CHAPTER 7

Saints and the City

(FOURTH TO FIFTH CENTURIES)

It has often been a matter of discussion among many people as to which monk
was the first to inhabit the desert. Some, going back further into the past,
have ascribed the beginning to the blessed Elijah and to John [the Baptist]. …
Others, whose opinion is commonly accepted, claim that Antony was the firstaffirm to this day
to undertake this way of life. … Amathas and Macarius, Antony’s disciples
… affirm to this day that a certain Paul of Thebes was the originator of the
practice … of the solitary life.¹

So Jerome began his life of Paul the Hermit. According to this, Paul went into the desert during the persecutions of Decius and Valerian – i.e. at some point in the 250s – but it is clear from Jerome’s account that although Paul was supposedly ‘the originator of the practice … of the solitary life’, he was adapting a routine of spiritual discipline and self-denial that had already been current in Christian circles for many years. This kind of practice is known as asceticism, from the Greek askesis (practice, training). The ascetics themselves traced their way of life back to Christ’s disciples who, according to the Acts of the Apostles, sold their possessions in order to share the proceeds with the poor and who then shared all their goods (Acts 4.32–5).² A popular form of asceticism for women – living a life of prayer and self-denial within the parental home – was popularly traced back to the early life of Mary, the mother of Christ, and to various early Christian disciples.³

The popular stories about the beginnings of asceticism and their very practical concerns – money, food and sex – may seem very distant from the theological debates discussed in the previous chapters. But Athanasius, the Cappadocians and Ephrem were deeply involved with the development of asceticism in the fourth century and their concern is evident in their writings. Athanasius, for example, is credited with the Life of Antony of Egypt which became swiftly famous and was translated into several languages, including Latin and Syriac. Even if he was not the author, he certainly gained much of his support from Egyptian monks. Basil wrote some guidelines for life in a monastic community.⁴ Both Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus wrote pieces encouraging Christians to imitate Christ and take up an ascetic lifestyle, and Nyssa’s Life of Macrina is one of the most engaging accounts of fourth-century Christian ascetic life. Interestingly, becoming an ascetic did not seem necessarily to involve joining a monastery or becoming a solitary monk or nun: the Cappadocians and Ephrem seem to have been concerned to encourage other forms of ascetic discipline, including ones within the family and even within marriage.

It is this fact that points us towards the heart of the fourth-century enthusiasm for the ascetic life: ultimately, asceticism was not about the following of a certain set of rules; instead, it was the choice of a life devoted to God and the pursuit of that life in a way which presented as few distractions as possible. Such a life might be more easy as a member of a monastic community, or as a hermit, but it was also possible for the bishop busy with ecclesiastical politics or the wealthy woman with a large household to run (indeed there was a strand of writing on asceticism which treated such people as more ‘heroic’ ascetics than those who lived in the desert enduring amazing privations!). Similarly, an ascetic life might be made easier by the following of some basic rules, but these were not necessary; they were never intended to define ascetic life absolutely and there was often a sense in ascetic writing that the most perfect ascetics – such as Paul and Antony – were those who had an instinctive grasp of their vocation, which made rules redundant. Indeed, there is evidence that ascetic rules were introduced as a solution to problems within ascetic communities rather than coming about as founding documents.

At the heart of Christian asceticism was a search for God in and through the life of this world. This search was based firmly on the belief in the Incarnation – that is, the belief that God came to live in the world in Jesus Christ. The fourth-century theologians of the ascetic life believed that in the Incarnation God lived as human in a way that resisted the ways of the world but which was yet somehow truer to the way in which the world ought to have been. They thus firmly connected asceticism with Christology: it comes as no surprise that Antony of Egypt supported Athanasius in his arguments against Arius. In the next generation, the Cappadocians’ idea that Christ was both fully God (their arguments again Eunomius) and fully human (their arguments against Apollinarius) was a vital background to their writing on asceticism. The ascetics reasoned that the incarnate Christ was the true image of God (Genesis 1.27); he thus revealed what true humanity was and promised salvation as the restoration of the state of human nature before the Fall. Christ’s resurrection was the first-fruits, or the guarantee, of this restoration for human nature in general. The full and perfect restoration of human nature would not be until the end of time, but in the meantime humans could work towards it with God’s grace, by imitating Christ.

So the ascetic life was a paradox: it was seen both as the withdrawal from ‘worldly’ or ‘secular’ forms of life, but also as an example of, or a pointer towards, a more perfect form of human living which had the potential to transform the world. This explains the often ambivalent language about materiality and embodiment: orthodox ascetics agreed that the body, as part of God’s creation, was good; nevertheless, they viewed it as profoundly and negatively affected by the Fall. The same was of course true of the soul, but it was the body, as the means by which humans interacted with the world, which was the site of the battle to regain the body – and the world – for God.⁵ Some ascetics did come to believe that their eventual perfection would consist in leaving materiality behind for ever, but usually ascetic language about subduing or fleeing from the flesh needs to be viewed as expressing a desire to leave behind the particular quality of materiality or the particular kind of world left behind by the Fall. Another way of expressing the ambivalence about ‘the world’ was to think in terms of its present and future condition. Thus, for example, Gregory of Nyssa sometimes described monastic life in terms which are reminiscent of his eschatology: the harmonious existence of humans in a life dedicated to the praise of God; communities in which the distinctions of men and women, between former slaves and their masters became irrelevant; communities which took in the destitute and which shared worldly goods in a way which recognized that the goods came ultimately from God.⁶ These descriptions were no doubt highly idealized. Nevertheless, they give a clear indication of the thinking behind the ascetic life and in particular reveal the connection between the practical disciplines of asceticism and the core theological belief that in Jesus Christ God became human that humans might become divine: ‘Having become what we were, he through himself again united humanity to God.’ ⁷ The other strong theological current running through asceticism in this period was the idea of the possibility of spiritual progress. Because this already incorporated ideas of training and preparation it was an ideal accompaniment to the more practical aspects of training expected of the Christian ascetic.

Besides these theological ideas about God, Christ and human nature, there are several practical concerns that one can trace in the development of asceticism in the first four centuries of Christianity. The first was the sharing of wealth. We have seen evidence for this in Acts, in Justin Martyr’s emphasis on the collection of money for the support of widows and orphans (Rome, mid-second century CE) and in Tertullian’s laconic comment that ‘we have everything in common except our wives’.⁸ Well before the conversion of Constantine there is ample evidence of the discomfort caused by disparities of wealth within congregations, and evidence that teachers were being called on to advise rich converts on what to do with their wealth.⁹ Both Paul and Antony, revered as the founders of Egyptian desert monasticism, were praised specifically as wealthy men who gave their riches away – both because that benefited the poor and because wealth was seen as a distraction from the pursuit of a Godly life.

The second concern was discipline concerning dress, drink and especially food. Because Christian ceremony focused (amongst other things) on a ritual meal, Christians were often accused of drunken feasting. But, as we have seen, early Christian apologists such as Tertullian took great care to defend themselves against such an attack and portrayed their meals as more sober and sedate versions of pagan banquets.¹⁰ Others responded by deliberately avoiding certain kinds of food and drink, especially those associated with luxury: one of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne (late second century CE) was described as a vegetarian, for example, and early Christians known as ‘enkratites’ seem to have rejected both meat and alcohol.¹¹ Of course, the diet of many if not most early Christians would have been restricted by financial means and supply (famine was a frequent occurrence); fasting only made sense either for those who had food to give up or for those ascetics whose diet was so spectacularly limited that it would have counted as fasting even for the poor. So, for example, Paul was said to have survived in the desert on water and half a loaf of bread a day. Jerome’s account of Paul’s life associates this simple diet not only with Paul’s self-discipline but also with his concern to set aside plentiful time for prayer: miraculously, a raven brought Paul his daily ration of bread, thus freeing him from the labour of either growing his own food or earning wages to buy it. (When he was visited by Antony, the obliging raven brought a full loaf.¹²) Other hermits, including Antony himself, were said to have gained their daily bread from local villagers in exchange for baskets: the hermits’ weaving of these baskets was a simple activity which was compatible with their long periods of prayer and contemplation. The choice of very simple clothing had a similar function. Some ascetics chose to wear rags or animal skins, which had taken little or no effort to make; others wore the simplest of garments which they had made themselves. Like basket weaving, the tasks of spinning and weaving were compatible with prayer and were often taken up in particular by women in monastic communities.

Ascetics’ choice of simple dress and food also served another important purpose. As in modern culture, extravagant clothing and lavish hospitality was often used in late antiquity as an ostentatious display of high status or as a way in which social climbers tried to claim high status for themselves. By rejecting such display, Christian ascetics were championing modesty and simplicity, which were virtues many pagan Romans would have valued highly, but they were also challenging Roman society in a radical way. The Roman culture of patronage complemented family relationships with a complex system in which patrons protected and benefited a number of clients from whom in turn they expected loyalty and various services. Patrons could themselves be clients of a patron higher up the social ladder: the emperor was in a sense the senior patron of the Empire. The provision of banquets and even distinctive clothing for clients was a very well-established way of keeping this structure together. By replacing patron-feasts with the common table of the Eucharist (and other similar meals), Christians were replacing the particular relationships created by patronage with the much more general bond of baptism. By agreeing to dress simply, well-to-do Christians were rejecting one of the obvious ways of distinguishing themselves from those of lower status. Many wealthy patrons who converted to Christianity in effect became patrons of Christian communities, providing places for worship and catacombs for burial. Even so, the use of their wealth for ostentatious display, for extravagant garments, jewellery and hair-styles and for lavish banquets was generally much less socially acceptable among Christians than among pagans.

The final concern in early Christian asceticism was sex. This is the most difficult aspect of asceticism to analyse because of the extreme difficulty of disentangling late antique and modern western assumptions about sexuality. Furthermore, Christian attitudes to sex seem to have differed widely even in late antiquity. Consequently, while it is true to say that some early Christian sources demonstrated disgust at the sexual act, this was by no means a universal feature of ascetic writing on sex, nor even perhaps a majority view.

An early text, the Protoevangelium of James, demonstrated a marked suspicion of sexuality – especially of female sexuality. Mary, the mother of Christ, was described as being dedicated to God as a young woman: her mother first ‘made her chamber a holy place, and allowed nothing uncommon or unclean to come near her’. At the age of three she was taken to dwell in the temple, where she ‘continued in the temple as a dove educated there and received her food from the hand of an angel’.¹³ This enclosure by external walls mirrored Mary’s internal intactness: not only was she a virgin when she conceived Christ but she remained intact even in giving birth – a point reinforced by the famous story of the midwife who, on doubting Mary’s intact state after birth, dared to inspect the mother of God and was punished with a withered hand.¹⁴ This tradition of Mary’s perpetual virginity was denied by some early Church Fathers, for example, by Tertullian.¹⁵ However, the kind of tradition found in the Protoevangelium of James played an important part in the theology of such writers as Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine, and it was through their huge influence on the western medieval theological tradition that the view took hold that virginity was the ideal and indeed ‘proper’ state of humanity – especially of women.

Particularly in the east, however, the situation was more complicated. There were undoubtedly groups among which chastity was the ideal, even from a very early stage. Rejection of marriage and sex was a feature of enkratite Christianity. There is specific evidence from the thought of Syrian enkratite groups that the motivation for this was not so much a disgust with sex as a belief that all human relationships were disrupted by conversion to Christianity: after baptism, the believer’s relationship with the Holy Spirit was so strong that it left no room for any particular human relationships.¹⁶ A rather different motivation to celibacy was the imitation of St Thecla. According to the narrative of the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, this young woman is said to have been persuaded away from marrying her fiancé by Paul. For this, she was condemned to be burnt to death, but she miraculously escaped. Although Thecla may in fact never have existed, she was a hugely popular object of devotion, many making pilgrimages to her supposed burial place at Meriemlik near Seleucia. Thecla’s story also inspired many young women to refuse marriage and take up an ascetic life, often, perhaps usually, in their own household. Gregory of Nyssa tells us his sister was given the name Thecla by her mother in the hope that she might eventually take up such a life. (It can safely be said that Macrina exceeded even the most optimistic of maternal expectations!) Women ‘household ascetics’ followed a rigid regime of prayer and fasting and rarely left the house, even to go to church. The rejection of marriage by women (especially those of means) was firmly against the social norms of the time, for it might have left a family without heirs. However, their choice of an enclosed life at home did at least ameliorate the situation for their family: besides proving their virtue to their fellow believers, it protected the female ascetics and their families from the allegation that their failure to marry was due to some sexual misdemeanour. This is another example of the way in which Christian practices could simultaneously defend some basic values of Greco-Roman culture (the importance of female sexual purity), whilst radically challenging established custom (which valued marriage very highly). In recent years, however, scholars have tended to highlight the way in which Christian rejection of marriage explicitly or implicitly challenged the prevailing social structures.¹⁷ By choosing not to marry, ascetics were choosing not to procreate and thus choosing not to continue the family structures which passed wealth and power from one generation to another. By choosing not to marry, ascetics were therefore withdrawing from society – or rather, they were withdrawing from one kind of society and creating another one, in which ties were created by a common faith and purpose rather than by blood and marriage.

There were also clearly some practical considerations involved in the choice of celibacy. Just as the production of food and clothing demanded labour, so families created a great deal of work; the education of several young sons and finding them a career was an expensive business, and daughters required dowries. The decision to become a monk or nun was a way of opting out of these concerns in order to devote oneself single-mindedly to the service of God. The distractions of marriage were not just financial of course: celibacy was also a way to opt out of certain kinds of emotional bonds, as Gregory of Nyssa so touchingly suggests in his work on virginity.¹⁸ Wealthy women, in particular, sometimes had much to gain from virginity. Instead of submitting to an arranged marriage in their mid-teens and carrying out the responsibilities of producing heirs, running a household and (often) managing substantial estates, an ascetic woman could choose a life of relative independence. She was free from the considerable burdens (not to say dangers) of childbearing; she might be free to manage her own time; she could choose how to dispose of her own wealth. Many women gained positions of leadership in their monastic communities, even sometimes over men.¹⁹ Of course, such independence was relative: ascetic women, even more than ascetic men, were expected to conform to strict standards of behaviour. The question is, however, whether ascetic women who voluntarily took on a life of ascetic discipline – even with all its strictures – were more free through being able to make that choice than those who submitted to the usual expectations of late antique society.²⁰

All of these reasons for choosing a life of celibacy, however, were more concerned with social outcomes (broadly defined) or positive theological goals rather than with negative attitudes to the sexual act itself. This is reflected in the fact that often what was being talked about was not a state of physical virginity, but the choice at some point to remain single and chaste. Thus formerly promiscuous men who converted could be said to have chosen a virgin life, and young widows who chose not to remarry were often treated as virgins. There were, however, plenty of other examples of extreme hostility to sexuality and many ascetics who regarded sex as contamination: the sayings of the desert fathers and mothers, for example.²¹ This hostility often translated into an extreme suspicion of women, who were habitually blamed for men’s temptation or lapses. Despite the vividness of these warnings, however, they must not be thought to tell the whole story of early Christian attitudes to sexuality.

Such were the ideas lying behind asceticism in early Christianity. But what were its historical origins? From where did it emerge? And – to return to Jerome’s question – who were the key figures in its emergence? Individual Christian men and women made the choice to reject marriage and lead disciplined lives of prayer and self-denial ever since the time of Jesus Christ. Under a broad definition of asceticism, Paul himself was an ascetic. The present question, however, concerns ascetic movements – identifiable strands within Christianity which saw the ascetic lifestyle as the only valid response to Christ, or at least as the preferred option. Although the evidence is hazy and much disputed, there seems to have been a strong ascetic strand to Christianity in Asia Minor and Syria from at least the second century. Although the term ‘enkratite’ falsely gives the impression of a coherent group, there were certain views and practices which can be described as enkratite: the rejection of marriage, meat and alcohol. A tendency to these views can be found in the writings of the Syrian Tatian (fl. 160), in the Acts of Thomas (beginning of the third century) and the preaching of Mani (fl. mid-third century CE).²² Too close an association with Syria alone is warned against, however, by the fact that similar views can be found in Marcion (mid-second century CE) and second-century Gnostics from Egypt.

In the mid-third century a distinctive and increasingly more organized form of Christian asceticism began to emerge in Egypt. The literary evidence for this movement is rather late – fourth-century biographies/hagiographies of ascetics like Antony and Paul and collections of ‘sayings’ of the desert fathers – but both types of literature were probably based on earlier oral traditions. From such sources as these, the main aspects of early Egyptian monasticism are fairly clear. First, although both Antony and Paul were each claimed to be the first solitary ascetic in the Egyptian desert, there were already other ascetics in Egypt. The Life of Antony, for example, implies that Antony’s sister joined a ‘group’ of virgins (the fact that they are grouped together apparently distinguishing them from the usual pattern of individual women in their own homes).²³ Similarly, although the Life credits Antony with being the first hermit to enter ‘the distant desert’, it specifically says that he learnt his way of life from hermits who ‘practised the discipline in solitude near their own village’.²⁴ Antony probably began this period of ascetic training some time in the early 270s (about 20 years after Paul’s retreat to the desert).

After learning from village hermits, Antony moved into the desert, to Pispir, ‘the outer mountain’. But even there he was not utterly alone: he is said to have woven baskets to earn money both for his bread and to help feed the poor. Around 305 he began to organize a loose group of hermits like himself. They were a community in the sense of having a common way of life, a common purpose, not in the sense that they lived and worshipped together as later communities did. This is the second notable aspect of Egyptian desert asceticism: although some hermits lived utterly alone, most came to live relatively close to others (not least because of the system of older monks teaching the younger ones).

In about 310 Antony withdrew further away: his ‘inner mountain’ near the Red Sea was said to be three days’ journey from any human dwelling. But even there, he could not hope to be completely isolated, still being consulted by monks, churchmen and lay people. This usefully illustrates a third point: the role of the desert ascetic as a ‘holy man’ who occupied a boundary position between civilization and the wilderness, between the city and the desert. Such men rarely withdrew so far as to be absolutely beyond the reach of those who sought their help, yet their followers had to seek them out. Their remoteness seemed to symbolize the way in which they were both in the world but not quite of it, and their occupation of the boundary between city and desert also symbolized their mediatorial role between God and the faithful. Whilst never usurping the role of Christ as mediator of salvation, they helped Christians to imitate Christ, providing a model and an inspiration, besides theological teaching and practical advice.

Fourthly, then, these desert ascetics performed a similar kind of role to that played by many Christian martyrs. The martyrs’ brave and faithful example inspired others to follow them (and Christ) in dying as witnesses to God. Although they were not the agents of salvation there was a sense in which they were thought to mediate salvation through their example and through their prayers – even after their death. In popular belief, the martyrs’ role sometimes threatened to put Christ’s actions into the shade.²⁵ Local martyrs assumed a huge importance for Christian communities, and ceremonies often centred on their graves – even their relics – precisely because they were close and tangible witnesses to the power of Christian faith. Like later ascetics, the martyrs were both there (their bodies in their tombs) and not there (they were thought to have ascended directly to heaven). Some commentators have suggested that after the period of persecution asceticism became a new form of martyrdom: it is easy to misunderstand this as the wilful seeking out of pain, as if self-persecution had replaced pagan persecution. Rather, what is meant is that asceticism became the most potent way of witnessing to the dramatically transformative effects of belief in Christ. The privations were important – ascetics were sometimes described as undergoing a ‘living death’ – but more important was the pursuit of God which they made possible. Furthermore, just as Christians had approached confessors in prison, asking them to pray for their salvation in the belief that the confessors would soon be martyrs raised to heaven, so they approached ascetics asking them to intercede for them. A letter from fourth-century Egypt has been preserved on its original papyrus: the writer Justin asks the ascetic Paphnuthius ‘to think of me in your holy prayers’, for ‘we believe in your citizenship in heaven’.²⁶

At around the same time that groups of hermits were beginning to move into the Egyptian desert, various forms of asceticism were developing in Syria. The most distinctive of these was groups of men and women known as ‘children of the covenant’.²⁷ These groups included ‘virgins’ – celibate men and women – and married couples who remained together whilst giving up sex. Both kinds of ascetic could be described by the Syriac term iḥidaya. The basic sense of this word is ‘single’ or ‘only’: it seems to have indicated both a person’s social state – single, unmarried or chaste within marriage – and his or her spiritual aim – a single-minded devotion to God. Both these senses were combined in the idea that the ‘single’ person was spiritually speaking wedded to Christ (or, in some texts, the Holy Spirit). Taking the traditional Christian language of Christ as bridegroom and the Church as bride, these groups envisaged that each individual in the Church as well as the Church collectively could be the bride of Christ. Eschatological perfection of human nature was described in terms of ‘entering the bridal chamber’.²⁸ In some early Syrian traditions only those who were ‘single’ were thought to enter the eschatological bridal chamber. In other traditions, those who were ‘single’ were like the wise virgins in the parable waiting for the bridegroom: they were the wakeful ones in the community witnessing to and preparing for the future arrival of Christ. In their virgin state they foreshadowed the condition of the eschatological life in which it was thought that all people would be unmarried, like the angels.²⁹ The sons and daughters of the covenant seem to have made a vow to be ‘single’ when they were baptized as adults. Ephrem the Syrian was probably a son of the covenant and his writings beautifully demonstrate the theological ideas underlying this kind of ascetic spirituality.

Aphrahat’s Demonstrations also provide evidence not only of this kind of Syriac ascetic theology but of the concern for discipline among the ‘singles’: in his day there seems to have been increasing anxiety about the dangers of male and female ascetics living together:

Therefore, my brethren, if any man who is a monk or a saint, who loves the solitary life, yet desires that a woman, bound by monastic vow like himself, should dwell with him, it would be better for him in that case to take (as a wife) a woman openly and not be made wanton by lust. … And also whatever man desires to continue in holiness, let not his spouse dwell with him, lest he turn back to his former condition and be deemed an adulterer.³⁰

Later, as the influence of Egyptian asceticism began to filter into Syria in the final decades of the fourth century, the groups of ‘singles’ began to take on a closer similarity to Egyptian monastic communities (the above quotation from Aphrahat is evidence of a move in this direction). The asceticism described by Ephrem is best thought of as something distinct.

In Egypt itself many continued to be attracted by the semi-isolated forms of desert monasticism. As the fourth century progressed, however, several men made efforts to establish more organized and tightly knit forms of ascetic life. From this movement came a distinction between what is known in English as eremitic and cenobitic monasticism. ‘Eremitic’ describes the discipline of a hermit (from the Greek eremos, ‘desert’).³¹ The term ‘cenobitic’ describes a group living, working and worshipping together (from the Greek koinos bios, a ‘common life’). As the practice developed, cenobitic communities were typically governed by a common rule.

To a certain extent, different traditions of asceticism grew up in different areas along the Nile. The hermit followers of Antony and Paul scattered themselves in various locations in middle Egypt. In lower Egypt, nearer the Nile delta, were found small communities of ascetics usually focused around an elder monk. From groups like these came the collections of pithy Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. One estimate suggests that by the 370s there were around 3,000 ascetics in the region of Nitria; by the end of the fourth century there were as many as 5,000. They gradually developed a more communal way of life, worshipping and sometimes eating together. Some monks from Nitria moved to a more remote location in Kellia, which was the community chosen by Evagrius Ponticus, one of the great theologians of the spiritual life. Another great ascetic, Macarius, settled in Scetis in lower Egypt. His form of asceticism more closely resembled a community life: there are still four monasteries to this day, one of which traces its origin directly back to him. A distinctive form of this kind of life was established in Palestine in the fourth century: each community, known as a Lavra, consisted of a number of hermits living in the same area and governed by a single abbot.

In upper Egypt, around 320, Pachomius (c.290–346) founded a community of monks at Tabennisi. He was said to have been inspired to convert to Christianity by the kindness of local Christians when he was stationed as a soldier in appalling conditions. He became convinced that Christian charity was best practised through the ascetic life, ideally in a community. Pachomius began by living as a hermit with his brother; by the time of his death, he was responsible for the order of nine monasteries for men and two for women – about 3,000 people in all, mostly Coptic-speaking peasants. He devised a common rule for these communities, which survives in a Latin translation. Stricter than Pachomius’ rule was that of Shenoute (died c.466), abbot of the ‘White Monastery’ in the same region. Although living conditions were harsh, Shenoute insisted on strict limits to self-denial: a letter survives in which he instructed women who under-ate that they must eat the one meal a day which was permitted to members of the community (a simple serving of bread, water and vegetables). Pachomius and Shen-oute both organized communities for women: unlike Pachomius, Shenoute allowed women to lead their own monastery. Indeed, he was most insistent that women were capable of the ascetic life: ‘Has the kingdom of heaven solely been prepared for men? … The same battle has been assigned to men and women, and the same crown stands before those men and women who together will have persevered.’ ³² Nevertheless, there is evidence from correspondence that the female ascetics resented Shenoute’s insistence that he had ultimate authority over all the White Monastery communities.³³ In fact, the establishment of female monasteries by both Pachomius and Shenoute seems to have reflected contemporary views of women. Whereas a few women had tried a hermit existence, it was thought difficult for them to survive the rigours of the desert alone and they were constantly under scrutiny in case they caused male ascetics to fall from virtue (the accusations were nearly always that way round!). In organized communities, women could worship and pray in a disciplined life and they could be kept apart from men except in carefully supervised conditions. Shenoute was also extremely influential in Egyptian Christianity as an author, in Coptic, of works relating to the ascetic life.

Varieties of cenobitic monasticism spread from Egypt to the east and north. In Pontus, to the north-east of Asia Minor, a man called Eustathius (c.300–377) became a particularly influential encourager of asceticism. So enthusiastic were his followers that by 340 some of them had been condemned for extremism by a synod at Gangra in the same region. But this did not stall Eustathius’ own efforts. He set up a hospice in Sebaste, the principal town of the Roman province of Armenia, where he had been ordained bishop in around 356. His influence spread as far as Constanti-nople, where a hospice and some monastic communities were established, apparently following his example.

As a young man in his mid-20s, Basil of Caesarea took a gap-year from his profession as rhetor, travelling to visit monasteries in Egypt, Palestine, Syria and perhaps Mesopotamia. Even if he did not travel with Eustathius as has sometimes been argued, it was almost certainly direct or indirect Eustathian influence that sparked his interest in asceticism. It was also around this time that Basil’s family estate at Annesi was turned into an ascetic community. According to Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa, the main buildings of the family home were put to the use of a community of women, and a men’s community set itself up on a remote part of the substantial family estate. Gregory reports that his eldest sister Macrina ‘put herself on a level with her maids, making them her sisters and equals, rather than her slaves and underlings’.³⁴ They had a life of great simplicity, helping each other to provide for their basic needs and devoting most of their time to worship: ‘there was constant prayer and an unceasing singing of hymns distributed throughout the entire day and night, so that this was for them both their work and their rest from work’.³⁵ The men’s community was described as a group of old men cared for by Naucratios, a younger brother of Basil and Macrina. To begin with, it may well have been a more loose association of hermits (akin to those crystallizing around Antony) than a community worshipping together as the women did. After his tour of monasteries, Basil was baptized and probably joined the men’s community in around 357. He was soon joined by Gregory of Nazianzus. Their life, although simple, must have included materials allowing them to study, for it was in this period that they produced the Philokalia, an edition of excerpts from Origen.

In the course of the next few years, Basil was ordained deacon and then presbyter in the congregation of Caesarea in Cappadocia, but he returned several times to Annesi, as if uncertain whether he wanted to be embroiled in the Church politics of Caesarea. A similarly uncertain vacillation characterized Gregory of Nazianzus’ life in this period. In 368–69 there was a severe famine in the region. Macrina is said to have responded by taking orphans into her community. In Caesarea Basil began negotiating with rich merchants to release stockpiled grain so that he could distribute it; he was also said to have used his own wealth to provide for the starving and the sick. In 370 he was ordained Bishop of Caesarea and was soon engaged in his project of establishing the ptochotropheion, or ‘place to feed the poor’, an institution that lasted at least until the fifth century. Basil himself described the place as consisting of,

a house of prayer built in magnificent fashion, and, grouped around it, a residence, one portion being a generous home reserved for the head of the community, and the rest subordinate quarters, all in order, for the servants of the divinity. … Hospices for strangers, for those who visit us while on a journey, for those who require some care because of sickness … we extend to the latter the necessary comforts, such as nurses, physicians, beasts for travelling and attendants.³⁶

Gregory of Nazianzus poetically described it as ‘a new city outside the city’, a phrase which nicely captured the ambiguity of Basil’s community: while symbolically withdrawn from the heart of secular life by being built outside the city walls, its inhabitants were nevertheless deeply involved with the life of Caesarea.³⁷ From the descriptions, it seems clear that the institution was not only a hospital and hospice but also a community of monks. Besides building the physical infrastructure, Basil was also involved in its institutional organization. Two forms of his rules for a monastic community survive, dealing with all sorts of issues, ranging from the care which an abbot owed his monks – he should tend them as a mother – to particular questions of discipline.³⁸

By this time, Basil had had a major disagreement with Eustathius over the question of the status of the Holy Spirit (Eustathius being unwilling to grant that it was homoousios with the Father and Son). The Cappadocians’ writings on asceticism were also showing a marked concern to discourage any extremes of ascetic practice. These two factors might explain why they never acknowledged the influence of Eustathius and why Basil’s rules in some places explicitly banned the practices which had been alleged against the followers of Eustathius at Gangra. For example, while the Eustathians had been accused of encouraging women to dress like men and even to shave their heads, Basil’s rule insisted that women and men should dress differently. While those at Gangra had alleged that the Eustathians encouraged sin by allowing ascetic men and women to live together, Basil’s rules forbade this. Eustathian asceticism had a very negative view of marriage (it was accused of claiming that married persons could not be saved). By contrast, the Cappadocian theologians had a generally positive view of marriage: Gregory of Nazianzus praised the ascetic lifestyle practised by his sister Gorgonia within marriage; Gregory of Nyssa suggested that the married ascetic was in some ways more to be praised than the celibate, and Basil’s rules forbade any married person to become an ascetic unless their partner agreed that they could leave. The moderate tenor of Basil’s rule came to have enormous impact not only in the east, but also in the west through its influence on the rule of Benedict.³⁹

The achievements of Basil of Caesarea dominate the historical landscape in this period and his importance both in theology and the history of monasticism cannot be denied. Yet it is clear that he – like Antony, Pachomius, Shenoute and Eustathius – was developing and adapting forms of asceticism which were already in existence. Basil’s family was influenced by Eustathian monasticism, and it may well have been Basil’s siblings, Macrina and Naucratios, who were the first in their family to take active steps towards asceticism. Gregory suggests that Macrina became a dedicated virgin at the age when young girls would normally be expected to marry and he claims that when Basil returned from Athens ‘excessively puffed up by his rhetorical abilities and disdainful of all great reputations’, it was Macrina who ‘took him over and lured him to the goal of philosophy’ (philosophia was the term typically used to denote the ascetic life).⁴⁰ More important than the question of which individual was responsible for Cappadocian monasticism is what the history of this remarkable family teaches us. First, their adoption of asceticism came by incremental steps: Macrina dedicating herself a virgin; Naucratios living as a hermit and (perhaps after a while) caring for a small group of ‘old men’; Macrina and Emmelia turning the house into a female community; Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus joining the men’s community; Basil forming a further community or communities. This kind of development was presumably typical of the growth of ascetic movements throughout the Empire and beyond and it is artificial to ask when any of the groups ‘became’ a monastery.

Secondly, even if her brother Gregory exaggerated it, Macrina’s influence was very strong. In being a woman in this role she was notable, but not unique. From the pen of Jerome, writing a generation later, we learn of other remarkable women, also well educated and wealthy, who became increasingly interested in asceticism and eventually founded their own monasteries. Melania the elder, a wealthy woman from Rome, was widowed at the age of 22; she left her home to visit the holy men of Egypt, later moved to Palestine and was the leader of a community of about 50 women on the Mount of Olives by 378 (that is, shortly before the time of Basil of Caesarea’s death). In Egypt she met Rufinus (a friend of Jerome), who a few years later also founded a monastery in Jerusalem. Jerome himself had had a couple of attempts at dedicating himself to an ascetic life in different contexts, first, in an informal ascetic community established by a friend in Aquileia, north Italy, next living as a hermit in Syria. The latter period in the 370s was ultimately an unhappy experience for Jerome: despite his clearly sincere desire for a very austere regime, he found the life of a solitary ascetic very difficult to square with his passion for scholarship, in particular his study of the Bible. Although he claimed to have supported himself in the desert by his own labour, he also had with him the equipment for study – not just his library but also assistants to enable him to copy books! (As his modern biographer dryly comments, ‘his cave must have been roomier than most’.) ⁴¹ He was in constant contact with his friend Evagrius, a priest in Antioch, but, although he learnt a little Syriac, he could communicate very little with his fellow hermits. When he did, it became clear they disagreed strongly on basic issues, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. These factors increasingly caused tensions between Jerome and his neighbours and he left. Jerome never lost his enthusiasm for asceticism in general, but the episode in Syria is a useful reminder that that particular kind of ascetic life did not suit everyone, however great their initial desire for it.

In the early 380s Jerome stayed in Rome, and he became sought out for his scholarship and views on the ascetic life, in particular by a group of wealthy Roman women. The widow Marcella had converted to a life of austere simplicity, apparently after reading the Life of Antony. She had turned her house into a meeting place in which she taught Christian women about asceticism, among them the young widow Paula and her daughter Eustochium. Jerome encouraged these women in a particularly austere form of ascetic life which they carried out in their own homes. In a famous letter to Eustochium he attacks the evils of marriage and advises a very rigorous regime of prayer and fasting. Furthermore, Eustochium was to keep to her own room, avoiding the company of non-ascetic women, lest they should awaken a concern with her own appearance or other frivolities.⁴² Eventually, Jerome, Paula and Eustochium left Rome to visit first the Egyptian ascetic communities and then the pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land. In the late 380s, Jerome, Paula and her daughter settled in Bethlehem where the women used their considerable wealth to found institutions for both men and women, together with accommodation for pilgrims. All three remained there until they died.⁴³

Although this account demonstrates some similarities between Basil’s circle and that of Jerome – notably the influence of wealthy, well-educated women – it also points to important contrasts. The particularly harsh ascetic practices of the men and women from Rome, their desire to be almost completely separated from the rest of the Christian community, together with their travels abroad, indicate that their primary influence was the very austere, withdrawn pattern of Egyptian monasticism. Jerome’s advice to his female correspondents had a very different tone to the advice to ascetics given by Basil or Gregory of Nyssa. In particular, Jerome’s writing was characterized by a strong fear of human sexuality, which closely echoed the vivid accounts of the Egyptian desert fathers’ temptations in the wilderness. This was very different from the Cappadocians, who, whilst advocating sexual restraint, even (under certain conditions) within marriage, never appear to have regarded sexual temptation with the horror that Jerome did.

A second interesting point of contrast with Cappadocian asceticism is the way in which the Latin ascetics chose to found monasteries in the Holy Land. Cappadocian (and indeed Eustathian) monasticism had founded ascetic communities locally, Basil’s family probably being typical in initially using its own land and buildings to do so. In travelling to the Holy Land, the western ascetics were not only following the increasing contemporary interest in pilgrimage to the sites of Jesus’ birth, life and death; they were also imitating the desert ascetics’ desire to leave civilization in order to live on the boundaries of the wilderness. It was a very dramatic step for wealthy aristocratic widows like Melania and Paula to leave Rome, the great, historic, civilized imperial capital (albeit one which was now somewhat in decline) and use their wealth to establish ascetic communities in Palestine on the edge of the Roman Empire, a region for centuries considered by Romans a cultural backwater. In this move, and in the character of their asceticism as a whole, these men and women were not only witness to the way in which Christianity could lead – should lead – to a new and radical way of life, but they were also deliberately setting themselves in contrast with the rank and file of ‘normal Christians’, the non-ascetic women, for example, whom Jerome forbade Eustochium to meet. In the era after persecution, these ascetics seem to be protesting against the way in which Christianity had become socially acceptable. Asceticism was their way of demonstrating in a visible and tangible way what they thought truly lay at the heart of the Christian life.

While these Latin ascetics’ actions were dramatic, their form of piety was not, however, so spectacular as that developing in a similar period further east. Out of the monasteries that had developed there under the influence of Egyptian monasticism emerged a habit of extreme mortification of the flesh. As if the standard regimes were not harsh enough, individual monks would challenge themselves with more and more bizarre trials. The most famous of these was Simeon, a native of north Syria.⁴⁴ At first thrown out of his own monastery for extremism, then travelling from monastery to monastery, Simeon later sought out more remote places for his ascetic practices. At one point he chose to live in a water cistern.⁴⁵ Despite their remote locations, his ascetic feats attracted attention: pilgrims apparently flocked to him, eager to gain a blessing from touching him. Eventually, he built himself a pillar which – according to his biographer Theodoret – was intended to remove him from the crowds. If that really was his motivation, Simeon had seriously miscalculated. Living on top of a pillar merely intensified his mystique and, despite raising his pillar three more times until it reached a height of about 30 feet, Simeon was bothered by increasing numbers of visitors. He attracted the rich and poor, emperors and beggars; according to Theodoret they travelled from all over the Empire and beyond: Persians, Medes, Ethiopians, Scythians, Arabs, Armenians, Iberians, Spaniards, Britons and Gauls. Simeon’s impact echoed that of the first Egyptian desert fathers a century earlier. His visitors did not come simply to gawp; they came for advice on a surprisingly varied range of topics, not only about the ascetic life but also about childlessness, the appropriate rate of interest, and weights and measures. Like the Egyptian desert fathers, Simeon performed the role of the holy man on the edge of a community, who was sought out to solve problems which threatened the peace of families and the village – although admittedly in a rather more bizarre location. Like the desert fathers, he occupied a boundary place between civilization and the desert, a boundary place in his case symbolized dramatically by his eyrie between earth and heaven. He seemed to be raised up to heaven in a symbolic foreshadowing of his hoped-for destiny. How could he fail not to be sought out as a special mediator of the divine? Indeed, in his case, the parallel between holy men and the martyrs became particularly clear. During his lifetime, his pillar became an important pilgrimage site, and the visitors continued in vast numbers after his death. Pilgrims could buy badges to prove they had been there; statuettes of him and his pillar were sold both there and abroad.⁴⁶

Simeon’s story reminds us of several important aspects of Christian piety in the fourth century and beyond. The phenomenon of asceticism did not just involve the heroes themselves. The success of the ascetics lay not merely in their personal qualities – their strength of character, convictions, genuine piety, their intelligence and ability to communicate – it also lay in the eagerness of the general population to receive what they had to offer. Simeon and the other holy men and women often dealt with Christians’ problems in a very personal, direct and down-to-earth way. Despite their geographic location outside the city, their advice and prayers bound them closely with the communities who sought them out.

Next, the lives of Simeon and the western ascetics highlight the increasing importance of pilgrimage in this period. Local communities had long venerated their own saints and martyrs, and often elaborate festivals were celebrated at their shrines.⁴⁷ Increasingly, however, Christians travelled as pilgrims to sites associated with saints with whom they felt a particular connection: the supposed burial place of Thecla at Meriemlik was a very popular destination, and not just among women and simpler Christians.⁴⁸ In a parallel movement, pilgrims also flocked to the Holy Land, reacting to the physical encounter with the places where Jesus had lived and died in a very similar way to how devotees venerated the relics of martyrs. Encouraged by the building projects of Constantine, but also fuelled by a huge popular fascination for seeing the sites with their own eyes, pilgrimage was undertaken even by those with no intention of becoming an ascetic, and increasingly required the provision of hostels and guides. A glimpse of this enthusiasm – and the distances some pilgrims travelled – can be grasped through reading the account of Egeria, a fourth-century pilgrim to Pales-tine, Egypt and Syria.⁴⁹ So popular did pilgrimage become, in fact, that some fathers felt compelled to warn against its dangers: Gregory of Nyssa wrote a famously grumpy letter complaining about the crowds, noise and crime of Jerusalem and warning of the dangers of allowing female and male ascetics to travel together.⁵⁰ However, this letter is no more to be taken as a ban on pilgrimage than Basil’s warnings about certain monks’ behaviour is to be taken as a ban on monasticism.

Despite its language of withdrawal from the world, the history of Christian asceticism in this period is in fact a story about the different ways in which Christians were grappling with living in the world. This is revealed on one level in varying practices to do with food, drink and sex; it is apparent at another level in the development of the role of the ascetic as bishop. While this position might seem to involve two incompatible roles – and indeed the bishops themselves were deeply aware of the tensions – this role became of increasing importance in cities throughout the Empire. This fact testifies not only to the characters of the men involved but to the way in which an ascetic vocation was seen to invest a bishop with a particular spiritual authority. Even if asceticism had been intended by some of its practitioners as a counter-cultural rebellion against compromise with the world, it was not long before ascetics were employed in the heart of the Church, actively engaged in politics, both ecclesiastical and imperial.

For example, Basil of Caesarea showed himself very adept at dealing with Emperor Valens, who was sympathetic to the homoian cause. Valens benefited from Basil’s support of his strategy of strengthening the Empire’s position in Armenia through the Christian Church, while in return Basil benefited from the re-division of the province of Cappadocia: since ecclesiastical boundaries typically followed Roman administrative ones, Basil filled the newly created vacancies with bishops sympathetic to his own theology.

In the west, around the same time, Ambrose was Bishop of Milan (from 374 to 397). Born in Trier, educated in Rome and with a good position as governor of Liguria and Aemilia in northern Italy, Ambrose found himself chosen bishop by popular consent, when he appeared on the scene to calm tensions over a disputed episcopal succession. One of the contentious issues was Arianism, a form of which was still strong in north Italy, not least owing to the presence of the imperial court in Milan – the Emperor Valentinian II in particular was an advocate of the term homoios to describe the Son’s relationship to the Father (he was merely ‘like’ the Father). In this context, Ambrose showed himself a brave defender of pro-Nicene Christianity even against emperors. On one famous occasion the Emperor Valen-tinian II (probably encouraged by his even more enthusiastically Arian mother Justina) demanded from the Milanese Christians the use of one of their major churches as an imperial – and thus Arian – place of worship. Ambrose refused. The next year, 386, Valentinian issued a decree formally declaring that Arians had the right to worship freely and then attempted to take the church he had demanded use of the year before. Again Ambrose did not give way: the story as recounted by Augustine was that the pro-Nicene congregation kept up their spirits by chanting hymns.⁵¹ (This was supposedly the beginning of the hymn tradition in the west.) In the end – after his mother died – Valentinian even asked to be baptized by Ambrose.

In the last few years of Valentinian’s reign, Ambrose developed a role as negotiator with the emperors on behalf of the Christian communities. For example, he was implacably opposed to the renewal of state subsidies for paganism and he successfully negotiated with both Valentinian II and his co-emperor in the east, Theodosius, on the issue. Despite repeated pleas from the Roman senate for such subsidies, the emperors refused and in fact issued a joint decree in 391 banning pagan rites. Less admirably, Ambrose persuaded Emperor Theodosius to treat lightly a bishop of a town near the Euphrates whose congregation burnt down a local synagogue, and some Christians near Antioch who had destroyed a Valentinian place of worship. In 390, however, Ambrose exerted his authority as a Christian bishop further than this ambassadorial role. Emperor Theodosius provoked horror among many in the Empire when he punished a riot in Thessaloniki with the massacre of about 7,000 of the town’s citizens. Ambrose’s response to this was to excommunicate the emperor. Even though Theodosius was welcomed back into communion by Ambrose the next year, it was still a bold move.

Although Ambrose was not a member of an ascetic community, so not strictly speaking a monk, his sister had been a dedicated virgin since he was a young boy and Ambrose himself was a vociferous defender of Christian asceticism throughout his life. When he was chosen to be bishop of Milan, one reason for his reluctance to accept was, according to his biographer Paulinus, a desire ‘to become a philosopher’ – that is, to live a life of withdrawal, prayer and study. The implication is that he would have to give that up in order to become a bishop. Nevertheless Augustine later described him as taking the opportunity of a pause in his day to read (silently – a practice which astonished others) and thus to ‘refresh his mind’.⁵² In fact, Paulinus argued, in becoming a bishop Ambrose became ‘Christ’s true philosopher’: a nice way of expressing the way in which the Christian ‘philosophy’ quickly adapted itself to the ‘secular’ life.

Different bishops reacted to the tensions between ascetic withdrawal and political engagement in different ways. After their initial struggles, both Basil and Ambrose seem to have come to terms with the dual role very well. Basil’s close friend, Gregory of Nazianzus, however, seems to have been tormented all his life by the competing claims of responsibility to his role as priest, then bishop, and of ascetic retreat. The height of influence came with the preaching of his five Theological Orations to the pro-Nicene congregation in Constantinople and his election as bishop there in 380. Only a few months later he had been deposed – at the very Council of Constantinople that acknowledged the truth of his theology – and he retired in despair at the arguments of bishops who squabbled like jackdaws or angry teenagers.⁵³

To some extent, these anxieties reflected the concerns of earlier pagan generations who had been forced to square the circle between a life of philosophical retreat and political engagement. Christian bishops were not slow to use the same language of praxis and theoria (action and contemplation) for their own dilemmas. But the Christian struggles were given a different colour because of the theology that lay behind them. Many classical Greek or Roman philosophers could have expressed their problems as a choice between philosophy and the world, or between the soul and the body, eventually hoping that they would be released both from the world and from materiality. Because of the doctrines of creation and incarnation, however, Christian theologians were committed to a belief in the goodness of the world and the possibility – through grace – of living in it well. Although they often expressed their troubles as a tension between the material and the immaterial, in fact what was at stake was not a choice between the two but a decision as to how to live with both healthily.