‘Monks, Monsters and Barbarians: Re-defining the African Periphery in Late Antiquity’, Journal...

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Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer2004, pp. 217-244 (Article)

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MERRILLS/MONKS, MONSTERS, AND BARBARIANS 217

Journal of Early Christian Studies 12:2, 217–244 © 2004 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Monks, Monsters, andBarbarians: Re-Definingthe African Periphery inLate Antiquity

A. H. MERRILLS

This essay examines the intersection of geographical thought and therepresentation of desert monasticism in late antique Christian historiography.It argues that the descriptions of the ascetic fringe provided by Eusebius andhis continuators were influenced by the accounts of peripheral groups providedby classical historians. In each case long accounts of the peculiar social,dietary, and sexual habits of peripheral groups could be used to reflect themores of the society of the center. It is suggested that Philo’s first-century workDe Vita Contemplativa offered the paradigm for this exploitation of secularmotifs of alterity in religious writing but that the approach had newresonances in the late antique world, particularly in the condemnation ofschismatics and the celebration of the expansion of the church.

Saint Antony could be forgiven if he looked back on his journey to visitPaul the Hermit with a mixture of astonishment and relief.1 According toAthanasius’ biography of the saint, Antony did not regularly cross pathswith the monstrous inhabitants of the desert, despite living in the wilder-ness for the whole of his adult life. Demons, venomous snakes, andEthiopians he did meet, and on a regular basis; but the shock of the saintupon encountering not one, but two, bona fide monsters on his long

1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the International MedievalCongress in Leeds in July 1999 and to the Cambridge University Medieval ResearchGroup in November 2002. I wish to thank Rosamond McKitterick, Brigitte Resl,Peter Sarris, Miri Rubin, and particularly David Frankfurter for their invaluablecomments and enthusiasm. I am also indebted to the anonymous referees of thisjournal for their perceptive criticism. Mistakes that remain are, of course, my own.

218 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

journey to visit Paul is easy enough to understand.2 Jerome’s Vita Pauli,which provides the only description of this episode, states that the first ofthese encounters was with a hippocentaur (half man, half horse) whichdid little other than bark incomprehensibly at Antony before directinghim on his way.3 The second, a still more hideous creature, proved to berather more communicative:

It was not long before [Antony] saw in the rocky valley a man of no greatheight, with a hooked nose, his forehead sprouting sharp horns, the lowerpart of whose body ended in goats’ feet. At the sight of him, Antony, like agood soldier, seized the shield of faith and the breastplate of hope, but thisanimal brought him the fruits of the date palm to eat on his journey, aspledges of peace. When he realized this, Antony stopped, and on askingwho he was, he received this answer from him: ‘I am a mortal creature, oneof the inhabitants of the desert whom the pagans, by various errors,worship, calling them fauns, satyrs, and evil spirits. I am acting as an envoyfor my tribe. We ask you to pray for us to the Lord we share, for we knowhe came once for the salvation of the world, and his sound has gone outover the whole earth.’4

It is a tribute to the skill of the hagiographer that Jerome manages toimbue this chance encounter in the wilderness with a variety of differentmeanings.5 Explicit contrast is drawn, for example, between the error ofthe pagan faiths, which worship the subhuman creatures of the desert,and the truth of the Christian religion, which counts even these monstersamong its devotees.6 To this end, Jerome follows the cited passage with along apostrophe to Alexandria, bewailing the sins of the city in contrast

2. Ath. V. Anton. 6, 9, 12, 15 (SC 400:146–48, 158–63, 166–69, 176–77).3. Hier. Vit. Paul. 7 (PL 23:22)4. Hier. Vit. Paul. 8 (PL 23:23a–b): Nec mora, inter saxosam convallem haud

grandem homunculum videt, aduncis naribus, fronte cornibus asperata, cuius ex-trema pars corporis in caprarum pedes desinebat. Ad hoc Antonius spectaculum,scutum fidei et loricam spei, ut bonus praeliator arripuit: nihilominus memoratumanimal, palmarum fructus eidem ad viaticum, quasi pacis obsides, offerebat. Quocognito, gradum pressit Antonius, et quisnam esset interrogans, hoc ab eo responsumaccepit: «Mortalis ego sum, et unus ex accolis eremi, quos vario delusa erroreGentilitas, Faunos, Satyrosque, et Incubos vocans colit. Legatione fungor gregis mei.Precamur ut pro nobis communem Dominum depreceris, quem in salutem mundiolim venisse cognouimus: et in universam terram exiitsonus eius.»

5. For a stimulating discussion of this chapter, see Patricia Cox Miller, “Jerome’sCentaur: A Hyper-Icon of the Desert,” JECS 4 (1996): 209–33.

6. David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 130 n. 113, notes that Jerome’sdescription of the satyr would seem to resemble domestic statues of the god Bes,familiar from Egypt in this period. It seems likely, therefore, that the hagiographer’sstatement regarding the folly of pagans was rooted in an awareness of local traditions.


to the piety of her outcasts.7 This condemnation is all the more volublegiven the traditional associations of the monstrous creatures encounteredby Antony. Within classical mythology the hippocentaur and satyr werechiefly defined with reference to their incessant sexual appetite and hatredof civilized society. If pagan gods and social deviants could pay homage toChrist and his servant, the inhabitants of Alexandria seem all the moreculpable for not doing the same.8

In one sense the physical and social peculiarities of the creatures en-countered by Antony are representative of the astonishing menagerie ofmonsters placed in the desert by classical writers from Herodotus on-ward.9 Their deference to God serves as a symbol for divine power overthe desert, and hence as the realization of the prophecies of the Psalmsregarding the spread of the Word throughout the world.10 From thisperspective, the very monstrousness of Antony’s interlocutors exemplifiesthe sentiment expressed in the last line of the paragraph quoted above—that “Christ’s sound has gone out over the whole earth.” Christian monkand classical monster are thus shown to have lived side by side in the samepart of the world’s periphery. Here it might be noted that other writersemployed a repertoire of poisonous beasts, dramatic terrain, and wander-ing Ethiopians to make the same point.11 As inhabitants of the world’sedge, monks had to expect to live in such company.

7. Hier. Vit. Paul. 8 (PL 23:23).8. Miller, “Jerome’s Centaur,” 217–18; and on the associations of centaurs and

satyrs in general, cf. Page DuBois, Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being, Women and Culture Series (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1991), esp. 25–42; Roger Bartra, Wild Men in theLooking Glass: The Mythic Origins of European Otherness (Ann Arbor: Universityof Michigan Press, 1994), 11–20; G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Function inAncient and Other Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 152–61; and the more general study of Hayden White, “The Forms of Wildness:Archaeology of an Idea,” in The Wild Man Within: An Image in Western Thoughtfrom the Renaissance to Romanticism, ed. Edward Dudley and Maximilian Dovak(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), 3–38.

9. A survey of attitudes to the monstrous periphery is provided by Bruno Roy, “Enmarge du monde connu: les races de monstres,” in Aspects de la Marginalité auMoyen Age, ed. Guy-H. Allard (Montreal: L’Aurore, 1975), 71–81. See also ValerieI. J. Flint, “Monsters and the Antipodes in the Early Middle Ages and Enlighten-ment,” Viator 15 (1984): 65–80; R. Wittkower, “Marvels of the East: A Study in theHistory of Monsters,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942):159–97; and John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art andThought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).

10. Ps 19.4 and cf. Rom 10.18.11. The image of the Ethiopian in patristic thought proved to be an enormously

long-lasting yet hugely complex one. See J. M. Courtes, “The Theme of ‘Ethiopia’ and‘Ethiopians’ in Patristic Literature,” in The Image of the Black in Western Art, ed.


The hippocentaur and satyr act simultaneously as avatars of the twinprotagonists of the Vita Pauli and as the manifestation—I hesitate to usethe term “personification”—of the desert itself. 12 Antony and Paul, liketheir monstrous neighbors, inhabit the wilderness at the edge of theworld. Significantly, each of Jerome’s characters—monastic or monstrous—is defined by opposition to human society and is equally praised forproximity to God. There are, of course, differences between the pairs, buteven the sexual excesses traditionally associated with the hippocentaurand satyr might easily be regarded as a distorted reflection of the asceticstruggle at the heart of the monks’ existence.13 In each case it is the aliencharacteristics of individuals living on the fringes of the world that aregranted particular attention.

Jerome’s satyr and hippocentaur, and by extension his image of Antonyand Paul, are recognizable manifestations of the literary trope of the“wild man.”14 The concept of the individual who is removed from societyand to a large extent defined by this removal is a common literary motiffrom Enkidu in the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh to Caliban in The Tem-pest. Scripture offers particularly vivid examples of this misanthropic

J. Devisse (New York: W. Morrow, 1979), 2.1:9–32; and Frank M. Snowden, Jr.,Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1970), 196–215. Snowden’s rather sympathetic view ofclassical attitudes towards African groups has since been extensively challenged. Seeesp. the stimulating recent study by Gay L. Byron, Symbolic Blackness and EthnicDifference in Early Christian Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 2002);and the discussion of Ethiopians and monasticism in David Brakke, “EthiopianDemons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other and the Monastic Self,” Journal ofthe History of Sexuality 10.3/4 (2001): 501–35.

12. Miller, “Jerome’s Centaur,” 220–25, argues that the monsters exemplify themoral ambivalence of the desert. David Brakke, “The Making of Monastic Demonol-ogy: Three Ascetic Teachers on Withdrawal and Resistance,” CH 70 (2001): 19–48,includes an important discussion of demons as reflections of the estrangement of themonastic individual from an “original undifferentiated unity” (31–32). On thepeculiar role of the desert within Judaic and Christian thought, compare Bartra, WildMen, 43–62; Antoine Guillaumont, “La conception du désert chez les moinesd’Égypte,” Revue d’histoire des religions 188 (1975): 3–5; and Shemaryahu Talmon,“The ‘Desert Motif’ in the Bible and Qumran Literature,” in Biblical Motifs: Originsand Transformations, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1966), 31–63.

13. On this suggestion, see esp. Miller, “Jerome’s Centaur,” 232–33; and comparethe discussion in Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and SexualRenunciation in Early Christianity (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), 213–40.

14. On the “wild man” motif, see Bartra, Wild Men, who draws upon thestimulating discussion of White, “Forms of Wildness.”


figure. Cain offers an obvious, if rather negative, archetype; but moreidealized images are found in Esau and Job, and in Christ during hisperiod in the wilderness.15

The literary paradigm of the biblical wild man proved to be a funda-mental one in late antique hagiography.16 Individual vitae of saints essen-tially represented a literary subgenre based upon this very motif, throughemphasis upon the physical isolation of their subjects and the wondrouseffects of the miracles associated with them. Such was the impact of thismotif that the actual juxtaposition of the classical monsters of the periph-ery, and the Christian monks who took their place, was rather rare inhagiographical writing. Instead, new genres appropriated the literarytropes of classical wonder writing to the new subjects of hagiography.The “monastic” histories written between the late fourth and early fifthcentury, which provide more or less fantastic narratives of pilgrimages tothe ascetic fathers, vividly illustrate this process.17 Drawing upon thecomplex scriptural associations of the desert, classical paradoxographicaltraditions, and the multifaceted idea of the wild man, these works hadlittle need to turn to the menagerie of peripheral monsters in order toentertain and instruct their audiences.

Hagiography and pilgrim narrative were not the only literary genresthat sought to explore the rapid growth of Egyptian monasticism and theChristian colonization of the desert, however. The fourth and fifth centu-ries also witnessed a massive change in the writing of historical literature,and this genre proved influential in the dissemination of the monasticideal. Following Eusebius of Caesarea, ecclesiastical historians sought todescribe the growth of the church, from its suffering at the hands ofpersecutors, and division through schism and heresy, to its supposed rolein the unification of the world. As might be expected, the new Christianchampions of the desert periphery had their own role to play within thisnarrative. If somewhat tangential to the wider patterns of human experi-ence, the desert ascetics nevertheless revealed an active and triumphantside to the church, and one that might have ramifications for believersthroughout the world.

15. Bartra, Wild Men, 44–45.16. For a stimulating discussion of the centrality of literary form to the

composition of early Christian hagiography, with particular relevance to the HistoriaMonachorum, see Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saintsin Christian Late Antiquity, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 30 (Berkeley:University of California Press, 2000).

17. Frank, Memory of the Eyes, provides a seminal assessment of these works andhas been extremely influential in shaping the present essay.


The Historia Ecclesiastica, composed by Eusebius of Caesarea in thethird decade of the fourth century, provided the model for historicalinquiry based upon the evolution of the church rather than the secularpast. This perspective was consciously adopted by each of Eusebius’continuators. In the 390s Rufinus provided a Latin translation of theHistoria with two appended books discussing the fate of the church in thefourth century. These books were then translated back into Greek andprovided with further continuations by Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen,and Theodoret of Cyrrhus in the mid-fifth century and by Evagrius Scho-lasticus in the last decade of the sixth.18 All of these writers had to balanceaccounts of events on the Egyptian periphery with descriptions of theschisms and persecutions of the center. Consequently, the desert asceticshad a very different function to fulfill within ecclesiastical historiographythan within any form of hagiographic writing. In order to elucidate thewider significance of desert monasticism, therefore, the ecclesiastical his-torians had to adopt new literary strategies.

The primary function of descriptions of the monastic periphery withinecclesiastical history was not to present the ascetics themselves as indi-vidual avatars of Christ or the prophets but rather to expound upon thesignificance of these figures to the wider evolution of the Christian church.The expansion of Christianity into the desert—into regions beyond thesphere of secular power—represented a crucial motif for writers anxiousto celebrate the universality of the faith. Consequently, a crucial functionof the monastic digressions within ecclesiastical histories was to depictthe African periphery in meaningful relation to the wider world. Whereaswriters of vitae and monastic histories described idiosyncratic miracleworkers and filled the desert with wild men, therefore, writers of ecclesi-astical history required a more explicitly organized image of the wilder-ness. Viewing the desert ascetics as a series of coherent groups within thecontext provided by world history rather than as a collection of anoma-lous individuals, the historians turned to a different paradigm from classi-cal literature—that of the peripheral people.

In secular geographical and ethnographic compositions of the classicalperiod it was the barbarian gens rather than the individual wild man that

18. Surprisingly few modern studies exist of the Eusebian continuators as a group.Perhaps the best overall study is that provided by Glenn S. Chesnut, The FirstChristian Histories: Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret and Evagrius (Macon,GA: Mercer University Press, 1986). For a shorter overview of the historians withinthe context of late antique historiography, see now David Rohrbacher, The Historiansof Late Antiquity (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 108–34.


formed the primary object of inquiry.19 Of course, like wild individuals,peripheral groups continued to be defined in opposition to the familiarworld of the center, but this contrast took different forms. For all theirstrangeness, barbarian groups were shown to operate along recognizablesocial lines, however strange these might have seemed to the Mediterra-nean observer. This is not to suggest that a rigid contrast may be drawnbetween these different representations of the “other.” Jerome’s satyr,undeniably a wild man as he appears in the Vita Pauli, actually describeshimself as a legate from his own tribe, and thus is not simply an isolatedfigure. Similarly, his apparent location in the deep desert contrasts withthe more usual position of wild men on the fringes of local communities.20

Yet Jerome treats the satyr in isolation within his work, in parallel to theself-imposed alienation of his monastic protagonists. By contrast, whenclassical writers looked at peripheral groups, and when ecclesiasticalhistorians followed their lead, it was to patterns of societal differencerather than individual anomaly that they turned.

CLASSICAL MOTIFS OF ALTERITY

It would be misleading to suggest that attitudes towards the barbarianother in classical geographical writing are easy to classify. Characteristicsassociated with peripheralized groups were, almost by definition, alteredby the changing assumptions of the writers’ own societies, as well as byexpanding practical knowledge of the groups under discussion. Conse-quently, the descriptions of the northern peoples in Herodotus’ Historiesare rather different from those provided by Tacitus or by the fourth-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus. Nevertheless, in light of thevoluminous classical literature concerned with the barbarian periphery,and the excellent recent scholarship devoted to this material, some broadertrends within classical alterity may be identified.21

19. On the distinction between wild man and barbarian gens, see esp. White,“Forms of Wildness,” 19–20, who notes that barbaric groups lived under law of somedescription, whereas wild men recognized no law at all. The association of theindividual ascetic with the monastic community might be regarded as analogous inChristian historiography and hagiography.

20. Bartra, Wild Men, 14.21. The bibliography on classical attitudes towards barbarian groups is substantial.

See esp. the seminal studies of François Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus: TheRepresentation of The Other in the Writing of History, trans. Janet A. Lloyd(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), esp. 213–59; Edith Hall, Inventingthe Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University


Central to the elucidation of any peripheral group in classical writingwas the question of geographical location. The association of a groupwith a specific region essentially served two purposes. The introduction ofdistant place-names exoticized the groups under consideration and accen-tuated their removal from the familiar geography of the center. Simulta-neously, the spatial delineation of a group was a voluble declaration ofauthority over it. Even where practical political or military authority overa region may have been limited, the classification and identification of itsgeographical territory was as powerful a tool of ideological control in theclassical period as it later became in modern colonial society.22

Important as geographical considerations were to the definition ofperipheral groups, it was the identification of sociological peculiaritiesthat distinguished peripheral barbarian groups from the writer’s ownsociety. In essence, of course, any deviation from the urbanized andsedentary agricultural communities of the Mediterranean might be takenas a motif of otherness, although this difference could manifest itself in avariety of different ways. At the furthest extreme lay the stereotypedimage of the pastoral nomad, long viewed with suspicion by the inhabit-ants of settled communities.23 Between purely pastoral groups and Medi-terranean civilization, however, lay a variety of different forms of other-ness manifested in peculiar patterns of habitation, legal practices, attitudestowards personal or communal wealth, and treatment of the dead. Dietcould also help to locate a group with respect to the society of the center.Anthropophagy as well as the consumption of milk, raw meat, and fish all

Press, 1989); Yves Albert Dauge, Le Barbare: Sur la conception romaine de labarbarie et de la civilisation (Brussels: Belles Lettres, 1981); Patrick Thollard,Barbarie et civilisation chez Strabon, Annales littéraires de l’Université Besançon 365(Paris: Belles Lettres, 1987); and, on Ammianus, T. E. J. Wiedemann, “Between Manand Beasts: Barbarians in Ammianus Marcellinus,” in Past Perspectives: Studies inGreek and Roman Historical Writing: Papers Presented at a Conference at Leeds, 6–8 April 1983, ed. I. S. Moxon, J. D. Smart, and A. J. Woodman (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1986), 189–211, and the studies cited below.

22. On the expression of imperial authority through the expression of geographicalknowledge, see esp. Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics in the EarlyRoman Empire, trans. Hélène Leclerc (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,1991); and Roger Dion, Aspects politiques de la géographie antique (Paris: BellesLettres, 1977).

23. On this subject, see esp. the excellent studies of Brent D. Shaw, “Eaters ofFlesh, Drinkers of Milk: The Ancient Mediterranean Ideology of the PastoralNomad,” Ancient Society 13/14 (1982/3): 5–31; and idem, “Fear and Loathing: TheNomad Menace and Roman North Africa,” in Roman Africa/L’Afrique romaine, ed.C. M. Wells (Ottawa: Editions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1982), 25–46.


represented deviation in varying degrees from the Mediterranean norm.24

The consumption of wine, by contrast, of which peripheral peoples weretraditionally thought to be intolerant, was regarded as a powerful symbolof civilization.

Alongside diet, sexual activity provided a consistent motif in descrip-tions of barbarian groups. Marks of gender could be confused or over-turned, as is most clearly apparent in classical descriptions of the north-ern Amazons.25 Reference could also be made to habitual incestuous orpolygamous activity, to excessive devotion to sexual activity, or to near-total abstention. On a rather different level, modes of communicationwere also used to illustrate social alterity. Groups could be depicted asbeing unusually bellicose or pacifistic toward strangers. Forms of speechunusual to the Mediterranean ear were further regarded as topics worthyof note, as the etymology of the onomatopoeic term barbaroi itself dem-onstrates.26 Physical difference was thus only one category by whichclassical writers could distinguish center from periphery. Even here, more-over, these distinctions might be made through discussion of unusuallongevity or patterns of dress, or the differing skin tone and hair color ofGermani or Ethiopians, quite as much as through the investiture of pe-ripheral groups with fantastic, “monstrous” characteristics.

Within the historical and geographical writing of classical antiquity,these descriptions of peripheral groups had a number of different func-tions. Partly intended as entertaining digressions to instruct and amuseaudiences, detailed ethnographic accounts also performed important po-lemical functions. Thanks to recent scholarship, it is almost superfluousto state that the ethnographic asides offered by Herodotus and Tacitus intheir respective compositions had crucial roles to play within the histori-ans’ conception and presentation of their own society.27 Tacitus’ accountof the Germani, after all, is as much about first-century Roman society asit is about the peoples across the Rhine. While these patterns may be lessimmediately apparent in other writers of the classical world, the broadassertion that writers viewed the strange world of the periphery through

24. Shaw, “Eaters of Flesh,” 15–21, discusses the associations of diet and alterity.25. Herodotus 4.110–17 (LCL 2:308–16); Strabo 11.5.1 (LCL 5:232–34); Diodorus

Siculus 3.53 (LCL 2:248–52); and the commentary provided by Hartog, Mirror ofHerodotus, 216–24; and DuBois, Centaurs and Amazons, esp. 25–48.

26. H. C. Baldry, The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1965), 21.

27. Compare Hartog, Mirror of Herodotus, and the brief discussion of Tacitus’Germania in Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe(Princeton: Princeton University Press: 2002), 50–52.


the filters provided by the center is indisputable. It was partly throughreference to what the Mediterranean world was not that writers were ableto make sense of what it was.

This paradigm of the classical, peripheral gens, implicitly contrasted tothe world of the center, profoundly influenced the description of theAfrican periphery within the ecclesiastical histories. It was through em-phasis upon communal otherness—through the depiction of the Egyptianmonastics as a group apart rather than as a collection of pious oddballs—that Eusebius and his successors were able to demonstrate the relevanceof this peripheral wilderness to the wider world. In part, no doubt, theorigins of this approach may be traced to simple deference to literarytradition. The writers of late antiquity were, after all, familiar enoughwith the classical canon. Yet a far more direct influence for the idealiza-tion of the monastic inhabitants of the periphery was provided by thework of the Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria.

THE THERAPEUTAE

One of the principal intentions of Jerome’s Vita Pauli was to demonstratethat Antony was not the first desert ascetic but merely followed in thefootsteps of the mysterious Saint Paul—an assertion that was to provokeconsiderable dispute in the early fifth century and beyond.28 To the eccle-siastical historians of the same period, however, the dispute was an aca-demic one; the first true champions of the ascetic movement predatedeach of these solitaries by at least three hundred years. Eusebius inter-rupts his account of persecution in the Historia Ecclesiastica to describe acommunity known as the Therapeutae, who lived on the banks of LakeMareotis near Alexandria.29 As the historian readily acknowledges, thisaccount is largely a summary of the work On the Contemplative Lifecomposed by Philo in the first century c.e. Eusebius quotes directly fromhis source at several points and only departs substantially from his modelto reiterate his argument that the behavior of the Therapeutae betraystheir Christian, rather than Jewish, identity. The fourth-century historianeffectively holds up this ascetic group as a model for Christians living inthe contemporary world.

As rapidly becomes apparent after even a cursory examination of histext, Philo’s original account was not intended simply as an impartial or

28. Guillaumont, “Conception du désert,” 10–11.29. Eus. HE 2.17 (SC 31:72–78).


objective description of the ascetic community, and the same is certainlytrue of Eusebius’ reproduction. Although the opening section of Philo’swork insists upon the absolute veracity of what follows, and comparisonwith other sources on Jewish asceticism corroborates much of his ac-count, Philo clearly intended to do rather more than simply to describe asmall group of pious outcasts.30 Instead, the writer repeatedly and explic-itly contrasts the virtues of the Therapeutae with the perceived moralfailings of the center. To this end, particular emphasis is placed upon thegroup’s sociological peculiarities, which are systematically compared tothe behavior of the inhabitants of Greece, Rome, and metropolitan Egypt;and in each case the Mediterranean societies come off worse in the com-parison.31 At first blush, the categories of distinction may appear unre-markable, particularly to the reader well-versed in the topoi of latermedieval hagiography. The author appears to recount a society markedby simple and vivacious living. Clothing is simple and apparently limitedto straightforward woolen shifts. Diet too is ascetic; and at several pointsthe author refers to the dry bread that formed the dietary staple, rarelyembellished with anything more than salt, hyssop, and servings of water.Sex, as might be imagined, is prohibited entirely, and a substantial pro-portion of the community are praised for preserving their virginity sincebirth. Finally, the dwellings of the group appear to have been crude in theextreme and sufficiently spaced to prevent any confusion between thesettlement itself and the urban forms of living that the Therapeutae hadleft behind.32

The comparison between this simplicity of life and the luxuries of themetropolis constitutes the focal section of Philo’s work. Indeed, the ma-jority of the piece is devoted not to the Jewish ascetic group on the fringesof the Western Desert but to the sins and excesses of gentile Greece,Rome, and Egypt discussed in these interjections. Throughout his po-lemic Philo repeatedly contrasts the purity of Therapeutic life with the

30. Philo DVC 1.1 (LCL 9:112). Cf. Josephus BJ 2.119–61 (LCL 2:368–84); andAJ 18.18–22 (LCL 9:14–20). On the text, see Geza Vermes, “Essenes – Therapeutai –Qumran,” Durham University Journal 52, n.s. 21 (1960): 97–115; and RossKraemer, “Monastic Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Egypt: Philo Judaeus on theTherapeutrides,” Signs 14.2 (1989): 342–70. Neither study, however, discusses thepolemical aspects of Philo’s text.

31. Philo makes direct comparisons between the Therapeutae and Mediterraneansociety at DVC 1.3, 2.10–13, 8.65 (LCL 9:114, 118–20, 150–52). Much of the rest ofthe work is structured around the implicit contrast between the societies.

32. Philo DVC 4.34–37, 9.73–74, 10.81–82 (LCL 9:132, 156–58, 162–64) (diet);8.68 (LCL 9:154) (sexual activity); and 2.19–20 (LCL 9:124) (settlement patterns).


moral excesses of the Mediterranean—a point that is perhaps most obvi-ous in his explicit juxtaposition of the frugal eating habits of the desertcommunity and the excessive feasting of the town-dwellers.33

In other words, the Therapeutae in Philo’s work perform precisely thesame role as that played by the northerly peoples in Tacitus’ Germania,by the Egyptians and Scythians in Herodotus’ Histories, and by the In-dian Gymnosophists of the Alexander histories. In each of these cases,and in countless others, the descriptions of peripheral groups are heavilyladen with implicit moral commentary upon the writer’s own world. Inmany cases, a negative presentation of a peripheral group might be usedto accentuate the triumphs of civilization. Tacitus’ account of haphazardGermanic settlement patterns, for example, is intensified by compari-son—both explicit and implicit—with the state buildings and sober orderof the Roman civitas.34 Conversely, idealized images of those living on theperiphery might equally be used to comment on the perceived failings ofthe civilized world. Tacitus’ suggestion that the Germani have little inter-est in gold initially appears as a reflection of the economic primitivism(and perhaps stupidity) of the inhabitants of the region but is simulta-neously presented as a comment on the dangers wrought by avarice inRoman society.35 Similarly, the same writer’s report of the monogamy ofGermanic marriages can scarcely be read as anything other than a criti-cism of prevalent behavior within the empire.36

Philo was fully aware of the literary tradition within which he worked.The only direct allusions to the classical canon within his work are bothHomeric, and both refer to idealized groups on the fringes of theoikoumene\. In the first passage the writer alludes to the Mysians of theIliad and conflates the group with the Hippomolgi (“noble mares-milkdrinkers”) alongside whom they appear within the epic. Philo then com-pares the simplicity of Mysian life to that of the Therapeutae.37 In thesecond passage Philo alludes to one of the most famous examples of theperipheral other—the Cyclopes of the Odyssey—in explicit comment onthe feasting habits of the Romans.38 Here Philo actually presents a rather

33. This contrast forms the bulk of Philo DVC 7.57–11.86 (LCL 9:146–66).34. Tac. Ger. 16 (LCL:154–56).35. Tac. Ger. 5 (LCL:136).36. Tac. Ger. 18–19 (LCL:156–60).37. Philo DVC 2.17 (LCL 9:122); cf. Hom. Il. 2.858 and 13.5–6 (LCL 1:124, 2:2).38. Philo DVC 5.40–41 (LCL 9:136–38); cf. Hom. Od. 9.347–73 (LCL 1:340–42).

For discussion of Homer’s Cyclopes within the context of antique ethnography, cf.Shaw, “Eaters of Flesh,” 21–25; and Kirk, Myth, 162–71.


sympathetic image of the Homeric monster Polyphemos and stresses theextent to which the creature was stupefied by the unfamiliar effects ofwine. While Philo was naturally at pains to stress the resistance of theTherapeutae to similar temptations, his choice of analogy remains inter-esting. Intolerance of wine was perhaps the most common marker ofotherness within classical ethnography, and Philo’s insistence that theTherapeutae and Polyphemos equally inhabited a world foreign to suchexcesses places both in the same category of removal from the civilizedworld.39

Eusebius omits the Homeric citations within his own account and isless concerned than his predecessor to highlight direct contrasts betweenthe Therapeutae and ordinary society, yet the literary function fulfilled bythe group remains essentially unchanged within the Historia Ecclesiastica.Like Philo, Eusebius celebrates the group in order to demonstrate a levelof ascetic perfection against which the spiritual life of the center may bemeasured. For Philo, writing in a largely pagan world, the most impor-tant contrast is between ascetic monotheism, as represented by the JewishTherapeutae, and the well-catalogued excesses of the decadent Gentiles.For Eusebius, who composed his work in the first years of the Christianempire, the contrast is a more complex one. The persistence of Eusebius’presentation of the group as Christian encourages the suspicion that thehistorian intended to enlist the group on behalf of his wider polemicagainst Judaism. Throughout the Historia Ecclesiastica the ancient reli-gion is presented as moribund and decadent in contrast to the vivacity ofthe expanding Christian church.40 Of equal importance, however, is thecomparison implicitly drawn between Christian asceticism (and sufferingin the face of adversity) and the persecuting forces of pagan Rome—perhaps the major rhetorical theme of the Historia Ecclesiastica as awhole. Again, the Therapeutae serve as an idealized yardstick againstwhich the failings of the wider world may be measured.

THE EUSEBIAN CONTINUATORS

The appearance of the Therapeutae within Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiasticaallowed the writer to declare Christian triumph in the desert even beforethe full advent of the ascetic movement in Egypt. When Rufinus and the

39. On wine as a marker of alterity within classical writing, cf. for example, Tac.Ger. 23 (LCL:166).

40. On Eusebius’ attitude towards Judaism, see Timothy D. Barnes, Constantineand Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 184–88.


Greek historians came to compose the continuations of the HistoriaEcclesiastica, their own accounts of the periphery were helped immeasur-ably by the rapid growth of monastic communities within the Nile Valleyand by the new prominence afforded to individual ascetics through theburgeoning genre of hagiography. The later historians composed theirworks for audiences already familiar with the triumphs of Antony and theTabennesian foundation and were spared Eusebius’ contortions in at-tempting to depict the desert as a scene of Christian activity.

Although each of the Eusebian continuators refers to the monasticismof the desert, it is the Historia Ecclesiastica composed by Sozomen in thelate 440s that devotes the greatest attention to the periphery. In the first ofhis digressions on the subject Sozomen specifically identifies Philo as theearliest champion of the desert philosophers and hence demonstrates hisadherence to the historiographical precedent set by Eusebius, rather thanto the hagiographical conventions of more recent literature. In his open-ing description of the desert philosophers, indeed, Sozomen refers directlyto the Jewish writer and reconsiders the issue of the religious faith of theTherapeutae.41 Thereafter Sozomen introduces a plethora of new, andundeniably Christian, champions, yet none appears in simple hagiograph-ical terms. All are presented within the model of alterity propounded byPhilo and later adopted by Eusebius, a model derived from classicaltraditions of ethnography.

Sozomen’s inclusion of geographical information within his digressionson the monastic periphery betrays obvious links to classical literary tradi-tions. At times this interest could encompass short topographical descrip-tion with evocative reference to the isolation of the desert, as is apparentin the accounts of Nitria and Cellia in the Wadi Natrûn. Elsewhere thesimple identification of a nearby settlement suffices with little additionalinformation.42 As was the case in the secular works from which Sozomendrew, this geographical specificity served multiple purposes. On one levelthe inclusion of Egyptian place-names, and particularly the consistentassertions of ascetics’ habitations in the desert, served both to exoticizethe location of the monks and to accentuate the general theme of Chris-tianity spread throughout the world.43 Paradoxically, the process of iden-tification and location simultaneously served a normalizing function ofsorts and helped to establish a more orderly image of the desert itself. The

41. Soz. HE 1.12 (PG 67:893–96).42. Nitria and Cellia—Soz. HE 6.31 (PG 67:1138); see also Soz. HE 1.12; 3.14,

15; 6.29 (PG 67:893, 1068, 1084, 1373–81).43. Brown, Body and Society, 215–16.


Christians of the periphery thus all occupy their own positions in acomplex and far-flung, but ultimately comprehensible, network of sanc-tity.44 In this sense Sozomen’s careful delineation of monastic geographymay be equated closely with classical secular writers’ accounts of regionsbeyond direct imperial control. Just as imperial geographers sought tocelebrate the extent of Roman hegemony through the careful delineationof regions on the very edges of the oikoumene\, so the Christian historians’interest in the desert periphery provided a powerful demonstration of thegeographic dispersal of the new faith.

In this light, Sozomen’s description of Pachomius’ Tabennesian com-munity—one of the most important monastic foundations of the NileValley—is also worthy of some comment.45 The historian takes pains tolocate the group accurately, of course, but goes further in his inclusion ofgeographical information. The Tabennesian name, he stresses, originatedin the settlement of the community on the island of Tabenna—an etymo-logical association of place and group with obvious parallels within otherlate antique ethnography.46 He goes on to stress that the community itselfregarded the island in matriarchal terms—a further association of groupand homeland with countless classical antecedents.47 The statement thatTabenna was an island adds a further dimension to these themes. Islandsprovided a standard utopian environment in classical, medieval, andearly modern thought while representing a vivid physical separation fromthe wider world.48 As a group born of an island, taking their name from

44. Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 50–51, notes how the inclusion of toponyms couldoperate in this way in the first-person narratives of the monastic histories. Herconclusions seem still more applicable to the ecclesiastical works, in which theaudience is deprived of the spatial structure upon which the monastic histories arebased.

45. On the Tabennesian community more generally, see esp. Philip Rousseau,Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt, Transformationof the Classical Heritage 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

46. Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1073–76). Isidore of Seville was, of course, the greatchampion of early medieval etymological inquiry. On the origins of this thought andon Sozomen’s contemporaries, see esp. Mark E. Amsler, Etymology and GrammaticalDiscourse in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Amsterdam Studies in theTheory and History of Linguistic Science (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: JohnBenjamins, 1989).

47. Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1076). On the maternal image in classical writing onplace, see esp. Marielle Bonjour, Terre natale: Études sur une composante affective dupatriotisme romain (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1975), 465–584.

48. On the significance of islands within classical historiography, see esp. EmilioGabba, “True History and False History in Classical Antiquity,” JRS 71 (1981): 50–62, at 56–60; and Vincent H. Cassidy, “Other Fortunate Islands and Some That Were


it, and regarding their relationship to it in organic terms, the Tabennesiancommunity is described in terms rather closer to contemporary nationalorigin myths than to other monastic foundation traditions.

Social Peculiarity

The description of the Tabennesian foundation also demonstrates theease with which a religious community could be represented as a distinctsocial group. Sozomen notes, quite correctly, that the community wasdivided by rank into twenty-four groups, labeled alpha to omega, andgoverned by a series of divinely ordained laws.49 He stresses the commu-nality of all possessions within the foundation, again in contrast to theoutside world. As is discussed below, Sozomen also notes the dietarypeculiarities of the group and the symbolic significance of its forms ofclothing. Essentially, therefore, Pachomius’ foundation is depicted as asmall community with both its own conventions and social structures andits own laws. The paternalistic government of the monastery is explicitlycontrasted with royal rule elsewhere, and a sense of separation from therest of the world is fostered by the historian’s particular emphasis uponthe group’s hostility to outsiders. In any meaningful sense, therefore,Sozomen presents Pachomius’ foundation as a self-governing peripheralgroup and one that is defined by its great contrasts to the world of thecenter.

The Pachomian foundation provides a particularly spectacular exampleof the use of descriptive terminology more generally associated withperipheral peoples, but it is by no means unique. Sozomen notes, forexample, that the ascetic Isidore also founded a community that wasforbidden all contact with the outside world.50 The monastic settlementsat Cellia, similarly, are shown to be governed by elaborate social anddietary rules.51 Of scarcely less importance is the extent to which Sozomenimplied that the asceticism of individual monks actually reflected theactivities of far larger constituencies. Throughout his digressions on thedesert Sozomen refers repeatedly to the size of the communities gatheredaround the new Christian champions. The Tabennesian foundation is

Lost,” Terrae Incognitae 1 (1969): 35–39. Compare also the references to monastichabitation on islands in Socr. HE 4.23, 24 (PG 67:517–20, 524); Thdt. HE 4.18 (PG82:1165); and the description of Martin’s island of Gallenaria in the Tyrrhenian Seain Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1081).

49. Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1073).50. Soz. HE 6.28 (PG 67:1372).51. Soz. HE 6.31 (PG 67:1388).


seven thousand strong, he stresses; Ammon’s Tabennesiotian community,three thousand; Serapion’s followers, one thousand; and those of Dioscorus,three hundred.52 Alongside these he notes the group of two thousandmonks living near Mareotis and the unnumbered monastic communitiesthat sprang up around the other desert fathers.53

This emphasis was not merely intended to suggest that the desert wasrichly populated, although this was of course important. The repeatedassertion that the ascetic champions set examples for their disciples tofollow also implies that the desert communities shared the characteristicsof their most prominent members. As a result, personal idiosyncrasiesfamiliar from hagiographical literature are associated not with the pietyof the individual but with the social observations of far larger groups.Sozomen praises different individuals, and by extension the groups aroundthem, for pacifism and for unusual martial skills—both deviations fromthe Mediterranean norm with obvious analogies in classical writing. 54

Just as Tacitus demonstrated the indifference of the Germani to gold,moreover, so Sozomen emphasizes the ascetic rejection of material wealth.55

The description of monastic cave dwellings is directly analogous to classicalaccounts of African Troglodytae, and other descriptions of the simplicityof monastic habitation may be considered in similar terms.56 Elsewhere,the historian depicts Melas—the leader of a community in Rhinocorura—engaged as a servant both to his own community and to officials sent toarrest him for heresy.57 This image of master as servant is, of course, ascriptural one, but the vivid contrast between the rigid social rules of thecenter and the social fluidity of the periphery is more than a mere assertionof Melas’ personal piety. Through this brief passage Sozomen effectively

52. Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1073) (Tabennesians); and HE 6.28 (PG 67:1372–73)(Tabennesiotians and the communities of Serapion and Dioscorus).

53. The two thousand monks around Alexandria appear in Soz. HE 6.29 (PG67:1373). Other monastic leaders associated with communities of unspecified size arediscussed at HE 3.14 (PG 67:1076) (Apollonius); 6.28 (PG 67:1369–72) (John,Genus and Theonas, Helles, Isidore); 6.29 (PG 67:1373–77) (Apollos, Piammon andJohn, Moses); and 6.31 (PG 67:1388–89) (Melas and the various communities ofScetis).

54. Soz. HE 1.12 (PG 67:892) (pacifism), 6.29 (PG 67:1380) (martial skills).55. Soz. HE 1.12 (PG 67:892) (rejection of wealth).56. Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1072), 6.29 (PG 67:1373), and cf. also Dorotheus’

construction of simple stone-built cells in the same chapter. On the Troglodytae (orTrogodytae) in classical writing see, for example, Plin. Nat. 6.189 (LCL 2:478);Strabo 17.3.7 (LCL 8:166–68); Herodotus 4.183 (LCL 2:384–86).

57. Soz. HE 6.31 (PG 67:1389).


contrasts the organization of the Rhinocorura community as a wholewith the prevailing norms in the outside world.

Dietary Peculiarity

Like Eusebius and Philo, Sozomen gets substantial mileage from theunusual dietary practices of the monastic groups that he describes. Theisolation of the individual members of the Tabennesian community attimes of repast is noted, although Sozomen says little on the nature of themeals themselves.58 More typical are assertions of straightforward asceti-cism. Dorotheus, we are told, survived on six ounces of bread and a fewvegetables daily. Moses and Ammon survived without recourse to anycooked food, other than bread, and Pachon and Pior were still moreforceful in their abnegation.59

Couched in these terms, the monastic passages act as implicit commen-tary upon the excesses of the center and bear close comparison to classicalaccounts of the peculiar diets of peripheral peoples. Of particular interesthere are Sozomen’s references to abstention from alcohol, refusal to eatcooked food, and occasional suggestions that monks survived withoutany meaningful sustenance whatsoever.60 As has been noted, intoleranceto alcohol was a defining feature of many peripheral groups in classicalwriting, was wholeheartedly adopted by Philo, and offered particularscope as a vehicle for criticizing the decadence of civilized society. Un-cooked food was also a mark of social alterity, second only to cannibal-ism in its contravention of familiar customs. The statement that an indi-vidual or group could survive without any sustenance for days at a timeeffects a still more striking statement of alterity. Through such descrip-tions Sozomen emphasizes both the separation of these ascetics fromsociety and, implicitly, the excesses of society itself. Dietary peculiaritywas frequently exploited in these terms by classical writers, and Sozomencertainly adhered to these literary models.61

58. Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1072).59. Soz. HE 6.29 (PG 67:1373–81) (Dorotheus, Moses, Pachon and Pior); 6.30

(PG 67:1384) (Ammon).60. On abstention from alcohol, see the discussion in Soz. HE 1.12 (PG 67:893);

and cf. Socr. HE 4.23 (PG 67:512). On refusal to eat food for long periods of time, seeSoz. HE 6.28 (PG 67:1369); and cf. Socr. HE 4.23 (PG 67:577).

61. The perceived peculiarity of the peripheral diet provides the title of Shaw,“Eaters of Flesh.”


Sexual Peculiarity

The sexual activity of peripheral groups also provided fecund ground forthose classical writers who described them, for a number of differentreasons. On the one hand, a variety of polygamous, incestuous, anddownright eye-popping behavioral patterns could demonstrate just howalien peripheral groups were.62 The enthusiasm with which Herodotusand his successors scrutinized the Amazons, for example, betrays theextent to which differing patterns of sexuality could underpin all mannerof alienation and difference.63 Alongside diet, however, sexual activityrepresented an obvious social sphere in which the dignity of the “noblesavage” might be contrasted to the decadent debauches of the contempo-rary center. Such themes are certainly evident in Philo’s De Vita Contem-plativa and in the summaries of this work provided by Eusebius andSozomen.64 It should scarcely come as a surprise, therefore, that the laterChristian historians adopted a similar approach in their own descriptionsof the periphery.

Celibacy was, of course, a crucial theme in the celebration of desertmonasticism, and several individuals and communities are praised fortheir restraint.65 Rather more dramatic, however, are the examples ofactive hostility to sexual activity highlighted by the historians. Sozomendescribes Apelles’ youthful assault upon a demonic succubus with a red-hot iron, in anger at the temptation placed before him.66 Similarly Evagrius,later a monk of Scetis, is described in the action of leaving his hometownwhen warned of impending matrimony by an angelic visitation.67 Accord-ing to Socrates Scholasticus, the ascetic Pambos expressed horror at theprostitutes of Alexandria, and Ammoun engaged in a chaste marriage andrefused to see even his own naked body for fear of confusion and arousal.68

Peter Brown has famously argued that the monks of the Egyptian desertwere too concerned with the perennial absence of food to devote toomuch time to sexual anxiety, but this did not prevent the contemporary

62. For a striking example of this process, see Lucian VH 1.22, 23 (LCL 1:276–78,278–79). On perceived sexual alterity and its implications for Greek self-perception,see Hall, Inventing the Barbarian, 201–11.

63. See above, n. 25.64. Philo DVC 8.68 (LCL 9:154).65. See, for example, Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1069); compare Socr. HE 4.23 (PG

67:512).66. Soz. HE 6.28 (PG 67:1372).67. Soz. HE 6.30 (PG 67:1385).68. Socr. HE 4.23 (PG 67:512).


historians of the movement from devoting considerable attention to thesubject.69

Communication and Physical Peculiarity

Social organization, diet, and sexual activity formed the most obviouscategories for distinction between peripheral groups—both secular andmonastic—and the world of the center. Other areas of difference wereexploited by classical ethnographers, however, and ecclesiastical histori-ans readily followed this lead. As has been noted, patterns of speech andcommunication formed a common barrier between the civilized and (bydefinition) barbarian worlds. In keeping with this tradition, Sozomendescribes individuals and groups who lived in silence for thirty years orspoke only rarely, who were blessed with prognostication or incrediblememories, and who communicated telepathically.70

As their medieval successors remind us, many of the groups thought toinhabit the periphery of the classical world were marked by peculiaritiesin appearance, and Sozomen also drew upon these assumptions in hisdepiction of the monastic desert. While these features offered less scopefor social commentary than did other manifestations of alterity, physicalidiosyncrasies certainly captured the imagination, both of contemporaryaudiences and of later commentators. As might be expected, late antiquehistorians found it difficult to present their monastic heroes as monsters.The vast majority of monks, after all, were equipped with the requisitenumber of limbs and heads and were bereft of scales, wings, or abnor-mally large feet beneath which they could find shade. Nevertheless,Sozomen’s account of the physical desiccation that resulted from Macarius’asceticism, Helles’ immunity to fire, Benjamin’s indifference to disease,and Ammon’s self-mutilation in order to avoid the responsibilities of theepiscopate all stress an indifference to the human body that could becontrasted easily to more “human” patterns of behavior.71 Others—the

69. Brown, Body and Society, 219: “In the ascetic literature of the fourth and fifthcenturies, the immensity of the Egyptian desert dwarfed the facts of sex.”

70. Soz. HE 6.28 (PG 67:1369–73) includes reference to John and Ammon (whohad the gift of prognostication), Theonas (who was silent for thirty years), Benus(who spoke but rarely), Eulogius (who was a telepath), and an anonymous monk(who was illiterate and yet had a perfect memory).

71. Compare Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1069) (Macarius); 6.28 (PG 67:1372) (Helles);6.29 (PG 67:1376) (Benjamin); 6.30 (PG 67:1384) (Ammon). On the furthersignificance of the rejection of the body to both ascetics and their observers, seePatricia Cox Miller, “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere,’” JECS 2(1994): 137–53.


aptly-named Tall Brothers, for example—are shown to have been physi-cally remarkable in other ways, in this case through their prodigiousheight.72

Perhaps the most common referent of physical difference, however, wasthe dress of the monks. Sozomen takes particular pains to describe thecumbersome dress of the Tabennesian community and expounds at lengthupon its symbolic and memorial significance. The novitiate, for example,were dressed in skins, woolen headcoverings adorned with purple nails,linen tunics, and girdles—a peculiar juxtaposition of traditional symbolsof nomadic pastoralism and sedentary royalty that exemplifies the group’sanomalous relation to the wider world.73 The clothing of other desertascetics in sheep- and goat skins not only attests to the simplicity of themonastic life style but also draws upon the long-standing association ofpastoralism both with the peripheral other and with an idealized simplic-ity of life.74 Like the pastoral nomads of the Mediterranean imagination,the desert monks occupied a position peripheral to sedentary life, onewhich might threaten or instruct in equal measure.

Sozomen’s description of the Egyptian periphery certainly provides themost vivid exploitation of the traditional motifs of alterity within theEusebian continuations. It should be noted, however, that Rufinus,Theodoret, and particularly Socrates Scholasticus all employed similarstrategies in their own descriptions of these groups. As has been noted,Socrates’ monastic passages considered sexual abnormalities at somelength. Socrates also notes Pior’s complete indifference to food, Pambos’ignorance of money, Macarius’ immunity to heat and thirst, and thevictories of countless other monks over demons—familiar denizens of thewilderness.75 Rufinus, similarly, stresses the asceticism of the new mastersof the desert and presents them as a group rather than merely as acollection of disparate individuals.76

It should also be noted that the methodologies employed by Sozomenin his description of Egypt were also put to good use by each of the Greekhistorians in their accounts of asceticism elsewhere in the eastern Medi-terranean. Theodoret was, of course, an outspoken champion of Syrian

72. Soz. HE 6.30 (PG 67:1381–84).73. Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1072).74. On pastoralism as a common motif of alterity, see Shaw, “Eaters of Flesh,” 5–

10; and Hartog, Mirror of Herodotus, 193–204.75. Socr. HE 4.23 (PG 67:513–21) includes descriptions of Pior, Pambos, and other

monks’ victories over demons.76. Ruf. HE 11.8 (GCS 9.1:1013–14).


monasticism through his Historia Religiosa, but other writers also cele-brated the growth of monasticism in the different regions of the world.Sozomen himself describes Eustathius’ community in Armenia and ex-plicitly notes its deviation in dress, vegetarian diet, attitudes towardsmarriage, and even distortion of gender roles.77 According to Sozomen, asmall community of women deprived themselves of traditional femalecharacteristics in what would seem to be obvious emulation of the Ama-zon precedent. A Syrian group, similarly, are compared with shepherds asa result of their pastoral diet, clothing, and unusual dwelling.78 Evagriustoo provided a long celebration of the Syrian cenobitic life and employedsimilar classical and scriptural tropes in order to do so.79 The contrastbetween peripheral Christianity and the sins of the wider world was thusexported beyond the Egyptian setting that Philo and Eusebius first em-ployed. Wherever recognizable ascetic groups could be identified, theirperipheral modes of life could be contrasted with the activities of thecenter.

THE FUNCTION OF THE DIGRESSIONS

The peculiar form in which the ecclesiastical histories present desertmonasticism suggests that the phenomenon was put to rather differentuse in these texts than in other genres of hagiographical writing. GeorgiaFrank’s illuminating recent study of the monastic histories as pilgrimnarratives has drawn revealing parallels between the lists of ascetic char-acteristics within these works and the disorienting catalogues of other-ness provided by classical travel writers and compilers of paradoxograph-ical literature.80 Throughout her work Frank stresses the constructednature of the pilgrims’ accounts. She demonstrates how the judicious useof fragmentary geographical information, the first person narrative, and,crucially, the disorienting use of lists within the texts all helped to removethe narrated space of the desert from the context in which a work wouldbe read. As a result, her study demonstrates with particular clarity theextent to which the writers of monastic histories drew upon seculargenres in the composition of their works. Even where they deviated fromthe precedent set by wonder literature—as with the inclusion of extensive

77. Soz. HE 3.14 (PG 67:1080–81).78. Soz. HE 6.33 (PG 67:1372–73).79. Evagrius, Historia Ecclesiastica 1.21, ed. J. Bidez and L. Parmentier, The

Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius (London: Methuen, 1898), 29–32.80. Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 59–61; cf. also James S. Romm, The Edges of the

Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 91.


miracle narratives, for example—the monastic writers clearly sought fortheir works an exoticism akin to that long enjoyed by tales of the won-drous periphery.

In one sense, therefore, the literary impulses that led to the compositionof the monastic histories bear extensive comparison to those behind theecclesiastical histories. In each case Egyptian monasticism may be seen tohave been a product of the scriptorium as much as the desert and to havebeen shaped by literary expectation and assumption as much as by theharsh realities of life on the periphery. Writers of both genres drew widelyupon classical literary traditions and adapted these models in order todescribe the monastic inhabitants of the desert. Yet there are importantdifferences between the forms. Whereas the monastic historians sought topresent the desert ascetics in glamorous isolation—to place the new mo-nastic fringe in a forcefully exotic “narrated space” or to create a newholy land of living saints—ecclesiastical historians were more anxious todemonstrate the relationship of such groups to the society of the center.Within the monastic histories the desert ascetics are little less than objectsof devotion and contemplation in themselves—representatives in the con-temporary world of the world of scripture. It is the ideal of personalcontact with the saint, either in person or through the pages of the worksthemselves, that forms the primary ideological focus of the compositions.The ecclesiastical histories, by contrast, largely eschew the opportunity topresent the saints as objects for individual contemplation, and relativelyfew miracle stories are included within these digressions. Instead, theHistoriai focus upon the image of the desert groups as communities—asan idealized form of Christian society, with manifold contrasts to theimperfect approximation of divine will evident elsewhere in the world.

The use of the ascetic periphery to cast implicit judgment upon thewider world undoubtedly followed the precedent set by Philo. For theJewish writer, the Therapeutae offered the opportunity to criticize theexcesses of the Gentiles in Egypt, Greece, and Rome. For Eusebius threecenturies later, the same group could be turned upon their original faith ina polemic against the apathy of Judaism. When a century later the Thera-peutae were superseded as champions of the desert by the new Christianmonks, Sozomen and his contemporaries similarly conscripted them intothe new religious struggles of the fifth century.

For the later ecclesiastical historians, the crucial struggle was not thatbetween Christianity and Judaism but between orthodox observance andthe myriad perceived heresies of the growing church. It was against differ-ent outcasts, therefore—those excluded from the recognized church—that the continuators directed their works. Significantly, each of the later


Greek historians juxtaposes his accounts of monastic life in the desertwith descriptions of heretical observance.81 As might be expected, theorthodoxy of the ascetics themselves is emphasized, and the point isdriven home by reference to Athanasius’ sanctuary in the desert at thetime of his own persecution. This juxtaposition of monastic and hereticprovides a powerful, if implicit, contrast between two different forms ofoutcast.82 The former, through societal, dietary, and physical difference, isshown to be outcast in spatial terms. The latter, through incorrect obser-vance, is morally excluded. If the descriptions of the desert monks wereintended to make any statement, therefore, it seems likely that it wasinfused with anti-Arian sentiment. Just as Tacitus criticized contemporaryRome through his celebration of idealized Germani or Salvian of Marseillescondemned Gallic Christians in contrast to the “noble” Goths and Van-dals, so the Christian historians of the fifth century employed the monas-tic champions of Christ in the condemnation of contemporary heresy.

The polemical aspect of this presentation of the ascetic periphery doesnot exhaust its interest for the modern historian. In the light of PeterBrown’s enormously influential scholarship on the position of the holyman within late antique society, the presentation of such individualswithin the historiography of the same period provides a timely reminderthat holy men, however integrated they may have been within networksof social obligation, remained strange and even monstrous phenomena tothe outside world.83 Brown himself argues that alienation of sorts pro-vided the foundation for the social authority of the holy man and demon-

81. Compare, for example, Ruf. HE 11.4 (GCS 9.1:1004–8) (which describes thepersecutions of the monks under Lucius), 11.7 (GCS 9.1:1012–13) (on the Arianheresy in Alexandria), and 11.8 (GCS 9.1:1013–14) (on the desert monks); Soz. HE1.12–14 (PG 67:889–904) (on monastic origins), 1.15 (PG 67:904–8) (on the originsof Arianism), 3.13 (PG 67:1065–68) (the monks are identified as Nicaean observersafter the Synod of Sardica), 3.14 (PG 67:1068–81) (a further description of theMonks themselves), 6.27 (PG 67:1368–69) (the monks act as leaders of anti-Arianresistance in Egypt), and 6.28 (PG 67:1369–73) (a third digression on Egyptianmonasticism); Socr. HE 4.23 (PG 67:509–21) (account of the monks) and 4.24 (PG67:521–25) (the persecutions under Valens); and Thdt. HE 4.18 (PG 82:1164–68) (onthe monks and the persecution of Lucius).

82. On the heretic as archetypal Christian outcast, see esp. White, “Forms ofWildness,” 4.

83. Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” JRS61 (1971): 80–101. For some suggestion of the influence of Brown’s scholarship, seeAlexander Murray, “Peter Brown and the Shadow of Constantine,” JRS 73 (1983):191–203.


strates how this was accomplished through a close analysis of the hagio-graphical evidence.84

What I hope to have demonstrated here, however, is that the monks oflate antiquity could be depicted as a group apart. Within the Historiai, ofcourse, this group is a spatially defined one—on the edge of the world—yet the implications of this presentation may have been further reaching.The catalogue of oddities associated by the historians of the period withindividual ascetics combined to create an image of the Christian desertanalogous to the peripheral regions of the classical world. The phenom-enon of the holy man in late antiquity was thus not limited to a profusionof saintly figures who each reflected the anxieties and desires of thecommunities in which they lived but extended to incorporate the vision ofa sanctified desert which itself held up a mirror to the world as a whole. If,as has been discussed, responses to holy men were dictated only partly bydirect personal experience and were affected to a considerable degree bythe preconceptions engendered by written sources, then the wider impli-cations of this second process should be apparent. Through it the saintlyfigures scattered throughout the world would not merely act as individualmanifestations of Christian piety (or Enkidu-like otherness) but wouldalso be associated on a fundamental level with their idealized brethrenwithin the desert. The hagiographical passages within late antique histo-ries have rarely been regarded as anything more than fortuitous borrow-ings from different literary genres that rose to prominence at about thesame time. In fact, the exploitation of established historiographical mod-els within these works may have had a significant effect upon perceptionsof holy men throughout the civilized world.

CHRISTIAN CONCEPTIONSOF THE PHYSICAL WORLD

The changing representation of the Egyptian periphery during the fourthand fifth centuries was as much a reflection of changing attitudes to theworld as a whole as to the monastic colonization of the Western Desert.Eusebius, it might be remembered, found Christians in the region longbefore the true emergence of the desert ascetic. As James Goehring hasrecently demonstrated, moreover, many of the ascetic figures traditionallyassumed to have inhabited the heart of the desert, and placed there byhagiographers and historians alike, did not justify such geographical

84. Brown, “Rise and Function of the Holy Man,” 91–95.


assumptions.85 Deep desert monasticism in fact represented just one (ratherrare) form of asceticism on a geographical continuum from the truewilderness to the observance of religious ritual in the town. The implicitassociation of the Christian champion with the desert was, as with somuch else in Egyptian monasticism, largely the creation of the scriptorium.86

The presentation of the desert as a place of particular Christian sanctityreflects a fundamental shift in the popular conceptualization of the worldthat took place over the course of late antiquity.87 Within this period theworld started to assume an unfamiliar shape. As many modern studieshave demonstrated, the fourth and fifth centuries witnessed the evolutionof the Christian conception of a Holy Land—a process marked by consid-erable sectarian conflict and a reassessment of Christian debts to Judaictheology.88 If these disputes redefined the position and importance of thecenter of the late antique world, the passages discussed in this paperdemonstrate that a similarly tumultuous shift was affecting the otherextreme. The periphery had long been regarded with ambivalence by theinhabitants of the Mediterranean center. Invested at times with a certainsavage nobility, at others with an almost bestial alterity, the areas beyondthe cultural hegemony of Greece and Rome were peripheral in almostevery sense to a classical gaze focused firmly on the Mediterranean.

With the development of Christian geographical thought, however, theedges of the world were invested with a new significance. Scripturalassertions that the Word of God would extend throughout the worldencouraged Christian writers to demonstrate that the parameters of thefaith extended far beyond the limites of the empire. To this end Eusebius

85. James E. Goehring, “The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and AsceticSpace in Early Christian Egypt,” JECS 1 (1993): 281–96.

86. The importance of literary convention in the shaping of Egyptian monasticismis further discussed in Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 1–8.

87. On the fundamental changes undergone by geographical thought during thefirst Christian centuries, see Natalia Lozovsky, The Earth is Our Book (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 2000); and A. H. Merrills, History and Geography inLate Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

88. The development of the Holy Land has witnessed some extraordinary recentscholarship, see esp. Robert L. Wilken, “Eusebius and the Christian Holy Land,” inEusebius, Christianity and Judaism, ed. Harold W. Attridge and Gohei Hata (Detroit:Wayne State University Press, 1992), 736–61; Dennis E. Groh, “The Onomasticon ofEusebius and the Rise of Christian Palestine,” SP 18.1 (1983): 23–32; P. W. L. Walker,Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in theFourth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); and esp. Robert A.Markus, “How on Earth Could Places Become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea ofHoly Places,” JECS 2 (1994): 257–71.


and his successors included descriptions of spectacular missionary activ-ity within their accounts. Eusebius himself, for example, paraphrases thefamous passage from Acts in which Philip converts an Ethiopian eunuchand with him the fabulous kingdom of the South.89 The consolidation ofChristianity within the same region is further narrated by the later histo-rians in their description of the fortuitous mission of Frumentius to thekingdoms of the Red Sea.90 Elsewhere the continuators describe the apoc-ryphal apostolic conversions of Parthia and India, later missionary activ-ity in Ethiopia and Iberia, and fourth-century evangelism across the Rhineand the Danube.91 In each case the success of Christianity beyond theboundaries of empire is celebrated, and the visible conversion of regionslong associated with the very edges of the world is granted a prominentposition.

The presentation of the African desert as a region of spectacular sanc-tity provides the most forceful demonstration of this rhetoric of Christianexpansion. Regions previously associated only with the monstrous areproudly depicted as the bastion of the new Christianity—a visible demon-stration of the power of the new faith and the impotence of the old. Thatthe monastic communities themselves were in reality rarely located farbeyond the civilized boundaries of the Nile Valley is immaterial within there-defined Christian oikoumene\. None of the traditional inhabitants ofthe desert appears within the Historiai, and the ascetic inhabitants of thefringe happily inherit this role. As Jerome’s satyr observed, far from beinga neglected region the desert could be depicted as a heartland of the newfaith—a position that only throws into sharper relief the iniquities of theMediterranean world.

89. Eus. HE 2.1 (SC 31:48–52); Ruf. HE 2.1 (GCS 9.1:103–9). On this episode, cf.Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity, 206–8; and esp. Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, ed.Tormod Eide, Tomas Hägg, Richard Holton Pierce, and László Török (Bergen:University of Bergen Press, 1998), 3:1081–83.

90. Ruf. HE 10.9 (GCS 9.1:971–73); Soz. HE 2.24 (PG 67:996–1000); Socr. HE1.19 (PG 67:125–29); and Thdt. HE 1.22 (PG 82:969–72). On the mission (and theliterature surrounding it), see Albrecht Dihle, “Frumentios und Ezana,” in hisUmstritten Daten: Untersuchungen zum Auftreten der Griechen am Roten Meer(Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1964), 36–65.

91. Ruf. HE 10.9 (GCS 9.1:971–73), Socr. HE 1.19 (PG 67:125–29) (the Apostolicmissions); Socr. HE. 4.33 (PG 67:552–53), Soz. HE 2.16 (PG 67:972–76), Thdt. HE4.33 (PG 82:1196–97) (the Goths); Socr. HE 1.20 (PG 67:129–30), Soz. HE 2.7 (PG67:949–53), Thdt. HE 1.23 (PG 82:972–73) (the Iberians); Socr. HE 7.30 (PG67:805–8) (the Burgundians). Perhaps the clearest declaration of Christian successwhere Rome had failed is provided by Theodoret Graec. Affect. Cur. 9.15. For text,translation, and commentary see Eide et al., Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, 3:1144–47.


If we return finally to Saint Antony and his monster, therefore, thesimilarities between the characters in this short drama may perhaps bediscerned. Monsters continued to feature prominently in Western thoughtuntil the Enlightenment, of course, long after the desert ascetics had losttheir appeal to the wider world. For a brief period, however, readers ofthe Vita Pauli would have looked at the pair depicted by Jerome, and theirattention would have been drawn not to the creature with “hooked snoutand extremities like goats’ feet” but to the equally peculiar figure along-side him. It was only through appropriating the language of the mon-strous that the writers, and particularly the historians, of late antiquitycould express just how strange the world of asceticism—and just howvast the world of Christianity—really was.

A. H. Merrills is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate atKing’s College, Cambridge

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