HISTORY OF CONSECRATED LIFE BULLET POINTS FOR LECTURE 4 RELIGIOUS LIFE IN LATE ANTIQUITY: THE ROMAN EAST DESERT

MOTHERS The world inhabited by the Desert Fathers is unique in its starkness. It was a world of constant, relentless battle, of ceaseless resistance against the sheer overwhelming force of the environment, as well as the equally ceaseless resistance against the demons that assailed the inner man. The desert was the ultimate arena, where the true athletes fought to achieve the imitatio Christi. It was a world of men. Women were not supposed to have any place in such an environment. Not only that: the desert world, in its complete isolation, had been created in part for the exact purpose of escaping from women and all they represented. o At Scetis lived a brother who was an experienced fighter. The enemy evoked in him the memory of a beautiful woman and tormented him severely. One day, through Providence, another brother came down from Egypt to Scetis, and, in the course of the conversation, told him that the wife of so-and-so had died. This was precisely the woman who so troubled him. At this news, he took his coat and departed by night to the place where she had been buried. He opened the tomb gathered the liquid flowing from the cadaver with his coat, and brought it back into his cell. The stench was intolerable, but he stared at this infection in front of his eyes, fighting his thoughts by saying: See here what you desired; well, now you have it, sit down again. And he subjected himself to this stench until the battle in him had ceased. o Anonymous account in the Apophthegmata Patrum: A brother was tempted violently by the demons: they changed themselves into beautiful women and tempted him for forty days without interruption, to make him yield to sin. But, seeing that he resisted with manly courage and could not be overcome, God, who saw his beautiful combat, granted him never to be tempted again. o Abba Theodore of Pherme: Do not sleep in a place where there is a woman. o Abba Daniels: Never put your hand in the dish with a woman, and never eat with her; thus you will escape a little the demon of fornication. o The disciple of Apa Sisoes said to him, Father, you have grown old. Let us move a little closer to the settled land. The Old Man said, Where there is no woman, that is where we should go. The disciple said to him, What other place is there that has no woman, if not the desert? The Old Man said to him, Take me to the desert. o Abba Arsenius to a woman who went to his desert hermitage: How dare you make such a journey? Do you not realize you are a woman and cannot go just anywhere?

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HISTORY OF CONSECRATED LIFE BULLET POINTS FOR LECTURE 4 In spite of such negative attitudes toward them, women in search of ascetic perfection went anywhere to find solitude and union with God from the boundaries of the villages and fertile lands, and even into the desert. In His Lausiac History, Palladius called them manly women ( = gynaikon andreion), who through Gods grace have fought battles equal to men (LH, 41). In venturing into the desert, these women were considered by male ascetics and true desert Fathers: they became men. Becoming men ennobled several women ascetics in the desert like Theodora of Nitria, Sarah of Pelusium, and Syncletica of Egypt to become amma, who were sought after by many desert abbas for their wisdom. Amma Theodora was one of the earliest desert-dwellers (and the only one in the Apophthegmata Patrum) to describe acedia ( = akdia) , a vice specific to the desert experience and one of the roots of sin (in fact, originally one of the capital sins) which causes faintheartedness, evil thoughts, and un-reasonable listlessness: Acedia attacks your body through sickness, debility, weakening of the knees, and all the members. It dissipates strength of soul and body, so that one believes one is ill and no longer able to pray. Amma Syncletica: Just as the bird who abandons the eggs she was sitting on prevents them from hatching, so the monk or the virgin grows cold and their faith dies, when they go from one place to another. Those who are great athletes must contend against stronger enemies. Two old men, great anchorites, came to the district of Pelusium to visit Amma Sarah. When they arrived one said to the other, Let us humiliate this old woman. So they said to her, Be careful not to become conceited thinking to yourself: Look how anchorites are coming to see me, a mere woman. But Amma Sarah said to them: According to nature I am a woman, but not according to my thoughts. It is I who am a man, you who are women.
OLYMPIAS THE DEACONESS AND THE OLYMPIADOS OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Olympias (361-408), a wealthy patrician in her own right after her parents death, became a widow in 386 and refused to remarry a relative of Emperor Theodosius. She was made deaconess by Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople, and soon a group of patrician women began gathering in her home popularly called Olympiados for spiritual discussions and to organize charitable works.

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HISTORY OF CONSECRATED LIFE BULLET POINTS FOR LECTURE 4 Her friendship with John Chrysostom, made bishop of Constantinople in 398, became a partnership in the ministry of charity. She had the money and zeal; he had the common sense necessary for the administration of such large-scale charity. However, John Chrysostom was under attack on several sides: from the clerics angered by his prohibition of their housing of syneisaktoi, from the courtiers of Empress Eudoxia whom he attacked in his sermons for their extravagant lifestyle at the cost of the poor (who applauded the bishops sermons), and from bishops in neighboring dioceses who were jealous of him. Directly affected by this attack on John Chrysostom were the women of the Olympiados. The fact that he alone could enter the enclosure of these women did not help malicious rumors against him and Olympias were circulated by his enemies. After John Chrysostom was exiled to Armenia in 404, his enemies began to harass the residents of the Olympiados. After being blamed for the burning of the Hagia Sophia the Christian cathedral of Constantinople Olympias was fined heavily and exiled. Her community was then disbanded. Olympias died in 408, not long after John Chrysostoms death. Her community, reunited by her relative Marina, was able to return to Constantinople in 416 after they reconciled themselves with its bishop. The Olympiados continued to exist until the Persian invasion of Constantinople in the early 7th century.

MACRINA AND THE FAMILIAL MONASTERY OF ANNESI

Macrina (327-80) was born into one of the most brilliant and sainted families in Christian history: Macrina the Elder, her grandmother; Basil the Elder and Emmelia, her parents; Basil the Great, Peter of Sebaste, & Gregory of Nyssa, her brothers all are honored as saints of the Church. Yet Macrina can be considered eminent among her more famous brothers because she was the spiritual mother of her entire family, even being a spiritual guide to her own mother into the philosophic and spiritual manner of life. When the great Basil (her younger brother) returned after his long period of education, puffed up beyond measure with his success, Macrina took him in hand and with such speed did she draw him also to the ascetic life and an intense Christian faith. At the age of 12, she became widowed when the man arranged for her suddenly died. Claiming before her parents that she was by then a virgin widow, she consecrated herself to God.

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HISTORY OF CONSECRATED LIFE BULLET POINTS FOR LECTURE 4 When her own mother Emmelia was widowed around 345, Macrina convinced her that they both transfer their household to their country estate in Annesi. There, she turned it into a model of familial monasticism where all (men and women) lived on a footing of equality with the staff of maids in an atmosphere of humility, poverty, asceticism, and piety. Later, she gathered there also a chors of virgins privately consecrated to God. o The virgin Macrinas life became her mothers guide to her philosophical and non-materialistic way of lifeShe induced her to place herself on an equal footing with the whole chors of virgins, so that she shared with them in equality the same table, the same kind of bed, and all the same necessities of life. All differences of rank were removed from their way of life They all lived apart from all worldly trivialities and was brought into harmony with the life of the angels. For neither anger nor envy nor hatred nor pride nor anything else of that kind was ever seen in them; the desire for earthly vanities, honor, glory, pride, and everything of that kind had been banished.Their delight was in self-control; their glory was to be unknown; their wealth was to possess nothing, having shaken off all material superfluity from their bodies as though it were tasks about which people busy themselves in this life. It consisted only of attention to things of God, prayer without ceasing, and the uninterrupted chanting of the Psalms, which was extended equally in time through night and day, so that for the virgins it was both work and rest from work. (Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae) After Emmelias death, the community took on a more definitive monastic form. By the year of Macrinas death, her koinnia at Annesi had a church of its own and there was a male communitythat was attached to it, located on the opposite side of the river and headed by her brother Peter. Macrina presided over the female koinnia; Peter over the male. But he considered Macrina his spiritual mother. Thus, it was Macrina who was the guiding spirit in the monastic settlement.

BASILIAN KOINNIA

Influenced by Macrina to aspire for asksis, Basil (330-79) embarked on a tour of the monastic communities in Egypt in 356. His exposure to monasticism was primarily brought about with a futile search for the elusive Eustathius of Sebaste. On his return to Caesarea a year later, Basil retired to Annesi to withdraw from the entire world to break all links that bind the soul to the body, that is, to be without

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HISTORY OF CONSECRATED LIFE BULLET POINTS FOR LECTURE 4 city, without house, without personal property, without particular friendships, without possessions, without means of livelihood. By 358, Basil joined an already existing group of brothers united in their souls by prayer and meditation and guided by written rules and canons. However, it was at this time that Basil himself began writing his ascetical principles. The invitation to serve the Church with his erudition eventually made him leave the Annesi fraternity in 359. But in the years that led to his ordination as presbyter (362) and then bishop (370), Basil continued to communicate to them his advices on asceticism. The result is a vast body of rules known as the Great Asceticon, which contain the catechetical-like Longer and Shorter Basilian Rules. Basils koinnia for men and women were hierarchically organized. They were segregated by sex and have been located primarily on the countryside. Basil expounded on obedience, insisting on the duty of the superior to correct others but also on his own need to be corrected (27). Power is not to be used autocratically; its prime purpose is the instruction and spiritual advancement of the subject (30 & 31). For him, the common life and obedience were valuable protections against histrionic self-advertisement and excess. Thus, there is no room for the individualism and spectacular ascetical feats of Egyptian anchorites in his conceived koinnia. Poverty for him is not a juridical convention but a generous devotion of the fruits of conscientious work for the service of the poor. Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore, the brethren should be occupied at definite times in the work of the hands. Basil emphasized that work was a means of supporting the community. He thus enjoined novices to be taught a trade, preferably one of the sorts that produced marketable essentials, such as agriculture, weaving or shoemaking. Asceticism for him must be seen as a conscious response to the evangelical call to love ones neighbors. He exhorts the members of the koinnia to outdo the philanthropy of those outside the Church. Social concerns should preoccupy its members: education of children, nursing the sick, caring for the elderly. Female koinnia followed the same principles. They were led by a proestsa the one who leads, protects, and cares for the ones in her keeping and lived separately from the men. While the proestsa was the undisputed authority within her own community, spiritual guidance and, as a matter of course, the administration of sacraments were the prerogative of the superior of the male koinnia and selected elders (presbyteroi).

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HISTORY OF CONSECRATED LIFE BULLET POINTS FOR LECTURE 4

LAVRIOTES OF PALESTINE

Colonies of lavriotes existed in parts of Palestine since the early 4th century. Jerome claims that the first of this was initiated by Hilarion of Gaza (+371). Educated in Alexandria, he was influenced by the asksis of Antony, that on his return to Gaza (308), he settled in a hut by the sea as an anchorite for 22 years. By 330, he had already attracted other anchorites like him who gathered around him to form a lavra. Chariton initiated his lavras just when bishops were assembling at Nicea (325). These three foundations at Pharan, Douka, and Souka grew into prominence in the life of the Church in Palestine.

MELANIA THE ELDER AND THE AELIA MONASTERY

As the fame of Eastern asceticism spread, a tiny but growing stream of asceticminded persons from the West began to flow into the Roman provinces of Syria and Egypt. Among the first was a wealthy Roman widow, Melania (+410), who set out to visit Egyptian anchorites in 372. At Nitria, she met Rufinus of Aquilea, a friend of St. Jerome, who was on a similar pilgrimage. Their collaboration would last for some twenty years. Around 379-80, both eventually settled at Aelia Capitolina (the name given to Jerusalem after the 2nd Jewish Revolt of 135), where they established and directed two cenobite communities one for men, one for women on (or near) the Mount of Olives. They spent the last 27 years of their lives bestowing gifts and food on local clergy and serving with their own private funds the bishops, solitaries, and virgins who visited them. Of the organization and rule in Melanias monastery, and the relationship between Melania and Rufinus, nothing is known. But Palladius assures us that no one escaped her benevolence, neither in the East nor in the West, neither in the North nor in the South. She was spiritual director of Evagrius Ponticus, a learned theologian. And she was well-suited: Being very learned and loving literature, she turned night into day by perusing every writing of the ancient commentators 3,000,000 lines of Origen and 2,500,000 of Gregory, Stephen, Pierius, Basil, and other standard writers. And she did not read them once only or in an offhand way, but she worked on them, dredging through each book seven or eight times.

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HISTORY OF CONSECRATED LIFE BULLET POINTS FOR LECTURE 4

PAULA AND EUSTOCHIUM AND THEIR BETHLEHEM MONASTERY

The widow Paula (437-404), a Roman patrician who excelled in Scripture study, maintained her own household and her status as a Christian widow, even if the call to asksis in the East strongly resounded in her heart. She first met Jerome during his stay in Rome as secretary to Pope Damasus (37884). She was among a group of women who pressed Jerome for lectures on Scriptures and lessons in Greek and Hebrew. When Jerome was forced to go back to the East after Damasus death in 384, Paula and her daughter Eustochium followed him. All three visited the ascetics of Palestine and Nitria (Egypt) before settling in Bethlehem at 386. There, she built two monasteries, one for women, the other for men (and later a house of hospitality). Life in these monasteries roughly followed the Rules which Paula observed in the monasteries of Nitria. The women were divided into three groups for meals and during work periods. They came together at the 3rd, 6th, and 9th hours, at evening, and in the middle of the night for the singing of the Psalms. On Sunday, they all walked to church for the Eucharist, and on returning, they each received their individual assignments for the week. Servants were not allowed and the women did most of the manual labor scrubbing floors, tending fires, cooking, sewing, serving as well as work for the poor. Obedience to the superior, detachment, poverty, asksis, and charity were virtues emphasized. Much stress was placed on the study of Scripture. In fact, on Paulas request to Jerome for an accurate Psalter, he demanded that his critical work be copied exactly by Paula and Eustochium themselves the earliest example of one of monasticisms most important contribution to Western culture: the scriptorium. In spite the collaboration between Paula and Jerome, the relationship was not all pleasant: Paula was hindered by Jerome. For though she was able to surpass all, having great abilities, he hindered her by his jealousy, having induced her to serve his own plan. (Palladius, Lausiac History, ch. 41) When pilgrims went to Bethlehem, they flocked to Paula, not to Jerome. He himself admitted: Who does not allow that what strikes the pilgrim from all parts of the world who come to Bethlehem is Paula herself!... Paula, from the very depths of her humility, eclipses us all.

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HISTORY OF CONSECRATED LIFE BULLET POINTS FOR LECTURE 4

EXTREME FORMS OF ANCHORITISM IN ROMAN SYRIA

The extreme practices of asceticism in the Syriac Church in pre-Constantinian times found continuity in the many 4th century anchorites surveyed by Sozomen and Theodoret. Stylites (Gr., stylos: pillars) They were solitaries who took up their abode upon the tops of a pillar and spend much if not all of their lives there. St. Gregory of Nazianzen (P.G., XXXVII, 1456) speaks of a solitary who stood upright for many years together, absorbed in contemplation, without ever lying down. Theodoret wrote that he had seen a hermit who had passed ten years in a tub suspended in midair from poles . Dendrites (Gk., dendron: tree) - These refer to anchorites who led asksis by living on a tree or inside its trunk. A certain anchorite from Apamea lived on a cypress, chaining himself to it to avoid falling (RevOrChret 4 [1899]: 337-40). Grazers (Gr., boskoi: shepherds) - They neither have houses nor eat bread or cooked food nor drink wine, but living on the mountains they praise God in prayers and hymns; They abstained from labor that , when it is time for nourishment, they wander over the mountain, like animals driven to pasture, each with a sickle, and feed on plants. (Sozomen, Eccl. Hist. VI.33) Statics (Gr., statikos: causing to stand) - (They) tamed their body with vigils, standing and fasting, that for a long time they remained without movement, unable to walk. Bidding farewell to tent and hut and enclosure, they had the sky for roof, and lets in all the contrasting assaults of the air, inundated by torrential rain now, later frozen by frost and snow, then burnt and consumed by the rays of the sun. (Theodoret, Hist. Mon. XVII.2, XXI.3) Recluses (Gk. stenochoria: life in a restricted place) They repaired to the desert, built small cells that were not even the size of their bodies. Surrounding it with another small wall, they immured themselves continuously and, deprived of human company, conversed with the divine Master of the universe. (Theodoret, Hist. Mon. III.2) Xeniteia Nilus of Ancyra described them as pilgrims in a strange land who, out of their desire for complete isolation, even in the midst of the people, feigned eccentricities, even insanity. (De monachorum praestantia) Simeon Stylites (+459) [in Syriac: emn Estnai] is the most famous of these eccentric figures in the history of Syriac asceticism. Growing up an uninstructed Christian, he experienced a conversion that drew him, thereafter, to seek God alone. He spent two years as an ascetic before joining the monastery of Eusebn at Tell Ad. After around ten years, he was asked by the abbot and the community to leave.

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HISTORY OF CONSECRATED LIFE BULLET POINTS FOR LECTURE 4 The reason behind this: he annoyed everyone with his extreme asksis which includes tying a rope of palm filaments around his body until his blood trickled and burying himself on a breast-high hole for two years. After living for a short time in an empty cistern, he settled in 410 at Telnen (not far from Antioch), on a piece of ground with a roofless enclosure. To escape admirers who wanted to touch him and pulled out the hair of his pelt clothing, Simeon mounted the first of three increasingly high pillars. On this, he took his stance of continual prayer. The final pillar stood at 60 feet high and had a top platform of about six feet square. Exposed to all elements, Simeon Stylites stood there and prostrated in prayer from sunset until 3 p.m.; he healed, counseled, preached, and arbitrated for his visitors until sundown. This went on for around 56 years till his death. He never came down from this pillar in spite of the harsh weather changes, sickness, hunger, and threats of excommunication. According to him, descending it would be tantamount to breaking a special covenant he had made with God. The fame of Simeon Stylites spread far and wide during his own lifetime: stretching from Britain in the west to Georgia in the east. In fact, little effigies of him were being manufactured in Rome and sold as amulets. He gathered male disciples within his enclosure but forbade women from entering it. Simeon demanded from his disciples an intense form of poverty and solitude. Everyone was to remain there and to be content with the food Gods grace sent them.

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