Post on 04-May-2023
The fascination of the desert or about a new culture of the body
to the Desert Fathers
Lect. PhD. Daniel Lemeni
Abstract: In this article, I intend to bring a small contributionto the knowledge of the Desert Fathers. First, I emphasize themain aspects of the spiritual life in Late Egyptian monasticism.Thus, I discuss the category of purity and impurity (or, tophrase it better: clean and unclean) and how they function withinthe world of the Desert Fathers. This binary dynamism is not tobe understood solely or even generally in a sexual fashion. Onecan consider, for instance, clean and unclean foods, places,thoughts, practices, relationships, and so on. The dialectic ofclean/unclean is akin to thinking of what pollutes and does notpollute. To understand the tension between these polarities helpsus to get a better fix on a whole range of important monastictropes: asceticism, the logismoi, the struggle with the demonic,the demand for flight from the world, issues of diet, etc. Themonastic universe is one of the privileged places where werefirst developed and then applied the rules governing thepatristic culture of the body. The ascetics who isolatedthemselves in the desert of Egypt (the fourth century) representonly a social group that is statistically negligible. But fromthe mentality point of view, the experience of this groupfulfills a decisive function in Eastern Christianity. The monkembodies the heroism of boundless faith, because his ultimate aimremains the deification by grace, so that the monk becomes theChristian ideal whose behavior is paradigmatic for everyChristian.Keywords: Desert Fathers, body, soul, spiritual, spirituality of
the desert
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In one day Abba Poemen was asked about impurities and he
summarized in one sentence the essence of monasticism, by
repling: „If we are active and very watchful, we shall not find
impurities in ourselves”1. In this response we see that the
problem does not refer to what contaminates us, but rather what
we do, not to be contaminated. The response of Abba Poemen
highlights the need to be always watchful and to maintain a
strict ascetic discipline. In this apophtegm is involved the
relationship between impure2 and pure in Early monasticism.
It is rather curious that although the Egyptian monasticism
has been studied in recent years in almost all its aspects, we
believe that, however, it has not been emphasized suficiently the
idea according to which the ascetic life is primarily an exercise
of perpetual purification of body and soul from everything that
contaminates them in this fallen world.
1 Abba Poemen 165, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The Alfabetical Collection,trans., with a foreword by B. Ward, Mowbray: London&Oxford, CistercianPublications, 1984, p. 190.2 Generally, by impure we understand the “weakening” of the ascetic due toloss of primary harmonies caused by the introduction of foreign elements.Thus, the impure is something that comes from outside, and it is able tocompromise an established order. In short, the disorder of physical andspiritual harmony involves always the existence of impure. The impure can bedefined in diverse ways, sometimes insisting on its physical size (thepassion), and sometimes the spiritual size (the demon). In the mentality ofLate Antiquity lacks a clear distinction between the physical dimension andthe spiritual one, since now the division of the human person in body, mindand spirit is well known in the monastic culture, which recovers in this wayThe First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5, 23). Here is treated moreexactly the body (soma), the vital principle (psyche) and the thinkerprinciple (pneuma). In the binomial impure-pure, the impure is the first thatwe consider because the pure derives from impure. In this case, the pure meansa positive quality, namely the absence of the contamination.
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We believe that the two pillars that sustain the spiritual
edifice of Egyptian monasticism (and not only) are the following:
puritas and visio Dei. The two terms are in an interdependent
relationship because they can not sustain one without the other.
If about visio Dei, the Desert Fathers are talking too little,
because they limited just to mention this spiritual experience,
never to describe it, on puritas we have a bigger range of
information.
The fundamental idea of this study refers to the fact that
in the concept of puritas we can identify an essential mechanism
of monastic experience. In other words, the major objective of
this study is to identify in this report an essential mechanism
of monastic anthropology, and therefore the behavior assumed by
these ascetics on themselves and others.
The ascetic life is fundamentally a practice (or spiritual
exercise) of perpetual purification of the ascetic, and this
implies the theme of impure.
In Egyptian monasticism the issue of impure occurs closely
related to the threat of the demons (logismoi)3. Demons, called by
Peter Brown „the stars of the religious drama of late antiquity”4
are as old as humanity itself, but the evolution of Christianity
from the third century on, seems to be marked by an accentuation
of the role of the „evil powers” in spiritual life. The fading of3 In monasticism the insistence on this correspondence is a new fact, assuggested by the study of Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Demons and Prayers: SpiritualExercises in the Monastic Community of Gaza in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries, VigliaeChristianae, No. II, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2003.4 P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity AD 150-750 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991),p. 54.
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the ancient dichotomy between good and bad demons, widespread in
Greek philosophy and early Christianity, and the emergence of a
perception of demons as purely „evil powers”, were among the most
spectacular developments of late antique Christianity5. The shift
of demons in the Christian discourse from the context of
idolatry, as in early Christianity, to the realm of ethics and
temptations, was a long process and enormously significant in
shaping the self in Late Antiquity.
In short, in Early Christianity, the demons shift from the
realm of public life to the realm of inner life. In other words,
the Desert Fathers approached the matter from the angle of the
spiritual life. For them, demons were a matter of internal
struggle, one in which the soul was the arena of battle. Although
a comprehensive explanation for this change is elusive, it is
easy to agree that theories of demons were an integral part of
the ascetic complex. In the psychology of ascetic culture, the
devil and demons penetrated into the daily routine and took over
the life of monks6.
This empire of demons challenged man in Late Antiquity and,
paradoxically, offered him a framework for perfection. In the
words of Barsanuphius: „It is temptation that causes man to
5 P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, pp. 53-54.6 J. Burton Russell, Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1981), p. 149. Russell has claimed that in the third and fourthcenturies the power of the devil seemed to grow as the security of life in theRoman Empire waned. On early Christian demonology, see E. Ferguson (New York:E. Mellen Press, 1984), pp. 105-42. For further bibliography on demons in theGreco-Roman world, see R. Valantasis, “Daemons and Perfecting of the Monk’sBody: Monastic Anthropology, Demonology, and Asceticism”, Semeia 58 (1992),pp. 47-49.
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progress”7. There can be no spiritual progress (prokopé),
Barsanuphius said, without identifying the trickery of the
demons. „The envy of the devil blinds your heart” said
Barsanuphius, „thus you consider the logismoi as good thoughts”8,
hence true spiritual labour according to him is to combat the
logismoi that troubled the monk9.
In the Apophtegmata Patrum, we see how the action of evil
spirits is causing the „contamination” (gr. miainein, molúnein) of
soul: „Abba Elias said <…observe your thoughts, and beware of
what you have in your heart and your spirit, knowing that the
demons put ideas into you so as to corrupt your soul by making it
think of that which is not right, in order to turn your spirit
from the consideration of your sins and of God>”10.
To Abba Pityrion the combination between passions and demons
is even more obvious: Abba Pityrion, the disciple of Abba Antony
said: „If anyone wants to drive out the demons, he must first
subdue the passions; for he will banish the demon of the passion
which he has mastered. For example, the devil accompanies anger;
so if you control your anger, the devil of anger will be
banished. And so it is with each of the passions”11.
7 See, for example, Barsanuphius and John, Questions and Answers 496, 499, SC 451,p. 616, 622; Valantasis, “Daemons and Perfecting of the Monk’s Body”, pp. 59-66.8 Questions and Answers 236, SC 450, p. 168.9 Questions and Answers 103, SC 427, p. 420.10 Abba Elias 4, in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 71. See, also, Abba Poemen51. For the relationship between the „dirt of passions” and the „wandering ofdemons” (see, Abba Macarius the Great 20), and for „impurity-devil” (see, AbbaMacarius the Great 24).11 Abba Pityrion, in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 200. See, also, Abba Poemen2, 51, Abba Eliah 4.
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Similarly, in the Life of Antony, the demons attack “all
Christians” who make progress in virtue, “but especially monks”
(see, The Life of Antony, the chapter twenty-three).
When the devil first appears in chapter five, he finds in
Antony an already accomplished ascetic: the devil’s task is “to
bring him back from the discipline” and “to detach him from his
righteous intention”. The struggle that follows, “Antony’s first
contest against the devil” is one of the most important passages
in the history of monastic demonology: it provided a frame of
reference as well as specific vocabulary for much subsequent
exegesis. The devil’s first weapons are “thoughts” (logismoi), which
he “suggests” (hupoballein) or “raises up” in Antony’s “thinking”
(dianoia).
Therefore, Antony intensifies the discipline of his body,
engaging in “training measures” so harsh that others are
astonished (see, The Life of Antony, the chapter seven). Athanasius
describes Antony’s more severe regime of bodily deprivation in
some detail, presenting it as preparation for his move outside
the village, just as the martyrs often prepared for their ordeals
through ascetic discipline: “having braced himself in this way,”
Antony sets out for the tombs and thus makes his first real
incursion into the devil’s space (see, The Life of Antony, the chapter
eight).
Antony’s discipleship included a strict training. The term
that Athanasius uses for this, askesis, is better translated
“exercise regimen” than “asceticism”, for it was really a sports
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term before it became a monastic one12. According to Tim Vivian,
“Athanasius was a pugilist, and a good one. Antony is his stand-
in in the ring. Images of contesting – literally “wrestling –
abound in the Life”13.
Athanasius describes this combat, whether mental, physical,
or visual, with the vocabulary of the arena: it is a “contest”
(athlon), in which the devil is “thrown for a fall” (katapalaiein) like
a wrestler (see, The Life of Antony, the chapters five and seven).
Like the martyrs before him, Antony proves paradoxically to be
powerful and triumphant when he is the most vulnerable: what
should be his point of weakness, his flesh, is the site of his
triumph.
Although the brutality of Antony’s combat with the demons is
exceptional, Athanasius applies its overall theme to the ordinary
monk’s ascetic development and struggle with demons. Just as
Antony practiced asceticism and achieved a high level of virtue
before any encounter with the devil, the monk does not form his
self essentially through conflict with demons. Rather, the monk’s
basic ascetic task is to preserve his “natural” self from the
corruption of the passions. Antony provides the ultimate model of
ascetic self-preservation, but his enduring integrity is rooted
in the divine integrity of Christ. Along his ascetic labors and
12 James E. Goehring, “Asceticism”, in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. EverettFerguson, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland, 1997), I:127. Also T. Spidlik, TheSpirituality of the Christian East, CS 79 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications,1986), 179-182.13 Tim Vivian, The Life of Antony. The Coptic Life and The Greek Life, trans. by Tim Vivianand A. N. Athanassakis, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2003, p.xlvi.
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his combats with the demons, Antony’s goal is to maintain his
integrity and disposition. Antony’s body “remained completely
unharmed” even as he approached death—graphic evidence of his
success at preserving himself14.
Thus, the Life of Antony, adopts a (markedly) positive attitude
towards the body. When Antony emerged after twenty years of
enclosure within a fort, his friends: "were amazed to see that
his body had kept its same condition, neither fat from lack of
physical exercise, nor emaciated from fasting and combat with
demons, but he was just as they had known him before his
withdrawal. . . . He was altogether balanced, as one guided by
reason and abiding in a natural state"15. There is no dualistic
hatred of the body here; asceticism has not subverted Antony's
physicality but restored it to its "natural state", that is to
say, to its true and proper condition as intended by God. This
natural state of the body continues up to the end of Antony's
long life. Although he lived to be more than a hundred, and
(quote): "his eyes were undimmed and quite sound, and he saw
clearly; he lost none of his teeth—they had simply become worn
down to the gums because of the old man's great age. He remained
strong in both feet and hands"16. So according to the text, self-
14 Life of Antony 93.15 Life of Antony 14. According to Chitty, “how we see Antony’s perfection as thereturn to man’s natural condition. This is the constant teaching of EastChristian ascetics. Their aim is the recovery of Adam’s condition before theFall. That is accepted as man’s true nature, man’s fallen condition being -unnatural” (D. Chitty, The Desert a City, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood,New York, p. 4).16 Life of Antony 93.
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control (enkrateia )17 enhanced rather than impaired Antony's bodily
health.
Natural asceticism, it can be said, is warfare not against
the body but for the body. Natural asceticism has a positive
objective: it seeks not to impair but to transform the body,
rendering it a willing instrument of the spirit, a partner
instead of an opponent. For this reason, Sergius Bulgakov (1871-
1944), used to say: "Kill the flesh, so as to acquire a body".18
Thus, Bulgakov employing the word "flesh" in its Pauline sense,
to signify not our physicality but our fallen and sinful self.
The Desert Father Dorotheus was surely wrong to say of his body,
"It kills me, I kill it"; and he was tacitly corrected by another
Desert Father, Poemen, who said: "We were taught, not to kill the
body, but to kill the passions"19.
The ascetic task is to preserve the self—the soul and its
intellectual component— as God created it: “For virtue consists
in the soul keeping its intellectual faculty according to nature
[kata phusin]”—that is, “as it was created.” Vice, then, is a
“turning away” or “distortion,” which happens when the monk17 According to K. Ware “it is evident that enkrateia, although often understoodin a negative manner—as hatred of the body, as the destruction of ourinstinctive urges—can also be interpreted in more affirmative terms, as thereintegration of the body and the transformation of the passions into theirtrue and natural condition. Again and again, when the patristic texts arecarefully analyzed, the Greek fathers turn out to be advocating not repressionbut transfiguration” (K. Ware, “The Way of the Ascetics: Negative orAffirmative?”, in V. Wimbush, R. Valantasis (eds.), Asceticism, OxfordUniversity Press, 1998, p. 12).18 Cf. Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom), "Body and Matter in Spiritual Life," inA. M. Allchin, ed., Sacrament and Image: Essays in the Christian Understanding of Man, TheFellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius (London, 1967), p. 41.19 Abba Poemen 184.
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“thinks about petty things” or succumbs to “filthy thoughts”. The
monk needs nothing “from outside” to avoid such thoughts; he can
preserve his natural state, for the task lies “within us”: see,
The Life of Antony, the chapter twenty.
The most sophisticated presentation of monastic theology to
survive from the writings of early Christianity is that of
Evagrius Ponticus (ca. 345-399), who was a monk of the semi-
eremitic settlement of Kellia in Lower Egypt for about fifteen
years.
He left us an extraordinary collection of writings on the
doctrines and developmental stages of the monastic life. In
short, they provide significant indications of how he understood
the unfolding of a monastic vocation. Evagrius’ model of the
monastic life was based on a traditional division of philosophy
into ethics, physics, and logic or contemplation.
Evagrius’ adaptation of the tripartite model presents
monastic life as composed of three aspects: praktiké (or the
ascetic discipline), theoria physiké (or the natural contemplation),
and theologiké (that is, the theology or the contemplation of
God)20.
One thing is immediately clear in these programmatic
statements: the substitution of praktike for disciplina moralis. The
fundamental aspect of monastic life is the praktiké21, the20 His terminology for the three stages varies slightly but these are the mosttypical labels.21 The Praktikos focuses on the first phase of monastic life, which he calls„practice”, the practical acquisition of virtue. It contains an account of theeight evil „thoughts” (logismoi) and offers suggestions for combating them. Inthis connection it should be remebered that, when Evagrius use the term praxis
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„practical life” of asceticism, understood in the monastic
context as sustained attention to the „thoughts” that captivate
the mind22. These thoughts, presented under eight headings
(gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, accidie, vainglory,
pride), distract from the pursuit of knowledge and twist both
experience and perception23. The goal of the praktiké is freedom
from the passions and the emotional distortions they encourage.
Evagrius made freedom from the passions (apatheia) the goal of the
monk’s first stage as an ascetic practitioner (quote): “The
ascetic life is the spiritual method of cleansing the passionate
part of the soul”24. ”The "health of the soul" (apatheia) as
Evagrius called it, was a key term in his spiritual vocabulary25.
Evagrius considered apatheia not simply the lack or absence
of the passions, but even more the presence or fullness of the
virtues.
Positively, asceticism acquires and orders the virtues under
the direction of puritas cordis (the purity of heart)26, because The
Gospel of Matthew (chapter five-verse eight) had promised the vision
(or praktiké), usually translated as „active life”, the „active life” signifiesfor him the inner struggle to subdue the passions and acquire the virtues.22 For Evagrius Ponticus (345-399), would condemn demons for theirmanipulative nature and their desire to blind the mind and deprive ofspiritual contemplation.23 In this scheme, conflict with demons became primarily a matter of one’sthoughts (See, Evagrius Ponticus. The Greek Ascetic Corpus, trans. with introduction andcommentary by Robert E. Sinkewicz, Oxford University Press, 2003).24 Evagrius, Praktikos 78 (SC 171:666; trans. Bamberger, CS 4:36).25 On apatheia, see especially Praktikos 56-89. For background, see Bamberger,Praktikos, pp. 82-87.26 Adapting Evagrius's teaching to a Western audience, St. John Cassian wiselyrendered apatheia as puritas cordis (purity of heart) (Cf. Owen Chadwick, JohnCassian, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1968), p. 102).
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of God to the pure of heart. One may thus discipline and refine
the body as a vessel, to make it a worthy or at least a non-
injurious one for the soul or spirit.
As Peter Brown has observed of late antique Christianity in
The Body and Society, the human body is destined to be transformed
into a wonderful model, a brilliant vehicle, a temple of God27.
Transformation of the microcosm, the body, thus will entail
experience of the transformed macrocosm, the world. In the world
affirming ascetic mode, the physical world is essentially good,
and thus the physical body is essentially good. In both ways of
thinking, however, the physical needs are not to be neglected,
but to be directed by and oriented toward the divine power or
spirit, which has the capability of transforming the human person
in the direction of the divine.
At the end of The Body and Society, Peter Brown, too, explicitly
links changing historical periods with the progress of
asceticism: When in the course of the late fifth and sixth
centuries deep changes sapped the political and economic
structure of the cities of Late Antiquity, the Christian notions
we have just described came to the fore. They made plain what
Jacques le Goff has described, in a memorable phrase, as la deroute
du corporel, (the confuse of the body) the definitive "rout of the
body," that marked the end of the ancient world and the beginning
of the Middle Ages28.
27 Peter Brown, The Body and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988),p. 171.28 P. Brown, The Body and Society, p. 441.
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The exegesis of 1 Corinthians chapter nine-verse twenty seven29
(namely, „I kill the body for to keep subject”) assumes different
shades (overtones) in the Eastern spirituality of the first
centuries.
Generally, the ascetic exercise highlights a specific
requirement in the purification of the soul. In other words, the
purification of the soul is achieved through body. This ascetic
mechanism is a recurring element, we might say strange of the
monastic art. We recall a passage where an angel shows Antony how
to get rid from akedia (quote): „When the holy Abba Anthony lived
in the desert he was beset by accidia, and attacked by many
sinful thoughts. He said to God, <Lord, I want to be saved but
these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my
affliction? How can I be saved?> A short while afterwards,
Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up
from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope,
then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent
to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him,
<Do this and you will be saved>. He did this, and he was
saved”30.
29 The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians has a special place in the monasticexegesis. This text is repeated several times by Athanasius in the Life ofAntony. At least with regard to this issue, Athanasius shown in perfectharmony with Abba Antony, because Antony defeat temptation by a control body(The Life of Antony 7.). An example of this war understood as a physical fact (theasceticism of body) is found in a chapter from The Life of Antony where is quotedthe passage from 1 Corinthians 9, 27. The author describes like the practice ofmortification prescribed by Abba Antony seeks the control of passions: The Lifeof Antony 55.30 Abba Anthony 1, in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 2. In the Apophtegmata Patrumthis monastic logic appears often: Abba Olympius 2, Abba Zeno 6.
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Indeed, the monk who defeats the demon forcing his body to
asceticism is the condition of the perfect victory31. If instead,
the evil defeats then the temptations or the passions become sins
of the flesh32.
Therefore, through body we win and we lose, because the
spiritual warfare is always a carnal fight. The work of the monk
is like Jacob’s Ladder: after down, he begins to climb in order
to become a heavenly being: in a sentence we find about Abba
Arsenius that „His appearance was angelic, like that of Jacob”33.
Antony is drawing on a long tradition of Alexandrian ascetic
exegesis of Genesis thirty-two, in which Jacob wrestled with an
angel, gained the victory, and received a new name, Israel.
According to Philo of Alexandria, Jacob’s wrestling with the
angel represents the ethical life of struggle with the passions,
while the name Israel, meaning “one who sees God,” signifies the
contemplative life, which victory over the passions allows. But
Antony elaborates on this tradition by associating Jacob, the
monk’s “name in the flesh,” with transience, diversity, and
corporeality, as well as with struggle with the demons, and
Israel, the monk’s “true name,” with eternity, unity, and
spirituality, and thus with overcoming the condition of
fallenness represented by the demons.
I would like to highlights the idea that, in the Christian
asceticism of Late Antiquity, the body was seen to be
31 See, Abba Moses 1, in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 138.32 See, Abba Poemen 20, Abba Theonas.33 Abba Arsenius 42, in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 19.
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problematic, not because it was a body, but because it was not a
body of plenitude.
While Christian theologians from Origen of Alexandria to
Gregory of Nyssa had embraced the Platonic dichotomy of the
composition of the human person, they could not devalue the body
to the level of prison completely if they were to affirm the
positive valuation of the created world in the biblical book of
Genesis, one of the central texts for anthropological speculation.
More, as Peter Brown has observed, "Through the Incarnation of
Christ, the Highest God had reached down to make even the body
capable of transformation"34.
In this way, the asceticism can be understood as an attempt
to manipulate the dim body so as to drive it as close as possible
toward that corporeal vitality that is the mark of its exemplar.
Asceticism, that is, attempts to control the play of the body as
signifier; it attempts to reimagine how the body can be read, and
what it can say. The body of plenitude signified an existence
that would defy the constraints of time and space.
The ascetics were poised between an original, lost prototype
of human nature, created by God in His own image, and revealed to the
visible world in the shimmering 'angelic' majesty of Adam, and a
fullness of humanity that would come about, through the
restoration of Adam's first state, at the Resurrection.
34 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 31.
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In a sentence we find about that „Abba Bessarion, at the
point of death, said, <The monk ought to be as the Cherubim and
the Seraphim: all eye>”35.
As monks are a terrestrial analogon for angels, the birds
are an analogon for monks in the world of nature. The association
of the two “kingdoms”, with the angels as connection, appears
explicitly in the texts of ascetics. “The bird – as suggested by
Saint Isaac the Syrian – flies from any nest to their nest in
other to give birth; the monk with right judgment is running to
his home (…)”. A tradition which has in Plato the classic
expression relates the human soul with the image of the bird, and
interprets all the anti-gravity trend, pulse of separation, of
ascension as likening to the life of birds (Phaidros, 246 b-d).
Like angels, the monks and the birds are “winged natures” that
seeking a relocation in “the clarity of mind”.
In this respect, the mortification and the contemplation are
the two “wings” of the monk. There is a close link between the
asceticism of the desert and the vertical flight. The scriptural
prestige of the bird in general and of certain birds in
particular is remarkable. We mention here the pelican that is
“the bird of the desert”, “the lonely bird” (quote): “I have
become like a pelican in the wilderness; I have become like an
owl in a ruined dwelling” (Psalm 101/102: 6).
The sign of the spiritual ascent, the wing – shared by
angels, monks, and birds – is a living symbol of the vertical
35 Abba Bessarion 11, in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 42.
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vocation of man, of his spirit that tends to the most high. The
monk is living in wilderness like an angel, alongside angels, so
that the extreme contemplative is combined with the extreme
action. The man cannot see the Face of God and live (see, Exodus
chapter thirty three). Is the supreme “discrimination” that is
between the fallen man and the angelic kingdom. The angels
ceaselessly see the Supreme Face they live with the face toward
Him, in an exuberance of the sight. The essence of the angels is
the sight – say Saint Augustin: “The angels are nothing, if they
do not see” (“Nihil sunt angeli, nisi videndo te). The monk needs to
achieve the angelic sight: <The monk ought to be as the Cherubim
and the Seraphim: all eye> (see above, Abba Bessarion). We talk
here on a spiritual „sight” that is achieved through exercise and
pray.
Therefore, the monk have to achieve a faculty that transcend
the ordinary condition. We talk here about the „third eye”,
namely „the eye of heart” (oculus cordis). The monk is training to
see with the inner eye that becomes his only eye (monachus quasi
monoculus). The monks and the angels are by definition vigilant
beings: “The monk becomes through prayer as angels”, said
Evagrius Ponticus.
Any spiritual path involves, therefore, the intersection
with the angelic model. We can say even more: to the extent that
man is anagogic “programmed”, to the extent that he feels called
to take the upward path of ascendant evolution, any anthropology
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is – underlying – an angelology36. These ascetics, “equal to the
angels”, no longer appear as belonging to this world. Sanctity
seems out-of-date.
This symbolism indicates the transcendent origin of monastic
anthropology. A monk is God’s rebel, and “the monastery is an
earthly heaven”, said John Climacus37. If every man is made
“similar” to the image of God, the function of the holy monks
calls them “very similar”, and venerates them as “earthly angels
and heavenly men”.
The monastic universe is one of the privileged places where
were first developed and then applied the rules governing the
patristic culture of the body. The ascetics who isolated
themselves in the desert of Egypt (the fourth century) represent
only a social group that is statistically negligible. But from
the mentality point of view, the experience of this group
fulfills a decisive function in Eastern Christianity. The monk
embodies the heroism of boundless faith, because his ultimate aim
remains the deification by grace, so that the monk becomes the
Christian ideal whose behavior is paradigmatic for the Christian
citadel (polis). In short, the Christian Church proposes to the
pagan elites a new way of life.
36 Besides the monks themselves, the angels were perhaps the most importantcharacters in the account of the Egyptian desert. In the alphabetic collectionof the Apophthegmata Patrum, angels serve a particular rhetorical function. Theangels, as found in the AP, serve as typos for how ascetics should live andwork together, an ideal toward which the eremites aspire in their owndiscipline. Advanced monks are described as “angelic” in both their appearanceand their actions. 37 The Heavenly Ladder, 27th degree.
18
On the other hand, the monasticism broadcasted in the
society of Roman-Byzantine the evangelical maximalism, the
acosmic vision (contemptus mundi) and the critical of polytheistic
traditions. Before establishing in an institutional framework
(beginning with the Council of Chalcedon – four hundred fifty-
one), the ascetic experience seems to have been disturbed the
ancient pagan mentality.
Here, we are dealing with a clash of mentalities: on the one
hand, the pagan mentality (namely, the pagan hedonism, the neo-
pitagorism, the neo-platonism, the later stoicism – all this have
contributed to the spiritualization of the religious fact in Late
Antiquity), and, on the other hand, the Christian mentality (or
the shock of the monastic current).
The monks were not only adored, but also ridiculed by some
contemporary pagan still attached by their hedonism. These
rivalries attest eventually an urban crisis in Antiquity.
Everyone takes part in this clash of mentalities. The question
is: why the monasticism was both admired and ridiculed?
Among the many circumstantial reasons, there is one crucial:
as a social phenomenon directed against the pre-Christian
mentality still prevalent in the third century, the monasticism
seems to manifest through his penitential rhetoric (the rhetoric
of mortification) an alarming tendency towards suicide. In fact,
it suggests, starting from a completely different perception of
the body, a new culture of the body that is hard to legitimate in
one day (very quickly).
19
If we rebuild this “new culture of the body”, we are faced
not only with the commonplaces concerning the (i)rationality of
Christianity, but also with the limits of those frames that the
contemporary sciences of human developed to introduce the concept
of “body” in the anthropological schemes.
Generally, the typology of perceptions about the body includes
(according to Jean-Marie Brohm38):
1. The objectivism (that is, the body is a moving object that
crosses the space – time: this is the mecanomorf man of
Descartes).
2. The imagism (that is, the body as a „center of action” –
Bergson and the mediation between the ideality of
representation and the external reality).
3. The realism (that is, the body is a substance with an
objective functions, a lived thing, but a real
representation as a corporal image of the self).
4. Finally, the psychoanaltic approach (that is, the body is an
articulated fantasy through the double pressure of the
imaginary and unconscious).
Today it is recognized that the body is an ontological and
epistemological fiction. The body is enrolling in a social and
ideological context within it is cut by several speeches that
subordonates it to their logic: the medical, religious, political
and aesthetic discourse. In terms of mentioned classification,
the patristic theology of the body is situated between imagism38 “Philosophie du corps: quel corps?”, in L’Univers philosophique I, Paris, PUF, pp. 397-403.
20
and realism (the Christian Revelation provides a solid basis for
the construction of the anthropolgical disciplines are
simultaneously realistic and optimistic, because the human body
is created by God and in which the Son incarnated, may not be
despised). Indeed, the man is, according to Genesis one-twenty
six, (eikon tou Theou/imago Dei), and this means that he is created
and oriented toward a spiritual quest in order to achieve
„likeness” to God.
On the other hand, the body is a soteriological instrument,
„because – says Saint John Chrysostom – if the body does not
rise, then no men will be restored” (On the Ressurection of Dead).
Several „realists” authors insist on the identity between the
earthly body and the risen body that will be, however,
incorruptible (According to John Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 4, 27).
The affirmation of his reality is based on the direct objectivity
of the Incarnation and vice-versa.
The reality of the body – as suggested by the historicity of
Gospel – is translated through a completely spiritual
individualism integrated in the old monastic anthropology: the
ascetic communities will be the places where, for the first time
in the history of his intellectual metamorphosis, the body is no
longer the agent of biological reproduction and neither the place
of voluptuous assertion of the self. It is rather a place of the
spiritual creativity where the filial responsibility to God and
the apprenticeship of repentance meet.
21
The Greco-Roman Antiquity had idealized the body, but the
Byzantine Church reformulated this somatic ideal in terms of
spiritual dignity. In other words, the body is rejected by the
Christian asceticism as a source of pleasures and passions of all
kinds, but it is also exalted as being the germ for the
eschatological age.
“By the virtue of the Spirit and spiritual regeneration, man
is raised to the dignity of the first Adam”, said Abba Macarius.
The ascesis lessens the effects of the first sin and manifests
the power of the spirit. The ascetics of the desert recount an
astonishing friendship, for the wild beasts recognized “the odor
of paradise” in saints and ended by becoming more human,
reflecting the human face with its gentle and intelligent eyes.
St. Gregory of Nyssa says likewise: “The soul shows its
royalty in the free disposition of its desires; this is inherent
only in a king; to dominate all is the characteristic of a royal
nature”. This is the return of man to his heavenly dignity. The
royal dignity is of an ascetic nature; it is the mastery of the
spiritual over the material, over the instincts and pulsations of
the flesh, the freedom from all determination coming from the
world.
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