Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (36 page)

The power of monks and hermits was dependent on their reputation in following Antony's heroic austerity. They had the inspiration of Christ's words in the Beatitudes (see p. 88), but there were also more contemporary reasons propelling them. Like the ascetics of Syria, they would know of the terrible continuing sufferings of Christians in the fourth-century Sassanian Empire, and they would also be uncomfortably aware that such suffering was no longer available in the Roman Empire. In default of any more martyrdoms provided by Roman imperial power, they martyred their bodies themselves, and thus they annexed the esteem which martyrs had already gained among the Christian faithful. They were extending the category of sainthood. There was quite conscious competition in this between Egyptians and Syrians, what Athanasius in his biography was happy to describe as 'a noble contest'.
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During the fourth century, Egyptian hermits and monks became famous for their self-denial, vying like athletes in such exercises for God's glory as standing day and night, or eating no cooked food for years on end.
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This spirit was equalled in Palestine and Syria, where monks and hermits performed terrifying feats of endurance and punishment of their worldly bodies by squeezing into small spaces or living in filth. Jerome, the Latin scholar-immigrant to the East who had tried their lifestyle and did not take to it (see p. 295), did his best to put them down with the comment that Syrian monks were as much concerned for the dirtiness of their bodies as with the cleanliness of their hearts.
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Syrians would probably have retorted that in view of the continuing appalling sufferings of their fellow Syrians at the hands of the Sassanians (see pp. 185-6), they had rather more grasp of what martyrdom meant than he did.

One Syrian word for monk is
abila
, 'mourner'. One of the many Christian spiritual writers who sought to borrow respectability for his works by placing them under the name of the much-honoured Ephrem the Syrian maintained that Jesus had cried but never laughed, and so 'laughter is the beginning of the destruction of the soul'.
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Nevertheless, it was in this same Syrian setting in the fifth century that there evolved a particular form of sacred self-ridicule or critique of society's conventions: the tradition of the Holy Fool. It was a specialized form of denying the world. Behind its Syrian origins lurked a Greek archetype from before the coming of Christianity: Diogenes of Sinope (see pp. 29-30). The first well-known reviver of Diogenes's deliberate attempt to flout all convention was Simeon, who came to be known in Syrian as
Salus
('foolish'). Simeon outdid Diogenes in active rudeness: when he arrived in the city of Emesa (now Homs in Syria), he dragged a dead dog around, threw nuts at women during church services and gleefully rushed naked into the women's section of the city bathhouse ('as if for the glory of God', his biographer optimistically commented). Not unnaturally he caused considerable offence, then somewhat illogically himself took offence at a group of girls who mocked him, miraculously leaving a number of them permanently cross-eyed. His affectionate chronicler a century later was Leontius, a Cypriot bishop. Bishops are not normally associated with antisocial behaviour; perhaps Leontius was writing in the same satirical spirit as Dean Swift. Certainly Diogenes 'the dog' lurked in some of Leontius's literary allusions - not least in the dead dog hanging from Simeon's belt. The Holy Fool was destined to have a long history in the Orthodox tradition (although for some reason the Serbs never took to him). His extrovert craziness is an interesting counterpoint or safety valve to the ethos of prayerful silence and traditional solemnity which is so much part of Orthodox identity. Not all Orthodox theologians have been very comfortable with that contrast.
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One of the most extraordinary practices adopted by some ascetics in Syria was to spend years on end exposed on top of a specially built stone column, living on a wicker platform which resembled the basket of a modern hot-air balloon. This form of devotion was pioneered in the early fifth century by another Simeon, therefore nicknamed the Stylite ('pillar-dweller'). Once established on his column, he reputedly never descended from it before his death. Since the column was successively extended in height to some sixty feet, special arrangements were presumably made for the alterations; while detailed investigation has solved one obvious practical question by revealing evidence that this and subsequent pillars were en suite. Otherwise, Simeon's frugal needs were met by an eager entourage of admirers who hoisted food up to him from the ground. His pillar survives in part, surrounded by a massive ruined basilica in the Syrian hill country beyond Aleppo, within sight of the modern border with Turkey. The column has literally been eaten away by its devotees, who over centuries chipped off small portions which they then ground to powder and swallowed for healing purposes. The remnant, now whittled down to man height from its original sixty feet, resembles a well-sucked lollipop (see Plate 3).

Over the next seven centuries, around 120 people imitated Simeon's initiative in Syria and Asia Minor. They were like living ladders to Heaven, and even if hermits, they were far from remote. St Simeon himself had chosen one of the most elevated sites in his portion of northern Syria next to a major road, dominating the view for scores of miles, and preaching twice a day.
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Stylites often became major players in Church politics, shouting down their theological pronouncements from their little elevated balconies to the expectant crowds below, or giving personalized advice to those favoured enough to climb the ladder and join them on their platform. There was little love lost between some rival pillars of different theological persuasions. Simeon the younger Stylite (521-97) is rather implausibly said to have insisted on spending his infancy on a junior pillar, but there is no doubt that he eventually graduated to a full-scale pillar near Antioch, of which there are remnants even more substantial than those of his elder namesake. It was possible for pilgrims to get there without too much trouble from the city, making for an edifying day out. Simeon does not seem to have protested while a large expensive church (whose ruins also still survive) was being built round his pillar, thus making this ragged hermit into a bizarre living relic, sole exhibit in a Christian zoo.
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It is plausible that one of the most important symbols of Islam, the minaret, was inspired by the sight of the later representatives of these Syrian Christian holy men summoning the faithful to worship God from their pillars. The first known minaret, after all, was part of the great Ummayad mosque in Damascus, well within the cultural zone of the Stylites.

Pillar-dwelling made it briefly into the Balkans, but in the climate of Europe westwards, it proved impracticable. Likewise in Asia Minor the winters were much harsher than further south, and even most ascetics were inclined to community life rather than the individualism of Antony or Simeon. It was here that most of the monastic rules were devised which form the basis of modern Eastern monasticism. Chief among their formulators was the monk Basil, who, unlike many talented theologians, combined wisdom and practicality, so that his influence was decisive not only in monastic life but also in one of the greatest doctrinal crises of the fourth century (see p. 218). He has come to be called 'the Great', and he was one of the first to set a pattern which became a norm in the Eastern Churches (see p. 437): he was first a monk, but was then chosen as bishop of his native Caesarea in Cappadocia, the modern Kayseri in Turkey. Basil, then, can be given much of the credit for uniting the charisma of monk and bishop, one of the potential problems for the fourth-century Church. He had gentle but firm words discouraging the hermit lifestyle in favour of community: 'the solitary life has one aim, the service of the needs of the individual. But this is plainly in conflict with the law of love, which the apostle fulfilled when he sought not his own advantage but that of the many, that they might be saved.'
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Basil's rules for monastic life were imitated and adapted to local conditions in the West, when only a few decades later Western Christians began experimenting for themselves with the monastic life (see pp. 312-18).

Basil's importance for the future of monasticism was equalled by that of his contemporary and acquaintance Evagrius/Evagrios, from the province of Pontus on the southern shores of the Black Sea (hence 'Evagrius Ponticus'), who travelled far from his homeland and a later popular ministry in Constantinople to become a monk in the deserts to the west of the Nile Delta. He and Basil were among the first monks to turn to writing alongside the physical struggles through which ascetics built up their spiritual life, yet the writings of Evagrius illustrate once more how uncomfortably the monastic movement might sit within the structures of the Christian Church. He was an admirer of Origen, and consequently suspect to many; in fact 150 years after Origen was first posthumously condemned by a Church council in 400, the same fate befell Evagrius, accused of 'Origenism' alongside Origen himself and condemned by the fifth Council of Constantinople in 553 (see p. 327). What made Evagrius's ideas particularly suspect later was his distinctive pronouncement that the highest level of contemplation could produce no image or form when it reached to the divine, in order that a true union with God could take place: 'Never give a shape to the divine as such when you pray, nor allow your mind to be imprinted by any form, but go immaterial to the Immaterial and you will understand.'
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By the eighth and ninth centuries, that sounded dangerously like fuel for the image-haters, the 'Iconoclasts' (see pp. 442-56), and Evagrius's memory gained renewed condemnation. It has taken the work of modern scholars to recover much of his work from Armenian or Syriac manuscripts and reassess him as one of the greatest founding fathers of Christian spiritual writing. His immediate impact was profound, and his ideas quietly worked away among communities of monks able to transmit them if only by word of mouth from generation to generation.

Even when it was impolitic to admire, let alone name, Evagrius, his descriptions of progress in the spiritual life could not be and were not ignored, because they resonated in the experience of generations of monks to come. Like so many others, he started on a road of inner exploration: a pattern in which the ascetic faced struggles and torments, to arrive at a state of serenity (
apatheia
) and then a final state achieved by the true master of the spirit, for which Evagrius was not afraid to use the resonant word
gnosis
. In all this Evagrius pointed, like a physician prescribing a programme of exercise, to an essential frame for spiritual progress: a rhythm of each day in structured monastic life, the orderly recital from the Psalms of David followed by a short time of silent prayer (in his case, a hundred times a day), and meditation on the Bible, which provided the seedbed in which prayer could grow. He was a strong believer in the human ability to receive God's generosity and mercy and grow in grace: 'we come into [this] life possessing all the seeds of the virtues. And just as tears fall with the seeds, so with the sheaves there is joy.' In an echo of Origen's universalism, he repeatedly asserted that even those suffering in Hell kept those imperishable seeds of virtue. No wonder his Church decided that he was dangerous.
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The very fact of the deliberate competition between Egyptian and Syrian monks in striving for holiness demonstrates their consciousness of the wider world; they were far from detached from the life and concerns of the Church. Monks and monastic leaders now often complicated political struggles and exercised power in ways which seem far from the Saviour's admonitions to humility, love and forgiveness. First in the Eastern and then the Western Church, they proved to be key players in theological confrontations, beginning with the struggles which erupted in the wake of Constantine's new ecclesiastical alliance.

CONSTANTINE, ARIUS AND THE ONE GOD (306-25)

Very quickly the Emperor Constantine I learned to his cost that Christians were inclined to imperil the unity which their religion proclaimed. The first instance of this came as a result of the Great Persecution: renewed quarrels about how to heal the wounds to the Church's self-esteem. In Egypt, hardliners were so shocked at the Bishop of Alexandria's willingness to forgive the repentant lapsed that around 306 one of them, Bishop Melitius of Lycopolis, founded his own rival clerical hierarchy, which disrupted the Church in Alexandria for decades.
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An even more serious split took place in the North African Church, where equally issues of forgiveness were combined with the problem of who had legitimate authority to forgive. A disputed episcopal election took place in Carthage, product of complicated arguments about who had done what in the crisis, combined with personality clashes. The Churches in Rome and elsewhere recognized Caecilian as bishop - one of the prices of recognition being his abandonment of the view of baptism which Cyprian had upheld independently in North Africa (see pp. 174-5). The opposition, furious at what they saw as this final proof of Caecilian's unworthiness, rallied behind the rival bishop, Donatus. The centuries-long Donatist schism in the North African Church had begun.
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Constantine's interventions in this intractable dispute have a remarkably personal quality, as the ruler of one of the most powerful empires in world history suddenly found himself confronted with subjects who appealed to a higher principle than his power. The dissidents were of course used to doing so, but the Emperor had not expected such ingratitude after he had ended the Great Persecution. If he knew nothing else about the Christian God, he knew that God was One. Oneness was in any case a convenient emphasis for the emperor who had destroyed Diocletian's Tetrarchy to replace it with his own single power, but there is more to the annoyance and apprehension apparent in Constantine's official correspondence than cynical political calculation. Anything which challenged the unity of the Church was likely to offend the supreme One God, and that might end his run of favour to the Emperor. Faced with petitions from the Donatists, in 313 Constantine made a decision of great significance for the future. Rather than make a judgement for the Christians with the help of the traditional imperial legal system, as the non-Christian Emperor Aurelian had once done before him (see p. 175), he would use the expertise of Church leaders, asking them to bring the matter 'to a fitting conclusion'.
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So he adapted the North African Church's well-established practice of submitting disputes to councils of bishops, with the difference that now for the first time they were gathered from right across the Mediterranean.