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

1

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.

15

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.

16

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

17

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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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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