believers. He determined to convert them; and to gain an entrée against their hostility he got his friends’ help in buying a stock of goods for sale and rented rooms as a businessman. By chance, harsh tax collectors were at the moment besieging the villagers, who begged Abraham to be their “protector.” From his friends he got a hundred gold coins to meet the collectors’ demands, a huge sum. He was rewarded by the village with its conversion. He took up residence. Next came the building of a church, his appointment as its priest, and a few years later, his ordination as bishop of Carrhae. There he became famous for his justice in disputes submitted to his judgement.Footnote 50
And last, the example of Simeon Stylites the Elder. Like other ascetics he was sometimes asked in his wisdom to straighten out relations on a quite personal level.Footnote 51 Our sources, however, naturally have much more to say about larger concerns. He responded once to a whole crowd of Antioch’s dyers who sought his aid, these, the most wretched of the laboring class, the most to be pitied; but in such matters, ascetics were often active.Footnote 52 Lest the holy man’s interventions be treated lightly, or himself insulted, there were the tales of what might happen to the guilty (remarkably prominent, see the number of mentions, item 22). A bishop, too, if he were seen as philotheos was sure to be protected by the same stories.Footnote 53
Simeon was, however, unique in one essential respect. Where others had fled the world, giving themselves to their penitential routines and narrow cells and hiding their sufferings as best they could in obedience to Jesus’ teaching (Matt 6:1, 5–6), he advertised himself with extraordinary ambition. He chose for his eventual residence a hilltop within a day’s walk of Aleppo, serving the population from all around. Theodoret in the Life (§11) describes how, over the years there, the privations he inflicted on himself were of a sort to excite absolute amazement, carrying his name to the furthest parts of the known world and attracting a corresponding press of petitioners for healing. There to avoid their crowding, a platform was first raised for him on a nine-foot pillar and subsequently, thrice, to a height above fifty feet; there, ever greater crowds daily attended him, needing various services and facilities. At his death, his fame found prompt expression in built stone, forming an enormous center for religious tourism, while his relics were entombed at Constantinople, center of everything. In its suburbs his successor Daniel, already much in the news for his miracles of healing, erected his own more modest pillar, and later, Daniel’s successor and imitator in turn, Simeon the Younger.Footnote 54 This latter (b. 521) put up his pillar near Antioch. Thereafter the stylite series tailed off; indeed the ascetic as a type had already begun to yield pride of place to the holy martyr.Footnote 55
My various illustrations, focusing for a moment on Libanius, then on Theodore of Sykeon, Abraham, and Simeon the Elder, are meant to make more vivid the quantifications offered in my third Table. They do show moral authority invoked to help with more or less ordinary interpersonal problems in the spirit of the seventh beatitude: blessed are the peacemakers (Matt 5:9); but this is rarely mentioned. It wasn’t miraculous. More often it is some serious affair where conflict involves the Haves against the Have-nots, the force of the prevailing social ethic is applied and can be felt, and it is the ordained leaders of the church who emerge as the heroes.
Of course this must be so; for bishops, even abbots, had clout and connections; they could call on financial support for solutions. Shenoute may serve in illustration, in the Life (81–82) by his biographer Besa. Institutional advocates were bound to outweigh the amateur—for so we may describe the holy man. Grotesque in his look and costume, beneath humility itself in his speech and address, what could he do? True, as his followers were prompt to remind visitors and their own readers, divine power abetted him; the fact emerges in the record (item 22), as was noted; if he was treated with disrespect or defiance, divine punishment might fall on the offender, sometimes quite miraculously, sometimes without need of any curse or invocation. It simply happened. Yet when these matters profiled in the third Table are given their full weight, the popular perception of ascetics is not much affected: they were above all miracle-workers, not social workers.
They were seen as thaumaturges, semi-divine. That they were not to be crossed was simply a part of who they were, in whatever way they chose to act; it was a part of their authority; but it was known that different individuals by their devotion, their theophilia, had been granted different powers. Which powers were called on depended on who asked, with what needs. Holy men responded; they didn’t initiate. Their place in the world, aside from the matter of their own salvation, was market-driven. There was thus much demand from farming folk, as was pointed out; there was a much, much greater demand for the treatment of everyone’s physical and mental health problems. Whatever people had once prayed for in pre-Christian times, Antony or Theodore might now know how to obtain. So ascetics had their day, they had their fame, enthusiastically inflated by their followers. Access to the blessings they had earned for others was, however, more and more often sought from still mightier saints in martyrs’ tombs.
Ascetics Are Mediators as Peter Brown Sees Them
To conclude, now, I return to my starting point, the 1971 article on the holy man, where I reviewed its two foundational assumptions critically. A third point of almost equal importance to Brown’s essay was correctly summed up twenty years later by Robert Doran, noting that “…[a]midst all the discrepancies in detail, one can observe in the Life [of the first stylite] features of that daily work-load of mediation that Peter Brown pointed to so brilliantly—‘what men expected of the holy man coincides with what they sought in the rural patron.’ ” Brown’s proposition was accepted almost immediately and almost without challenge, as appears in a gigantic footnote, above (n. 6).Footnote 56 It was treated by him mostly in the context of the eastern provinces and within them, in Syria. In the past, he asked, how had the rise of this figure been explained? Answer had been sought in the figure of the “divine man,” the ΘΕΙΟΣ ΑΝΗΡ, recalled above. Brown’s article, however, rejects all of this, perhaps as unedifying.Footnote 57 What remains is the central notion of the holy man as “mediator”—a term that is indeed key, as appears in Doran’s understanding of it (quoted above), in the company of many other scholars to the present day.Footnote 58
Here, however, the attendant problems seem quite intractable; for, at the start, as is well known, the Have-nots in their need to confront the too-greedy, continued in late antiquity to seek defenders from among the Haves, not in some new world, but in the long familiar ways.Footnote 59 Help from someone wealthy, thus influential, thus powerful, continued to be the resort of the Have-nots whether the offensive greed was the tax collectors’, corruptly, or that of some big landowner acting through his agents. From the mid-third century, increasing involvement of soldiers in government brought them further forward as a third member to the two-party scene of rich and poor; and after the improvement in the position of the Church post-Constantine, as was emphasized above, a fourth party appears, in the form of local priests, abbots, and bishops, with their various degrees of clout and control of wealth.Footnote 60 But with these ecclesiastical officials Brown is not concerned.
Central to his argument, instead, and in support of a new, mediating figure emerging from the “religious revolution,” are two texts. Both were recalled on earlier pages, above. The first was Libanius’ oration in defense of civilian patrons against encroachment by the military. In “Rise and Function,” this was quite misunderstood.Footnote 61 The second text was, if not misread, at least used to prove too much. It involved young Abraham, as described above, abandoning his initiation into a hermit’s life in order to help a nearby village. His benign intervention and its rewards ended in his elevation to a bishopric. Thereafter, beyond the article’s horizon, his bent toward a mission among the poor could find ample expression, certainly better funded, as was indicated in my commentary on Items 20–21 in the third Table, above.Footnote 62 There was thus nothing novel in his story. Abraham could play such a successful part thanks to the money he could command in the usual way of the Haves, though in his case, vicariously.
Besides these two texts, Brown looks also to the Elder Simeon, initiator of the stylite life; effectually it ended with his successor, Daniel, and Daniel’s successor, Simeon the Younger. Giving themselves to the publicity of their penitential routines, building their platforms high in the air and positioning themselves near or in major cities, they succeeded in securing the awe-struck reverence of the secular world around them; so they might indeed be listened to. It needs no pointing out, however, that ascetics characteristically began their lives with their prayers screened from observation; for, in obedience to Matthew 6, good Christians in worship were not to draw attention to what they were doing, like the hypocrites. They should rather retreat into “a secret place,” such a place as an abandoned tomb, a cistern, a hermit’s cell or a monk’s.
And where it was physically possible, they should support themselves by the work of their hands. To do so was a part of their asceticism, as the obligation was a tenet of the ascetic movement. Obedient to St. Paul’s example, it was defended in many passages by a prominent source for Brown’s essay, Theodoret of Cyrrhus. It was defended, too, by another bishop, one of its devoted historians, Palladius, lashing out at “busybodies infected with misdirected piety, with their ill-judged pretexts falling short of disengagement from the world (apatheia) and in consequence fostering interfering, meddlesome busy-ness and the rejection of concerns that served their own best interests.”Footnote 63 What justifies the choosing of these three stylite saints to serve as referents in some 60 of the 95 footnotes in the article that instance holy men at all? Why should the same three serve as an explanatory “model” (91, 92), where so clearly they offered themselves rather as theatrical outliers? A central role for ascetics as mediators (4% of the mentions in all 829 of the three Tables, above) can’t be supported even by drawing on a data-base many times larger than anything sampled in the article.
Ascetics seem in fact to behave in the manner of that reprobated sect unique to Syria, “Messalians” in Syriac, “those who pray,” “the Supplicants.”Footnote 64 In the Messalians’ insistence on a total devotion to penitence, freed as they thought from the need to supply their own wants and thus, dependent on their supporters, they were seen by others as an “ascetic heresy” (84)—certainly not in the ascetic movement’s main stream. Additionally, only one of them, Simeon the Elder, can offer support to Brown’s picture of holy men in action, if their profiles may be trusted; for the Elder Simeon with Theodoret does indeed score high on a mediator scale (items 23 and 24 in Table 3), but the other two stylites together afford only two mentions in these categories. In sum, only by selection, distortion and suppression of evidence can the holy man be presented principally or even significantly as a mediator.Footnote 65
Table 3. Social Ills Addressed
A last weakness, perhaps the most obvious in “Rise and Function,” appears in its comment on the prominence of miracles in Theodoret. The bishop indeed has much to say about them; he recalls his own childhood raised among them; yet Brown’s comment concludes in the flat declaration, “The miracle is felt to be secondary … often no more than a pointer” (87). How so? Again, a declaration: miracles smack of “magic” (96), to be dismissed as “bizarre … folklore” (89); they belong to “primitive” times and beliefs (82, 99); or, like Simeon the Elder himself, they belong to centuries in which Gibbon saw only decay (81). “Altogether, we get a very wrong impression if we look only at the miraculous element in the holy man’s relations with his clients” (98). Stories of thaumaturgy are the occasion of “a strain placed on the credulity” of ourselves in our enlightened times (96); for it is of course not easy for us to accept the demonic causation of all fleshly ills that Simeon and the unenlightened took for granted.Footnote 66
Instead, we are directed to the holy man’s routine of devotion to all those around him, a devotion perceived as a sort of life-long consultancy throughout the “twenty-four hours of the day” (81). He must ever assure good relations among his “clientele” (92, 96) through his “labor” and “sweat” (94), his “work” (93) that was indeed “hard work” (81, 86, 94), a “hard business” (80). Daniel’s “reputation,” for example, “owes little to his feats as a thaumaturgist” (92). Holy men accepted their role as any good “professional” must (93, 97, 100), obedient to expectations; and “what men expected of the holy man coincides with what they sought in the rural patron” (87).
To illustrate the professionalism of the holy man, “Rise and Function” follows a religious tourist to the home of the ascetic John, in whom the bishop-historian Evagrius in Alexandria had expressed an interest; so Evagrius’ young friend Palladius obediently journeys up-Nile to the site, to seek a report. There in the hostelry, open only on weekends (where later there was a grander one built, to accommodate a hundred visitors), he awaited his turn to speak to the holy man and pose his questions—since John, though a healer, was even better known for his gifts of prophecy. Palladius inquired about his brother and sister: would they enter a monastic life? Would his father recover health? And what of his own future? On all points, he was comforted by John’s predictions.Footnote 67
Brown, however, re-writes this narrative (93) to provide “a hall to house one hundred consultants at a time,” where in fact that facility was not yet built nor was there ever more than one consultant, John, and continues with a reference to holy men’s “well-furnished consulting rooms” discovered by archeologists. The picture thus is of some care-giver in the National Health, some “true professional” who could “keep his wits about him.” Yet in truth, John performed exactly as wonted; and in the Table, this prophetic power (10) is especially often mentioned. Everything in the sources is thus, so to speak, normal—which “Rise and Function” suppresses in order to support a different profile, more asserted than founded in the sources.
The picture of the holy man in “Rise and Function” is at all these many points and others besides quite incompatible with my own, offered above. Let me hope that, if control of the data-base is made sufficiently accessible, comparison of the two will allow a good choice between them.
Data-Base Appendix
After each entry follows the profile of the ascetic(s) treated in the Coptic (in translation), Greek, or Latin text, giving citations and, in parentheses, the relevant Item-number in my Tables; so, for example, at 1.4 in Theodoret’s Hist. relig. will be found mention of divine punishment of Bad Persons whom the saint encounters, expressed as 1.4 (22).
Alexander Akoimetos (Syriac), Vie d’Alexandre Acémète (ed. Émile de Stoop; PO 6; Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1911) 644–705; Greek text, Historia monachorum in Aegypto. Édition critique du texte grec et traduction annotée (ed. André-Jean Festugière; Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1971) 9–35, and Les Moines d’Orient (trans., André-Jean Festugière; 4 vols. in 7; Paris: Cerf, 1961–1965) (1964) 4, 1:9–28; Englished by Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) 250–80.
The profile of Alexander “the Never-sleeping”: 6 (21); 13 (16); 16 (2); 19 (20); 22 (21); 27 (21); 32 (10); 33 (20); 34 (22); 35 (20); 39 (21); 45 (20); 46 (9); 46 (11); 46 (16).
Amélineau, see Macarius.
Anthony’s Life by Athanasius, in Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine; introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes (ed. Gerhardus Johannes Marinus Bartelink; Paris: Cerf, 1994); gingerly acceptance of this authorship by Harmless, Desert Christians, 112–13. The Latin translation by Evagrius has been Englished by Caroline White, Early Christian Lives (London: Penguin, 1968) 70–170; the Greek, Englished by Robert C. Gregg, in Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter of Marcellinus (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980) 29–100.
The profile of Anthony in Athanasius’ Life: 14.5 (1); 48.3 (2); 48.4 (1); 50.9 (13); 54.4 (18); 56–57.1 (1); 57.3 (3); 58.1–5 (3); 59.2 (11); 60.6 (12); 61.3 (3); 62.1 (11); 63.3 (2); 64.5 (2); 70.2f. (1); 71.2 (2); 80.4 (1); 82.4 (11); 84.1 (1); 86.7 (22); 87.2–4 (21); 89.2 (10).
Apophthegmata patrum, as The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers (trans. John Wortley; Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2014), in what the translator also calls “the alphabetical collection,” constituting the earliest of several collections all called Apophthegmata patrum, as he explains, pp. 16–17 and again in his Palladius of Aspuna, The Lausiac History (Collegeville, PA: Liturgical Press, 2015) xiv. The same editor also translated “the systematic collection” as The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Collegeville, PA: Liturgical Press, 2012). There are earlier translations both in English and French, with an old text in Greek, PG 65.71–440, and in Latin, Vitae patrum V: Verba seniorum in PL 73.851–1024; an overview in Harmless, Desert Christians, 167–86.
The Profiles of holy men among the Egyptian monks: pp. 34 (13); 61 (13); 78 (12); 79 (2); 85 (10); 90 (2); 95 (10); 121 (13); 129 (2); 176 (3); 184 (3); 203 (7); 204 (22); 208 (2); 213 (1); 217 (18); 218 (2); 271 (13); 299 (22).
Chariton, the anonymous Life, in Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity. A Sourcebook (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; trans. Leah Di Segni; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990).
The Profile of Chariton (b. Iconium ca. 275): 403-04 (22); 409 (9); 409 (1).
Cyril of Scythopolis, as Kyrillos von Skythopolis (ed. Edouard Schwartz; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1939); as [Cyril of Scythopolis:] Lives of the Monks of Palestine (trans., Richard M. Price; Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991).
The profile of Cyril’s holy man (page and line-number in Schwartz): 20.25 (3); 21.15 (1); 22.15. (2); 23.5 (13); 27.20 (20); 29.10 (22); 31.20 (22); 34.25 (1); 35.10 (11); 36.5 (4); 36.20 (2); 39.5 (17); 57.5 (18); 66.10 (18); 70.5 (22); 75.25 (2); 76.1 (2); 77.25 (2); 81.20 (22); 89.25 (16); 94.25 (18); 96.10 (13); 107.15 (13); 109.25 (17); 130.5 (22); 135.10 (10); 136.15 (3); 137.5 (20); 138.15 (20); 145–147 (21); 160.20 (8); 164.5 (3); 164.15 (3); 167.10 (18); 168.15 (18); 171.5 (3); 177.10 (21); 212.10 (13); 215.15 (13); 218.5 (2); 219.15 (11); 228.10 (3); 228.20 (1); 232.5 (13); 232.30 (18); 242.15 (1); 242.35 (17); 247.10 (1); 355.5 (1); 355.15 (2); 356.1 (3).
Daniel the Stylite’s biography in Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Saints Stylites (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1923) 1–94; translated as “Saint Daniel the Stylite” in Three Byzantine Saints: Contemporary Biographies Translated from the Greek (ed. and trans. Elizabeth Dawes and Norman H. Baynes; Oxford: Blackwell, 1948) 7–71.
The profile of Daniel the Stylite: 20 (3); 20 (1); 27 (22); 29 (2); 31 (3); 33 (2); 36 (2); 37 (2); 38 (4); 39 (22); 40 (2); 44 (1); 45–46 (10); 49 (22); 58 (1); 59 (22); 59 (2); 65 (10); 68 (10); 74 (3); 74 (1); 75 (22); 76 (22); 77 (3); 79 (3); 81 (13); 82 (4); 83 (23); 85 (1); 86 (3); 87 (3; 88 (3); 89 (6); 90 (9); 90 (23); 91 (10); 93 (10); 94 (10); 97 (2).
Evagrius Scholasticus, his Ecclesiastical History with introduction, critical notes and indices (ed. Jean Bidez and Léon Parmentier; Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert, 1964); Englished by Michael Whitby, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus; translated with an introduction and notes (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000).
The Profiles of holy men: Barsanuphius 4.33 (1); Simeon “Holy Fool” 4.33 (10); 4.34 (22); Simeon Stylites the Younger 6.23 (1); 6.23 (2); 6.23 (3); 6.23 (10); 6.23 (13); and Zosimas 4.7 (10); 4.7 (9); 4.7 (5); 4.7 (13).
Gregory the Thaumaturge’s biography by Gregory of Nyssa, in Pierre Maraval, Grégoire de Nysse: Éloge de Grégoire le Thaumaturge. Éloge de Basil, traduction et notes (Paris: Cerf, 2014); also Luigi Leone, Vita di Gregorio Taumaturgo: traduzione, introduzione e note (Roma: Città nuova, 1988); Englished by Michael Slusser, Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus: Life and Works (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998).
The Profile of Gregory of Nyssa’s holy man, the “Thaumaturge”: 15–17 (22); 40 (19); 46 (1); 46 (3); 47 (23); 47 (24); 48 (19); 50 (24); 52 (18); 59 (19); 65–67 (21); 76 (22); 77 (2); 78 (1); 89 (11); 99 (3).
Hilarion’s biography by Jerome in Jérôme, Trois vies de moines (Paul, Malchus, Hilarion / Jérôme) (ed. Pierre Leclerc, Edgardo Martin Morales, and Adalbert de Vogüé; Paris: Cerf, 2007); Englished, in Carolinne White, Early Christian Lives (London/New York: Penguin, 1998) 89–115.
The profile of Jerome’s Hilarion: 7.4 (4); 8.8 (3); 9.3 (5); 9.6 (3); 10.4 (2); 10.11 (2); 11.1 (2); 11.11 (22); 12.10 (2); 13.9 (2); 14.5 (2); 15.1 (1); 17.9 (21); 19.1 (1); 22.4 (18); 24.4 (22); 26.3 (1); 28.4 (13); 29.3 (17); 29.12 (22); 30.6 (1).
Historia monachorum in Aegypto, anonymous: ed. André-Jean Festugière and separate trans., Enquête sur les moines d’Égypte, in his Moines d’Orient (both, Paris: Cerf, 1964); text and translation together, André- Jean Festugière, Historia monachorum in Aegypto (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1971). For the problem of some duplication in the dependent Lausiac History, see below, Palladius. For an English version, see Norman Russell, Lives of the Desert Fathers (Piscataway, NJ: Anglican Sisters of the Love of God, 2009), with a bibliography pp. 6–7, on the different versions.
The profile of many monks in Egypt: Praef. 9 (1) and 9 (9); chap. 1.2 (10); 1.8 (10); 1.10 (10); 1.12 (1); 1.12 (5); 1.14 (11); 1.16 (3); 1.64 (10); 2.6 (1); 4.3 (13); 5.7 (9); 6.1 (9); 6.1 (10); 6.1 (1); 6.2 (22); 8.2 (9); 8.7 (1); 8.36 (23); 8.37 (22); 8.40 (20); 8.46 (20); 8.48 (10); 9.1 (13); 10.1 (9); 10.1 (1); 10.20 (12); 10.31 (16); 10.34f. (22); 12.7 (13); 12.15 (20); 15.1 (9); 16.1 (11); 19.1 (9); 20.12 (13); 21.1 (9); 21.1 (1); 21.15f. (13); 22.4 (2); 22.9 (22); 22.7 (12); 26.1 (9); 26.1 (1).
Hypatius’ Life by Callinicus, in Vida de Hipacio, Callinico. Introducción, traducción (ed. Ramon Teja; Madrid: Trotta, 2009); or Gerhardus Johannes Marinus Bartelink, Callinicos. Vie d’Hypatios. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes (Paris: Cerf, 1971).
The profile of Callinicus’ holy man Hypatius: 4.8f. (3); 6.7 (23); 9.6 (3); 12.2 (3); 12.10 (3); 15.2 (3); 18.1 (21); 20.3 (20); 22.1 (21); 22.5 (1); 22.7 (5); 22.10 (1); 22.11 (3); 22.14 (1); 22.15 (3); 22.21 (1); 22.21 (8); 28.5f. (3); 28.27f. (3); 28.32 (24); 28.47 (1); 28.50–56 (2); 31.1–3 (21); 32.19 (10); 36.3 (21); 38.4f. (5); 38.10 (8); 38.13f. (1); 40.1f. (2); 40.5 (2); 40.8–16 (2); 40.24 (19); 43.21f. (22); 44.2 (2); 44.15–19 (22); 44.21–23 (2); 44.24 (2); 44.27–29 (5); 44.37 (1); 46.4 (17).
John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints: Syriac Text Edited and Translated by Ernest Walter Brooks part I, in PO 17 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1923) 1–304, and part II in PO 18 (1924) 513–698, the following Profile references being to page numbers. [In part III (1926) there is no relevant evidence.] All three parts have been reprinted with unchanged pagination (Paris: Brepols, 2003 [1923–1925]).
The Profile of John of Ephesus’ many holy men: p. 5 (1); 7–8 (22); 8–9 (21); 9 (22); 10 (22); 11 (21); 11 (5); 12 (2); 12 (4); 14 (17); 14 (2); 15 (2); 15 (22); 16 (21); 17 (13); 17 (9); 18 (18); 20 (22); 24 (22); 25 (3); 26 (21); 29 (22); 30 (22); 34 (9); 41 (1); 43 (1); 57 (2); 63 (7); 64–68 (1); 70 (4); 71 (1); 73 (21); 74–75 (22); 79–80 (11); 108–109 (1); 117 (1); 223 (2); 223 (1); 300 (22); [part II] 581 (21); 596 (21); 604–605 (21); 613 (2); 613–614 (1); 615 (20).
Macarius “the Great,” in Émile Amélineau, Histoire des monastères de la Basse Égypte. Vies des saints Paule, Antoine, Macaire, Maxime et Domèce Jean le Nain, etc. Texte copte et traduction (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1894) 46–117.
The profile of Macarius “of Scete,” called “the Great”: page 88 (1); 90 (1); 91f. (3); 91-92 (7); 91-92 (6); 91-92 (2); 102 (11); 98 (3); 104 (21); 104 (1).
Pachomius and his successor Theodore, in Armand Veilleux, La vie de saint Pachôme selon la tradition copte (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1984) 21–259 [original French translated into English, 1980].
The profile of Pachomius and Theodore: §10 (21); 20 (13); 41 (3); 42 (23); 43 (2); 43 (11); 44 (2); 45 (1); 109 (2); 110 (2); 111 (2); 112 (3); 150 (1); 151 (1); 152 (3); 153 (3); 154 (3); 180 (10).
Palladius, The Lausiac History of Palladius (ed. Cuthbert Butler; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898); of date 420, see Nicolas Molinier, Histoire Lausiaque, Introduction, traduction et notes (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1999) 26 (date) and 56–222, the translation; Englished by William Kemp Lowther Clarke (London/New York: SPCK, 1918); more recently by Robert T. Meyer (Westminster/ London: Longmans, Green, 1965). The church historians Socrates (4.23) and Sozomen (3.14; 6.20, 28–34) drew heavily on Palladius, as also did Rufinus of Aquileia for a Latin version (PL 21:387–462; see Molinier 27). In Palladius’ 71 chapters are nine individuals who are also profiled in the Historia monachorum in Aegypto (see above). Since the duplication between Palladius and the Monks in Egypt is, however, so incomplete, here, all 71 chapters of the text are tallied. Only a minority yield anything relevant to my Tables.
The profile of Palladius’ holy men: 8.6 (12); 12.3 (3); 17.2 (10); 17.2 (1); 17.3 (11); 17.13 (2); 18.10 (13); 18.11 (1); 18.21 (3); 18.22 (2); 18.27 (8); 19.11 (1); 22.9 (2); 23.5 (13); 24.1 (1); 32.1 (10); 35.2 (10); 35.13 (10); 36.5 (6); 36.5 (2); 39.4 (1); 40.2 (21); 44.3 (1); 44.3 (2); 48.2 (13); 50 (22).
Paphnutius’ accounts in Coptic, in Tim Vivian, ‘Histories of the Monks of Upper Egypt’ and ‘The Life of Onnophrius’ by Paphnutius with ‘A Discourse on Saint Onnophrius’ by Pisentius of Coptos, Translated with Introduction (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2000) 73–141.
The profile of various monks: §5 (21); 27 (11); 31 (21); 46 (8); 46 (24); 53 (6); 75 (11); 84 (16); 86 (21); 88 (21); 90 (1); 98–100 (13); 101 (10); 103f. (3); 105 (4); 108 (7); 108 (1); 111 (22); 111–112 (5); 116 (3); 117 (8); 118 (15); 119f. (21); 122 (15); 123 (5); 124-126 (4); 124-126 (7); 125f. (4); 127-129 (2); 131 (18); 132-134 (18); 136 (9); 13 (21).
Simeon Stylites the Elder: the Syriac biography Englished in Robert Doran, The Lives of Simeon Stylites (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1992) 103–98, in the edition dated to 473 (pp. 36, 50), noting its character as an “apologia” (53). It is important not to rely on Hans Lietzmann’s edition (1908) of the sixth-century British Museum text, see Delehaye, Saints stylites vi. It is on this of 1908, however, and its German translation by Heinrich Hilgenfeld that Peter Brown’s article relies, where the chapter/verse numbers also differ from the earlier Vatican text on which Doran relies (Brown p. 90/ Hilgenfeld p. 117 §70 = Doran 163 §82, 119 §72 = 165 §85, 136 §93 = 137 §57, etc.). Another brief Life by Antonius, translated by André-Jean Festugière, Antioche païenne et chrétienne. Libanius, Chrysostome et les moines de Syrie (Paris: Boccard, 1959) 493–506, is Englished by Doran, Lives, 87–100; it contains little on miracles except, as Doran notes (97 n. 16), “later additions” published by Hans Lietzmann. As to the Life by Theodoret, for purposes of profiling it is considered only as it appears above in this author’s Historia religiosa along with other saints (and therein, chapter 26).
The Profile of the Stylite (Syriac): 6 (2); 7 (20); 9 (21); 11 (20); 17 (22); 22 (16); 29 (20); 33 (3); 34 (3); 35 (3); 36 (2); 37 (1); 38 (11) 38 (3); 39 (22); 56 (23); 56 (22); 57 (21); 57 (22); 60 (22); 61 (13); 63 (13); 64 (18); 65 (9); 69 (22); 70 (17); 71 (17); 72 (17); 73 (22); 74 (18); 75 (18); 77 (23); 77 (21); 78 (1); 79 (3); 80 (3); 81 (3); 82 (1); 83 (3); 84 (3); 85 (18); 86 (19); 88 (13); 89 (2); 90 (13); 91 (3); 92 (22); 100 (22); 101 (20); 105 (10); 106 (1); 106 (23).
Simeon the Younger’s anonymous Life in Paul van den Ven, La vie ancienne de S. Syméon stylite le Jeune (521–592) 2 vols.: 1: Introduction et texte grec (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1962) and 2: Traduction et commentaire (1970).
The profile of Simeon the Younger: Praef. (1); 1 (9); 14 (22); 20 (3); 21 (2); 42 (2); 43 (2); 44 (2); 45 (3); 46 (7); 48 (2); 49 (2); 50 (1); 51 (13); 52 (13); 53 (5); 54 (3); 55 (2); 56 (1); 57 (11); 58 (3); 59 (17); 60 (22); 61 (1); 64 (1); 66 (3); 67 (1); 68 (13); 69 (3); 70 (1); 71 (10); 72 (21); 72 (22); 73 (2); 74 (3); 75 (3); 76 (3); 77 (21); 78 (19); 79 (13); 80 (5); 80 (3); 81 (3); 82 (2); 84 (6); 85 (1); 86 (2); 87 (2); 88 (3); 89 (3); 92 (3); 95 (1); 96 (1); 97 (18); 101 (3); 101 (3); 102 (3); 105 (10); 111 (3); 113 (1); 114 (3); 115 (3); 116 (22); 117 (5); 118 (4); 118 (2); 119 (3); 120 (3); 122 (20); 123 (20); 131 (22); 123 (1); 136 (3); 137 (2); 137 (5); 138 (3); 139 (2); 138–140 (1); 140 (4); 141 (3); 142 (3); 143 (3); 144 (7); 145 (5); 146 (6); 147 (2); 148 (8); 149 (18); 150 (3); 151 (2); 152 (3); 153 (3); 154 (3); 155 (6); 156 (5); 158 (3); 158 (22); 163 (3); 167 (3); 168 (3); 170 (11); 172 (17); 173 (10); 174 (11); 175 (11); 176 (22); 177 (2); 178 (13); 179 (11); 180 (5); 182 (13); 183 (13); 184–185 (13); 187 (10); 188 (5); 190 (3); 191 (6); 192 (6); 193 (6); 195 (3); 196 (7); 197 (3); 198 (3); 199 (3); 200 (3); 201 (11); 203 (10); 207 (2); 212 (3); 213 (5); 213 (3); 214 (2); 214 (22); 215 (11); 216 (11); 217 (18); 218 (3); 219 (2); 220 (3); 223 (11); 225 (22); 226 (3); 227 (2); 28 (11); 229 (2); 230 (5); 230 (5); 231 (1); 232 (3); 233 (11); 234 (3); 236 (17); 237 (11); 238 (13); 239 (11); 241 (5); 242 (3); 244 (6); 245 (3); 246 (3); 247 (3); 248 (3); 249 (3); 250 (5); 251 (3); 252 (1); 253 (1); 254 (1).
Theodore of Sykeon’s biography by George of Sykeon, in Vie de Théodore de Sykeon 1. Texte, grec; 2, traduction (André-Jean Festugière; 2 vols.; Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1970), the saint d. 613; see also an English translation by Dawes and Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints, 88–185.
The profile of Theodore of Sykeon: 14 (17); 18 (2); 26 (3); 26a (1); 26a (8); 30b (13); 31 (3); 34 (22); 35 (2); 36 (14); 42 (11); 43 (2); 44 (2); 45 (8); 45 (18); 46 (2); 51 (18); 52 (18); 53 (18); 55 (19); 56 (18); 57 (10); 59 (1); 60 (20); 61 (1); 61 (22); 64 (6); 65 (3); 67 (6); 68 (3); 69 (22); 70 (11); 71 (2); 72 (7); 76 (21); 76 (22); 80b (1); 81 (3); 83 (5); 84 (2); 85 (3); 86 (2); 87 (2); 88 (2); 89 (2); 80 (10); 91 (3); 92 (20); 93 (2); 93 (4); 94 (2); 96 (6); 96 (3); 97 (2); 98 (8); 99 (8); 101a (18); 101a (14); 102 (3); 103 (2); 104 (15); 107 (3); 107 (3); 108 (3); 109 (3); 110 (3); 110 (6); 111 (3); 112 (3); 113 (3); 115a (1); 115b (14); 118b (14); 119 (10); 120 (10); 121 (3); 122 (5); 123 (2); 123 (13); 129 (2); 131 (1); 132 (2); 138 (2); 140 (2); 141 (18); 143 (3); 144 (17); 145 (14); 145 (8); 145 (24); 145 (1); 147 (21); 148 (21); 148 (22); 149 (22); 150 (23); 151 (21); 151 (22); 153 (10); 154 (1); 154 (3); 156 (4); 156 (1); 156a (5); 156a (3); 157 (2); 157 (20); 158 (1); 159 (3); 159 (11); 159 (2); 159 (2); 160 (8); 160 (1); 161 (1); 162 (2).
Theodoret’s history of the Church, trans. in Histoire ecclésiastique/Theodoret de Cyr; Greek text edited by Leon Parmentier and Günther Christian Hansen (3rd ed.; GCS, NF 5; Berlin: Akademie, 1998), notes and review by Jean Bouffartigue; introduction by Annick Martin; translation by Pierre Canivet (Paris: Cerf, 2006-2009). See relevant parts below in “Brief mentions.”
Theodoret, Historia religiosa (also called by the author, §10, “Historia philothea”), in Pierre Canivet and Alice Leroy-Molinghen, Théodoret de Cyr, Histoire des moines de Syrie ‘Histoire philothée’, 2 vols.; 1, Introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes (Paris: Cerf, 1977–79); 2 (1979) with uninterrupted chapter numeration but with its own pagination; also an English translation by Richard M. Price, History of the Monks of Syria by Theodoret (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1985).
The profile of Theodoret’s holy men: 1.4 (22); 1.4 (18); 1.6. (19); 1.7 (21); 1.8 (22); 1.8 (7); 1.11 (14); 2.18 (3); 2.19 (1); 2.19 (3); 2.20 (3); 2.21 (10); 3.7 (13); 3.8 (17); 3.9 (2); 3.9 (9); 3.22 (2); 5.8 (24); 6.2 (13); 6.4 (9); 6.5 (24); 6.6 (1); 6.10 (13); 7.3 (11); 8.9 (22); 8.11 (8); 8.13 (9); 8.13 (24); 8.14 (14); 9.4 (2); 9.5 (3); 9.7 (3); 9.9 (2); 9.10 (2); 9.12 (22); 9.14 (3); 9.15 (1); 10.4 (17); 10.7. (18); 11.4 (1); 11.4 (4); 13.9 (3); 13.11 (2); 13.13 (2); 13.14 (16); 13.15 (10); 13.16. (4); 13.17 (3); 14.3 (1); 14.3 (3); 14.4 (22); 15.2 (22); 15.3 (22); 16.2 (1); 16.3 (24); 17.3 (23); 17.8 (23); 21.14 (7); 21.14 (1); 21.14 (7); 21.17 (10); 22.3 (1); 22.5 (13); 24.7 (1); 26.11 (1); 26.11 (12); 26.15 (3); 26.16 (3); 26. 17 (9); 26.19 (10); 26.21 (4); 26.22 (9); 26.26 (23); 28.5 (9); 28.5 (8).
Sources not used or used with caution:
Jerome’s three ascetics’ biographies are all suspect. See Christine Mohrmann, “Introduzione” to Bartelink, Vita di Antonio, xliii n. 2; but Hilarion figures also in other sources. His life is listed separately, above. As to the Paul biography, see John Wortley, Alphabetical Sayings, 271; Harmless, Desert Christians, 105; and Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) 133, 183 (“total fiction”).
Also a poor source, as being so highly rhetorical and morally didactic, the anonymous Syriac Life of Rabbula translated by Robert Doran, Stewards of the Poor: The Man of God, Rabbula, and Hiba in Fifth Century Edessa (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2006) 65–105, and 64 on the preferred Greek text, ed. 1865.
“Mark the Deacon,” Life of Porphyry, dismissed as a sixth-century fabrication by Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 260–74, citing various scholars (though the work continues to be used as irresistible).
Brief mentions, in alphabetical order:
A certain Abraham abbot of a monastery in the vicinity of Aleppo visited by Rabbula, where both the monks and the abbot wrought miracles of healing; see Doran, Stewards, pages 67 (1) and 67 (3); anonymous monks (2) in Regnault et al., above at note 16, p. 352, and in the Apophthegmata patrum, “alphabetical,” ed. Wortley 277 (11); Barsanouphius in this abbot’s Correspondance 88 (3) and 534 (2), cf. above at nn. 16, 51; also 364 (23) in the same edition; Barses in Theodoret, Hist. eccl. 4.16.1–2 (1) in Pierre Canivet’s translation, Histoire ecclésiastique 2 (Paris: Cerf, 2009) 240–42; Chariton, the anonymous Life, in Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; trans. Leah Di Segni; Minneapolis (Fortress Press, 1990) 396–420, at §11 (22); 13 (9); 16 (1); 21 (9); 21 (1); 24 (18); John “of Egypt” in Theodoret, Hist. eccl. 5.25 [24].2-4 (10); John, in Rapp, “ ‘For next to God,’ ” above at note 6, pp. 71-72 (3), relief του ϰαµάτου; Moses (Moïse), in Theodoret, Hist. eccl. 4.23.5 (9), θαυµατουϱγίαι; Nephoros (3), in Rapp, above at note 6, p. 70; Paphnutius (3), P. Lon. 1926, above at note 3; and Rabbula (3) in the Syriac text translated by Doran p. 87, a cautious wording short of direct healing.
