The Encroaching Desert: Egyptian Hagiography and the Medieval West

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THE ENCROACHING DESERT

THE ENCROACHING DESERT Egyptian Hagiography and the Medieval West edited by

JITSE DIJKSTRA AND MATHILDE VAN DIJK

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

Cover illustration: Matthias Grünewald, “The temptation of Saint Antony” from the Altarpiece of Isenheim (1512-1516), by permission of the Museum of Unterlinden, Colmar.

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15530 5 ISBN-10: 90 04 15530 9 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Acknowledgements ...................................................................... Jitse H.F. Dijkstra and Mathilde van Dijk, Introduction: The Encroaching Desert ........................................................ David Frankfurter, Hagiography and the Reconstruction of Local Religion in Late Antique Egypt: Memories, Inventions, and Landscapes .................................................. Jacques van der Vliet, Bringing Home the Homeless: Landscape and History in Egyptian Hagiography .............. Peter van Minnen, Saving History? Egyptian Hagiography in Its Space and Time .............................................................. Claudia Rapp, Desert, City, and Countryside in the Early Christian Imagination ............................................................ Conrad Leyser, The Uses of the Desert in the Sixth-Century West ................................................................ Lynda L. Coon, Collecting the Desert in the Carolingian West ........................................................................................ Bert Roest, The Franciscan Hermit: Seeker, Prisoner, Refugee .................................................................................. Eric L. Saak, Ex vita patrum formatur vita fratrum: The Appropriation of the Desert Fathers in the Augustinian Monasticism of the Later Middle Ages .............................. Gabriela Signori, Nikolaus of Flüe († 1487): Physiognomies of a Late Medieval Ascetic .................................................. Mathilde van Dijk, Disciples of the Deep Desert: Windesheim Biographers and the Imitation of the Desert Fathers .................................................................................... Index of Names .......................................................................... Addresses of Authors and Editors ............................................

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13 39 57 93 113 135 163

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257 281 287

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Nine of the ten essays included in this volume are the papers presented at a workshop held under the same title at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, on March 14-15, 2005. We would like to acknowledge our gratitude to several institutions and persons without whom the organization of the workshop and the compiling of this volume would have been impossible. First of all, we would like to thank the Radboud Foundation (Radboudstichting), the Groningen University Fund (GUF), the Groningen Research School for the Study of the Humanities (GRSSH), and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for their financial support of the workshop. In addition to the generous contribution by the GRSSH, we are especially grateful to Martin Gosman, who from the start stimulated us to organize the workshop, and to Marijke Wubbolts, who with ceaseless effort and efficiency organized all the practical and financial aspects of the workshop, so that we could concentrate on its contents. We would also like to thank Jan Bremmer for supporting our application of an NWO grant. Second, we would like to thank the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies for excellently hosting the workshop. Not only was the beautiful medieval building in the heart of the city of Groningen, then the home institution of both guest editors, a suitable place for organizing the workshop, its lecture rooms also contributed to a pleasant and stimulating intellectual environment. The discussions were masterly led by the chairs of the different sessions ( Jan Bremmer, Anneke Mulder-Bakker, Alasdair MacDonald, and Bart Ramakers), while Arjo Vaderjagt deserves praise for his acute and eloquent résumé at the end of the workshop. At the same time, behind the scenes, the support staff of the Faculty kindly helped us serving coffee and tea, preparing the aula for the key-note lecture and making the rooms ready for the other lectures. In particular, Mirjam Buigel-De Witte needs to be thanked for her assistance in making the workshop into a success. We would also like to thank Justin Kroesen for his willingness to organize a trip to several medieval village churches in the Groningen countryside. His enthusiastic guidance made that Monday afternoon into a wonderful and relaxing experience.

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acknowledgments

Finally, we would like to thank the authors for their preparedness to contribute to this volume, for their active participation in the discussions during and after the workshop, and their perseverance in adjusting the papers to the format required for this volume. It was Wim Janse who asked us already before the workshop to publish its proceedings in Church History and Religious Culture. We are grateful for the trust he showed in us by asking us to become guest editors of this volume, and kindly thank him as the final editor for his help in the last stages of the editing process and taking care of the review section. We also like to thank the publishing house, Brill, for its professional assistance on the road to publication and making this book into a handsome volume. Jitse H.F. Dijkstra and Mathilde van Dijk

INTRODUCTION: THE ENCROACHING DESERT* Jitse H.F. Dijkstra and Mathilde van Dijk In 1993, James Goehring published an important article entitled ‘The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,’1 in which he unravels the myth presented by the early Christian sources that in Late Antiquity the Egyptian desert was filled with monks. Beginning with the metaphorical dichotomy between desert and city, Goehring shows that the “desert myth” was a literary construct in which holy men withdrew to the desert in massive numbers to renounce the world. The desert itself thus became a spiritual city, to paraphrase the famous words from the prototype of all saints’ lives, the Life of Antony. In this literary construct, the desert was needed to emphasize the spatial renunciation. Although the reality of early Egyptian monasticism was much more complex, “in the literary model, the desert encroached more and more on the portrayal of ascetic space.”2 After the first monks had wandered into the desert in the third century, it was Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria who around 356 CE created the literary model of the Egyptian desert hermit in his description of the life of Antony.3 This literary model was quickly imitated, and the resulting new works presented in turn new saints to imitate, which began an endless, self-generating process of literary production. Whether it was the Syrian or the Egyptian desert in which hermits first removed themselves from society in this way, is not of great concern for us here.4 It was the lives of the Egyptian desert fathers, as transferred through the works of admirers such as John Cassian

* We benefited considerably from comments by Jan N. Bremmer and Richard W. Burgess on an earlier version of this introduction. 1 J.E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society and the Desert. Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (Harrisburg, Penn., 1999), pp. 73-88 (‘The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,’ 19931). 2 Goehring, Ascetics, Society and the Desert, p. 88. 3 All dates in this volume are CE, unless otherwise indicated. 4 A question also addressed by Goehring, Ascetics, Society and the Desert, pp. 1335, there 32-4 (‘The Origins of Monasticism,’ 19921). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2006

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(in his Institutes and Conferences) and Latin translations (most notably, the translation of the Life of Antony and collections of desert father material such as the Vitae patrum), that subsequently circulated in the Latin West. Although the physical presence of the desert itself was absent, the desert myth of renunciation from the world proved particularly appealing, and it is well known that the Egyptian desert lure continued to influence western monastic thought throughout the Middle Ages. This volume centers on the theme of Egyptian hagiography: in what contexts was it used in Late Antiquity, and how were its themes and motives transferred to and reused in the different contexts of the medieval West? Our study is not intended as an exhaustive study of Egyptian hagiography and its literary evolution in the medieval West, but as a series of case studies that underline the complexity of the ever-changing contexts in which the desert father material was interpreted. In this introduction, we would first like to offer some remarks on the origins of the workshop in order to show how this volume has taken shape. Second, we will give a brief overview of the various contributions. Initially, the plan for the workshop was rather modest, namely to invite David Frankfurter to Groningen. In 1998, he had published an important and thought-provoking book about religion in late antique Egypt, in which he presents a refreshingly new perspective on the transformation from the Ancient Egyptian religion to Christianity in Late Antiquity (fourth to sixth centuries).5 Far from describing how Christianity was imposed upon traditional local religion, Frankfurter looks at the interaction of Egyptian religion with Christianity on a local and regional level. In this “bottom up” approach, Frankfurter sees no swift “triumph” of Christianity over “paganism,” but rather a dynamic process of, what he calls, assimilation and resistance. According to Frankfurter, the process of transformation can even be seen in terms of the “resilience” of the traditional local religion of the countryside. In this way, the Christian “triumphalism” that has dominated the study of Egyptian religion in Late Antiquity for so long can definitively be discarded — at least in his opinion. Ever since its appearance eight years ago, Frankfurter’s book has evoked both praise and criticism.6 Although undoubtedly correct in 5 6

D. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt. Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, 1998). The book received the Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the

introduction: the encroaching desert

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its claim that the process of religious transformation in late antique Egypt was more complex than has been acknowledged thus far, not every scholar has agreed with Frankfurter’s interpretation of the sources. Being a historian of religions, Frankfurter naturally uses anthropological models and parallels to reconstruct local religious tradition. Another main source he uses is Egyptian hagiography, written in Greek and Coptic, a genre of which the usefulness as a historical source has often been disputed.7 Admittedly, Frankfurter duly recognizes the limitations of these sources for reconstructing traditional local religion, but they are still one of the main sources for his work. Whereas there has been ample discussion of Frankfurter’s interpretation of some specific passages in hagiographical works, the more fundamental discussion of the usefulness of Egyptian hagiography as a historical source has not yet occurred. That was why the firstmentioned guest editor, who was inspired by Frankfurter’s work when writing his Ph.D.-thesis on the religious transformation of the region of the First Cataract in southern Egypt in Late Antiquity, for which one of the main sources is a hagiographical text, the Coptic Life of Aaron, wished to invite Frankfurter to Groningen on the occasion of the public defense of his thesis.8 As two other specialists of Egyptian hagiography, Jacques van der Vliet and Peter van Minnen, were also attending the defense, they were asked to respond to the lecture by Frankfurter from the perspective of their own disciplines, Coptic studies and ancient history, respectively. Speaking about his plans with the last-mentioned guest editor in the pleasant environment of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen, the idea was formed to extend this symposium into a small workshop. As she was working on some biographers from the Devotio Moderna who made extensive Historical Studies Category of the American Academy of Religion in 1999 and was soon published in a paperback edition. For some critical remarks, see M. Smith, ‘Aspects of the Preservation and Transmission of Indigenous Religious Traditions in Akhmim and Its Environs during the Graeco-Roman Period,’ in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest, eds. Arno Egberts, Brian P. Muhs and Jacques van der Vliet (Leiden, 2002), pp. 233-47, there 245-7. 7 E.g. Roger Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), pp. 7-8. 8 Jitse H.F. Dijkstra, Religious Encounters on the Southern Egyptian Frontier in Late Antiquity (AD 298-642) (Ph.D.-thesis, University of Groningen, 2005), to be published in the series Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta.

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use of the desert father material, she was particularly interested in other ways in which the Egyptian desert material was reused in the Middle Ages. We therefore decided to combine our interests and ask, in addition to the specialists in Egyptian hagiography, several medievalists to present their case studies at a two-day workshop. As a result this volume is divided into two different sections. The first section contains three papers and discusses the use of Egyptian hagiographical works as historical sources for late antique Egypt. The second section contains seven papers outlining different cases of reuse of the desert father material in the medieval West. This division was already apparent in the workshop. The first day started with a public key-note lecture by Frankfurter and was followed by the presentation and discussion of the papers by Van der Vliet and Van Minnen. Like all other papers, these had been precirculated and were already in an advanced stage of preparation, so that there was ample room for discussion. The workshop itself was of a closed character, so that the first morning session was not open to the public. In the afternoon, we went on a guided tour of several fine examples of medieval village churches in the countryside of Groningen. The second day was entirely devoted to the Middle Ages. We began with a session on the Early Middle Ages (Leyser and Coon), followed by two sessions on the Later Middle Ages (Roest and Signori; Saak and Van Dijk). The day was rounded off with a concluding lecture by Arjo Vanderjagt and some final remarks by the guest editors. As the questions posed to the late antique material were different from the ones asked of the medieval material, at the end of the workshop it was felt that there was a need for a proper introduction to the essays on the medieval West after the section on Egyptian hagiography. We therefore invited Claudia Rapp to fill this gap, and her essay traces the concept of the desert from the Bible down to its transferal to the medieval West. The articles that follow are arranged more or less chronologically. The first concerns the reuse of the desert fathers in the fifth- and especially the sixth-century West (Leyser), and the next the appropriation of Egyptian materials in the Carolingian West (Coon). The following essays cover two of the Mendicant Orders, the Franciscans (Roest) and the Augustinian Hermits (Saak). The volume concludes with case studies on the imitation and interpretation of the desert father material in several descriptions of the Swiss hermit Brother Klaus (Signori, a paper orig-


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inally delivered in German) and in the biographers of the Regular Canons and Canonesses of Windesheim in the Low Countries (Van Dijk). These case studies are intended to offer a few examples of how medieval men and women reused the desert father material in widely different contexts. Other important cases, such as Irish monasticism, the Cistercians and the Dominicans will be left for future studies.9 Together the ten papers presented here constitute some snapshots of the use and reuse of Egyptian hagiography written by some of the foremost specialists in their fields. They cover three major periods in history (Late Antiquity, the Early and Later Middle Ages) and well over a thousand years. In our opinion, the importance of this volume lies in the fundamental discussion of Egyptian hagiography as a historical source for the study of Late Antiquity and its contribution to the scholarship on the reception of the desert fathers in the Middle Ages. In general, the papers show from different perspectives and disciplines how the Egyptian desert kept encroaching upon literature, and even on architecture (see the article by Coon). Having given an overview of the origins of this book and its contents, let us now have a closer look at the papers individually. The first in a series of three articles discussing the use of Egyptian hagiography as a historical source is the essay by David Frankfurter, ‘Hagiography and the Reconstruction of Local Religion in Late Antique Egypt: Memories, Inventions, and Landscapes.’ In this essay, Frankfurter once more sets out his ideas about the use of hagiographical works for the reconstruction of local Egyptian religion. Despite their limitations because of biblical and literary distortions, what he calls with the words of the poet Marianne Moore “imaginary gardens,” he still thinks there are “real toads” in them. In the remainder of his paper, Frankfurter gives some examples of how these authentic details can be recovered from Egyptian hagiographical works. He argues that in some cases the landscape and gestures can preserve a significant amount of authentic memory. On the other 9 On Irish monasticism see, for instance, Lisa M. Bitel, Isle of the Saints: Monastic Settlement and Christian Community in Early Ireland (Ithaca, 1990); on the Cistercians’ connection with the desert see e.g. Immo Eberl, Die Zisterzienser. Geschichte eines europäischen Ordens (Stuttgart, 2002), pp. 11-2, 21-2; among the Dominicans, Henry Suso (ca. 1295-1366) is but one example of a brother who modeled himself on the desert fathers, see e.g. his Exemplar 2.35, ed. Karl Bihlmeyer (Stuttgart, 1907, repr. 1961), pp. 103-9.

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hand, he is hesitant about the authenticity of the representation of Ancient Egyptian priests in the sources. In the concluding part of the paper, Frankfurter defends the use of anthropological models and parallels for the interpretation of hagiography and applies this approach to two passages from Christian literary works. In the second paper, ‘Bringing Home the Homeless: Landscape and History in Egyptian Hagiography,’ Jacques van der Vliet continues on Frankfurter’s theme of authentic details in the landscape. In contrast, he actually sees the construction and reconstruction of a Christian landscape as one of the central functions of Egyptian hagiography and does not think that hagiographical works reflect historical processes of the past, but rather that they were attempts to explain and legitimize contemporary landscapes. He illustrates this point from the Coptic Martyrdom of Saint James the Persian, which postdates the Arab conquest of Egypt but relates events dating back to the fifth century, and the sixth-century Life of Aaron, which goes back to events in the fourth and fifth centuries. In between, Van der Vliet discusses shifting attitudes towards the cult of saints’ relics in several Egyptian monastic sources. He ends by discussing the tradition of the Holy Family in Arab Egypt as an example of the later “rewriting” of the Christian landscape. The first series of articles is concluded with a paper by Peter van Minnen, ‘Saving History? Egyptian Hagiography in Its Space and Time.’ This paper most clearly diverges from Frankfurter’s ideas of Egyptian hagiography’s use for history. As an ancient historian, Van Minnen is actually highly skeptical of the use of hagiographical works in reconstructing traditional local religion. First of all he introduces a number of nuances in the prevalent view that Egyptian hagiography mainly consists of the lives of the desert fathers and that it was highly important in late antique society. In Egypt the impact of ascetics was dwarfed by that of martyrs and, generally speaking, hagiography was relatively unimportant. A second precaution is the muddled transmission of our sources, which often makes interpretation difficult. It is only occasionally that authentic details, called “nuggets” by Van Minnen, can be isolated, as in the case of the ascetic Apa Bane whose feature of having a troubled spine could be confirmed by the discovery of a skeleton with similar features during recent excavations. In most cases, Van Minnen argues, we are on less firm ground, since most saints’ lives were written at a time when “paganism” definitively belonged to the past, the second half of the


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fourth century and later. This circumstance suggests to Van Minnen that rather than preserving “cultural memory” the authors of the hagiographical works used the texts available to them, most notably the Bible, and the landscape around them to explain the past, with which Van Minnen thus agrees on the latter point with Van der Vliet. According to Van Minnen, it is better to view Egyptian hagiography as a series of stories about how people were saved, in other words as “Salvation history.” This is a nice transition to the fourth article, Claudia Rapp’s ‘Desert, City, and Countryside in the Early Christian Imagination,’ which sets the scene for a series of six papers on the reuse of Egyptian hagiography in the medieval West. Rapp follows the concept of the desert from the Egypt of the Old Testament to the Judaean desert of the New Testament and back again to the Egyptian desert of early Christian hagiography. She agrees with Van Minnen that the early monastic project in Egypt may be conceived of as a means of seeking salvation and that Egyptian hagiography can thus be seen as “Salvation history.” Meanwhile, however, the concept of the desert was also dislocated from the specific location of the Egyptian desert and internalized, which means that the desert could also be sought elsewhere, outside of Egypt. This evolution is quite literally embodied by John Cassian who is generally regarded as the bringer of the Egyptian desert material to the West. If we think further along these lines, the desert could become a “typological landscape,” in which the concept merely stands for monastic retreat. Such a retreat could even become restricted to a small period of time as is evidenced by many of the important early Church fathers who retreated from public life to the “desert,” only to return as powerful Church officials. In this sense, the desert has become only a transitional phase in the spiritual formation of the Church fathers. Be this as it may, it was Cassian’s message of the desert as a lifelong struggle that penetrated the West. The following article, by Conrad Leyser, discusses this reception in the fifth- and especially the sixth-century West. Whereas John Cassian has usually been contrasted with Augustine of Hippo, the former being represented as a passive transmitter of the Egyptian desert experience and the latter as a critic thereof, both shared a concern about the proper application of asceticism. The asceticism of the fifth- and sixth-century West can be perceived as an attempt to reconcile their solutions, Cassian emphasizing moral expertise and

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Augustine communal charity, that culminated in the sixth-century Rule of Saint Benedict. The initial enthusiasm over the arrival of the Egyptian desert experience in the West, such as at the island of Lérins near modern Cannes, under the influence of Cassian and Augustine, was tamed in the fifth century, only to emerge with more vehemence in the sixth. Leyser argues that in the hands of bishops such as Gregory of Tours, Caesarius of Arles, and Fulgentius of Ruspe the desert in fact became a key instrument for exerting episcopal authority in the sixth-century West. On the basis of the Life of the Jura Fathers, he also illustrates the revived interest in the desert on the part of sixth-century monastic communities. The next paper brings us to the Carolingians. In her paper ‘Collecting the Desert in the Carolingian West,’ Lynda L. Coon refutes the image that the Carolingians were passive collectors and demonstrates how in the ninth century they used the Egyptian desert material not only as a model to be imitated but also as a prelude to the asceticism of the West. They did this by what is called in Ja≤ Elsner’s terminology an “aesthetic of bricolage,” that is, a careful control of the past by collecting, embodying, and displaying. Coon mentions three types of bricolage; literary, visual, and ritual bricolage, and thus she focuses not only on texts such as Eigil’s Life of Sturm, but also on architecture. A case in point, and perhaps the most telling example of Carolingian eclecticism, is the abbey of Fulda, in modern Germany, in which eastern and western relics were collected in the eastern and western crypts to symbolize the history of Christian asceticism. The next two papers concern the Mendicant Orders, and therewith we arrive in the Later Middle Ages. In the first essay, ‘The Franciscan Hermit: Seeker, Prisoner, Refugee,’ Bert Roest writes about the importance of the Egyptian desert experience for the Franciscan Order. Although in modern discussions of this and other orders the emphasis has often been on the pastoral and apostolic element, Roest argues that, from the beginning, the ascetic element also played a prominent role. In fact, the history of the orders can be viewed in terms of a constant tension between both elements. Roest first describes several instances of the flourishing ascetic movements in eleventh- and twelfth-century Italy. Within this framework, he then compares the Lives of Saint Francis of Assisi with its ultimate model, the Life of Antony by Athanasius, and analyzes the Rule for hermitages written by Francis himself. Yet, despite the retention


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of the eremitical tradition within the Franciscan Order, the tension with the pastoral and apostolic runs throughout its history and is traced until the early sixteenth century. The second essay on the Mendicants is ‘Ex vita patrum formatur vita fratrum: The Appropriation of the Desert Fathers in the Augustinian Monasticism of the Later Middle Ages’ by Eric L. Saak. He argues that the Egyptian desert was still very much alive in the fourteenthcentury Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, which appropriated the desert material for the sake of its own identity and mission. The chief architect of this process of appropriation was Jordan of Quedlinburg who with his Liber vitasfratrum and other works was highly influential within the Order until the early sixteenth century. Saak analyzes this text in detail and demonstrates how Jordan, inspired most of all by the Pseudo-Augustinian Sermones ad fratres in eremo, traced back the origins of the Order to Paul of Thebes, the First Hermit, and its foundation to Augustine. Thus Jordan construed a version of the past that served as an explanation and a legitimization of the origins of the Order. The last papers are yet two further examples of the rich afterlife of the Egyptian desert of the Later Middle Ages, respectively, in Switzerland and the Low Countries. In the penultimate essay, ‘Nikolaus of Flüe († 1487): Physiognomies of a Late Medieval Ascetic,’ Gabriela Signori describes the different representations of the physical appearance of the fifteenth-century Swiss hermit Brother Klaus in a series of literary sources, from Jacob of Waltheym to Albrecht of Bonstetten. Rather than telling something about what Klaus really looked like, these texts show what the authors (and their public) expected him to look like. Signori argues that these expectations were inspired by a close reading of the lives of the desert fathers in the Vitae patrum. The final paper, ‘Disciples of the Deep Desert: Windesheim Biographers and the Imitation of the Desert Fathers,’ by Mathilde van Dijk symbolically brings the volume to a close by returning to the editors’ home country, the present day Netherlands. In her contribution, Van Dijk looks at the influence of the Egyptian desert material on the Devotia Moderna, in particular on two works from the Chapter of Windesheim, De viris illustribus by John Busch and the sisterbook of Diepenveen, the former describing the lives of brothers, the latter of sisters from the two most important monasteries of the Chapter. In the De viris illustribus, John Busch portrays his brothers as the new desert fathers, using the original fathers as models

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but at the same time adjusting his portrayals to the evolving ideas on the nature of true piety. Although there are many similarities in the sisterbook with Busch’s account of the brothers, the authors of the sisterbook were forced to deal with gender differences. Van Dijk suggests that the biographers’ representation of sin was less gendered than in the Vitae patrum and their emphatic stress on the inner person made the Diepenveen sisters more like their male counterparts. The common thread that runs through these papers is the fact that they are all witnesses to the endurance of the desert myth. Leaving aside the question of the historical use of Egyptian hagiography, in itself highly important, the contributions on late antique Egypt demonstrate that in this period the desert material had already been appropriated to reflect the contemporary place and time. This is most clearly found in Van der Vliet’s contribution, who interprets, for instance, the Life of Aaron as an explanation and legitimization of a sixth-century Christian landscape. In the Middle Ages, the appropriation of desert father material from a contemporary perspective was essentially the same. For example, the Life of Aaron is reminiscent of the Augustinian Hermits’ attempt to explain and legitimize the existence of the Order by seeking its origins (Saak), although in both cases the point of departure, the specific time and place, is rather different. Here, then, we have come to the unifying theme of this volume, though a loose one (e pluribus unum): although the contexts in which the desert father material was interpreted may have been different, in each case it was appropriated to reflect the “here and now.” This does not mean that medieval people did not think highly of the desert fathers — far from it. For some sixth-century bishops, the desert fathers were an instrument of power (Leyser), and those same fathers played an important role in discussions about the direction the Franciscan Order should take (Roest). On the other hand, although in the abbey of Fulda the desert fathers were still important models to imitate, they had now become only part of a larger history of Christian asceticism (Coon). The Windesheim brothers and sisters also closely imitated the ascetic behavior of their ancestors, but had to “translate” it to their daily lives (Van Dijk). In sum, each case discussed says something about a given time and place. The ways in which the appropriation was carried out also differed greatly. Thus we can see how the famous model of the Life of Antony is reused, as in the case of the Life of the Jura Fathers (Leyser) and the Lives of


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Francis (Roest), how themes and motifs are reused, as in Busch’s De viris illustribus (Van Dijk), or how even small details are reused, as in the different depictions of Brother Klaus (Signori). In addition to this literary level, the appropriation may finally manifest itself in material form, as in the abbey of Fulda, where the desert father material consisted quite literally of their relics (Coon). We hope to have illustrated that by investigating from a multidisciplinary point of view, with its differing perspectives, the complex process of the recycling of the desert myth can be laid bare, be it in late antique Egypt, early medieval France or Germany, or later medieval Italy, Switzerland or the Low Countries. Many more studies are still needed to fill in the lacunae of the vast and complicated reception of the desert fathers, which had such a large impact on late antique and medieval literature and architecture. The concept of the Egyptian desert may have started out as a myth, but it soon became a daily reality for the many men and women who aspired to true piety. The value of the study of the desert father material lies in what its appropriation says about those people.

HAGIOGRAPHY AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF LOCAL RELIGION IN LATE ANTIQUE EGYPT: MEMORIES, INVENTIONS, AND LANDSCAPES* David Frankfurter Abstract Scholars interested in the continuing vitality or decline of traditional religion in the late antique Mediterranean world often find themselves dependent on hagiographical texts, which inevitably depict traditional heathenism as a foil to their Christian heroes and thus cannot be used as simple documentation for historical realia. This paper proposes ways of drawing historical evidence for real, continuing local religion from hagiographical texts from late antique Egypt. After a discussion of the specific ways in which hagiography imposes literary and biblical themes on its representation of traditional religious practices, two points of authentic memory are presented: topographical traditions and traditions about expressive gesture. In contrast, the hagiographical image of the Egyptian priest, for example, carries little historical authenticity. A concluding section of the paper defends and outlines the use of anthropological models for the historical interpretation of hagiography.

Introduction What good are saints’ lives for history? The question comes up repeatedly in the study of Late Antiquity, but the answers have long devolved into two diametrically opposite camps. On the one hand, there are those historians who draw on hagiography as virtual documentation of ancient attitudes and events — and certainly much more fun to read than chronicles and papyri. The field of Byzantine Studies has often seemed particularly indulgent of this naive positivism.1 On the other hand, there are historians who, confronted by the literary and stereotyped nature of saints’ legends, find themselves incapable of using the texts in any productive way for social history.

* I am grateful to the conveners, Jitse Dijkstra and Mathilde van Dijk, for inviting me for the lecture in Groningen and creating a stimulating forum for its discussion, and to my respondents, Jacques van der Vliet and Peter van Minnen, for their provocative comments. 1 See, for example, Stavroula Constantinou, review of Carolyn L. Connor, Women of Byzantium (New Haven, 2004), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.01.07. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2006

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This camp is occupied by the papyrologists and epigraphers whose preference for the authentic voices of documentary texts makes hagiography seem like utter fantasy.2 (Today this camp gains tacit support from those scholars of ancient literature who study saints’ lives in order to highlight the intersections of fiction, ideology, theology, and literary culture. In this way the text serves as its own hermetic world; history per se has little relevance.)3 Between these two camps stand those scholars whose particular interests in the field of late antique social history and religion require them to consult saints’ lives, but who freely acknowledge the criticisms of the historical value of these texts made by the second camp. Peter Brown has always stood as the leader in this third camp, both scrutinizing the evidence of hagiography and warning of the deceptive tendencies that such literature carries in the representation, say, of Christianization and violence.4 I too have tried to claim this middle ground in gathering evidence for forms of continuing Egyptian religion in the fourth and fifth centuries.5 Following scholars like Ewa Wipszycka and Ramsay MacMullen, I believe that we cannot simply ignore the substantial evidence of hagiography just because it lacks the first-hand historical reliability of a building inscription or a festival goods receipt — those priceless though limited documentary sources.6 However, we must be exceptionally up-front about the literary character and historical limitations of saints’ lives, as well as the nature of the questions we put to the texts. This is what I intend to explore in this essay: first, the limitations of hagiography for extracting historical information about native Egyptian religion;

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E.g. Roger Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), pp. 7-8. E.g. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, ‘The Sense of a Stylite: Perspectives on Simeon the Elder,’ Vigiliae Christianae 42 (1988), 376-94; Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘Holy Women, Holy Words: Early Christian Women, Social History, and the “Linguistic Turn”,’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), 413-30; and Derek Krueger, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian Era (Philadelphia, 2004). 4 E.g. Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London, 1982), pp. 10352 (‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,’ 19711), and Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge, 1995). 5 David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, 1998). 6 Ewa Wipszycka, Études sur le christianisme dans l’Égypte de l’antiquité tardive (Rome, 1996), pp. 63-105 (‘La christianisation de l’Égypte aux IVe-VIe siècles: aspects sociaux et ethniques,’ 19881); Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, A.D. 100-400 (New Haven and London, 1984), and Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven and London, 1997). 3

hagiography and the reconstruction of local religion

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second, the kinds of narrative features that can provide a basis for historical interpretation. The Limitations of Egyptian Hagiography Let me set the stage with three examples. The early fifth-century travelogue account of Egyptian hermits, the Historia monachorum in Aegypto, describes one Apa Apollo’s encounter with a festival procession from some temple in Hermopolis.7 The author describes the procession, with its wooden image of the god, as a “Bacchic frenzy.” Apollo miraculously halts the procession through his incantations; and they all — priests, devotees, and image — are stuck in the hot sun until Apollo releases them . . . on condition that they convert to Christianity. “As a result,” the story concludes, “there is no longer anybody in his district who may be termed a heathen.”8 While obviously not an eyewitness account of these events, the text seems to provide vivid evidence of a thriving temple cult in the Thebaid in the 380s or so — that is, more than a half-century after the empire officially went Christian. But how reliable is the Historia monachorum as a witness to real Egyptian religion? Although there is no reason to doubt that the author of the work visited the places and people he says he did, the text itself is written for outsiders — the growing audience of literate “armchair pilgrims” in the cities of the Mediterranean world. Indeed, as Andrew Merrills has so insightfully demonstrated, these armchair pilgrims had literary expectations for the depiction of exotic lives in the wild regions of the empire’s periphery. They craved details of extreme lifestyle and bizarre conflicts; and authors like Jerome, Palladius, and the composer of the Historia monachorum actively wrote to meet those expectations. So to what extent is the story of the image procession, presumably reported to the author by Apa Apollo’s devotees, developed to evoke a picture of wild heathen lands not unlike those envisioned in ancient novels?9

7 Historia monachorum 8.25-9, ed. A.-J. Festugière [Subsidia Hagiographica 34] (Brussels, 1961), pp. 56-8. Martin of Tours exerts a similar control over villagers engaging in heathen rites in Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 12, ed. Jacques Fontaine [Sources Chrétiennes 133] (Paris, 1967), p. 278. 8 Historia monachorum 8.29, ed. Festugière, p. 58. 9 A.H. Merrills, ‘Monks, Monsters, and Barbarians: Re-defining the African Periphery in Late Antiquity,’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 12 (2004), 217-44; see also Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late

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My second example comes from a text known as the Life of Shenoute — the charismatic and fanatical abbot of the White Monastery of Atripe — ostensibly written by his disciple and successor Besa in the later fifth century. The text describes Shenoute’s crusade — maybe in the early 390s — against a temple cult in a nearby village named Pnewit.10 As Shenoute nears the village, his donkey halts, for the villagers have laid some kind of magical materials in the path. Shenoute has his servant pick them up; they proceed into Pnewit, much to the shock of the villagers, who flee; Shenoute enters the temple and destroys its images. The story, ostensibly on the eyewitness authority of Shenoute’s own protégé, would seem to provide rare evidence for a thriving temple cult in Upper Egypt, some twenty kilometers from Shenoute’s monastery, supported by traditional villagers and priests familiar with protective binding spells.11 Indeed, two of Shenoute’s sermons about temple plundering were at some point in the fifth or sixth century linked to this crusade in the Life, so historians have tended to read them altogether as cumulative documentation for persisting Egyptian religion in the region of Panopolis.12 Yet it is not secure evidence at all. The sermons do not specify Pnewit; and the Life itself, according to Nina Lubomierski’s Humboldt University dissertation, is not the personal work of Besa at all but a fluid collage of local legends originally read out as encomia at Shenoute festivals. We are dealing here with a picture of a traditionalist village and its actions inherited from oral tradition and then shaped by the dramatic pen of an encomiast.13 Antiquity (Berkeley, 2000), esp. pp. 2-6 on the historical context of the Historia monachorum. 10 Ps.-Besa, Sinuthii vita sahidice, ed. in E. Amélineau, Monuments pour servir à l’histoire de l’Égypte chrétienne aux IV e et V e siècles [Mémoires Mission Archéologique Française 4] (Paris, 1888), pp. 45-6; Ps.-Besa, Sinuthii vita bohairice, ed. Johannes Leipoldt [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 41] (Paris, 1906), p. 41. 11 See Serge Sauneron, Villes et légendes d’Égypte, 2nd ed. (Cairo, 1983), pp. 1047, and Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 68-9, 209, 236. 12 E.g. Walter E. Kaegi, ‘The Fifth-Century Twilight of Byzantine Paganism,’ Classica et Mediaevalia 27 (1966), 243-75, there 255-6; Wipszycka, Études (see above, n. 6), pp. 90-2; Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization c. 370-529, 2 vols. [Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 115] (Leiden, 1993-1994), 2: 207-12; cf. Roger Rémondon, ‘L’Égypte et la suprème résistance au christianisme (Ve-VIIe siècles),’ Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 51 (1952), 63-78, there 71. 13 See Nina Lubomierski, Untersuchungen zur sogennante Vita Sinuthii (Ph.D.-thesis, Humboldt University of Berlin, 2006), forthcoming, and ‘Towards a Better Understanding of the So-Called “Vita Sinuthii”,’ presented at the 8th International Congress of Coptic Studies, Paris 2004.


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My third and final example of the problems we encounter in using hagiography to reconstruct native Egyptian religion in its last phases comes from the legend of an obscure holy man-made-bishop, one Macarius of Tkow, who seems to have lived in the first half of the fifth century. The chapter that interests me describes a village with a temple dedicated to the god “Kothos” — a corruption of Agathos Daimon, the Egyptian fortune spirit Shai. The traditional villagers are described as practicing devotions to Kothos before domestic shrines; while the priests of Kothos are waylaying Christian children, sacrificing them, and pulling out their intestines to make strings for magical harps. Macarius and his monks approach the temple to check out these stories, and Kothos rallies the villagers to defend the temple. At the end, the holy man Macarius calls down fire from heaven to burn the temple, all the images of Kothos and even the high priest. The heathen villagers flee; and the Christians take their homes.14 Here again we would seem to have detailed evidence of traditional religion in Upper Egypt still in the fifth century. And yet, the stories of heathen child sacrifice and Elijah-like battles of thaumaturgy between holy man and heathen god would make most social historians reject this text as so much fantasy. Add to these problems manuscripts no earlier than the tenth century for a text that originated some hundred years after Macarius himself, and the story of the temple of Kothos becomes almost useless as documentation — at least without a serious argument for specific points of reliability.15 These three texts exemplify the literary evidence for Egyptian religion’s sporadic persistence in the fourth and fifth centuries, after Christianity had gained imperial support, monasteries were growing,

14 Ps.-Dioscorus, Panegyric on Macarius 5, ed. and trans. D.W. Johnson, 2 vols. [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 415-6] (Louvain, 1980), 1: 29-40, 2: 21-30, trans. reprinted with introduction in Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice, ed. Richard Valantasis (Princeton, 2000), pp. 156-9. See prior discussions of this text by Kaegi, ‘Fifth-Century Twilight’ (see above, n. 12), 256-7; Wipszycka, Études (see above, n. 6), pp. 94-5; Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 21-2, 69-70, 131-42; and now, with discussion of the Kothos/Shai connection, idem, ‘Illuminating the Cult of Kothos: The Panegryic on Macarius and Local Religion in Fifth-Century Egypt,’ in The World of Early Egyptian Christianity: Language, Literature, and Social Context: Essays in Honor of David W. Johnson, eds. James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie (Washington, D.C., 2007), forthcoming. 15 D.W. Johnson, ‘Macarius of Tkow,’ in The Coptic Encyclopedia, 8 vols., ed. Aziz S. Atiya (New York, 1991), 5: 1492-94, there 1492.

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and — as Roger Bagnall has shown — the infrastructure of Egyptian temple religion had gone into steep decline.16 But their historical reliability is suspect on numerous counts: not only the considerable distance between the literary composition and the putative events described, but also because their own agendas as hagiographies lie elsewhere from documenting actual events. So let us consider the characteristics of hagiography that tend to resist historical reliability. Ahistorical Tendencies in Egyptian Hagiography First of all, hagiography, both in its finished literary form and in its typical origins in oral legends of saints, fundamentally represents group tradition. In his miracles and peregrinations, the saint calls forth collective identity, affirming institutions, exemplifying virtues, and grounding allegiances — and even encapsulating shared values and hopes.17 In the oral stage, or as a public encomium at a festival, this collective function is quite explicit, since the narrative is formulated specifically to bring people together.18 But in subsequent scribal stages (such as the Life of Shenoute underwent) the text becomes a nostalgic repository of local and institutional legend, encapsulating how this shrine, this monastery or its relics, this “culture hero,” came to sanctify the day, the land, and the fortune of this people. Indeed, we may well regard hagiography as etiology: foundation stories for religion as it is lived not in the narrated past but in the days of the encomium — and then the days of the scribes and editors. As Evelyne Patlagean has described, hagiography lays out the saint’s acts and conflicts over space, making his celebration “here” inevitable. As a literary composition, then, the saint’s life serves in some direct way as a charter for some institution: the power inherent in some shrine, the authority of its attendants, perhaps some theological position taken — all in all, the saints’s proper authority in

16 Roger Bagnall, Later Roman Egypt. Society, Religion, Economy and Administration (Aldershot and Burlington, 2003) Ch. X (‘Combat ou vide: christianisme et paganisme dans l’Égypte romaine tardive,’ 19881). 17 See Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985), pp. 19-21. 18 See e.g. Janet Timbie, ‘A Liturgical Procession in the Desert of Apa Shenoute,’ in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. David Frankfurter [Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 134] (Leiden, 1998), pp. 415-41; Arietta Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints en Égypte des Byzantins aux Abbassides (Paris, 2001), pp. 306-23.


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“this” area.19 Especially with the network of new shrines and churches that marked Christian sacred space, such stories wove their physical presence into the traditional sense of geography. Through vitae, saints gained local resonance.20 To advance these political aims and even to situate the saint’s authority, the hagiography depends on a literary backdrop of standard topoi, conjuring “a world that is heavier in menace than it is rich in promise.”21 Demonic antagonists and models of human depravity, opponents both verbal (like the philosophers who debate Athanasius’s Antony)22 and thaumaturgical, like the inevitable sorcerers who emerge only to be defeated and converted, are trotted out as foils to the saint.23 These topoi are not necessarily the sheer inventions of storytellers and scribes. Real historical characters or types will also be rendered as stock dramatic foils — a tactic that Abbot Shenoute uses in sermons against his local nemesis Gessios. But we must approach these texts with the sense that the narrative details serve primarily to buttress the charisma of the saint: that he and his shrine serve as the inevitable resolution to a world of danger and error.24

19 Evelyne Patlagean, ‘Ancient Byzantine Hagiography and Social History,’ in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History, ed. Stephen Wilson (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 101-21, there 111-2 (19681); see also Bernard Flusin, Miracle et histoire dans l’oeuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis (Paris, 1983), pp. 182-208; Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints (see above, n. 18), pp. 30-4; Johan Leemans, ‘General Introduction,’ in “Let Us Die That We May Live”: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs, eds. Johan Leemans, Wendy Mayer, Pauline Allen and Boudewijn Dehandschutter (London and New York, 2003), pp. 3-52; and David Frankfurter, ‘Urban Shrine and Rural Saint in Fifth-Century Alexandria,’ in Seeing the Gods: Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity, eds. Ja≤ Elsner and Ian Rutherford (Oxford 2005), pp. 435-49. 20 On the establishment of Christian sacred geography see Béatrice Caseau, ‘Sacred Landscapes,’ in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, eds. G.W. Bowersock, Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge and London, 1999), pp. 2159, there 40-5. 21 Patlagean, ‘Ancient Byzantine Hagiography’ (see above, n. 19), p. 104. 22 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 72-81, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Graeca 26] (Paris, 1887), cols. 944-57. 23 See Dorothy de F. Abrahamse, ‘Magic and Sorcery in the Hagiography of the Middle Byzantine Period,’ Byzantinische Forschungen 8 (1982), 3-17; Matthew W. Dickie, ‘Narrative Patterns in Christian Hagiography,’ Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 40 (1999), 86-91. 24 See Claire Sotinel, ‘La disparition des lieux de culte païens en occident: Enjeux et méthode,’ in Hellénisme et christianisme, eds. Michel Narcy and Eric Rebillard (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2004), pp. 49-55.

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Perhaps the most important thematic influence on this literary construction of sanctity, scholars of hagiography have shown, is the biblical typology, which often determined how those stock dangers, antagonists, and victims were depicted.25 Everything from healings and exorcisms to theological debates, and especially conflicts with a demonic heathenism might refer back to Elijah and Elisha, Daniel, Moses, Jesus, Paul, and their various legends; and encomiasts and scribes worked hard to make such allusions explicit for audiences interested in the paradigmatic authority of the Bible. The story of Macarius of Tkow and the cult of Kothos clearly alludes to Elijah and the priests of Baal in depicting fire descending from heaven at the holy man’s command, and then the killing of the heathen priest. The motif appears also in the apocryphal Acts of John and the legend of another Coptic holy man, Moses of Abydos, who massacres some 30 Egyptian priests. Conflict and violence in these texts show their heroes to be incarnations of the prophets of old, rampaging justly across the countryside. It is difficult to pick historical events out of such thoroughly typologized narratives.26 But, even beyond the Bible, the representation of opponents and conflict in hagiography draws on a wide repertoire of literary caricatures, images of barbarian Otherness, and forms of vilification that can entirely obscure the realities of traditional religion in the vicinity of the historical saint. Local gods, for example, are usually called by their Greek names — Kronos, Aphrodite, Apollo — and then subjected to archaic Christian forms of lampooning, such that nothing whatsoever is conveyed about real gods in the area.27 Cult devotions are imagined according to Roman atrocity legends — child sacrifice and the such — and thus an intrinsic danger to society, rather than the simple dressing and processing of images or the grain offerings that we know about from inside sources of the second and third 25 See Patlagean, ‘Ancient Byzantine Hagiography’ (see above, n. 19), p. 109, and now Krueger, Writing and Holiness (see above, n. 3), pp. 63-93. 26 Elianic typology in the Panegyric on Macarius: David Frankfurter, Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis, 1993), pp. 65-74; and in Acts of John (38-42), see Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2 vols. [Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum 1-2] (Turnhout, 1983), 2: 505-6. Cf. Antony, Epistula 6.72-7, trans. Samuel Rubenson (Minneapolis, 1995), p. 221. On the Life of Moses of Abydos, see sources below, n. 35. 27 See Jacques van der Vliet, ‘Spätantikes Heidentum in Ägypten im Spiegel der koptischen Literatur,’ in Begegnung von Heidentum und Christentum im spätantiken Ägypten [Riggisberger Berichte 1] (Riggisberg, 1993), pp. 99-130, there 110-8.


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centuries.28 They set up the saint as a potential martyr for Christian truth, confronting barbaric cults strikingly reminiscent of those imagined to dominate the empire of Diocletian. A new local martyr would mean special blessings beyond those of a mere missionary.29 Here, then, are five tendencies in the representation of saints, both orally and textually, that diminish their historical reliability, especially vis-à-vis Egyptian traditional religion. That many of our sources were composed or compiled a century or so after the events they depict creates even greater problems, for collective memory and legend can be fluid. So do we regard these texts as so much inventions of a past, useless as witnesses to religious realities of an earlier time? This view seems to me no less naive than the uncritical acceptance of the texts as historical documents. After all, as I have laid it out, their tendencies to invention and caricature belong to quite identifiable literary-ideological programs, not arbitrary fantasy. Understanding what hagiography involves should open up some critical space for us then to discuss the transmission of accurate memory and authentic detail. But most importantly, we must be clear about what evidence we want from such texts. In this case, I am interested in details of traditional Egyptian religious devotion and expression that, earlier in history, would have been integrated through temples and priestly cult. This is not “paganism” as historians and classicists have used this term. If the customary notion of “Paganism” comprises an elaborate polytheistic belief-system, sacrifice-based temple cult, and passive acquiescence to mystical priests, we cannot hope to find it in Late Antiquity; and to seek evidence for the continuity of this kind of religion is to prejudge the terms of discussion anachronistically.30 Nor 28 See the remarks by Arthur Darby Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1972), 1: 169-75, there 170, n. 3 (‘Greek Novels and Egyptian Religion,’ 19281), and Van der Vliet, ‘Spätantikes Heidentum in Ägypten’ (see above, n. 27), p. 108, n. 45 29 On the appeal of martyrological language in late antique vitae, see Sotinel, ‘Disparition des lieux de culte païens’ (see above, n. 24), 50-3, and Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire [Transformations of the Classical Heritage 39] (Berkeley, 2005), pp. 151207. 30 Cf. Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans [Revealing Antiquity 4] (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 7-9, and Harold Remus, ‘The End of “Paganism”?,’ Studies in Religion 33 (2004), 191-208. The same confusion pervades Trombley’s use of “pagan” and “Hellenic” together: see his Hellenic Religion and Christianization (see above, n. 12), passim.

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is it appropriate to seek an Egyptian religion imagined according to Ptolemaic or early Roman scale, for this kind of institutional scale was all but gone by the middle of the fourth century. We should be looking, rather, for features of local religious life and ritual orientation that have some discernible continuity with older cult, that may be so ingrained in local cultural life that few people even see them as non-Christian, and that we can take as plausible on some grounds other than purely literary.31 In general, we may find our evidence not in the precise narration of events but in minor details, attitudes towards some place, actions portrayed as typical and familiar in the culture, which may serve as backdrops to the saint’s charisma or thaumaturgy. It is a case of — to quote the poet Marianne Moore — “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” — fictional or historically irretrievable episodes made compelling through a landscape of familiar and authentic features.32 Our job, then, is to establish which are the real toads, not to argue about the authenticity of the gardens. Furthermore, we must remember that this endeavor may have relevance only to Egyptologists, anthropologists, and historians of religion, interested in the dynamics of continuity and transformation, not to scholars interested only in literary or theological features of these texts. If one wants to extract historical information of this sort, then here are some ways to do it. And in the rest of this essay I will propose two areas of plausibly historical details — real memories — pertaining to traditional Egyptian religion as it would have continued in the fourth, fifth, and later centuries in various pockets of Egypt. I will also discuss one additional area of detail that strikes me as especially problematic — representations of cult priests — and will conclude with some suggestions on how complex narrative episodes can be granted some tentative authenticity through comparison to anthropological models.

31 See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 33-6; Cf. David Frankfurter, ‘Stylites and Phallobates: Pillar Religions in Late Antique Syria,’ Vigiliae Christianae 44 (1990), 168-98. 32 Marianne Moore, “Poetry” (1921). See in general Patlagean, ‘Ancient Byzantine Hagiography’ (see above, n. 19), p. 112; Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (see above, n. 17), pp. 31-2; Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 20-2.


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Points of Authentic Memory 1: Landscape Let me propose first that traditions about places in the landscape will maintain a high degree of authenticity over considerable periods of time and from oral to scribal stages. That is, places will serve as foci for historical memory. Saints’ lives, and to a large extent martyrologies, are fundamentally literature of place, detailing particular landscapes, charting the sites of foundational events, and making sense of those many liminal zones that comprise the environment: wilderness and ruin, river and mountain, spaces of beasts and towns of savages. These would be recognizable territories, matching audiences’ and monasteries’ very experiences; and what the hagiography provided was a depth to the landscape: that is, the trials and acts of the holy man buried and celebrated here, the demonic assaults and barbarian activities once associated with that old temple. Sainthood is very much defined in local terms — within and against a topography intimately experienced. As much as Christianity laid out a new network of shrines and holy places, the landscape itself retained a familiarity, even a vitality in its traditional features, which could be negotiated in various ways: preservation, avoidance, neglect, replacement, revitalization. But landscape also functions as the chief repository of social memory — the recollection of past events: “This is where Apa Moses lived before he went south”; “That village used to worship an idol not so long ago”; “Here a crocodile used to attack fishermen.” It is in that sense that hagiographies may be said to preserve authentic memories, clustered around points in some real landscape that the text seeks to reflect.33

33 Patlagean, ‘Ancient Byzantine Hagiography’ (see above, n. 19), pp. 102, 10911; Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (see above, n. 17), pp. 125-7; John M. Howe, ‘The Conversion of the Physical World: The Creation of a Christian Landscape,’ in Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. James Muldoon (Gainesville, 1997), pp. 63-78; Frankfurter, ‘Introduction: Approaches to Coptic Pilgrimage,’ in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (see above, n. 18), pp. 13-44; and Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints (see above, n. 18), pp. 306-11. Cf. Wim J.J. Van Binsbergen, ‘Interpreting the Myth of Sidi Mhâmmad,’ Social Analysis 4 (1980), 5173; William A. Christian, Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, 1981), pp. 70-125; Michael J. Sallnow, Pilgrims of the Andes: Regional Cults in Cusco (Washington, D.C., 1987), pp. 1-16; Lisa M. Bitel, Isle of the Saints: Monastic Settlement and Chrisian Community in Early Ireland (Ithaca, 1990), pp. 48-56; and now Susan E. Alcock, Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscape, Monuments, and Memories (Cambridge, 2002).

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Often holy sites are preserved and revered even though the legends fall away or become contested. Sulpicius Severus’s Life of Martin of Tours describes a site outside of a Gallic town “that popular opinion held as sacred, under the pretext that some martyrs had been interred there.”34 Someone had even built an altar there; and by Martin’s time (the late fourth century) it had become a regional pilgrimage shrine. Yet the devotees lacked the precise martyrological details (or the written records) without which Martin would not deem a shrine authentic. He claimed the tomb belonged to a criminal, not a martyr, and had the altar torn down. If the modern historian can credit neither the local legend nor Martin’s counter-allegation, we can still observe the traditional intertwining of tradition and local site, especially a site of such collective devotion. But in Coptic hagiography we find numerous occasions where memories — of diverse scale — are preserved around points in the Egyptian landscape. The first example appears in the Life of Moses of Abydos, a monk of the early sixth century. The text describes a number of encounters between the holy man and heathens, most of them so woven out of biblical — Elianic — topoi that they only reflect persisting Egyptian religion in the most general way. But one incident stands out: The citizens of . . . two villages came and prostrated themselves before our father Apa Moses and pleaded with him, for an evil demon named Bes had entered the temple north of the monastery. He would come out and afflict those passing by. Some of them he blinded in one eye. In other cases, their hands would shrivel up. He would cripple others in the feet. In some, he caused facial deformities. Some he would make deaf and dumb. Indeed, many saw him leaping down from the temple and transforming his appearance many times.35

Of course, Moses is called in to exorcize the temple; and that he does, in a drama worthy of a Hitchcock movie. But what might strike us as a typically fantastic exorcism story actually receives some

34 Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 11.1, ed. and trans. Fontaine (see above, n. 7), pp. 276-7. Similar situations arose in late fourth-century Egypt, as Shenoute’s sermon “Those Who Work Evil” testifies: see L.-Th. Lefort, ‘La chasse aux reliques des martyrs en Égypte au IVe siècle,’ La nouvelle Clio 6 (1954), 225-30. 35 Vita Mosis (Codex EL 111-2: K9555), ed. in Walter Till, Koptische Heiligen- und Märtyrerlegenden, 2 vols. [Orientalia Christiana Analecta 102, 108] (Rome, 1935-1936), 2: 52, trans. in Mark Moussa, ‘The Coptic Literary Dossier of Abba Moses of Abydos,’ Coptic Church Review 24 (2003), 66-90, there 83.


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historical illumination from outside sources. For, north of the Abydos Osireion (which became the convent of Apa Moses), stood the great Memnonion; and in the proximal (northwest) corner of this temple was a crypt from which the voice of the god Bes issued oracles through the middle of the fourth century. Both graffiti and Ammianus Marcellinus bear witness to this major oracle cult.36 It is also clear that the Life itself would have been assembled in conjunction with one of the monastic complexes associated with Apa Moses in the vicinity of the temples. That is, the authors or editors must have had a relationship to the area described.37 We have, then, an unusual amount of corroboration. It is not a heathen cult to which the Life bears witness, but a longstanding local association between the abandoned temple and the god Bes. Indeed, it was more than an association: the Life describes villages as retaining a sense of the temple ruins as the abode of a spirit Bes — as a marked or hot place in the landscape. Now, from this point there are various routes of plausible speculation we can take: for example, were people simply avoiding the ruin as demonic, or were some still incubating there for dreams of Bes? We cannot know for sure; and yet it is clear that the place served as the axis of some form of memory.38 Jitse Dijkstra’s discussion of the falcon of Philae, slaughtered by one Apa Macedonius in the Coptic Life of Aaron, points to a similar persistence of authentic memory in association with a place. If the composition itself is no earlier than the end of the fifth century, concerning events that supposedly took place in the middle of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, Dijkstra gives good grounds for believing that a real cultic detail is preserved here — the caged falcon — in connection with the great temple complex of Philae: “There” — we can imagine Christians still saying — “stood the cage

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Ammianus 19.12.3-16, trans. with discussion in Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice (see above, n. 14), pp. 476-80. Epigraphy discussed in Françoise Dunand, ‘La consultation oraculaire en Égypte tardive: L’oracle de Bès à Abydos,’ in Oracles et prophéties dans l’antiquité, ed. J.-G. Heintz (Paris, 1997), pp. 65-84. See in general Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 124-31, and ‘Voices, Books, and Dreams: The Diversification of Divination Media in Late Antique Egypt,’ in Mantikê. Studies in Ancient Divination, eds. Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter Struck [Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 155] (Leiden, 2005), pp. 233-54. On the convent of Apa Moses see René-Georges Coquin, ‘Moses of Abydos,’ in The Coptic Encyclopedia (see above, n. 15), 5: 1679-81. 37 See Coquin, ‘Moses of Abydos’ (see above, n. 36), 1680-81. 38 See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 130-1.

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for a falcon.”39 The fact that some traditional cults on Philae continued into the fifth century allows that the local memory of the falcon cage might have circulated less than a century between this cult’s demise and the composition of the Life.40 Can we interpret the representations of continuing Egyptian religion in the stories of Apollo of Hermopolis and Macarius of Tkow with which I began? The Historia monachorum talks about the temple (naos megistos) and its famous idol (eidôlon epiphanestaton) as specific to one of the villages and its people.41 It is clearly a local cult; and those who remember it, who belonged to the village, are “even today (mekhri nun)” living in monasteries.”42 The events around Apa Apollo indeed serve as etiology for the absence “in this area (en tois horiois) of anyone who could be called heathen.”43 The localized nature of the tradition lends some authenticity to its historical existence in some form in the later fourth century.44 The story of Macarius of Tkow likewise anchors its depictions of fifth-century Egyptian religion in local references: “a village on the west side of the river”; “one of their temples by some vineyards by the road.”45 To be sure, the region is not specified, as the Historia monachorum does for its Mediterranean readership; yet additional details situate the temple in the region of Akhmim, where Abbot Shenoute himself preached about lingering temple devotion in the late fourth

39 Jitse H.F. Dijkstra, ‘Horus on His Throne: The Holy Falcon of Philae in His Demonic Cage,’ Göttinger Miszellen 189 (2002), 7-10; idem, Religious Encounters on the Southern Egyptian Frontier in Late Antiquity (AD 298-642) (Ph.D.-thesis, University of Groningen, 2005), pp. 79, 174; and personal communication. Whether the memory concerned a cage, a naos, or some other structure depends on both the meaning of the magkanon supposed to have held the falcon and whether the falcon therein (or thereon) was alive. 40 See Pierre Nautin, ‘La conversion du temple de Philae en église chrétienne,’ Cahiers archéologiques 17 (1967), 1-47; Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 64-5, 105-11; cf. Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above, n. 39), pp. 81-2. 41 Historia monachorum 8.25, ed. Festugière (see above, n. 7), p. 56. 42 Historia monachorum 8.29, ed. Festugière, p. 58. 43 Historia monachorum 8.29, ed. Festugière, p. 58. 44 Cf. Historia monachorum 10.33, ed. Festugière, p. 88, a much vaguer depiction of Egyptian religion in an area. See now Theofried Baumeister, ‘Ägyptisches Lokalkolorit in der Historia Monachorum in Aegypto,’ in Aegyptus Christiana: Mélanges d’hagiographie égyptienne et orientale dédiés à la mémoire du p. Paul Devos bollandiste, eds. Ugo Zanetti and Enzo Lucchesi [Cahiers d’Orientalisme 25] (Geneva, 2004), pp. 165-74. 45 Ps.-Dioscorus, Panegyric on Macarius 5.1, 3, ed. and trans. Johnson (see above, n. 14), 1: 29-31, 2: 21, 23


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and early fifth centuries. Indeed, the text seems very much to reflect local traditions, one of which, the text suggests, concerned tensions between Christians and temple devotees living in the same village that evolved into rumors of secret cult atrocities against Christians.46 Moreover, at the end of the story, the Kothos devotees who refuse baptism flee; and “the Christians dwelt in their houses” — a local tradition of social replacement anchored to the homes themselves, complete with the altar niches that previous owners had dedicated to the local god.47 Stories about how “that village over there” remained largely heathen while others had become acceptably Christian strike me as plausible local memories. To these last legends from Hermopolis and somewhere north of Akhmim we might compare two others: the already mentioned depiction of the village of Pnewit in the Life of Shenoute and a much more reliable account of an Isis temple in the town of Menouthis, just outside Alexandria, still operating in the late fifth century.48 All four legends associate temple devotion with the character of a village “over there”: its Otherness, its dangerousness, even its savagery, as Christians inevitably imagined heathen cults in the bloodiest terms.49 Now, we must remember that these extremes of difference that the hagiographer imposes on the narrative in fact masked a considerable fluidity, not only in the social world — for Christians certainly lived in the same villages as traditional devotees — but also in the spectrum of practice and devotion between temple and church: that is, the many Christians who are said either to fear the powers in images and temples or to continue local

46 Region of Akhmim: based on the detail of Besa’s arrival on the scene (Panegyric on Macarius 5.8, ed. Johnson, 1: 34), hence within the conceivable region of the Shenoute monastery. In general, see Johnson, ‘Macarius of Tkow’ (see above, n. 15), pp. 1492-94, and Frankfurter, ‘Illuminating the Cult of Kothos’ (see above, n. 14). 47 Ps.-Dioscorus, Panegyric on Macarius 5.11, ed. and trans. Johnson, 1: 39, 2: 30. 48 Menouthis temple: Zachariah of Mytilene, Vita Severi, ed. M.-A. Kugener [Patrologia Orientalis 2.1] (Paris, 1904), pp. 16-35, on which see Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore and London, 1997), pp. 187-8, 327-9; Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 162-5; and idem, ‘The Consequences of Hellenism in Late Antique Egypt: Religious Worlds and Actors,’ Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 2 (2000), 162-94, there 189-91. On the Zachariah text, see now Edward Watts, ‘Winning the Intracommunal Dialogues: Zacharias Scholasticus’ Life of Severus,’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 13 (2005), 437-64. 49 See James B. Rives, ‘Human Sacrifice Among Pagans and Christians,’ Journal of Roman Studies 85 (1995), 65-85.

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devotional practices that they do not see as inconsistent with Christianity. These features of local practice reflect a range of religious acts that, while not “heathen,” cannot be designated “Christian” in the modern sense.50 But even if rendered in exaggerated, absolute terms, the local traditions of once-traditional communities reflected real conceptions of village difference, understood in terms of a village’s heritage as well as its remaining temple structures. This is not to say that landscapes are always authentic. Some can be superimposed, as in the Apocalypse of Elijah’s use of biblical holy land concepts to imagine an Egypt sacred through martyrs or, as Lynda Coon has demonstrated, the conceptualization of a “desert” around the monastery of Fulda; while others may be simply muddled from afar, like the Land of the Gerasenes in the Gospel of Mark.51 Yet even these texts preserve authentic details of their central landscapes, whether the Frankish badlands or Jerusalem. Points of Authentic Memory 2: Gestures If landscape provides one context for the transmission of authentic memories into hagiography, the other context worthy of historical consideration is action and gesture. That is, real customs, belonging either to the world depicted in the text or to traditions of “what we used to do,” still remembered in the area, will be preserved as recognizable components in hagiography, meant to inspire familiarity in the audience — another form of “real toads in imaginary gardens.”52 But like topographical memory, gestural memory has a lived, embodied character that distinguishes it from the abstract rehearsal of narrative events. The Lives of Pachomius, for example, describe how, “as a child his parents took him with them somewhere on the river to sacrifice to those [creatures] that are in the waters.”53 Only 50 See texts in Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice (see above, n. 14), pp. 473-5 (Ch. 41), and David Frankfurter, ‘Beyond Magic and Superstition,’ in The People’s History of Christianity 2: Late Ancient Christianity, ed. V. Burrus (Minneapolis, 2005), pp. 255-84. 51 Apocalypse of Elijah: see David Frankfurter, ‘The Cult of the Martyrs in Egypt before Constantine: The Evidence of the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah,’ Vigiliae Christianae 48 (1994), 25-47, esp. 32-5. Monastery of Fulda: see Lynda L. Coon, ‘Collecting the Desert in the Carolingian West,’ this volume, below, pp. 135-62. Gospel of Mark: 5,1-14. 52 See Leemans, ‘General Introduction’ (see above, n. 19), pp. 39-40. 53 Vita Pachomii, S-Bo 4, trans. A. Veilleux, 3 vols. (Kalamazoo, Mich., 19801982), 1: 25.


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a sense of place, family, and (minimally) gesture is recalled, nothing about the fish-god, the festival, or the larger cultic context.54 We do not expect preservation of dates or beliefs or gods’ names from gestural memories — from habitus (to use Pierre Bourdieu’s term) — but rather a sense of what one does in such-and-such a situation, or what people did do, beforehand. Yet around those gestures and responses, out of which social interaction itself is constructed, social memory forms. To quote Paul Connerton, who has also written about this phenomenon, “images of the past and recollected knowledge of the past are conveyed and sustained by (more or less) ritual performances.” Hence “to study the social formation of memory is to study those acts of transfer that make remembering in common possible.”55 It is in this sense of habitus — even if repudiated habitus — that I find historically compelling the depiction of the domestic Kothos cult in the story of Macarius of Tkow. The images of the local god, we learn, are “mounted in the niches of their houses. And when they go inside their doors, they are accustomed to bow down their heads and worship him.”56 The text describes normal devotions at domestic altars, certainly a feature of homes in Roman Egypt, as we know from excavations at Karanis and elsewhere. These were the gestures of people who had such shrines, the text affirms; and if we take as historical the subsequent tradition that these homes came to be occupied by Christians, the gestures might even have been recalled in connection with real empty altar niches. It is precisely such responses to places, objects, and times that people transmit as memories — not the identity of Kothos and what he meant, or how he compared to other gods, but the acts of devotion.57 I would argue that such devotional acts, and the social memory involved in maintaining such acts, are never really repudiated, for their character and importance persist regardless of the official context. Incubation, for example, belongs to the sphere of habitus — traditional gestures of response to holy places. The practice was long 54 See Van der Vliet, ‘Spätantikes Heidentum in Ägypten’ (see above, n. 27), pp. 115-6. 55 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 38-9. Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 81-3. 56 Ps.-Dioscorus, Panegyric on Macarius 5.1, ed. and trans. Johnson (see above, n. 14), 1: 29, 2: 21-2. 57 See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 131-42, and ‘Illuminating the Cult of Kothos’ (see above, n. 14).

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established in Egyptian temples like Abydos; it was excoriated by Shenoute in his time; yet by the late fifth century it was widespread among Coptic saint shrines and sanctioned in their literature.58 Shenoute and other preachers mention other ritual gestures popular among Christians that strike them as heathen but that obviously reflected a continuity of efficacious gestures, of religious habitus: amulets, fluids energized with incantations, protective rites.59 Perhaps it is in this same way too that we should accept the tradition in the Life of Shenoute that the villagers of Pnewit, anxious to repel the marauding abbot, buried magical materials in the road leading to the village.60 (Again, we need not take this story as Besa’s own secondhand account but rather as a vignette offered in some fifth-century encomium on Shenoute). The story imagines gestures of community protection that would have been familiar to an audience; and certainly we have manuals for such rites in Coptic, often with clearly monastic provenance. That traditional villagers in the region of Atripe might have used such rites against Shenoute strikes me as the most likely part of the story. These rites serve not just as a dramatic foil to Shenoute’s cunning; they represent a traditional response to threat and invasion.61

58 On the growth of incubation traditions at martyr shrines, see Lefort, ‘La chasse aux reliques’ (see above, n. 34); Theofried Baumeister, Martyr invictus: Der Märtyrer als Sinnbild der Erlösung in der Legende und im Kult der frühen koptischen Kirche (Munster, 1972), pp. 68-71; Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints (see above, n. 18), pp. 336-9; Frankfurter, ‘Voices, Books, and Dreams’ (see above, n. 36). 59 See the sources in Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice (see above, n. 14), pp. 473-5 (Ch. 41). 60 See above, n. 10 for the Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic editions. 61 See e.g. Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, eds., Ancient Christian Magic (San Francisco, 1994), pp. 177-8 (# 84): spell to be placed in “pathway” to house of intended; Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, eds., Amulets and Magic Bowls ( Jerusalem, 1985), Bowls 5 and 11, which protect “thresholds” of homes; and in general on rituals of protection of domestic and community entrances and border areas, Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monka B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago, 1960), pp. 15-25. On the milieu of Coptic protective spells, see Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 257-64, and ‘The Perils of Love: Magic and Counter-Magic in Coptic Egypt,’ Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (2001), 480500, esp. 497-500. The Life of Shenoute dresses the story of the Pnewit villagers’ magical materials in a version of the biblical story of Balaam’s ass, who halts at the sight of God’s angel, whom the prophet himself cannot see (Num. 22,22-35). Shenoute’s donkey likewise halts at the place of the buried magical spells, a vivid case of biblical typology.


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In general, hagiographical sources express a familiarity, even an intimacy, with such traditional responses to holy places, images, and dangers, that one can never find among historians like Sozomen and Evagrius, whose pictures of traditional piety anywhere in the empire were meant to invite derision. For hagiographers, the spirits are real, if demonic; and hence devotees’ thrall to those spirits in their places and images is somehow understandable.62 Villagers anxiously defend Pnewit according to, so the text says, the books they had. Elsewhere they bow to their altars and defend their temple out of devotion to Kothos; and so on. Likewise in late fourth-century Gaul, Sulpicius Severus describes heathen processions with cloth-covered images (which Martin of Tours confuses with a funeral procession).63 The texts depict these gestures as sensible collective responses; and it is reasonable to credit these depictions with some historical reliability. We are, of course, on thinner ice with the more elaborate depictions of cult ritual. The story of the image procession in Hermopolis that Apollo halts, according to the Historia monachorum, is believable because it conforms generally to what we know otherwise about festival processions from temples. This text makes good historical evidence for a local temple cult in Hermopolis in the later fourth century.64 But other texts cover their complete ignorance of real temple rites with lurid tableaux of child sacrifice, only ended through the powers of the local saints.65 It is not surprising to find such fantasies imposed on the one area of Egyptian religion least open to contemporaneous Christians and later monastic writers: temples were closed structures, and with the decline of the institution, only their active presence and the responsive gestures were remembered. However, historians must treat hagiographical descriptions of temple ritual with utmost skepticism.

As astutely observed by Béatrice Caseau, ‘POLEMEIN LIYOIS: La désacralisation des espaces et des objects religieux païens durant l’antiquité tardive,’ in Le sacré et son inscription dans l’espace à Byzance et en occident, ed. M. Kaplan (Paris 2001), pp. 61-123, there 84. 63 Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 12, ed. Fontaine (see above, n. 7), p. 278. 64 See e.g. Serge Sauneron, Les fêtes religieuses d’Esna aux derniers siècles du paganisme (Cairo, 1962). 65 E.g. the legend of Macarius of Tkow and the cult of Kothos (Ps.-Dioscorus, Panegyric on Macarius, 5.2, ed. and trans. Johnson (see above, n. 14), 1: 29-30, 2: 223) and the legend of Apa Banina and the Cauldron of Sohag, in the Coptic Synaxarium at 7 Khoiak, ed. and trans. René Basset [Patrologia Orientalis 3.3] (Paris, 1907), pp. 391-2, on which see Sauneron, Villes et légendes d’Égypte (see above, n. 11), 160-4. 62

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A Point of Inauthentic Memory: The Character of the Egyptian Priest It has been argued that places and gestures provided foci for authentic memories of traditional Egyptian devotion — that hagiographies could preserve real memories in the contexts of local topography and traditional gestures. Let us now consider a context or feature within hagiographical narrative that might seem to preserve authentic historical memories, but is much more dubious: characters — specifically, the figure of the Egyptian priest. Against the landscape and its holy places, behind the gestures that determine devotions, hagiographers arrange a variety of stock figures as dramatic counterparts to the holy men. Others have written about the figure of the sorcerer, the demoniac, and the imperial official.66 The Egyptian priest seems to have provided a uniquely flexible type — and one on whom we can hang little historical weight. In the legend of Macarius of Tkow, a high priest of Kothos, named Homer, is introduced as a stand-in for the temple staff;67 and Macarius throws him on a pyre of heathen images like Elijah with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel.68 The Life of Moses of Abydos makes explicit the typology with this same Elijah story, as Moses kills 30 priests of Apollo. The author makes a point of distinguishing two types of priest in this bloodbath, waab and hont, a distinction reminiscent of real Egyptian priestly ranks.69 Yet there is nothing else in this episode that we can discern as authentic. And if in these texts the Egyptian priest is an insidious opponent of Christians, the Apophthegmata patrum pose Egyptian priests as natural sages — wise despite their heathen allegiances, exotic figures whose insights could be instructive to monks.70 66 Frankfurter, ‘The Perils of Love’ (see above, n. 61), as well as discussions cited in n. 23 above. 67 Ps.-Dioscorus, Panegyric on Macarius 5.10-1, ed. and trans. Johnson (see above, n. 14), 1: 37-9, 2: 28-30. 68 2 Kg. 18,40. 69 Vita Mosis, Codex EL 49-50, trans. Moussa, ‘Abba Moses of Abydos’ (see above, n. 35), 80. Cf. Jaroslav Cernÿ, Coptic Etymological Dictionary (Cambridge, 1976), p. 288 s.v., and Anthony Alcock, ‘Coptic Words for “Priest”,’ Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 114 (1987), 179. Peter van Minnen’s derivation of these two priestly ranks from biblical exegesis in his paper ‘Saving History? Egyptian Hagiography in Its Space and Time’ (this volume, below, pp. 57-91, there 73-4) is far-fetched. Hont appears only once in the Coptic Bible, for the prophet of Helios (biblical On) held by Petephr, father of Aseneth (Gen. 41,45); while ouhhb is used for all other priests (Ex. 2,16; Num. 3,3; 5,16; Mic. 3,11 etc.). It is thus quite unlikely that the author of the Vita Mosis derived both ranks from the Bible. 70 Apophthegmata patrum, Macarius 39; Olympius 1, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia


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Some stories where Egyptian priests figure prominently describe their conversion to Christianity. I suspect this narrative topos reflects some real monks’ backgrounds. Otherwise, I think, it would not have produced a credible legend.71 But in general I do not view these stories of Egyptian priests in the worlds of holy men as telling us much historically about the status of priests in the later fourth and fifth centuries. Here we must really go to papyri, inscriptions, and Shenoute’s sermons for the proper picture of Egyptian priests’ activities after the third century.72 Anthropological Models and the Historical Interpretation of Hagiography I finally want to address the utility of anthropological models for the historical interpretation of hagiographical texts. The principles behind using such models do not apply to every such text, nor are they warranted by some consistent feature in saints’ lives, such as the ones I have been examining in this essay. The principles justifying the use of anthropological models begin, however, with the assumption that some hagiographical narrative does preserve authentic memories of the time depicted, even if we cannot systematically prove or determine this authenticity. Secondly, I assume that religious behavior subscribes to certain identifiable patterns beyond particular historical context. This assumption is most clearly illustrated in the earlier discussions of place and action. The theory that place and geography provide organizing schemes for tradition derives, as we saw, from comparative anthropology. Theories of gesture-memory likewise reflect anthropological models. Indeed, as soon as we move from the text to any general statement or assumption about cultural memory, conversion or religious replacement, we are intrinsically engaging comparison and social theory; and we can either naively pretend our statements are borne from the texts alone or we can take seriously the requirements of generalizing about religion.73

Graeca 65] (Paris, 1864) cols. 280-1, 313. Cf. the archiereus Astratol in the Martyrdom of Shenoufe & Brethren, Pierpont Morgan Codex M 583, T. 41, fol. 119v I, ed. and trans. in E.A.E. Reymond and J.W.B. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford, 1973), pp. 102, 203. 71 See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 262-4. 72 Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 200-10. 73 See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 273-81; ‘ “Things Unbefitting Christians”: Violence and Christianization in Fifth-Century Panopolis,’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 8 (2000), 273-95, there 285-91; and ‘Syncretism and

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Now, some patterns are more likely to have occurred in the time and culture of fifth-century Upper Egypt than others. I might be more inclined to accept a maverick holy man claiming clairvoyant powers or residual devotion to archaic holy places as likely scenarios for this period than, say, a millenarian movement or a revolt of Amun priests.74 So, thirdly, I would suggest that indications of such likely patterns in the hagiographical narrative support a hypothesis that the pattern occurred historically roughly in the time described. I am moving here from evidence, via model, to hypothesis, not historical assertion.75 As with any scientific speculation, there are some who will inevitably feel uncomfortable moving from data to hypotheses at all. But let me offer two examples. In the story of Macarius of Tkow and the cult of Kothos, the drama that leads to the temple’s destruction follows the report, by village elders to Macarius, that the heathens are sacrificing Christian children inside their temple, and then Macarius’s demand to go inside and see for himself. Now, this assertion is obviously false; but we know that such rumors of atrocities in temple interiors did arise to justify violence against native temples, and earlier in the empire against Christians themselves.76 The text seems to describe an historical shift from, first, Kothos devotees and Christians living as neighbors, to — second — the expulsion of the Kothos devotees — a shift in which Macarius and other monks figure prominently. It is at this point that I move to other cases in which some degree of coexistence between different religious groups erupts over rumors of one party’s atrocities against the other’s children or women. These rumors are often fomented by local demagogues or religious leaders, and can lead to expulsions and pogroms.77 Now, informed about the Holy Man in Late Antique Egypt,’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003), 339-85, there 340-50. 74 Maverick holy man: e.g. monk of Boushêm described in the Coptic Lausiac History 6, trans. Tim Vivian, Coptic Church Review 21 (2000), 82-109, there 95-7. 75 See Victoria A. Bonnell, ‘The Uses of Theory, Concepts and Comparison in Historical Sociology,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980), 156-73. 76 E.g., Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.22-4; Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica, 5.16; Mark the Deacon, Vita Porphyrii 68; Zachariah of Mytilene, Vita Severi, ed. Kugener (see above, n. 48), pp. 27-9; Cf. Cod. Th. 16.10, characterizing traditional forms of devotion as insania sacrificiorum (10.2); nefaria licentia (10.5); vetitis sacrificiis (10.7); insanem victimam caedat (10.10, 12); and exsecrandis hostiarum immolationibus damnandisque sacrificiis (10.25). 77 See e.g. Birgit Meyer, ‘Beyond Syncretism: Translation and Diabolization in the Appropriation of Protestantism in Africa,’ in Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics


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larger patterns, we look back to the fifth century, when holy men are occasionally recorded as advising or inflaming social dynamics in a region. While we cannot say whether rumors of child sacrifice would have arisen before or after the influence of someone like Macarius of Tkow, still the outlines of atrocity-panic and pogrom as reflected in the text are historically plausible by comparison with other historical episodes.78 It is a hypothetical reconstruction, but certainly a worthy direction for those of us interested in the dynamics of Christianization. My second example involves not a saint’s life but a sermon, delivered by Shenoute’s successor, Abbot Besa. It is a tantalizing reprimand to the Christian leaders “and headmen and all the people who live in the villages,” presumably near the monastery at Akhmim: “We have been informed about you,” he begins, “that you prepare yourselves to fight for nothing over a piece of wood and, when we had heard, our heart was deeply grieved.” Besa proceeds to speak against violence in general but gives no more indication of context beyond that “piece of wood” — not much to work from!79 It is exceedingly unlikely that this piece of wood is a holy relic, as was once proposed, or a piece of lumber or a tool. The first phenomenon is unknown in Egyptian Christianity of Besa’s time; while it is unclear why a Christian leader would address a lumber dispute in theological terms: “Such a thing is not fitting for us, we being Christians, nor again is it pleasing to God . . .” On the other hand, the derisive phrase “piece of wood (oulakme nshe)” was often applied — especially by Shenoute himself — to traditional, “heathen” divine images.80 So, given the larger regional context, from Shenoute’s of Religious Synthesis, eds. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw (London and New York, 1994), pp. 45-68; idem, Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Trenton, 1999); Mary Douglas, ‘Sorcery Accusations Unleashed: The Lele Revisited, 1987,’ Africa 69 (1999), 177-93; and Andrew Walsh, ‘Preserving Bodies, Saving Souls: Religious Incongruity in a Northern Malagasy Mining Town,’ Journal of Religion in Africa 32 (2002), 366-92. See Frankfurter, ‘Illuminating the Cult of Kothos’ (see above, n. 14). 78 On social leadership by holy men, see esp. Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (see above, n. 4). 79 Besa, fr. 41, ed. and trans. K.H. Kuhn, 2 vols. [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 157-58] (Louvain, 1956), 1: 129-30, 2: 123-4. 80 E.g. Shenoute, “Reading Today from the Proverbs,” ed. Johannes Leipoldt [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 42] (Leipzig, 1908), pp. 113-4 (# 39). See Van der Vliet, ‘Spätantikes Heidentum in Ägypten’ (see above, n. 27), pp. 110-1.

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time, of abiding forms of traditional religion, as well as Shenoute’s own historical example of violence against traditional religious images, I have proposed that this “piece of wood” was an Egyptian divine image, locally honored. And again, interested as I was in what kind of religious situation that might have sparked villagers — not monks — to “fight over” such an image, I laid out the hypothetical scenario of a religious purge movement launched against the elder devotees of a mixed (Christian/traditional) village near Akhmim in order to establish purity and fortune in a community free of demons. But on what basis could I move from the hypothesis of a wooden image to this larger hypothetical scenario? By reference, again, to other incidences of this religious pattern, exemplified in more elaborate form in twentieth-century west Africa. This move in no way glosses over the vast cultural differences between modern Africa and late antique Egypt, nor does it use African ethnography to fill in holes in late antique Egyptian history. Rather, it is the construction of a strong hypothetical scenario to ground the sermon historically — by reference to other examples of such a scenario in history.81 This is a defensible — indeed, essential — procedure for the historical interpretation of certain kinds of materials. It is not for everyone, of course; yet scholars who shun the use of comparative theory and social models inevitably bring their own models to bear on their materials anyway — and they do so quite uncritically, conjuring notions of Christian triumph, for example, or magic or paganism or conversion or sacrifice, according to assumptions that are quite archaic and often confessionally driven. Historians often ignore or disown social patterns and models at their peril. Historical/cultural comparison gives an historical scenario or religious pattern both coherence and focus. Comparison gives an historical assertion or generalization the integrity of a real hypothesis rather than airy speculation: that these kinds of dynamics have indeed occurred under analogous circumstances; so they might well be operating here, too. Conclusions Because of their close connections with specific religious worlds, saints’ lives provide essential witnesses to aspects of religion that would not

81

See David Frankfurter, ‘ “Things Unbefitting Christians” ’ (see above, n. 73).


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appear in documentary sources or among ancient historians. The historian has no more right to throw up his hands in frustration with hagiographical literary devices than to stand aloof from documentary sources and their challenges. We treasure all sources for what they can provide in often quite limited ways. Saints’ lives, I have argued, can preserve local memories of a particular sort: religious topography, religious gestures, and occasionally the outlines of social patterns. They do not tell us when something happened or the inner details or ideas of a religious system they oppose; but they do reflect sensibilities and attitudes toward places, people, and even images. They reflect worlds in which supernatural powers are taken quite seriously. And I will say, as a historian of religions, that these are the worlds I seek to reconstruct.

BRINGING HOME THE HOMELESS: LANDSCAPE AND HISTORY IN EGYPTIAN HAGIOGRAPHY Jacques van der Vliet Abstract This essay evaluates Egyptian hagiography as a historical source by defining its function in the construction of a Christian landscape. To this purpose, it discusses the Bohairic Martyrdom of Saint James the Persian, shifting attitudes towards the burial of monastic saints, Coptic stories about temple conversions, and contending Christian and Muslim traditions concerning the Holy Family in Egypt.

On the Trail of Saint James the Persian Although very popular in the early-medieval East, the Martyrdom of Saint James the Persian (or, the Sawn Asunder, Jacobus Intercisus) has at first sight little to commend it to the modern reader.1 According to the Bohairic Coptic version, which will be exclusively used here,2 the saint was a Persian nobleman living at the Sassanid court in the time of King Iskarat (Yazdgird, 399-420), son of Sabôr (Shâpûr). James was a Christian but, in order to further his career, he renounced the Christian faith in favor of the Persian state religion. His apostasy, however, estranged him from his own kith and kin, and urged

1 For the dossier of the saint, see P. Devos, ‘Le dossier hagiographique de S. Jacques l’Intercis, I: La passion grecque inédite,’ Analecta Bollandiana 71 (1953), 157210; 72 (1954), 213-56; cf. P. Peeters et al., eds., Bibliotheca Hagiographica Orientalis [Subsidia Hagiographica 10] (Brussels, 1910), pp. 91-2 (nos. 394-8); the Coptic tradition: De Lacy O’Leary, The Saints of Egypt (London, 1937; repr. Amsterdam, 1979), pp. 161-2; Tito Orlandi, ‘James Intercisus, Saint,’ in The Coptic Encyclopedia, 8 vols., ed. Aziz S. Atiya (New York, 1991), 4: 1321. 2 Martyrium sancti Iacobi Persae, quoted after the page and line numbers of the edition in Acta Martyrum II, ed. I. Balestri and H. Hyvernat [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 86] (Paris, 1924; repr. Louvain, 1953), pp. 24-61. This edition follows a tenth-century manuscript, for which see Adulphus Hebbelynck and Arnoldus Van Lantschoot, eds., Codices Coptici Vaticani, Barberiniani, Borgiani, Rossiani, 2 vols. (Vatican City, 1937-1947), 1: 400-2; for other Bohairic witnesses, Hugh G. Evelyn White, The Monasteries of the Wâdi ’n Natrûn, 3 vols. [Publications of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian Expedition 2, 7 and 8] (New York, 19261933), 1: 75.

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by his family, he decided to reconvert. His return to Christian convictions was badly received at the court and the king himself is described as the main prosecutor in the ensuing process that leads up to the saint’s rather predictable martyrdom and his painful death. The pattern of apostasy, overt reconversion and subsequent martyrdom is reminiscent of much later stories situated under Islamic rule.3 Indeed, the Bohairic version includes long parenetic passages that urgently warn the reader against renouncing Christ in order to obtain the favors of the temporary rulers of this world.4 Although its core is probably older, the present Bohairic version of the Martyrdom may therefore postdate the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641. When the undaunted reader has made his way through a long series of gruesome tortures and reached the final doxology, a surprise awaits him. After the conventional episode of the secret and hasty reburial of the saint’s badly damaged body, which ends the passio, an interesting and dramatic translatio follows, peculiar to the Coptic tradition.5 Around the body of the saint, we are told, a cult rapidly developed. Under the pressure of the continuing persecution within the Persian Empire, however, and in order to protect his relics against the wrath of the Sassanid king, his mortal remains were transported secretly to Jerusalem, where they found refuge within the walls of a monastery, that of the Iberians (i.e. Georgians), inhabited by one of the heroes of early anti-Chalcedonian literature, the colorful person of Peter the Iberian, bishop of Gaza (ca. 417-491).6 He was not only 3

E.g. the Martyrdom of John of Phanijôit, newly re-edited by Jason R. Zaborowski, The Coptic Martyrdom of John of Phanijôit: Assimilation and Conversion to Islam in ThirteenthCentury Egypt [The History of Christian-Muslim Relations 3] (Leiden, 2005). 4 Martyrium sancti Iacobi Persae, ed. Balestri and Hyvernat (see above, n. 2), pp. 24-7. 5 Martyrium sancti Iacobi Persae, ed. Balestri and Hyvernat, pp. 50-60. For an Arabic version (unpublished), see Georg Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, 5 vols. [Studi e Testi 118, 133, 146-7, 172] (Vatican City, 1944-1953), 1: 505; Marcus Simaika, Catalogue of the Coptic and Arabic Manuscripts in the Coptic Museum, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1939-1942), 1: 53-4 (no. 101). Note, though, that the Sahidic Coptic Martyrdom, just as the Syriac from the Egyptian Scetis (Peeters et al., Bibliotheca Hagiographica Orientalis (see above, n. 1), no. 394), lacks the translatio; see Augustinus Antonius Georgius, De miraculis Sancti Coluthi . . . (Rome, 1793), pp. 245-72. The most recent study of the translatio remains Oscar von Lemm, Iberica [Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg, sér. 8, Classe historico-philologique, vol. 7, no. 6] (St.-Petersburg, 1906), pp. 2-19. For the muddled abstracts in the Coptic and Ethiopian Synaxaria, see at pp. 17-9. For different traditions concerning the relics of Saint James the Persian, see Georgius, De miraculis, pp. 246-51; Otto F.A. Meinardus, Christian Egypt: Faith and Life (Cairo, 1970), p. 169, n. 4. 6 The biographical information about Peter contained in the Martyrdom of James

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a great saint himself, according to the author, but also a lover of saints, for which reason he was nicknamed “Abba Petros, the martyrophile (pimaimarturos).”7 Following the persecution of the orthodox in Palestine under the Emperor Marcian, in the wake of the Council of Chalcedon (451), Peter had to flee to Egypt. In his retinue, two of his disciples took the relics of James with them to Egypt. They had put them in a box of silver, which they deposited in a monastery near Alexandria. At that time, however, the Church of Alexandria was suffering under the despotic rule of the pro-Chalcedonian Bishop Proterius (451-457), who had the military and civil authorities of Alexandria chase the monks from the monasteries in the neighborhood. Again, Peter the Iberian had to flee persecution. At first he intended to return to Gaza, where he was a bishop, but a vision of Saint James the Persian himself stopped him. The saint ordered him to stay in Egypt and to transport his body to Pemje, the town known in Greek as Oxyrhynchus, and nowadays called al-Bahnasa. He promised Peter to guide him until his relics would have reached their place of destination. Peter went to Pemje, where he was hospitably received by a native of the town, Moses.8 Proterius, however, heard about Peter’s stay in Oxyrhynchus and sent soldiers there in order to arrest him. Peter and his followers had to take refuge in a possession of Moses’ outside the town, in a village (“a small xwrion”) called

derives from the Syriac Vita Petri Hiberi, ed. and trans. Richard Raabe (Leipzig, 1895), attributed (not by the text itself ) to John Rufus. For Peter and his times, see A. Kofsky, ‘Peter the Iberian: Pilgrimage, Monasticism and Ecclesiastical Politics in Byzantine Palestine,’ Liber Annuus 47 (1997), 209-22; C.B. Horn, Beyond Theology: The Career of Peter the Iberian in the Christological Controversies of Fifth-Century Palestine (Ph.D.-thesis, Catholic University, Washington, D.C., 2001) (not seen); for his place in Egyptian anti-Chalcedonian literature, Maria Cramer, Heinrich Bacht, ‘Der antichalkedonische Aspekt im historisch-biographischen Schrifttum der koptischen Monophysiten (6.-7. Jahrhundert): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Entstehung der monophysitischen Kirche Ägyptens,’ in Das Konzil von Chalkedon: Geschichte und Gegenwart, eds. Aloys Grillmeyer, Heinrich Bacht, 3 vols. (Wurzburg, 1951-1954), 2: 315-38; Tito Orlandi, Storia della Chiesa di Alessandria, 2 vols. [ Testi e Documenti per lo Studio dell’Antichità 17, 31] (Milan, 1968-1970), 2: 119-21; David W. Johnson, ‘Anti-Chalcedonian Polemics in Coptic Texts,’ in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity, eds. Birger A. Pearson, James E. Goehring (Philadelphia, 1986), pp. 216-35, esp. 222-3. According to the Vita, trans. Raabe, p. 46, the monastery of the Iberians in Jerusalem was located north of the church of Zion, near David’s tower, and founded by Peter himself. 7 Martyrium sancti Iacobi Persae, ed. Balestri and Hyvernat (see above, n. 2), p. 53, lines 6-7; cf. Vita Petri Hiberi, trans. Raabe (see above, n. 6), pp. 25 and 37. 8 Cf. Vita Petri Hiberi, trans. Raabe, p. 61.

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“in the language of the Egyptians” Paim (paim), five stadia (i.e. about one kilometer) to the east of Pemje.9 There the saint appeared to Peter again. He announced his desire to stay in Paim and indicated a place, somewhat to the south of the village, where a sanctuary was to be built in his name. The relics were temporarily deposited in a small dwelling. Finally, Peter returned to his see in Gaza. The two brothers who accompanied him with the relics of the saint did not follow him, however, but decided to keep the relics of the saint for themselves and disappear with them during the night. Fortunately, James himself prevented his own kidnapping. He stopped the two men at the riverside and ordered them to put his relics in a stone trough lying around nearby. The two men were sent away and the trough with the bodily remains of the saint miraculously flew through the air in order to reach its proper place, “on the dyke to the south of Paim.”10 In the same village, Paim, a pious lady happened to live, named Theodora. The saint appeared to her in a vision and told her to assemble the priest and the clerics of the village and to leave the village southward, “by the road of the dyke,” until they would reach the great stone trough containing the remains of the saint.11 After having found them, the villagers temporarily kept the relics in the local church and started to build a beautiful sanctuary for them, situated on the dyke south of Paim, which was finished on the third of the month Mekheir ( January 28 according the Julian calendar).12 The corpse of the saint was transferred there right away, and the author briefly describes the festivities that marked the occasion. In a final paragraph, he enumerates the many healings and exorcisms that took place on the spot and thereby vouchsafed the authenticity of the holy remains. The story briefly summarized here is a nice and characteristic example of a familiar hagiographic genre, that of the translatio: the

9 Martyrium sancti Iacobi Persae, ed. Balestri and Hyvernat (see above, n. 2), p. 54, lines 11-4; all these details (and the apparitions of the martyr) are, of course, not in the Vita Petri Hiberi. 10 Martyrium sancti Iacobi Persae, ed. Balestri and Hyvernat, p. 57, line 25. 11 Martyrium sancti Iacobi Persae, ed. Balestri and Hyvernat, p. 58, lines 11-5. 12 The entry in the modern Synaxarium for 16 Khoiak, which commemorates “the consecration of the church of Saint James the Persian” (cf. Maurice de Fenoyl, Le sanctoral copte (Beirut, 1960), p. 100), does not seem to be connected with the present tradition.


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account of the more or less miraculous and eventful transfer of the relics of the saint from the place of his death to one or several of the cult places where he was venerated. As a genre, the translatio has been situated “between hagiography and history,” which is not really a comfortable or unambiguous position.13 Also in the present case, this judgment calls for some remarks. A first observation concerns the documentary value of the Martyrdom. On the surface, the text seems soundly rooted in history. Even for those who might doubt the historicity of the saint, the undoubtedly historical characters that figure throughout the text, such as the Persian King Yazdgird, the Emperor Marcian (450-457), the short-lived Patriarch Proterius and, of course, Peter the Iberian, firmly situate the events in the fifth century. Nevertheless, it may be clear that the text could hardly serve as a reliable source for, for instance, Christianity in the Sassanid Empire or the aftermath of the Council of Chalcedon. Even the quite detailed information about Peter the Iberian, the main protagonist of the translatio, has been ingeniously adapted, though with some liberties, from one single source, the Life of Peter attributed to John Rufus, itself a hagiographical text.14 Therefore, despite the considerable efforts to create a credible historical background, the historical value — taken in the conventional, narrow sense of the word — of the Martyrdom is minimal. By contrast, even though no other traces of his cult in the region of Oxyrhynchus survive15 and the village in question cannot be identified with confidence anymore,16 the story of the translatio proves beyond any doubt that once a sanctuary devoted to Saint James the Persian must have existed on the dyke road south of the small khôrion Paim, just east of the town. It is even conceivable that the role of the pious lady Theodora is not entirely fictitious. She may have been remembered as a benefactor of the local church, or perhaps her 13 See Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, 1978), pp. 9-16, who duly acknowledges this fact. For the genre, see further Martin Heinzelmann, Translationsberichte und andere Quellen des Reliquienkultes [Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge Occidental 33] (Turnhout, 1979). 14 See above, n. 6. 15 James the Persian does not appear e.g. in the rich papyrological and epigraphic material collected by Arietta Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints en Égypte des Byzantins aux Abbassides (Paris, 2001), or in the later record of Christian Oxyrhynchus, for which see Stefan Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten in arabischer Zeit, 6 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1984-1992), 1: 283-300. 16 Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten, 4: 1811-12.

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name was mentioned by an inscription in or near the building. But that is about as much certainty as can be obtained: the entire fanciful narrative of the saint’s martyrdom and posthumous adventures culminates and ends on the dyke near Paim. Almost every element of the composition could be exchanged for another without great loss, but not this one. The story, although told chronologically, cannot even be called primarily a biographical text. It is a text about landscape, about the Christian landscape of Oxyrhynchus.17 A further observation can be made, which concerns the “socioliterary” status of the story. The cult of the relics of the martyrs has found its literary expression in examples of Christian literature as early as the Martyrdom of Polycarp.18 Indeed, “Kultätiologie” is a central concern of most of the typical Egyptian-style martyrdoms that make up a considerable part of what is called Coptic literature.19 The Martyrdom of Saint James the Persian stands, therefore, in a venerable tradition. It must be noted, however, that early Egyptian hagiography from monastic milieus bears witness to a strong countercurrent. The authors of several ancient monks’ lives willingly deny themselves the pleasure of expanding their biographies with juicy additions such as a translatio or a volume of posthumous miracles. Instead, they expressly state that the place of burial of their hero was unknown or even purposely kept secret. The best known examples are, of course, the Lives of Saints Antony and Pachomius. Hide-and-Seek: The Saints’ Relics in Egyptian Monks’ Lives After the death of Antony, his two disciples “hid his body under the earth, and nobody until now knows where his body was concealed, but for these two alone.”20 They had been instructed to do so by Antony himself, who had told them not to permit anybody to take 17 It may be added that it is a text about the anti-Chalcedonian landscape of the town, for the story also firmly connects the local cult of Saint James the Persian with the anti-Chalcedonian (“Coptic”) Church, both through the role attributed to Peter the Iberian and his local host, Moses (also in the Life of Peter, see above), and, perhaps, through the person of Theodora, who is otherwise unknown. 18 Martyrium Polycarpi 17-8, 4th ed. P.Th. Camelot [Sources Chrétiennes 10] (Paris, 1969), pp. 230-2. 19 Theofried Baumeister, Martyr invictus: Der Märtyrer als Sinnbild der Erlösung in der Legende und im Kult der frühen koptischen Kirche (Munster, 1972), pp. 172-3. 20 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 92.2, ed. G.J.M. Bartelink [Sources Chrétiennes 400] (Paris, 1994), p. 372.


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his body from the desert to the Nile Valley in order that it would not have to undergo the popular rites of embalming, public exposure and lamentation, rites that Antony was said to abhor. Instead, he tells them: “bury my body yourselves and hide it under the ground . . . in order that nobody knows the spot but you alone.”21 Pachomius’s body was even dug up and buried again in order to conceal its real burial place. According to the end of a Sahidic Life, the brothers of the community “prepared his body for burial just like all the brothers and they celebrated the Eucharist over him. Afterwards they led him away, chanting until they had brought him to the desert and had buried him, on the fifteenth of the same month of Pashons.”22 When they had returned from the desert, however, “Theodore took three other brothers with him, in that night, and they dug him up from the place where he was buried and they deposited him together with father Papnoute, the brother of father Theodore, the accountant of the community. And nobody knew the place where he was up to the present day.”23 Also Theodore, Pachomius’s favorite disciple, obeys an injunction by the saint himself: “when the Lord visits me, Pachomius had told him repeatedly, do not leave my body in the place where it will be buried!” — and Theodore knew why: “for fear that people would take his body on the sly and build for it a sanctuary as they were doing for the holy martyrs. For many a time he had heard him [Pachomius] criticize those who treated them in this way, for everybody who acts thus is a dealer in the bodies of the saints.”24 A hundred years later, Pachomius’s criticism of the cult of the martyrs’ relics in the various forms which it had taken in late antique Egypt is echoed, in an even more forceful way, by Shenoute.25 The

21

Athanasius, Vita Antonii 91.6-7, ed. Bartelink, pp. 368-70. Pachomii vitae sahidice scriptae, S 7, ed. L.-Th. Lefort [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 99-100] (Paris, 1933), p. 95, lines 23-7; for the place of the fragmentary Life S7 in the Pachomian literary tradition, see L.-Th. Lefort, Les vies coptes de saint Pachôme et de ses premiers successeurs [Bibliothèque du Muséon 16] (Louvain, 1943), pp. lxxvii-lxxx, and the notes to his translation at pp. 44-52. 23 Pachomii vitae sahidice scriptae, S7, ed. Lefort (see above, n. 22), p. 96, lines 1-7. 24 Pachomii vitae sahidice scriptae, S7, ed. Lefort, p. 93, line 26 — p. 94, line 11. 25 See L.-Th. Lefort, ‘La chasse aux reliques des martyrs en Égypte au IVe siècle,’ La Nouvelle Clio 6 (1954), 225-30; see also Jürgen Horn, Studien zu den Märtyrern des nördlichen Oberägypten I: Märtyrerverehrung und Märtyrerlegende im Werk des Schenute. Beiträge zur ältesten ägyptischen Märtyrerüberlieferung [Göttinger Orientforschungen, Reihe 4, 15] (Wiesbaden, 1986), pp. 1-9. 22

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latter’s polemics are certainly no mere rhetorical exercises. Thus there is no reason whatsoever to doubt the exactitude of his observations concerning the cult of the relics of the (supposed) martyrs inside the (cathedral?) church of Panopolis-Akhmim.26 By the fifth century, keeping the relics of the saints within the city churches was already a widespread habit.27 Shenoute’s polemic stance against accepted town practices suggests that the rejection of the cult of the relics as articulated by him and the saints’ lives quoted above primarily represented a monastic point of view. As for his own burial, nothing much is known. The Life of Shenoute, traditionally attributed to his pupil Besa, contains an impressive description of the saint’s death, but his burial is described in a few words only. After having heard the heavens rejoice over Shenoute’s arrival, it says, “we hurried to cover (var.: kiss) his holy body; we deposited it in a pierced box28 and buried it.”29 This is virtually the end of the Bohairic Life. The (fragmentary) Sahidic is slightly different, but it is even briefer: “and right away we prepared him for burial, we secured his body in a wooden coffin and buried it in glory and honor.”30 Only the Arabic Life inserts a story of reburial closely modeled after the episode from the Sahidic Life of Pachomius, quoted above.31 Yet in spite of the secrecy

26

Oeuvres de Schenoudi, ed. E. Amélineau, 2 vols. (Paris, 1907-1914), 1: 212-20. For the historical process, see the already classic study by Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (London, 1981); cf. Heinzelmann, Translationsberichte (see above n. 13), pp. 25-31; E.D. Hunt, ‘The Traffic in Relics: Some Late Roman Evidence,’ in The Byzantine Saint, ed. Sergei Hackel [Studies Supplementary to Sobornost 5] (London, 1981), pp. 171-80. 28 Thus, literally; perhaps the expression refers to the half-open, fruit-crate type of palm-fiber coffins that can be found in medieval tombs of a quite simple kind (cf. W∑odzimierz Godlewski, ‘The Medieval Coptic Cemetery at Naqlun,’ in Christianity and Monasticism in the Fayoum Oasis, ed. Gawdat Gabra (Cairo, 2005), pp. 173-83, there 177). Likewise, A.F. Shore, ‘Extracts of Besa’s Life of Shenoute in Sahidic,’ Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 65 (1979), 134-43, there 143, thinks of “a wrapping of the body with palm-matting, basket, or similar covering.” Note that the relics of James the Persian are put, in Jerusalem, in “a box of silver” (Martyrium sancti Iacobi Persae, ed. Balestri and Hyvernat (see above, n. 2), p. 53, line 16); in both cases the same word for “box” (kãca) is used. 29 Ps.-Besa, Sinuthii vita bohairice 189, ed. Johannes Leipoldt [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 41] (Paris, 1906; repr. Louvain, 1951), p. 76, lines 5-8. 30 Ps.-Besa, Sinuthii vita sahidice, ed. Shore, ‘Extracts’ (see above, n. 28), p. 139b, lines 25-31. 31 Ps.-Besa, Sinuthii vita arabice, ed. in E. Amélineau, Monuments pour servir à l’histoire de l’Égypte chrétienne aux IV e et V e siècles [Mémoires Mission Archéologique Française 4] (Paris, 1888), pp. 474-5. 27


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suggested by this passage in the Arabic Life, the (or, a) tomb of Shenoute came to be known later in history, even if its location is still a matter of debate.32 Finally, in the still later Coptic Life of Macarius the Great, a somewhat ambiguous departure seems to be made from the earlier monastic tradition.33 Here too, after the celebration of the liturgy for the deceased, the monks “deposited his holy body in the cave next to the church which he had built.”34 In line with the earlier monastic sources, no further attention is paid to his tomb nor is there any hint whatsoever of a cult of his relics. Then a Saint Paphnouti is introduced and praised as Macarius’s successor. Logically, the Life might have ended there. Instead, the Bohairic Life, the only complete version that we have in Coptic, inserts a striking episode that is doubtless of a secondary nature. It describes how the inhabitants of Djidjbir (Arabic Shishwir, Shabshir), the putative home village of the saint in the Delta,35 succeeded in finding out the place where he was buried, and how they entered the Scetis on the sly and took away the body of Macarius.36 They brought his relics back with them to their village and put them in a chest of precious wood. Then they started to build a sanctuary for him to the south-west of the village, which was richly adorned. It was finished on the thirteenth of Epiphi ( July 7) and consecrated on the next day in the presence of a whole crowd of bishops. The liturgy was celebrated and the relics of the saint were deposited in a special room at the southeast

32 Peter Grossmann, ‘Zum Grab des Schenute,’ Journal of Coptic Studies 6 (2004), 83-105. 33 Ps.-Sarapion of Thmuis, Macarii vita bohairice, here cited after the chapter numbers of the new edition by Toda Satoshi (Ph.D.-thesis, Leiden University, 2006). Toda convincingly argues that the Life, in its present form, may date from as late as the eighth century. 34 Macarii vita bohairice 42.13-4, ed. Toda. 35 See Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten (see above, n. 15), 5: 2372-75. Actually, the tradition that makes Macarius a native of Djidjbir is highly spurious. According to the Church historian Socrates (ca. 380-450), who wrote merely some decades after the death of the saint, Macarius was from Upper Egypt (Historia ecclesiastica 4.23.31, ed. G.C. Hansen [Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte, N.F. 1] (Berlin, 1995), p. 252). 36 The text adds apologetically Hws kata ouTmaT: “as if by consent [of the saint himself ?]”. Of course, the saint might have stopped them, if he had wished, as James the Persian had done (see above). Nevertheless, this is an obvious example of translatio by theft, following a widespread medieval pattern well studied, among others, by Geary, Furta Sacra (see above n. 13).

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of the sanctuary. Also in this sanctuary, of course, many miracles and healings took place, and still take place up to the present day, according to the Life.37 Another village, Djidjbir, hardly less obscure than Paim, and another translatio, now inserted in the Life of one of the most famous monks of the heroic times of Egyptian monasticism, Macarius the Great. The critical attitude towards the cult of the saints’ relics as found in early monastic sources, most typically represented by the Lives of Saints Antony and Pachomius is usually taken as an indication of the popularity of such cults, and this is likely to be correct. The often vehement criticism must denounce a widespread and wellrooted phenomenon, or abuse, if one accepts the negative judgment. This is not to say that the motif of this monastic resistance is a mere literary topos. We are quite clearly dealing with the ideologically motivated rejection of what was considered a wrong way of venerating the saints or, to put it differently, with a conflict between a highly articulate desire for spiritual worship and a perhaps less articulate but strong and widespread desire for having the power of the saints immediately available. Both tendencies are reflected on a literary level in Egyptian hagiography. The quoted chapter from the Life of Macarius the Great would indicate that the purist views as expressed in early monastic literature failed to have made a lasting practical impact. Indeed, hagiography has many roles and functions, but, as the Martyrdom of Saint James the Persian shows perhaps most compellingly, one of its central functions is precisely to construct a Christian landscape where the holy is always within easy reach. Writing the Christian Landscape Constructing and reconstructing the Christian landscape as it is done in hagiography has, in spite of its ahistorical methods, a clear historical dimension. It constructs, but at the same time explains and legitimizes the landscape. Therefore, hagiography pretends to write history. Complex and momentous events and circumstances that shaped history on an international scale brought Saint James from the Sassanid capital to Oxyrhynchus and, eventually, to the dyke near Paim. A possibly entirely fictitious biography of the young

37

Vita Macarii bohairice 43, ed. Toda (see above, n. 33).


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Macarius gave the inhabitants of Djidjbir the right to boast an impressive sanctuary of that saint. Some hagiographic sources seem to be more outspokenly historical in their intentions than others. One such source is discussed extensively in Jitse Dijkstra’s recent dissertation about religious change in the area of the First Cataract.38 Baptized Histories of the Monks in the Egyptian Desert by its first editor,39 this fascinating Coptic (Sahidic) text is more appropriately called the Life of Aaron. The Life of Aaron, a presumably fourth- or fifth-century saintly anchorite of Philae, is a rich and multilayered composition that is remarkable in several respects. It is, for example, much concerned with bishops, even with the episcopal succession within one restricted region, that of the First Cataract. In addition, it is much concerned with conversion: savage Nubians, deprived of the Gospel, are evangelized, pagan priests transformed into Christian clerics, and the massive temples of Philae are merely waiting for their turn to be converted into churches. It is tempting to take the kind of history written by the Life of Aaron at face value: the stories are told in a funny, lively manner, the main characters are partly known from other sources and there is a wealth of couleur locale. However, exactly the same qualities can be discovered in the Martyrdom of Saint James the Persian quoted in the beginning of this paper, which is a very poor historical source! Dijkstra’s analysis makes it clear, in my opinion, that the Life of Aaron, no less than the Martyrdom of James, is focused on landscape, in the broadest possible sense, which encompasses both its physical and its ideological dimensions. The Life’s apparently historiographic interest in episcopal filiation, more particularly in the series of early bishops of Philae, is something quite exceptional, at least on this local scale.40 The bishops celebrated by Egyptian hagiography are usually the well-known heroes of the national Church. The life and doings of Saint Athanasius, for

38 Jitse H.F. Dijkstra, Religious Encounters on the Southern Egyptian Frontier in Late Antiquity (AD 298-642) (Ph.D.-thesis, University of Groningen, 2005), pp. 97-123. 39 E.A. Wallis Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt, 2 vols. (London, 1915), 1: 432-95, after a single tenth-century manuscript; a new edition remains a desideratum. A modern, though indifferent English translation can be found in Tim Vivian, Paphnutius: Histories of the Monks of Upper Egypt, and The Life of Onnophrius [Cistercian Studies Series 140] (revised ed., Kalamazoo, Mich., 2000), pp. 73-141. 40 See Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above, n. 38), pp. 103-5, 114-20.

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example, were fancifully retold in an entire cycle of related stories, many of them to be found in homiletic compositions falsely attributed to the saint himself, but of certainly much later manufacture.41 The general framework of this (auto-) biographical cycle was roughly provided by official ecclesiastical history. The stories themselves, characteristically, show Athanasius sharing for three years the life of an Akhmim workman42 or turning a pool in the neighborhood of Alexandria into a healing centre.43 A similar framework must have been at hand in Philae, though hardly in the form of an official Church history. The most likely source of information about the bishops of Philae is the diptychs of the cathedral church, the lists that served their liturgical commemoration. Such a list survives from Faras, somewhat more to the south, in Nubia, written on the walls of one of the side rooms of the famous cathedral of the town. Together with similar lists found elsewhere on the church walls, it was undoubtedly meant for use in the cathedral liturgy.44 The names of former bishops were kept alive within this liturgical framework. Both its outspoken interest in bishops and its probable source, therefore, connect the Life of Aaron with the hierarchical center of the Church of Philae, the episcopal church. As is also borne out by Dijkstra’s analysis, both the Life’s interest in hierarchy and its occupation with conversion can be connected with a decisive phase in the reconstruction of the landscape of the First Cataract area.45 During the sixth century, this region is marked by profound transformations, both political and cultural (changes, mainly, in the status of the neighboring Nubians, whose kings became Christian and remodelled their administration after Byzantine-Egyptian examples) and religious (changes in the organization of cultic space, both on Philae itself and in Nubia). As is well attested by other sources, both epigraphic and historiographic, a pivotal role in these processes was played by the enterprising Bishop Theodore, who for an unusually long time in this crucial period was head of the Church

41

See Tito Orlandi, Omelie copte (Turin, 1981), pp. 45-6. Ps.-Athanasius, In Michaelem 44-46, trans. in Orlandi, Omelie copte, p. 69; a critical edition is being prepared in Leiden. 43 Ps.-Constantine of Assiut, Encomium I in Athanasium 31-2, ed. Tito Orlandi [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 349] (Louvain, 1974), pp. 12-3. 44 Stefan Jakobielski, A History of the Bishopric of Pachoras on the Basis of Coptic Inscriptions [Faras 3] (Warsaw, 1972), pp. 191-201. 45 Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above n. 38), pp. 174-6. 42


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of Philae.46 The Life of Aaron mirrors these transformations in the sense that it legitimizes and explains a new Christian landscape, dominated, also physically, by Nubians, pagan temples and politically active bishops, by providing it with a historical dimension. This legitimization and explanation is primarily a process, not of the analysis of historical data, but of appropriation. The stories about the conversion of landscape as told in the Life are not about historical facts, but about the actually present landscape. Rather than documenting historical processes, they are themselves part of the historical process that constructs and reconstructs the Christian landscape. This may be illustrated in yet another way. Monumental temples make odd churches, even when properly purified and repainted. Moreover, they dominate, at least in Philae, the horizon in a way scarcely found in other towns in Egypt, rich as the country is in large temples. The mere physical mismatch in the landscape between actual practice and normality, rather than any positive interest in religious conversion, may have triggered the kind of descriptions of dying paganism found in Egyptian hagiography. It is certainly remarkable that other famous stories about anti-pagan action and temple conversion are also situated in landscapes that, however deeply and thoroughly they may have been Christianized, are physically dominated by (converted) pagan temples (Atripe, Akhmim, Abydos). There is no way to find out whether Moses of Abydos really exorcized temples invested with demons and really fought with hostile pagan priests, but the stories relating these adventures are the very real ideological appropriation of the landscape of Abydos, one of the most prestigious religious centers of pharaonic Egypt where the preChristian history of the country can still be felt present, even today.47

46

Siegfried G. Richter, Studien zur Christianisierung Nubiens [Sprachen und Kulturen des Christlichen Orients 11] (Wiesbaden, 2002), pp. 99-103; Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above, n. 38), pp. 171-6. 47 For the dossier of Moses, see R.-G. Coquin, ‘Moses of Abydos,’ in The Coptic Encyclopedia (see above, n. 1), 5: 1679-81, with further references; Mark Moussa, ‘The Coptic Literary Dossier of Abba Moses of Abydos,’ Coptic Church Review 24 (2003), 66-90 (not seen); the stories in question have been frequently quoted, e.g. by J. van der Vliet, ‘Spätantikes Heidentum in Ägypten im Spiegel der koptischen Literatur,’ in Begegnung von Heidentum und Christentum im spätantiken Ägypten [Riggisberger Berichte 1] (Riggisberg, 1993), pp. 99-130, there 117-8.

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Rewriting the Christian Landscape Landscape is a palimpsest, both in its physical and in its ideological dimensions.48 The village of Paim cannot now be located anymore on the map of present-day Middle Egypt and even the considerable town of Oxyrhynchus or Pemje itself, rebaptized as alBahnasa, has dwindled with time to the size of an insignificant village. No more traces of the cult of Saint James the Persian can presently be found in its neighborhood. Instead, it can be shown that already in the first half of the tenth century relics of the saint were venerated in the prestigious setting of the newly refurbished monastery of the Syrians in the Wadi ’n-Natrûn.49 If these are (part of ) the same relics, it can be assumed that the cult of the saint on the dyke near Paim had come to an end or, at least, had lost much of its glamour around 900. By that time, indeed, although the process is difficult to pinpoint chronologically, the entire landscape of Oxyrhynchus/al-Bahnasa was about to be rewritten. As Christian Décobert has shown in a brilliant essay, the role of the town during the Arab conquest had become the core of a legendary history that, keeping pace with the gradual islamization and arabization of the region, attached itself to the landscape and reconstructed it in the sense of the new religion.50 A fascinating aspect of this Islamic reconstruction of the landscape of Oxyrhynchus is certainly the establishment of a Muslim oratory, “outside the town, at its west side,” at a spot where Christ and his mother Mary had stayed for seven years following their flight to Egypt.51 According to Décobert, the establishment of this Islamic holy place is not the unreflected continuation of a similar Christian cult at the same spot,

48 See, for a general approach, Béatrice Caseau, ‘Sacred Landscapes,’ in Interpreting Late Antiquity: Essays on the Postclassical World, eds. G.W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, Oleg Grabar (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), pp. 21-59; for Egypt, the stimulating essay by David Frankfurter, ‘Syncretism and the Holy Man in Late Antique Egypt,’ Journal of Early Christan Studies 11 (2003), 339-85. 49 See J. van der Vliet, ‘History through Inscriptions: Coptic Epigraphy in the Wadi al-Natrun,’ Coptica 3 (2004), 187-207, there 200-2. 50 Christian Décobert, ‘Un lieu de mémoire religieuse,’ in Valeur et distance. Identités et sociétés en Égypte, ed. Christian Décobert (Paris, 2000), pp. 247-63, who sketches the process and refers to the relevant sources, starting with the (Christian) chronicle of John of Nikiu (late seventh-early eighth century). 51 Al-Harawî (twelfth-early thirteenth century), quoted by Décobert, ‘Lieu,’ p. 249. Cf. Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten (see above, n. 15), 1: 299-300, n. 45.


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but the specifically Islamic appropriation of the local landscape.52 Even if an existing Christian tradition on the spot may have spurred the Muslim imagination, which is not even certain, the Islamic interpretation of Jesus’ flight into Egypt is quite distinct. According to Muslim tradition, which takes a verse from the Qur’an (23,50) as its point of departure, Jesus’ stay in Egypt is a sign pointing forward to the Muslim conquest of the country, an event in the course of which precisely the landscape of al-Bahnasa had acquired heroic dimensions. By means of subtle shifts like these, the Christian landscape was overwritten with an Islamic one. In fact, Christian interest in the stations of the Holy Family’s journey through Egypt appears to have grown considerable only in the centuries following the Arab conquest, possibly in reaction to Muslim occupation with this theme.53 It is therefore uncertain whether the Christian association of the al-Bahnasa region with the passage of the Holy Family is older than the Islamic tradition, or a parallel or even more recent development. In any case, both traditions appear to be distinct topographically too. Christian literary sources, also apparently local ones, such as a homily attributed to a Bishop Cyriacus of al-Bahnasa,54 do not focus on the town itself or its western outskirts, where the Muslim oratory was situated, but on a place called (Dayr) Bîsûs/Bâsûs (nowadays Dayr al-Garnûs), about ten kilometers north of al-Bahnasa. There, according to report, a healing well that was dug by Jesus can still be seen today.55 52

Décobert, ‘Lieu’ (see above, n. 50), pp. 251-4. Décobert, ‘Lieu,’ p. 250. See Anne Boud’hors and Ramez Boutros, ‘La Sainte Famille à ]abal al-Tayr et l’homélie du Rocher,’ in Études coptes VII: Neuvième Journée d’études, Montpellier 3-4 juin 1999, ed. N. Bosson [Cahiers de la Bibliothèque Copte 12] (Paris and Louvain, 2000), pp. 59-76, there 75-6, for a somewhat different view; cf. Anne Boud’hors, ‘Manuscripts and Literature in Fayoumic Coptic,’ in Christianity and Monasticism in the Fayoum Oasis (see above, n. 28), pp. 21-31, there 25-7. 54 See P. Dib, ‘Deux discours de Cyriaque, évêque de Behnésa, sur la fuite en Égypte,’ Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 15 (1910), 157-61; cf. Graf, Geschichte (see above, n. 5), 1: 232-3; Gabriele Giamberardini, Il culto mariano in Egitto, 3 vols. ( Jerusalem, 1974-1978), 2: 55-63; Boud’hors and Boutros, ‘Sainte Famille’ (see above, n. 53), p. 67; Stephen J. Davis, ‘A Hermeneutic of the Land: Biblical Interpretation in the Holy Family Tradition,’ in Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millennium: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, 2 vols., eds. M. Immerzeel and J. van der Vliet [Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 133] (Louvain and Paris, 2004), 1: 329-36, there 336. See also Ps.-Timothy Aelurus, Homélie sur l’église du Rocher 24 (Arabic), ed. Anne Boud’hors, Ramez Boutros [Patrologia Orientalis 49.1, no. 217] (Turnhout, 2001), pp. 120-1, with n. 48. 55 For this locality, see Timm, Das christlich-koptische Ägypten (see above, n. 15), 3: 53

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Quite recently, in the Holy Year 2000, Christian Egypt celebrated not only two millennia of Christianity, but also the 2000th anniversary of the flight into Egypt. This commemoration was accompanied by much publicity and a stream of publications, both scholarly and touristic. For present day Copts, naturally, the flight singles out Egypt as a privileged country, as a Christian Holy Land. In route descriptions of the journey southward of the Holy Family destined for modern tourists, al-Bahnasa rather than Dayr al-Garnûs appears as a station, even though in most cases not many details are provided about their sojourn in the town itself.56 Still, by including al-Bahnasa in pilgrim tours that pretend to follow in the footsteps of the Holy Family, the site is in a sense being recuperated as a Christian landscape. Whether this surge of interest in its Christian history has left its traces in the modern village is unknown to me. But it would certainly be astonishing if no local mu'allim would have grasped the opportunity for spinning a yarn, just as his forefathers had done. Coming Home To conclude, one of the functions of hagiography and, as far as Egypt is concerned, certainly not the least important one, is to write the Christian landscape, seen as the physical and ideological habitat of the Christians of a particular town or province in a particular period. It does so by situating the holy in time and space according to certain literary conventions that allow a considerable degree of variation. Whereas the spatial setting is determined by the tangible and verifiable presence of cult places and memorial sites in a particular landscape, the historical depth of the hagiographical story primarily serves the purpose of legitimation and explanation. Hagiography, as far as it writes history, writes performative history or, rather, represents itself the historical process in that it links the landscape to

1194-97, s.v. I“nin. The traditional etymology of Bîsûs, as “House ( phÍ ) of Jesus,” is probably false: an eleventh-century inscription in the church at Naqlûn (Fayyum) mentions the superior of a monastery called Apa Eisous ( Jesus), which is a more likely ancestor of (Dayr) Bîsûs/Bâsûs; see J. van der Vliet, ‘The Inscriptions,’ in W. Godlewski, ed., Naqlun: The Church of Saint Gabriel (Warsaw, forthcoming), no. A.11. 56 See e.g. a trilingual booklet, sold in Egyptian churches and monasteries, by Fathy Sa'îd Georgy, The Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt (s.l., 2001), p. 15 (English), p. 56 (Arabic), where both places are mentioned.


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past historical or mythical events that are finely attuned to a precise present situation, but may be arbitrary from any other point of view. That hagiography is no good as an historical source is no news and it is not my main point here. I would rather argue that hagiography is a first rate historical source as far as it helps to reconstruct human landscapes: crossroads of time and space, marked by meaningful reference points that give the homeless a feeling of home, even in the gloomy halls of Philae temple or on the dyke near Paim.

SAVING HISTORY? EGYPTIAN HAGIOGRAPHY IN ITS SPACE AND TIME Peter van Minnen Abstract Egyptian hagiography, just as other kinds of hagiography, originates in a certain time and place. The problem is that we can rarely pin down what part of the evidence is early and what evidence derives from later developments. We also often do not know where exactly the evidence comes from. In this paper, I will first discuss some of the problems this poses in dealing with Egyptian hagiography as a source of history, then I will argue that it is a kind of history after all: from about 400, when Egyptian hagiography takes off, it consistently provides a totalizing explanation for what had happened in the course of the fourth century: people had turned from paganism to Christianity, but no one had taken much notice while it happened. Egyptian hagiography does not build on authentic memory of what had happened in the fourth century, but amounts to an imaginative explanation-after-the-fact, largely inspired by the Bible and other literature.

Introduction There may be some virtue in having an ancient historian look at the subject of Egyptian hagiography.1 It so happens that I once added a saint to the Coptic calendar, when I published the earliest account of a martyrdom in Coptic.2 Clearly, the subject is still expanding, and even for the earliest period there are manuscripts such as the one I published that will add to our stock of saints.

1

The most recent survey of hagiography for ancient historians is in the Vademecum historyka starozytnej Grecji i Rzymu, 3 vols., ed. Ewa Wipszycka (Warsaw, 1967-1999), 3: 221-333. 2 See Peter van Minnen, ‘The Earliest Account of a Martyrdom in Coptic,’ Analecta Bollandiana 113 (1995), 13-38. Stephen, the priest from the village of Lenaios in Middle Egypt, has made it to the encyclopedia of Eastern saints: J. Nadal Cañellas, ‘Stefano di Lenaios,’ in Enciclopedia dei santi. Le chiese orientali (Rome, 1999), pp. 109798. Arietta Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints en Égypte des Byzantins aux Abbassides (Paris, 2001), pp. 192-3, thinks that the Duke papyrus I published could come from Bawit and that Stephen may be mentioned in a calendar of saints from there, but only Apa S[ can be read in the calendar, and the papyrus I published does not have to come from Bawit at all. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2006

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peter van minnen

My next point relates to the scope of my paper. I will be dealing with Egyptian hagiography in its space and time. In Egypt itself, certainly in the early period, the focus of much hagiography is on martyrs, not on ascetics. In what follows, I will occasionally draw on the lives of Egyptian ascetics, not necessarily the ones known from the western tradition, which are the subject of several other contributions to this volume, but I will also freely draw on martyrdoms and other information about Egyptian saints. The early documentary evidence, until about the early ninth century, demonstrates the relative unimportance of ascetics in actual practice, from cult activities in shrines dedicated to saints,3 to onomastics.4 My last point relates to the time covered by my paper. This is broadly speaking Late Antiquity. I will try to stay as closely as possible to the actual lives and deaths of Egyptian saints in the fourth and fifth centuries. Unfortunately, I cannot quite avoid drawing on evidence that is available only in manuscripts dating from a later period. This is unexceptionable, because hagiography has always used such evidence and tried to separate the earliest layers from later accretions. Although it is now fashionable to take each piece of evidence as first and foremost a window into (the spirituality of ) its own time, as an ancient historian I can ill afford to do so: I need some of the later evidence to make up for the relative dearth of the early evidence. This brings me to the outline of my paper. I will first deal with the last point, how to establish what evidence is early. In my second section, I will put the older scholarship into a historical perspective. In the third section, I will try to come to grips with the current scholarship on these matters. Records of martyrs did undergo significant changes over time, but there are at least some early records, and many others contain intriguing details that do not seem to have been made up long after the fact. What do we do with such intriguing details, and what do they tell us? In recent years, scholars such as David Frankfurter have interpreted these details as expressions of religious life as it was lived in a given place from pagan through

3 This kind of evidence can be traced with the help of Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints (see above, n. 2). 4 See Willy Clarysse, ‘The Coptic Martyr Cult,’ in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective, eds. M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun (Louvain, 1995), pp. 377-95.

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Christian times.5 Are there indeed such expressions in Egyptian hagiography? As I explain in my fourth section, I am rather suspicious of this. The final sections will therefore be a bold attempt at redefining Egyptian hagiography as history, in the sense given to it by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945): “Geschiedenis is de geestelijke vorm waarin men zich rekenschap geeft van het verleden” (“history is the cultural form in which one accounts for the past”). I will argue that this is what happens in the Egyptian hagiography I am dealing with: in it Egyptian Christians in Late Antiquity imagined what had happened in a past too distant for them to remember. In the course of the fourth century almost everywhere in Egypt people had turned from paganism to Christianity, but no one had paid much attention while it was happening. By about 400, the end result, a fully Christian society in a once fully pagan environment, had to be explained somehow, and hagiography provided an answer. This answer may be as little convincing as the explanation found in modern histories of religion in Late Antiquity, but it at least deserves serious consideration. Authentic Records of the Persecution: The Contribution of Hippolyte Delehaye The questions I have outlined in the introduction to my paper have been addressed and answered before, and I will start by providing a historical perspective on the scholarship on the subject. I will limit myself to the Bollandists in this section. They have been studying hagiography since the seventeenth century, originally to distinguish the true from the false and to support the claims of Christian saints quotquot toto orbe coluntur.6 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Bollandists reached their zenith and produced what ranks among the finest historical scholarship ever. That they pulled this off with the seemingly unpromising subject of hagiography is all the more astonishing in view of the fact that the subject as they had

5 See David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, 1998), his essay ‘Hagiography and the Reconstruction of Local Religion in Late Antique Egypt: Memories, Inventions, and Landscapes’ (this volume, above, pp. 1337), and the articles quoted there. 6 The first volume of the Acta sanctorum came out in 1643, the la(te)st in 1940, covering the saints from January 1 through November 10.

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originally conceived it died shortly after. In the seventeenth century the impetus to undertake their work had come from the desire to make Catholicism more respectable in the aftermath of the Council of Trente, which had tried to meet protestant criticism of saints. The Bollandists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century — foremost Hippolyte Delehaye (1859-1941)7 — replaced this with more strictly historical and less sectarian concerns. At the same time, however, the project itself became less appealing. From a historian’s point of view, the “nuggets,” authentic records or details, had by then been isolated — the rest could be written off. There was so much hagiography of dubious relevance to historians that it seemed useless to continue to amass, sift and publish more data. As a consequence, the saints from November 11 to December 31 have been left out in the cold since 1940. Delehaye distinguished several kinds of texts about martyrs, and his distinctions have become commonplace. The “historical passions” contained reports of proceedings derived from the acta proconsularia. The “panegyrics” derived their inspiration more from Greek literature than anything else. The “epic passions” are the Hollywood version of this, and the Egyptian material is full of them. “Epic passions” can be recognized by the role assigned to the emperor himself at the beginning of the martyrdom. A provincial governor is still the actual judge, but there are now also witnesses, which do not fit the kind of trial used during the persecutions. Delehaye rightly identified the acta proconsularia as behind the more authentic records of the early persecutions, the acta genuina ac sincera. For the martyrs of the Great Persecution such records are rare. I will make just two comments on this distinction, the one a practical observation, the other a suggestion. The practical observation comes first. How do we recognize authentic acta, reports of proceedings before the Roman governor? The best work on this has been done by Giuliana Lanata, who compared martyr acts with reports of proceedings surviving on papyrus.8 Such acta are not immune against contamination or adulteration over time, 7 See Bernard Joassart, Hippolyte Delehaye. Hagiographie critique et modernisme, 2 vols. [Subsidia Hagiographica 81] (Brussels, 2000). 8 Giuliana Lanata, Gli atti dei martiri come documenti processuali (Milan, 1973). Lucy Grig, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London, 2004), p. 147, refers to Gary A. Bisbee, Pre-Decian Acts of Martyrs and commentarii (Philadelphia, 1988), for the definitive study, but he did not take Lanata into account.


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and there has been a lingering doubt even about the possibility that copies of such reports could have been made by Christians during the persecutions, and that these would have survived in the context of memorial services for martyrs. Delehaye himself was quite reluctant to assume that some acta were copied early on, because such copying would seem to have been dangerous under the circumstances.9 I suspect that Delehaye’s own experience with German justice in World War I influenced his negative view of Roman justice. He was tried by a German judge for having written patriotic texts for an illegal Belgian newspaper, La Libre Belgique, during the occupation.10 Under Roman rule, however, reports of proceedings were made public and could be copied by anyone interested in it. That so few copies were made or survived is perhaps due to logistical difficulties in obtaining such copies at the time of the persecutions — or in obtaining them in time, before the records were destroyed. Reports of proceedings had to be copied while they were literally hanging out for a while or searched for in the archives as long as these were kept up. Next comes the suggestion. Once the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal there should have been a run on these archives. Why did no more acta from the Great Persecution survive? Some may have been incorporated into hagiographical literature in the following centuries, and acta may have been preserved that way, but I wonder whether Prudentius does not have a point after all. This late fourth-century Christian author blamed the lack of records on malice, deliberate destruction by the perpetrators of the persecution (chartulas blasphemus olim nam satelles abstulit).11 The authorities may have taken the exceptional step of not publicizing the reports of proceedings of the Great Persecution. Earlier acta had become part of Christian literature and were adding to the perseverance of Christians during the Great Persecution. The government must have been aware of this. It may well have taken the bold step of jeopardizing the Rechtsstaat by destroying the evidence. 9 See Hippolyte Delehaye, Cinq leçons sur la méthode hagiographique (Brussels, 1934), p. 9, an important passage. 10 See Oscar E. Millard, Underground News (New York, 1938), also published as Uncensored. 11 Prudentius, Peristephanon 1.75-8, ed. M. Lavarenne (Paris, 1951), p. 25. For a similar suggestion, see Glen W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 23-4.

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To take the point about the availability, or unavailability, of records from the Great Persecution even further, I may refer to the dossier from 320 relating to an incident that had happened during the Great Persecution, showing that some Donatist hero was not as unimpeachable as he had been made out. In this case an actual record from 303 was still available when the investigation was made in 320, and Augustine could still retrieve the dossier two generations later.12 Many authentic details from the Great Persecution were probably transmitted in the same way. I may also recall a remark by Augustine on the rarity of reports of proceedings: Stephen the Protomartyr’s passio could be read out in church from Scripture, but the acta of other martyrs were not readily available for such use (cum aliorum martyrum vix gesta inveniamus, quae in sollemnitatibus eorum recitare possimus, huius passio in canonico libro est).13 Acta of the earlier persecutions survived precisely because they had become part of the literature Christians transmitted to posterity.14 The number of Christians in a position to copy reports of proceedings would have been fairly small early on. The point about the reports of proceedings is important because they contained two crucial elements: the questioning and the verdict, that is, the condemnation to death. These facts could not be much improved on by later hands and may be taken as more likely authentic than any other part of martyr acts. The panegyrics and other more elaborate texts of later date recycled older material by adding to the report of proceedings the following items not found in the acta: at the front, the imperial decision, the background of the martyr, often seeking martyrdom or “dying for God”; in between, tortures, prayers, visions; and at the back, miracles and anything not immediately happening at the time of the persecutions itself, but at the time of the installation of the cult. The report of proceedings itself did not have to be transformed much.15 One has of course to take 12

See Yvette Duval, Chrétiens d’Afrique à l’aube de la paix constantinienne (Paris, 2000). Augustine, Sermo 315.1, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 38] (Paris, 1865), col. 1426. 14 The best evidence for Egyptian martyrs in earlier persecutions comes through Eusebius. There were not as many as in the Great Persecution, for which Eusebius provides almost contemporary evidence. For an update on the persecutions in Egypt after Hippolyte Delehaye’s ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte,’ Analecta Bollandiana 40 (1922), 5-154 and 299-364, see Clarysse, ‘The Coptic Martyr Cult’ (see above, n. 4), pp. 377-82. 15 For an example see René-Georges Coquin, ‘Le panégyrique d’Ammonios, 13


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possible or even likely interference from other acta into account. When Christians started to find the saints physically in the late fourth century (the so-called inventio), there may have been an additional incentive to invent records — not so much saints, because by then Christians already knew full well whom they were looking for. It is possible that they felt the need to add details about the inventio itself, for example as an event foreseen by the martyr, but this did not necessarily affect the report of the questioning and the verdict. Delehaye’s focus on martyrs rather than ascetics makes sense for Egypt. As Arietta Papaconstantinou has shown, martyrs were far more important in the everyday life of Egyptian Christians than other saints.16 The number of shrines dedicated to martyrs dwarfs that of all the others, ascetics, bishops or biblical characters, combined (except if we take Mary into account). The first martyrion or shrine for a martyr is mentioned in a document of 398.17 But when we look at the actual manuscripts that would have been read during memorial services in these shrines, it does not appear that hagiography per se was so important in Egypt early on. The few early scraps are easily outnumbered by contemporary biblical and other liturgical manuscripts. One may argue that the manuscripts we have from before the eighth century represent what Egyptian Christians threw away, whereas the later ones represent what they kept, but I take the spread of Christian manuscripts, mainly papyri, between the fourth and the eighth centuries as an indication of what was and was not important to Egyptian Christians at the time. If one wanted to give a martyr shrine something, one gave it a Bible or a four-gospel book,18 not a hagiographical text to be used in its liturgy. The relative unimportance of hagiography in earlier centuries is confirmed by the virtual absence of martyrdoms and other hagiographical texts in remnants of early Egyptian libraries: Nag Hammadi, Bodmer and Beatty,19 the

évêque-martyr d’Esna par son successeur Dorothée,’ Bulletin de la Société d’Archéologie Copte 32 (1993), 11-54 (Arabic text). Most of it is not authentic, but the questioning and condemnation to death are sober enough to be regarded as authentic. 16 Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints (see above, n. 2). 17 P.Haun. III 67. 18 As is implied in the Martyrdom of Paese and Thecla, in a catalogue of objects pilgrims might consider giving to a martyrion (fol. 79r i-ii) in the edition of E.A.E. Reymond and J.W.B. Barns, Four Martyrdoms in the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford, 1973). 19 With the exception of the Acts and Apology of Phileas, see below, p. 69.

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monastery of Epiphanius and that of Balaizah. This tendency also appears from inventories of ecclesiastical and monastic libraries.20 In an influential series of contributions, Peter Brown has argued that religion in Late Antiquity, especially Christianity from the late fourth through the sixth century, was all about holy men.21 This is a development we see reflected in Egyptian manuscripts at most only after the eighth century. The more complete libraries we have for this later period, such as that from Hamouli, give us a wide range of texts read on certain dates in the year. Most of them are still taken from the Bible, but there are now a sufficiently large number of hagiographical texts which will have provided occasional diversion for the obligatory Bible readings. The hagiographical miscellanies are all in the Sahidic Coptic dialect, whereas the newer manuscripts in Bohairic Coptic are biblical or other liturgical texts. When Hamouli made the transition from Sahidic to Bohairic, it apparently translated the most important texts. Hagiography could wait. It had never been that important. Hagiography was an alternative to the daily grind, not in the sense of something that ran counter to official Christianity imposed from above (in casu the Bible), but as a complement. Egyptian hagiography addresses Church dogma and politics, in much the same way as it addresses paganism. It made a point, sometimes about a matter of some urgency, such as the theological debates of the day, but often and more consistently about less ephemeral matters, such as salvation. I will come back to that in the fourth section of my paper. Egyptian Hagiography Today: Again Monks and Especially Martyrs We modern historians are not Bollandists. We are not only not interested in providing support to the claims of one sect against the criticism of another, but we also do not feel an urgent need to separate the “nuggets” from the mass of hagiographical data anymore. When 20 There is little even in the way of martyrdoms. There is just one manuscript in a Greek list of books I published in 1991 in Papyri, Ostraca, Parchments and Waxed Tablets in the Leiden Papyrological Institute, ed. F.A.J. Hoogendijk and P. van Minnen (Leiden, 1991), pp. 40-77 (no. 13). Later on, in a Coptic list, the number of martyrdoms increases along with that of panegyrics for non-martyr saints, paralleling the actual increase of surviving manuscripts. For references see Clarysse, ‘The Coptic Martyr Cult’ (see above, n. 4), pp. 394-5. 21 Starting with his seminal 1971-article ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,’ repr. in Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London, 1982), pp. 103-52.


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it comes to the history of spirituality, all hagiography is created equal. This means that we will not sit down to fill the gaps left by the Bollandists, but we will use their work and that of others to create our own histories. But why bother with Egyptian hagiography? It is not more or less fictitious than other hagiographies. There are two factors that come into play here, the eternal fascination of “things Egyptian” and the actual and factual influence of Egyptian saints on posterity. If we discount biblical saints, there are two kinds of saints attested in Egypt itself: first the martyrs, and then the non-martyrs, who are either monks or bishops or both. Egypt has produced a large body of hagiographical material on martyrs with what many regard as a distinct voice, sometimes referred to by the somewhat misleading name “koptischer Konsens.”22 Its stock features are listed as follows by Theofried Baumeister: “Verhör, Marter, Gebet, göttliches Eingreifen durch Schutz und Wiederherstellung des Leibes, Konstatierung des Erfolges im Refrain, kurz, Gottes erlösende Macht in der Bewahrung und Wiederherstellung des Märtyrers, des Erwählten Gottes.”23 This can be preceded by a visit by Jesus and “Selbstanzeige” on the part of the martyr, is always followed by condemnation to death and execution, and often by recuperation of the corpse and a prophecy about the shrine dedicated to the martyr later on, which explains how it will be established. The “koptischer Konsens” is not pervasive and ultimately originates in the Greek tradition.24 For the rest of the world, Egyptian hagiography is admittedly far more important when it comes to non-martyrs.25 Monasticism originates in Egypt and even if it did not, early Egyptian monasticism made the largest impact on posterity.26 The Nachleben of Egyptian 22 Delehaye. ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte’ (see above, n. 14), 130, spoke more correctly of an air de famille in the case of most Egyptian martyrdoms. 23 Theofried Baumeister, Martyr invictus. Der Märtyrer als Sinnbild der Erlösung in der Legende und im Kult der frühen koptischen Kirche (Munster, 1972), pp. 147-8. On this one can consult the first part of the entry on ‘Heiligenverehrung,’ by the same author, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, eds. T. Klauser et al. (Stuttgart, 1950-) 14: cols. 96-150. Still useful is the Dutch article by Jan Zandee, ‘Het patroon der martyria,’ Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 14 (1959), 1-28. 24 Cf. the Greek Martyrdom of Georgius, the model for the Egyptian martyr Paphnutius, for whom a very early manuscript in Greek survives from Egypt (PSI I 27). 25 A recent survey of the evidence for the fourth century is William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford, 2004). 26 Paul Peeters, Le tréfonds oriental de l’hagiographie byzantine (Brussels, 1950), p. 48, summed up the importance of early Egyptian monasticism as follows: “cette création égyptienne compte au premier rang des forces qui ont fait l’Europe.”

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monasticism is endless and the subject of most of the other papers in this volume. I will here be concerned with the Nachleben of Egyptian hagiography in Egypt itself. Most saints are martyrs and date from the early fourth century. Most other saints date from the second half of the fourth century. They were occasionally exported to the rest of the Mediterranean. Together these Egyptian saints account for the bulk of the extant literature. Early fifth-century monks and sixthcentury bishops from the time of the Monophysite revival in Egypt, themselves often ascetics of some sort, also generated interest in their person which was then satisfied by additional hagiographical literature, which circulated in Egypt and found its way to Nubia and Ethiopia, but no longer to the rest of the Mediterranean. Egypt has also produced a vast body of material on non-Egyptian saints. Foreign saints were imported into Egypt early on, and it is not so easy to establish a cut-off date for this, perhaps 451 or rather 641. As far as the export of Egyptian saints is concerned, the same dates may apply, the earlier one perhaps more likely for the Latin West, the latter for the East, Greek and otherwise. The Lives of John the Almoner, the melkite patriarch of Alexandria, were exported to the Greek world in the seventh century, but he was not an Egyptian himself, and his allure was more international because of the special circumstances of the Sassanid invasion of the Roman East. John the Almoner is, however, interesting for another reason, because the historical value of his Lives has come under scrutiny recently. Vincent Déroche thinks highly of them, whereas Ewa Wipszycka is far more critical.27 The difference can be explained in that Déroche appreciates the stories as plausible in themselves and that Wipszycka finds them inappropriate to the context to which they refer, early seventh-century Alexandria. Déroche has been persuaded by the fact that the stories add up to a coherent picture, but Wipszycka is no doubt right to point out that the coherence derives from the author rather than from historical realities in Alexandria. John was popular in his time, yet his awkward theological and ecclesiastical position as a melkite in a Monophysite context is glossed over in the Lives. Ecclesiastical politics may be less urgent than exis-

27 Vincent Déroche, Études sur Leontios de Neapolis (Uppsala, 1995), pp. 136-53; Ewa Wipszycka, ‘L’économie du patriarchat alexandrin à travers les vies de saint Jean l’Aumônier,’ in Alexandrie médiévale 2, ed. Christian Décobert (Cairo, 2002), pp. 61-82.


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tential policies, such as helping the needy, but that was not what an Alexandrian patriarch was supposed to be occupied with, even during a time of war. Let us look at some examples of a more limited transmission of stories about Egyptian saints who were not martyrs, first and foremost Macarius the Great’s two Greek disciples Maximus and Domitius. After they had died and had been buried, Macarius built a monastery nowadays known as al-Baramus (“of the Romans,” that is, Greeks). The account of their lives deals with their origins, their lives as ascetics, their miracles and their death.28 Although they were Greek, Maximus and Domitius never made it to the rest of the Mediterranean. However, they are attested in Egyptian Syriac — written not for the Syrians in Syria, but for the Syrian neighbors in Scetis, in the monastery of the Syrians — and in Egyptian Arabic. Another example is Nabraha. This obscure saint — unknown outside the Fayyum — was a confessor who did not die but was saved by the bell, as it were, when the Emperor Constantine took over.29 The hagiographer could not well let Nabraha die through all the stock-in-trade torments typical of the “koptischer Konsens” — because Nabraha did not so die. At least this much can be isolated as a historical fact in this Coptic “martyrdom.” The most pressing problem we are up against is the total absence of any control whatsoever over Egyptian hagiography for all practical purposes. We have endless amounts of Coptic texts at our disposal, often published in out-of-the-way places, but we have no idea when this body of material was created or under what circumstances or by whom. Paul Peeters once maliciously suggested that the whole study of Coptic hagiography was “une discipline frappée d’infantilisme,” not because of the Copts, but because of its modern practitioners (including myself ), who painstakingly edit texts without ever taking the next step of making sense of it all for others or even just for themselves.30 Using this literature for anything but the strictest concern for what actually happened in the long fourth century —

28 See the text published by Henri Munier, ‘Une relation copte sa‘îdique de la vie des saints Maxime et Domèce,’ Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 13 (1917), 93-140. 29 See the text published by Henri Munier, ‘Un nouveau martyr copte. Saint Nabraha,’ Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 15 (1918), 227-59. 30 Peeters, Le tréfonds oriental (see above, n. 26), p. 28.

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from the martyrs of the Great Persecution to the monks — is therefore doomed to failure from the start. We need a history of Coptic literature before we can make any sense of Egyptian hagiography.31 Current research on its development is not impressive, which makes generalizations, for example on patterns of deformation of records over time, rather adventurous. Texts were reused in different contexts, and so they did not all undergo the same changes. For martyrdoms we have the assistance from one of Delehaye’s publications,32 and for non-martyrs we have good work on the Greek side, on Athanasius’s Life of Antony,33 which projects the situation in Athanasius’s own time when monks abounded to the period of the Great Persecution,34 and on Pachomius and his immediate successors.35 Less well served are the Historia monachorum in Aegypto and Palladius’s Historia Lausiaca.36 The hardest nut to crack is the Apophthegmata patrum, which René Aigrain once called a kind of magma — it has not yet erupted.37 The relationship between the Apophthegmata patrum and earlier, Greek and even Egyptian, wisdom literature has received only cursory treatment. We have to reckon with subtle distinctions here: Egyptian wisdom is used in the Apophthegmata patrum as a humility topos. The Egyptian desert fathers are put to shame by the insight of ancient pagan wisdom into human nature. The interaction, or confrontation, between the Apophthegmata patrum and earlier wisdom literature is not traditional and unconscious, but direct and deliberate. This makes it less common and more individual, so we cannot generalize from it. Nevertheless, it is still an important source and raises all kinds of

31

Jürgen Horn, Untersuchungen zu Frömmigkeit und Literatur des christlichen Ägypten (Göttingen, 1988) made a start with this for the first part of the Coptic Life of Victor, son of Romanus, a foreigner who was martyred in Middle Egypt. Jitse H.F. Dijkstra has now done something similar for the Coptic Life of Aaron in his dissertation, Religious Encounters on the Southern Egyptian Frontier in Late Antiquity (AD 298-642) (Ph.D.thesis, University of Groningen, 2005), pp. 97-123. 32 Delehaye, ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte’ (see above n. 14). 33 First and foremost Hermann Dörries, Wort und Stunde, 3 vols. (Göttingen, 19661970), 1: 145-224. 34 On this point, “repristination,” see Ewa Wipszycka, Études sur le christianisme dans l’Égypte de l’antiquité tardive (Rome, 1996), pp. 427-32 (‘Saint Antoine et les carrières d’Alexandrie. Remarques sur le ch. 46 de la Vita Antonii d’Athanase,’ 19911). 35 Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, 1999). 36 See Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 2000). 37 René Aigrain, L’hagiographie (Paris, 1953), p. 174.


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interesting questions about what kind of education the desert fathers, or their literary agents, had received.38 All other sources for Egyptian hagiography are even less well represented in modern scholarship, and this is especially so for hagiography written in Coptic. Tito Orlandi’s brief survey in the Coptic Encyclopedia is the basis for others.39 The standard account runs as follows. In the fourth century there were Greek models, acta and some more literary martyrdoms such as the (Beatty-Latin) Acts or the (Bodmer) Apology of Phileas as well as texts by or about the founders of the various monastic traditions (letters, rules, sayings, lives). At the very end of the fourth century new kinds of literature were developed, the fantastic martyrdoms (for example, the Martyrdom of Georgius in Greek) and the ditto travelogues (first and foremost, the Historia monachorum in Aegypto). Starting in the fifth century, Greek hagiographical material was translated into Coptic. This is also when the infamous “chasse aux reliques,” for example those of Stephen the Protomartyr, started.40 In this and the next century, the texts were expanded to include in the case of martyrdoms ever more “koptischer Konsens”41 and in the case of early Egyptian ascetics more rules, more sayings (with ever more tenuous contextual links to the original context of the founder of a particular monastic tradition) and more miracles, including those performed by the monks from the afterlife. At this time also the fatal link was made between Egyptian martyrdoms and Antioch, whence Diocletian was supposed to have ordered the prosecution of individual Christians. By the beginning of the

38

See e.g. C. Rapp, ‘Christians and Their Manuscripts in the Greek East during the Fourth Century,’ in Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree provinciali di Bisanzio, eds. G. Cavallo, G. de Gregorio, M. Maniaci (Spoleto 1991), pp. 127-48. 39 Tito Orlandi, ‘Hagiography,’ in The Coptic Encyclopedia, 8 vols., ed. Aziz S. Atiya (New York, 1991), 4: 1191-97; Theofried Baumeister, ‘Die Historia monachorum in Aegypto und die Entwicklung der koptischen Hagiographie,’ in Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millennium: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, 2 vols., eds. Mat Immerzeel and Jacques van der Vliet [Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 133] (Louvain and Paris, 2004), 1: 269-80. 40 See L.-Th. Lefort, ‘La chasse aux reliques des martyrs en Égypte au IVe siècle,’ La Nouvelle Clio 6 (1954), 225-30. 41 Or rather, more and more martyr accounts, including the acta, got overlaid with the more literary model provided by Greek martyr acts, turning it into epic passions for the most part. In this period, e.g., the Martyrdom of Psote is expanded — fortunately we still have a witness to a shorter, more original and presumably more authentic version as well. See Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints (see above, n. 2), pp. 217-9.

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sixth century the cult of the saints is also fully developed. Finally, between the sixth and the eighth centuries this material becomes so much contaminated that one may well despair at ever dissecting it properly or by distinguishing strands or trajectories in the various traditions. And this is a period for which we still do not have much in the way of contemporary manuscripts. The martyrdom cycles linked to Antioch become more elaborate and more confused over time, but this probably did not take off in earnest before the middle of the eighth century.42 Between the ninth and eleventh centuries date our most important collections of extant texts, those from the library found at Hamouli in the Fayyum, from Shenoute’s library in his Panopolite monastery, and from various other places in Upper Egypt, such as the collection in the Egyptian Museum in Turin and the collection in the British Museum in London.43 This is also the time when stories about saints were beginning to be gathered first month by month in so-called Menologia, and then from the fifteenth century onwards in Synaxaria, which contain excerpts of stories about saints arranged in calendar form. When this happens, the selection, the ordering, and even the editing of the excerpts become standardized up to a point. The local flavor of a smaller collection of texts to be read in a particular church or community was systematically lost when the national, or at least regional, collections, which contained more saints than were available locally replaced the more haphazard collection of texts about saints which had accumulated locally. A tantalizing early calendar from the sixth century shows us how much more idiosyncratic and local the selection of celebrated saints was in Oxyrhynchus at that early time.44 Even in the Synaxaria martyrs unknown outside Egypt dominate. The very end of the fourth century is thus definitely the most productive period in original hagiography. That is also when the literary transformation of earlier documents started to develop and the more fantastic tales were concocted that found their way in the trav-

42 The key witness is one Julius of Aqfahs, on whom see R.-G. Coquin, review of Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Recherches sur Jules d’Aqfahs, 3 vols. (Ph.D.-thesis, Montpellier, 1993), Bulletin de la Société d’Archéologie Copte 37 (1998), 149-55. 43 Published by E.A. Wallis Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London, 1914). 44 See the definitive study of P.Oxy. XI 1357 in Arietta Papconstantinou, ‘La liturgie stationnale à Oxyrhynchos dans la première moitié du 6e siècle,’ Revue des Études Byzantines 54 (1996), 135-59.


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elogues from that period. I am thinking of the martyrdom of Apollonius and Philemon from Antinoopolis in the Historia monachorum in Aegypto.45 This text shows that mummies of martyrs had just begun to be displayed. The display of martyr mummies was something secondgeneration Melitians (“the Church of the Martyrs”) had started doing.46 Now everybody was doing it. Baumeister thinks47 monastic circles were responsible for this kind of literature, but there is nothing monastic about this particular set of martyrs, to say the least. About a century later, a successor of Shenoute is quoting portions of the Martyrdom of Psote and Callinicus in Coptic.48 Shenoute himself had already said in the earlier fifth century that it was alright at a martyrion to orare, legere, psallere, sanctificare se et sumere eucharistiam,49 but not to concinere, edere, bibere, ludere, fornicari, homicidia committere per ebrietatem, luxuriam et rixam in omni vecordia.50 The latter are rejected as pagan practices — clearly a rhetorical device. I think what is most important to understand here is that the situation for Egypt is not that much different from that elsewhere, only for Egypt the picture is more muddled. That will not stop us from asking questions and offering tentative answers about Egyptian hagiography between the fifth and the eighth centuries, and especially in the fourth century. In what follows I will address more strictly and traditional historical questions centered on the long fourth century and its Nachleben in Egypt itself when hagiography became transformed into the texts we find in the manuscripts we have.

45 Historia monachorum 19, ed. A.-J. Festugière [Subsidia Hagiographica 34] (Brussels, 1961), pp. 115-8. 46 Athanasius, Festal Letters 41-2, ed. L.-Th. Lefort [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 150] (Louvain, 1955), pp. 62-7, dating to 369-370. For the Melitians see most recently Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire [Transformations of the Classical Heritage 39] (Berkeley, 2005), pp. 105 and 277-8. 47 Baumeister, ‘Die Historia monachorum in Aegypto’ (see above, n. 39). 48 Cf. Jürgen Horn, Studien zu den Märtyrern des nördlichen Oberägypten, 2 vols. (Göttingen, 1986-1992), 1: 27-36, who thought this text was by Shenoute himself, with the remarks by T. Baumeister, ‘Die koptischen Märtyrerlegenden,’ in Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten, ed. Walter Ameling (Stuttgart, 2003), pp. 121-35, there 125. 49 Presumably in a church rather than in a structure near the actual tomb as per Canones Basilli 31, ed. in Wilhelm Riedel, Die Kirchenrechtsquellen des Patriarchats Alexandrien (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 248-9, but Shenoute may be more generous than that. 50 I am paraphrasing Delehaye, ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte’ (see above, n. 14), 37, who himself quotes from the editio princeps.

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The earliest hagiographical manuscripts indeed date from the fourth century. They tend to be in Greek, but the one from the later fourth century I published is in Coptic.51 Hagiographical manuscripts are on record for all other centuries, but they remain extremely rare until after the middle of the eighth century, when substantial finds give us snapshots of the kinds of saints that were commemorated during the liturgical year in some places in Egypt.52 It is not the same everywhere. Even within the Coptic calendar, the Arabic Synaxarium, there are important differences. The Upper Egyptian recension, which is poorly known, actually contains much additional material of paramount interest to historians. This is the area where we happen to have early documentary evidence for cults as well. Bones and Bits of Memory: Imagining a Christianizing Past If we want to limit ourselves to the historically reliable in Egyptian hagiography, there is not much to report — but it is not altogether as hopeless as some would make it out to be either.53 A good example is the spine of Apa Bane. According to the Egyptian literary tradition, this ascetic from Middle Egypt, unknown outside Egypt, could not stand, sit or lie down without great pain in the last eighteen years of his life. Recent excavations underneath the church of his monastery have produced a skeleton with a troubled spine. Pathologists at the University of Vienna have confirmed that someone with such a spine would have had a hard time for most of his adult live, which is a rare but striking confirmation of the local hagiographical tradition.54 But there is more: bodily pain, suffering and the death of saints is at the very heart of hagiography, not just in the case of martyrs, and physical remains such as the spine of Apa Bane are the tangible result. Everything else — the Nachleben of the saint, the creation of a Christian landscape, “relitainment” — is secondary, even if often the best we can do with Egyptian hagiography. With Bane’s spine in hand we can feel the pain! 51 See Van Minnen, ‘The Earliest Account of a Martyrdom in Coptic’ (see above, n. 2). 52 Clarysse, ‘The Coptic Martyr Cult’ (see above, n. 4), p. 393. 53 E.g. Roger Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), pp. 7-8. 54 See Helmut Buschhausen et al., ‘Die Ausgrabungen von Dair Abu Fana in Ägypten in den Jahren 1991, 1992 und 1993,’ Ägypten und Levante 6 (1996), 13-73, there 38-48.


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The evidence rarely takes us straight back to what actually happened, as it does in the case of Apa Bane’s bones. More often, it tells us something about how the past was represented at a later date, when it was deemed relevant in a different context, as in the case of the bones of Cyrus and John. We know when these were transferred to Menouthis, but this does not yield reliable or even relevant data for the earlier period in which they were martyred in Alexandria. Facts in stories created at a later date may not always go back to a reliable core, as they do in the case of Apa Bane, or at least we are rarely in a position to tell. This is especially problematic when these later stories seem to contain evidence for Christianization and the demise of paganism in the fourth and fifth centuries. How much of this information reflects a historical process that actually happened? It is widely believed that such stories faithfully recall the often rather violent struggle between dying paganism and active Christianizers, that is, saints, particularly non-martyrs.55 Martyrs also converted crowds of bystanders according to some martyrdoms, but most historians tend to reject such details as later additions. In spite of this, these scholars accept similar stories about non-martyrs, which are usually anchored later in time. Such details should be regarded with the same kind of suspicion as when they occur in martyrdoms. Take the Life of Moses of Abydos, a kind of Christian Elijah conquering paganism in Upper Egypt at the end of the fifth or the first half of the sixth century. While at it, he opposes two kinds of traditional Egyptian priests, waab and hont priests. This has been claimed as evidence for the persistence of separate Egyptian priestly castes into Late Antiquity as late as the fifth or sixth century — or at least as a clear instance of the persistence of traditions about pagan priests and of local memory, well anchored in space and time.56 On the contrary, it may be suggested that the author of the Life of Moses derived the two kinds of Egyptian priests, not from local memory, but from the Old Testament, more particularly from the last chapters of Genesis and the first chapters of Exodus in the Coptic translation of the Bible (made at a time when there were still real Egyptian

55

E.g. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 265-84. See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, pp. 171 and 201, and most recently Martina Ullmann, ‘Zum Ende des altägyptischen Kultes am Beispiel der Tempel von Abydos,’ Biblische Notizen 102 (2000), 133-40, there 139-40. 56

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priests).57 In my view, this heavily Egyptian part of the Old Testament was the main, if not the exclusive, source for Christians in Late Antiquity of information about ancient Egypt, even for those in Egypt itself. Not only do such details as in the Life of Moses seem to me unhistorical in a strict sense, but also useless in attempts to trace cultural memory ( Jan Assmann’s “kulturelles Gedächtnis”) in Upper Egypt in the fifth, sixth, or any other century. The author was making the story up with the help of canonical texts at his disposal.58 I am not impressed by the long list of survivals (practices from pagan times that in some form experienced an afterlife in Christian times) from traditional Egyptian religion that an older scholarly tradition has found in the evidence from Egypt. When we detect a faint link between a detail in an Egyptian hagiographical text and traditional Egyptian practice, it is quite possible, but rarely entertained, that the author is using the same kind of imagination in creating this link as we do in detecting it. Such a link is the deliberate product of bookishness. A detail found in earlier literature available to the author may well have been reused by him in a creative manner and in a new context. We are not always in a position to check this, but too often we jump to the conclusion that we have an authentic detail preserved in local memory, when it is in fact a handme-down from earlier texts, as in the case of the waab and hont priests in the Life of Moses of Abydos. This bookishness will even deform contemporary reality to make it conform to the Bible, let alone history, traditions or interpretations handed down through more tenuous channels than, say, a canonical text. “Kulturelles Gedächtnis” is not a very helpful category either. It is not only not “kulturell” (because “cultural” can mean almost anything and is therefore meaningless), it is also not “Gedächtnis” — memory is something in a person’s head and will disappear unless that person uses (“communicates”) it before he dies. Communication is the crucial point here, because it alone preserves a religious tradition, and language is the most important form of communication — visual and other kinds of communication are no more than helpful

57

Gen. 41,45; Ex. 2,16. Cf. the response to this suggestion by Frankfurter, ‘Hagiography and the Reconstruction of Local Religion in Late Antique Egypt,’ in this volume, see above, p. 32, n. 69. 58


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props.59 One learns to communicate religiously by copying the words from others who are using them and by using them oneself, much the same way one learns a language. Languages change slowly, and sometimes they die. It does not matter much whether communication is oral or written — written texts are no less prone to change and loss over time. We no longer memorize our religion, and therefore our religion runs the risk of disappearing, like a dead language. Dead languages are still around on the scholar’s desk, much the same way as ancient paganisms are (and were in Late Antiquity). In the case of Moses of Abydos the religious language that helps create his Life is the Bible, which Egyptian Christians of Late Antiquity knew by heart. We need to put Egyptian hagiography firmly back into the hands of the readers who created it. The texts were written by readers of mountains of pre-existing literature. They were applying rules of interpretation, both to the texts they received from the past and imaginatively reused to create their own works, but also to features in the landscape. Although literal features are important here as well, much the same way as gestures are, topography is far more important: just as in the case of language generally in its various manifestations, such as cursing, we also need to be more sensitive when it comes to the meaning, or what was taken for the meaning, of toponyms. The encomium of Macarius of Tkow provides us with another example of the creative use of language in religious communication.60 Macarius is told about a village where there is a temple of Kothos, the brother of Apollo. Such names drawn from Greek mythology already give the contrived character of the story away, for Kothos is a name from Greek mythology.61 Moreover, in the encomium Kothos is commander in chief of the air, which we may recognize as a reference to Satan based on the New Testament,62 and, significantly, his priest is called Homer. The learned author must have had a good time with this. One can imagine what happens when

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See Niklas Luhmann, Die Religion der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 2000). Ps.-Dioscorus, Panegyric on Macarius 5, ed. D.W. Johnson [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 415] (Louvain, 1980), pp. 29-40. 61 Cf. the remark on Kothos by Frankfurter, ‘Hagiography and the Reconstruction of Local Religion in Late Antique Egypt,’ this volume, above, p. 17. 62 Eph. 2,2. 60

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such a tale is taken instead as a reflection of local paganism, persisting for real or just in local memory, with “Apollo” standing for some indigenous god and “Homer” for a genuine traditional Egyptian priest, as remembered by the village population.63 The villagers are not talking to us here at all. The learned author pictures pagans and Christians as living side by side in the village. This is quite reasonable for a much earlier period, but cannot be based on memory and is therefore hardly authentic. The agency of the outsider in the story, Macarius, who serves to make an end to paganism in this Egyptian village, is not an authentic reminiscence either. When we actually know something about pagans and Christians living side by side for some time, as on the island of Philae, they never meet or confront one another.64 What is at work in stories about Christianizers, the heroes of the stories, confronting pagans is not cultural memory, bits of local knowledge about such confrontations transmitted and preserved from the past, but something quite different. These confrontations are imagined, to explain some obvious facts in the contemporary material and cultural landscape known to the author: there were no pagans anymore, yet there were enough material remains and even texts around to suggest that once the place was full of pagans.65 Such material remains are not so much carriers of traditions or reminiscences as challenges or questions which were answered with the help of texts. Christians, and Muslims later on, could hardly avoid satisfying their curiosity about what they saw by making up stories to explain it with the help of canonical and other texts. If these stories found their way into books, their transmission is visible to us, but they remain in essence explanations of material remains. Apart from material remains, which were a source of inspiration and still are, I also reckon with literary or even linguistic communication of pseudo-details over time. I may refer to the rather bookish representation of Melitian schismatics in Constantine of Lycopolis (bishop from 569 to 605).66 Another case is the striking confirmation 63

Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 131-6 and 141-2. See now Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above, n. 31). 65 See also the contribution by Jacques van der Vliet, ‘Bringing Home the Homeless: Landscape and History in Egyptian Hagiography,’ this volume, above, pp. 39-55. 66 In Constantine’s encomium of the martyr Claudius (published by Gérard Godron, Textes coptes relatifs à Saint Claude d’Antioche [Patrologia Orientalis 35.4] 64


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of details in the Coptic Life of Aaron by what Strabo tells us about the falcon cult at Philae — Strabo may have been the ultimate, not necessarily the direct, source for these details.67 Language also preserves elements of older cultures that can go unnoticed by and large — until someone is curious and imagines what the original meaning of certain expressions may have been and decides to do something about it, as Shenoute did with expressions referring to “luck,” which he deemed improper for Christians. Perhaps even the well-known story about Pachomius and the sacred Nile perches is just a smart inference from the name of a city, Latopolis. The inference may well be correct, but in the same way as our twentieth-century interpretation of Egyptian cults is correct, that is, based on wide reading and imagination, not “kulturelles Gedächtnis.” Rare literary survivals of ancient Egyptian expressions, sayings and brief stories have been spotted in early Christian literature, notably the Apophthegmata patrum and related literature.68 An intriguing example of an expression that may have traveled through thick layers of literature before entering the hagiographical texts at our disposal is contained in the Martyrdom of Apa Epima. This is quite a fantastic story, until suddenly the torturer, a fixture in more than one martyrdom, curses himself as follows: “May my right eye be the point on which the gate of hell turns.”69 Now this sounds ancient Egyptian — how did this detail get in here? It might be based on material, visible remains, as is the case of the cauldrons (Turnhout, 1970), the references to Melitians are not authentic in the sense that Constantine is an independent witness. Anyone who was a bishop of Lycopolis knew that the subject of Melitius, who had been a schismatic bishop of Lycopolis, had to come up, but that does not mean that there were still Melitians in Lycopolis when Constantine wrote his encomium. His evidence is based on references to Melitians and their practices in Athanasius (see above, n. 46, for the reference). For the rest, Constantine credits his Melitians with melkite views, which shows who the real or at least potential contemporary opposition in Constantine’s time would have been. Likewise, his references to pagan elements in a particular village in the Lycopolite nome are not meant to be taken seriously as evidence of contemporary paganism. On the other hand, the “criminal pilgrimage” described by Constantine reflects real pilgrimages and suggests that systematic theft at shrines of saints was common. 67 Strabo 17.1.49, ed. H.L. Jones (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), p. 130. Cf. Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above, n. 31), pp. 78-9 and 122. 68 See Heike Behlmer, ‘Ancient Egyptian Survivals in Coptic Literature: An Overview,’ in Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms, ed. Antonio Loprieno (Leiden, 1996), pp. 567-90. 69 See Togo Mina, Le martyre d’Apa Epima (Cairo, 1937), p. 26.

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from Panopolis.70 Literal gates in Egyptian temples sometimes turned on stones with a carved image of one of the traditional enemies of Egypt, and this could have been interpreted as a representation of the individual sinner by Egyptian Christians in Late Antiquity, who noticed such images during their visits to the old temples. A literary connection with the past is also possible. A similar expression in a somewhat different context, a “tour of hell,” indeed occurs in the story known as Setne II.71 Ancient Egyptian concepts of hell or the afterlife in general contributed little to Christian concepts, at least not directly, but starting in the Hellenistic period, others interested in the afterlife, such as the Jews resident in Egypt, may well have borrowed images from the Egyptian tradition to satisfy their natural curiosity.72 They may then have transmitted this to Egyptian Christians. Something like this has indeed been argued by Hugo Gressmann, who even included the passage from Setne II in an older study, in which he also drew on later medieval Jewish sources, believed to be based on traditions going back to Antiquity.73 The borrowing may have taken the following route: from Egyptian to Jewish into the Hellenistic or early Roman period, then from Jewish to Christian in the later Roman period. Although its predecessor had picked up some bits here and there from the Egyptian tradition, Christianity was by and large a ready-made import that

70 As explained by Serge Sauneron, Villes et légendes d’Égypte, 2nd ed. (Cairo, 1983), pp. 160-4. I pointed to a similar case involving the zodiac in ‘The Letter (and Other Papers) of Ammon: Panopolis in the Fourth Century,’ in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest, eds. Arno Egberts, Brian P. Muhs and Jacques van der Vliet (Leiden, 2002), pp. 177-99, there 189, not in a hagiographical text this time, but in a letter written by a pagan priest in the earlier fourth century. Obviously, the landscape was asking questions to all its inhabitants — or visitors. The details we find in texts are best taken as sometimes quite reasonable responses to these questions. 71 See the English translation in Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3 vols. (Berkeley, 1973-1980), 3: 138-51, there 140. 72 There are also significant differences between the Egyptian tradition in general and Christian views of death and dying (for the latter views see, generally, Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002), pp. 56-70). Egyptian hagiography focuses on the actual dying and death of the saint rather than on the tomb and the afterlife, as one expects in a traditional Egyptian setting. I owe this observation to Willy Clarysse. 73 Hugo Gressmann, Vom reichen Mann und armen Lazarus [Abhandlungen der königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1918, No. 7] (Berlin, 1918), especially pp. 31-43 on Setne II, in particular 38-9 on the door. I thank Jan Bremmer for the reference.


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replaced Egyptian religion and did not need to borrow much from the local religion directly. In the case of visions of the afterlife, it is perhaps even possible to speak of a Hellenistic-Roman koinê, although the reference to the door in the Martyrdom of Apa Epima is perhaps too specific and can better be explained as a literary tradition.74 The borrowing did not only go from Egyptian literature to Jewish and later Christian texts, but also from Greek literature on the afterlife to Egyptian literature: Setne II includes several typically Greek elements in its portrayal of the afterlife. I have focused more on language here than on anything else, because communication is mostly language. But an example from gestures may be in place here, too. In the previously mentioned encomium of Macarius of Tkow it is remarked that pagans bow down before niches in their houses.75 Such niches obviously survived in older houses and once contained images of gods — perhaps they still did in the form of, for example, painted images. These houses were now occupied by the descendants of pagans, Christian archaeologists avant la lettre, who correctly explained what would have been going on with these niches. They were now doing practically the same with icons of saints. Is this “kulturelles Gedächtnis” or a correct interpretation of something from the past that was still visible? Presumably the latter. It is quite plausibly imagined, but not recalled. The most important conclusion is that these people were not stupid. But they were wrong when they imagined that Christians had replaced pagans — Christians were the direct descendants of pagans. When it comes to the portrayal of paganism and its replacement by Christianity, or more particularly the portrayal of individual pagans who become Christians, most Egyptian hagiography does not give us a transcript of what actually happened or of what was recalled as cultural memory. But what does it tell us? I think we can put most of it down as an attempt to picture through stories how people were saved (or lost). This sounds evangelical, but it is better than

74 The expression in the Martyrdom of Apa Epima (see above), which Gressmann did not yet know, could conceivably also have survived, not as religion, but as language. Cursing is after all a particular kind of language and as such highly conservative. 75 Cf. the interpretation of this passage (Ps.-Dioscorus, Panegyric on Macarius 5.1, ed. Johnson (see above, n. 60), p. 29) by Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 131-6 and 141-2, and idem, ‘Hagiography and the Reconstruction of Local Religion in Late Antique Egypt,’ this volume, above, p. 29.

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“conversion,” which is a rather ambiguous term: individuals are saved, the Roman Empire becomes Christian, blocks of a public building are recycled for a church — hardly the same phenomena, but all three are currently rubricated under the heading “conversion.” Being saved or “becoming Christian” takes on different forms. In Egyptian hagiography there is not one exclusive way to be saved. There were multiple ways to tam grande secretum after all, except that it had now become the Christian God. There seems to be an enormous gulf between this and dogmatic Christianity, but when one looks more closely, there is not much difference between it and the New Testament, for instance in the Acts, where even a persecutor (Paul) becomes a Christian.76 In hagiography a Roman governor might be saved,77 but the opposite move, being lost, is also realistically portrayed. The way Egyptian hagiographical texts portray Diocletian as an apostate is not a retrojection of the historical case of Julian the Apostate, but rather suggestive and psychologically shrewd. None of this ever happened, but the author who first came up with it knew that such things happened and provided a convincing model of conversion-the-wrong-way. The main characters in hagiography are saved themselves, often through their death as in the case of the martyrs. That they also save others is secondary. How to be saved was a problem once people did not need to be saved anymore but were born Christians. Since almost everybody was born a Christian in Late Antiquity, there was a need to picture salvation, and hagiography fulfilled that need. In many cases, the patterns of such salvation stories were imported from abroad. They were adopted wholesale by Egyptian Christians, who did not feel the need to be on the defensive against a foreign culture. That the local Egyptian population was holding on to elements of their own culture when making the transition to the new culture is not apparent in hagiographical literature (or elsewhere, for that matter) for two reasons: that literature was not produced by them and such elements are hardly prominent — not a single convincing case has ever been put forward of a traditional religious practice held on to by a local population in the face of Christianity.

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Acts 9,1-19; 22,3-16; 26,9-18. See e.g. S.N.C. Lieu, ‘From Villain to Saint and Martyr: The Life and AfterLife of Flavius Artemius, dux Aegypti,’ Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 20 (1996), 56-76. 77


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Egyptian hagiography is first and foremost history in the sense that it imagines correctly or incorrectly (after all, we historians do both) how the transition from paganism to Christianity took place in the fourth century. By focusing on the supreme act of martyrs rather than on what led up to it (commitment to a way of life), most hagiography is not primarily programmatic as some lives of ascetics are. Some of the latter do portray and promote a certain lifestyle, but ascetics are not that prominent at all and will have mattered most to the rarefied circles of ascetics themselves. In Late Antiquity we are a long way from a Christian culture where asceticism is at the heart of the definition of what constitutes Christianity. The early saints, martyrs but even some of the more unusual ascetics, were personalities, and as such the subject of anecdotes and stories, rather than model Christians whose way of life as portrayed in their Lives would have appealed to readers or to those who were being read to. Programmatic elements are added even to martyrdoms over time. Eventually the same happened in Egypt as in other parts of the Christian world, across boundaries of politics and culture, when ascetic ideals became the ideals of Christianity tout court. There is an early core of literature specifically devoted to lifestyle issues (for example, the Pachomian corpus), and this literature may have become more prominent over time, even in Egypt. Even so, the bulk of what Egyptian Christians read or heard remained the same throughout two millennia: the Bible and, a distant second, martyr acts. The latter always retained relevance and urgency, whether outright persecution or oppression took place or people were leading a hard life. Martyr acts are also close to the New Testament, with Christ as the prototypical martyr. Not only are the bulk of Egyptian hagiographical texts not programmatic, they are also not performative. Although the place where it all happened is important, and a martyrion with an annual cult was associated with it, elements that specifically address the cult and how it was organized rarely intrude. They are not completely absent, and over time more explicit suggestions about what pilgrims might expect to find at a shrine, or what they might consider donating to it do find a place in the texts. But “Kultätiologie,” or the explanationafter-the-fact for an existing cult, is hardly their original point. That point was to link a place with history, not cult. I think it is time to get rid of the fatal link between the Christianization of the Roman Empire and saints or holy men. Saints and Christianization (making or becoming Christian) have little to do

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with each other.78 The Christianization of the Roman Empire happened too fast in the course of the fourth century for saints to have taken a leading role in it. Once the process was completed, saints were indeed credited with it but incorrectly. Christianizers are a literary construct after the fact of Christianization. Christianizers are part of a discourse about Christianization invented at the very end of the fourth century to explain the fact of Christianization. Somehow all of Egypt had become Christian earlier on, but how this had come about was already too long ago to remember by the time Christians started to ask questions about it. The transition period had apparently been brief and full of other, more pressing business, such as taxes or ecclesiastical disputes — pagan persistence, such as on Philae, in itself quite exceptional, played no role in the matter. Pagan generations simply died out, while new generations of Christians grew up. The up to 90% pagans in 300 were all dead by 400. None of the over 95% Christians in 400 had been around in 300. The spectacular growth, in absolute numbers, in the course of the fourth century must be explained along the lines of Rodney Stark, according to whom the steady growth of Christians percentage-wise is all that counted.79 The absolute numbers just started to be very large very fast in the fourth century. In a variation of André Piganiol’s famous dictum about Roman civilization,80 one might say that “le paganisme ancien n’a pas été assassiné, il est mort de sa belle mort.” Therefore, the answer to the question, “How did the Roman Empire become Christian?” provided by hagiography towards the end of the fourth century, that is, saints converting pagans community-wise and even violently, was simply wrong. There was little left to Christianize even for the young Shenoute. In the 380s he could detect only one pagan in Panopolis and that was a crypto-pagan, Gessios,81 one of the generic, classical kind, who

78 Even further goes Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints (see above, n. 2), pp. 370-1, who equates the development of the cult of saints with Christianization. There would have been no cult of saints without Christianization, nor vice versa. 79 Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, 1996). For the Egyptian context see P. van Minnen, ‘The Roots of Egyptian Christianity,’ Archiv für Papyrusforschung 40 (1994), 71-85. 80 André Piganiol, L’Empire chrétien (325-395) (Paris, 1947), p. 422: “La civilisation romaine n’est pas morte de sa belle mort. Elle a été assassinée.” 81 That Gessios was a crypto-pagan suggests that members of his class would all have been Christians, at least nominally, by the 380s. On Gessios see Stephen


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could adduce Apollonius of Tyana and Plato against claims about Christ — hardly the kind to join the ordinary, local Egyptian pagans bent on preserving traditional local practices in the face of a foreign culture (Christianity) imposed from above. Telling the story three quarters of a century later to a gasping audience, Shenoute was a living fossil, whose memory just went back longer than anyone else’s and who had actually met an educated pagan once. To picture ordinary, traditional Egyptian pagans was apparently a tall order, even for Shenoute. To sum up, I distinguish three layers in the portrayal of how paganism was replaced in early hagiography. First there was the need to picture how pagans became Christians, that is, how people were saved. Then there was the added twist about how they then saved others as well, individually (often quite plausibly), or whole communities (in my view quite unlikely).82 Finally there was “Kultätiologie.” The latter is not entirely absent, but we should not forget two things. First, what people actually heard during a memorial service for a saint were mainly portions of the Bible, the gospels to be more precise. Second, each shrine dedicated to a particular saint also had texts about other saints, because if the main point was to show how people were saved and then how they saved others, there was no need to limit oneself to one saint. It is remarkable how inclusive a business hagiography really is. Eventually each shrine had a series of hagiographical texts, and later, the Synaxaria included hundreds of martyrs and other saints. This inclusive character of hagiography must be part of the original point. Egyptian hagiography can at least in part be saved from the onslaught of historical criticism. The “Ehrenrettung” of Egyptian hagiography has not been quite exhausted. Delehaye was dismissive about this whole matter (“un défi à l’histoire comme au bon sens”), but later finds have given us enough reason for pause.83 There are

Emmel, ‘From the Other Side of the Nile: Shenute and Panopolis,’ in Perspectives on Panopolis (see above, n. 70), pp. 95-113. 82 Wipszycka, Études sur le christianisme (see above, n. 34), pp. 63-105, there 67 (‘La christianisation de l’Égypte aux IVe-VIe siècles: aspects sociaux et ethniques,’ 19881), stressing the cohesion of smaller towns in Egypt. But cf. p. 95 there, for the coexistence of pagans and Christians in villages. Even Wipszycka admits that there had been a Christian presence for a long time before the triumph of Christianity. Christians had been a familiar feature. 83 Delehaye, ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte’ (see above, n. 14), 148.

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bits of history in Egyptian hagiography, and these can be isolated with the help of the usual critical procedures or even with the help of archaeology as in the case of Apa Bane’s spine. It is not to be written off so easily. Looking for “nuggets” can still be fun. But even more history appears, when we do not look at the details, but at the whole: the point hagiography makes about how the Roman Empire had become Christian is important — even if we cannot accept it as the correct view of the historical process, it is serious history in Huizinga’s sense, and deserves to be treated as such. I therefore take “saving history” in the title of my paper also in the sense of Salvation history. Egyptian hagiography was a way to picture how people were saved. The authors may have gotten it wrong, and their reliance on canonical texts does not inspire confidence. The rather violent ways in which saints as latter-day Elijahs brought pagans into the fold according to some hagiographical texts may not be at all what actually happened in the fourth century. The exaggerated role of monks in some hagiographical texts is a clear sign that the whole story is made up after the fact by their authors: monks. Shenoute is merely boasting about himself, and his Life is a useless panegyric. Monks do not belong in martyrdoms, and the influence of early monks on the wider community is unlikely at best — the early monks became influential only after they died, and later monks exercised influence mainly by becoming bishops. Egyptian Hagiography in Space and Time: Explaining the Success of Christian Discourse A brief inventory of relevant historical (“what-really-happened”) questions for any hagiographical text may be helpful at this point: – “who happened” (the individual saint, who tends to be taken for granted by us; early hagiography is an attempt to capture the personality of a saint; later developments include pedagogy, when saints become models of a certain lifestyle, and eventually “Kultätiologie”) – what happened (people were saved, and hagiography pictures how; a record of individual salvation is bound to be more convincing than a picture of how the Roman Empire was saved) – how did it happen (the point being that there are multiple ways to be saved)


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– where did it happen (the places where the important events happened: in the case of martyrs, the place of the trial; that of the execution, if different; the place of the burial, if any — ordinary Christians were burned; the shrine matching one of the preceding; in the case of ascetics, their cell, the place of their burial, the shrine matching either) – when did it happen (micro-time, the date on the calendar, and macro-time, the more distant past, whose explanation may well be incorrect) Because hagiography is a way to communicate religiously, two further, more literary (“what-does-it-say”) questions may be added: – who says so (who is doing the talking? We have to know more about the milieu that produced, read and reused hagiographical texts; not whole communities such as the cities, let alone the villages; maybe leading ecclesiastical figures such as Constantine of Lycopolis, or monastic milieus writing textbooks for an audience of neophytes; some of it is coming wholesale from abroad) – how does it say so (what were the literary models used by the often bookish authors to produce their texts? First and foremost the Bible, but what else? We also need to know how they read, even more than how they pictured or interpreted history; how did people in Late Antiquity learn to express themselves?) To expand on the two questions matching the traditional coordinates of hagiographical research, where and when, Egyptian hagiography can be located in space and time to some extent. But for that we need a better grasp of Coptic literary history and detailed maps. In hagiographical literature there are two kinds of time. First what I have called macro-time, providing a sense of Christian history or a kind of historical explanation of what was available in the landscape (broadly conceived). Then there is micro-time, providing a date on the calendar. Micro-time is more reliable than the tentative explanation given in hagiographical literature for a past that was no longer remembered, but could only be approached through texts such as the Bible. Yet, not all explanations about the past were wrong. Space is even more important. In the Life of Aaron the common denominator in the manifold stories is ascetics living, dying and being

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buried at particular spots, significantly, not on Philae.84 Rather than taking the stories about the bishops as primarily legitimizing and explaining the creation of the see of Philae from a later, sixth-century perspective, I see them as part of an ascetic tradition associated with the overland route from Philae to Syene on the right bank of the Nile — the First Cataract is not navigable, so this was quite a busy route, as is clear from the Life — where three bishops were buried along with Aaron, and with another island in the First Cataract itself, “this” island in the Life, where the fourth bishop was buried and the stories were related to the author. In my opinion, we are dealing here with the representation of an existing landscape dotted with ascetic hotspots.85 Let us finally take something that was actually found somewhere. In Antinoopolis there was an oracle associated with the cult of the local doctor-martyr Collouthos. Representations of healed body parts were donated to his shrine. This was something entirely new to Egypt — there are no traditional Egyptian forerunners for this. It was imported from the Greek world by Egyptian Christians. The practice, well-known from the ancient Greek world (for instance in the cult of Asclepius), did not arrive in Egypt earlier, probably because pagan Antinoopolis for all its professed Greekness was much more provincial than Christian Antinoopolis. Antinoopolis was a provincial capital in Late Antiquity, and there was much more circulation between provinces in Late Antiquity than before.86 But Christianity also comes into play here. It is a universal religion, and that still means something. It had a much greater chance of being the same everywhere and also of communicating easily from one end of the Roman Empire to the other and beyond. The representations of

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See also Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above, n. 31), pp. 106-12. Cf. Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above, n. 31), pp. 113-23 and 174-6, and Van der Vliet, ‘Bringing Home the Homeless,’ this volume, above, pp. 49-50. Contrary to the suggestion made there by Van der Vliet, I think the source for these stories cannot be the diptychs of bishops of Philae, because such diptychs were kept everywhere and would have sparked similar stories elsewhere — and Aaron was not a bishop. The synchronism between Aaron and one of the bishops cannot have been derived from the diptychs. Moreover, if the Life dates to the sixth century, it is odd that the list of bishops is not taken further than about 385. In fact, I find a date shortly after 425, which is the approximate time in which the story is set (see Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above, n. 31), p. 110), a better date for the original production of the text. 86 See e.g. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (see above, n. 53), pp. 4 and 321-2. 85


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healed body parts were copied by Egyptian Christians, not from pagans with a living healing cult, but from other Christians. So what do we have here: a case of someone else’s “kulturelles Gedächtnis,” someone else’s paganism and habit memory recalled thousands of miles away? One could argue that in the Greek world the traditional pagan healing cult transmitted one of its modes of expression (the representations of body parts) to the later Christian healing cults through a kind of cultural memory. Even so, it has no bearing on the practice of Egyptian Christians. Rather than trying to detect the Devil (paganism or heresy) or even God (authentic traditions about the persecution) in the details, I would like to draw attention to the “elephant” in Late Antiquity. A remarkable feature of this period, indeed a first in the history of empires or even the world, is that the various parts of the Roman Empire, even areas outside its borders, start to produce the same kind of religion and spirituality as elsewhere. This is even more remarkable than the standardization in the administration of the various provinces of the empire, which, starting with Diocletian and Constantine, also become uniform. The really extraordinary fact we have to explain as historians is that for the first time ever a place such as Panopolis had the same kind of religion as, say, Bordeaux. And this is not only something that is underway around 300 and reaches its completion around 400 — this remains so for at least another millennium after that. To describe this as a uniformity imposed from above and then to write it off as uninteresting to historians of religion on that basis is in my view wholly mistaken.87 A uniformity from above was only occasionally attempted, and never entirely successful. This does not explain why melkites and Monophysites, westerners and easterners across major political, linguistic and cultural boundaries experience a virtually identical Christianity over incredibly long periods of time.88

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Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), p. 7. The same applies to Islam. Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: The Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), rightly included Islam in his essay on the common worlds created in or just after Late Antiquity that transcended political boundaries for the first time in history. It is a pity that Sarah I. Johnston, ed., Religions of the Ancient World (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), did not see fit to include Islam. 88

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Late Antiquity was a bristling world where Christians communicated their ideas and practices over long distances. Christianity already was the same everywhere, because it had the same origin (“missionary” churches, making ever more people like themselves), but it remained pretty much the same through all the changes thanks to ongoing communication and kept on changing the same way as well. Christianity reproduced its idiom everywhere in the same way. Only much later, Christian traditions that no longer communicated with one another started to diverge but we should not overestimate even this. What always strikes me is that even after the Arab conquest there is so much copying going on between now divided Christianities. Apparently neither doctrinal nor political divisions can prevent this mutual exchange of ideas and practices in areas where Christianity was generous, in hagiography or liturgy or apocrypha. Most religious communication took place locally, but Christians were not always unsympathetic to communication over long distances. Just think of the interaction between Nubian and other African Christianities and the Christianities of the Mediterranean proper.89 Why was the Christian mold almost exactly the same everywhere? As I have said before, Christianity was hardly imposed from above, and what was imposed was divisive and did not last. My explanation would run as follows. Christian communication is bounded by a common set of transmitted and widely accessible texts, available in large quantities early on and in a continuous line. They were the scripts for the living memory created by reading aloud, chanting, and other highly effective forms of religious communication. Christianity came to Egypt largely as a ready-made import from abroad. Since religious communication is mostly language, all it needed was a translation. We therefore need to know more about translations, how they were made, by whom and for what purpose. We especially need to consider what the rules of translation were and how these were learned and transmitted. One could also try a generalization of Max Weber’s thesis to explain why Christianity was almost exactly the same everywhere: the Protestant ethic created modern society — maybe Christianity in general creates the kind of society that fits it, not vice versa. This could also be an explanation for the ultimate triumph of Christianity

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See e.g. Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (see above, n. 31), pp. 129-50.


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in Late Antiquity: it was a more efficient and effective way of religious communication. It took over the Roman Empire — because it talked about it. Hagiography was one of the ways of talking about empire in which the relation between religion and society was expressed, changed and transmitted to subsequent generations. It was certainly not the only way to talk about it, nor was it the most important one (that was the Bible), but it was remarkably successful. Its positive effects (positive in the sense of influencing the process for the better, by not allowing Christians to conceive of the government exclusively in positive terms) lasted for well over a millennium before it was discarded in the wake of, and in some cases long after, the Enlightenment. In a religion such as Christianity, so-called little and great traditions coexist in a symbiotic relationship with the great tradition taking the lead. Official religion, Church institutions, and dogmas, cannot be played out against local traditions.90 Take the saint as a champion of orthodoxy on the national or even international plane: in time this literally precedes the saint as local healer. The actual literary evidence we have from the fourth century, such as Athanasius’s works, for the saint as champion of orthodoxy must precede all other considerations. In that century Christians needed guidance in theological matters even more than healing and similar actions. Charismatic leaders who perform miracles have been privileged by a previous generation of scholars. Theologically savvy saints are probably far more historical (for example Phileas, or Antony according to the letters).91 Holy men were far less important than they have been made out to be. We need to resist making the past more charismatic than it was. There are also many recent studies about local traditions, which often turn out to be less specific than one could wish. “Local” or “regional” often means Egypt as a whole, and the time frame can be anywhere between the fourth and eighteenth centuries, depending on the earliest available evidence.92 Clearly this is not precise enough — and we are still a long way from “local.” We are also nowhere near where we should be when it comes to actual communities. Roman

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As Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 5-6 does. On Antony see Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony (Lund, 1990), later reissued with an English translation of the letters (Minneapolis, 1995). 92 As in Frankfurter’s Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5). 91

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Egypt was not a colonial society with local communities clinging on, more or less successfully, to their past as a defensive against foreign imports — or giving up their resistance overnight by physically destroying their past. The premier community that is supposed to have done this in Late Antiquity is Alexandria,93 where the Serapeum was destroyed towards the end of the fourth century. This cannot be correct. Of all places, Alexandria was a multicultural, pluralistic society, not one community. As I have suggested, the conversion of whole communities we find depicted in hagiography is an interpretation from the time when everyone was a Christian and they could not picture the change from paganism to Christianity to have taken place in any other way than as communities. But it does not work that way except in isolation. Egypt was too densely populated for this. There was an intricate network of communities everywhere, linking all to Alexandria directly or indirectly.94 Christianity had been around for three centuries — in fact everywhere in Egypt. It had to some extent competed with other religions on the religious “market place.” Alexandria was a 700-year old multicultural society, bristling with religious strife on and off, but this strife was never aimed at converting or eliminating other religions or whole communities. The Serapeum was moreover not destroyed by recent converts, as one would have expected in the case of a local community giving up its resistance overnight, but by born Christians. And many pagan structures remained in Alexandria, which makes no sense if the point was to break with the past. The message to the government in the first instance seems to have been: “See what we can get away with!” The government had to swallow the violence engineered by the Archbishop Theophilus, a rarefied dogmatic theologian, not a local religious expert with a baggage of “kulturelles Gedächtnis.”95 The world of Late Antiquity, even in Egypt and not just in the larger cities such as Alexandria, was too multicultural: different cultures, different paganisms and Christianities, had been interacting for 93

See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (see above, n. 5), pp. 281-2. See Richard Alston, ‘Trade and the City in Roman Egypt,’ in Trade, Traders and the Ancient City, eds. Helen Parkins and Christopher Smith (London, 1998), pp. 168-202. 95 On the events surrounding the destruction of the Serapeum, see J. Hahn, Gewalt und religiöser Konflikt. Studien zu den Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Christen, Heiden und Juden im Osten des Römischen Reiches (Berlin, 2004), pp. 78-120. 94


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so long that a kind of mixed culture had come about, somewhat like the mixed culture in much of the Middle-East today, where Muslims and Christians have been living side by side for about 1,350 years now, only intermittently feeling the need to distance themselves from one another. Conclusion Traditions die if not repeated, communicated or re-enacted, and that is how paganism died in Late Antiquity, because the old words and gestures, were not repeated. There is a cautionary tale here, even for atheists: atheism will die if you do not practice it. Our own scholarly traditions are not immune to a slow but certain death either. We need to salvage good scholarly procedures as they have been applied to hagiography in general and repeat them by applying them to the relatively understudied Egyptian hagiographical tradition. Establishing the original or at least oldest attainable form of a text servata primigenia scriptorum phrasi is still a bona fide objective, but we are now also interested in the study of hagiography as living texts — in any language. This adds considerably to the task, and we should perhaps worry about languages even more than about scholarly procedures — and I do not mean dead languages only but also those that are dying as scholarly languages, such as French and German. In the end, why should we bother with hagiography? Because it is inclusive Christianity it is at least remarkably generous. Irrespective of their background, human beings are portrayed as eminently redeemable in hagiography. Hagiography is also realistic: Christianity is a risky business, and apostasy is a real option. Those who hold on to their faith may well meet an early and violent death at the hands of persecutors. But if even these persecutors can be saved and become martyrs themselves, and even pagan priests can become bishops (as in the Life of Aaron),96 then there is hope for us all.

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See Dijkstra, Religious Encounters (above, n. 31), pp. 118-23.

DESERT, CITY, AND COUNTRYSIDE IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN IMAGINATION Claudia Rapp Abstract This paper isolates the literary motif of the desert as the idealized locus of monastic retreat and shows the transformation of this concept from pagan to Christian literature. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of the notion of the desert as a state of mind of detachment from and indifference to the world. This allows for the practice of monastic virtues even in a worldly environment, and thus bridges the perceived gap between monks and bishops.

The Concept of the Desert in Antiquity One of the fundamental differences between pagan religion and the Judaeo-Christian tradition lies in the favored abode of their divinities.1 No pagan deity would ever choose to live in the desert or to appear to mortals in the desert. The gods of Classical Antiquity preferred to encounter humans or to amuse themselves in lush landscapes, flowering meadows, shaded groves, near gently gurgling springs, or perhaps in the sea or on mountaintops.2 The wealthy and educated elite imitated their divinities and sought respite from the cares and troubles of the city by escaping to their country estates. Stoic and Epicurean philosophers enjoyed retreats to the countryside with their like-minded friends, where they could engage in unhindered discussion. Cicero’s Tusculan Conversations are set in the green hills near Rome, and the participants in his dialogue De oratore meet in the Tusculan villa of one of the interlocutors.3 The

1 This article has its origin as a paper presented at the conference ‘Out of the Desert. Dry Places in History and the Imagination,’ held at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, Cal., in February 2000. In altered form, much of its content has been published in my Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley, 2005), pp. 105-36. 2 R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece. The Contexts of Mythology (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 80-113. 3 For the continuation of this tradition among upper-class Christians, see J. Fontaine, ‘Valeurs antiques et valeurs chrétiennes dans la spiritualité des grands propriétaires


chrc 86, 1-4

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idealized countryside setting was also popularized in literature and became the theme of bucolic poetry. Entire poems, such as Virgil’s Georgics, were written to celebrate the simple, rustic life in a beautiful garden-like setting, while shorter descriptions of the locus amoenus were included in longer works, such as the description of the island of the Phaeacians in Homer’s Odyssey. The antithesis of this fertile and lush landscape of the countryside favored by the gods is the desert. The desert also symbolizes an empty and threatening space, devoid of people and far removed from all the advantages and achievements of human society.4 The counterpart of the desert, interpreted in this manner, is the city, which represents community, civilization, and the amenities of life. In contrast to the Classical tradition, the desert has always occupied a special role in the history of the Judaeo-Christian God and his people. With regard to the desert, this history may be seen as resembling a drama in three acts, with an open-ended epilogue, which will be my guiding principle in this essay. The first act takes place in the desert of Egypt, with Moses as the protagonist. The second act is located in Palestine, where Jesus plays the central role. The third act returns to the original location of the Egyptian desert. This time, the actors in the drama — the hermits and monks of Late Antiquity — are more numerous. They aim to re-enact the experience of the participants in the first act of the Exodus, and strive to bring alive God’s promises to his chosen people, which He gave in Act Two. In the epilogue to this evolution, the audience become participants, as it were, because an open invitation is extended to all Christians to internalize the ideal of desert spirituality, regardless of their geographical location. As a consequence of this “internalization,” finally, the desert may be seen as a merely typological landscape. Act One: The Old Testament In the story of Exodus, the desert functions mostly as a place of encounter with God who makes his presence known through reve-

terriens à la fin du IVe siècle occidental,’ in Epektasis. Mélanges patristiques offert au Cardinal Daniélou, eds. J. Fontaine and C. Kannengiesser (Paris, 1972), pp. 571-95. 4 An interesting philological observation is that erêmos only became a noun in Christian Greek (hê erêmos — “the desert”). In Classical Greek, including the Septuagint, erêmos is an adjective, meaning “desolate, lonely, solitary.” See H.G. Liddell, R. Scott,

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lation, chastisement, nourishment, and protection. After 40 years of his youth at the court of Pharaoh, and another 40 years as a shepherd in the desert of Midian, Moses is called by God and spends the last 40 years of his life leading his people through the desert until they finally reach the Promised Land.5 Moses’ first encounter with God occurs in the desert, near Mount Horeb, “the mountain of God.” He notices the Burning Bush, and when he draws closer hears the voice of God telling him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.6 It is in the desert of Mount Sinai that God communicates his commandments to Moses.7 As he gives Moses the stone tablets on which they are inscribed, God allows himself to be seen at a distance not only by Moses, but also by Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the 70 elders of Israel: “and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness” — an image that evokes the smooth surface of a cool and still pool of water, in stark contrast to the arid and rugged mountain terrain of the Sinai.8 Later, Moses is summoned to the mountain on his own. He enters into the cloud and remains there, communicating with God for 40 days.9 God shows his power in the desert also by providing sustenance to his people in need. For six consecutive days, he lets manna rain down from heaven, which was not only nutritious, but also delicious: “it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.”10 In the experience of Moses and the Israelites, the radical simplicity of the desert forces people to concentrate on the essential, their spiritual relationship with God. In the narrative of Exodus, the desert also functions as a liminal space between Egypt and the Promised Land, the locus of transformation and transition to a greater unity with God. Other books of the Old Testament highlight God’s fearful ability to either render any region into a desert or to transform a desert

A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. H.S. Jones with R. McKenzie, with rev. supplement (Oxford, 1996), p. 687. 5 Cf. Acts 13,17-8. All biblical translations are from The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Glasgow, 1989). 6 Ex. 3,1-12. 7 Ex. 20,1-17. 8 Ex. 24,10. 9 Ex. 24,15-8. 10 Ex. 16,31.

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into a populated and fertile land. The Book of Ezekiel, probably dating from the early sixth century BCE, talks not of God’s power as residing within a pre-existing desert, but of his ability to make any place deserted and desolate as he chooses: “When I make the land of Egypt desolate and when the land is stripped of all that fills it, when I strike down all who live in it, then they shall know that I am the Lord.”11 The Book of Daniel prophesies the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem by Antiochus II Epiphanes in 167 BCE by coining the new and chillingly evocative phrase of the “abomination of desolation.”12 But God not only shows his power or displeasure by creating a wasteland. He can also turn desolated land into a garden of luxury and build up cities, as the Book of Ezekiel emphasizes: “And they will say: ‘This land that was desolate has become like the Garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined towns are now inhabited and fortified.’ ”13 These promises of God’s power in the desert will later exert a great influence in the early monastic imagination. Act Two: The New Testament The desert continues to play an important role in the New Testament. The desert of Palestine is a liminal space where God makes himself known, beginning with John the Baptist, the “voice in the desert” who announces the coming of Christ.14 As the people of the Old Testament experienced, the desert is a formidable, frightful space where one can encounter God. Jesus withdraws to the desert for a period of contemplation and fasting for 40 days, at the end of which he is tempted by a demon.15 Only once he has proven himself through this test can Jesus begin his active life of preaching and healing, just like the people of Israel had to undergo tribulations on their 40-year journey to the Promised Land. The desert is also a space where the forces of evil may be present. The possessed man whom Jesus heals had been driven to the 11

Ezek. 32,15; cf. also Ezek. 30,7-8; 33,29; 35,3-4. Dan. 9,27; 11,31; 12,11 (the New Revised Standard Version translates this “the abomination that desolates”). Cf. Mt. 24,15; Mk. 13,14; Lk. 21,20. 13 Ezek. 36,35. Cf. also Ezek. 34,25-31. 14 Mt. 3,3; cf. Is. 40,3. Note that the RSV translation uses several different expressions to render the Greek word erêmos. 15 Mt. 4,1-11; Mk. 1,12-3; Lk. 4,1-13. 12


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desert by a demon many times.16 But on a more conciliatory note, the desert in the New Testament can also represent a concrete landscape, at a distance from the towns, where welcome solitude can be found. Jesus thus often retreats to the desert to pray.17 He also goes there to simply escape the crowds — usually without success as the people follow him nonetheless, obliging him to feed his followers through the multiplication of loaves and fishes.18 Act Three: The Monastic Experience of the Desert After God led the Israelites through the desert to the Promised Land, under the leadership of Moses (in Act One), and after he sent his Son who continued to seek out the desert as a place of divine encounter (in Act Two), the third act of our drama of Christian history returns to the desert of Egypt. Beginning with the late third century, the Egyptian desert was populated by the pioneers of the desert life, the desert fathers. At least, this is what the “desert myth” that was propagated in early Greek hagiography proclaims, as James Goehring has convincingly shown.19 Within the context of early Christian monasticism, associations of the actual geographical setting of the Egyptian desert are twofold. First, there is the traditional, Egyptian understanding of the desert as a threatening space, which must have resonated especially among the native Egyptians who joined the monastic movement.20 Egyptian religion distinguishes between the “black land,” the fertile Nile valley, which is associated with the god Osiris and his son Horus, and the “red land,” the desert and mountainous terrain beyond it, which is the share of the trickster god Seth.21 The desert is the location of

16

Lk. 8,29. Mk. 1,35; Lk. 5,16. 18 Mt. 14,13-21; Mt. 15,29-39; Mk. 1,45; Mk. 6,32-44; Lk. 4,42. 19 J.E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society and the Desert. Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (Harrisburg, Penn., 1999), pp. 73-88 (‘The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,’ 19931). For a detailed treatment of the literature generated by the monastic movement in Egypt and its background, see now W. Harmless, S.J., Desert Christians. An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford, 2004). 20 A. Guillaumont, Aux origines du monachisme chrétien. Pour une phénoménologie du monachisme [Spiritualité Orientale, 30] (Begrolles-en-Mauges, 1979), pp. 69-87. 21 H. te Velde, ‘Seth,’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, 3 vols., ed. D.B. Redford (Oxford, 2001), 3: 269-71. 17

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the tombs of the dead and thus of religious pollution. It is also the place where, after the triumph of Christianity, the pagan deities withdrew to continue to pester people in the form of demons. The literary prototype for all monastic desert experience is Antony of Egypt who leads a life as a hermit at an ever increasing distance from society, as celebrated in the Life of Antony (ca. 356) by Athanasius of Alexandria. Antony’s progressive withdrawal into the desert amounts to nothing less than a territorial battle with the demons, who protest vociferously against his advance and attempt to stop it with all their might. When Antony has himself walled into a tomb — a tremendous act of bravery considering the associations of death and religious impurity — his satanic adversary immediately fears that this initial encroachment on his territory will pave the way for further inroads, and therefore descends on him with an army of demons.22 The next step of Antony’s advance into the desert consists in taking up residence further away, in an abandoned fortress. Here, too, the demons immediately protest: “Get away from what is ours! What do you have to do with the desert?”23 Finally, Satan comes to Antony’s cell to admit his defeat: “I no longer have a place — no weapon, no city. There are Christians everywhere, and even the desert has filled with monks.”24 In the Christian imagination, these traditional, indigenous associations of the Egyptian desert with demons, death, and pollution, are combined with the idea of the desert of Egypt and the Sinai, a landscape of concrete historical and spiritual significance, where Act One of God’s history with his people was played out. It is the location of the Exodus, the Passage of the Red Sea and of God’s First Covenant with Israel. The monks and hermits who took up residence there, it seems to me, all joined in the common project of bringing this experience to life again, thus attributing special significance to the concrete geographical setting of their asceticism. This constitutes Act Three in the drama of God’s story with mankind. The Christians who retreated to the desert followed quite literally in the footsteps of God’s chosen people, the Israelites of old. They modeled themselves after the prophets, especially Elijah and Elisha, and after John

22

Athanasius, Vita Antonii 8-10, ed. G.J.M. Bartelink [Sources Chrétiennes 400] (Paris, 1994), pp. 156-64. 23 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 12.3-14.1, there 13.2, ed. Bartelink, pp. 168-72, there 170; trans. R.C. Gregg (New York, 1980), pp. 40-2, there 41. 24 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 41.4, trans. Gregg, p. 62.


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the Baptist. They fulfilled, for all to see, God’s old promise to transform the wasted land into a city, and to render the desert into a garden, a foretaste of Paradise.25 The transformation of the desert into a city is another powerful concept, especially in the ancient world of the eastern Mediterranean which was noted for its city culture. Cities were the center for all social, economic, political, and cultural life. In an abstract sense, the polis was also an important tool for conceptualizing human social relations, ever since Aristotle proclaimed that man was a zôon politikon, a political or social being. The opposite of the city is the desert, both in a topographical and a demographical sense. The desert is a wide open space with no clear delineation of its boundaries. The city, by contrast, is a well-defined area, often surrounded and protected by a wall. The desert is marked by scarcity of supplies, the city is a place of abundance, of commerce, entertainments, and all kinds of distractions and pleasures. Finally, the desert is a place of loneliness, while the city is characterized by the presence of crowds. Through the work of God and his people, in this instance the Egyptian monks as the successors to ancient Israel, the desert absorbs and subsumes both its counterparts, the city and the countryside. The key passage that illustrates this process comes from the Life of Antony: “. . . he persuaded many to take up the solitary life. And so, from then on, there were monasteries in the mountains and the desert was made a city by monks, who left their own people and registered themselves for the citizenship in the heavens.”26 The Christian tradition built upon and added to the ancient cultural tradition of the appreciation of the polis by imagining heaven as a city, the Heavenly Jerusalem.27 In the Apocalypse of Paul, for example, heaven is a gated city with strictly regulated access, where only those who have completed a lifelong quest of renunciation have a chance to enter.28 Only by becoming strangers to the world do the Christian 25

F. Heim, ‘L’expérience mystique des pèlerins occidentaux en Terre Sainte aux alentours de 400,’ Ktema 10 (1985), 193-208, there 205-8. For a history of the Greek concept of paradise, see Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002), pp. 109-19. 26 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 14.7, trans. Gregg (see above, n. 23), pp. 42-3. 27 On the importance of the concept of the city in the writings of the Church fathers, see also B.E. Daley, S.J., ‘Building a New City: The Cappadocian Fathers and the Rhetoric of Philanthropy,’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 7 (1999), 431-61. 28 Apocalypse of Paul 24, trans. M.R. James (Oxford, 1924), p. 539. This text imagines the heavenly city of Jerusalem like an Egyptian monastery. See K.B. Copeland,

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ascetics acquire citizenship in heaven.29 The construction of a “new city” of Christian citizens, especially monks, stands as a strong countercultural symbol that makes manifest the power of God through his servants. Those who inhabit the desert are called with the Greek neologism “citizens of the desert” (erêmopolitai ).30 The prototype is John the Baptist, who is frequently called a “citizen of the desert.”31 Basil of Caesarea explains that the desert shelters apostles, prophets, and monks as “citizens of the desert.”32 The transformation of the desert or wilderness into a city is always an occasion for a great rhetorical display of marvel. While Jerome was still gathering strength for his resolve to retreat to the desert of Chalkis near Antioch, he described it as a “city more pleasant than all others” (omni amoeniorem ciuitatem).33 The paradox of the desert as city, the creation of a new society, a new politeia of seekers of God, is given lively expression in a metrical homily of the late fourth century in Syriac, entitled On Hermits and Desert Dwellers, which is, probably falsely, ascribed to Ephrem the Syrian: The desert, frightful in its desolation, became a city of deliverance for them [the hermits], where their harps resound, and where they are preserved from harm. Desolation fled from the desert, for sons of the kingdom dwell there; it became like a great city with the sound of psalmody from their mouths.34

The monks who make the Egyptian desert their home are a testament to the transformative power that God continues to exercise down to ‘The Earthly Monastery and the Transformation of the Heavenly City in Late Antique Egypt,’ in Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions, eds. R.S. Boustan and A. Yoshiko Reed (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 142-58. 29 Basil of Caesarea, Epistula 223.2, ed. Y. Courtonne, 3 vols. (Paris, 1957-1966), 3: 11, lines 30-1. 30 For further references see G.J.M. Bartelink, ‘Les oxymores desertum civitas et desertum floribus vernans,’ Studia Monastica 15 (1973), 7-15. 31 The Commentary on the Liturgy ascribed to Basil of Caesarea, for example, explains that the monk’s cloak is a reminder of John the Baptist, as a “citizen of the desert”: F.E. Brightman, ‘The Historia Mystagogica and Other Greek Commentaries on the Byzantine Liturgy,’ Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 9 (1907-1908), 248-67, there 262. 32 Basil of Caesarea, Epistula 42.5, ed. Courtonne (see above, n. 29), 1: 107, line 23. 33 Jerome, Epistula 2, ed. J. Labourt, 8 vols. (Paris, 1949-1963), 1: 9, line 18. 34 Ps.-Ephrem the Syrian, On Hermits and Desert Dwellers 157-61, trans. J.P. Amar in Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook, ed. V.L. Wimbush (Minneapolis, 1990), p. 72.


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their day. The transformation of desert into city is a powerful image that can be invoked to underscore this. Another, no less evocative image, is that of the transformation of the desert into a garden. The prophet Isaiah had said: “For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord.”35 In the monastic literature of Egypt, the garden or paradisiacal setting is expressed in a variety of ways.36 First of all, in a concrete and tangible way, Antony and many other hermits like him cultivated the land where they lived so as to have a food supply for their own use and to feed their visitors. They often chose to settle near sources of water or — if they lived in an arid spot — produced the miraculous appearance of a spring, in imitation of Moses striking the desert rock with his staff. Their gardens became harbingers of Paradise where all creatures live in harmony. Wild beasts miraculously desisted from attacking their crops, often in response to a stern admonition by the monastic cultivator.37 There are also stories of monks living in perfect harmony with nature: a crocodile offered its service to ferry Abba Helle across the Nile,38 an antelope allowed Macarius to drink her milk and a hyena sought his help to restore the eyesight of her blind cub,39 snakes guarded the cell of Amoun against robbers,40 and a lion was tamed by Gerasimus after he had removed a thorn from its paw. This took place, the author of the Spiritual Meadow, John Moschos, 35

Is. 51,3. Cf. also Is. 35,1-2: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing”; Is. 41:19-20: “I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive; I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together, so that all may see and know, all may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it.” 36 For a detailed documentation see K.S. Frank, Aggelikos Bios. Begriffsanalytische und begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum “engelgleichen Leben” im frühen Mönchtum [Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Mönchtums und des Benediktinerordens 26] (Munster 1964). 37 E.g. Athanasius, Vita Antonii 50.6-9, ed. Bartelink (see above, n. 22), pp. 270-2. 38 Historia monachorum 11.9.13, ed. E. Schulz-Flügel [Patristische Texte und Studien 34] (Berlin, 1990), p. 328, lines 52-7. 39 Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 18.9, 27-8, ed. G.J.M. Bartelink (Milan, 1974), pp. 82, 94. 40 Historia monachorum 8.2-6, ed. Schulz-Flügel (see above, n. 38), p. 307, line 1 — p. 308, line 28.

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explains, “to show how the beasts were in subjection to Adam before he disobeyed the commandment and fell from the comfort of Paradise.”41 The wonderfully transformed landscape is inhabited by men and women who have themselves been wonderfully transformed. No longer attached to the life of the world, they are often regarded as leading the life of angels in Paradise.42 This image of monks as representing the host of angels is most commonly applied in the monastic literature to groups of monks. It is usually occasioned by the orderliness and peacefulness of the social structure and the regularity of the daily schedule that prevail in the large coenobia. It is especially applied to the psalmody of the monks whose singing is reminiscent of that of the heavenly hosts. The 500 monks who had gathered around Abba Apollo near Hermopolis appeared “like a real army of angels, drawn up in perfect order, robed in white.”43 The specific setting of the monastic project in Egypt, it seems to me, carries with it all these associations of the desire to actualize in the present day the history of Salvation, which had begun with God’s First Covenant, and to prove that the Christian monks are the legitimate successors of Israel who carry on its inheritance.44 This marks Act Three in God’s history with his people, and thus I now turn to the Epilogue of my desert narrative, where participation in this story is thrown open to all Christians, regardless of their geographical location — whether in city, countryside or desert, and regardless of their station in society — whether laypeople, monks, or clergy. This is made possible by a new way of reflecting on the spiritual benefits of desert life that internalizes the ideal, with the effect that it can now be achieved anywhere. Epilogue: The Desert as a State of Mind The continued struggle for spiritual progress by all Christians after their baptism is, according to Augustine, analogous to the wanderings 41

John Moschos, Pratum spirituale 107, trans. J. Wortley (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1992), p. 88. 42 Frank, Aggelikos bios (see above, n. 36), passim; P. Nagel, Die Motivierung der Askese in der alten Kirche und der Ursprung des Mönchtums (Berlin, 1966), pp. 34-62. 43 Historia monachorum 7.5.1, trans. N. Russell (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1981), p. 73. 44 For Egyptian hagiography as Salvation history, see also Peter van Minnen, ‘Saving History? Egyptian Hagiography in Its Space and Time,’ this volume, above, pp. 57-91, there 79-84.


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of the Israelites through the desert after the crossing of the Red Sea. His affirmation that “the world is this desert [of Egypt]” (saeculum autem hoc eremus est) already contains in a nutshell the idea that would later become influential in western, especially Irish monasticism, that the Christian existence is that of the peregrinus, a stranger in this world embarked on a lifelong pilgrimage to a better place.45 The hermits and monks in late antique Egypt applied this notion in a concrete way. To them, the desert was much more than the physical landscape where one can follow the example of Moses on Mount Sinai, John the Baptist in the desert of Jordan, or Christ in the desert. It was the place where they could participate in and contribute to the history of Salvation. Their aim in withdrawing from society was also to reap spiritual benefits for themselves — not dissimilar from the goals of the wealthy and learned pagans in their countryside retreats with which we started this essay. The desert appears in this sense in the literature of the JudaeoChristian tradition long before the first hermits began to populate the desert of Egypt: in the writings of Philo (first half of the first century), Clement (second century), and Origen (first half of the third century).46 It is significant that all three of these authors were born and bred in Egypt, more specifically in Alexandria. They follow the classical tradition in establishing a connection between physical retreat and tranquility of mind. Yet, in contrast to the classical tradition, the setting they select for this purpose is not the countryside, but the desert. Philo sees the desert not only as a morally desirable place far removed from the corruption of the town, but also as a location of ideal climatic conditions where the air is light and pure and which is therefore more conducive to a life of contemplation.47 Clement 45 Augustine, Sermo 4.9.9 (Classis prima. Sermones de scripturis), ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 38] (Paris, 1865), col. 37. See also Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum 72.5, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 36] (Paris, 1845), col. 917. 46 The material and most, but not all observations in the following are largely derived from Guillaumont, Aux origines du monachisme chrétien (see above, n. 20), pp. 69-87. See also B. McGinn, ‘Ocean and Desert as Symbols of Mystical Absorption in the Christian Tradition,’ Journal of Religion 74 (1994), 155-81; K. Bosl, ‘ERHMO%Eremus. Begriffsgeschichtliche Bemerkungen zum historischen Problem der Entfremdung und Vereinsamung des Menschen,’ Byzantinische Forschungen 2 (1967 = Polychordia. Festschrift Franz Dölger, ed. P. Wirth), 73-90. 47 Philo of Alexandria, De vita contemplativa 22-3, ed. L. Cohn, S. Reiter (Berlin, 1915), p. 51, line 16 — p. 52, line 8. See also De decalogo 2, ed. L. Cohn (Berlin, 1902), p. 267, lines 10-1, explaining why God chose to give the Law to Moses in the desert. Philo, however, is not the first to make this point, according to Guillaumont, Aux origines du monachisme chrétien (see above, n. 20), p. 72, n. 1.

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follows Philo in establishing a connection between the desert and tranquility.48 To him, however, the physical setting of the desert is only relevant insofar as it generates the proper mental disposition. The desert landscape itself is not indispensable. Accordingly, he insists that one can live in the city as if in the desert, and thus make spiritual progress.49 For Origen, finally, the desert is synonymous with hêsychia, a state of detachment from irrelevant worldly cares which allows a total concentration on the inner self, an ideal which had already appealed to the Stoic philosophers.50 Hêsychia soon becomes a monastic ideal and reflections on this desired state of inner focus on the divine in complete disregard for one’s surroundings are often voiced with a view to the desert. Like Origen and others before him, John Chrysostom later distinguishes between the desert as a landscape and the desert as a state of mind: “Let us seek after the desert, not only that of the place, but also that of disposition.”51 In the experience of the first and second generation of Egyptian monks, the daily challenges of life in the desert, away from the distractions of the bustle of the city or agricultural labor in the countryside, allow the soul to concentrate in prayer and meditation. The individual is stripped naked of all the markers of identity that mattered in his previous social context and throws himself at the mercy of God. The elimination of external stimuli is the first and easiest step on this quest since it consists of a one-time act of physical withdrawal from the world. Much more difficult is the concentration of the mind and soul on the divine, because it requires a continuous effort. John Cassian, a sometime practitioner of the Egyptian desert life who would later advertise this ideal to a western audience in his writings, advises that the monk should sit in his cell in contemplation and solitude so that “like a splendid fisherman . . . he may eagerly and without moving catch the swarms of thoughts swimming in the

48 Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus II 10 (112.2), ed. O. Stählin, rev. U. Treu (Berlin, 1972), p. 224, lines 17-8. 49 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.12 (77.3), ed. O. Stählin, rev. L. Früchtel, U. Treu (Berlin, 1970), p. 55, lines 6-7. 50 Origen, Homilia 20.8 in Jeremiam, ed. E. Klostermann (Leipzig, 1901), p. 190, line 4. See also P. Miquel, Lexique du désert. Étude de quelques mot-clés du vocabulaire monastique grec ancient [Spiritualité Orientale 44] (Bégrolles-en-Mauges, 1986), pp. 145-80. 51 John Chrysostom, De compunctione ad Stelechium 2.3, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Graeca 47] (Paris, 1863), col. 414B.


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calm depths of his heart, and surveying with curious eye the depths as from a high rock, may sagaciously and cunningly decide what he ought to lure to himself by his saving hook, and what he can neglect and reject as bad and nasty fishes.”52 In an interesting literary juxtaposition, the mental state produced by the arid and forbidding desert here is made to resemble that of cool waters swarming with fish. The desert life also harbors its own perils. The elimination of all external distractions helps to focus the soul on contemplation of the divine, but it also throws the mind back on itself and magnifies one’s inner thoughts and doubts. The ingrained concerns and desires of the world and the pleasures of one’s previous life continuously threaten to invade the mind and disturb its equilibrium. John Cassian explains: “For whatever faults we bring with us uncured into the desert, we shall find to remain concealed in us and not to be got rid of.”53 He then adds a vignette from his own experience: during his withdrawal to the desert, even though he lived in solitude, he still managed to experience anger — not at a neighbor, but at the few objects in his cell, his pen, his penknife, and his flint for making fire.54 Cassian here experienced concretely what Evagrius Ponticus had formulated in the abstract: “Against people of the world, the demons fight primarily through things, against monks, they fight mostly through thoughts. For they are deprived of things because of the desert. And in the same measure as it is easier to sin internally than in actuality, in the same degree is the internal war more difficult than that about things. For the intellect is a thing that is easily set in motion and badly equipped to hold in check prohibited imaginations.”55 Because of the challenges it poses, the desert life is clearly not the right setting for everyone, but for those who have been called by God it becomes their path to spiritual perfection. Some authors, like John Cassian, strictly recommend that life in solitude should be 52 John Cassian, Collationes 24.3, trans. E.C.S. Gibson in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second Series, 14 vols., eds. Philip Schaff, Henry Wace (New York, 1890-1900, repr. Grand Rapids, Mich., 1986-1989), 11: 533. 53 John Cassian, De institutionis coenobiorum 8.18, trans. Gibson (see above, n. 52), 11: 262. 54 John Cassian, De institutionis coenobiorum 8.19, ed. M. Petschenig, rev. G. Krenz (Vienna, 2004), p. 162, line 28 — p. 163, line 6. 55 Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos 48, trans. A. Guillaumont, C. Guillaumont [Sources Chrétiennes 171] (Paris, 1971), p. 608.

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preceded by an extended stay in a monastic community, where withdrawal from the world is combined with the practice of virtues within the community, supported by the regular rituals of liturgical celebration.56 Even those who are experienced monks may not be able to endure the hardships of solitary desert life. This is the morale of the story told of Abba Gelasius, the abbot of a monastery in Nilopolis, who quelled his recurring desire to retreat to the desert by subjecting himself for a brief trial period to the physical discomforts of eating raw vegetables and sleeping outdoors.57 In these examples, and especially in the writings of John Cassian, the radical retreat to the desert is the ultimate challenge, the culmination of the monastic life that has to be mastered first within a community. This was not, however, the only possible approach. At the same time, there was the opposing trend which regarded the communal life as more demanding than the solitary existence. Abba Matoes explained this to a monk who was troubled by his propensity to gossip: “It is not through virtue that I live in solitude, but through weakness; those who live in the midst of men are the strong ones.”58 Spiritual progress, in this interpretation, does not depend on the austerity of the setting, but on the sincerity of the soul, helped along by proper guidance. In the words of another abba: “He who lives in obedience to a spiritual father finds more profit in it than one who withdraws to the desert.”59 Finally, the desert abode in and of itself is no guarantee for spiritual advancement. In fact, even the great Antony is reported to have been humbled by a revelation which showed him his equal who lived in the city: a doctor who was generous in his charity and steadfast in his prayer.60 This paradox is also explored in a Saying by 56 John Cassian, De institutionis coenobiorum 8.18, ed. Petschenig (see above, n. 54), p. 161, line 27 — p. 162, line 19. 57 Apophthegmata patrum, Gelasius 6, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Graeca 65] (Paris, 1864), cols. 152C-153A. 58 Apophthegmata patrum, Matoes 13, trans. B. Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (London and Oxford, 1975, repr. 1981), p. 145. See also the hermit who wants to abandon the desert in the hopes of making greater spiritual progress inside a monastery: Apophthegmata patrum, Paphnutius 5, ed. Migne (see above, n. 57), col. 380C-D. 59 F. Nau, ‘Histoires des solitaires égyptiens,’ Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 4 (1909), 357-79, there 379 (no. 296); trans. B. Ward, The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers. Systematic Sayings from the Anonymous Series of the Apophthegmata Patrum (Oxford, 1975, repr. 1991), p. 47 (no. 163). 60 Apophthegmata patrum, Antony 24, ed. Migne (see above, n. 57), col. 84B.


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Amma Syncletica, one of the few desert mothers: “Many who live in the [desert] mountains, but act like city-dwellers, have perished. And many who are in cities, but do the works of the desert, are saved.”61 About a century later, and not in Egypt, but in Syria, Theodoret of Cyrrhus insists that perfection can be attained in any kind of setting: “But lest anyone should suppose that virtue is circumscribed in place and that only the desert is suitable for the production of such a yield, let us now in our account pass to inhabited land, and show that it does not offer the least hindrance to the attainment of virtue.”62 Theodoret’s remark brings me to the last aspect of the significance of the desert within the monastic experience that I wish to discuss. The Desert as a Typological Landscape It is important to note that the formulation of the Christian ideal of complete internal detachment as the precondition for the attainment of virtue and for the receipt of God’s grace was, at least initially, linked to the concrete geographical setting of the Egyptian desert. James Goehring has shown the pervasive and lasting imprint of the monastic experience in the Egyptian desert on later writing on related subjects.63 This explains how the “desert” soon becomes a loaded term that evokes associations of retreat and spiritual growth, regardless of the actual nature of the location. Several authors of the late fourth and early fifth century describe lush, prosperous settings as a monastic “desert.” Jerome’s Life of Paul the Hermit shows all the marks of a carefully crafted literary artifact, and does not lack in charming descriptions of the ideal outdoor setting: Paul’s cave, although located in a barren desert landscape far removed from civilization, is itself like an oasis, with a palm tree for shade, and a spring for clear water.64 Basil of Caesarea raves about his retreat near Annisi in the Pontus region as if it provided him

61 Apophthegmata patrum, Systematic Collection, ed. J.-C. Guy [Sources Chrétiennes 387] (Paris, 1993), p. 138. 62 Theodoret, Historia religiosa 4.1, trans. R.M. Price (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1985), p. 49. 63 See Goehring, Ascetics, Society and the Desert (see above, n. 19). 64 Jerome, Vita Pauli 5, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 23] (Paris, 1845), col. 21A; cf. Jerome’s artful description in Vita Pauli 3, ed. Migne, cols. 19B-20A, of the beautiful garden that was turned into a torture chamber for a martyr.

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the same spiritual benefits as the Egyptian desert. But the description that follows shows that his actual physical environment resembles a pleasant country abode more than the forbidding arid expanses of Egypt: “I had set out for Pontus in search of a way of life and God did show me a place that suits perfectly my mood. . . . It is a high mountain covered with a dense forest, irrigated on the north side by cool and limpid waters. At its foot stretches an inclined plain fertilized by the water that drips continually from the mountain. Woods have grown spontaneously around the plain, various trees of all kinds forming almost a sort of a hedge. The island of Calypso, which Homer admired above all others for its beauty, is small in comparison. . . . Let another wonder at the multitude of flowers and singing birds; I am not at leisure to apply my mind to it. The most I can say of this land is that it is ready to bear all sorts of fruit on account of its favorable location. It feeds me with the most delectable fruit — quietude. . . .”65 Both Jerome and Basil had received an excellent education in the classical, secular vein. When these two men had occasion to describe a place of monastic retreat, they did so by using the literary conventions of the ideal landscape as a garden. Their writing takes recourse to the ancient literary ideal of the locus amoenus in order to give expression to the Christian monastic ideal of desert spirituality. They were deeply familiar with the literary tradition of bucolic poetry, with Homer’s description of the cave of Calypso or the delights of the island of the Phaeacians, or with Virgil’s Eclogues and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. While Basil and Jerome managed to incorporate elements of bucolic praise of idealized landscapes into their writing, two authors in Gaul at the beginning of the fifth century selected the form of bucolic poetry and ekphrasis and infused it with Christian meaning. Through their penmanship, the lush countryside becomes the backdrop for conversion to Christianity and for monastic retreat. The first author is Endelechius, about whom nothing else is known apart from the fact that he was a correspondent of Paulinus of Nola. His short poem On the Deaths of the Cattle (De mortibus boum), composed around 400, resonates with literary reminiscences to the bucolic

65 Basil of Caesarea, Epistula 14.1-2, trans. G.A. Barrois (Crestwood, N.Y., 1986), pp. 16-7.


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poems of Ovid, Horace, and Virgil.66 The rustic countryside is the setting of the outbreak of an epidemic that causes the death of all cattle herds, sparing only that of Tityrus which had been sealed with the protective sign of the cross. This miraculous survival convinces the less fortunate herdsmen Aegos and Bucolos of the power of the Christian God, and they convert. The second text is a prose work, the Praise of the Desert by Eucherius of Lyons, composed in 426.67 Eucherius was no stranger to the monastic tradition. Born into a senatorial family in southern Gaul, he soon joined the monastic circle of the island of Lérins and eventually became bishop of Lyons. John Cassian dedicated the second part of his Conferences to him.68 Eucherius’s work extols the island of Lérins off the coast of southern Gaul as the ideal place of monastic retreat in the Egyptian desert tradition. In actual appearance, however, the island resembles a paradisiacal garden rather than a wilderness. Eucherius describes it as a place of brooks, meadows, and flowers, thus integrating into his work the ancient literary tradition of praise of the lush countryside as the ideal location of pleasant retreat of educated friends. But even the Garden of Eden of the desert-inspired retreat pales in comparison to the inner paradise which flourishes in the soul of the monk, celebrated by Eucherius in a number of paradoxical juxtapositions: “Here we have a delightful meadow for the interior man. The untilled desert is attractive with a wonderful pleasantness. The material desert becomes a paradise of the spirit.”69 The “internalized desert” and the “typological desert” facilitate the application of the desert ideal to a variety of locations and circumstances, including a retreat that is limited in time.

66 M. Skeb, ‘Endelechius,’ in Lexikon der antiken christlichen Literatur, eds. S. Döpp, W. Geerlings (Freiburg, 1998), p. 189. 67 Eucherius of Lyons, De laude eremi, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 50] (Paris, 1846), cols. 701-12. See I. Opelt, ‘Zur literarischen Eigenart von Eucherius’ Schrift De laude eremi,’ Vigiliae Christianae 22 (1968), 198-208. This poem exerted great influence on the German mystics in the Middle Ages. See e.g. H. Bayer, ‘Vita in deserto. Kassians Askese der Einöde und die mittelalterliche Frauenmystik,’ Zeitschift für Kirchengeschichte 98 (1987), 1-27. 68 C. Casper, ‘Eucherius (von Lyon),’ in Lexikon der antiken christlichen Literatur (see above, n. 66), pp. 203-4. 69 Eucherius, De laude eremi 39, trans. C. Cummings, ‘In Praise of the Desert. A Letter to Hilary of Lérins, Bishop, by Eucher of Lyons,’ Cistercian Studies 11 (1976), 60-72, there 70.

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The personal desert experience was an essential part of the spiritual formation of many Church fathers. It is as if they needed to build up their credentials so that they could then engage in theological writing, or embark upon ecclesiastical careers with greater authority, having tasted themselves of the harshness of asceticism and the sweetness of its divine rewards. For most Christians outside Egypt who belonged to the educated elite of Late Antiquity, the desert experience was one of three stages of life. First came secular education, then spiritual formation in the desert, and finally a return to service in society by holding ecclesiastical office and by composing religious treatises. This pattern continued well into the fifth century. Many of those who later became bishops or religious scholars had exposed themselves to the personal experience of monasticism, either in the desert or in a community. Nearly all of the great names of the late fourth and fifth century follow this path: Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Paulinus of Nola, Rufinus of Aquileia, Augustine, Ambrose, Orosius, and Jerome. This tri-partite division of the entire span of one’s life, where the time spent in the desert is a turning point in preparing the individual for service to God and the community, has its precedent in the life of Moses.70 This idea goes back to Philo of Alexandria, and finds its fullest expression in the works of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa. In his Life of Moses, Philo shows that Moses was reared in the secular learning of the Egyptians until he ruptured his ties to Egyptian civilization and retreated to the desert of Midian where his religious contemplation was eventually rewarded by a direct encounter with God in the Burning Bush. From this moment on, Moses returned to society and became the leader of the people of Israel. Basil of Caesarea gives further contours to this pattern by explaining that each of these stages in Moses’ life lasted for exactly 40 years.71 This progression from secular learning, through a period of withdrawal for the sake of theôria, or contemplation of God, back to a “mixed” life that combines ministry to society with periods of 70 For the following, see M. Harl, ‘Les trois quarantaines de la vie de Moise, schéma idéal de la vie du moine-évêque chez les Pères Cappadociens,’ Revue des Études Grecques 80 (1967), 407-12. 71 Basil of Caesarea, Commentarius in prophetam Isaiam, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Graeca 30] (Paris, 1888), cols. 117-668 as quoted by Harl, ‘Les trois quarantaines de la vie de Moise’ (see above, n. 70), p. 409, n. 8. This is a text of contested authenticity.


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contemplation, modeled on the life of Moses, became a popular literary device. In this tripartite scheme of the progression of the individual, the desert is merely a transitory stage in preparation for a larger task that yet awaits the practitioner. This is the pattern advocated by the highly educated Christians of Late Antiquity, expressed in the writings of the Cappadocian fathers and Jerome.72 Their appreciation of monastic life and the desert experience as a formative, but transitory and transitional stage stands in marked contrast to the Egyptian tradition, brought to the West by John Cassian, that regards monasticism as a lifelong struggle. Conclusion To summarize, a large and complex range of associations is connected with the concept of the desert in early Christian monasticism. For the period of Late Antiquity, we have outlined three categories: the desert of Egypt as a specific geographical setting, the desert as a state of mind and the desert as a typological landscape. These three interpretations of the desert have their collateral in three approaches to asceticism and ecclesiastical office: 1. For the “fathers” who lived in the actual desert of Egypt, the monastic life — whether alone or in a community — is a lifelong undertaking that only ends when the practitioner dies. These men shunned appointment to the priesthood or the episcopate as detrimental to their spiritual purpose. 2. The pursuit of the desert as a state of mind was a continuous struggle, but did not depend on location. The concept of the internal desert does not require even a temporary stay or a pilgrimage to the desert fathers, let alone permanent residence in Egypt. It does not even demand a radical lifestyle change. Rather,

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It is conceivable that they were influenced in their positive view of the third, community-oriented stage by the tradition of Syrian monasticism. When it emerged in the third century, Syrian asceticism had its own local roots which were only in the course of the second half of the fourth century exposed to the influence of the Egyptian practice. In Syria, ascetic groups of men and women existed within and alongside the Christian communities centered on a particular church and its clergy. Instead of an abrupt and violent break with the world, the Syrian ascetics carved out their own place within it. For a brief and recent introduction to Syrian asceticism, see Harmless, Desert Christians (above, n. 19), pp. 425-8, with bibliography on p. 454.

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it opens up the possibility of attaining salvation on the path of monastic spirituality regardless of one’s place in society. In this way, all Christians have access to the benefits of the desert as a state of mind. 3. Those who retreated to a “typological” or “functional desert” usually did so close to home, and for a limited period of time. For them, the “desert” experience was a transitional stage, a training camp in Christian and monastic virtues. In this, they followed the model of Moses whose leadership of Israel was the culmination of 40 years spent in the solitude of the desert, preceded by another 40 years at the court of Pharaoh. Those who, like the Cappadocians, regarded the desert experience in this way as a rite of passage were more willing to accept ordination themselves and were more inclined to treat ecclesiastical office as a high honor which cannot be refused. The “desert” as a concept enjoys enduring appeal. Beginning with the context of Greco-Roman educational ideals and the Old Testament, it acquired multi-valency in meaning, which early Christianity absorbed and re-shaped. The monastic project of the late third and fourth century then added its own experiential wisdom with its emphasis on the desert as a state of mind. It is in this last application that the desert continued to exert its influence on Christian practitioners and thinkers throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.

THE USES OF THE DESERT IN THE SIXTH-CENTURY WEST Conrad Leyser Abstract This essay surveys the cultural uses of the Egyptian desert in western ascetic culture across the fifth and sixth centuries. Challenging the commonly-held assumption that the desert was effectively suppressed by clerical hierarchies or monastic communities in the West, the essay argues that the institutions of the episcopacy and the monastery, the twin pillars of the medieval Church, in fact sought to lay their foundations squarely in the memory of the desert. The bishops selected for discussion are Caesarius of Arles, Fulgentius of Ruspe, and Gregory of Tours; the monastic communities are those described in the Life of the Jura Fathers and the Rule of Saint Benedict.

Introduction There came to me certain bishops whose plain duty it was to exhort me to press wisely on with the task which I had begun. Instead they said to me: ‘It is not right, what you are trying to do! Such an obscure person as you can never be compared with Simeon the Stylite of Antioch! The climate of the region makes it impossible for you to keep tormenting yourself in this way. Come down off your column, and live with the brethren whom you have gathered around you.’ Now, it is considered a sin not to obey bishops, so of course I came down and went off with those brethren and began to take my meals with them.1

So Wulfoliac, a Lombard who had come from Italy to Francia in hopes of furthering the cult of Saint Martin, told his story to Bishop Gregory of Tours in the mid 580s. Wulfoliac’s literal “climb-down” from his pillar in the face of episcopal opposition is usually taken to encapsulate the history of the desert tradition in the sixth-century West. Comments Gregory’s translator: “As the bishops pointed out to Wulfoliac, this sort of thing was no doubt all right in the Middle East, but the climate of northern Gaul was hardly suited to it.”2 Other scholars have tended to side with Wulfoliac rather than the

1 Gregory of Tours, Decem libri historiarum 8.15, trans. L. Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 447. 2 Thorpe, Gregory of Tours, p. 447.


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bishops — but all are fundamentally agreed that the dramatic charisma of a Simeon the Stylite was out of place in the increasingly dour corporate landscape of Frankish Gaul, its Church dominated by aristocratic bishops and monasteries. The story of Wulfoliac becomes a parable for the emerging contrast between eastern and western Christendom, or for the passage from “the world of Late Antiquity” to that of the “barbarian West.”3 There are good grounds, however, to question this rather dejected account. As I have argued elsewhere, we should bear in mind that Gregory told the story as Wulfoliac’s champion.4 The villains of the piece were the boorish bishops who did not recognize the signs of true sanctity in their midst.5 Wulfoliac’s story does not, therefore, mark the twilight of the desert in the West. The powers of the wilderness were far too valuable a resource simply to suppress. If we chart the uses of the desert tradition in Latin Christianity across the sixth century, what we see repeatedly is the eagerness of bishops and monastic communities to celebrate and to partake of its charisma. In fact, the contrast habitually posed between “institutional” authority and the “charismatic power” of stylites like Wulfoliac was more apparent than real in a context of political disintegration and infrastructural collapse.6 The luxury of suppression was not to be enjoyed in a world where improvisation in the face of entropy and ambush were the order of the day. The desert in the West was not (or not only) a place: it was indeed a weapon. Since Philip Rousseau’s Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian, published in 1978, English-speaking scholars have been well aware of how “desert talk” could be used by those who had “been there” to claim moral authority over those who never had.7 The locus classicus of this phenomenon is the vision

3

Following P. Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London, 1982), pp. 166-95 (‘Eastern and Western Christendom in Late Antiquity: A Parting of the Ways,’ 19761); see also his The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, AD 200-1000, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2003). 4 We should also not forget the monastic community which Wulfoliac founded after his descent to earth, and which was subsequently to preserve his memory. 5 C. Leyser, ‘ “Divine Power Flowed from This Book”: Ascetic Language and Episcopal Authority in Gregory of Tours’ Life of the Fathers,’ in The World of Gregory of Tours, eds. K. Mitchell, I. Wood (Leiden, 2001), pp. 281-94. 6 See B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005). 7 P. Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford, 1978). Rousseau’s study presaged a growing interest among English-speaking

the uses of the desert in the sixth-century west

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offered in the 380s by Jerome in his letter to the Roman virgin Eustochium, in which desert experience is proposed as the hallmark of real spiritual expertise: O but posted there in the wilderness, in that vast solitude, scorched by the heat of the sun — the terrible dwelling place marked out for monks — how often did I imagine myself immersed in the delights of Rome. . . . In fear of the fires of hell I had damned myself to that imprisonment, with only scorpions and wild beasts for company — and yet how often did I find myself amidst the ranks of dancing girls. My face was blanched with fasting, my body frozen, and my mind ablaze with desires. This specimen of humanity, already more corpse than living flesh, was boiling over with the flames of lust.8

In so far as we can reconstruct it, Jerome seems to have been referring to a period during which he was a houseguest in a reasonably well-appointed Syrian villa.9 No matter the element of hyperbole: in Jerome’s hands, the result of his trial by desert ordeal was a resounding vindication. His apparent self-deprecation was, as he put it, a lesson in “holy arrogance” for his virginal charge, who could, like Jerome, vaunt herself over her less dedicated peers. In the eyes of many of Jerome’s contemporaries, however, this was to go too far. One of the emphases of work in English on the ascetic tradition in the past decade and a half has been to differentiate the attitude of Jerome from that of his peers, above all Augustine of Hippo.10 While himself inspired by the example of Saint Antony, the archetypal Desert Father, Augustine emerged as the critic of ascetic pride — and the champion of charity and humility as the “core values” that should underpin the lives of all Christians, be they priests, monks, or lay people.

scholars of all periods in the power and poetics of travel narrative: see S. Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford, 1992) and W. Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative in the French Renaissance: The “Undiscovered Country” (Oxford, 1998). 8 Jerome, Epistula 22.7, 2nd ed. I. Hilborg [Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 54] (Vienna, 1996), pp. 152-3. 9 S. Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis. Prosopographsiche und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart, 1992); and the same author’s Jerome (London, 2000). 10 D. Hunter, ‘Resistance to the Virginal Ideal in Late Fourth Century Rome,’ Theological Studies 48 (1987), 45-64; R. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990); M. Vessey, ‘Conference and Confession: Literary Pragmatics and Augustine’s Apologia Contra Hieronymum,’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993), 175-213; K. Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).

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In the history of theology, Augustine’s perspective has traditionally been contrasted with that of John Cassian, who cast himself as bringing the wisdom of the desert to the ascetic movement in southern Gaul. Cassian was accused of “Pelagianism” by Prosper of Aquitaine, one of Augustine’s more excitable disciples in the area.11 But Cassian was no follower of Pelagius, nor of Jerome. We understand the situation better if we realize that Cassian shared with Augustine a set of concerns about the possible effects — such as vanity, envy, and pride — of an intemperate use of the desert tradition.12 That said, his answers to this pastoral problem were not the same as Augustine’s. Cassian placed his emphasis on the possibility, but also the extreme difficulty of emulating the achievements in moral progress of the desert fathers. A vignette of oneself in a cave was in no way sufficient. As I have argued elsewhere, the ascetic tradition in the Latin West across the fifth and sixth centuries developed as a series of attempts to effect a synthesis of Augustine’s emphasis on communal charity on the one hand, and, on the other, Cassian’s science of moral expertise.13 Each had left problems unresolved. Augustine had (deliberately) not explained on what basis moral progress could be instilled or assessed by those in positions of authority, while Cassian had not been able to propose a clear institutional framework for his ethical regimen. It was the achievement of the Rule of Saint Benedict, composed ca. 540, to have “worked” Augustine and Cassian to remedy each others defects, in its brilliantly succinct account of how to establish and sustain a monastic community. Some 50 years later, Benedict’s biographer, Pope Gregory the Great, achieved a different synthesis of the contrasting fifth-century approaches. Believing the last days to be at hand, Gregory bypassed institutional concerns in order to develop a language of authority to be used in multiple contexts, across the whole body of the faithful. The contrast between the institutional specificity of the Rule of Saint Benedict and the moral universalism of Gregory’s corpus was, in turn, to preoccupy their subsequent readers in the medieval Church. What has yet adequately to be stressed, however, is the role of the desert in the post-Roman meditations on perfection and power. 11

C. Leyser, ‘Semi-Pelagianism,’ in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. A. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1999), cols. 761-6. 12 C. Stewart, Cassian the Monk (New York, 1998); S. Driver, John Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture (London, 2002). 13 C. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2000).


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Marie-Elisabeth Brunert’s meticulous survey of the reception of the desert in Gaul and beyond in this period has been too little noted by English-speaking authors.14 From 400 to 600, Latin writers wrestled with “desert expertise” as, at once, an icon of moral community and authority and a perilous invitation to a kind of spiritual self-satisfaction, deplored by the desert tradition itself. Although not a point universally appreciated — certainly not by Jerome, and perhaps not by Augustine either — “Desert Christianity” was a self-correcting tradition that dwelt insistently on the dangers of its own allure. The reception of the desert in the West was characterized by ebbs and flows of enthusiasm and suspicion. We will argue that the fifth century was a period in which initial excitement about the desert was subsequently restrained. By contrast, the sixth-century witnesses a revival of interest in the desert, of which the Lombard Wulfoliac and his Gallic admirers is only one index. As we shall see, the desert was used to bolster episcopal authority and to lend definition to monastic communities. The institutional profile bishops and monasteries were to acquire in the medieval Church owes not a little to the strengths they drew from the desert in this formative century. Much of the ground is familiar — and yet there remains work to be done on even the most canonical of texts. Take the Verba seniorum, for example, the Latin version of the Apophthegmata patrum produced in the 550s in Rome by the deacons (and future popes), John and Paul.15 For the best part of a millennium, western readers wishing to encounter the desert fathers in their own words would turn to the Latin translation of the Sayings. Its manuscript diffusion has been charted, and its relation to the other sayings collections meticulously plotted.16 But it has been used primarily as a source for the Sayings tradition in its Egyptian context: work has only just begun on its

14

M.-E. Brunert, Das Ideal der Wüstenaskese und seine Rezeption in Gallien bis zum Ende des 6. Jahrhunderts [Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Mönchtums und des Benediktertums 42] (Munster, 1994); not noticed in Leyser, Authority and Asceticism (see above, n. 13), or M. Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2003). 15 The edition by J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 73] (Paris, 1879), cols. 855-1022 has not been replaced. For a comprehensive modern translation, see L. Regnault, Les sentences des pères du désert: les apophthegmes des pères (recension de Pélage et Jean) (Solesmes, 1966). 16 C. Battle, Die “Adhortationes sanctorum partum” (“Verba seniorum”) in lateinischen Mittelalter. Überlieferung, Fortleben und Wirkung [Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Mönchtums und des Benediktertums 31] (Munster, 1972).

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place in the Latin desert canon, in particular its relation to the transmission and commemoration of John Cassian.17 How the Roman Verba seniorum relate to the contemporary Roman martyr tradition, to the Rule of Saint Benedict and its sister texts, developed in the Roman hinterland, and to the Dialogues of Pope Gregory, with their stories of western wildernesses — all of this remains to be clarified.18 Taming the Desert in the Fifth Century From the start, “the desert” was subject to commodification. It was never only a literal place, but a source of cultural inspiration and, indeed, contention for its Christian observers and consumers. In the course of the past generation, it has been shown that the standard account of the monastic withdrawal to the desert is, in fact, the tendentious product of a “priest versus prophet” confrontation staged within the fourth-century Egyptian Church, not unlike that witnessed in Francia by Gregory of Tours two hundred years later. Received wisdom has it that the monastic flight to the wilderness, the land just beyond the area under cultivation, drew on a long established practice of tax evasion. When adopted by the first Christian “monks” (in Greek monakhoi, meaning “single” in the sense of “unattached”), withdrawal (anakhôrêsis) made sense as a drastic gesture of moral dissociation from the world and the starting point for a life of strict discipline (askêsis). However, the secular practice of anakhôrêsis was rarely so dramatic; it usually involved a lateral move to another community, as opposed to the complete severing of ties.19 Furthermore, many experiments in ascetic living in this period were conducted by Christians who did not leave home, but who remained within their towns and villages. The activities of these so-called “apotactics” seem to have made local bishops somewhat nervous, and, not coincidentally, they are not well attested in the sources.20 The story that predominates is the one told by the bishops: in their account, all attention 17 P. Rousseau, ‘Cassian’s Apophthegmata,’ Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 48 (2005), forthcoming. 18 A start was made by J. Petersen, The “Dialogues” of Gregory the Great in their Late Antique Cultural Background (Toronto, 1984). 19 P. Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, 1999), pp. 9-11. 20 J. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Egyptian Monasticism (Harrisburg, Penn., 1999) and, for a general overview, W. Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the History of Early Monasticism (New York, 2004).


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is focused on the monakhoi, whose activities were both more distant and more easily classifiable. The centerpiece of this episcopal editorializing was the Life of Antony by Athanasius of Alexandria, which constructed a foundation myth of its protagonist as an unlettered pioneer breaking open the wilderness for monastic living.21 So packaged and fetishized, the desert became a prominent feature of the new public Christian landscape, diverting the attentions of the growing stream of pilgrims on their way to the newly-minted shrines of the Holy Land.22 Some, like Jerome, sought to lay claim to the experience of desert living; and by the end of the fourth century, aspirant western ascetics had begun to seek out the wilderness in their own landscape, taking to the mountains, the forests, and the sea.23 Our sources for the creation of “desert islands” in the western Mediterranean are especially rich. By the 420s, one group of western desert ascetics on the islands of Lero and Lérins, off modern-day Cannes, had produced a panegyric to broadcast their activities. This text, the De laude eremi of Eucherius of Lyons, gave to the desert a sacred history from Abraham and Moses to the present:24 “I must, indeed, regard as sacred all the desert places illuminated by the retreat of holy men — but you, my Lérins, I hold in especial honor. With the gentlest of embraces, you open your arms to welcome back those washed up in the shipwrecks of the storm-tossed world.”25 The desert, wild and bare, is the perfect site for the welling up of God’s salvific action in the world. At Lérins, as in Sinai, the rocks give up water, and its saltiness is made sweet. In Eucherius’s description, the Lérinian wilderness becomes the Garden of Eden, “a paradise for all those who live there, showing them the Paradise they will possess.”26 Not everyone agreed: “A filthy island filled by 21 S. Rubenson, The Letters of St Antony: Origenist Theology, Monastic Tradition, and the Making of a Saint (Lund, 1990); D. Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford, 1995). 22 E.D. Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire, AD 312-460 (Oxford, 1982); G. Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrimage to Living Saints in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000). 23 For this development, see Claudia Rapp, ‘Desert, City, and Countryside in the Early Christian Imagination,’ this volume, above, pp. 93-112, there 102-9. 24 S. Pricoco, L’isola dei santi: Il cenobio di Lerino e le origini del monachesimo gallico (Rome, 1978). 25 Eucherius of Lyons, De laude eremi 42, ed. S. Pricoco (Catania, 1965), pp. 75-6. 26 Eucherius, De laude eremi 42, ed. Pricoco, p. 76. Cf. the similar remarks by Rapp, ‘Desert, City, and Countryside in the Early Christian Imagination,’ this volume, above, p. 109 about this text.

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men who flee the light,” commented the pagan aristocrat Rutilius Namatianus of Capraia, to the north of Sardinia, where his young relative had gone to join this “mad folly of a demented brain.”27 Doubts about the desert were not confined to pagans. The elitism of Jerome and the triumphalism of the Lérinians alarmed many Latin Christians. One well-known reader of Athanasius, and a correspondent of Jerome, has left us particularly clear evidence both for the attractions of the desert in the late fourth-century West, and for the reasons to resist them. In his Confessions, written in the years immediately after his consecration as bishop of Hippo in 396-397, Augustine describes his encounter at Milan with the story of Antony, as told to him by another North African who had himself heard the story at Trier.28 In Augustine’s account, Antony’s example is “the tipping point” of his conversion. However, in a much less well-noticed passage, one of the very few in the Confessions where Augustine reveals anything of his history in the years between his conversion in 386387 and the time of writing some ten years later, he says: “Terrified by my sins and the dead weight of my misery, I had turned my problems over in my mind and was half determined to seek refuge in the desert. But you forbade me to do this and gave me strength by saying: Christ died for us all, so that being alive should no longer mean living with our own life, but with his life who died for us.”29 Augustine, then, turned his back on the desert. While not hesitating to celebrate the monastic life, Augustine’s version of it was resolutely urban: he took as his model the first community of Christians at Jerusalem, as described in the Bible.30 Later readers of Augustine were to expend a great deal of energy in, as it were, bringing him back to the desert.31 As we shall see, at least one episcopal biographer went to great lengths to construct a counter-factual — what Augustine would have been like had he not turned his back on the desert. 27 Rutilius Namatianus, De reditu suo 1.440-8, trans. Harmless, Desert Christians (see above, n. 20), p. 466. 28 Augustine, Confessiones 8.6.14-8.19, ed. L. Verheijen [Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 27] (Turnhout, 1981), pp. 121-3. 29 Augustine, Confessiones 10.43.70, trans. R. Pine Coffin (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 251. 30 Acts 4,32-5. See L. Verheijen, Nouvelle approche de la règle de S. Augustin (Bellefontaine, 1980); G. Lawless, Augustine of Hippo and His Monastic Rule (Oxford, 1987). 31 See the contribution by Eric L. Saak, Ex vita patrum formatur vita fratrum: The Appropriation of the Desert Fathers in the Augustinian Monasticism of the Later Middle Ages,’ this volume, below, pp. 191-228.


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In Gaul, the renunciation of the desert was a more carefully negotiated compromise, but we should not mistake its terms. The chief broker was John Cassian — by common consent, the key figure in the formation of the desert tradition in the West. But Cassian’s role has not always been accurately understood. He is traditionally presented as something of a passive interpreter, transmitting to the West the lessons he had learnt in Egypt and Palestine. This is certainly how Cassian styled himself, offering his first text, the Institutes, as a set of observations of desert practice and moral teaching, and his second, the Conferences, as a series of dialogues with desert fathers.32 However, as his well-educated audience would have had little trouble in discerning, this amounted to a generic captatio benevolentiae before Cassian unleashed his own message. As I have argued elsewhere, Cassian’s overall goal was to deliver a warning to the local monastic movement about its excesses, and to set it on a respectable moral and intellectual footing.33 Desert living was in many ways a mirage: “You do not attain the perfect life simply by throwing away your money or your rank,” Cassian emphasized, this being exactly the gesture made by Antony in church which had so inspired an impressionable Augustine.34 Genuine moral progress, as far as Cassian was concerned, came from sustained effort to combat the vices. There were no short cuts, whether one lived in a city or on an island. For all his evocation of the desert, Cassian was in fact, like Augustine, an advocate of urban monasticism. The twin influences of Augustine and Cassian tamed desert living in the fifth-century West. At Lérins, in particular, Cassian’s influence seems to have taken sharp and immediate effect.35 In the East, monks roamed the countryside and threatened the cities as well in large, unashamedly intimidating numbers. They begged, they beat up their enemies and destroyed public property.36 It took a huge assertion of 32 See now R. Goodrich, ‘Underpinning the Text: Self-Justification in Cassian’s Ascetic Prefaces,’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 13 (2005), 411-36. 33 Leyser, Authority and Asceticism (see above, n. 13), pp. 33-61. 34 Cassian, Collationes 1.6, 2nd ed. M. Petschenig [Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 12] (Vienna, 2004), p. 13. 35 C. Leyser ‘ “This Sainted Isle”: Panegyric, Nostalgia, and the Invention of “Lerinian Monasticism”,’ in The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays in Honor of Robert Markus, eds. W. Klingshirn, M. Vessey (Ann Arbor, 1999), pp. 188-206. 36 On begging, see D. Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002); on violent monks, see now Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ:

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episcopal power at Chalcedon in 451 to bring a modicum of control to the situation — but even then this made little difference to those, such as Shenoute of Atripe, who did not accept the authority of the Council.37 In the West, by contrast, we look in vain for a Shenoute — Wulfoliac will not fit the bill — and we find instead monks seemingly prepared themselves to foreswear the icon of the desert. The Rule of Saint Benedict is famously determined to discourage would-be imitators of Antony: monks should not attempt to seek out the wilderness on their own, the Rule prescribes, or at least not until they have been tried and tested in the furnace of community life.38 The Rule’s later use as a charter for western cenobitism may, however, lead us to an anachronistic and overly conservative assessment of its immediate message. A useful corrective is provided by Pope Gregory the Great. In his account, Benedict does precisely what the Rule forbids, abandoning secular schooling in Rome for the fastnesses of Subiaco as a lone and untried ascetic, ready to do battle with the Devil.39 Sixth-Century Bishops and the Desert While not facing armies of monks like their eastern counterparts, bishops in the Latin West were far from secure. Their increasing prominence as part of an institutional network that had survived the fall of the western Empire served to raise the stakes attending their tenure of office, and to increase their vulnerability. Bishops in the West were men who needed allies, and they had much to gain from association with living as well as with dead holy men. The desert was a welcome resource both in the city and in the countryside — a means of negotiating with both the great and the little communities. Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire [Transformations of the Classical Heritage 39] (Berkeley, 2005), pp. 208-50. 37 See in general S. Emmel, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, 2 vols. [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 111-2] (Louvain, 2004). There were, of course, monkbishops in the East: see A. Sterk, Renouncing the World, Yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass., 2004); and now C. Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005). 38 Regula Benedicti 1.1-3, ed. A. de Vogüé and J. Neufville, 6 vols. [Sources Chrétiennes 181-6] (Paris, 1971-1972), 1: 436. 39 Gregory the Great, Dialogorum libri quatuor 2.1.3, ed. A. de Vogüé, 3 vols. [Sources Chrétiennes 251, 260, 265] (Paris, 1978-1980), 2: 130.


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Let us return to Gregory of Tours and his Antony, Wulfoliac. Something of the context for Gregory’s approbation of the holy man can be gauged from the incident related later in the Histories regarding the “false Christ of Bourges,” a self-appointed miracle worker and prophet, who, in partnership with his sister “Mary” roamed the countryside. He moved from Arles to Javols and thence to Gregory’s own country of Le Puy where he intended to attack Bishop Aurelius. The bishop was tough enough to dispel him and his followers, but “a great number of people were deceived by him, not only the uneducated, but even priests in orders. . . . Quite a number of men now came forward in various parts of Gaul . . . [and] acquired great influence over the common people.” Gregory adds, “I did my best to argue with them and to make them give up their inane pretensions,” implying that he understood persuasion to be more useful than force.40 The story of Wulfoliac shows why Gregory deplored the moral short-sightedness of his fellow-bishops. So far from being a threat, Wulfoliac was an invaluable helper in that, according to Gregory, the hillside on which he set up his column was a cultic site to Diana. In the words that Gregory gives to the holy man: “ ‘Crowds began to flock to me from the manors in the region, and I kept telling them that Diana was powerless, that her statues were useless, and that the rites which they practiced were vain and empty. I made it clear that the incantations which they chanted when they were drunk and in the midst of their debaucheries were quite unworthy of them. Instead they should make a seemly offering of worship to God Almighty who had made heaven and earth.’ ”41 Wulfoliac serves, therefore, as a veritable mouthpiece for a stirring episcopal broadside against rusticitas in all its forms. Holy men were not only useful in the countryside. In his early years as bishop of Tours, a seat he acquired in a somewhat haphazard manner, Gregory had reason to be grateful for the public embrace of the recluse Senoch, who lived near an oratory of Saint Martin (as did Wulfoliac, it should be noted). Living saints, so far from threatening a bishop like Gregory, could in fact mediate and help to buttress his primary relationship to the shrine of Martin of which he was the guardian. In his Life of the Fathers, Gregory programmatically 40 Gregory of Tours, Decem libri historiarum 10.25, trans. Thorpe (see above, n. 1), pp. 585-6. 41 Gregory of Tours, Decem libri historiarum 8.15, trans. Thorpe, p. 446.

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constructed an ascetic genealogy for his episcopacy, combining stories of his own sainted relatives, such as Nicetius of Trier, with spiritual kin such as Senoch and the female recluse Monegundis, also living at a Martin shrine in Tours.42 In ways we might regard as counter-intuitive, but which would not have surprised contemporaries, the desert becomes in the writings of Gregory an instrument of his rhetoric of dynastic legitimation.43 His point was to emphasize at once the earthly pedigree of his lineage, and to issue the reassurance that his family had no interest in this-worldly self-promotion. Conscripting the desert to very ancient norms of political discourse, Gregory argued that his family deserved power precisely because they were not interested in it. One example of episcopal authority backlit with this combination of dynastic and desert charisma which may have influenced Gregory more than he admitted (or than has been subsequently noticed) was furnished by Caesarius, bishop of Arles from 502 to 542.44 In Gregory’s world, Caesarius and his sister Caesaria were principally associated with the Rule for Virgins, which had been adopted by Radegund as the charter for her convent of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. Radegund’s story, from Gregory’s perspective, was not unlike that of Wulfoliac: she was a bona fide ascetic wrongfully persecuted by a clumsy and ignorant bishop, Maroveus of Poitiers.45 Both her good faith and Maroveus’s incompetence were exposed by Caesarius’s Rule, which could not have been more explicit about the terms on which bishop and convent were supposed to interact.46 Caesarius himself, in compiling and subsequently revising the Rule, had sought to condense in it all of the “wisdom of the desert” as acquired both through his erudition and his own experience. 42

Leyser, ‘ “Divine Power Flowed from This Book” ’ (see above, n. 5). See K. Cooper, ‘The Household and the Desert: Monastic and Biological Communities in the Lives of Melania the Younger,’ in The Household in the Christian Tradition, eds. A. Mulder-Bakker, J. Wogan Browne (Leiden, forthcoming). 44 W. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994); Leyser, Authority and Asceticism (see above, n. 13); and now A. Diem, Das monastische Experiment: Die Rolle der Keuschheit bei der Entstehung des westlichen Klosterwesens [Vita Regularis: Ordnungen und Deutungen religiösen Lebens im Mittelalter, Abhandlungen 24] (Munster, 2005). 45 Gregory of Tours, Decem libri historiarum 9.39-44, ed. B. Krusch, W. Levison [Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1.1] (Hannover, 1937-1951), pp. 460-75. 46 W. Klingshirn, ‘Caesarius’ Monastery for Women in Arles and the Composition and Function of the Vita Caesarii,’ Revue Bénédictine 100 (1990), 441-81. 43


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Caesarius seems to have been the last of the alumni of Lérins to go on to great things. In a well-known homily to the Lérins community, which deliberately evoked the panegyrics of previous generations, Caesarius hailed the island which had sent “so many mountains to the sky” — but there were none to follow him.47 There was another side to Caesarius’s relationship with Lérins. According to his biographers, who wrote shortly after his death, Caesarius had in fact been expelled as a destructive influence on the community, so extreme was his zeal for asceticism.48 He had been (re)schooled at Arles under Pomerius, the African grammarian, who, as I have shown elsewhere, had fully absorbed the lessons in taming the desert given by Augustine and Cassian.49 While the influence of these fifthcentury authorities and of Pomerius is pervasive throughout Caesarius’s work, his penchant for confrontation was unchecked. Where Gregory of Tours found ways to devolve the task of rooting out rusticitas, Caesarius exerted a centripetal force as a preacher, constantly invoking his own labors as an ascetic and his own responsibilities as a bishop against the unregenerate ways of the countryside. Back in Arles, confrontation was even more starkly drawn. Whether in setting up the convent, or in redeeming captives, Caesarius gave a pointedly and increasingly aggressive display as an ascetic pastor.50 This was not simply a function of his predilection for arguing: the structural problem at the core of Caesarius’s episcopacy was his vulnerability to the accusation of nepotism. He had made his sister abbess of the convent he had founded; when she died, she was succeeded by the bishop’s niece, while his nephew was the steward of the community. In this context, Caesarius seems to have decided, only a strident and unrelenting display of moral probity would serve to keep the hostile clergy of Arles at bay. In staging such a performance, he could draw directly on the example of Augustine, who had entrusted his sister with responsibility for a female community

47 Caesarius of Arles, Sermo 236.1, ed. G. Morin, 2 vols. [Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 103-4] (Turnhout, 1953), 2: 940-1. 48 Vita Caesarii 1.7, ed. B. Krusch [Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 3] (Hannover, 1896), pp. 459-60. 49 Leyser, Authority and Asceticism (see above, n. 13), pp. 65-80; on Pomerius’s later influence, see now M. Claussen, The Reform of the Frankish Church: Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula canonicorum in the Eighth Century (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 184-205. 50 W. Klingshirn, ‘Charity and Power: Caesarius of Arles and the Ransoming of Captives in Sub-Roman Gaul,’ Journal of Roman Studies 75 (1985), 184-203.

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at Hippo;51 and less directly on that of Antony, who, according to Athanasius had vested at least a portion of the family inheritance on his sister, whom he installed in a convent prior to his own withdrawal to the desert.52 Caesarius and Gregory of Tours, embattled as they were, appealed to the idea of the desert as a touchstone of invulnerability. In Athanasius’s unforgettable description, Antony had emerged from his enclosure after his battles with demons “neither fat, nor thin, but in perfect equipoise, untroubled by any emotion.”53 But this was not the only reading of the desert tradition open to bishops in the Latin West. There were those who sought, counter-intuitively, to dwell on the theme of vulnerability. An unmistakable feature of the Sayings collections is the extreme reluctance of the desert fathers to accept the kinds of moral power which their otherworldliness conferred upon them. In this very gesture of reluctance, ancient audiences would have recognized the desert father’s participation in the classical ethics of power as established from Plato onwards. Philosophers, Plato had argued in the Republic, should be kings precisely because they were not interested in power in this world. What distinguished Socrates from the Sophists was that he refused to be paid for his teaching: the truths he imparted were beyond price.54 The radical disdain for money and authority evinced by the desert fathers therefore vouchsafed their status as worthy successors to the ancient philosophical tradition. In a gesture to this tradition, classical magistrates would make a show of refusing office when offered it. From the fourth century, some bishops (and their biographers) sought to follow suit, and the tradition of nolo episcopari was born.55 We saw above Augustine’s avowal that he had considered fleeing to the desert: some of his contemporaries, notably Gregory of Nazianzen in his De fuga, went to the

51

See L. Verheijen, La Règle de S. Augustin, 2 vols. (Paris, 1967) for a discussion of the male and female versions of Augustine’s Rule. 52 Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (see above, n. 21); S. Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 1994). 53 Athanasius, Vita Antonii, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Graeca 26] (Paris, 1887), cols. 864-6. 54 M. Hénaff, Le prix de la vérité. Le don, l’argent, la philosophie (Paris, 2002). For a critique of philosopher kingship in a contemporary context, see M. Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics (New York, 2001). 55 J. Béranger, ‘Le refus du pouvoir,’ Museum Helveticum 5 (1948), 178-96; R. Lizzi, Il potere episcopale nell’Oriente romano: Rappresentazione ideologica e realtà politica (IV-V sec. d. C.) (Rome, 1987).


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lengths of acting this out. Latin bishops, from Ambrose to Gregory the Great and beyond, were to follow suit, and indeed to develop the language of reluctance to power into a sustained rhetoric of vulnerability while in power. In the sixth century, a limit case of this litany of protestation, and one where the use of the desert is especially prominent, is provided in the Life of Caesarius’s contemporary Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe from 502 to 532. According to his biographer, who wrote in the mid 530s, Fulgentius was a monk-bishop not content with one flight from office. Again and again, he is seen leaving all behind in search of the anonymity of the wilderness: each time the effort fails, and the bishop is returned to his seat. The drama of the secrecy he so desires and the recognition he reluctantly accepts is played out right up until Fulgentius’s last years: “About a year before he was taken from this world, moved by a profound compunction of heart, he [Fulgentius] suddenly gave up his Church duties. And, secretly departing from his monastery, accompanied by a few brothers, he sailed to the island of Cercina. There on a rocky promontory named Chilmi, he ordered a monastery to be built. . . . Now, on this island, all the more amply and seriously like a beginner, he mortified the body and wept in the sight of God alone. But many complained about the absence of their bishop and so, constrained by the requirements of charity, he went back to his monastery.”56 Intriguingly, none of this drama is apparent in the work of Fulgentius himself: he seems to have been a leader, like Caesarius, who was not afraid of confrontation, and unwaveringly Augustinian in his sense of duty to the wider community. He betrays no hint of a yearning for the desert. Almost willfully, then, Fulgentius’s biographer seems to have used the Life as an opportunity to challenge the cursus of the Christian leader as Augustine had established it. We may imagine the question propelling the Life of Fulgentius to be: “What would happen if an Augustinian bishop did not turn his back on the desert and on the example of Antony? Would it still be possible to combine the demands of charity with the demands of moral selfperfection?” The answer given by the Life is in the affirmative: for all his absences, the bishop never abdicates. Fulgentius’s effulgence — the pun is exploited fully in the Life — can never remain concealed 56 Vita sancti Fulgentii episcopi Ruspensis 28, trans. R. Eno (Washington, D.C., 1997), p. 55.

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for long. The purpose of his retreats is to make his brilliance shine all the more brightly.57 The Life of Fulgentius marks an important stage in the development of a specifically western tradition of the desert. Early on in the Life, the young Fulgentius is shown to be fluent in Greek and as a reader of Cassian, yearning to make for the “real” desert in the East. But he is persuaded not to go by the bishop of Syracuse, who notes that the deserts of the East are places of schism (the reference being to the Acacian schism, dividing the eastern patriarchate from Rome in the late fifth century).58 Fulgentius was happy to comply with the bishop, and his various ascetic adventures play out in the western Mediterranean. As his monastic contemporaries were showing, whatever warnings Augustine and Cassian may have given, there was plenty of desert living to be done in the West. Cenobitism and the Desert in the Sixth Century Around the time of the death of Cassian, in the mid 430s, a well born young man from what is now the Franche Comté made his way deep into the forests of the Jura. This imitator Antonii — in the words of his hagiographer, writing some three generations later in the early sixth century — found a large pine under which to take shelter both from the heat and the cold. He lived an angelic life, as it were in a perpetual springtime, far from human habitation or cultivation, at the junction of two rivers, with only the beasts and the occasional hunter for company.59 In our sixth-century account, Romanus is the first of three Jura fathers: he is joined by his brother Lupicinus, and their successor, Eugendus, at whose death the author had been present. Our author, a monk at Romanus’s foundation at Condat, dedicates his Life of the Jura Fathers to two monks at the monastery of Saint Maurice at Agaune, at the other end of Lake Geneva, founded by the Burgundian King Sigismund in 515, and destined for an illustrious future. 57 C. Leyser, ‘ “A Wall Protecting the City”: Conflict and Authority in the Life of Fulgentius of Ruspe,’ paper presented at the congress ‘Fondamenti del potere e conflitti d’autorità nel monachesimo tardo-antico/Foundations of Power and Conflicts of Authority in Late Antique Monasticism,’ Turin, 2-4 December, 2004, the proceedings of which are currently in press. 58 Vita Fulgentii 8, ed. G.-G. Lapeyre (Paris, 1929), pp. 47-53. 59 Vita patrum Iurensium 1.8, 12, ed. F. Martine [Sources Chrétiennes 142] (Paris, 1968), pp. 246 and 252.


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The Life of the Jura Fathers deserves a wider audience than it has to date received. In the influential “cartographic” schema of Gallic monasticism propounded first by Friedrich Prinz, which postulates a division between, on the one hand, the monastic culture of the Touraine, associated with Saint Martin, and, on the other, that radiating out from Lérins, the Jura text appears to be an anomaly in that it draws on both northern and southern contexts with equal fluency.60 For textual scholars of the development of regular cenobitism in the Latin West, the Life of the Jura Fathers, or more precisely, a supposedly lost section of the text, has been seen as a “missing link” between the fifth-century Gallic Rules of the Fathers associated (by some) with Lérins, and the sixth-century Italian Rules of the Master, Eugippius of Lucullanum and Benedict.61 This suggestion has not met with widespread support — but this need not be the end of the story. A different discussion can begin if, instead of using the Life to explain the Rules, we see both in the context of the monastic development of the desert tradition in the Latin West. No less than their episcopal colleagues, abbots in this period sought to revisit the desert, in the face of the fifth-century warnings, as they sought to give definition to the theory and practice of monastic community. The signal interest of the Life of the Jura Fathers is that it charts the development of the community beyond the death of the founder: it is thus a study in the “routinization of charisma” — or rather, a sustained investigation of how to avoid it, how to retain the magic of the desert while devising workable structures for community life. Having introduced Romanus as a modern Antony inhabiting a place of Paradise on earth, the Life shows him to be a healer of lepers, and a spiritual father for a growing number of disciples. The Jura forest, like Antony’s desert, becomes a city. Without embarrassment, the author then goes on to describe the tension in the now swollen body of followers. An old man comes to Romanus to complain about the arrival of too many young men “in rabid ambition, walking tall

60 F. Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich. Kultur und Gesellschaft in Gallien, den Rheinlandern und Bayern am Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung (4. bis 8. Jahrhundert) (Munich, 1965), as reviewed by M. Wallace-Hadrill, English Historical Review 83 (1968), 370-1. 61 F. Masai, ‘Recherches sur le texte originel du De humilitate de Cassien (Inst 4.39) et des Règles du Maître (RM 10) et de Benoît (RB 70),’ in Latin Script and Letters, AD 400-900, Festschrift L. Bieler, eds. J. O’Meara, B. Nauman (Leiden, 1976), pp. 236-63.

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on their proud high heels,” hoping that membership of Romanus’s community would be serve as a springboard into clerical office.62 Surely it would be better to identify an elite of true (old) monks, and expel the rest, continues the senior. Not so, insists Romanus, striking a clear Augustinian tone in a text which has hitherto been redolent of the works of Cassian. He rebukes the old man for his pride, and makes the case for the community as a mixed body. Only God is in a position to make the segregation proposed by the elder.63 The tension continues in the abbacy of Romanus’s brother Lupicinus, who goes to great lengths spiritually to correct and physically to heal an elder who had been making a point of extreme self-denial. In so doing, as I have argued elsewhere, Lupicinus himself effectively agrees to adopt a “quieter” form of leadership than the pioneering style favored by Romanus.64 That this does not mean the “disenchantment” of the monastery is vouchsafed in the account of the third abbot, Eugendus. As a boy, in the company of Romanus and Lupicinus, he had been granted a vision of angels descending and ascending into heaven, modeled on Jacob’s dream in the wilderness: “Little by little, with great care, the troop of angels began to mingle with the crowd of mortals; the angels pick up these mortal creatures, join together with them, and singing in unison go back upwards towards the heavens from which they came.”65 The charmed life in the wilds of the Jura first led by Romanus, in other words, continues into the next generation. If the triptych of Romanus, Lupicinus, and Eugendus allows us to track the development of a community (or the memory of a community) across the best part of a century, then the three Italian Rules for cenobites — the Rule of the Master, the Rule attributed to Eugippius of Lucullanum, and the Rule of Saint Benedict — allow us to see three interrelated versions of the same tradition, formed possibly within one generation. This is not the place to revisit the intricacies of how these texts might be related.66 What bears emphasis here is what the

62 Vita patrum Iurensium 21, ed. Martine (see above, n. 59), p. 262. The context for the reference to “high heels” is the late Roman theatre. 63 Vita patrum Iurensium 29-34, ed. Martine, pp. 280-96. 64 C. Leyser, ‘Angels, Monks, and Demons in the Early Medieval West,’ in Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages, eds. R. Gameson, H. Leyser (Oxford, 2001), pp. 9-22. 65 Vita patrum Iurensium 123, ed. Martine (see above, n. 59), pp. 370-2. 66 Leyser, Authority and Asceticism (see above, n. 13), pp. 108-17.


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Rules have in common. Taken together, what the Rules represent is the emergence, and evidently the iteration, of a powerful ideology of male monastic stability. Like the Life of the Jura Fathers, the Italian Rules, in particular the so-called Rule of Eugippius, and the Rule of Saint Benedict, manage to conscript an Augustinian focus on the monastery as an institution with Cassian’s technology of moral purification. The result is the birth of the western regular cenobitic tradition — the development of practical handbooks (Rules) outlining precisely the exterior and interior requirements of a community life. This definition of monastic community owed more to the desert than might be apparent from the Rule of Saint Benedict’s somewhat wary attitude towards the eremitical life. If we turn aside from this particular prescription towards the sixth-century manuscript context in which these Rules have survived, the “desert context” of Latin regular cenobitism emerges with greater clarity. The earliest copy of the Rule of the Master and our only copy of the Rule of Eugippius survive in two late sixth-century codices, both of which made their way to Corbie in the eighth century.67 It is clear that one of these books (that containing the Rule of the Master) is a programmatic compilation; the codicological unity of the other is in greater dispute, but we have argued elsewhere that a case can be made that the volume, while slightly more haphazard in presentation, can be considered as more than the sum of its discrete parts.68 An overview of both books suggests that their compilers regarded their Rule texts as part of the wider patristic inheritance. Seen from this perspective, two features stand out in these manuscripts — the particular authority of Augustine, as framed within the wider authority of the desert.69 The Augustine transmitted here speaks as a monk to other monks: we have a copy of Augustine’s On Correction and Grace and associated correspondence, written in the late 420’s to monks at Hadrumetum who had sought reassurance that Augustine’s theology of grace and free will did not obviate their

67 The manuscripts are: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 12205 and MS Lat. 12634; St.-Petersburg Q. v. I 5. See F. Masai, H. Vanderhoven, Édition diplomatique des manuscrits latins 12205 et 12634 de Paris (Brussels and Paris, 1953). 68 C. Leyser, ‘Excavating the Passion of SS John and Paul (BHL 3242): Early Medieval Contexts for the “Vetustissimus” of Corbie,’ in Religion and Dynasty in a Christian City: Rome, 300-900, eds. K. Cooper, J. Hillner (Cambridge, forthcoming). 69 Masai and Vanderhoven, Édition diplomatique (see above, n. 67), p. 33.

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ascetic effort; and a text explicitly identified as the Regula sancti Augustini.70 The desert, meanwhile, is all around, in the shape of Evagrius’s Sentences for Monks, Ephrem the Syrian’s Institutio ad monacos and long extracts from Cassian, quoted directly in the cento-Rule ascribed to Eugippius, or blended into the continuous prose of the Rule of the Master. The latter, a huge text stretching to nearly one hundred folios is prefaced by the three-folio Rule of the Fathers. This short text, transmitted otherwise through southern Gaul, is constructed as a dialogue between four desert fathers: Serapion, Macarius, Paphnutius, and a second Macarius. The implication is that their consultation authorizes everything which follows: there can be few clearer indices of the determination of western cenobitism to locate its point of origin as the Egyptian desert. From the vantage point of these codices, we may return to the seemingly negative assessment of the eremitic life given by the Rule of Saint Benedict. The Rule shares with the texts in these codices (and with the Rule of Eugippius in particular) a concern to hold in one field of vision the Augustinian idea of community with the moral striving of the desert tradition. As in the codices, the former concern is framed by the latter. The Rule of Saint Benedict’s initial reluctance to see untried ascetics heading for the hermit life is balanced by its closing exhortation to read Cassian.71 We may recall the bishop of Syracuse’s advice to the young Fulgentius of Ruspe: while hastening to Egypt or Syria may be discouraged, the ascetic project itself is fully endorsed. The desert may not be a destination in the Rule of Saint Benedict, but it is the point of origin from which all else draws its meaning. The Desert and the End Times If we are to believe Gregory the Great, then Benedict, like Jerome, saw dancing girls in his chosen desert.72 These girls, however, were real, sent by a jealous subordinate to disrupt the communities Benedict

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See Verheijen, La Règle de S. Augustin (see above, n. 51). Regula Benedicti 73.5, ed. de Vogüé, Neufville (see above, n. 38), 2: 672; see A. de Vogüé, ‘Les mentions des oeuvres de Cassien chez Benôit et ses contemporains,’ Studia Monastica 20 (1978), 275-85. 72 Gregory the Great, Dialogorum libri quatuor 2.8.4, ed. de Vogüé (see above, n. 39), 2: 162. 71


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had established. In the Dialogues, whence this story comes, Gregory went to great lengths to catalogue the miraculous deeds of Italian holy men and women, involving many a tale of heroism in the Italian wilderness. In his scriptural exegesis meanwhile, through a relentless scrutiny of difficult Old Testament books and of his own experience, Gregory argued consistently that it was impossible satisfactorily to combine the active and contemplative lives as a Christian leader — but necessary to make the attempt to do so.73 For the sake of the whole body of the faithful, leaders had therefore to live with a permanent and aching sense of dissatisfaction. The result of Gregory’s labors was to give definitive articulation to the desert father’s intuition into the vulnerability of authority. As has long been understood, and recently re-emphasized, Gregory’s contribution permanently inflected the moral tone of political discourse in the Latin West.74 The abiding irony is that this was not Gregory’s intention. Convinced that the end times were near, he devoted all his efforts to reaching all the faithful, monks or otherwise. For Gregory, then, the desert was a sign of the monastic past, not of the eschatological future. In purely practical terms, seeking out the desert in Italy after the Gothic wars and the Lombard invasions was no longer a desideratum.75 In 577, the Lombards sacked the community of Montecassino, and Benedict’s disciples took refuge in Rome. The experience of urban exile may have confirmed their master’s teaching that the desert was not lightly to be sought, and that safety lay in obedience to an abbot and a Rule. Not everyone shared Gregory’s sense of eschatological time. Gregory of Tours, for example, while recording Gregory’s election and his sermon on the plague with evident interest and approval, did not see everywhere the signs of the end. Nor was it by any means agreed that the monastic desert was a thing of the past. In fact, if we scan forward through the early medieval centuries, we can see that the reluctance to assume authority encoded in the desert tradition could be overpowering, especially for new converts less familiar, perhaps, 73 A primary theme of C. Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988). 74 J. Leclercq, L’amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu: initiation aux auteurs monastiques du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1957), trans. K. Misrahi (New York, 1963), p. 26; Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom (see above, n. 3). 75 T. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy, AD 554-800 (Rome, 1984) remains an excellent guide.

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with the tropes of ancient political discourse. As Clare Stancliffe has shown, there were a number of kings in the British Isles in the seventh century who “opted out,” none more so dramatically than King Sigebert of the East Angles, who abandoned the field of battle under stress of otherworldly conviction and became a monk.76 Sigebert’s abdication is a reminder that the stylite Wulfoliac’s climbdown from his pillar is far from being the end of the story of the desert in the West.

76 C. Stancliffe, ‘Kings Who Opted out,’ in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and AngloSaxon Society: Studies Presented to J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. P. Wormald (Oxford, 1983), pp. 154-76.

COLLECTING THE DESERT IN THE CAROLINGIAN WEST Lynda L. Coon Abstract The Egyptian desert summoned for its early medieval progeny memories of a past age of superhuman askêsis that posed a challenge to Carolingian attempts at Benedictine hegemony. In response, the architects of ninth-century monastic reform labored to present their votaries with a carefully controlled memory of the Egyptian past, and they did so through a propagandistic aesthetic of literary, visual, and ritual “bricolage.” Ja≤ Elsner defines this aesthetic of bricolage as an artistic form based on symbolic ownership of the past through the display of ancient spolia on contemporary monuments (e.g., the sculptured reliefs collected from past, imperial regimes and exhibited as spolia on the Arch of Constantine) or the layering of present-day texts with past literary forms (e.g., Christian typological exegesis of Hebrew Scripture). Similarly, for the Carolingians, who also ventured into the artistic realm of bricolage, collecting, embodying, and displaying were methods of exerting control over the past.

Introduction Carolingian ascetic intellectuals were connoisseurs and collectors of the textual and material vestiges of the Golden Age of desert asceticism. For example, the Carolingian monastic reformer, Benedict of Aniane, collected ancient monastic Rules from both East and West, including those of the Egyptian Pachomius and the Cappadocian exegete and ascetic, Basil. Benedict’s stockpile of regulae had an educational and liturgical purpose, for the over 300 monks at Aniane heard daily lectures on these historic texts as part of their morning assembly.1 The end result of Benedict’s 30-year program of amassing

1 For Benedict’s collecting of texts and their incorporation into the morning assembly, see Ardonis vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensis 38, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach [Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores 15.1] (Hannover, 1963), p. 217: Fecit denique librum ex regulis diversorum patrum collectum, ita ut prior beati Benedicti regula cunctis esset, quem omni tempore ad collectam matutino legere iussit. (“He caused a book to be compiled from the rules of various fathers, so that blessed Benedict’s Rule might be foremost in the minds of all. He gave orders to read it all the time in the morning at assembly.”). This passage and subsequent translations are from Thomas F.X.


chrc 86, 1-4

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documents from all over the empire is his famous Concordia regularum (ca. 820).2 In the Concordia, the Carolingian master administrator demonstrates how early ascetic practice harmonizes with each chapter of Benedict of Nursia’s sixth-century Rule, which the abbot of Aniane had worked hard to impose throughout the empire.3 Benedict’s sacred biography, penned by Ardo, a monk of Aniane, achieves the same ascetic harmony by focusing on the bodily transformation of the saint. Ardo traces the ascetic development of his spiritual mentor from the saint’s initial experimentations with desert-style self-mortification to his inevitable submission to the temperate rhythms of the Benedictine Rule. In effect, the abbot of Aniane’s ascetic resume parallels the achievement of the codex of the Concordia in that it joins the history of eastern and western askêsis into one, physical space: the body of the holy man. At the monastery of Fulda, the spiritual and intellectual jewel of the Carolingian empire, Abbot Eigil (ca. 818-822) created an architectural version of Benedict’s Concordia regularum (see Plate 1).4 Just as the abbot of Aniane had sought to unite the ascetic practices of East and West in one, accessible space, Fulda’s celebrated architectural

Noble and Thomas Head, Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park, Penn., 1995), p. 247. 2 For the text of the Concordia and an introduction to its manuscript history, see Benedicti Anianensis concordia regularum, ed. Pierre Bonnerue, 2 vols. [Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 168, 168A] (Turnhout, 1999). 3 For the Carolingian program of Benedictine hegemony, see the decrees of the Aachen councils (816-817) in Legislatio Aquisgranensis, ed. Josef Semmler [Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum 1] (Siegburg, 1963), pp. 435-81. For an overview of Carolingian monastic reform, see Mayke De Jong, ‘Carolingian Monasticism: The Power of Prayer,’ in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Rosamond McKitterick, 7 vols. (Cambridge, 1995), 2: 622-53; and Arnold Angenendt, Das Frühmittelalter: Die abendländische Christenheit von 400 bis 900 (Stuttgart, 1990), pp. 317-27 and 366-74. 4 See Gereon Becht-Jördens, ‘Text, Bild und Architektur als Träger einer ekklesiologischen Konzeption von Klostergeschichte: Die karolingische Vita Aegil des Brun Candidus von Fulda (ca. 840),’ in Hagiographie und Kunst: Der Heiligenkult in Schrift, Bild und Architektur, ed. Gottfried Kerscher (Berlin, 1993), pp. 75-106. Janneke E. Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space: History and Identity at the Monastery of Fulda (744-856) (Ph.D.-thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2003), pp. 93-133 also provides an excellent analysis of the Fulda building campaign under Abbots Ratgar, Eigil, and Hrabanus (as well as the famous conflict in the abbey over Ratgar’s ambitious architectural program). The author wishes to thank Dr. Raaijmakers for the gift of a copy of her important dissertation. Finally, Werner Jacobsen places the Fulda crypts within the larger architectural context of Frankish tombs. See his ‘Saints’ Tombs in Frankish Church Architecture,’ Speculum 72 (1997), 1107-43.

collecting the desert in the carolingian west

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western cloister (ca. 822)

altar to the Salvator

Boniface shrine

eastern atrium

Salvator basilica at Fulda, plan of the ground floor (ca. 802–819) N 0

crypt-altar dedicated to western monastic founders

20m

crypt-altar dedicated to the eastern desert hermits

Salvator crypt, hypothetical floor plan (ca. 819)

Plate 1: Reconstruction of the Salvator basilica at Fulda, after Charles McClendon, Origins of Medieval Architecture. Building in Europe, AD c. 600-900 (New Haven, 2005), p. 159 (Fig. 162). Copyright permission granted by Yale University Press.

renovations (ca. 790s-820s) encapsulated in material form the history of Christian self-abnegation. The monks of Fulda dedicated an eastern crypt to the relics of luminaries of desert asceticism, including the Egyptians Antony, Athanasius, and Paul of Thebes. The western crypt housed the remains of Italian and Northern European dynasts and intellectuals: Benedict of Nursia, Columbanus, Cuthbert, and Bede (among others). The two subterranean crypts were the foundations upon which the monastic edifice rose, especially its distinguishing feature: the western apse-shrine of Fulda’s patron, the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface (ca. 680-754). Pilgrims who came to Fulda to venerate the holy dead could negotiate — by walking through the spaces of the two crypts — the entire history of Christian asceticism, from its Egyptian origins through its northern European continuation. The basilica invited its spectators to perceive the life and martyrdom of Boniface as the climax of that history, and, by

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extension, the Fulda monks as its supreme heirs.5 Fulda’s resident poet (vates) and future abbot, Hrabanus Maurus (ca. 780-856), composed a series of architectural tituli to commemorate the abbey’s collecting of relics of Christ’s passion, the apostles, Egyptian hermits, Roman martyrs, patristic authors, and northern missionaries.6 Overall, the built environment of Fulda functions as a kind of cabinet of curiosities, wherein the Carolingian predilection for collecting and displaying ascetic and biblical artifacts is manifested.7 The abbey basilica also offers architectural testimony to the monks’ expertise at producing material histories of the evolution of the Church, from its evangelical origins through its Frankish present-day.8 The political message of both the Aniane and Fulda projects is clear: the West and its cenobitic founders represent the culmination, and perfection, of the grand narrative of Christian asceticism. The evidence for this natural progression from East to West can be found in three distinct places: a codex, such as the Concordia; a body, such as that of a perfected, Benedictine monk; or a basilica, such as the abbey church at Fulda. This fusion of eastern and western spiritual styles into a single space is part of a larger program of monastic reform, wherein Carolingian churchmen sought to assemble the disparate threads of past, religious wisdom (collected from numerous, ancient volumes) into one codex (in uno codice).9 The enterprise of 5 For the liturgical and material history of the veneration of Saint Boniface at Fulda (and beyond), see Petra Kehl, Kult und Nachleben des heiligen Bonifatius im Mittelalter (754-1200) [Quellen und Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Abtei und der Diözese Fulda 26] (Fulda, 1993), pp. 32-43. 6 See Hrabanus Maurus, Tituli ecclesiae Fuldensis, ed. Ernst Dümmler [Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini 2] (Berlin, 1884), pp. 205-14. 7 On the ability of medieval relics to evoke wonder and their affinities with early modern cabinets of curiosity, see Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750 (New York, 1998), pp. 68-74. On relics as curiosities, see Adalgisa Lugli, Naturalia et Mirabilia: Il collezionismo enciclopedico nelle Wunderkammern d’Europa (Milan, 1983), pp. 13-6. On early medieval relic collecting, see Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300900 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 283-318. 8 For the classic discussion of how the built environment of the cloister produces theological and contemplative spaces, see Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, 1991), pp. 216-7. 9 For example, Hrabanus Maurus’s colleagues frequently hounded him to collect patristic lore on various aspects of the Church institution. See the preface to his important work De institutione clericorum (ca. 819), ed. Detlev Zimpel [Freiburger Beiträge zur Mittelalterlichen Geschichte: Studien und Texte 7] (Frankfurt, 1996), pp. 281-2: Sed non in hoc satis eis facere potui, qui me instantissime postulabant immo cogebant, ut omnia haec in unum volumen congerem, ut haberent, quo aliquo modo inquisitionibus suis satisfacerent, et in uno codice simul scriptum reperirent, quod antea non simul, sed speciatim


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collecting served a greater political ambition on the part of Carolingian abbots and royal dynasts: imposing one rule and one custom (una regula, una consuetudo) throughout the empire’s monasteries.10 The Carolingian penchant for collecting texts and artifacts is also evocative of what Ja≤ Elsner ingeniously defines as an “aesthetic of bricolage,” a late antique artistic form based on symbolic ownership of the past through the display of ancient spolia on contemporary monuments (for example, the sculptured reliefs collected from past, imperial regimes and exhibited as spolia on the Arch of Constantine) or the layering of present-day texts with past literary forms (e.g., Christian typological exegesis of Hebrew Scripture).11 Visual and literary bricolage, Elsner argues, works to “conflate past and present and display the past only in so far as the past is validated by, fulfilled in and made meaningful through the present.”12 Similarly, for the Carolingians, who also ventured into the artistic realm of “bricolage,” collecting, embodying, and displaying were methods of exerting control over the past.13 For instance, the myth of the Egyptian desert summoned for its early medieval progeny memories of a past age of superhuman askêsis that posed a challenge to Carolingian attempts at Benedictine hegemony and its goal of una regula, una consuetudo. In response, the architects of ninth-century monastic reform labored to present their votaries with a carefully controlled memory of the Egyptian past, and they did so precisely through a propagandistic aesthetic of literary, visual, and ritual bricolage.14 singuli, prout interrogabant, in foliis scripta habuerant. (“But in this I did not have the power to perform satisfactorily for those who were demanding — nay, compelling — me most urgently, that I gather together all of these writings into one volume, so that they might possess them, and, on account of this, they would be satisfied to some degree with respect to their [earlier] queries. Moreover, they would discover in one codex writing conveniently assembled which previously had not been collected together, for they used to inquire in particular about having a single text, as they already possessed writings in [disparate] folia.”). 10 The desire for “one rule” and “one custom” discussed in Josef Semmler, ‘Benedictus II: una regula — una consuetudo,’ in Benedictine Culture 750-1050, eds. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst [Mediaevalia Lovaniensia Series I, Studia 11] (Louvain, 1983), pp. 1-49. 11 Ja≤ Elsner, ‘From the Culture of Spolia to the Cult of Relics: The Arch of Constantine and the Genesis of Late Antique Forms,’ Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000), 149-84. 12 Elsner, ‘Culture of Spolia to Cult of Relics,’ 176. 13 For the political implications of collecting, see Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore, 1984), pp. 132-69. 14 Elsner, ‘Culture of Spolia to Cult of Relics’ (see above, n. 11), 178, notes that

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Literary Bricolage The sacred biography of Benedict of Aniane, for example, leaves its audience with an ambiguous impression of the heroic qualities of desert askêsis. As an adult convert to the eremitic life, Benedict’s initial ascetic style is intensely eastern. The holy man viewed his flesh as a “bloodthirsty beast” that had to be conquered: “He [Benedict] had a cheap old tunic that he did not change until many days had elapsed. Inevitably a colony of lice grew on his filthy skin, feeding on his limbs emaciated by fasts. His cowls were threadbare with extreme age.”15 Furthermore, Ardo bids his audience of reformminded Carolingians to muse on a Benedict who is at first disdainful of his namesake’s Rule: “Declaring that the Rule of blessed Benedict was for beginners and weak persons, he strove to climb up to the precepts of blessed Basil and the Rule of blessed Pachomius.” Ardo also uses the wizened, ill-clad body of the self-torturing Benedict as instructional text and cautionary tale. The neophyte monk inscribes his contempt for the “lax” Benedictine Rule on his own flesh, rejecting the Regula as a fluff-piece for “young recruits and the infirm.”16 The hagiographer’s depiction of the militant asceticism, rituals of self-mortification so severe that they cause the holy man’s shriveled flesh to hang from his bones “like the dewlaps of oxen,” is so outrageous that it might just be farcical.17 In fact, Ardo cleverly juxtaposes Benedict of Nursia’s final directive to his flock (“keep this little

the medieval aesthetic of spoliation owes much to the “bold and brilliant uses of art, spolia, and relics in the state propaganda of Constantine.” For a discussion of the role of memory in the formation of collective, religious identities, see Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago, 1992), pp. 84-119. For Carolingian collective memory, see Rosamond McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004). For the collective memory of the monks of Fulda, see Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), pp. 21-55. 15 Ardonis vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensis 2, ed. Wattenbach (see above, n. 1), p. 202: Erat itaque vilis ei et pervetusta tunica, quam nonnisi plures exactos mutabat dies. Quapropter copia pediculorum in squalenti surgebat cute, a quibus ieiuniis adtenuata depascebantur membra. Cocullae illi nimia erant vetustate consumptae; trans. Noble and Head (see above, n. 1), p. 219. Pierre Bonnerue, Benedicti Anianensis (see above, n. 2), p. 34, discusses Ardo’s description of Benedict’s desert-style asceticism. 16 Ardonis vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensis 2, ed. Wattenbach, p. 202: Regulam quoque beati Benedicti tironibus seu infirmis positam fore contestans; trans. Noble and Head (see above, n. 1), p. 219. 17 Ardonis vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensis 2, ed. Wattenbach, p. 202: . . . pellis ossibus inherebat hac in modum pallearia bovum rugata pendebat; trans. Noble and Head, pp. 219-20.


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Rule that we have written for beginners. After that, you can set out for the loftier summits of the teaching and virtues”) with the holy man’s over-the-top performance of the Rule’s parting instruction.18 Clearly, the hagiographer wants his audience to associate the imperative to seek “the loftier summits” of ascetic practice with the easternstyle, bone-jarring askêsis practiced by the inexperienced holy man. Miraculously, Ardo reports that the novice ceased this physical brutality to embrace the moderate asceticism and corporate culture of the Holy Rule: “He was inflamed with love of the Rule of Benedict, and like a new athlete (novus atleta) just back from single combat he entered the field to fight publicly.”19 In this section of the Vita the hagiographer plays off of a famous line of the Benedictine Rule, which suggests that perfected monks will eventually abandon the monastery to engage in individual battle against the Devil in the wilderness: “They [hermits] have built up their strength and go from the battle line in the ranks of their brothers to the single combat of the desert.”20 In Benedict of Nursia’s vision of the ascetic life, the monastery appears to be a transitional place for those who are destined for staggering renunciation in the desert. The Carolingian version reverses the order of this vexing section of the Rule by demoting the desert to mere initiatory space, a preparatory stage in the early development of the cenobitic practitioner.21 Whereas the Concordia offers harmony between the ascetic practices of East and West,22 the Vita of Benedict of Aniane goes for dissonance: the Regulae of Basil and Pachomius — the featured eastern rules in the Concordia — lead the young monk

18

Regula Benedicti 73.8-9, ed. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, Minn., 1981), p. 296. The author wishes to thank Eric Saak for this point. 19 Ardonis vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensis 2, ed. Wattenbach, p. 202 (see above, n. 1): . . . in amore prefati viri Benedicti regulae accenditur, et veluti de singulari certamine novus atleta ad campum publice pugnaturus accessit; trans. Noble and Head (see above, n. 1), p. 220. 20 Regula Benedicti 1.5, ed. Fry (see above, n. 18), p. 168. 21 The reversal from hermit to monk also occurs in the model text for Benedict of Aniane’s Vita: Gregory the Great’s hagiographical portrait of Benedict of Nursia. The author wishes to thank Conrad Leyser for this point. For a discussion of the tension between eremitic and cenobitic ascetic styles in both the Rule and in Gregory’s sacred biography of Benedict, see Conrad Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2000), pp. 101-59. 22 The structure of the Concordia itself, however, offers an inherent (and unavoidable) imbalance between eastern and western rules, for as Pierre Bonnerue notes, Benedict’s access to eastern texts was extremely limited. See his introduction to the text of Benedict’s Concordia (see above, n. 2), pp. 125-6.

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to a self-conscious and apprentice-style askêsis. Ardo’s clever hagiographical strategy enables him to present his subject saint as a selfmutilator reformed by the wise sanction of the Benedictine Rule, while still making the point that the ascetic prowess of this Carolingian monk could have trumped the legendary austerity of the Egyptian fathers. The eastern Rules thus operate as literary spolia in the Vita. Their presence enables Ardo to display his knowledge (and ownership) of historic texts — and he clearly expects his audience to possess the same level of erudition — while his ascetic portrait of the abbot of Aniane makes it clear that the western ascetic regime has eclipsed its desert counterpart. Carolingian hagiographers employ this skillful literary tactic of incorporating, superseding, and inevitably rejecting desert rigor throughout the sacred biographies of the “founding fathers” of Frankish monasticism. For instance, the Abbot Eigil’s Life of the founder of Fulda, Sturm (ca. 715-779), transforms the cloister’s neighboring hills and forests, a region referred to as Buchonia in Carolingian texts, into desert landscapes and the saint and his hermit-votaries into Golden Age ascetics.23 According to Eigil, Sturm, a Bavarian nobleman and disciple of Boniface, abandons his fledging career as a priest-scholar to take up the penitential life in the wilderness (in eremo) around the future site of the abbey of Fulda. Sturm and two other hermits enter this heavily wooded region and construct a hermitage at Hersfeld. In imitation of Egyptian anchorites who fashion primitive dwellings using organic, local materials, the Sturm-group build shabby cells

23 Discussed by Maria-Elisabeth Brunert, ‘Fulda als Kloster in eremo: Zentrale Quellen über die Gründung im Spiegel der hagiographischen Tradition,’ in Kloster Fulda in der Welt der Karolinger und Ottonen, ed. Gangolf Schrimpf (Frankfurt, 1996), pp. 59-78, and by Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), pp. 737. The date of the Vita Sturmi is currently the subject of much debate among scholars, but Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), pp. 68-72, makes a convincing argument for its creation during the abbacy of Eigil (818-822). For the Life, see Pius Engelbert, Die Vita Sturmi des Eigil von Fulda: Literarkritisch-historische Untersuchung und Edition [Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen und Waldeck 29] (Marburg, 1968), detailed introduction to the context and manuscript history, pp. 5-127; text is on pp. 131-63. Engelbert (pp. 18-20) reviews the various theories regarding the date of the Vita and proposes ca. 794-800 as the appropriate range. English translation of the Vita Sturmi is available in Noble and Head (see above, n. 1), pp. 166-87. Hrabanus Maurus in his famous dedicatory poem De laudibus sanctae crucis (ca. 814) A.2.7-8, ed. M. Perrin [Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 100] (Turnhout, 1997), p. 58 refers to the heavily wooded region around Fulda as the silvae Bochoniae.


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(habitacula) and roof them with the bark of trees.24 Residing in “uncultivated places of solitude” (solitudinis agrestia loca), the hermits could see only earth, sky, and massive trees.25 The simple structure of the hermitage symbolically links its inhabitants to the natural world, for the ascetics exist as feral beings on the fringes of human society. The Sturm-group rejects intoxicating drink and imbibes only weak beer (tenuis cerevisia) because, the hagiographer stresses, sacred texts spell out that intoxicants are incompatible with the starkness of the anchoritic life.26 The rejection of alcohol enables the latter-day, winedrinking Fulda community to share in the abstemious, desert style of the original group. Eigil describes the hermit Sturm as fettering himself to a squalid and intensely confining desert lifestyle.27 During one of the saint’s forays into the Frankish badlands (modeled both on desert vitae and biblical stories of wandering prophets), Sturm encounters a throng of naked Slavs swimming and bathing in the channel of the River Fulda.28 The Slavs’ foul stench ( foetor) repels both the holy man and his faithful donkey in a rather clumsy re-creation of the famous story from the Old Testament of the prophet Balaam and his talking she-ass.29 Balaam is an appealing 24 Vita Sturmi 4, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), p. 134: . . . parva arborum corticibus tecta instruunt habitacula. 25 Vita Sturmi 4, ed. Engelbert, p. 134: . . . praeter caelum ac terram et ingentes arbores pene nihil cernentes. For a desert parallel, see Jerome’s late fourth-century Life of the hermit Malchus, where the holy man says that he is only able to see “sky and earth,” Vita Malchi 7, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 23] (Paris, 1845), pp. 59-60. As Brunert, ‘Fulda als Kloster in eremo’ (see above, n. 23), p. 63, notes, Jerome’s depiction of the desert landscape exerts a major influence on Carolingian hagiography. 26 Vita Sturmi 13, ed. Engelbert, p. 145: . . . ut apud illos nulla potio fortis qua inebriari possit, sed tenuis cerevisia biberetur. Boniface himself had advised the Sturm-group that alcohol was incompatible with desert rigor. This rejection of intoxicants occurs when the Sturm-group builds its first hermitage at the future site of the Fulda abbey. Eigil adds here that a Church synod convened during the reign of Louis the Pious relaxed this stricture and only a few monks of his day refused alcohol. 27 Vita Sturmi 4, ed. Engelbert, p. 133: ut arctiori se vita et eremi squalore constringeret. The use of squalor here is, as Brunert, ‘Fulda als Kloster in eremo’ (see above, n. 23), p. 67, points out, stems from Cassian’s portrait of the desert in his Conferences. 28 Vita Sturmi 7, ed. Engelbert, p. 139: . . . ibi magnam Sclavorum multitudinem repperit, eiusdem fluminis alveo gratia lavandis corporibus se immersisse. Engelbert (pp. 82-3) rejects the arguments of past scholars, who had maintained that Sturm happened to be upon a group transport of slaves from the East. He proposes instead that these bathers were indeed Slavs, who had settled in Thuringia and Francia during the eighth century and had continued to live in autonomous enclaves. 29 Num. 22, 22-35. For the Balaam topos in Carolingian hagiography and exegesis, see Lynda L. Coon, ‘Historical Fact and Exegetical Fiction in the Carolingian Vita S. Sualonis,’ Church History 72 (2003), 1-24.

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figure for hagiographers of Carolingian frontier saints because the Mesopotamian prophet resides in a middle ground between God’s chosen people (the Israelites) and neighboring infidels (the Moabites). Like Balaam’s donkey, Sturm’s beast of burden possesses the power of discerning supernatural beings, for the cavorting and stinking Slavs cause the creature to quiver with fear. The Slavs here assume the role of polluted and lascivious desert demons, which taunt and abuse (subsanno, “to insult by derisive gestures”) the roving holy man and his spiritually perceptive ass. The textual portrait of these depraved pagans would bring to the initiated reader/hearer’s mind narratives of traveling hermits menaced by marauding desert nomads.30 In the face of such loathsome enemies, Sturm immediately takes off for his hermitage located on “higher ground,” a spot favored by First Covenant prophets, including Balaam, who blesses the Israelites atop a mountain cliff overlooking a “wasteland.”31 Reminiscent of Balaam, Sturm occupies a liminal space between God’s elect (Christians) and idolatrous populations (pagan Slavs). The holy man’s retreat to a craggy hilltop to escape the demonic Slavs is a clear metaphor for the spiritual ascent accomplished through the treacherous life of selfabnegation. In this section of the Vita, Eigil intensifies the exoticism of place by presenting Buchonia as a frontier zone between the civilized West and the barbarous East.32 Chapter 5 of the Vita achieves a similar rhetorical effect by having Sturm’s spiritual guru, Boniface, urge the hermit to withdraw further into the wilderness because the Saxons, described here as a savage and ferocious tribe (gens barbarica; feroces Saxones), are terrorizing the region.33 In Eigil’s hagiographical vision, Buchonia emerges as a barbarous solitude, an isolated and exotic wasteland (vastissima deserti loca; horrendus desertus), where Fulda’s founders eke out a bleak existence in a cramped hermitage, a desert-like forerunner to the impressive com-

30

For example, Jerome’s Vita Malchi 4, ed. Migne (see above, n. 25), pp. 57-8 employs this image. The Life of Malchus was a standard text in the Benedictine inventory of saints’ lives. 31 Num. 23,28. 32 Noted by Werner Jacobsen, ‘Die Abteikirche in Fulda von Sturmius bis Eigil: kunstpolitische Positionen und deren Veränderungen,’ in Kloster Fulda in der Welt der Karolinger und Ottonen (see above, n. 23), pp. 105-27, there 105-7: “. . . an der Grenze zu slawischem Siedlungsgebiet gelegen, also an der Peripherie der damaligen abendländischen Zivilisation.” 33 Vita Sturmi, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), p. 135.


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munity later ruled by Sturm’s hagiographer, Abbot Eigil (818-822).34 The landscape fashioned in the Life, however, is largely an imagined one, for the hagiographer consistently belies the region’s true character: the hermits take advantage of well traveled merchant routes, cross bridges over the River Fulda, and admire Buchonia’s celebrated fountains, springs, and arable lands. Eigil’s targeted audience — the monks of Fulda, who listened each year on the saint’s feast day to liturgical recitations from the Vita Sturmi — would have been struck, no doubt, by the disharmony between the hagiographer’s invented topography and their own, intimate knowledge of the monastery’s lush and well-watered hinterland.35 Nevertheless, at the Benedictine Fulda of Eigil’s day, routine, public readings from the Lives of desert fathers created a lively mental space for the monks’ understanding of the Sturm legend as a western corollary to an eastern, anchoritic tradition.36 Through this liturgical system, the Life of Fulda’s founder became part of the classic corpus of desert lore. In addition, the Vita Sturmi achieves what Eigil’s reconstruction of the abbey basilica and his addition of two hall-crypts had accomplished: the union of eastern and western ascetic practice in one narrative space. While the abbey’s impressive relic collection imparts to its pilgrim audience a material history of Christian askêsis, the familiar terrain of Buchonia, which Sturm’s successors could visit, observe, and touch, provides a memory-stage for their own, private musings on the evolution of the ascetic life. The monks of Fulda could, as part of a meditative exercise, imaginatively map onto the abbey’s woodlands and peaks biblical, desert, and Benedictine

34 Sturm’s mentor Boniface also characterizes the region around Fulda as a locus silvaticus in heremo vastissimae solitudinis (“a heavily wooded place in a wasteland of the vastest solitude”); see Boniface, Epistula 86, ed. Michael Tangl, 5 vols. [Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae selectae in usum scholarum] (Berlin, 1955), 1: 193. For Eigil’s desert vocabulary, see Johannes Fried, ‘Fulda in der Bildungs- und Geistesgeschichte des früheren Mittelalters,’ in Kloster Fulda in der Welt der Karolinger und Ottonen (see above, n. 23), pp. 3-38, there 6-7. 35 The environment of the Fulda cloister is discussed by Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), p. 74 36 Regula Benedicti 73.5, ed. Fry (see above, n. 18), p. 296 requires daily readings from the desert corpus. Eigil instituted the practice of public readings from the Vita Sturmi on the anniversary of the founder’s death. See Candidus, Vita Eigilis abbatis Fuldensis 22, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach [Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores 15.1] (Hannover, 1963), p. 232. Becht-Jördens, ‘Text, Bild und Architektur’ (see above, n. 4), p. 84, notes that Candidus’s hagiographical image of Eigil brings together the fathers of both eastern and western monasticism, Pachomius and Benedict.

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narratives of place. Journeying through Buchonia, then, became a way of navigating through the various layers of ascetic history.37 The didactic agenda of Eigil’s Vita Sturmi also dovetails nicely with that of Ardo’s Vita of Benedict of Aniane. Sturm’s path to the cenobitic life begins after his conversion to a desert style of asceticism, again reversing Benedict of Nursia’s original vision of the coenobium as a training-ground for future desert hermits. Sturm first is priest and exegete, then squalid hermit, and finally loyal devotee of the Benedictine Rule. His first attempts to create a hermitage are peripatetic: the anchorite keeps moving on to find better — and higher — ground. In contrast, the site of the future Benedictine community at Fulda is a holy spot preordained by God; it personifies Benedictine stabilitas loci.38 In his Life, Sturm passionately (inhianter) converts to the Benedictine system, and Eigil represents the saint’s conversion through the language of the Rule itself, a vocabulary immediately recognizable to any monk, but especially to Carolingian Benedictines, who were required to memorize the Rule and inscribe its precepts on their hearts.39 The saint “inclines” (inclina aurem cordis tui) both soul and mind to the Rule and submits his body to its disciplinary techniques (ita eum oportet sollicitius observare praecepta regulae).40 The early sections of Eigil’s sacred biography of Sturm intimate that the holy man’s embrace of the Rule as well as Fulda’s later incarnation as bulky Benedictine community (over 600 monks) and architectural wonder are inevitable historical events.41 Sturm’s criteria 37 For the relationship between landscape and religious collective memory, see Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Mediation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 40-4. 38 Vita Sturmi 13, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), p. 144: . . . sanctum et a Deo dudum praedestinatum ingressus est locum (“Just now the [hermit-group] entered into the holy place, a site predestined by God”); for Benedictine stabilitas, see Regula Benedicti 4.78, 58.9, 58.17, 60.9, 61.5, ed. Fry (see above, n. 18), pp. 186, 266, 268, 274. 39 Canon 2 of the first Aachen synod; text in Legislatio Aquisgranensis, ed. Semmler (see above, n. 3), p. 441: ut qui possent regulam memoriter discerent (“those monks who are able should commit the Rule to memory”). 40 Vita Sturmi 14, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), p. 145: Porro cum fratres regulam sancti patris Benedicti inhianter observare desiderassent et ad monasticae disciplinae normam sua corpora mentesque toto annisu inclinassent . . . (“Next, when the brothers passionately had desired to observe the Rule of the holy father Benedict and, through exertion, had inclined the whole of their bodies and minds to the standard of monastic discipline . . .”). Cf. Regula Benedicti, prologus 1, 65.17, ed. Fry (see above, n. 18), p. 286. 41 For a discussion of the size of the monastic community, see Karl Schmid, ‘Mönchslisten und Klosterkonvent von Fulda zur Zeit der Karolinger,’ in Die Klostergemeinschaft von Fulda im früheren Mittelalter, ed. Karl Schmid, 3 vols. in 5 facsimiles (Munich, 1978), 2.2: 571-640, there 612, 632.


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for selecting the site for his hermit community include fertile soil and an ample supply of running water, echoing the Rule’s discussion of the location of an ideal, self-sufficient monastery.42 Eigil depicts the hermit-Sturm as a skilled craftsman, who fells trees with a special tool he always carries and erects circular animal pens in a single night.43 The anchorite’s construction of the primitive hermitage at Hersfeld is but a first step in an increasingly sophisticated career as a builder. It is possible to read Sturm’s metamorphosis from itinerant hermit to Benedictine abbot in terms of his mounting mechanical proficiency. As hermit, Sturm is a craftsman and carpenter, and his first building site at Hersfeld evokes the earliest and most rudimentary examples of desert architecture, which consisted of “an informal aggregate of scattered cells around the central one of the community’s founder.”44 In contrast to Sturm the builder-hermit is Sturm the abbot-engineer, who carves out intricate systems of water canals to serve better his growing community (crescente familia).45 Abbot Sturm is also passionately committed to architecture (as were his successors, Baugulf, Ratgar, and Eigil), and the former hermit oversees the construction of a colonnaded basilica (30 m long and 20 m wide) with an eastern apse 11 m in diameter (ca. 751).46 Sturm later (ca. 770) installs in the 42 Vita Sturmi 10, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), p. 142: . . . loci illius statum et qualitatem terrae et aquae decursum quae usque hodie monasterio sufficient (“the position of that place, the quality of its soil, and the flow of its water supply, [all of these things] which sustain the monastery up until the present day”). Cf. Regula Benedicti 66.6, ed. Fry (see above, n. 18), p. 288. Discussed by Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), p. 82. 43 Vita Sturmi 7, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), pp. 138-9. 44 For early desert architecture, see Walter Horn, ‘On the Origins of the Medieval Cloister,’ Gesta 12 (1973), 13-52, there 15-8. 45 Vita Sturmi 13, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), p. 145. 46 Sturm’s successor Baugulf began the construction of a new, three-nave basilica with a large, eastern apse in ca. 791. When Baugulf resigned as abbot in 802, his architect Ratgar took over and initiated a new, massive building campaign, sparking much conflict in the monastery. Ratgar eventually was deposed and his successor Eigil completed Ratgar’s enormous western transept and western apse and added the two crypts. For a first-rate overview of the entire Fulda building campaign (and a heavy emphasis on archaeological evidence), see Charles McClendon, Origins of Medieval Architecture: Building in Europe, c. 600-900 (New Haven, 2005), pp. 158-61. Werner Jacobsen details the architectural implications of the conflict under Ratgar: ‘Benedikt von Aniane und die Architektur unter Ludwig dem Frommen zwischen 814-830,’ in Riforma religiosa e arti nell’epoca carolingia, ed. Alfred A. Schmid [Atti del XXIV congresso internazionale di storia dell’arte] (Bologna, 1983), pp. 15-22. Jacobsen believes that the monumentality associated with the building programs of

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nave near the western, lay entrance a reliquary tomb (requies) for his martyred mentor, Boniface, and he does so, Eigil emphasizes, with wondrous dexterity ( pulchro opere condidit).47 This progression from hermit-craftsman to abbot-architect speaks to a uniquely Carolingian style of askêsis: one that fuses a Benedictine memory of Egyptian “primitivism,” evoked by the little, bark-roofed huts at Hersfeld, with the monk’s own vision of Frankish modernity materialized in technologically sophisticated edifices with complex symbolic programs. Visual Bricolage Fulda’s building program has been the subject of superb work in the field of architectural history over the past six decades, from Richard Krautheimer’s groundbreaking, 1942 textual and material study of the Salvator basilica, to Werner Jacobsen’s insightful consideration of Carolingian architectonics within the realm of monastic reform agendas (1990s), to Janneke Raaijmakers excellent 2003 analysis of the role of the built environment in the formation of the abbey’s collective memory.48 In 2005, Krautheimer’s student, Charles McClendon, further refined the architectural investigation of the aesthetic, strucCharlemagne’s reign came to an end under Louis the Pious (under the ascetic impetus of Benedict of Aniane) and that the Fulda community’s reaction to Ratgar can be explained within this larger, ascetic context. Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), p. 64, however, makes a strong case that the monks of Fulda did not object to the building program itself, but to Ratgar’s mismanagement of it. If anything, Abbot Eigil augmented the ambitious plan of Ratgar by adding two crypts and a cemetery church, as well as beginning the new, western cloister. Raaijmakers suggests that Eigil was a more effective administrator than Ratgar had been. 47 Vita Sturmi 21, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), p. 156. Werner Jacobsen provides an excellent discussion of the evolution of the Sturm-basilica (ca. 744-751); see his ‘Abteikirche in Fulda’ (see above, n. 32), pp. 105-12. 48 Richard Krautheimer traces the evolution of the Salvator basilica from Sturm through Eigil; see his influential Studies in Early Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art (London, 1971) pp. 203-56 (‘The Carolingian Revival of Early Christian Architecture,’ 19421). The Carolingian complex has been reconstructed largely through archaeological excavations, seventeenth-century plans (i.e., before the demolition of the medieval basilica to build its Baroque counterpart), and ninth-century descriptions (Krautheimer, Studies, p. 209). Charles McClendon provides a historiographical discussion of the continued influence of Krautheimer’s theories of Carolingian architecture as well as a critique. See his ‘Louis the Pious, Rome, and Constantinople,’ in Architectural Studies in Memory of Richard Krautheimer, ed. Cecil L. Striker (Mainz, 1996), pp. 103-6. Werner Jacobsen refines Krautheimer’s original, structural study: see his Der Klosterplan von St. Gallen und die Karolingische Architektur (Berlin, 1992), pp. 193-9, and ‘Abteikirche in Fulda’ (see above, n. 32), pp. 105-27. Finally, see Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), pp. 93-133.


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tural, and archaeological setting of Fulda.49 Moreover, German scholars of early medieval architectural history have noted that the reconstruction of Fulda’s abbey-basilica (the Salvator), begun under the ambitious and controversial Abbot Ratgar and completed under Abbot Eigil, is the first example of a truly “modern” church north of the Alps.50 The Salvator offers remarkable testimony to the technical expertise and organizational skills of the architects of the Carolingian renaissance as well as to the rising prominence of monks in monumental building.51 In no other period in the western history of architecture were abbots themselves more active as builders than during the Early Middle Ages.52 As Krautheimer once said of Fulda’s third Abbot Ratgar, “certainly he was bitten by the building bug.”53 At the time of its consecration (819),54 the high-tech Salvator’s nave measured 63.30 m long and 16.70 m wide and included two apses: a semi-circular one in the east and, in the west, a huge, continuous transept (77 m long and 17 m wide) and semi-circular apse. The basilica’s scale evokes that of Saint John Lateran in Rome, the political and spiritual heart of the early medieval papacy. The Salvator’s western transept — down to its eccentric features like being extremely narrow and closing off each end with colonnades — recreates the idiosyncratic monster-transept of Old Saint Peter’s.55 49

McClendon, Origins of Medieval Architecture (see above, n. 46), pp. 158-61. Jacobsen refers to Ratgar’s building program (which Eigil completed) as “der neuesten Baumode,” ‘Abteikirche in Fulda’ (see above, n. 32), p. 118; Becht-Jördens, ‘Text, Bild und Architektur’ (see above, n. 4), p. 75, describes Eigil’s architectural renovation as the largest and most modern north of the Alps; and Engelbert (see above, n. 23), p. 9, calls the Salvator project “der Meisterwerke der modernen Architektur seines Reiches.” Ratgar is famous among architectural historians for his revolutionary, architectural style. 51 Becht-Jördens (see above, n. 4), p. 93. For the exegetical readings of Carolingian art and architecture, see William J. Diebold, ‘The New Testament and the Visual Arts in the Carolingian Era, With Special Reference to the sapiens architectus (I Cor. 3,10),’ in The Study of the Bible in the Carolingian Era, eds. Celia Chazelle and Burton Van Name Edwards (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 141-53. 52 Wolfgang Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe: The Architecture of the Orders, trans. Alastair Laing (London, 1972), p. 11. 53 Krautheimer, Studies (see above, n. 48), p. 209. 54 Hrabanus in his architectural Tituli ecclesiae Fuldensis, ed. Dümmler (see above, n. 6), p. 206 informs us that Bishop Haistulf of Mainz consecrated the apse-shrine to Boniface on 1 November 819: Quod super exstructum Heistolf sacraverat. Consecration of the basilica also described in Candidus, Vita Eigilis 15, ed. Wattenbach (see above, n. 36), p. 230. 55 See Krautheimer, Studies (see above, n. 48), p. 211; McClendon, Origins of Medieval Architecture (see above, n. 46), p. 159. 50

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In a similar vein, the cloister at Fulda, moved in 822 from its original location in the south to the west, preserves the memory of the classic atria (large, colonnaded courtyards designed to accommodate pilgrims) of early Roman basilicas, including Saint Paul’s outside-the-walls, which had a western atrium. Fulda’s lay pilgrims, like those who visited Saint Peter’s in Rome, entered the basilica through a new eastern atrium (25 m × 25 m), as the western part of the church (formerly the lay entrance) now belonged, as Raaijmakers theorizes, exclusively to the monks, whose bodies were made holy via their proximity to the martyr.56 Fulda’s western transept may well have functioned in a manner similar to that of Saint Peter’s: the transept offered a private gathering space — a martyria — where pilgrims and worshippers (or, in the case of Fulda, monks only) could assemble outside the more public space of the basilica.57 Even the site on which the Fulda basilica was constructed resonates with that of the Vatican Hill, for just as Saint Peter’s faced the Tiber to the east and cut into the Mons Vaticanus to the west, the Salvator was bounded by a mountain on one side and a river on the other.58 Moreover, approximately 50 percent of the relics transferred into the reconstructed Salvator basilica by 819 were of Roman origin, and their incorporation into Eigil’s newly constructed crypts link the abbey with the subterranean spaces of the Roman catacombs.59 Finally, the new location of the Boniface-shrine — conspicuously displayed in

56 Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), p. 121; also noted by Jacobsen, ‘Abteikirche in Fulda’ (see above, n. 32), p. 126. 57 Recent archaeological data suggests that the western transept of Saint Peter’s existed before the nave; hence, the original edifice was not a transept at all, but a martyria to which the “basilica” was added in two phases (first three aisles and then five). See Alberto Carpiceci and Richard Krautheimer, ‘Nuovi dati sull’Antica Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano,’ Bolletino d’arte 93-94 (1995), 1-70, continued in vol. 95 (1996), 9-84. Carpiceci and Krautheimer’s evidence is summarized by Ross Holloway, Constantine and Rome (New Haven, 2004), pp. 79-80. Consult also Roger Stalley, Early Medieval Architecture (Oxford, 1999), p. 45. 58 The author wishes to thank architectural historian Professor Kim Sexton for pointing out the similarities in landscape. Jacobsen, ‘Abteikirche in Fulda’ (see above, n. 32), p. 108, discusses the alignment of Sturm’s original abbey with its eastern apse located at the foot of the mountain and its western, lay entry aligned with the river. 59 Krautheimer, Studies (see above, n. 48), p. 213. For the larger context behind the transport of relics from Rome to Francia, see Julia M.H. Smith, ‘Old Saints, New Cults: Roman Relics in Carolingian Francia,’ in Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honor of Donald Bullough, ed. Julia M.H. Smith (Leiden, 2000), pp. 317-39.


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the western apse — copies the location, dimensions, and elevation of the Apostle Peter’s tomb at his pilgrim-basilica in Rome.60 As Krautheimer remarks, the plan of Fulda’s transept proves that the “monks of Fulda wanted to be as Roman as the Romans or even more so.”61 The totalizing effect of this building campaign was to orientate the entire abbey complex toward the west: western cloister, colossal (by the standards of the day) western transept, and western apseshrine to the Apostle of the Germans, Boniface. Fulda’s architects successfully transformed the “liturgical center” of the basilica from its sacred eastern apse (dedicated to the Holy Savior) to the west and Boniface, as Jacobsen demonstrates.62 More specifically, the renovation of the Salvator rotated the built environment of Fulda toward Rome and the papacy, something Eigil also achieves in his Life of Sturm by having the former hermit turn his ascetic gaze from the eastern deserts and toward Rome. In the Life, Sturm travels to Rome (ca. 747-748), where he is initiated into a Roman style of askêsis.63 Sturm, through Boniface’s intercession, successfully places Fulda under the direct protection of Saint Peter rather than under the authority of the bishop of Mainz.64 The Fulda abbots mapped, in a very sophisticated manner, the numinous topography of early Christian Rome onto the spatial arrangements of the Salvator, its crypts, and its adjacent cloister, thereby rendering the complex an architectural embodiment of the relationship between the abbey and the papacy. Fulda as Rome represents a final layer in a complex series of symbolic 60 Krautheimer, Studies (see above, n. 48), pp. 209-13; consult also John Crook, The Architectural Setting of the Cult of the Saints in the Early Christian West, c. 300-1200 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 135-6; Stalley, Early Medieval Architecture (see above, n. 57), pp. 37-45; Jacobsen, Der Klosterplan von St. Gallen (see above, n. 48), pp. 193-9; Charles McClendon, The Imperial Abbey of Farfa: Architectural Currents of the Early Middle Ages [Yale Publications in the History of Art 36] (New Haven, 1987), pp. 60-75; and Carol Heitz, L’architecture religieuse carolingienne: Les formes et leurs functions (Paris, 1980), pp. 99-108. 61 Krautheimer, Studies (see above, n. 48), p. 212. 62 Jacobsen, Der Klosterplan von St. Gallen (see above, n. 48), p. 199. Also discussed in Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), p. 115. 63 Vita Sturmi 14, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), pp. 145-7. 64 See Boniface, Epistula 89, ed. Tangl (see above, n. 34), 1: 203-5. Vita Sturmi 17, ed. Engelbert (see above, n. 23), pp. 151-2 intimates that the bishop of Mainz, Lull, did not have direct authority over the abbey. A number of scholars have discussed this issue: for instance, Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), p. 3, and Karl Schmid, ‘Die Frage nach den Anfänge der Mönchsgemeinschaft in Fulda,’ in Klostergemeinschaft von Fulda (see above, n. 41), 1: 108-35, there 129.

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strata imposed on the abbey and its hinterland: Hebrew wilderness, Egyptian desert, Roman catacomb, cenobitic marvel, and apostolic basilica. Fulda’s landscapes — built, natural, or even imagined — articulate brilliantly the method by which Carolingian ascetic intellectuals controlled access to and understanding of the ascetic past. The enormous relic collection of the abbey and its satellite churches (ca. 819-838) bring together in Buchonia the material remains of the world history of Christendom.65 The collection is both exotic (a chunk of Mount Sinai)66 and familiar (the body parts of local saints, including Sturm and Boniface). The Fulda monks, as proprietors of this material history, mediated access to the sponge (spongia) with which Roman soldiers offered Christ a vinegary drink, a bit of the column on which Christ was scourged, a portion of Peter’s chains, and a vast array of body parts and accoutrements (spolia) from every classification of holy person (male and female and often spatially sex-segregated): archangels, apostles, martyrs (largely Roman), eastern hermits, Church fathers, missionaries, monastic founders, intellectuals, and popes. The collection includes spolia of the patron saints of major Roman basilicas (Peter and Paul, Cosmas and Damian, Praxede and Pudentiana, Aquila and Priscilla, Cecelia, Lawrence, Sabina, and Agnes, among others), echoing the Salvator’s re-creation of the Christian landscapes of late antique Rome. Like all first-rate collectors, the Fulda abbots displayed their tastes and interests through the assemblage of precious artifacts. The biblical and desert landscapes so crucial to the crafting of house-hagiographies like the Vita Sturmi materialize in the abbey’s collection of the material vestiges of Hebrew terrain and the bodies of legendary Egyptian hermits.67 The most influential texts of Fulda’s renowned scriptorium 65 Eigil’s successor, Hrabanus, continued the program of relic collecting. As Raaijmakers, Sacred Time, Sacred Space (see above, n. 4), p. 168, points out, Hrabanus brought the remains of 38 martyrs (mostly Roman) to Fulda and its satellite churches between 835 and 838. See also David Appleby, ‘Rudolph, Abbot Hrabanus and the Ark of the Covenant Reliquary,’ The American Benedictine Review 46 (1995), 419-43. 66 Hrabanus Maurus, Tituli ecclesiae Fuldensis, ed. Dümmler (see above, n. 6), p. 209: Pars montis Sinai, Moysi et memoratio digna (“A chunk of Mt. Sinai and a worthy memorial to Moses”). The Fulda monks installed the chunk of Mount Sinai in the Saint Michael rotunda, which Eigil and Hrabanus had constructed adjacent to the Salvator (ca. 820-822). 67 Engelbert (see above, n. 23), p. 39, discusses the Vita Sturmi as a house-hagiography, i.e. Eigil addressed his narrative to a narrow, monastic circle, and its circulation, as the text’s manuscript history suggests, was quite limited.


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find corporeal parallels in the monastery’s crypts and churches, where the relics of Augustine of Hippo, Ambrose of Milan, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, and the Northumbrian Bede — authors who exerted a major influence on the abbey’s celebrated exegetical life — could be inspected.68 The body parts of principal monastic founders — Antony, Martin, Benedict, Columbanus, Sturm, and Boniface — too were available for scrutiny as were a multi-cultural array of Irish, Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, Iberian, Gallic, Italian, North African, Syrian, and Egyptian saints. The eclecticism of Fulda’s relics illuminates the abbey’s global project of stockpiling a world history of Christianity. Ritual Bricolage This same eclecticism is mirrored in early medieval monastic practice, as evidenced by detailed commentaries on the Rule, such as that penned by Hildemar of Civate, a monastery located in the diocese of Milan.69 Hildemar’s Expositio (ca. 845), like Fulda’s Salvator basilica, encapsulates a world history of asceticism and imposes it on the ritual bodies of monk. For Hildemar, the charisma of the desert is something to be embodied through habitual, disciplinary practices. His commentary is a detailed reckoning of every aspect of the lives of the monks of Civate, from the ideal measurements of their cloister to the appropriate amount of liquid soap stored in containers (vascula) kept next to their beds.70 The Expositio stems from the lively setting of the Carolingian monastic classroom, for its extant manuscript versions were culled from student notes hastily taken during

68 For the holdings of the early medieval Fulda scriptorium (which was destroyed during the Thirty Years War), see Karl Christ, Die Bibliothek des Klosters Fulda im 16. Jahrhundert: Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse [Beiheft zum Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 64] (Leipzig, 1933). Christ reconstructs the Fulda library through eighth- and ninthcentury fragments of its catalogue as well as sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inventories. 69 For the text of the commentary, see Hildemar of Corbie/Civate, Expositio regulae sancti Benedicti, ed. in Rupert Mittermüller, Vita et regula SS. P. Benedicti: una cum expositione regulae a Hildemaro tradita (Regensburg, 1880). For a discussion of the context behind the Expositio and its manuscript history, see Ludwig Traube and H. Plenkers, Textgeschichte der Regula S. Benedicti [Abhandlungen der königlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klasse 25.2] (Munich, 1910), pp. 40-5. See also M. Alfred Schroll, Benedictine Monasticism As Reflected in the Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries on the Rule (New York, 1941), pp. 23-5. 70 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller (see above, n. 69), pp. 183-4 (cloister); p. 520 (soap containers).

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the magister’s long lectures on the Rule.71 Hildemar’s sources are impressive and include biblical, desert, patristic, classical, and contemporary texts, reflecting the exceptional tastes and political interests of ninthcentury connoisseurs. In the exquisite style of Carolingian bricolage, Hildemar fuses lessons on the Rule with instruction in grammar, etymologies, poetry, and medicine; he is quite comfortable pairing Virgil’s poetic description of the evening with Benedict’s teachings on the night office.72 His lectures, which frequently cite desert exempla, capture the power of eremitic practice by relocating it in the daily habits of Civate’s students. The Expositio affords the intrepid reader a unique glimpse into how the desert — and the memory of its inhabitants’ intimidating physicality — could be realized in early medieval Italy through carefully controlled bodily habits.73 For Hildemar, the body of a Benedictine monk functions figuratively as a stage for remembering the “huge silence” (silentium ingens) and “vast solitude” (vastissima solitudo) of the Egyptian desert.74 For Carolingian Benedictines, rituals of silence bring to mind both the legendary topography of the Egyptian desert (a vast and silent wasteland) as well as the hermits’ reputation for strict control over speech and purity of language (the ritual process of emptying of the body of everything save God’s Word).75 In fact, Hildemar regards silence as a chief mortification of the body.76 The monk’s mouth, he reasons, should be like an eternal cloister (aeterna

71 Mayke De Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West (Leiden, 1996), p. 70, notes that “Hildemar’s commentary has been rightly called a textbook of Carolingian monastic life.” 72 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller (see above, n. 69), p. 271. 73 Theoretically, this section owes a great deal to Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, 1984), and Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, 1977). 74 For discussion of ascetic traditions of silence, see Paul F. Gehl, ‘Competens Silentium: Varieties of Monastic Silence in the Medieval West,’ Viator 18 (1987), 125-60; for Carolingian views on the “vast solitude” of the desert, see Brunert, ‘Fulda als Kloster in eremo’ (see above, n. 23), pp. 59-78. 75 These practices were mediated to the monks of Civate largely through Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences. See John Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum ed. Jean-Claude Guy [Sources Chrétiennes 109] (Paris, 1965) and his Collationes patrum, ed. E. Pichery, 3 vols. [Sources Chrétiennes 42, 54, 64] (Paris, 1954-1959). For a discussion of Cassian’s portrait of the desert surveillance of speech, see Leyser, Authority and Asceticism (see above, n. 21), pp. 47-61. See also Carruthers, Craft of Thought (see above, n. 37), pp. 60-115. 76 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller (see above, n. 69), p. 457: quia silentium mortificationem significat (“since silence signifies mortification”).


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clausura), a permanent barrier ( perpetuus murus) between the interior man and the external world.77 Control over what crosses over that boundary — words, food, vomit — must parallel the limited access to the inner cloister of the monastery. The cloister itself emerges in Hildemar’s writings as a space for silent contemplation and reading as well as a place where speech is severely restricted. In this sense, the claustrum functions symbolically as a desert-like, contemplative space within a larger monastic complex ( just as the Salvator’s eastern crypt transports the desert to the monastic precincts). In fact, Hildemar refers to the claustrum of the monastery as the wilderness the ancient Israelites entered after they had crossed the Red Sea (a trope for the renunciation of desire and the taking of the Benedictine vows).78 Simultaneously, the cloister is an architectural rendering of the inner being of the monk, for Hildemar moors the meditative “inner man” to the cloister and the “exterior man” to the sections of the monastery more involved with external affairs, as Mayke De Jong observes.79 Like silent contemplation, pain or discomfort in the body can provoke memories of desert austerity. Ritual practices of eating and fasting therefore link a contemporary monk to an ancient, eremitic tradition. The desert fathers had a conflicted relationship with food: on the one hand, eating sustains the body; on the other, its consumption underscores human frailty. According to legendary accounts, some desert fathers ate only while standing, others hid their consumption of food by covering their heads with their cowls, and a few ate little at all. In the early medieval Benedictine system, where the precise times for eating as well as the quantity and nature of the food eaten were intensely monitored activities, the monks’ habit of eating in unheated refectories would purposely lessen the pleasure of savoring food by chilling the body of the one consuming it.80 For 77 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, p. 206: . . . scurrilitatibus et verbis otiosis aut risum moventibus aeternam clausuram ponimus, i.e., aeternum et perpetuum murum (“We place an eternal cloister — that is, an everlasting and perpetual wall — against scurrilous and idle words or movements [of the mouth] that spark laughter”). 78 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, pp. 29-30. 79 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, pp. 89, 184; De Jong, ‘Carolingian Monasticism’ (see above, n. 3), p. 639. 80 Carolingian monasteries typically did not have fireplaces in their refectories. See Walter Horn and Ernest Born, The Plan of St. Gall: A Study of the Architecture and Economy of, and Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery, 3 vols. (Berkeley, 1979), 1: 272. Hildemar’s commentary is fairly precise about which sections of the monastery are actually heated (the warming room, Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, p. 203). The refectory does not appear to be one of them.

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the monks of Civate, eating remains a deeply charged activity, for it is a dangerous stimulant to desire and excess. Eating vile foods, Hildemar makes clear, is a correction to this.81 Through the chilling of the body at the refectory and the avoidance of luxurious foods, Carolingian Benedictines could share in the ambiguous desert attitude toward ingestion (i.e., taking food into the mouth is necessary, but it should not be pleasurable), which they would have known well through their group readings of desert texts.82 Hildemar also informs his students that the regulation of what goes into and out of their bodies connects them to an ancient tradition, where abstention from eating flesh (as flesh incites the flesh) and imbibing intoxicants, in addition to engaging in periods of fasting, function as fundamental markers of desert identity. The authority of the desert diet could be summoned to solve major ascetic controversies of the day, such as whether or not monks should eat cheese (as cheese could be seen as “flesh” because it is technically “fat”). Hildemar explains to his class that as Egyptian hermits ate cheese, Benedictines clearly have license to do so.83 Fish is not only allowed, but eating it symbolically connects a monk to the resurrected body of Christ, for the risen Jesus ate fish, as did the Apostles and the ancient hermits in imitation of the Savior.84 The taking of food into the mouth, therefore, unites the Benedictine of Hildemar’s day to an ancestral lineage of Christian asceticism, just as the refusal to take in flesh — even that of fowls, for as Hildemar points out, flesh from fowls is even sweeter, and hence more dangerous, than red meat — disconnects the monastic body from its secular counterpart.85 In fact, at Civate, only very young boys (and the sick) are routinely given meat to eat; as they mature to manhood, they are weaned off of flesh; hence, monastic masculinity is linked here to abstinence from meat.86 Over indulgence in food and drink (crapula) causes unclean fluids to pass over the sacred, cloister-like boundary of a monk’s mouth, and the act of vomiting is a visible testimony both to a

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Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, p. 435. Regula Benedicti 42, ed. Fry (see above, n. 18), p. 242. 83 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller (see above, n. 69), p. 442. 84 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, p. 441. 85 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, pp. 409-10. Clearly there was controversy over whether or not Benedict had prohibited the flesh of fowls as well as red meat. 86 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, p. 419. 82


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Benedictine’s desire for excess (a feminizing tendency) and his inability to link himself with desert piety (a masculine ethos).87 Being a slave to the gastric vice is incompatible with the life of self-abnegation. Through giving lectures on the bodily practices outlined in the Rule, Hildemar imposes layers of ascetic history onto the ritual life of the monks of Civate. Fasting and corporeal punishment, ritual practices that cause pain and discomfort in the body and thereby spark memories of desert austerity, yoke Benedictines to the Egyptian wilderness. Pieces of monastic garb too, such as the scapular link a monk to an ancient anchorite, for a scapular (a protective, outer garment worn by Benedictines engaged in manual labor), Hildemar explains, preserves a memory of the desert melota (a sheepskin garment put on by desert hermits while toiling).88 Liturgical customs (desert tradition of singing twelve psalms), ablutions (routine washings after nocturnal emissions), manual labors (modeled after those of desert luminaries), and ritual prostrations (desert humility embodied through the bowing of the head toward the ground), and anxieties over bathing (i.e., whether or not a monk should bath) all find their origin in the desert, and they continue in unbroken fashion, monastic educators stress, in the liturgical and ritual rhythms of the monastery of the ninth century.89 The routine reading of the desert corpus would make it clear to the monks of Civate that their material and bodily habits stem from historic eremitic custom. Yet there is considerable disharmony between these ancient and modern practices. The monks of Civate, for example, heard lectures on the primitive and exotic nature of desert table manners. Cappadocian ascetics, Hildemar notes (following Cassian), began the practice of having public readings during meals. They did so, Hildemar elucidates, not to enforce spiritual discipline among the ascetics but

87 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, p. 438 provides a physiological discussion of vomiting: the liver, which typically heats up food in the belly, cannot do so when a monk eats in excess. The result is that the steam created by the excess of food courses through the body until it reaches the head, where it then causes the monk to become “aggravated” and he vomits. 88 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, pp. 513-4. 89 For Hildemar’s discussion of the desert origins of his monastery’s ritual habits, see Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, pp. 280-3 (liturgy), pp. 479-80 (manual labor), pp. 513-6 (clothing), p. 473 (penance), p. 184 (ritual bowing of the body), p. 204 (ritual ablutions), and pp. 408-9 (bathing). Many of these issues were also targets of Carolingian monastic reform.

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rather to extinguish frivolous speech or quarreling, activities dangerously occasioned by communal eating. The Carolingian magister also explains to his curious students the notorious practice of the Egyptian ascetics of Tabennesis, whose reputation for disciplinary silence was so intense that during meals they would draw their cowls over their heads down past their eyelids to prohibit their curious eyes from wandering freely along the table or over the bodies of their table companions. These veiled ascetics could see only the table and their portion of food placed upon it. Thus, they remained blissfully ignorant as to the quantity of food their neighbors were consuming as well as the quality of their table manners.90 In his lecture on desert eating habits, Hildemar signals to his discipuli a clear break between desert habits of ingestion and the Benedictine practice of his day. In the old days of Christian asceticism, he stresses, it used to be the case that while monks ate, they were always read to, but that this was done only to quell the telling of tales or prevent scandalous behaviors. In Egypt, the focus of the hermits’ eyes is down, toward the table. But for “modern monks,” the public lectio edifies an already well-disciplined audience. Their attention then is drawn up from the table and toward heavenly things.91 The message here is clear: the Benedictine system is more successful than its desert counterpart at creating docile, ascetic bodies. The edificatory nature of the cenobitic lectio is part of a larger theme in the Expositio: the motif of Carolingian eloquence. Eloquence is what differentiates the modern ascetic practitioner from his desert ancestor. The monastery of Hildemar’s day creates a hierarchy based on the eloquence of the mouth, for the key to assuming a top position within the monastery is the masterful use of the voice, a preoccupation shared by classical orators and rhetoricians. Whereas the Christian ascetics of John Cassian’s era strove to empty their minds of rotelearned classical texts — such as Abba Nesteros, who bemoans the

90 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, pp. 421-2; citing Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum 4.17, ed. Guy (see above, n. 75), pp. 142-5. 91 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, p. 422: Unde quia inspicienda est intentio, cum manducat monachus, usquedum totum manducaverint, semper legere debent; nunc autem non solum debet esse lectio causa vitandi fabulas vel scandalum, verum etiam causa aedificationis. (“Whereupon as the intention [of the Egyptian hermits] was for the purpose of surveillance during eating that they always read during the entire time of the meal; nowadays, however, reading is not only carried out for the purpose of avoiding story telling or scandal, but also for the sake of edification.”).


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fact that Ovid was so “soaked into him” that the memory of the Roman poet had to be eradicated in order for the hermit to “remember” heaven92 — Carolingian masters return to classical grammarians and orators (Cicero, Quintilian, Priscian, Victorinus, and Severus) and fuse their views on perfect speech with those of patristic and “modern” theorists of speech and rhetoric (Ambrose, Augustine, Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Alcuin). The goal of this Carolingian fusion is the further refinement of liturgical speech. Hildemar instructs: “The grammarians are essential because they teach rightly and clearly the obscure art of how to accent words while reading aloud and how to distinguish sounds.”93 The magister of Civate goes into great detail about how to prepare the mouth for the act of reading: the eloquent lector knows how to press his lips together gently so that the sound they produce is suppler.”94 Proper accenting, stresses on words, pitch, pronunciation, and modulation of the voice are major concerns for the early medieval lector. Overall, the monastic orator must be of sufficient proficiency to use his voice as an instrument through which he penetrates the intellects of his hearers. At Civate, this expert liturgical mouth generates a corporate hierarchy. Perfected monks are granted more freedom to speak, and when they do, they are to utter only eloquent and wise words. Those who are less capable of understanding the rudiments of Latin grammar possess lesser rank, for grammar is a critical pathway to God. In fact, imperfect monks are not to speak at all, for, as the Rule explicitly states, the tongue has the power to kill.95 Depraved and unrestrained speech leads to lascivious acts. Hildemar warns his pupils that they are to “hear and be silent” while he is to “teach and speak.”96 The most brilliant cantors in the community have more leeway vis-à-vis the disciplinary culture of the Rule than are their less talented peers. Hildemar adds grammar and chant to the list of monastic labors, and he includes grammarians and cantors in the ranks of the monastery’s artisan class.97 The abbot must be a gifted 92

Carruthers, Craft of Thought (see above, n. 37), p. 88. Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller (see above, n. 69), p. 428: . . . quae docent recte et distincte obscurorum sensuum secundum accentuum sonos legere atque distinguere. 94 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, p. 425. 95 Regula Benedicti 6.5, ed. Fry (see above, n. 18), p. 190; referencing Prov. 18,21. 96 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller (see above, n. 69), p. 205. 97 Hildemar, Expositio, ed. Mittermüller, p. 530. 93

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cantor as well as a learned scholar. He sits at the top of a hierarchy of chanters who possess varying degrees of talent. In this community, the act of public reading is a major art form, one relying both on the “custom of the ancients” and the teachings of “modern masters.” It is an artistic skill that produces ritual and communal status. God, of course, is the most powerful orator in the Benedictine community, and those monks closest to Him are the ones who take “a more active part in speaking, in giving commandments, and in bestowing blessings.”98 The strongest monks therefore are those who come closest to being like God: a disembodied voice.99 The Expositio of Hildemar of Civate, like the house-hagiographies of Fulda and Aniane as well as well as the symbolic program of the Salvator basilica, reveals the conflicted relationship Carolingian ascetic intellectuals had with the legacy of the Egyptian desert. On the one hand, bodily practices and ritual gestures link the monks of Civate to their eremitic ancestors. On the other hand, Hildemar demonstrates where the modern, more erudite practices of his day trump the heritage of the desert. Eloquence, necessitated by the complex and expanded liturgical requirements of the ninth century (and the expanded sacred spaces designed to accommodate them, such as Fulda’s Salvator), separated the Benedictines from their (supposedly) more literal-minded Cappadocian and Egyptian counterparts.100 Moreover, Hildemar argues that desert regulae restrain more the exterior (hence inferior) man, while the Rule of blessed Benedict works more to reign in the inner man.101 Therefore, the magister of Civate suggests to his students that desert asceticism is sheer physicality: it is something that an individual monk can do (fasts, beating, silence, penance, prostration). Real perfection, however, lies beyond doing — it rests in the realm of the truly gifted, those few who can use the expert, liturgical voice to transcend the body (and its desert-like askêsis of the “outer man”) and enter the celestial realms (the realm of the “inner man”). The legacy of the desert then becomes part of the routine, the daily, and the habitual — it is a practice to be collected. 98 Ambrose Wathen, Silence: The Meaning of Silence in the Rule of St. Benedict [Cistercian Studies Series 22] (Washington, D.C., 1973), p. 180. 99 Elaine Scarry, Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford, 1985), pp. 191-8. 100 For the expansion of the Carolingian liturgy as well as the number of monkpriests, see Angenendt, Das Frühmittelalter (see above, n. 3), pp. 327-48, 403-6. 101 Expositio, ed. Mittermüller (see above, n. 69), p. 256.


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A Carolingian Aesthetic of Bricolage Where then is the place of the Egyptian desert within this larger program of Carolingian collecting and connoisseurship of eastern and western ascetic styles? Carolingian royal and monastic dynasts collected a wide variety of texts and artifacts from different eras and locales: architectural designs, artistic styles, ancient statuary, relics, poetry, exotic alphabets, patristic writings, and, of course, monastic regulae.102 Yet past scholars found this enterprise of collecting indicative of the second-rate nature of Carolingian intellectual culture. Rather than being inventive thinkers or fashioners of new, theological systems, the Carolingians emerge from this scholarly tradition as cut-and-paste exegetes or unimaginative plagiarists, whose contribution to western civilization lies more in their talents as transmitters of ancient cultures and less in the realm of original thought. There is, however, another, more complex way of reading the act of collecting. Collecting is an imperialistic venture, where the collector seeks not to restore the context of the original artifacts (be they material or textual), but to create a new, metaphorical framework for the collection as a whole. In fact, the “spatial whole of the collection supersedes the individual narratives that lie behind it.”103 Collecting is also, as Ja≤ Elsner persuasively maintains, part of a larger, late antique “aesthetic of bricolage,” which functions simultaneously as artistic style (the display of historic spolia on contemporary edifices) and vehicle of State propaganda (an exertion of control over past epochs through visual and textual collecting). As practitioners of bricolage, the spiritual leadership of the abbey of Fulda turned to “the material culture of the past in order to bolster the present.”104 These abbot-connoisseurs reduced the Golden Age narrative of the Egyptian desert to a mere initiatory phase within the inevitable rise of the Benedictine Order in the West and its Carolingian alliance with the papacy. For the pilgrims who came to the abbey to tour its hallowed collections, the desert, now symbolically housed in the eastern crypt, was but a first stop on the virtual

102 The Carolingian collecting of exotic alphabets is discussed by Bernhard Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien. Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichten, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966), 2: 227-45, there 232-3 (‘The Study of Foreign Languages in the Middle Ages,’ 19611). 103 Stewart, On Longing (see above, n. 13), p. 153. 104 Elsner, ‘Culture of Spolia to Cult of Relics’ (see above, n. 11), 155.

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tour through a linear and progressive history of asceticism. For the Fulda monks, house-hagiographies mediated the potency of Egyptian austerity by relegating desert rigor to an initial stage in a holy man’s superior cenobitic career. In the daily lectures of Carolingian monastic educators, which were built on a bricolage of classical, biblical, late antique, and early medieval texts, novice Benedictines learned to relegate the desert to bodily practice and equate the cloister’s modernizing liturgical spaces as spiritual arenas inhabited by eloquent lectors, who transcend desert physicality. When viewed as a “spatial whole,” Carolingian material, ritual, and textual histories work together to incorporate, manage, and supersede the legacy of the Egyptian past.

THE FRANCISCAN HERMIT: SEEKER, PRISONER, REFUGEE Bert Roest Abstract This article claims that the initial religious aspirations of the Friars Minor were heavily indebted to eremitical ideals, and that these ideals were never totally forgotten, notwithstanding the quick transformation of the Franciscan movement into an order of professional priests and theologians. The article sketches first of all the eremitical roots of the early Franciscan life. Then it covers the representation of early Franciscan hermitages and the eremitical life in the Vitae of Francis, pointing out specific parallels with Athanasius’s Life of Antony. Subsequently, it analyses Francis’s conception of the eremitical life according to his Regula pro eremitoriis data. It closes with a review of the ways in which eremitical traditions were retained, both as formative elements in the Franciscan handbooks of religious instruction, and as statements of protest and escape from dominant developments within the Order.

Introduction Traditionally, the Mendicant Orders are associated with pastoral care and ministry: the opposite of the eremitical life. The model par excellence in this regard is the Dominican Order, with its streamlined organization and a school curriculum that was totally geared to producing well-trained preachers, teachers, confessors, and inquisitors. At closer look the situation becomes far more ambivalent. The Dominicans themselves did not negate all aspects of the contemplative eremitical life. It can be argued that several of the early Dominicans were very conscious of the eremitical ascetical traditions embedded in the forma vitae of the Augustinian Canons. Elements of that would be taken up again in the fourteenth century. Looking at the other Mendicant Orders, such as the Friars Minor and the Augustinian Hermits, it becomes clear that these were orders in which eremiticism and solitary contemplation were important constituting elements from the very beginning. In fact, the history of these orders can be described in terms of a never-ending conflict between pastoral obligations and the search for eremitical retreat and evangelical perfection.1 1

For the Augustinian Hermits see Eric L. Saak, ‘Ex vita patrum formatur vita fratrum:


chrc 86, 1-4

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This essay draws attention to the eremitical phenomenon within the Franciscan way of life, focusing on: – Its sources in the flourishing eremitical movements within eleventhand twelfth-century Italy, some of which had roots that reached back to the Egyptian and Syrian desert experience – The representation of the hermitage in the Vitae of Francis, pointing out specific parallels with Athanasius’s Life of Antony and the conscious reference to the desert and solitude within the Franciscan hagiographical context – The translation of Francis’s conception of the eremitical life in the Franciscan Rule for hermits: how it described the objectives of that life and built this experience around the well-established MagdaleneMartha metaphor – The retention of the eremitical tradition when the Order evolved into a learned order of teachers and preachers, not only via the received hagiographical tradition but also through the Franciscan education of novices, in which can be traced the mediated legacy of the desert fathers (via the works of John Chrysostom, John Cassian, and Basil, who had drawn on the Egyptian and Syrian desert experience for their own writings) – The Franciscan eremitical life as a statement of protest and escape from dominant developments within the Order, in that a number The Appropriation of the Desert Fathers in the Augustinian Monasticism of the Later Middle Ages,’ this volume, below, pp. 191-228. There exists, by now, an impressive number of studies on the place of the hermitage in the early Franciscan movement and on the importance of seclusion for Francis of Assisi. My most important sources of inspiration throughout have been O. Schmucki, ‘ “Mentis silentium.” Il programma contemplativo nell’Ordine Francescano primitivo,’ Laurentianum 14 (1973), 177-222; J. Paul, ‘L’érémitisme et la survivance de la spiritualité du désert chez les Franciscains,’ in Les mystiques du désert dans l’Islam, le Judaïsme et le Christianisme (Paris, 1975), pp. 133-45; Benedikt Mertens, ‘ “In eremi vastitate resedit.” Der Widerhall der eremitischen Bewegung des Hochmittelalters bei Franziskus von Assisi,’ Franziskanische Studien 74 (1992), 285-374, there 288-319; Pietro Messa, Frate Francesco tra vita eremitica e predicazione (S. Maria degli Angeli and Assisi, 2001), cf. the review in Collectanea Franciscana 72 (2002), 969-70 and Il Santo 43 (2003), 884-7; Michael Higgins, ‘Saint Francis and the Hermitical Movement,’ Analecta Tertii Ordinis Regularis 32 (2001), 87-137. I also have relied heavily on various articles collected in the volume Franciscan Solitude, eds. André Cirino and Josef Raischl (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1995), notably those of Giovanna Casagrande, ‘Forms of Solitary Religious Life for Women in Central Italy,’ pp. 80-116; Martino Conti, ‘Hermitage and Evangelization in the Life of Francis,’ pp. 121-7; Marcella Gatti, ‘A Historical Look at the Carceri in the Pre-Franciscan and Early Franciscan Period,’ pp. 128-38, and Grado G. Merlo, ‘Eremitism in Medieval Franciscanism,’ pp. 265-82.

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of Francis’s companions (Giles and Leo, Julian of Speyer and others) kept the eremitic retreat alive. Their charismatic witness in turn became an inspiration for the Spiritual factions that understood eremitic solitude as an escape; a path that was repeatedly trodden in the centuries thereafter. Sources of Inspiration Marcella Gatti and Benedikt Mertens have established that Francis started his early eremitic wanderings after his conversion in a landscape literally riddled with hermitages and retreats. Monte Subasio, Assisi’s mountain at the edge of the Spoleto valley, had attracted hermits and monks since the fifth century. The western outcroppings of this mountain were called Colle Sant’Antonio after the desert father, and one of its southern hills was called Santa Maddalena, referring to the Magdalene’s legendary eremitical years in the caves of southern France. Several chapels named after Saint Antony and the Magdalene, as well as two abbeys on Mount Subasio — namely San Benedetto and San Silvestro — facilitated eremitic retreats on the mountain slopes, supporting hermits in a number of carceri between the eleventh and the late fourteenth century. When Francis received the use of one of these cells, he was probably just one hermit among others in the woods. It was only after 1399, when the San Benedetto Abbey was destroyed, that most other carceri disappeared, so that the Franciscan Carceri hermitage, with its support structure through the Order, eventually was the single one to survive. Monteluco, the mountain at the other side of the Spoleto valley (circa 50 kilometers from Assisi) in which Francis began his religious adventures, harbored an eremitic tradition that went back to Isaac of Syria, who had traveled to Italy around 532. His followers built around his cell the San Giuliano monastery, which for centuries was a center for eremitical settlements that retained elements of their Syrian models (with caves and huts in the immediate neighborhood of the central house). Eventually, San Giuliano developed into a full monastery, first turning into a Cassianese and later into a Cluniac abbey. These developments, however, did not end eremitic undertakings in the surrounding hills.2 2 Gatti, ‘A Historical Look at the Carceri’ (see above, n. 1), pp. 131-3; Mertens, ‘In eremi vastitate resedit’ (see above, n. 1), 288-319.

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Francis and his early companions would also have been acquainted with Monte Pisano, near Lucca and Pisa in Tuscany. This mountain was called mons eremiticus and contained both individual hermitages and larger hermit communities, especially during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In addition, there was a long tradition of incarcerati, cellari, cellani, reclusi, murati, and eremiti in the Marches of Ancona (for instance on the Montagna dei Fiori), organized into small communities of cells near churches and chapels connected with monasteries. The hagiographic tradition shows that Francis recruited a number of his companions from these various groups.3 Francis would not only have received inspiration from these hermit settlements. He also would have encountered followers of recent eremitic cult leaders, who were engaged in mapping out for themselves a form of evangelical life. Cases in point are the followers of William of Malavalle, the Brettinesi, who from the very beginning seemed to have combined the eremitical life with apostolic activity, and the hermit communities of John Bono in the Cesena region. Several such groups obtained permission to preach and to hear confession in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council. Hence we are dealing with groups that followed a route comparable to that of the early Franciscan movement, almost exactly in the same time period, or even slightly earlier. The main difference with the Franciscans is that, in the early thirteenth century, these other groups were more or less forced to take on the Benedictine or the Augustinian Rule, so to become normalized groups within the categories that the Church had established at the Lateran Councils. Quite a few of these groups eventually were absorbed into the Hermits of Saint Augustine. In this context it is also good to take stock of currents in female religiosity. Too frequently, the formation of the Ugolinian, Damianite, and early Poor Clare monasteries in the thirteenth century is depicted as a side affair within the early history of the Franciscan Order, and more often than not relegated in the scholarly literature to male Franciscan initiatives. It is easily overlooked that many of the early Ugolinian and Damianite monasteries had close links with an established tradition of ascetic retreat by women, either alone or in small recluse communities. Although the Church had problems with women that tried to follow the eremitical life in isolation, there is ample evidence for the

3

Mertens, ‘In eremi vastitate resedit,’ 289.


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presence of female hermits and recluses in central Italy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For some of these women, the hermitage was a temporary affair. A case in point is Bona of Pisa (ca. 1165-1207), whose life of pilgrimage (and as a tour guide in the Holy Land) included a period in which she lived as a hermit in the deserts of Palestine.4 In central and northern Italy, such eremitic initiatives could be combined with penitential activities, and with the formation of communities in which the women could create a formula to straddle the contemplative and active aspects of their religious ambitions. The intervention of bishops, papal legates, and popes subsequently forced a number of these eremitical and penitential communities into accepting an established rule (the Augustinian Rule, the Benedictine Rule, or one of the rules issued in the course of time for the Proto-Poor Clares), to seek spiritual guidance from the secular clergy or from Mendicant clerics, and to reshape their religious life along established monastic lines (in Benedictine or Cistercian fashion). Throughout the later medieval period, quite a few Poor Clare settlements and renewal movements associated with the female branches of the Franciscan Second or Third Order started from eremitical beginnings around an individual recluse. A good example, put forward by Giovanna Casagrande, is Filippa Mareri († 1236). Filippa initially lived as a recluse in her own home, then moved with some followers to a dormitory near her castle, to enter, finally, into the Damianite Order (the future Poor Clares). Another example given by Casagrande is Margherita Colonna († 1280), who became a hermit around 1273 in a cave on the Prenestine Hill, gathering a number of companions around her. Allegedly, Cardinal Giacomo Colonna gave them an anchorite rule. After her death, Margherita’s hermitage evolved into a monastery of Poor Clares. Likewise, Colette of Corbie (early fifteenth century) lived for some time as a recluse before she began her reform of Poor Clare monasteries in Burgundy, Flanders, and Savoy.5 4 Anna Benvenuti Papi, ‘ “Velut in sepulchro”: Cellane e recluse nella tradizione agiografica italiana,’ in Culto dei santi. Istituzioni e classi sociali in età preindustriale, eds. S. Boesch Gajano and L. Sebastiani (L’Aquila and Rome, 1984), pp. 365-455, there 443. 5 Casagrande, ‘Forms of Solitary Religious Life for Women’ (see above, n. 1), pp. 90-2. On Colette, see especially Élisabeth Lopez, Culture et Sainteté, Colette de Corbie (1381-1447) [Centre Européen de Recherche sur les Congrégations et les Ordres Religieux: Travaux et Recherches 5] (Saint-Étienne, 1994).

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Other female recluses steered free from being absorbed into the regulated monastic life, establishing either a life as a hermit in the wild, or rather — and that was the trend in the thirteenth century, especially in Italy — as a recluse in the city. A famous recluse in the ambiance of the Franciscan Order was Umiliana Cerchi, whose Vita was written by the friar minor Vito of Cortona. His hagiographical account relates that she took on the habit of the Franciscan tertiaries, yet expressed the wish to live in the wilderness. As this wish could not be realized, she found her retreat in a room. This drew admirers, some of whom she encouraged to do the same, telling them that they should think of their own home as a hermitage in a grove, and consider their natural family as the beasts of the forest that they should flee from at all cost!6 In a comparable vein, the Vita of Margaret of Cortona, written by the Franciscan friar Giunta Bevegnati, tells us that Christ himself chose the lifestyle for the prospective saint. He would have told her in person that she was not destined for a life in a desert, as that was no longer appropriate in this day and age. Yet Christ assured her that she could be as solitary in her city as if she was living in the midst of the desert.7 There is a broad category of holy women in central Italy who can be classified as recluses. A number of them were affiliated with one of the religious orders. Those are the women that received hagiographic attention. Yet Anna Benvenuti Papi and Giovanna Casagrande point out that documentary sources reveal a much larger number of incarcerati/inclusae/reclusae than the hagiographic sources. The latter highlight the recluses that the Church could use to propagate models of female holiness under control of the Mendicant Orders, but tend to ignore many of the more irregular and independent recluses who

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Acta sanctorum, May 4, ed. Jean Bolland (Antwerp, 1680), pp. 392-5. Cf. Anna Benvenuti Papi, ‘Umiliana dei Cerchi. Nascita di un culto nella Firenze del Duecento,’ Studi Francescani 77 (1980), 87-117. 7 Giunta Bevegnati, Leggenda della vita e dei miracoli di Santa Margherita da Cortona, trans. E. Mariani (Vicenza, 1978), p. 39. Many more examples of a slightly different kind can be mentioned here, such as Clare of Montefalco, who became a recluse within her community, and Umiltà of Faenza. A woman from a different area and time period is Jeanne-Marie de Maillé (1331-1414), whose Vita was written by her Franciscan confessor, Martin de Bois-Gaultier. See for an overview of these women Casagrande, ‘Forms of Solitary Religious Life for Women’ (see above, n. 1), pp. 92-4.


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did not have a formal link with any of the orders, and yet may have had a fascinating life of religious experimentation.8 However, independent female recluses not embedded in an accepted community under surveillance of one of the Mendicant Orders became seriously embattled in the fourteenth century, when Dominican preachers in particular started to fulminate against men and women who sequestered themselves in caves and cells without proper spiritual guidance by recognized preachers and confessors. Action against such recluses went hand in hand with the forced suppression of Beguines and Bizocche, and with the contemporary propagation of the Franciscan Third Order as a viable alternative under Mendicant control. The Eremitical Life in the Vitae of Francis Athanasius’s Life of Antony gave the hagiographical genre a commanding narrative structure that kept its hold on the imagination of hagiographers for many centuries. In western Europe, as Jean Leclercq tells us, the Egyptian hermit-monk rising up out of Athanasius’s hagiographical masterpiece remained a model for the medieval monastic tradition. To quote Leclercq: “Il restait, réellement, le Père de tous les moines: aussi, dans tous les milieux et à toutes les époques du Moyen Âge occidental, se considéraient-ils comme ses vrais fils; partout ils ont revendiqué son patronage . . . A chaque renoveau monastique, on révoque l’ancienne Égypte: on veut, dit-on, faire revivre l’Égypte, instaurer une nouvelle Égypte; et on recourt à S. Antoine, à ses exemples, à ses écrits. . . . S. Antoine représente pour tous un idéal, dont le propre est de pouvoir être réalisé diversement. La vie d’Antoine n’est donc pas, pour les moines du Moyen Âge, simplement un texte historique, une source d’information sur un passé définitivement mort: c’est un texte vivant, un moyen de formation à la vie monastique.”9 Whatever the innovative character of the Franciscan movement, the first Vitae devoted to its founder-saint by Thomas of Celano

8 See for instance Benvenuti Papi, ‘ “Velut in sepulchro” ’ (see above, n. 4), pp. 365-7; Casagrande, ‘Forms of Solitary Religious Life for Women’ (see above, n. 1), pp. 90-7. 9 Jean Leclercq, L’amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu. Initiation aux auteurs monastiques du Moyen Âge (Paris, 19903), p. 98.

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reached back to the hagiographical tradition established by Athanasius. There is, first of all, a cultural explanation for this. Thomas of Celano himself had been the product of Benedictine Abbey schools, such as Monte Cassino. For him, Athanasius’s Life of Antony would have been one of the first models to rely on (alongside of the texts written by and on Benedict of Nursia). On top of that, Thomas would have had another reason to shape his own text on the matrix provided by what was arguably the most famous hagiographical account available to him. The Franciscan leadership wanted Celano to provide the Order and the Church as a whole with an authoritative hagiographical account of Francis’s life, death, and miracles, by which to legitimize what critics of the Franciscan experiment might have considered to be dangerously close to condemned initiatives by the Waldensians and the Humiliati. Recently, Sean Kinsella has scrutinized the way in which both the Vita of Antony and the Vita prima sancti Francisci by Celano developed along a tripartite movement of spiritual growth: moving from the purgative through the illuminative to the perfective level. In Antony’s case, this process was a journey from awakening and early struggle, through becoming a monastic model and guide to others, to his conformity to Christ. Kinsella’s study suggests that Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima adopted this developmental scheme very carefully. Throughout its three books the Vita prima presents this movement threefold. In the first book, which dwells on the impact of the Word of God in the life of Francis and therewith is fundamentally purgative in character, the transition from Francis hearing and announcing the Word (initially without fully understanding), through living and adopting the Word, to Francis being transformed internally by the Word, itself completes the triad of purgation, illumination, and perfection. The same holds true for books two and three of Celano’s Vita prima. Book two, which presents Francis as a light to the world and as an example to others is fundamentally illuminative, yet again fulfills the pattern of spiritual growth through the purgative, illuminative, and perfective stages between the reception of the stigmata and Francis’s bodily suffering, the interpretation of Francis’s bodily wounds, and the death, burial, and ascension of Francis into heaven. Likewise, book three, dealing with the canonization and miracles of Francis, the main gist of which is perfective, has a purgative aspect in Celano’s account of Francis’s hard struggle to renew the Church, an illuminative aspect in the manifestation of his miracles,


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and a perfective element in the final outcome of the saint’s life and works, namely a world renewed by his life and teachings.10 As Kinsella himself remarks towards the end of his article, there are many other ways to see correspondences and parallels between Celano’s Vita prima and Athanasius’s Life of Antony. In addition to these, it is possible to discern at least five narrative themes shared by both texts. First of all, both texts exploit similar biblical passages as guidelines for action. Most significantly, they deploy nearly the same biblical texts as catalyst for the first major conversion experiences. Early in Athanasius’s narrative, the reader is told that Antony, pondering over which route to take, entered the church: “. . . it happened that the Gospel was being read, and he heard the Lord saying to the rich man, ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me’ . . . Antony left the church at once and gave to the villagers the property he had received from his parents . . .”11 According to Celano, biblical passages like these motivated the direction of Francis’s and his early companions’ conversion to the evangelical life, be it Luke 9,3 and Matthew 10,10, which commanded the disciples not to have gold, silver or money and to travel without provisions,12 or Matthew 19,21: “If you want to be perfect, go and sell everything.”13

10 Sean Kinsella, ‘Athanasius’ Life of Anthony as Monastic Paradigm for the First Life of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano: A Preliminary Outline,’ Antonianum 77 (2002), 541-56. 11 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 2, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, Early Christian Biographies, ed. Deferrari [The Fathers of the Church 15] (Washington, D.C., 1952), p. 135. 12 Thomas of Celano, Vita prima sancti Francisci 1.9.22, ed. in Collegium S. Bonaventurae, Legendae S. Francisci Assisiensis [Analecta Franciscana 10] (Quaracchi, 19261941), pp. 75-102, there 91: Qui cum ei cuncta per ordinem enarrasset, audiens sanctus Franciscus Christi discipulos non debere aurum sive argentum seu pecuniam possidere, non peram, non sacculum, non panem, non virgam in via portare, non calceamenta, non duos tunicas habere sed regnum Dei et poenitentiam praedicare, continuo exsultans in spiritu Dei. (“When (the priest) had told him everything in an orderly fashion, Francis understood, all the while rejoicing in the spirit of God, that the disciples of Christ were to possess neither gold, nor silver nor money, that they should carry with them on the road no wallet, no bag, no bread and no staff, that they should have no shoes nor two tunics but preach the kingdom of God and penitence.”). 13 Celano, Vita prima 1.10.24, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), p. 20: Accelerat proinde vendere omnia sua et pauperibus, non parentibus elargitus est ea, et perfectioris viae titulum apprehendens, sancti Evangelii consilium adimplevit: Si vis perfectus esse, vade et vende omnia quae habes, et da pauperibus . . . (“He hastened accordingly to sell all his possessions and distributed it not among his family but among the poor, and

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Second, there is the love for solitary places. The Life of Antony is very much a narrative of ongoing retreat, to go further and further away, so to engage the divine in solitude. Hence, the Life of Antony suggests that, following divine advice, Antony came “. . . to a very high hill, at the foot of which was water, very clear, and sweet, and very cold . . . After he had received bread from his fellow travelers to start with, he remained alone on the hill, with no one else with him . . .”14 Although Francis’s life was different, Celano’s Vita prima elicits the same theme to elaborate Francis’s frequent solitary encounters with the divine,15 culminating in the mountain-retreat at La Verna, leading to God’s literal imprint on Francis’s body.16 Third, there is the punishment of the body. The Life of Antony is one of the first hagiographical texts that makes the body the privileged locus to fight out the war against temptations through mortification and discipline. A good example is given in chapter 47: “When, at length, the persecution ended and the blessed Bishop Peter had died a martyr, Antony departed, and again retired to the cell. There, he was daily a martyr to conscience in the sufferings he endured for the faith. He practiced a much more intense asceticism, for he fasted constantly and wore a garment made of skin, the inner lining of which was hair. He kept this even until his death. He never bathed his body with water to cleanse it. Nor did he even wash his feet; he would not allow them to put in water at all without necessity.”17

by taking on the glory of a more perfect road, he fulfilled the counsel of the Holy Gospel: if you want to be perfect, go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor . . .”). 14 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 49-50, trans. Deferrari (see above, n. 11), p. 180. 15 Hence Celano’s Vita prima 1. 27.71, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), p. 53, states: Eligebat proinde frequenter solitaria loca, ut ex toto animum in Deum posset dirigere . . . (“Accordingly he frequently chose solitary places, so that he could completely direct his soul to God . . .”). 16 Francis’s choice for La Verna is introduced by Celano, Vita prima 2.2.91, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), p. 69 as follows: Tempore quodam beatus et venerabilis pater Franciscus, relictis saecularibus turbis, quae ad audiendum et videndum eum quotidie devotissime concurrebant, locum quietis et secretum solitudinis petiit, cupiens ibi vacare Deo et extergere, si quid pulveris sibi ex conversatione hominum adhaeserit. (“At a certain time, the blessed and venerable father Francis — abandoning all turmoil of secular people, who very devoutly came together on a daily basis to hear and see him — searched for a secret place of rest and solitude, desiring there to be free for God and to cleanse himself from the dust sticking to him from the conversation with people.”). There, Francis would encounter his Seraphic vision, in the same text, 2.3.94, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae, p. 72. 17 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 47, trans. Deferrari (see above, n. 11), p. 178.


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Following this mould, Celano’s Vita prima singles out Francis’s asceticism, his mortification of the flesh, as well as the harsh subjugation of bodily urges, which were called by Francis the willful obstinacy of “brother ass.” In Celano’s case, this theme is extended to the life of the early Franciscan community.18 Fourth, there is the confrontation with devilish temptations. The Life of Antony is riddled with the saint’s struggles against temptations put forward by the Devil. It starts early: “The Devil, however, in his envy and hatred of the good, could not bear to see such steadfastness in a young person and attempted to use against him the methods in which he is skilled,” and culminates in heroic struggles later on in the narrative, depicting moments when Antony faced the Devil in total solitude.19 In Celano’s text, comparable temptations with exactly the same function make their appearance, for instance in chapter 27, where Celano relates how Francis, retreating into solitary places, was forced to fight with the Devil who tried to tempt him in all possible ways.20 Finally, there is the special relationship with animals, recalling a pristine paradisiacal world. In the Life of Antony, this prelapsarian relationship is exemplified by the exchange between the saint and

18

In Celano’s narrative, Francis’s progressive contempt for his own body is connected with the embrace of suffering (his own and that of his fellow men, especially lepers and other outcasts), as well as with Francis’s attempts to curb the inclinations of the flesh. Cf. Vita prima 1.7.17, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), p. 16 (the encounter with the leper); 1.17.42 and 1.19.52, pp. 33-4 and 40-1 (the subjugation of the flesh) and Francis’s teachings of bodily mortification to others. For a more in-depth treatment of the early Franciscan relationship with the flesh see my essay ‘Dealing with Brother Ass: Bodily Aspects of the Franciscan Sanctification of the Self,’ in The Invention of Saintliness, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker [Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture 2] (London and New York, 2002), pp. 163-84. 19 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 5, trans. Deferrari (see above, n. 11), p. 138. This theme is developed further in chapters 6 to 14. 20 Celano, Vita prima 1.27.71, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), p. 54: Manu ad manum cum diabolo confligebat, cum in eiusmodi locis non solum tentationibus ipsum pulsaret interius, verum etiam exterius ruinis et subversionibus deterret. Sed sciens fortissimus miles Dei. Dominum suum ubique omnia posse, terroribus non cedebat, sed aiebat in corde suo: ‘Nihil amplius, o malevole, potes in me malitiae tuae arma excutere, quam si in publico coram omnibus maneremus.’ (“He fought hands on with the Devil, as in such places the Devil not solely assailed him with temptations internally, but also frightened externally with ruin and acts of destruction. Yet the soldier of Christ, knowing very strongly that his God could do all things everywhere, did not give in to these onslaughts, but said in his heart: ‘No more, foe, can you discharge in me the weapons of your malice, than if we were in public in the presence of all people.’ ”).

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an animal that damaged his crops: “At first, however, the beasts in the desert often used to damage his crop and his garden when they came for water, but having caught one of them, He said graciously to all: ‘Why do you harm me, when I do you no harm? Go away, and, in the name of the Lord, do not come near these things any more.’ ”21 This anecdote, together with others, does not differ much from the stories concerning Francis’s extraordinary relationship with animals. Celano’s Vita prima devotes a full chapter to this specific theme, to signal Francis’s exceptional holiness, by which he gained the obedience and the love of irrational creatures, manifesting in the process his own untainted relationship with God’s creation.22 Whatever the parallels, many of which, like the typological patterns discovered by Kinsella, can also be found in Thomas of Celano’s Vita secunda and in the Legenda major on Francis written by the Franciscan minister general Bonaventure,23 the Franciscan hagiographers faced the urgent task of connecting the life and actions of the founder with the Order he established. In the hagiographical texts, the origins of the Order are bound up with those moments when Francis, transformed through his spiritual desert experience, returned to the world (like Christ returning from the desert) ready to assume his apostolic mission. The eremitical life remained both a reference point for Francis of Assisi and a topic of discussion among the young fraternity. As late as 1209, returning from Rome, where they had just received papal approval for their way of life by Pope Innocent III, Francis and his followers discussed whether they should pursue the apostolic life, or whether they should try to live a life of eremitical seclusion in “loca solitaria.” According the Celano’s Vita prima, the choice eventually fell on the former.24

21

Athanasius, Vita Antonii 50, trans. Deferrari (see above, n. 11), p. 181. See Celano, Vita prima 1.21, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), 44-7, on his preaching to the birds and their obedience. 23 See especially Ewert Cousins, ‘St. Bonaventure’s Life of St. Francis and the Monastic Archetype,’ in Blessed Simplicity, ed. Raimundo Panikkar (New York, 1982), pp. 135-41; William R. Cook, ‘Tradition and Perfection: Monastic Typology in Bonaventure’s Life of St. Francis,’ American Benedictine Review 33 (1982), 1-20. Both of these works are also cited in the article of Kinsella, ‘Athanasius’ Life of Anthony as Monastic Paradigm’ (see above, n. 10), 543, n. 4. 24 Celano, Vita prima, 1.14.35, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), p. 28: . . . Conferebant pariter, veri cultores iustitiae, utrum inter homines conversari deberent, an ad loca solitaria se conferre. Sed sanctus Franciscus . . . eligit non sibi vivere soli . . . (“. . . the 22


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If the hagiographical tradition is anything to go by, this choice did not solve the dilemma once and for all. For a considerable time, Francis retained doubts about the decision to opt for the apostolic life. Unable to resolve his doubts by himself, Francis sent out two friars to Sylvester and Clare of Assisi, to ask for their prayers and for a response from God. Their answer was unanimous: it was God’s will that Francis went out to preach. The hidden irony within this story is that both Sylvester and Clare were renowned champions of seclusion and prayer. Hence, Francis’s ultimate choice for the apostolic life was guided by the advice of those steeped in the depths of spiritual retreat.25 Francis found a compromise solution for this felt dichotomy by seeking alternation, thus serving the people and benefiting from the solitude of contemplation. Hence, he intermittently undertook lengthy fasting and prayer sessions, honoring certain moments and feast days in the liturgical year, such as Saint Michael the Archangel, Assumption, Saints Peter and Paul, Christmas, and Easter. He also engaged in ascetical retreat during the time following Epiphany, which Jesus had consecrated by his fasting, and on many Fridays, in memory of Christ’s passion. By these periodic retreats, during which he combined prayer and contemplation with a severe fasting regime, Francis hoped to enact the Gospel life and to humble himself before God. Spiritually replenished by these experiences, he then felt able to resume his apostolate. Hagiographical and documentary sources mention some of the cells where Francis would retreat on such eremitic sabbaticals: Borgo San Sepolcro, Fonte Colombo, Greccio, Poggio Bustone, Rocca di Brizio, Sant’Eleuterio near Rieti, Sant’Urbano, Sarteano, La Verna, Carceri, Isola Maggiore in lake Trasimeno, Le Celle in Cortona, and so forth.26

true cultivators of justice discussed among themselves whether they should mingle among the people or retreat to solitary places. Yet the holy Francis . . . chose not to live for himself alone . . .”). 25 Bonaventura of Bagnoregio, Legenda major, 12.1-2, ed. in Collegium S. Bonaventurae, Seraphici Doctoris S. Bonaventurae Legendae Duae de Vita S. Francisci Seraphici (Quaracchi, 1923), pp. 126-7. See on this Martino Conti, ‘Eremo ed evangelizzazione nella vita dei francescani,’ in Lettura Spirituale-Apostolica delle Fonti Francescani [Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto Apostolica Pontifica Università Antonianum], eds. G. Cardaropoli and Martino Conti (Rome, 1980), pp. 75-102, repr. in English in Franciscan Solitude, eds. André Cirino and Josef Raischl (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1995), pp. 121-7. 26 Such places are alluded to in chapter seven of the Regula non bullata, the final

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Both the Compilatio Assisiensis and the Speculum perfectionis testify that Francis eventually was able to envisage a new synthesis between the apostolic and the eremitical life, by insisting that eremiticism was as much an attitude as a physical retreat: “Even when you are on the road, your conversation shall be humble and honest, as if you were in the hermitage or in your cell. For, wherever we go, we always take our cell with us; for Brother Body is our cell, and our soul is the hermit who lives in it, constantly praying and meditating to God. For if the soul cannot remain quiet in its cell, then a hand-made cell is of little value to the religious.”27 The Franciscan Rule for Hermitages Francis used his own experiences, as well as those of others to map out a concise guide for the eremitical life of the friars between 1217 and 1221. This work has survived as the Regula pro eremitoriis data, and has been compared with other classics guiding the eremitic life of medieval religious (such as Augustine’s sermons to the brothers in the desert, Peter Damian’s rule for hermits and Peter the Venerable’s letter to Gilbert the recluse).28 It would seem that Francis’s Regula pro eremitoriis data, also entitled in some of the manuscripts as the De religiosa habitatione in eremo (a title that conveys the fact that it was not a rule in the legal sense of the word), was first of all meant for friars who, like Francis, wanted to exchange the apostolic life for bouts of periodical retreat, in order to experience a more perfect spiritual life than was normally possible.29

redaction of which stems from 1221, in the Vita prima of Antony of Padua and in the Vita beati Aegidii, Conti, ‘Eremo ed evangelizzazione’ (see above, n. 25), pp. 75102. 27 Licet enim ambulatis, tamen conversatio vestra sit ita humilis et honesta, sicut si in eremitorio aut in cella essetis. Nam ubicumque sumus et ambulans, habemus semper cellam nobiscum: frater enim corpus est cella nostra et anima est eremita, quae moratur intus in cella ad orandum Dominum et meditando de ipso. Unde si anima in quiete non manserit in cella sua, parum prodest religioso cella manu factu. This passage can for instance be found with some variations in Speculum perfectionis, ed. Paul Sabatier, 2nd ed. (Manchester, 1928-1931), pp. 14-7; Speculum perfectionis, ed. L. Lemmens [Documenta Antiqua Franciscana 2] (Quaracchi, 1901), p. 37. 28 For a more detailed analysis, also regarding its authenticity, see Kajetan Esser, Studien zu den Opuscula des hl. Franziskus von Assisi (Rome, 1973), pp. 137-79 (‘Die Regula pro eremitoriis data des hl. Franziskus von Assisi,’ 19621). 29 Cf. Speculum perfectionis, ed. Sabatier (see above, n. 27), p. 17: . . . Fratres mei, qui vadant per mundum sustinendo famem et multas tribulationes, et alii fratres, qui morantur in


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To overcome the pitfalls inherent in the solitary eremitical experience, the Franciscan hermitage was meant to house a small community of ideally not more than four friars (although the legendary sources tell us that hermitages could house more people).30 For a determinate time period, two of these friars were supposed to take on the position of the servant/mother (the role of Martha), furnishing the material needs of the other two friars, and making sure that the “sons” put under their temporary care were kept away from anybody, so that their silence would not be disturbed. During this period, these “sons” lead the contemplative life of Mary (the role of the Magdalene) and spent many hours of the day in their cell prostrate in prayer,31 maintaining in all of this the grid of the liturgical hours, which formed as it were, stabilizing sign posts in their contemplative endeavors. Normally, their only point of contact with the world of man were their temporary “mothers.”32 After a while, the roles of mother and son could be reversed.33

eremitoriis et pauperculis domibus. (“. . . my friars who may go through the world, sustaining hunger and many tribulations, and others who stay in hermitages and poor dwellings.”). 30 Cf. Thomas of Celano, Vita secunda sancti Francisci 29.59 and 31.61, ed. in Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), pp. 129-268, there 167. 31 Regula pro eremitoriis data, ed. in Kajetan Esser, Francisci Assisiensis Opuscula (Grottaferrata, 1978), pp. 295-8: Illi, qui volunt religiose stare in eremis sint tres fratres vel quattuor ad plus; duo ex ipsis sint matres et habeant duos filios vel unum ad minus. Isti duo qui sunt matres, teneant vitam Marthae et duo filii teneant vitam Mariae et habeant unum claustrum, in quo unusquisque habeat cellulam suam, in qua oret et dormiat. (“Let those who want to stay piously in hermitages consist of groups of three or four friars at most; let two of those be the mothers and let hem have two or at least one son. Those two who are the mothers, let them lead the life of Martha, and let the two sons lead the life of Mary and let them have one cloistered dwelling in which each has his own cell in which he prays and sleeps.”). 32 Regula pro Eremitoriis Data, ed. Esser (see above, n. 31), pp. 295-8: Isti fratres, qui sunt matres, studeant manere remote ab omni persona; et per obedientiam sui ministri custodiant filios suos ab omni persona, ut nemo possit loqui cum eis. (“Those friars who are the mothers, let them strive to stay far from anybody, and by the obedience due to their minister, let them guard their sons from anybody, so that nobody can talk with them.”); Regula pro eremitoriis data, ed. Esser, pp. 295-8: Et isti filii non loquantur cum aliqua persona nisi cum matribus suis et cum ministro et custode suo, quando placuerit eos visitare cum benedictione Domini Dei. (“And let these sons not speak with anybody but their mothers and with the minister and his custos when it pleases the latter to visit them with the blessing of the Lord God.”). 33 Regula pro eremitoriis data, ed. Esser (see above, n. 31), pp. 295-8: Filii vero quandoque officium matrum assumant, sicut vicissitudinaliter eis pro tempore visum fuerit disponendum . . . (“Whenever the sons take over the task of the mothers, at those times when it has seemed to them apt to arrange this alternately . . .”). Mother/son metaphors

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The Franciscan Rule for hermits became the basic text for the organization of the contemplative life in small Franciscan romitorii/carceri throughout the medieval period. This would have started very early. According to Thomas of Celano’s Vita secunda, a Spanish cleric speaking to Francis would have told the prospective saint that: “Your friars are living in our land in a small hermitage. They have so arranged their way of living that half of them take care of the domestic needs and the other half spend their time in contemplation. In this way, each week those who lead the active life exchange with those who lead the contemplative life, and the quiet of those giving themselves to contemplation is changed for the business of work.” Francis would have replied to this that these friars by their good example caused their profession to exude a fragrant odor.34 This anecdote has of course raised the question whether Francis’s Regula pro eremitoriis data could have been inspired by such examples rather than the other way round. Yet the sources do not allow modern scholars to answer that question. Although the Rule for hermitages was meant for specific dwellings of contemplation, it could be argued that Francis wanted all his dwellings to maintain as much as possible a hermitage character: as places where the Franciscan life of poverty, prayer and evangelical fraternity could be maintained during moments when the friars were not begging or preaching penance. This is borne out by some observations by Jacques de Vitry (1216), who stated that the brothers of the movement visited villages and houses in the daytime to preach penance, and returned in the evening to lonely places to contemplate. It is also supported by an alleged comment by Francis from 1226, in answer to a request to describe his ideal friary. In his answer, he described a modest compound, closed off by a ditch and a hedge. Within the compound he envisaged small dwellings of earth to describe the relations between the contemplating and the serving friars can also be found in contemporary beguine and anchorite regulations. In the very beginning, the eremitical retreat was an option for lay and clerical friars alike. Yet in later descriptions, the role of Martha is increasingly assigned to the lay brothers, who had to serve the clerics engaged in contemplative retreat: Speculum perfectionis, ed. Lemmens (see above, n. 27), p. 27. 34 Celano, Vita secunda 135.178, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), p. 232: Fratres, inquit, tui, in terra nostra pauperculo quodam eremitorio commorantes, ita vivendi modum sibi statuerant, ut media pars domesticis curis intenderet, media contemplationi vacaret. Hoc modo qualibet hebdomada in contemplativam activa transibat, et contemplantium quies ad laborum exercitia recurrebat.


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and wood, as well as a few cells where brothers could pray and work undisturbed, away from useless chatter. In the midst of these simple dwellings and cells should be found a basic church, where the friars could gather for Mass and the celebration of the divine office.35 This vision of the ideal friary does not differ much from the hermit communities that Francis would have been able to see in the hills of central Italy. It also fits the description of the Franciscan Portiuncula settlement in Francis’s lifetime.36 If the Portiuncula was Francis’s ideal community (aside from the small romitori where a single friar or a few friars could retreat for longer periods of time), it was an ideal that soon had to be forgotten. Due to the growing number of friars and changing conditions, larger convents and loftier friaries made their appearance. Yet by that time there was already a large network of Franciscan carceri/romitori in place, partly building on existing romitori traditions in the Italian mountains that the friars could step into. It could well be that the Regula pro eremitoriis data was partly an attempt to maintain the small and contemplative character of the Franciscan hermitage versus the friaries near and in the urban centers, which were quickly growing and changing into centers of learning and administration.37

35

Esser, Studien (see above, n. 28), p. 178, n. 232 refers in this regard for instance to some information in the Speculum perfectionis, ed. Lemmens (see above n. 27), p. 30: Accepta benedictione ab episcopo, vadant et faciant mitti magnam carbonariam in circuitu terrae, quam pro loci aedificatione acceperunt et ponant ibi bonam sepem pro muro in signum paupertatis et humilitatis; postea faciant fieri domos pauperculos ex luto et lignis et aliquae cellulas, in quibus fratres aliquando possint orare et laborare pro majori honestate et vitanda otiositate. Ecclesias etiam parvas fieri faciant, non enim debent facere fieri magnas ecclesias causa praedicandi populo . . . (“After they have received the blessing from the bishop, let them go out and create a large charcoal circle on the ground which they take for their building site and there let them make a good fence instead of a wall in the sign of poverty and humility. Thereafter let them create simple houses out of mud and wood, as well as a number of cells in which the friars at times can pray and work for greater honesty and to evade idleness. Let them also create small churches, for they should not make great churches to preach to the people . . .”). 36 According to Celano, Vita secunda 12.19, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 12), pp. 142-3 every friar at the Portiuncula had his own cell to retreat into. 37 For an introduction to this aspect of the Franciscan life, see L. Pellegrini, ‘L’esperienza eremitica di Francesco d’Assisi e dei primi francescani,’ in Francesco d’Assisi e francescanesimo dal 1216 al 1226 (Assisi, 1977), pp. 281-313; Grado G. Merlo, ‘Eremitismo nel francescanesimo medievale,’ in Eremitismo nel francescanesimo medievale [Atti del XVII Convegno Internazionale della Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani, Assisi, 12-13-14 ottobre 1989] (Assisi and Perugia, 1991), pp. 27-50; Bruno Marcucci, Il romitorio nella “forma vitae” francescana (Florence, 1994).

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The Retention of the Hermitical Tradition in the Educative Traditions of the Order When the Order became a pastoral task force in the Church, the issue of religious formation and education of novices presented itself with new urgency. During the early days, adult newcomers would be immersed in the Franciscan ways by the charismatic example of Francis and his early companions. The growth and institutionalization of the Order took a part of this charisma away. This was exacerbated by the fact that the Order recruited more and more adolescents, who had to be trained in the basics of the liturgy and the religious life before they could be exposed to the education necessary for their future tasks as preachers and educators. This was a new situation for the friars. They responded by creating the positions of novice master and magister juvenum in the 1240s, and by producing a number of novice training manuals.38 Most famous in this regard are a group of writings by the German friar David of Augsburg, now known under the collective title De exterioris et interioris compositione hominis,39 Bonaventure of Bagnoreggio’s Regula novitiorum from 1259-1260,40 and finally the Speculum disciplinae written by the Aquitainian custos Bernard of Bessa.41 It is remarkable that all of these manuals partly by coincidence and partly through the exposure to authoritative traditions within Victorine, Cluniac, and Cistercian houses (with which the Franciscans in France, Italy, and the German lands had close contacts), retained some important traditional vestiges of late antique monasticism, 38 For an introduction to the Franciscan novice training manuals, see my book Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden, 2004), pp. 206-20. 39 David of Augsburg, De exterioris et interioris compositione hominis libri tres, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (Quaracchi, 1899). For a partial modern Italian translation of the work (chapters 52-70), see: L. Iriarte et al., I mistici. Scritti dei mistici Francescani, I: secolo XIII (Assisi and Bologna, 1995), pp. 171-280. 40 Bonaventura, Regula novitiorum, ed. in Collegium S. Bonaventurae, Opera Omnia, 11 vols. (Quaracchi, 1882-1902), 8: 475-90. See for these and other educational writings by Bonaventure of Bagnoreggio for young friars also the Selecta pro instruendis fratribus ordinis minorum scripta S. Bonaventurae, una cum libello speculum disciplinae, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (Quaracchi, 1942), pp. 237-57. For late medieval German translations of Bonaventura’s Regula novitiorum, see Kurt Ruh, Bonaventura Deutsch (Bern, 1956), pp. 251-3. 41 Bernard of Bessa, Speculum disciplinae, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 40), 8: 583-622. Cf. Franco Bernarello, La formazione religiosa secondo la primitiva scuola francescana (Venice, 1961), pp. 39-40.


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notably in their treatment of bodily and mental discipline, vocal and mental prayer, and the search for increasing levels of perfection. The Franciscan novice training treatises contain basic concepts on asceticism, labor, and discipline that can also be found in the works of the desert fathers,42 notably as they had been formulated by John Cassian in the Institutes and in the Conferences. The first of these works introduces aspiring monks to the elements that belong to the discipline of the outer man within the monastic life. The Conferences in turn deal with the training of the inner man and the “perfection of the heart.” Both works became prescribed reading in early Benedictine monasticism. Although the Conferences became suspect for Pelagian tendencies, its message was recuperated in the abridgment made by Eucherius of Lyons. This double movement of the training of outer and inner man, which was subsequently transmitted in Cluniac, Cistercian, and Victorine circles, is also a pivotal structuring element in the just-mentioned Franciscan novice training treatises, most clearly so in the above-mentioned works by David of Augsburg. David’s De exterioris et interioris compositione hominis, written for the novices under his care as the novice master of the Regensburg friary in the 1240s, starts with a Formula de compositione hominis exterioris ad novitios. As the title indicates, this “beginners’ manual” is totally devoted to the edification of exterior man, providing behavioral guidelines and instruments to strengthen bodily and mental comportment. If properly maintained, outward comportment eventually would become a true signifier of internal virtue. The steps to proceed on this path are presented in a most condensed form in chapters 27 to 41, themselves entitled the Viginti passus de virtutibus bonorum religiosorum ad novitios. Once outer comportment has become the novice’s second nature, and has begun to work on his inner essence, he can turn to the next work, namely the Formula de interioris hominis reformatione ad proficientes, which in its turn is supplemented by a final doctrine of perfection

42 Cf. David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford, 1995); Philip Rousseau, ‘Christian Asceticism and the Early Monks,’ in Early Christianity: Origins and Evolution to A.D. 600: In Honour of W.H.C. Frend, ed. Ian Hazlett (Nashville, 1991), pp. 112-22; Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York, 1993); Antoine Guillaumont, Études sur la spiritualité de l’Orient chrétien [Spiritualité Orientale 66] (Bégrolles-en-Mauges, 1996), pp. 81-92.

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in the De septem processibus religiosorum. Both of these works deal with the subsequent stages of religious perfection from the viewpoint of interior man, starting with the proper reformatio of the powers of the soul, namely ratio, memoria, and voluntas, which are hampered by sin. Through their spiritual reformatio, man’s soul once more can become a true image of God.43 De septem processibus religiosorum thereafter provides a sevenfold progression of spiritual man; a progression that eventually will lead to a perfection of the heart and the soul akin to that described by John Cassian. Though initially presented as a further step in the novitiate training, this treatise is directed to the mature religious in their more elevated spiritual stages.44 Hence, whereas the Franciscan eremitic ideal had clear connections with Italian eremitical traditions that ultimately reached back to the Syrian desert, the mainstream texts of Franciscan novice training also retained important elements of the monastic desert experience in Egypt, if only via a roundabout route, notably William of Saint Thierry’s Epistola ad fratres de monte Dei and Hugh of Saint Victor’s De institutione novitiorum, which were the direct sources for David of Augsburg, Bonaventure, and Bernard of Bessa. It is probably no coincidence that both among early fourteenth-century Franciscan

43

Concerning the internal reformation, David of Augsburg, De exterioris et interioris compositione hominis, p. 88 informs us that: Interior reformatio in spiritu mentis consistit, quia et interior homo et imago Dei est mens rationalis . . . interior autem homo in bonis de die in diem renovatur et proficit in similitudinem eius, ad cuius imaginem creatus est. (“The interior reformation depends upon the spirit of the soul, because the rational soul is both interior man and the image of God . . . interior man is renovated day by day in good things and advances in the similitude of Him in which image he is created.”). Bonaventure developed the theme of interior and exterior man elsewhere on the basis of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, Bonaventura, In II librum sententiarum, d. 2, dub. 3, ed. in Collegium S. Bonaventurae (see above, n. 40) 2: 587: Scriptura distinguit hominem interiorem et exteriorem, sicut habetur secundae ad Corinthios licet is, qui foris est, noster homo corrumpatur; tamen is qui intus est, renovatur de diem in diem. Exteriorem autem hominem vocat non ipsum corpus tantum, sed corpus cum viribus animae, per quas habet his sensibilibus intendere, et eis in haerere. Interiorem autem hominem vocat ipsum spiritum rationalem, secundum quod habet circa coelestia se ipsum occupare. (“Scripture distinguishes between interior and exterior man, as is stated in the second letter to the Corinthians [2 Cor. 4,16]: albeit our outside man perishes, inward man nevertheless is renewed day by day. Scripture denominates with exterior man not solely the body itself, yet the body with those powers of the soul with which it tends to direct itself to sensible things and clings to them. On the other hand, Scripture assigns to interior man that rational spirit according to which it tends to occupy itself with celestial matters.”). Cf. Bernarello, La formazione religiosa (see above, n. 41), pp. 29-31. 44 Bernarello, La formazione religiosa, pp. 24-6.


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dissidents (the so-called Spirituals) and in fifteenth-century Franciscan Observant communities (male and female), the ongoing interest in these desert traditions for spiritual purposes would give rise to a renewed engagement with the ascetical writings of John Chrysostom, John Cassian, Basil, and (Pseudo-) Jerome.45 This is most pronounced among the eremitically inclined Villacrecean Observants in the fifteenth century, who modeled the basics of their own novice training first and foremost on Bonaventure’s authoritative Regula novitiorum, yet made sure to enlist the support of Cassian to mould the mind of their postulants.46 In the century thereafter, the same was true among the Capuchins who, from the 1530s onwards composed a series of novice treatises and elucidations of the Franciscan Rule in which the teachings of Cassian and Basil were carefully embedded in between teachings drawn from Francis of Assisi’s Testamentum and his Regula pro eremitoriis data.47 The Franciscan Eremitical Life as a Statement of Protest and Escape Already before Francis’s death, the Franciscan Order had begun to move away from the way of life that still could combine itinerant preaching of penance with eremitical retreat. The changing shape of Franciscan preaching (from evocative exhortation to do penance towards doctrinal preaching) and the increasing burden of confessional as well as administrative tasks, asked for well-educated clerical friars in need of housing, food, and libraries. This affected the character

45 Cf. Steve Driver, ‘From Palestinian Ignorance to Egyptian Wisdom: Jerome and Cassian on the Monastic Life,’ American Benedictine Review 48 (1997), 293-315. 46 Note the following remarks of Lopez de Salinas in his Memoriale religionis o Breve memorial de los oficios activos y contemplativos de la religion de los frailes menores (Capitulo duo, fol. 36r., Del enformador de los nuevos fraires e de los que prueban para ser fraires): “Este tal, asimesmo, para poder bien doctrinar a los novicios e mozos en las costumbrez de la Religión, debe ser él bien doctrinado en sanctos libros, mayormente de algunos especiales que fueron fechos por varones muy espirituales y aprobados para esto, así como ciertas doctrinas de San Bernardo, e la Doctrina de los novicios que fizo San Buenaventura, Fraire Menor, e otra que fizo Humberto, Fraire Dominico, e la doctrina de Juan Casiano, señaladamente la del cuarto libro De statutis Monachorum.”, ed. in Introducción a los orígenes de la Observancia en España. Las reformas en los siglos XIV y XV (Madrid, 1958), p. 690. 47 For an initial overview and analysis of the Capuchin output of novice treatises and spiritual adhortations for novices, including those from the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see I frati cappuccini. Documenti e testimonianze del primo secolo, 2 vols., ed. Costanzo Cargnoni (Perugia and Rome, 1988) 1: 1277-1485.

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of the Franciscan friary (which became a real cloister-like edifice), as well as its location. Many of the primitive friaries were built outside of town in semi-reclusion. New friaries built in the 1230s and 1240s increasingly were built in the towns, whereas older friaries were relocated.48 It was still customary to retain a possibility of seclusion for those seeking temporary retreat. Early Franciscan constitutions (the socalled pre-Narbonne fragments of 1238 and the Narbonne constitutions of 1260) mention the existence of eremitical dwellings of some kind in the neighborhood of the friaries. Yet many clerical friars began to see eremitical retreat as a form of spiritual idleness. One of those, the chronicler Salimbene of Parma, writing after 1250, went as far as to say that friars who retreated into eremitical reclusion were useless for hearing confessions and giving guidance to others.49 For friars such as Salimbene, retreat had become a luxury, and a useless one at that. In a more positive sense, this opinion was shared by those clerical friars who limited eremitic retreat to moments of leisure, during which they could focus on matters that needed free time; a luxury that they normally did not have, due to pastoral and administrative obligations. Hence, Bonaventure of Bagnoreggio retreated to La Verna, the famous mountain where Francis would have received the stigmata, to write his Itinerarium mentis in Deum. That inspired (and ideologically charged) hermitage setting allowed the minister general to reach a state of meditative quietness necessary for composing a work of lasting spiritual value. For clerical friars like him, eremitic retreat had become the exception. Not surprisingly,

48 There is a massive amount of literature on these issues. A good introduction is given in Luigi Pellegrini, Insediamenti Francescani nell’Italia del Duecento [Istituto Francescano Studi e Ricerche. Nuova serie] (Rome, 1982); idem, ‘L’espansione degli insediamenti francescani in Italia,’ in Francesco, Il Francescanesimo e la cultura della nuova Europa, eds. Ignazio Baldelli and Angiola Maria Romanini (Rome and Florence, 1986), pp. 91-110; G. Casagrande, Chiese e conventi degli ordini mendicanti in Umbria nei secoli XIII-XIV (Perugia and Assisi, 1989). 49 Salimbene of Parma, Cronica, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger [Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores 32] (Hanover and Leipzig, 1905-1913), p. 102: Alique morabuntur in civitatibus iuxta ecclesiam fratrum in heremitorio omnino reclusi, et habebant fenestram, per quam mulieribus loquebantur, et layci erant inutiles ad confessiones audiendas et ad consilia danda. (“Some lived in towns alongside of the church of the friars utterly separate in a hermitage, and they had a window through which they spoke with women, and they were lay friars unfit to hear confessions and to give counsel.”). Note that, in a quite malicious manner, Salimbene connected eremitical “idleness” with unlicensed contacts with women.


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many hermitages and carceri/romitori associated with the life of Francis and his early companions were abandoned in the course of the thirteenth century (only to be recuperated during the Observant renewal movements in the later medieval period). Francis had ended his days removed from the decision-making process, having left the leadership of the Order to others. He was surrounded by a few close companions, who shared his predilection for retreat. After the death of Francis, these companions, such as Giles of Assisi, Leo of Assisi, and Julian of Speyer continued to opt for an eremitical life style, and to steer free from the administrative and pastoral obligations that were changing the Order. Therewith they kept the eremitical ideal alive within the Order, if only marginally so. The Vita sancti Aegidii, probably written by friar Leo in or shortly after 1262, mentions a number of hermitages where Giles of Assisi spent his years in prayer and writing, visited by admirers from a younger generation (hermitages around Assisi, places such as La Verna, the Carceri at Monte Subasio and Monteripido, and a number of hermitages in the Rieti Valley, such as Greccio, Poggio, Bustone, and Fonte Colombo). It has been suggested that Francis’s early companions, several of whom lived very long lives (Giles died in 1261 and Leo in or after 1271), had the “opportunity to reshape their memories of Francis into something that spoke to their own reading of subsequent events. It also gave them time to pass those memories on to another generation of Franciscans who would themselves adjust the memories to fit their own views.”50 Whereas Giles apparently did not portray his own eremitical life as a mirror for an order that was falling away from the pristine ideals — although some criticism is vocalized, it is not a major focal point within Giles’s own writings, nor in Leo’s Vita Aegidii — later partisans of the Franciscan Spiritual movement, such as Angelo Clareno (writing in the 1320s) and other fourteenth-century sources, claimed that Giles had presented the hermitage as a last refuge in an order that was falling into decline.51 Among these Franciscan Spirituals, this representation of the life and convictions of Francis’s early companions became very popular. 50 David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans. From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park, Penn., 2001), p. 13. 51 Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 27-8.

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Suffering from increasing sanctions and even outright persecution by the Order superiors for their intransigent adherence to standards of poverty that the Order could no long permit, they tried to create an eremitic Franciscan counterculture. This phenomenon was particularly strong in the Marches of Ancona and in Umbria, traditionally the heartlands of eremitic experimentation. In the early fourteenth century, the Spiritual friars went as far as to take over several Franciscan hermitages with force, to turn them into communities where, once again, the pristine Franciscan evangelical ideals could be lived to the full, in accordance with the admonitions of the Franciscan rule, Francis’s Testamentum and the Regula pro eremitoriiis data. The larger community of friars, in its turn, used the hermitage more than once as a half-way house to keep disturbing elements within the Order under control (as a more lenient alternative to full imprisonment). Hence, John of Parma, who had to step down as the minister general of the Order in 1257 (due to his implication in a scandal over the extreme Joachimist utterances in the Introductorius in aevangelium aeternum, written by the Franciscan friar Gerard of Borgo San Donnino), was more or less exiled to the Franciscan hermitage at Greccio, where he spent the next 25 years of his life. It is fascinating that he was allowed some visitors. Therewith, John of Parma, like Giles of Assisi before him, could become a cult figure among some younger friars with spiritual leanings.52 After the 1270s, several other friars were subjected to this kind of punishment (good examples are Thomas of Tolentine, who later was martyred at Tana, and Peter of Macerata, subsequently the leader of the dissident Ancona Spirituals. In their case, hermitage detention was soon to be exchanged for chained imprisonment).53 The most famous friar to receive this treatment when his preaching caught the attention of anxious superiors, no doubt was Ubertino of Casale. His provincial minister wanted to lock him up, yet intervention by the urban authorities of Perugia and Pope Benedict XI led to his temporary exile to La Verna (1305). There, living in the neighborhood of other eremitically inclined friars (among whom was John of Fermo, whose own Vita is a testimony to his love of eremitical

52 53

Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 33, 38. Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, p. 44.


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retreat) and pious women such as Margaret of Città di Castello, he succeeded in writing (the first redaction of ) his famous Arbor vitae.54 In 1294, some kind of solution seemed at hand for the Spiritual Franciscans. In that year the hermit Peter Morrone from the Abruzzi received the papal crown (Celestine V). He lent his ear to several groups of Italian Spirituals, allowing them to establish themselves as the Poor Hermits of Pope Celestine. For a while, this seemed to solve the issue (much to the disappointment of the Franciscan leadership, who still sought punishment for these apostates). However, the hermit-pope withdrew from the papacy within five months. He was succeeded by Boniface VIII, who put the former pope behind bars, and annulled most of Celestine’s legislation. This also meant the demise of the new Order of Poor Hermits. Their members now in theory were back under the obedience of their former Franciscan provincials. Deciding that it was not a good idea to await how this would turn out, they fled to Greece, as they had done before (and where Angelo Clareno and fellow Spirituals had become acquainted with several classics of eastern Spirituality, notably the works of Basil and John Climacus, which fuelled their eremitical aspirations).55 Angelo Clareno commented on this turn of events in a letter to friar Liberato, suggesting that: “for our own greater peace and safety we should journey to remote places, where we might serve God freely, and without tumult or scandal.”56 Here, the hermitage once again is portrayed as a last refuge. The 1294-1295 episode was just the beginning of much harsher persecutions of the Spirituals, who soon would be treated as schismatics and heretics. The apex of these persecutions took place during the papacy of John XXII and the generalates of Michael of Cesena and Guiral Ot. It was the latter, however, who in the 1330s gave permission to a group of obedient friars with eremitic tendencies to settle in the hermitage of Brugliano. After some setbacks, this would

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Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, p. 97. R.G. Musto, ‘Angelo Clareno O.F.M.: Fourteenth-Century Translator of the Greek Fathers. An Introduction and a Check-List of Manuscripts and Printings of His “Scala Paradisi”,’ Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 76 (1983), 215-38, 589-645; C. Riggi, ‘Il Climaco latino nel medioevo e la tradizione manoscritta della versione e degli scolii di Angelo Clareno,’ Schede Medioevali 20-21 (1991), 21-44 (= L’edizione di testi mediolatini: problemi metodi prospettive). 56 Found in Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans (see above, n. 50), pp. 69-70, which gives a very lucid treatment of this whole episode. 55

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form the beginnings of the Observant reform, which both within the male and within the female branches of the Order would entail a thorough re-evaluation of the eremitic aspect of the Franciscan way of life, not only in Italy, but also in the Spanish peninsula (especially in the reforms pushed through by the Villacrecians and the Alcantarines).57 Ultimately (after the 1440s), the Observants would tread the same path as the Franciscan community had done in the thirteenth century — increasingly focusing on their pastoral tasks, to the detriment of their eremitical legacy. This again resulted in the emergence of dissidents and reformers in search of solitude and poverty. The most successful of these groups would be the Riformati and the Capuchins in the early sixteenth century.58 Conclusion The eremitical element within the Franciscan way of life was always checked by the strength of the Franciscan apostolic mission and the pressures to adopt a form of religious engagement deemed to be more fruitful to the Church at large. Just like the Dominicans, the Friars Minor became a major pastoral taskforce, deeply involved with preaching, hearing confessions, and inquisitorial activities. This side of the Franciscan way of life has determined both the way in which many contemporaries saw the Order, and the way in which Church historians have evaluated the Franciscan contribution to the late medieval religious world. Yet, the Franciscan commitment to pastoral care was never fully dominant within the Order. Francis’s vision of the life of evangelical perfection owed much to existing eremitic traditions in central Italy. The appeal of these traditions was so strong that, throughout his life, Francis continued to waver between the apostolic and eremitical alternatives. Some programmatic elements of his love for the eremitical life finally were codified in his Regula pro eremitoriis data. 57 On Ot’s initiatives, see Duncan Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Franciscan Order (Rome, 1987), pp. 376-9. 58 For an outline of these developments, see Costanso Cargnoni, ‘Le case di preghiera nella storia dell’Ordine Francescano,’ Studi e Ricerche Francescane 7 (1978), 55-112. This study gives ample bibliographical references on the position of the eremitical life in the various Franciscan reform movements between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries. See also Merlo, ‘Eremitismo nel francescanesimo medievale’ (see above, n. 37).


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The first hagiographers of Francis described his eremitic tendencies with recourse to the most famous hagiographical example available to them: Athanasius’s Life of Antony. Therewith the eremitic tendencies in Francis’s life could be transformed into an acknowledged model of spiritual growth. This model could be used within the Order for formative purposes, and at the same time could defend the Order’s origins and way of life against detractors. The formative aspects of the eremitic life also found their way into the Franciscan Order via a different road, namely through the novice training treatises with which prospective friars were introduced to the religious life from ca. 1240 onwards. Just as the hagiographers turned to the Life of Antony for an authoritative model of hagiographical writing, the Franciscan authors of novice training treatises incorporated many aspects of the monastic desert experience to give shape to the religious formation of future friars. Throughout the Order’s history, the tension between the apostolic and the eremitical aspects of the Franciscan experience gave rise to conflicts. This is most clearly visible in the struggle between the socalled Spiritual Franciscans and the friars of the “Community.” For the latter, the eremitic element of the religious life had a formative aspect, but it could only exist as a fringe activity in the context of the educational, apostolic, and administrative burden of the clerical friars. For the Spirituals, on the contrary, the eremitical experience was bound up with the Franciscan quest for poverty and spiritual perfection. Even though the Spiritual movement was suppressed, the underlying tension was never solved, and continued to fuel new reform initiatives through the centuries.

EX VITA PATRUM FORMATUR VITA FRATRUM: THE APPROPRIATION OF THE DESERT FATHERS IN THE AUGUSTINIAN MONASTICISM OF THE LATER MIDDLE AGES Eric L. Saak Abstract This article traces the role of the desert fathers in the creation of the late medieval Augustinian Myth. It argues that the major problem facing members of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine (OESA) was how to appropriate the tradition of the desert fathers and that of Augustine’s monasticism for the tradition of the Order. In this light, special attention is given to the Pseudo-Augustinian Sermones ad fratres in eremo and the central importance of John Cassian and Paul of Thebes. Of particular importance are the works of Jordan of Quedlinburg, which shaped the identity of the OESA from the mid-fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. The desert fathers provided the model of the eremitical life, and thus Jordan “mythified” the desert fathers as he had Augustine himself. This was not an issue of historical identification, but of mythic creation in an attempt to provide the foundation of the late medieval OESA.

Introduction Augustinian monasticism had a major impact on the religious and intellectual life of Europe from the fourteenth century on into the early sixteenth, serving as a catalyst for both the Renaissance and the Reformation.1 Yet in the early fourteenth century, the OESA found itself in a precarious situation. The Order was in fierce competition with both the Franciscans and the Augustinian Canons and its very existence was at stake.2 To secure the privileges needed for the Order to flourish, the Augustinian Hermits had allied themselves with the pope and the papal cause, authoring works for Popes Boniface VIII and John XXII that articulated the papal hierocratic theory in

1

Eric L. Saak, High Way to Heaven. The Augustinian Platform between Reform and Reformation, 1292-1524 [Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 89] (Leiden, 2002); Meredith J. Gill, Augustine in the Italian Renaissance. Art and Philosophy from Petrarch to Michelangelo (Cambridge, 2005). 2 Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 15-234. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2006

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its most extreme form. The Order had been formed in 1256 by Pope Alexander IV, gathering together a number of dispersed eremitical groups. Unlike the Franciscans and Dominicans, the Augustinian Hermits did not have a charismatic founder, and unlike the Augustinian Canons, the OESA could not rely on a 200-year established tradition for their legitimacy. Not only did the Order have to struggle for position in society, but it also had to develop a clear sense of its own identity and mission. In this context, members of the OESA created for themselves during the course of the 1330s through 1350s a clearly defined and delineated history of origins that gave them their group identity. This endeavor culminated in Jordan of Quedlinburg’s Liber vitasfratrum.3 Though the Egyptian desert of the early fathers was far removed in time and space from fourteenth-century Europe, in the mind of Jordan, the OESA had appropriated the desert for themselves as the foundation of their religious life. As Jordan affirmed, the life of the Augustinians was formed from the life of the desert fathers.4 Following in the footsteps of Augustine, members of the OESA created a unique place for themselves in the history of Christianity. Central to the OESA’s self-fashioning was the re-christening of the desert fathers as the earliest patres of Augustine’s hermits, and the major architect of that image was Jordan. For Jordan and the late medieval Augustinians, the desert was not some far away place found only in stories and myths: the desert was the life they were living day in and day out, the desert made present in the fourteenth century that was to play such a seminal role in the transition from medieval to early modern Europe. The Sermones ad fratres in eremo Before Jordan of Quedlinburg completed his Liber vitasfratrum (by 1358), a work that soon became the unofficial “Handbook” for the Order and was, at least in part, intended to provide an answer to the question of what made one an Augustinian,5 Jordan had been

3

Saak, High Way to Heaven, pp. 267-315. Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, prologus, ed. W. Hümpfner and R. Arbesmann (New York, 1943), p. 5. 5 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Epistula ad Johannem lectorem in Argentina, ed. in Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 1. 4

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interested in and busy dealing with the history of the Order already for three decades. In 1343, Jordan donated his autograph copy of a miscellany of Augustiniana to the Order’s house in Paris. This manuscript has survived and is known as his Collectanea sancti Augustini, which contains, among other things, an early collection of the pseudoAugustinian Sermones ad fratres in eremo, and a biography of Augustine, composed by Jordan.6 Already in the Collectanea we find Jordan striving to recover the historical roots of his Order. He dimisses many of the stories that were circulating about how Augustine had originally founded his Order of Hermits in Italy before returning to Hippo as unhistorical. He tries to reconstruct the historical development of Augustine’s monasticism, and therefore that of his Order, from the sources themselves, and most of all, from the Confessions.7 It is from the Confessions, moreover, that Jordan learned of the central importance of the desert fathers to Augustine’s own conversion. In Confessions book 8, Augustine tells how Ponticianus told him and his friend Alypius about Saint Antony, and read the two young African intellectuals Antony’s Life. This set Augustine on fire for conversion and to dedicate himself to God completely. It was also the event that directly preceded his conversion in the garden.8 Augustine had never heard of the desert fathers, and it was his encounter with them, and Antony in particular, that served as catalyst of his own conversion to Christianity and Christian monasticism. The historical problem Jordan faced, therefore, was how to connect the desert fathers, Augustine’s own monasticism, and the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine. Previous attempts to reconstruct the earliest origins of the OESA were at Jordan’s disposal when he set to work on the problem. From 1330 to 1334 were composed the Anonymous Florentine’s Initium sive processus ordinis heremitarum sancti Augustini, Nicholas of Alessandria’s 6 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Collectanea sancti Augustini, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 251, fols. 1r-104v; see also Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 774-80. 7 See Jordan of Quedlinburg, Annotatio temporum beati Augustini episcopi, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 251, fols. 71va-72vb; the text is given in Eric L. Saak, ‘The Creation of Augustinian Identity in the Later Middle Ages,’ Augustiniana 49 (1999), 109-64, 251-86, there 264. Jordan used the chronology of his Annotatio temporum for his emplotment of Augustine’s biography in his Vita sancti Augustini, ed. in Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 774-810. 8 Augustine, Confessiones 8.6.14-5, ed. James J. O’Donnell (Oxford, 1992), pp. 84-5.

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Sermo de beato Augustino, and Henry of Friemar’s Tractatus de origine et progressu ordinis fratrum eremitarum sancti Augustini.9 In the works of these authors we find that the OESA traced its origins to Paul of Thebes, the First Hermit, and Antony. From these two, the author of the Initium argued, “every order and religion of the modern religious takes its beginning and point of departure.”10 This original anchoritic impetus then became dispersed throughout the world, with three primary “founders” in three different geographical regions: Basil in Caesarea, Pachomius in Thebes, and Augustine in Italy and Africa.11 From Augustine’s monasticism then was derived “virtually all religions,” and the Initium explicitly mentions, among others, the Benedictines, the Camaldalese, the Cistercians, the Carthusians, the Regular Canons, the Franciscans, and the Dominicans.12 While Augustine had pride of place, the Initium is clear that he did so because of his own embodiment of the monastic tradition coming from Paul, the First Hermit, and Antony, whom he includes in the Order’s “ancient fathers.” Indeed, one can date the beginning of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine to the year 225 and Paul and Antony, or to 343 and Augustine himself, or to 1150, or 1190, or 1230, or finally to the Great Union in 1250.13 The author wants to emphasize, overemphasize if need be, the antiquity of the OESA. Jordan did not set to work ex novo, and it was, in part, his attempt to correct erroneous accounts of the antiquity of the OESA that led him to take up the project anew. In doing so, Jordan had a source unavailable to the Anonymous Florentine, Nicholas of Alessandria,

9

Initium sive processus ordinis heremitarum sancti Augustini, ed. in Balbino Rano, ‘Las dos primeras obras conocidas sobre el origen de la Orden Augustiniana,’ Analecta Augustiniana 45 (1982), 331-76, there 337-51; Nicholas of Alessandria, Sermo de beato Augustino, ed. in Balbino Rano, ‘Las dos primeras obras conocidas,’ 354-76; Henry of Friemar, Tractatus de origine et progressu ordinis fratrum eremitarum sancti Augustini, ed. R. Arbesmann, Augustiniana 6 (1956), 90-145; see also Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 187-218. 10 Initium, ed. Rano (see above, n. 9), p. 337: Ab istis namque anchoritis omnis Ordo et religio modernorum religiosorum sumpsit exordium et principium. For a good discussion of Antony and Paul within the larger context of desert monasticism, see William Harmless, S.J., Desert Christians. An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford, 2004), pp. 58-118. 11 Initium, ed. Rano, pp. 337-8. 12 Initium, ed. Rano, pp. 340-3. 13 Initium, ed. Rano, pp. 349-50. The dating here is certainly not accurate, though there is no reason to believe that the Anonymous Florentine was intentially redating. Antony died in 356 and Augustine was not born until 354.


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or Henry of Friemar, namely, Augustine’s own words telling of his earliest monastic communities: the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, which were to become the central text in the fierce debates over Augustine’s heritage that arose in Jordan’s own day and were still at issue when the Observant Augustinian friar, Martin Luther, began studying theology at Erfurt.14 Though Erasmus ended the dispute in proclaiming these sermons forgeries, the origins of the work remain an enigma. The Sermones ad fratres in eremo are known today as present in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, which presents the text of the Sermones as published in 1685 by the Maurists.15 The Maurists included a prefatory warning of the spurious nature of the sermons, which is reproduced in Migne.16 Further, they mention that they based their edition on Jordan’s autograph, with which they collated at least two other manuscripts.17 In Migne, the Sermones ad fratres in eremo consist of 76 sermons. The extent to which they based their edition on Jordan, however, must be questioned when one takes note of the fact that in his Collectanea Jordan included only 23 Sermones ad fratres in eremo. Included in the Maurist edition, however, are two of the four Sermones sancti Augustini present in Jordan’s Collectanea with the designation Sermones sancti Augustini ad presbyteros suos, and four of the six Sermones sancti Augustini ad populum.18 Between 1343 and 1685, the Sermones ad 14 See Kaspar Elm, ‘Augustinus Canonicus-Augustinus Eremita: A Quattrocento Cause Célèbre,’ in Christianity and the Renaissance. Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, eds. Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (New York, 1990), 83-107. In 1505 Wimpfeling denied the authenticity of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo and claimed that Augustine never lived as a monk, which elicited a strong reaction by the OESA, including Martin Luther. Luther’s earliest marginals, dating from 1509-1510, include a note to Augustine’s De vita et moribus clericorum, in which Luther supports the work as genuine explicitly against Wimpfeling; see Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 61 vols. (Weimar, 1883-1999), 9: 12, lines 7-18. The De vita et moribus clericorum was the title given to Augustine’s sermons 355 and 356, which circulated separately, as well as part of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo. Luther does not comment on the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, but was correct in upholding these two sermons as authentic. 15 Sermones ad fratres in eremo, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 40] (Paris, 1845), cols. 1233-1358. 16 Sermones ad fratres in eremo, ed. Migne, cols. 1234-35. 17 Sermones ad fratres in eremo, ed. Migne, col. 1235. 18 The sermons Jordan included as Sermones ad presbyteros are numbers 5 and 38 in Migne; Jordan’s Sermones ad populum are numbers 43, 44, and 76 in Migne. The sermon ad populum, De ieiunio et orationis is listed in Migne’s collection under Sermones suppositicii, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 39] (Paris, 1846), cols. 1886-87. In the Tabula of Jordan’s autograph, only the first 23 Sermones ad fratres in eremo are numbered. In the text itself, thereafter the numbering continues but not consecutively and not consistantly. This in itself indicates that Jordan was copying these

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fratres in eremo not only grew from 23 sermons to 76, but also incorporated sermons that Jordan had explicitly excluded from the collection, namely, Jordan’s Sermones Augustini ad presbyteros suos and ad populum became Sermones ad fratres in eremo. Moreover, sermons number 27 and 28 of Jordan’s collection, designated as sermons ad presbyteros suos, are included by the Maurists in their collection, but these two sermons are in fact genuine sermons of Augustine, numbers 355 and 356, or as sermons 52 and 53 of Migne’s collection of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo. The problem we face, therefore, is not only the origin of these sermons, but also the development of the collection itself. Whereas in 1943, Rudolph Arbesmann noted a list of 23 extant manuscripts of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, though admitting this was incomplete,19 in 2002 Kaspar Elm could identify 424 extant manuscripts, based on the Vienna project cataloging the manuscripts of Augustine’s works.20 Moreover, as Elm notes, the Vienna project is only two-thirds complete, and does not take into account translations or early printed editions. Thus, Elm concludes, the Sermones ad fratres in eremo had a greater impact than did even Augustine’s Rule itself, extant according to Verheijen in 274 manuscripts.21 In this light, what we are dealing with is not some quaint and curious oddity of a rather obscure religious order, but with a major text influencing the religious life as such of late medieval and Renaissance Europe. Until quite recently it had been assumed that the Sermones ad fratres in eremo were the work of a single forger. In 1943, in rejecting the perhaps natural assumption that either Jordan himself was the author of these sermons or another Augustinian Hermit had been to defend the OESA in the context of the debate with the Canons, Arbesmann argued: “For two thirds of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, comprising

sermons from another numbered collection, or collections. I am currently working on the critical edition of Jordan’s Collectanea, in which I will treat the textual history of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo extensively. 19 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), p. xxv. 20 Kaspar Elm, ‘Sermones ad fratres in eremo. Pseudoaugustinische Lebensregeln für Eremiten und Kanoniker,’ in Regula Sancti Augustini. Normative Grundlage differenter Verbände im Mittelalter, eds. Gert Melville and Anne Müller [Publikationen der Akademie der Augustiner-Chorherren von Windesheim 3] (Paring, 2002), pp. 51537, there 534. 21 Elm, ‘Sermones ad fratres in eremo,’ p. 535. On Augustine’s Rule, see Luc Verheijen, La Règle de saint Augustin, 2 vols. (Paris, 1967).


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all those collected and used by Jordanus . . . we find that the author is not an Augustinian Hermit but a Benedictine monk who lived long before the time when such a falsification would have served the suspected purpose. A special study of this question will soon appear.”22 Such as study, however, never did appear, unless Arbesmann was referring to the article of J.-P. Bonnes, published in 1945-1946, on the sermons of Geoffrey Babion, in which he argued that the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, based on textual parallels and borrowings, were no later than the twelfth century.23 Nevertheless, the obscurity of the sermons’ origins has simply continued, with varying dates proposed as definitive, ranging from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. In the late 1980s, Balbino Rano and Katherine Walsh presented persuasive evidence for dating the origins of the sermons to the fourteenth century.24 Walsh’s argument was that had the Sermones ad fratres in eremo been extant, they surely would have been used by the Anonymous Florentine, Nicholas of Alessandria, and Henry of Friemar for their portrayals of the Order’s Augustinian origins.25 While an argument “from silence” can never be completely convincing, it is in this case rather persuasive when one takes into account that these authors were vigorously looking for ways to prove the Hermits’ case against the Canons, and were certainly drawing upon and embellishing each other’s work. Thus, it is first with the Anonymous Florentine that we find an association between the original OESA and Saint Francis: the assertion that Augustine had first founded his Order of Hermits in Italy before bringing them back to Africa, an account of Augustine appearing in a vision to Pope Alexander IV, which therefore acted as the catalyst of the Great Union of 1256, and a notable argument against the priority of the Canons. All of this lore was then further embellished and strengthened in Nicholas’s account, who added the designation of Simplicianus as a hermit, and further still in Henry’s.26 22 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), p. xxix. 23 J.-P. Bonnes, ‘Un des plus grands prédicateurs du XIIe siècle: Geoffroy du Loroux dit Geoffroy Babion,’ Revue Bénédictine 56 (1945-1946), 174-215. 24 Balbino Rano, ‘San Agustín y los orígenes de su Orden. Regla, Monasterio de Tagaste y Sermones ad fratres in eremo,’ La Ciudad de Dios 200 (1987), 649-727; Katherine Walsh, ‘Wie ein Bettelorden zu (s)einem Gründer kam. Fingierte Traditionen um die Entstehung der Augustiner-Eremiten,’ in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, 6 vols. [Monumenta Germaniae Historica Schriften 33] (Hanover, 1988-1990), 5: 585-610. 25 Walsh, ‘Wie ein Bettelorden,’ pp. 596-7. 26 Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 194-218.

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If any of these authors had known of the sermons, they surely would have used them. If, therefore, we can accept this argument as persuasive, it means that the Sermones ad fratres in eremo originated sometime between 1334 and 1343. In this light, Walsh has highlighted the central importance of the chancellor of Paris, Robert de Bardis, for the origins of the Sermones.27 Arbesmann had noted that two fifteenth-century manuscripts of the Sermones, one from Berlin and one from Danzig, mention that the sermons were found in Paris by de Bardis.28 Arbesmann further mentioned the Vatican and Paris manuscripts of de Bardis’s collection of Augustine’s sermons, claiming that either he had copied from Jordan, or they had both copied from a common source.29 Walsh, however, inverted the relationship. She showed that the Vatican manuscript did not date from the fifteenth century, as mistakenly noted in the catalogue, but was a fourteenth-century manuscript and was de Bardis’s personal copy, dating to the period of his chancellorship, that is, from 1336 to 1349. Moreover, the Vatican manuscript had numerous sermons added in the margins. “Every entry,” Walsh explained, “that would later become part of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, is found unsystematically and haphazardly in the manuscript, as much in the main text as in the margins, namely, as the collector had come across them.”30 Thus, Walsh concludes, for de Bardis there was no “standard” collection and he did not designate the sermons as ad fratres in eremo. The title, according to Walsh, can most appropriately be considered to have originated with Jordan.31 Balbino Rano has gone beyond the argument from silence to present a case that the author of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo knew and used the works of the Anonymous Florentine, Nicholas of Alessandria, and Henry of Friemar,32 and thus as a collection, though

27

Walsh, ‘Wie ein Bettelorden’ (see above, n. 24), pp. 598-600. Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), p. xxvii. 29 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. xxvii. 30 Walsh, ‘Wie ein Bettelorden’ (see above, n. 24), p. 599: “Jede Eintragungen, die später als Teile der Sermones ad fratres in eremo erkannt werden sollten, finden sich unsystematisch und willkürlich verteilt, sowohl im Haupttext wie auch am Rand, also wie sie dem Sammler untergekommen waren.” 31 Walsh, ‘Wie ein Bettelorden,’ p. 600. 32 Rano, ‘San Agustín y los orígenes de su Orden’ (see above, n. 24), 711-4. Rano’s two major pieces of textual evidence concern the phrase instigante autem pia 28


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no definitive answer can be given, its most likely date is between 1347 and 1357.33 Such a late dating, however, is rather unlikely given Jordan’s Collectanea, which he gave to his Order’s house in Paris in 1343.34 Rano, as had scholars previously, assumed that there was a single forger and/or compiler of the collection. Most recently, however, matre (“at the instigation of his pious mother”), and Et sic perveni in Africam pia matre defuncta, et aedificavi, ut videtis, monasterium, in quo nunc sumus, in solitudine a gentibus segregatum. (“And thus, my mother having died, I arrived in Africa, and I built, as you can see, a monastery, in which we are now, in solitude, away from people.”) from sermon 21; see the same article, 711-2. The textual parallels between these passages and Nicholas of Alessandria’s Sermo de sancto Augustino and Henry of Friemar’s Tractatus (see above, n. 9), are such that a direct textual relationship exists. Rano did not mention, however, what is perhaps even better proof. In Jordan of Quedlinburg, Collectanea (see above, n. 6), sermon 21, fol. 26rb, we find: Et placuit Deo centarium numerum fratrum mihi donare illuminans corda nostra non solum sanctissimos patres solitarios imitari, sed etiam in hac solitudine more apostolorum omnia communiter possidere, nos servare et postea docere et per me vobis precipere voluit. (“And it pleased God to give me a hundred brothers [and] illuminating our hearts, that we would endeavor not only to imitate the most holy solitary fathers, but also to possess all things in common in this solitude in keeping with the custom of the apostles, and thereafter He wanted both to command and to teach you through me.”). The reference to Augustine having been given a hundred brothers was referring to the “tradition” that Augustine wrote his Rule, and thus founded his first monastic community, in Centumcellis. This assertion, however, is first found in the Sermo de sancto Augustino of Nicholas of Alessandria, ed. Rano (see above, n. 9), p. 365: Dicti autem heremite in prefata heremo inter Romam et Viterbium in tantum numero et merito satis cito creverunt, quod ibidem cellas construxerunt iuxta locum qui Centum cellis dicitur et habitatores illius regionis in dicta heremo ecclesiam in honorem Sancte Trinitatis ipsis fratribus edificarunt et ibi in processu temporis fuit primus locus Ordinis heremitarum sancti Augustini. (“However the said hermits in the above mentioned hermitage between Rome and Viterbo quickly grew in such number and merit that they themselves built cells next to the place which is called Centumcellis, and the inhabitatants of that region [living] in the said hermitage, built a church in honor of the Holy Trinity, and there, in the course of time, was the first location of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine.”). The author of the Initium mentioned Centumcellis, but claimed that this was only one possibility for Augustine’s first monastic foundation, and that the precise location cannot be determined; Initium, ed. Rano (see above, n. 9), pp. 338-9. The Initium is the first extant textual reference to Centumcellis, and Nicholas’s Sermo is the first text that definitively names Centumcellis as the location of Augustine’s first monastery. There is no evidence that the author of the Initium or Nicholas knew the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, and yet the textual parallels indicate that there is a textual relationship. The hundred brothers Augustine was given in his first monastery in sermo 21 is an attempt to preserve the Centumcellis image, though places the first foundation in the outskirts of Hippo. It seems highly likely that the author of sermon 21 knew Nicholas’s Sermo. 33 Rano, ‘San Agustín y los orígenes de su Orden’ (see above, n. 24), p. 714. 34 The date of 1343 has been assumed as the date of the donation, since Jordan made a visitation to Paris for the prior general in 1343. There is, however, no concrete evidence that Jordan did indeed present his Collectanea to the house in Paris in 1343.

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Kaspar Elm has argued that not only can we not assume there was a “standard” collection of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, but also that we need to realize that these sermons could very well have been written by different authors at different times.35 Simply put, Elm’s argument not only makes sense, it also corresponds to the evidence. Elm has pointed to the twelfth-century controversies between the newly emerging Augustinian Canons and secular priests as having provided the model for the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, for in this context too there were forged texts ascribed to Augustine.36 Yet what he did not mention, is that at least one of the sermons Jordan included in his Collectanea, the unnumbered sermo ad populum De penitentia, listed as the 33rd text of the collection, is extant in manuscript 474B of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris, and dates from the twelfth century. In other words, in Jordan’s collection of Sermones sancti Augustini there are two authentic sermons of Augustine, and at least one pseudo-Augustinian sermon from the twelfth century, even if other of the sermons in the collection date from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The sermon De penitentia, however, was not included in the Sermones ad fratres in eremo by the Maurists, and neither was the sermon immediately preceding it in Jordan’s collection, which has been attributed to Caesarius of Arles. In point of fact, there was not a single forger. Was there, however, a single collector who provided the source of the transmission? Though Walsh, Rano, and Elm have furthered our understanding of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, at least by complicating the matter significantly, what has not been noted is that of the 23 Sermones ad fratres in eremo of Jordan’s collection, only two are found in the Vatican manuscript of de Bardis, numbers 19 and 20. Sermon 19 of Jordan’s collection, De vigilia nativitatis Domini, is found in the margin beginning on folio 51rb. Sermon 20 of Jordan’s collection, De nativitate Domini, is found in the text beginning on folio 67vb. In both cases de Bardis designated these sermons as ad heremitas. Moreover, on folio 290va we find a sermon added in the margin on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and here too de Bardis noted that it is a sermon ad heremitas. This sermon is not present in Jordan’s collection, nor in that of the Maurists. Jordan was not the source for de Bardis, and the Vatican manuscript of de Bardis’s collection, Vat. Lat. 479, 35 36

Elm, ‘Sermones ad fratres in eremo’ (see above, n. 20), pp. 528-9. Elm, ‘Sermones ad fratres in eremo,’ pp. 528-34.


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was not the source for Jordan, nor does it seem that they shared a common source. The relationship between de Bardis’s collection of Augustine’s sermons, Jordan’s Collectanea, and the textual tradition of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo is yet to be determined. Such an endeavor could very well be made infinitely more difficult, if not impossible, when we note, as did neither Walsh nor anyone else, that the Vatican manuscript of de Bardis’s collection is incomplete. Vat. Lat. 479 is a large manuscript, consisting of 325 folia containing over 300 sermons attributed to Augustine. In the preface to the work, de Bardis explains that he has organized his collection of Augustine’s sermons, which he had found in various monasteries and old books, into five parts. The first concerns the deeds and saints of the Old Testament; the second, the sollemnities and saints of the New Testament; the third, the words and writings of the Old Testament; the fourth, the words and writings of the New Testament; and the fifth, the ornaments of and impediments to the Church and the final ends of the good and the evil.37 Vat. Lat. 479, however, only contains the first two parts. It could be that de Bardis did indeed have a set collection of Sermones ad heremitas that paralleled Jordan’s collection, with the exception of the sermon on the Assumption, but that he organized his work differently, placing them throughout the five parts rather than keeping them all together. Not only the Danzig and the Berlin manuscripts from the fifteenth century mentioned by Arbesmann, but numerous other fifteenth-century manuscripts and at least two fourteenth-century manuscripts include the explicit remark that these were sermons found in Paris by Robert de Bardis.38 Moreover, in each case the collection contains the same sermons found in Jordan’s

37 Robert de Bardis, Collectorium sermonum sancti Augustini, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 479, fol. 1ra. 38 For example: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 1264, fourteenth century, fol. 123; Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex Vindobonensis Palatinus 3466, fourteenth century, fol. 147; Vienna, Schottenklosterbibliothek, Codex Scotensis-Vindobonensis 132, fourteenth/fifteenth century, fol. 80ra. G. Morin, ‘Notes d’ancienne littérature ecclésiastique,’ Revue Bénédictine 13 (1896), 346-7; as cited by Rano, ‘San Agustin y los origines de su orden’ (see above, n. 24), 715, has pointed to Toulouse, Bibliothèque de la Ville, MS 169, dated to the fourteenth century, which claims that the sermons ad fratres in eremo were found in the abbey of Saint-Denis, written by a Father John, a priest in the church of Saints Gervasius and Prothasius in the time of King Pippin, and then made their way to the papal library in Avignon.

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Collectanea, only two of which are present in Vat. Lat. 479, and do not include de Bardis’s sermon on the Assumption. At this point, however, all we can say for certain is that at least one of the sermons in Jordan’s collection originated in the twelfth century; that Jordan did not use Robert de Bardis as the source of his collection; that independent of Jordan at least three of the sermons had been designated ad heremitas; that two authentic sermons of Augustine were part of the “original” collection; that there was a tradition established early on in the transmission that the Sermones ad fratres in eremo had been found in Paris by Robert de Bardis; and that Jordan’s Collectanea was not the source of the early transmission, though it stands as a witness to the early transmission. Regardless of their origins, however, the Sermones ad fratres in eremo played a major role in debates over the origins of the OESA from Jordan’s time to the early sixteenth century. Moreover, Jordan used the sermons as a foundational source for both his Vita sancti Augustini and his Liber vitasfratrum. Finally, in these sermons we find the beginnings of Jordan’s historical solution to problem of the relationship between the desert fathers, Augustine’s own monasticism, and the OESA. When looking for the desert fathers in the Sermones ad fratres in eremo one finds a notable lack of references. Only four of the 36 sermons Jordan included in his Collectanea have reference to the desert fathers: numbers twelve, sixteen, 21, and 23. Paul of Thebes and Antony are used as exempla in sermon twelve,39 and Antony is so as well in sermon sixteen.40 The desert fathers in general make an appearance in sermons 21 and 23, and here we find Augustine appealing to the desert fathers as the source of his own monasticism. In sermon 21, On the Three Types of Monks and on Holy Poverty,41 Augustine traced the origins of his conversion to the desert fathers: As the holy father Jerome declared to us in a letter, most beloved brothers, there were three types of monks in Egypt, of which the first two were very good, but the third was completely worthless and should be avoided at all costs. What are those first two types that are said to be best except the type and order of hermits and of cenobites, whose most splendid life and holy congregation had its origins in the time of the preaching of the apostles. These are those perfect men, to whom I often adhere, through whom in the time of my errors I merited to be illumined. Their reputation for sanctity, coming to my ears, led me not to put off being baptized.42 39 40 41 42

Jordan Jordan Jordan Jordan

of Quedlinburg, Collectanea (see above, n. 6), sermo 12, fols. 15ra-b. of Quedlinburg, Collectanea, sermo 16, fol. 19vb. of Quedlinburg, Collectanea, sermo 21, fols. 26ra-27vb. of Quedlinburg, Collectanea, sermo 21, fol. 26ra: Ut nobis per literas declar-


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Yet the desert fathers were not just the original influence for Augustine, but continued to serve as a the primary example of the religious life. In sermon 23 we find a passage that sheds important light on Jordan’s view of the desert fathers.43 Afer extolling the virtue of obedience and cautioning against the vice of pride, Augustine then makes the argument: O you who remain in the desert, to each and every one of you I say: either you are better than the brothers who are in the cenobitic community, or you are worse. If you are better, I say come, so that you might give to them the example of life. If, however, you are worse, I say come, so that you might learn what you do not know.44

In effect, here Augustine is arguing that those religiosi who have remained in the desert, should come into a cenobitic community, either to enrich it, or to learn from it. Either way, the hermits in the desert should be coopted into a cenobitic community. And here we find the unexpressed rationale for Jordan’s treatment of the desert fathers: they are to be appropriated in order to teach the cenobites the true monastic life. Augustine’s contribution was to combine the holiness of the desert fathers with the apostolic life lived in community. Having returned to Africa, Augustine told his hermits: I built a monastery, as you see, the very monastery in which we are now, in solitude, segregated from the crowd. And it pleased God to give me a hundred additional brothers, illuminating our hearts that we should not only imitate those most holy desert fathers who lived alone, but also in this solitude to follow the custom of the apostles by possessing all our goods in common, and to take care of each other, for God wanted to teach you and to command you through me. For you see that before me there had been many fathers whom we ought to follow and imitate. However, they did not teach as I do that we should live according to the apostolic life. Therefore I am not embarrassed to say that I am the head and beginning of all of you.45

avit sanctus pater Ieronimus, fratres dilectissimi, tria fuerunt in Egypto genera monachorum, quorum duo sunt optima sed tercium omnino tepidum et omni affectu vitandum. Que sunt illi duo que optima predicantur nisi heremitarum atque cenobitarum genus et ordo? Quorum vita clarissima et sancta congregatio tempore apostolice predicationis sumpsit exordium. Isti sunt viri illi perfecti quibus frequenter adhesi tempore errorum meorum per quos etiam illuminari merui. Quorum etiam sanctitatis fama ad aures meas perveniens baptizari non diu distuli. 43 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Collectanea, sermo 23, fol. 29ra-30rb is the last in Jordan’s collection of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo and is titled: De obedientia et superbia. 44 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Collectanea, sermo 23, fol. 30ra: O vos qui manetis in deserto cuilibet vestrum dico: aut melior es fratribus qui sunt in cenobio aut peior es. Si melior es, veni, ut eis exemplum vite tribuas. Si autem deterior es, veni, ut discas que nescis. 45 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Collectanea, sermo 21, fol. 26rb: Edificavi ut videtis monasterium in quo nunc sumus in solitudine agentibus segregatum. Et placuit Deo centarium numerum fratrum mihi donare illuminans corda nostra non solum sanctissimos patres solitarios imitari, sed

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There are, however, even closer connections. Above I have already mentioned that the author of the Initium argued that one can point to Paul of Thebes and Antony as the founders of the OESA. In his Sermo de beato Augustino, Nicholas of Alessandria made the connection even more explicitly. According to Nicholas, the followers of Antony became dispersed throughout the world, some of whom in Asia began living under the Rule of Basil; others in Thebes lived under the Rule of Pachomius; and those who went to Italy lived under the Rule of Augustine.46 Those hermits of Antony’s who came to Italy, before they started living according to Augustine’s Rule, congregated in Mons Pisanis and in Centumcellae, both of which were becoming the mythic location of Augustine’s first monastery.47 Simplicianus, the holy man living as a hermit outside of Milan, had been inspired to live his eremitical life based on the example of these hermits. According to Nicholas, Augustine was converted to Christianity and to Christian monasticism by Simplicianus, and then on his return journey to Africa, he stayed for three years with the hermits in Centumcellae, and for this group of hermits wrote his Rule. Thus Centumcellae was Augustine’s first monastic foundation and was the beginnings of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine. For Nicholas, there was a direct line from Antony to Augustine, and this connection with the desert fathers was only strengthened by the role of Simplicianus. For Nicholas, the desert fathers, beginning with Antony, were the primordial members of the OESA.48 Jordan did not accept Nicholas’s account of the origins of the Order. Based on his reconstruction of Augustine’s biography drawn from the Confessions, Jordan knew that Augustine could not have stayed three years with the hermits in Centumcellae. At most, he simply visited them on his way back to Africa. Moreover, Jordan suggests that the hermits of Centumcellae had become part of Augustine’s own original monastic community who then, after its dispersal, returned to Tuscany. The Tuscan hermits were not part of the dispersal of the hermits of Paul of Thebes or Antony, but etiam in hac solitudine more apostolorum omnia communiter possidere, nos servare et postea docere et per me vobis precipere voluit. Sic enim videtis quod ante me multi fuerunt patres quos sequi et imitari debemus, non tamen sicut ego secundum apostolicam vitam alios vivere docuerunt. Caput igitur et principium omnium vestrum me dicere non erubesco. 46 Initium, ed. Rano (see above, n. 9), p. 364. 47 See Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 189-218. 48 Nicholas of Alessandria, Sermo de beato Augustino (see above, n. 9), pp. 363-8.


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rather of Augustine’s own original monastic community.49 Nowhere in Jordan’s writings do we find a direct line of succession from Antony, or Paul, to Augustine.50 Nevertheless, Jordan did leave the door open, so to speak. He did so not with respect to Antony or Paul as such, but with Simplicianus. Jordan was clear that Augustine’s first monastery was in Hippo, correcting the previous accounts which had placed it first in Italy.51 And yet Simplicianus provided Jordan with the connection between Italy and Hippo. According to Jordan in his Vita sancti Augustini, based on the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, before Augustine departed for Africa, he had already decided to establish there a monastery. Thus, he went to Simplicianus and asked him to give him some of his hermits, twelve to be precise, whom Jordan names, whom he could bring with him to Africa and there found a monastery.52 Jordan never draws an explicit line from Paul and/or Antony to Augustine, but he does from Simplicianus to Augustine; according to Jordan, Augustine founded his Order of Hermits in Hippo with hermits brought to Hippo from Milan and Simplicianus’s monastery. Not only did he provide a more historical account of Augustine’s monastic foundation than had previously been given, namely, as it first having been in Hippo rather than in Italy, but he also remained silent about the connection between the desert fathers and Simplicianus, leaving the “door open”: the first members of Augustine’s Order of Hermits, were, in addition to himself and his friends Alypius and Nebridius, hermits of Simplicianus, 49 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), pp. 44-5. 50 However, in the autograph of Jordan’s Collectanea, one quire is missing. This text is preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS 5338. In the Tabula of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS 5338, after the versified life of Augustine comes a versified life of Paul of Thebes. The Tabula of Jordan’s autograph only mentions a versified Life of Augustine, which, unfortunately, is part of the lost quire. The versified Life of Paul of Thebes is present in fols. 48rb-51rb. In the Tabula of Jordan’s autograph, after a versified life of Augustine is listed a versified Life of Paul of Thebes. Whether this versified Life of Paul of Thebes had been included in Jordan’s autograph, or was a later addition, perhaps of the copiers, cannot be definitively determined. See also Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 774-7. 51 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 22-3 (see above, n. 4); cf. Jordan of Quedlinburg, Vita sancti Augustini 9, ed. Saak (see above, n. 7), pp. 794-6. 52 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Vita sancti Augustini 7.1, ed. Saak, pp. 791-2. Here Jordan cites sermo 26 in his collection of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, Jordan of Quedlinburg, Collectanea (see above, n. 6), fols. 32va-b.

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who by 1343 had been portrayed as standing in a direct line of succession to Antony. Jordan’s Collectanea was the primary intertext for his Liber vitasfratrum, where he appropriated the desert fathers as the ancient patres of the OESA, and he did so not only with Simplicianus being the “lynch pin,” but also because Augustine had done so himself, as Jordan knew from the Sermones ad fratres in eremo where Augustine exhorts those hermits remaining in the desert to join his cenobitic community. In his Liber vitasfratrum, Jordan traced the history even further back, all the way to Christ and the apostles themselves. The Liber Vitasfratrum The Liber vitasfratrum is Jordan’s only work to have received a modern critical edition.53 It was completed by 1358, when Jordan submitted it to his Order’s prior general, Gregory of Rimini, for approval, approval that never came, due most likely to Gregory’s untimely death in November of 1358.54 The entire work, Jordan explained, was intended to answer the question of what made one an Augustinian. Jordan gave an extensive and multifaceted answer, but one that came down to the principle of imitating Augustine in all things.55 To explain how the OESA imitated Augustine, Jordan began his work with a discussion of Church history and the development of monasticism. The first religious community, Jordan explained, actually preceded the apostolic community. Drawing from Peter Comestor, Jordan argues that Samuel established the first religious community.56 There53 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4). As noted, Jordan’s Vita sancti Augustini has been edited in a working edition in Saak (see above, n. 7), pp. 774-810. Cyril Lawrence Smetana, O.S.A., has also presented a text of Jordan’s Vita sancti Augustini, but unfortunately it is of insufficient quality to be used for scholarly purposes. See Smetana, Life of Saint Augustine by John Capgrave. Edited from British Library Additional MS 36704 Together with Jordanus of Saxony’s Vita s. Augutsine [sic!] from Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 251 [Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 138] (Toronto, 2001), pp. 75-111. 54 On the dating of the Liber vitasfratrum and its submission to Gregory, see Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), pp. lii-vi. On Gregory’s generalate, see Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 315-44. 55 See Saak, High Way to Heaven, pp. 267-315; cf. Klaus Schreiner, “Nimm, Lies.” Augustinus als Vorbild (exemplar) und Regel (regula) Klösterlicher Buch- und Lesekultur im späten Mittelalter [Schriftenreihe der Akademie der Augustiner-Chorherren von Windesheim 3] (Paring, 1998). 56 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), p. 9.


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after, Jordan notes, “Christ himself founded the apostolic gathering, giving to them the evangelical rule.”57 This original apostolic community continued through Pentecost and was the beginnings of cenobitic community. From this original community, Jordan explains, there were three generations. The first generation was the apostles themselves and those who followed them, as told in Acts. Over time, however, as more members joined the evangelical, apostolic community, the rigor thereof began to become lax. Therefore, desiring to renew the original apostolic community, a group of those remembering the original perfection, left the cities and secluded themselves in hidden places outside the cities. In this way they could follow the original discipline of the disciples. And this was the second generation of the original apostolic community. In time, however, it became clear that this second generation also was falling away from the original apostolic community, for family life conflicted with the apostolic life. Therefore, individuals began to withdraw from this community and renouncing wives and all family ties, began to live as individuals dedicated to God, but in community. These, Jordan tells us, were the cenobitic monks, and they were the third generation of the apostolic community. This generation continued until the time of Saint Paul of Thebes, the First Hermit, and Saint Antony.58 Here Jordan ends his chapter and begins a new one discussing the four types of monks found in Egypt.59 Jordan had finally arrived at the desert fathers. Before detailing the four types of monks found in Egypt, Jordan makes a distinction that is essential for understanding his conception of monasticism: that between a cenobitic community and a monastery. The term “monastery,” Jordan explains, refers to the place of habitation; a cenobitic community on the other hand, signifies the type of profession. Thus a monastery could consist of a single monk; a cenobitic community could be called a monastery as well, but would by definition mean a group living a common life. For this distinction, Jordan cites John Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences.60 Based on this distinction, he later makes a further demarcation between a 57 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 10: Deinde ipse Christus conventum apostolorum instituit regulam evangelicam eis tradens. 58 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 11-2. 59 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 13-5. 60 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 12.

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hermitage and an anchoritic or cenobitic form of life. A hermitage refers to the habitation, whereas “anchoritic” or “cenobitic” refers to the type of profession. Thus, Jordan explains, there can be eremitic anchorities and eremitic cenobites.61 Living in community, therefore, does not, in and of itself, dislegitimate the designation of “hermit,” and Augustine had both lived himself as, and established a group of, eremitic cenobites. Even though they lived in community, the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine were genuinely eremitic, a designation Jordan based upon Cassian. When Jordan began tracing the history of monasticism with the desert fathers in Egypt, we should note that for him the desert fathers, as such, did not follow the apostolic life. The apostolic life, according to Jordan, originally had three generations, the third of which lasted up until the time of Paul of Thebes and Antony. The third generation was that of a cenobitic community, and this was a tradition continued by the desert fathers in Egypt. Nevertheless, Jordan makes a clear distinction between the original generations of the apostolic life, and the desert fathers. The vita apostolica suffered a lapse, and would not be renewed until Augustine. In discussing Egyptian monasticism, Jordan demarcates four types of monks: the cenobites, and anchorites, the sarabites, and the gyrovagi. The first two types are “good” and the second two are “bad.”62 The last two types Jordan harshly condemns, claiming they have nothing to do with “our religion.” The cenobites and anchorites, however, are to be embraced.63 Whereas in the second chapter of the work Jordan had distinguished between a cenobitic community and a monastery, and then in chapter seven made clear that there could be cenobitic hermits and anchoritic hermits, here in chapter three Jordan equates the hermits with the anchorites. A hermit, Jordan explains, is by definition an anchorite, and of the anchorites, or of the hermits, Paul of Thebes and Antony held primacy of place.64 How are we to understand, then, Jordan’s definition only four chapters later that a hermit did not, by definition, mean an anchorite, since there could be cenobitic hermits?

61

Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, pp. 13-5. 63 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. 64 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. 62

Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 22. ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 15. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 13.


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The answer is found in how Jordan develops his argument, and the purpose thereof. In chapter four Jordan argues that the anchoritic life is more perfect than the cenobitic, citing Abbot Piamon from Cassian’s Conferences as proof.65 The end and perfection of the anchoritic life is to have one’s mind completely abstracted from worldly concerns and united with Christ to the extent humanly possible. The end of the cenobitic life, however, is self-moritification and to crucify one’s will, taking no heed for the morrow.66 In other words, the anchoritic life is union with Christ, whereas the cenobitic life is the imitation of Christ. In this light, the cenobitic life prepares one for the anchoritic life, and thus the anchoritic life is the more perfect life. The cenobitic life, however, is more secure than the anchoritic life. The dangers an anchorite faces are far greater than those of the cenobite, for the Devil loves solitude.67 Whereas the vita perfecta is the anchoritic life, and the vita securior is the cenobitic life, the most perfect life, the vita perfectissima, would be to combine both forms of monastic life. Unfortunately, Jordan explains, this is virtually impossible, and he cites Abbot John, once again from Cassian’s Conferences, as witness.68 This was, however, the unique accomplishment of Augustine. Augustine lived the life of an eremitical cenobite. It is here that Jordan brought in his definition of the two forms of eremitical life: the cenobitic and the anchoritic, which apparently over-turns his earlier definition of the anchoritic life being identical to the eremitical life. However, there is no contradiction. To be an anchorite is to be a hermit, but to be a hermit, does not, in and of itself, mean that one is an anchorite. As the term “monastery,” so the term “hermitage” refers to the type of habitation, not the type of religious profession. Augustine joined the two in his person, and in the first two of his three monastic foundations in Hippo, namely those monastic communities he founded before having been ordained a bishop.69 65

Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 15-7. 66 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 15-6. 67 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 17-8. 68 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 21. 69 According to Jordan, Augustine founded three monasteries: the first in the outskirts of Hippo; the second within Hippo after having been ordained as presbyter; and the third within the episcopal residency after having assumed the episcopate;

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Even as a bishop, Augustine continued to live the life of an eremitical cenobite, the most perfect life, that was the renewal of the apostolic community. After Jordan traced the development of monasticism to Augustine, he then continued with Augustine’s original community, describing its habit, and way of life. Yet in the third book of the Liber vitasfratrum, we gain additional insight into this development, for here Jordan discusses apostolic poverty. Holding possessions in common, Jordan argued, was the standard form of community according to natural law. Human law introduced the right to ownership. Jordan pointed to holding property in common in both the Old Testament and in the ancient philosophers. It was, however, Christ and the apostles who instituted the Christian form of communal living, which however, over time, ceased to be practiced, until the true and authentic apostolic life was renewed and brought back to life by Augustine and his Rule.70 Jordan continued by demarcating nine phases in the development of the apostolic life.71 The first was that of Christ and the apostles, who lived in poverty, holding possessions in common, and lived from the alms of the faithful. The second mode of apostolic life was that of the apostolic community of Acts. This form of Christian life continued until approximately 225 and Pope Urban, the sixteenth pope after Peter, Jordan notes.72 The third form then began with Urban, when the bishops began distributing property to those in need, and selling Church property as needed.73 The fourth mode began with Constantine. With Constantine and the legalization of Christianity, the movement began to grow beyond a small community, and thus the laity began to provide for the Church from their own possessions, without renouncing them. The clergy, however, continued to live a common life without possessions.74 The fifth stage in the devel-

see Jordan of Quedlinburg, Vita sancti Augustini, 9, 11, 13, ed. Saak (see above, n. 7), pp. 796-810. 70 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), p. 320. 71 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 326-30. 72 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 326. 73 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 327. 74 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 327-8.


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opment of the apostolic life emerged with Augustine, when members of the clergy began wanting to have their own possessions since the laity did. Augustine determined that clergy were not to live with possessions. However, this declaration was not always followed, and thus Augustine conceded that members of his clergy could have possession if they wanted. His own clergy though decided to follow the communal life, living without individual possessions.75 The sixth form began with Pope Gelasius. When an obvious gap between the wealthy and poor among the laity became apparent, Gelasius determined that the goods of the Church should be used to help. Thus he determined that a fourth of the Church’s income would go to bishops; a fourth to the clergy; a fourth to building churches; and a fourth to the poor.76 The seventh form followed, when the goods of the Church began to be used for prebends, awarded to clergy and canons.77 The eighth mode of the community of goods was the one Jordan claimed was in use in his time, namely, that the goods of the Church the clergy can use, though not own as their own property, but if they have property not associated or related to the Church, then they can own that property as their own, unless they have renounced ownership by a vow or a monastic profession.78 The ninth form of the apostolic community Jordan claimed was that of the religious. Over time the ideal of the apostolic community became increasingly lax, since at first it applied to all Christians, and then it only applied to the clergy, and even there, he laments, “in clerical benefices in reality scarcely any vestige [of the apostolic life] can be seen.”79 In tracing the development of the apostolic life, in terms of apostolic poverty, Jordan does not explicitly mention the desert fathers. We can notice, however, that the second form of the apostolic life in terms of the community of goods corresponds to the third generation of the apostolic life that he had delineated in the first book. Jordan claimed that the second mode of apostolic life extended to

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Jordan Jordan 328-9. 77 Jordan 78 Jordan 329-30. 79 Jordan . . . in clericis reperiri. 76

of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 328. of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 329. of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 330: beneficiatis vix eius [sc. communionis regulae apostolicae] vestigium de facto valeat

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the year 225 and the time of Paul of Thebes and Antony. This was the same limit he set for the third generation, and in the Initium the Anonymous Florentine claimed that one could date the origin of the OESA to 225, the time of Paul and Antony.80 In the following chapter, however, Jordan does treat the desert fathers explicitly. Jordan poses the question of how Augustine can be said to have been the renewer of the apostolic life, embodied in his Rule, when there were many religious, both holy fathers and monks who lived a cenobitic life previous to Augustine.81 Jordan first approaches this question by mentioning the ecclesiastical approbation of Augustine’s Rule. The other Rules that exemplify the apostolic life in addition to Augustine’s are the Rule of Saint Basil and the Rule of Saint Benedict. The Rule of Saint Benedict only came about long after Augustine’s and thus that does not present a problem. Basil’s Rule, however, was basically contemporaneous with Augustine’s.82 There is also the possibility that Pachomius wrote a Rule, though Jordan notes that some people attribute Basil’s Rule to Pachomius, and so these are really the same Rule. Yet it is likely the Basil’s Rule was composed slightly after Augustine’s, so that Augustine’s would still hold primacy of place.83 Moreover, Basil’s Rule, or Pachomius’s Rule, was not approved by the Church and was not based upon the apostolic community of Acts 4.84 Thus Augustine’s Rule, which most likely was the first historical Rule to codify the apostolic life, was certainly the first Rule to codify the apostolic life solemnized by the Church. Therefore, Augustine’s Rule is the unique renewal of the apostolic life.85 Throughout his discussion of the apostolic life, both in terms of the development of apostolic poverty and his history of monasticism, Jordan presents Augustine as the genuine restorer of the original apostolic life. The way of life described by Augustine in his Rule, which was the articulation and codification of his own monastic life, was not merely the vita perfecta. The desert fathers lived the perfect life, as did essentially all monks, regardless of which Rule they fol-

80

See above, p. 194, with n. 13. Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), p. 330. 82 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 331. 83 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 331. 84 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 331-2. 85 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 332. 81


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lowed. The Augustinian life and Rule, or in other words, Augustine’s religion, was the most perfect life, the vita perfectissima, and was so based on it having combined the anchoritic and cenobitic life, and restored the original practice of apostolic poverty. Yet there is more. Jordan argues for a third aspect that renders Augustine’s religion as the vita perfectissima, namely, the combination of the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. In doing so, he put forth a radical re-interpretation of the contemplative life. For Jordan the distinction between the two types of life is not that between secluded contemplation and active participation in society, between enclosure in one’s cell and the cura animarum. The distinction is that between the body and the soul. Taking care of the body, or physical life as such, comprises the vita activa, and as such is most necessary and worthy; the contemplative life, however, consists of all aspects that relate to the wellbeing of the soul, including, he mentions explicitly, preaching and teaching. The cura animarum for Jordan was by definition part of the vita contemplativa.86 Moreover, while both the active and contemplative lives are needed and necessary, their combination forms the most perfect life. This was the model of Jesus himself, who spent time in the desert alone before beginning his preaching. “From this example,” Jordan explained, “we learn that this is the most perfect life: for a time to rest in contemplation in solitude with God alone, and for a time to go forth, through contemplation, to regurgitate from deep inside the spiritual wellsprings for others, for the purpose of winning souls.”87 And this was the accomplishment of Augustine, who ought to be the model for the OESA.88 As no other religion or order, Augustine and his Order of Hermits comprised the vita perfectissima based on the combination of the active and contemplative lives, the combination of cenobitic and anchoritic monastic profession, and the renewal of apostolic poverty. As such, Augustine and his Order held a place of primacy in the history of 86

Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 33. Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 35: Sed propter opera contemplativae vitae licitum et aliquando omnino expendiens esse exire solitudinem exemplo Salvatoris nostri probatur; qui antequam praedicare inciperet, ductus est in desertum et inde exiens exorsus est praedicare. Qui etiam postmodum saepissime solitudinem montis petiit pernoctans ibidem solus in oratione, ut dicitur Lucae 6. Quo exemplo instruimur hanc esse vitam perfectissimam nunc in solitudine soli Deo in contemplatione vacare et nunc exire per contemplationem hausta ad lucra animarum reportanda aliis eructare. 88 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 35-6. 87

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Christianity.89 Yet we are still left with the question of the place and role of the desert fathers in all this. Jordan seems to have “jumped over” the desert fathers, at least in his qualitative portrayal of the history of monasticism from Acts to Augustine. How did Jordan fit the desert fathers in when he so clearly and forcefully argued that Augustine was the renewer of the original apostolic life? To answer this question we need to turn from Jordan’s historical emplotment to his actual use of the desert fathers to see how the desert fathers functioned for Augustinian monasticism as represented by Jordan. Exempla patrum et fratrum When one reads Jordan’s Liber vitasfratrum one cannot question the central place of the desert fathers therein. In tabulating Jordan’s sources, his explicit citations of authorities, Augustine stands above all others with 404 citations. The next most frequently cited source or authority is the Vitae patrum, with 173 citations. John Cassian comes next with 127 citations, followed by Canon Law with 124. Jerome is next in line with 66 citations, eight more than Jordan’s references to texts present in his own Collectanea. Jordan’s confrère, Henry of Friemar, is cited 37 times, and the Life of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine is cited 25 times. This compares to the 21 citations of the Legenda aurea and the eighteen citations of Saint Bernard. Benedict’s Rule is cited eleven times, and although Francis and Dominic are mentioned in the text, Jordan does not cite their works. What this tabulation clearly shows is that after Augustine, the desert fathers were Jordan’s primary source for his Liber vitasfratrum. Jordan cited the Vitae patrum and Cassian more frequently than he did even Augustine’s own Rule, which had 125 citations. When Jordan stated in his prologue that he would include some examples from the lives of the fathers, because the lives of the brothers are formed from the lives of the fathers,90 the reader would not have known the weight given to the fathers in the text that followed. 89 Jordan may have been drawing on the arguments put forward for the primacy of Augustine and the OESA by Augustine of Ancona in his Summa de ecclesiastica potestate (1326), who claimed that Augustine’s Rule and religion was the highest form of Christian perfection and the renewal of the original apostolic life; see Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 138-56. 90 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, prologus, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), p. 5.


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We can begin to get a better understanding of the function of the desert fathers for Jordan’s Liber vitasfratrum if we go beyond mere citation counting and examine how Jordan used his citations. A comprehensive analysis of Jordan’s use of the desert fathers, primarily, that is, of Cassian and the Vitae patrum, lies beyond the scope of this essay. Here, however, a representative example can be given by focusing on a specific case study, Jordan’s treatment of obedience. Jordan discussed obedience to begin part two of his work, which was designed to illustrate the principles involved in having “one heart and one soul in God,” the precept of Augustine’s Rule.91 For explicating the ideal of the cor unum for his brothers, Jordan focused first and foremost on obedience. After an introductory chapter, Jordan devoted chapter two of part two to obedience itself, and then chapter three deals with the efficaciousness and fruits of obedience.92 Jordan began his treatment of obedience by claiming that it is the first virtue stemming from the cor unum, and he cites Hugh of Saint Victor’s Commentary on the Rule of Saint Augustine as proof.93 This is then followed with two citations from Augustine. Thereafter, Jordan discusses the legal definitions of presbyter, prelate, bishop, priest, and abbot, drawing on Augustine and Canon Law. After asserting that Augustine commanded his Order of Hermits to obedience, Jordan then cites the Rules of Saints Benedict and Bernard, concluding this section of the chapter by making the equation of the obedience due of any brother to his superior in the Order with that of Christ submitting to the will of his father in Gethsemane in Matthew 26: “Father, not as I will, but as you will.”94 Then Jordan introduces the first of the four exempla in this chapter, drawn from the Vitae patrum. The second exemplum follows directly, and this is a story Jordan

91 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 75-91; cf. Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 286-314. 92 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 75-91. 93 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 78: Prima igitur virtus, quae secundum Hugonem ex unione cordis generatur, est oboedientia. 94 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 81: Sic igitur in omni sua actione sit dispositus frater quilibet, ut Superiori suo veraciter dicat illud verbum, quod ipse filius Dei factus oboediens usque ad mortem dicebat Patri: ‘Pater,’ inquit, ‘non sicut ego volo, sed sicut tu.’ (“Thus, therefore, each and every brother in his own actions should be so disposed to be able truthfully to say to his superior those words that the son of God himself said in obedience to his Father even unto death: ‘Father,’ he said, ‘not as I will, but as you will.’ [Mt. 26,39].”).

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himself had heard.95 After these two exempla, Jordan cited Anselm and Canon Law regarding the distinction between disobedience and obedience, before presenting another story he himself had heard about a disobedient brother. A warning against trying to appear obedient and not really being so followed, with a quotation from Jerome as evidence, and the chapter ends with a final exemplum again from Jordan himself. In the following chapter on the efficaciousness and fruits of obedience, Jordan strings together a series of nineteen exempla to hammer his point home.96 Of these nineteen, six are from the Vitae patrum, three from Cassian, five from Jordan himself, two from the Life of Nicholas of Tolentine, and then one from Rufinus, Gregory the Great, and Sulpicius Severus. Exempla one through eleven in order of presentation are all from sources of the patres, and with the exception of Gregory the Great, are all stories from or about the desert fathers. Exempla twelve through nineteen then, with the one exception of exemplum eighteen from the Vitae patrum, are from the fratres, or from “modern times.” In these two chapters we see Jordan’s approach throughout his work when dealing with a particular theme. He first gives an explication of the theme, and uses sources both as authorities for his explication and as exempla to illustrate his points. He then gives a series of exempla to emphasize the lesson(s) to be drawn. He by no means always follows this two-chapter sequence, but the basic presentation is the same. We see here too the weight Jordan gives to the desert fathers, and that exempla from the desert fathers in general form the basic illustrations to which Jordan then adds exempla from “modern times,” drawn either from textual sources or from oral tradition. The exempla are the primary means used for religionization:97 how is a brother to know if he is following Augustine’s religion? The exempla give the answer, and do so even more forcefully than the explications. With the exempla Jordan follows a two-fold strategy to enforce conformity: a negative approach, based on a “hidden shame,” and a positive approach, showing the advantages of conformity to the ideal.98 Thus in chapter two of the second part of 95

Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 82. Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. 84-91. 97 For the term “religionization,” see below, and Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 710-35. 98 For a fuller treatment of Jordan’s textual strategies and how hidden shame functions in his work, see Saak, High Way to Heaven, pp. 308-12. 96


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the work, after explicating what precisely obedience is, Jordan then offers exempla illustrating the dangers if one is not obedient. The first exemplum Jordan offers is from the Vitae patrum: a brother went to an abbot and told him that he wanted to find an abbot who fit his own will. The abbot responded by telling the brother that he was not seeking an abbot whose will he wanted to follow, but an abbot who would follow his own will. Hearing this, the brother recognized his fault.99 This story was then followed by two of Jordan’s own stories that he had heard. The first concerned a brother who was taken in a dream by a spirit to hell, and there he saw all the tortures of the damned. One woman in particular was being tortured more than all the rest. The brother asked his guide why this was so, and his guide told him to ask the spirit being tortured. The brother did, and the spirit responded that she was being tortured so because she had not been obedient to her confessor.100 “Thus,” Jordan concluded, “it ought to be feared what happens to those brothers who want to have superiors who follow their own will,”101 connecting his story with the one from the Vitae patrum. He then proceded to tell the story of a brother who enjoyed leaving the monastery to go “sight seeing” in the city, against the directives of his prior. On one such journey, he came across a woman possessed by a demon. The woman asked the friar to help her by exorcizing the demon. The friar reluctantly agreed, and tried to do so, commanding the demon in the name of holy obedience to come out of the woman. The demon responded by asking why he, the demon, should obey him when he did not obey his prior. The friar left feeling ashamed.102 The point Jordan strives to bring home is that obedience is not only the first virtue of the cor unum, but also has eternal consequences as well as very practical ones for the lives of the brothers. These negative examples are then followed with positive ones in chapter three. Here Jordan shows the value of obedience. In the first exemplum he relates, drawn from the Vitae patrum, a brother is

99 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), pp. 81-2; cf. Vitae patrum, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 73] (Paris, 1849), col. 932C. 100 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 82. 101 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, p. 82: Sic timendum est, quod accidat aliquibus fratribus, qui volunt habere praelatos, qui sequantur voluntates eorum. 102 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann p. 83; cf. Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), p. 311.

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told by his abbot to go to a certain place and bring back some manure. In this place, however, it was known that there was a lioness. The brother was afraid and told the abbot that he had heard that there was an evil beast, a lioness, in that place, whereupon his abbot jokingly replied by telling him that if the lioness should come upon him, to bring her back with him. The brother then went as told, and as soon as he arrived at the place, the lioness came out. The brother, taking his abbot’s words at face value, tried to capture the lioness, whereupon the lioness fled. The brother followed and told the lioness that his abbot had told him to catch her and bring her back with him, and immediately, the lioness stood still. The brother then brought the lioness back to his monastery. The abbot was amazed and praised God, but to teach the friar humility, lest he be proud of what he had done, the abbot chastised the friar for his lack of understanding and told him to let the beast go and return to her home.103 The point of the story was clear. Obedience is a virtue that has wonderful effects, just as the lack of obedience has dire consequences. The major source Jordan used for illustrating how one should live the Augustinian life was drawn from the desert fathers, religious who lived after the apostolic community and before its renewal with Augustine. How are we to understand this? To answer this question we must return to Jordan’s view of history and the place of Augustine and the OESA therein, which will then reveal the role the desert fathers played in Jordan’s view of Augustinian monasticism. In the Liber vitasfratrum, Jordan implicitly included the desert fathers within the status antiquus of the OESA. Whereas Jordan gave a short history of the development of Christianity and Christian monasticism, he also did so for his Order. In this light, we find two stages of the Order, the status antiquus and the status modernus. The status antiquus for Jordan was comprised of the Order’s patres, whereas the status modernus consisted of the fratres. The dividing line was the Great Union of 1256 and Pope Alexander IV sending the hermit friars of Saint Augustine into the cities.104 The desert fathers for Jordan are counted among the patres because the religio Augustini is the eremitical form of the religio apostolorum. Augustine has such importance because 103

Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp.

84-5. 104

Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 280-1.


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he renewed the vita apostolica, combining it with cenobitic eremiticism to form the vita perfectissima. Augustine was the initiator of the vita perfectissima both in his own time and in the Great Union, or in other words, for both the status antiquus and the status modernus. The foundation thereof is the life of Christ and the apostles, not Augustine as such, though Augustine is the one who made that life possible once again and who established it within the Church. Just as the hermits of Centumcellae, which for Jordan were “refugees” from Augustine’s monasticism and for Nicholas, from Antony, so were the hermits before the Great Union. The whole point, though, is the apostolic life of Acts, and the beginnings of eremiticism with Paul of Thebes and Antony. The desert fathers were, after the apostles, the “original” patres Augustini as the founders and precursors of Augustine’s religion. The apostolic life was not eremitical, and the eremitical life of the desert fathers was not apostolic. The apostolic life, as such, was not the vita perfectissima, which would only be established by Augustine. The desert fathers, as Christ and the apostles, were the original patres for the fratres and as such were the originators and founders of the status antiquus of the Augustinian micro-religion. Paul of Thebes, Augustine, and the Function of the Desert Fathers In the Liber vitasfratrum, as seen above, Jordan’s primary source after Augustine was the Vitae patrum, followed by Cassian. Yet in his Collectanea, it is Paul of Thebes, the First Hermit, who stands out as having special status, a versified Life of whom Jordan included as the only non-Augustinian text among his collection of Augustiniana.105 The primacy of Paul for Jordan is seen as well in Jordan’s Opus Dan, or Sermones de sanctis: Paul is the only desert father to receive treatment. Though Jordan refrained from drawing a direct line of paternity from Paul to Augustine and Augustine’s hermits, Paul nevertheless had a special place in Jordan’s conception of the origins of Augustinian monasticism. In the Opus Dan, we learn why. Paul was not only the first hermit, according to Jordan, but he also served as the model for all hermits. Jordan’s Opus Dan was his third and last major collection of sermons, completed sometime after 1365.106 The collection consists of 105 106

See above, n. 50. Jordan’s first collection of sermons was his Opus postillarum, on which he was

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271 sermons, and is extant in at least 65 manuscripts and six printed editions.107 Jordan dedicated 23 sermons to Augustine, a concentration unmatched in the collection, with the next highest number of sermons, fourteen, given to the dedication of a church.108 Whereas his Collectanea and Liber vitasfratrum were composed for his own Order, his Sermones de sanctis were intended for the Church at large, especially when we note that Jordan included sermones ad statum, addressed to martyrs, confessors, virgins, any saint, religious persons, priests, knights, nobles, merchants, scholars, and members of the clergy.109 Although Jordan addresses specific groups, his Sermones de sanctis were intended for a general audience, and as such, offer an insight into his approach to religionizing society rather than simply a work intended for his confrères. In this light, Paul too is highlighted, to whom Jordan dedicated seven sermons.110 Jordan began the first of his seven sermons on Paul with an explication of Mark 1,12. After Jesus was baptized, “the Holy Spirit immediately cast him out into the desert.”111 In answering the question of why Jesus had gone into the desert, Jordan explained that it was because: The first matter is: why did Christ go into the desert . . . Christ worked and sustained all things to teach us. Just as not on his own account, but on our account he wanted to be baptized, namely, so that he might sanctify us with water; thus not on account of himself, but on our account he went into the desert, namely, so that he might consecrate the eremitical life for his perfect imitators.112

still working in 1365; Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), p. xix. Thereafter he composed his Opus Jor or Sermones de tempore, and thereafter, as he explicitly states, his Opus Dan; Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann, pp. xxxix-xliii. 107 Opus Dan: Ulm, s.a; Strasbourg, 1481, Strasbourg, 1484; Paris, 1500, Paris, 1509, and Paris, 1521; see Adolar Zumkeller, Manuskripte von Werken der Autoren des Augustiner-Eremitenordens in mitteleuropäische Bibliotheken [Cassiciacum 20] (Wurzburg, 1966), pp. 287-92. I am using the Paris, 1521 edition. 108 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan (see above, n. 107), sermones de sancto Augustino, sermones 129-151, fols. 207r-249v; sermones de dedicatione templi, sermones 215-229, fols. 362r-379r. 109 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fols. 385v-438r. 110 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fols. 55r-65r. 111 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 55r: Et statim Spiritus expellit eum in desertum. [Mk. 1,12]. 112 Opus Dan, fols. 57r-v: Prima est quare Christus exivit in desertum . . . Ad quod dicendum quod quia Christus omnia ad nostram doctrinam operabatur et sustinebat, sicut non propter se sed propter nos baptisari voluit, ut videlicet nobis sanctificaret aquas: sic non propter se sed propter nos eremum adiit: ut videlicet suis perfectis imitatoribus vitam eremiticam consecraret. Cf.


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Jesus was now not only the founder of the apostolic life, but also the founder of the eremitical life, and his first imitator in this regard was Paul, to whom Mark 1,12 also applied.113 There were, however, certainly differences in the respective accounts of Jesus and Paul having been cast into the desert that Jordan recognized. Jesus was cast into the desert by the Holy Spirit, whereas Paul, according to his Legenda, had fled into the desert out of fear to escape persecution.114 Yet the two are actually parallel, as Jordan continued to point out, because even though Paul fled into the desert from fear, it was nevertheless done at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore the words of Mark can be applied to Paul.115 They also, however, can be taken as indicating the three aspects of the eremitical life for those who want to follow Paul into the desert, at least in a spiritual sense. The first is the hidden inspiration of divine direction; the second, the putting away of worldly concerns; and the third is the turning of the mind inwardly. These three characteristics, Jordan affirmed, Paul possessed, “and are neccesary for each and every devoted human imitating Christ in the desert.”116 Paul, therefore is “the exemplar and mirror of the eremitical life.”117 Two things here are of special significance. First, Jordan broadened the eremitical life to include those religious who would follow the example of Paul at least in a spiritual sense. One could be a hermit, one could live the eremitical life, even if one did not physically and geographically live in the desert. Second, Paul becomes the counterpart to the apostles. Just as the apostles lived the original apostolic life established by Jesus, so did Paul live the original eremitical life established by Jesus. Jesus was the founder of both forms of monastic life, the eremitical and the apostolic, the combination of which formed the vita perfectissima, brought into being by Augustine.

Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), pp. 15-20. 113 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fols. 15-20. 114 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 55v. 115 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 55v. 116 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 55v: Hec tria fuerunt in beato Paulo, et sunt necessaria cuilibet homini devoto Christum in desertum imitanti. (“These three things were present in the blessed Paul and are necessary for each and every devoted human imitating Christ in the desert.”). 117 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 56r: . . . Paulus propter persecutiones fugit ad eremum nutu divino compulsus, ut fieret exemplar et seculum vite aeremitice.

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In the six following sermons on Paul, Jordan continued to explicate the eremitical and religious life. Paul only makes passing appearance. Jordan used the saint as a forum for articulating his own understanding of the religious life. Thus in the second sermon on Paul, Jordan explicates the vita perfectissima, repeating and echoing his discussion in the Liber vitasfratrum,118 whereby the vita perfectissima is the combination of the eremitical and apostolic lives, a union accomplished by Augustine. The desert fathers, including Paul, did not live the vita apostolica. It is also noteworthy that Jordan’s sermons on Paul are the only places that he cites the Vitae patrum in his Opus Dan. Paul serves as the origin, culmination, and embodiment of the eremitical life of the desert fathers, which Jordan had already established by affirming that Paul is the exemplar and mirror of the eremitical life. Whereas Elijah prefigured the vita eremitica, Paul lived it in reality.119 Under Jordan’s pen, Paul had become transformed into a protoAugustinian hermit. Jordan was not writing hagiography; he was asserting the historical significance of his own Order’s religion. This is seen as well in Jordan’s sermons on Augustine himself. In the 23 sermons on Augustine, Jordan explicated Augustine’s theological and philosophical primacy, as well as his religious primacy within the history of Christianity. In explicating Genesis 2,12, “A font rose from the earth irrigating the entire surface of the earth,” Jordan explained that the font would first irrigate those areas closest to the source, namely, Paradise, before extending out to all the ends of the earth.120 Jordan then interpreted the font as Augustine.121 He continued the analogy by arguing that Augustine too first irrigated those nearest him: Namely, the hermits, who, it is said, are as if in Paradise, in keeping with the words of Antony about Paul: ‘Truly I saw him in Paradise.’ Wherefore Augustine wrote his book On the Cognition of the True Life for them. Then he

118 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fols. 57r-v.; cf. Jordan of Quedlinburg, Liber vitasfratrum, ed. Hümpfner and Arbesmann (see above, n. 4), pp. 15-20. 119 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 64r. For the importance of Paul, see Kaspar Elm, ‘Elias, Paulus von Theben und Augustinus als Ordensgründer. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtesdeutung der Eremiten- und Bettelorden des 13. Jahrhunderts,’ in Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im späten Mittelalter, ed. Hans Patze [Vorträge und Forschung 31] (Sigmaringen, 1987), pp. 371-97. 120 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fols. 233v-236r. 121 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 236r.


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watered other orders living under his Rule. Therefore the former is held to honor Augustine more than the rest.122

Jordan then enumerated the various occasions the Order should celebrate: Augustine’s conversion or the reason of his conversion since he was converted by hermits; his unique and intimate relationship with his brothers; his giving them the Rule and his teaching of his unique doctrine; his foundations of monasteries; the Order’s possession of his glorious body in Pavia; the Order’s special favor with the Apostolic See, which gave the Order the privilege of calling Augustine the Order’s father, teacher, head, and leader; and the rational observance [of his feast day] of the University of Paris and of the cardinals in the curia.123

Here Jordan returned to the importance of the desert fathers for Augustine’s conversion and then continued in increasing concentric circles to point to the broad significance of Augustine’s impact and significance for Church history. Anyone who would have read this sermon would have known Jordan’s reference to the University of Paris implied the immanence of Giles of Rome, the Order’s first master of theology at Paris. The Order’s possession of Augustine’s body in Pavia, and Augustine being called the OESA’s father, teacher, head, and leader go back to Pope John XXII and his granting the hermits custody of Augustine’s tomb in San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia in 1327. John XXII too comes to mind regarding the Order’s special favor with the Apostolic See, as does the privileges Boniface VIII had granted the Order under the leadership of Giles of Rome, and even further back one comes to Alexander IV’s establishment of the OESA in 1256. The reference to the cardinals in the curia, however, is a bit more obscure, but Jordan himself “fills in” his reference by including as one of his 23 Sermones de sancto Augustino, a sermon by Master Fernandus of Spain, a secular priest and bishop, preached in Avignon, according to Jordan, in the presence of all the 122 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 236: . . . Videlicet eremitas, qui quasi dicuntur esse in paradiso, iuxta illud Antonii de Paulo primo eremita: Vere in paradiso Paulum vidi. Unde eis scripsit librum de congitione vere vite. Deinde rigavit alios ordines sub sua regula militantes. Ideo iste ordo plus ceteris tenetur eum honorare. 123 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 236: Tum propter conversionem sive sue conversionis rationem, cum ab eremitis sit conversus. Tum propter singularem cum fratribus convictum et familiarem conversationem. Tum propter regule traditionem et singularis doctrine instructionem. Tum propter monasteriorum fundationem, ubi de orto. Tum propter corporis sui gloriosi possessionem Papie. Tum propter sedis apostolice prerogationem, qui dicit eum Patrem, Magistrum, et Caput et Ducem in privilegio. Tum propter universitatis Parisiensis et cardinalium in curia rationabilem observationem.

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cardinals in the year 1352.124 In this sermon, Bishop Fernandus eulogizes Augustine as the founder of the OESA, citing the Sermones ad fratres in eremo as proof. Although the Order of Hermits, Fernandus explains, “proceded from Saint Paul the First Hermit, nevertheless the form of the regular life of the brother hermits according to the Apostolic rule takes its beginning from blessed Augustine, on account of which the OESA merits to bear Augustine’s name, as from their head and origin.”125 Here Fernandus acknowledges the “protoAugustinian” role of Paul of Thebes, while still giving primacy for the combined eremetic and apostolic lives to Augustine. Little wonder why Jordan chose, in this one instance alone in all his sermon collections, to include a sermon not his own. Moreover, there is suggestive evidence that Fernandus used Jordan’s Collectanea as a source, or at least his Vita sancti Augustini. The citations Fernandus includes from the Sermones ad fratres in eremo are all to sermons included in Jordan’s Collectanea. In addition, Fernandus delineates Augustine’s monastic foundations, and does so according to Jordan’s account in his Vita sancti Augustini, namely, that there were three: first, in the desert (in eremo) outside of Hippo, and for these brothers Augustine wrote his Rule; then in the garden given to Augustine by Bishop Valerius after Augustine had been ordained as presbyter; and finally within the episcopal residencey, after Augustine became bishop, and this monastery was for Augustine’s priests, an order that now, Fernandus is clear, as was Jordan, is called the Regular Canons.126 Jordan had expanded the meaning of the term in eremo to include those religious who followed Paul the First Hermit at least spiritually, which would include the brothers of the OESA, and had claimed

124 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 240v; cf. Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), p. 175, n. 37. 125 Fernandus de Hispania, Sermo de sancto Augustino, in Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 242v: . . . Licet ordo aeremitarum sancto Paulo primo aeremita processerit, forma tamen regularis vitae fratrum aeremitarum secundum Apostolicam regulam a beato Augustino sumpsit exordium; propter quod ab eo tamquam ab eorum capite et principio denominari meruerunt. 126 Jordan of Quedlinburg, Opus Dan, fol. 242v; cf. Jordan of Quedlinburg, Vita sancti Augustini 9, 11, 13, ed. Saak (see above, n. 7), pp. 794-810. Nicholas of Alessandria also had Augustine establishing three distinct communities, with the second and third paralleling those of Jordan. Augustine’s first monastic community, however, was, according to Nicholas, in Centumcellis; see above, n. 32. Fernandus’s portrayal follows Jordan’s, and does so sufficiently to suggest a textual reliance, though it is possible that Fernandus developed his account based on the Sermones ad fratres in eremo alone.


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that Augustine’s first monastery was established in eremo in the outskirts of Hippo, and here Fernandus simply re-asserted the “facts” and did so not only forcefully, but also in the presence of all the cardinals in Avignon. By including this sermon in his Opus Dan, Jordan was able to offer “external” witness to his Order’s claims. Augustine had a unique role in the history of the Church, though one that can be traced back to Paul of Thebes, and even further back to Christ and the apostles. Fernandus’s sermon gives external confirmation of the role of Augustine and the function of the Paul of Thebes and the desert fathers for Augustinian monasticism. Augustinian monasticism in the fourteenth century was embodied most authentically in the OESA, and had its origins in Christ and the apostles and Paul of Thebes, and then its foundation in Augustine himself. Religionization and Augustinian Monasticism When looking for the reception, influence, and role of the desert fathers in late medieval Augustinian monasticism, we must turn first and foremost to the issue of function. The question is not whether Jordan and his confrères actually were what they claimed, nor whether they accurately represented the desert fathers and their Order’s mythic founder. The question is how did the hermits represent themselves to themselves and their society. The works of Jordan of Quedlinburg reveal the self-perception of the OESA as do no others. The Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine, however, were by no means the only form of Augustinian monasticism in the Later Middle Ages. And that itself is the point. The Augustinian Canons, and perhaps even the Dominicans, who followed Augustine’s Rule, could legitimately claim Augustine’s heritage as their own. Yet the Hermits were the ones who most vociferously claimed Augustine’s paternity, and they had, from the very beginnings of the fourteenth century, papal support for their cause. In the religio-political controversies of the Later Middle Ages, the Augustinian Hermits emerged the victors, and did so with papal sanction. This as such, however, was not enough. The Hermits had to prove their historicity, their paternity, and their legitimacy to themselves and to their society. In doing so, they turned not only to Augustine, but also to the desert fathers to prove their antiquity and their rightful place within the history of Christendom. It was not simply the fate of a religious order that was a stake: it was the

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conception and perception of Christian monasticism itself. In this light, the Augustinian Hermits returned to their origins, Augustine, and even going beyond Augustine, to Christ himself and his apostles, and to the mirror of the eremitical life, Paul of Thebes, who was the first founder of the eremitical life after Christ. The Hermits appropriated the desert fathers textually and historically in their quest to affirm the role of their own micro-religion within the history of Christianity. The term “micro-religion” is one I have introduced to refer to the various religiones within Christendom in the Later Middle Ages.127 While one does at times find the term religio Christiana, “religion” was primarily used as a particular means of fulfilling one’s obligation to God. Thus Thomas Aquinas asked the question in his Summa whether there was only one religion or numerous religions. He answered by arguing that there are numerous religions within Christianity. Most often the term “religion” was used to refer to the monastic life, such as when one would “enter religion” one would then have a legally defined status religionis. In his Liber vitasfratrum, however, Jordan makes it clear that joining an approved and established religious order was not the only legitimate means for “being” a “religious.” There were groups, such as the Beghards and Beguines, who were truly religiosi although they did not have a legally defined status religionis of an approved order. Moreover, one finds designations attached to various religions, or to the religiones particulares as the Augustinian hermit Augustine of Ancona termed them. Augustine himself referred to the “religion of Benedict,” the “religion of Francis,” the “religion of Dominic,” and the “religion of Augustine,” as well as to the “religion of John the Baptist” and the “religion of Jesus Christ.” Religio was a way of life, not to be equated with ordo or regula. The Augustinians’ religion was distinct from the Order as such and from the Augustinian Rule, even though the Rule provided the structure for the religion within the institutionalized Order. When Jordan wrote about what made one an Augustinian, his fundamental answer was one who followed Augustine’s religion, which was founded upon Augustine’s Rule. The endeavor Jordan set for himself was therefore not only to provide a detailed answer to the question of what made one an

127 For here and what follows, see Saak, High Way to Heaven (see above, n. 1), pp. 710-35.


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Augustinian, and not only to offer a detailed description of what that entailed, but also to provide a means of making sure one would be sufficiently “religionized” in Augustine’s religion. He gave explicit instructions to read his work as a mirror, to compare one’s own life with the precepts and examples given of Augustine’s religion. As such, Jordan’s Liber vitasfratrum was not only a didactic work, it was also a “catechetical” work, intended to “religionize” the followers of Augustine’s religion. As I have argued elsewhere, the structures and processes of religionization deserve a place between those of Christianization and Confessionalization, and as such, religionization represents a major stage in the development of Christianity. The theoretical, conceptual, and historical contours of religionization lie beyond the scope of this paper as such, but the concept can help us understand how Jordan appropriated the desert fathers for his own religion, and how he used them for the Order’s religionization. The desert fathers, and Paul of Thebes above all, were to be the mirrors and models of the religious life of the OESA. If one wanted to know what made one an “Augustinian,” one could not ignore the eremitical heritage. It was Augustine himself who effected the establishment of the most perfect life, the combination of the vita apostolica and the vita eremitica, in combining the vita activa with the vita contemplativa, based on Christ’s time in the desert before beginning his pastoral mission. This was the ideal for the Order, the ideal that Augustine had established and institutionalized in his Order of Hermits. It was an ideal that encorporated Paul of Thebes and the desert fathers, for Paul and the desert fathers provided the model and the mirror for how one was to live the vita perfectissima, embodied in Augustine’s monasticism, in Augustine’s religion. This itself was a model of the religious life, of the Christian life, that the Augustinian Hermits endeavored to impress upon their Order and upon their society. The desert was not simply a phenomenon of the past, was not simply a phenomenon distant in time and space. The religious life, as established by Christ, consisted of both the vita eremitica and the vita apostolica, which were combined once again by Augustine. The desert was not simply geographical. The desert was also, and in the fourteenth century, primarily, spiritual. It was thus that the desert fathers were made present in the fourteenth century in Jordan’s appropriating them for the religionization of the Order. For Jordan and the OESA, the lives of the brothers were formed from the lives of the fathers indeed! And

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as such, the Order of Augustine’s hermits assumed a mission in late medieval society unmatched by any other religious order: to be and to live the most perfect life for the instruction, edification, and spiritual progress of Christendom; to religionize not only their own Order, but society at large. The sons of Augustine were to transform society based on the model Augustine himself had established, a model derived from Christ and perpetuated in the desert fathers. In the Later Middle Ages, the desert was not some far away place, a region unknown to the West. It was the ideal of the West itself, the ideal of Christendom, as the most perfect life in imitation of Christ. The Augustinian platform of religionization extended beyond the Order itself, to embrace all of Christian society. The desert fathers played a role that far exceeded their wildest expectation. Their appropriation by Jordan and the OESA paved the way for the catalytic impact of Augustine on the transformation of society,128 and the emergence of Early Modern Europe.

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The Augustinian program for transforming society was based on “transformational sanctity”; see E.L. Saak, ‘Quilibet Christianus: Saints in Society in the Sermons of Jordan of Quedlinburg,’ in Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons, eds. Beverly Kienzle et al. [Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales. Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 5] (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1996), pp. 317-38.

NIKOLAUS OF FLÜE († 1487): PHYSIOGNOMIES OF A LATE MEDIEVAL ASCETIC Gabriela Signori Abstract During the fifteenth century the number of saints increased dramatically. But most of them had already been dead for centuries and were known only through the pages of their vitae. Living saints became rare, chiefly because of the unwaveringly skeptical approach towards them. Critics were always asking, How does one recognise a saint? What do “real” saints look like? What is the relationship between what is outside and what is inside, between the physical appearance and the inner self of a man? As this paper will demonstrate, it was was not so much these questions as the answers that were new.

Introduction A man may be known by his look, and one that hath understanding by his countenance, when thou meetest him.1

Is it really possible to know whether someone “hath understanding” from their appearance? Can reason and other such qualities really be recognized by virtue of how someone appears, sounds, feels or perhaps smells? These questions must be asked at every encounter, be it with a foreign culture, society or individual. For reasons having to do with economy of perception we can understand that form and content are often connected, for this appears to considerably ease social relations. Form and content correspond and I can very easily see and recognize who “hath understanding” and who “hath not,” or, who is good (holy) and who bad. The key word here is the term “holy.” To Be or To Appear To Be Medieval societies are all too often described as having a “simple” way of understanding symbols.2 This includes various areas of

1 2

Sirach 19,26. Ingrid Hahn, ‘Zur Theorie der Personenerkenntnis in der deutschen Literatur


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perception, experience, and knowledge such as art, language, medicine, and humoralist-related physiognomy.3 Physiognomy was the science of how external features, physical signs such as a large nose or protruding lips, can be understood to reflect a person’s inner being.4 Gregory the Great († 604) declared all this nonsense at the end of the sixth century.5 He was neither the first nor the last to harbor reservations regarding this body of knowledge.6 Returning to the symbolism of images, these reservations notwithstanding, in religious art saints are not only better than you and I, but usually also more beautiful.7 Their inner beauty is turned outdes 12. bis 14. Jahrhunderts,’ Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 99 (1977), 395-444, there 395: “Gegenüber solcher neuzeitlicher Skepsis hat das Mittelalter ein unerschüttertes Vertrauen in die Wahrheit der Dinge, die Repräsentanz des Seins in Natur und Geschichte.” On complex theory see Ulrich Wienbruch, ‘ “Signum,” “Significatio” and “Illuminatio” bei Augustin,’ in Der Begriff der Repraesentatio im Mittelalter. Stellvertretung, Symbol, Zeichen, Bild, ed. Albert Zimmermann [Miscellanea Mediaevalia 8] (Berlin and New York, 1971), pp. 76-93; Ludger Oeing-Hanhoff, ‘Sein und Sprache in der Philosophie des Mittelalters,’ in Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, 2 vols., eds. Jan P. Beckmann et al. [Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13] (Berlin and New York, 1981), 1: 165-78. 3 Alfonso Maierù, ‘ “Signum” dans la culture médiévale,’ in Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter (see above, n. 2), 1: 51-72; Michael Fuchs, Zeichen und Wissen. Das Verhältnis der Zeichentheorie zur Theorie des Wissens und der Wissenschaften im Dreizehnten Jahrhundert (Munster, 1999). 4 Leo Jordan, ‘Physiognomische Abhandlungen,’ Romanische Forschungen 29 (1911), 691: Phisionomie est une science a jugier mours et maniere de gens solonc les signes qui perent en fachon de cors et nomeement du visage et de la vois et de la colour. (“Physiognomy is a science, which attempts to discover people’s character and nature by the interpretation of signs, which are in the body, the face or the coloring.”). See Scriptores physiognomonici graeci et latini, ed. Richardus Foerster, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1893), and Tamsyn Barton, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman Empire [The Body, in Theory] (Ann Arbor, 1994), pp. 95-131, and Joseph Ziegler, ‘Text and Context: On the Rise of Physiognomic Thought in the Later Middle Ages,’ in “De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem.” Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and Literature in Honour of Amnon Linder, ed. Yitzhak Hen [Cultural Encounters 1] (Turnhout, 2001), pp. 159-82; Irven M. Resnick, ‘Ps.-Albert the Great on the Physiognomy of Jesus and Mary,’ Medieval Studies 64 (2002), 217-40; Valentin Groebner, ‘Haben Hautfarben eine Geschichte? Personenbeschreibung und ihre Kategorien zwischen dem 13. und dem 16. Jahrhundert,’ Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 30 (2003), 1-17. 5 Gregory the Great, Dialogorum libri quatuor, ed. Umberto Moricca (Rome, 1924), pp. 40-1. See Paolo Squatriti, ‘Personal Appearance and Physiognomics in Early Medieval Italy,’ Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988), 191-202. 6 Compare the arguments of late antique, Christian authors regarding the bodysoul relationship and see the short outline in Elizabeth C. Evans, Physiognomics in the Ancient World [Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. New Series 59] (Philadelphia, 1969), pp. 74-83. 7 Andrew Morrall, ‘Defining the Beautiful in Early Renaissance Germany,’ in

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ward. In this context beauty means a well-proportioned face, white teeth, well-formed arms, straight legs, devout gestures, usually expensive clothing made from equally expensive cloth in which to wrap the beautiful body.8 Like the myrmidons of Christ’s passion, evil people wear gaudy and torn hose and a shamelessly short doublet; they gesticulate wildly and contort their faces into horrible grimaces.9 Religious art creates a closed world which offers little room for ambivalent interpretation, according to Hans Belting.10 Its function was to strengthen man’s belief, not give rise to uncertainty regarding good and evil.11 Profane art functioned similarly, although it is based on fundamentally different ideals than religious art.12 Meanwhile all too often other laws dominate the deciphering of the world. This kind of thinking was certainly evident before the thirteenth century, but thereafter became more prominent.13 As conConcepts of Beauty in Renaissance Art, eds. Francis Ames-Lewis and Mary Rogers (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 80-8. See also Dyan Elliott, ‘Dress as Mediator between Inner and Outer Self: The Pious Matron of the High and Later Middle Ages,’ Medieval Studies 53 (1991), 279-308. 8 See, for example, Franti“ek Graus, Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger. Studien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit (Prague, 1965), pp. 463-8; Elisabeth Vavra, ‘Klug oder töricht — Heilige oder Sünderin. Zur Gestaltung der Jungfrauenparabel in der bildenden Kunst,’ in Symbole des Alltags, Alltag der Symbole. Festschrift für Harry Kühnel zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Gertrud Blaschnitz (Graz, 1992), pp. 417-44; Regine Körkel-Hinkfoth, Die Parabel von den klugen und törichten Jungfrauen (Mt. 25, 1-13) in der bildenden Kunst und im geistlichen Schauspiel [Reihe 28: Europäische Hochschulschriften. Kunstgeschichte 190] (Frankfurt, 1994), pp. 107-17. 9 See Christine Winkler, Die Maske des Bösen. Groteske Physiognomie als Gegenbild des Heiligen und Vollkommenen in der Kunst des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts [Beiträge zur Kunstwissenschaft 8] (Ph.D.-thesis, Aachen; Munich 1986); Katrin Kröll, ‘Der schalkhafte beredsame Leib als Medium verborgener Wahrheit. Zur mittelalterlichen Bedeutung von Entblößungsgebärden in Bildkunst, Literatur und darstellenden Kunst,’ in Mein ganzer Körper ist Gesicht. Groteske Darstellungen in der europäischen Kunst und Literatur des Mittelalters [Rombach Wissenschaftliche Reihe Litterae 26] (Fribourg, 1994), pp. 239-94. 10 Hans Belting, Bild und Kult. Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst, 5th ed. (Munich, 2000), pp. 510-45. 11 Gerhard Jaritz, Zwischen Augenblick und Ewigkeit. Einführung in die Alltagsgeschichte des Mittelalters (Vienna and Cologne, 1989), pp. 154-68. 12 See Ingrid Hahn, ‘Parzivals Schönheit. Zum Problem des Erkennens und Verkennens im “Parzival”,’ in “Verbum et signum.” Beiträge zur mediävistischen Bedeutungsforschung, Studien zu Semantik und Sinntradition im Mittelalter, eds. Hans Fromm et al., 2 vols. (Munich, 1975), 2: 203-32. 13 Hahn, ‘Zur Theorie der Personenerkenntnis’ (see above, n. 2), 425, identifies four types in contemporary literature which determine the relation of appearance to essence: 1) the nigra-formosa formula according to which the chaste hero appears in rags, 2) the hypocrite, fraud fake friend who, although dressed well, has only disguised his black intentions, 3) beautiful is good, and 4) ugly is evil.

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cerns piety, the problem rapidly arose that it could be faked or feigned such that appearance and essence sometimes diverged.14 Rutebeuf, in his book Dit d’hypocrisie which Rome banned, has Courtoisie equate the acquisition of a black dress and a long, black cowl with the discovery of heavenly manna.15 This would make one look like a hermit, “to those who only saw my external appearance while my heart was somewhere else completely.”16 Rutebeuf, a jongleur, who established himself in Paris in the mid-thirteenth century, verbally attacked not only the Mendicants, the “monk vermin” in the words of Poggio Bracciolini († 1459) and Erasmus († 1536).17 Rutebeuf also insulted the “papelards and beguines,” the “bigots and the pious ones” who spread in the wake of the Mendicant Orders.18 “The most beautiful,” another passage reads, “are the saints.”19 This 14 Hennig Brinkmann, ‘Verhüllung (“integumentum”) als literarische Darstellungsform im Mittelalter,’ in Der Begriff der Repraesentatio im Mittelater (see above, n. 2), pp. 314-39; Wolfgang Speyer, ‘Religiöse Betrüger. Falsche göttliche Menschen und Heilige in Antike und Christentum,’ in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, Teil V: Fingierte Briefe, Frömmigkeit und Fälschung, Realienfälschung [Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Schriften 33.5] (Hannover, 1988), pp. 321-43; André Vauchez, ‘La nascità del sospetto,’ in Finzione e santità tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Gabriella Zarri (Turin, 1991), pp. 39-51; Teresa M. Shaw, ‘Wolves in Sheeps’ Clothing: The Appearance of True and False Piety,’ Studia Patristica 29 (1995), 127-32. Later examples can be found in Friedrich Roth, ‘Die geistliche Betrügerin Anna Laminit von Augsburg (ca. 1480-1518). Ein Augsburger Kulturbild vom Vorabend der Reformation,’ Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 43 (1924), 355-417; Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (London, 1985); Miriam Eliav-Feldon, ‘Invented Identities: Credulity in the Age of Prophecy and Exploration,’ Journal of Early Modern History 3 (1999), 203-32. 15 Rutebeuf, Le dit d’hypocrisie, ed. in Edmond Faral and Julia Bastin, Œuvres complètes de Rutebeuf, 2 vols. (Paris, 1959), 1: 286-98, see Omer Jordogne, ‘L’anticléricalisme de Rutebeuf,’ Lettres romanes 23 (1969), 219-44; Jean Dufournet, ‘Rutebeuf et les moines mendiants,’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 85 (1984), 152-68. 16 Rutebeuf, Le dit d’hypocrisie, ed. Faral and Bastin (see above, n. 15), p. 295: Celui qui m’esgardait defors: mais autre cuer avoit ou cors. For matters concerning clothing see Peter von Moos, ‘Das mittelalterliche Kleid als Identitätssymbol und Identifikationsmittel,’ in Unverwechselbarkeit. Persönliche Identität und Identifikation in der vormodernen Gesellschaft, ed. Peter von Moos [Norm und Struktur 23] (Cologne, 2004), pp. 123-61. 17 Poggio Bracciolini, Contro l’ipocrisia (I frati ipocriti), ed. Giulio Vallese (Naples, 1946), see Cesare Vasoli, ‘Poggio Bracciolini e la polemica antimonastica,’ in Poggio Bracciolini 1380-1980. Nel VI centenario della nascita (Florence, 1982), pp. 163-205; Erasmus, Vertraute Gespräche (Colloquia familiaria), translated and introduced by Hubert Schiel (Stuttgart, s.a.), p. 169, see Geoffrey Dipple, Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation. Johann Eberlin von Günzburg and the Campaign against the Friars (Hants, 1996). 18 Rutebeuf, Les ordres de Paris, ed. Faral and Bastin (see above, n. 15), pp. 323-9; Rutebeuf, Des béguines, ed. Faral and Bastin, pp. 334-5. 19 Rutebeuf, Les règles des moines, ed. Faral and Bastin, p. 275: Qui est plus bele s’est plus sainte.

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irritated the jongleur. At about the same time Rutebeuf was badmouthing the Mendicants, in France the Beguine Sybilla of Marsal’s fraud was exposed.20 She had pretended that she was being fed only by the Eucharist, the Corpus Christi, but was found to have been hiding more mundane nourishment under her bed.21 In view of the increasing number of saintly men and women, it became urgent to have an instrument with which to separate the wheat from the chaff.22 This immediately spawned the treatise On the Differentiation of Spirits which, following 1 John 4,1, was designed to help clarify the problem regardless of whether one was dealing with divine intuition or infernal machinations. Signs, signa, were sought which would facilitate distinguishing good from evil.23 Authors such as Nikolaus of Dinkelsbühl († 1433) dealt with this theme in their Lent sermons.24 The complexity of late medieval comprehension of symbolism is also to be seen in Realism, which developed as a style first in the 20 Richeri gesta Senoniensis ecclesiae [Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores 25] (Hannover, 1880), pp. 308-10, see Peter Dinzelbacher, Heilige oder Hexen? Schicksale auffälliger Frauen in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit (Reinbek, 1995), pp. 77-8. 21 In the late medieval period primarily women were exposed as false saints, see Jean-Michel Sallmann, ‘Esite una falsa santità maschile?,’ in Finzione e santità (see above, n. 14), pp. 119-44. 22 Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society. The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago and London, 1982), p. 126; Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls. Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, 1984). 23 Der Traktat Heinrichs von Friemar über die Unterscheidung der Geister. Lateinisch-mittelhochdeutsche Textausgabe mit Untersuchungen, ed. Robert G. Warnock and Adolar Zumkeller [Cassiciacum 32] (Wurzburg, 1977); Heinrichs von Langenstein “Unterscheidung der Geister.” Lateinisch und Deutsch. Texte und Untersuchungen zu Übersetzungsliteratur aus der Wiener Schule, ed. Thomas Hohmann [Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 63] (Zurich and Munich, 1977). See Christoph Benke, Unterscheidung der Geister bei Bernhard von Clairvaux [Studien zur systematischen und spirituellen Theologie 4] (Wurzburg, 1991); Jean-Michel Sallmann, Visions indiennes, visions baroques: les métissages de l’inconscient (Paris, 1992), pp. 91-116; Rosalynn Voaden, ‘Women’s Words, Men’s Language: “Discretio Spiritum” As Discourse in the Writing of Medieval Women Visionaries,’ in The Medieval Translator. Traduire au Moyen Âge. Vol. 5, eds. Roger Ellis and René Tixier (Turnhout, 1996), pp. 64-83; Rosalynn Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices. The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (Woodbridge, 1999); Cornelius Roth, “Discretio spiritum.” Kriterien geistlicher Unterscheidung bei Johannes Gerson [Studien zur systematischen und spirituellen Theologie 33] (Wurzburg, 2001); Dyan Elliott, ‘Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernement of Spirits, and Joan of Arc,’ The American Historical Review 107 (2002), 26-54. 24 Alois Madre, Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl. Leben und Schriften. Ein Beitrag zur theologischen Literaturgeschichte [Beiträge zu Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 40] (Munster, 1965), pp. 138-9, 155-6, 161-2, 306-8.

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thirteenth century equally in word and image. The portrait forces us to represent unhandsome things which for that very reason are not automatically bad or evil.25 Henceforth type and individual compete more often with each other. As recent art history studies have indicated, this is even the case with Renaissance portraiture.26 Tension between the two “powers” sometimes manifests itself in unexpected quarters, such as in John Busch’s († 1479-1480) “Windesheimer chronicle.”27 Busch’s smugness is at times insufferable: me, me, me; but the small portraits he sketched of his Order’s “famous men” are attestations of a noteworthy talent for observation. He dedicated a few words, if not several folio pages, to each of the 24 patres primitivi, the founding fathers of the Windesheimer Convent.28 He found it important to communicate to posterity where the brothers had come from and what they did. He also wanted to record what the brothers looked like, how they wrote, spoke, and moved. Divergent Concepts of Holiness In the Later Middle Ages we encounter the same tension between type and individual in hagiography as well, a genre which must remain rather more resistant to individualization than other literary forms, particularly when dealing with the Christian belief of saintly

25 For example, the unflattering self-portrait by Thietmar of Merseburg in the fourth book of his chronicle. See Dieter Kartschoke, ‘ “Der ain was grâ, der ander was chal.” Über das Erkennen und Wiedererkennen physiognomischer Individualität im Mittelalter,’ in Festschrift Walter Haug und Burghart Wachinger, 2 vols. (Tübingen, 1992), 1: 1-24. 26 Peter Meller, ‘Physiognomical Theory in Renaissance Heroic Portraits,’ in The Renaissance and Mannerism. Studies in Western Art, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1963), 2: 63-9; Katharina Andres, Antike Physiognomie in Renaissanceporträts [Europäische Hochschulschriften, 28.341] (Ph.D.-thesis, Bochum, 1998; Frankfurt, 1999); Piers D.G. Britton, ‘The Signs of Faces: Leonardo on Physiognomic Science and the “Four Universal States of Man”,’ Renaissance Studies 16 (2002), 143-62. 27 Des Augustinerpropstes Iohannes Busch Chronicon Windeshemense und Liber de reformatione monasteriorum, ed. Karl Grube [Geschichtsquellen der Provinz Sachsen und angrenzender Gebiete 19] (Halle, 1886), pp. 1-244. See Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Das Wunder der Devotio Moderna. Neue Aspekte im Werk des Windesheimer Geschichtsschreibers Johannes Busch,’ in Windesheim 1395-1995. Kloosters, teksten, invloeden, eds. A.J. Hendrikman et al. [Middeleeuwse Studies 12] (Nijmegen, 1996), pp. 170-85, and Mathilde van Dijk, ‘Disciples of the Deep Desert: Windesheim Biographers and the Imitation of the Desert Fathers,’ this volume, below, pp. 257-80. 28 For nos. 24 and 1, cf. Staubach, ‘Das Wunder der Devotio Moderna’ (see above, n. 27), p. 173.

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living which changed very little through the centuries.29 This is also true for ascetics like Nikolaus of Flüe († 1487) who at age 50 settled at Ranfttal, not far from his birthplace of Flüeli which lies close to Sachseln in the canton of Unterwalden, Switzerland, as an hermit (also called a “Waldbruder”) and allegedly fasted for twenty years.30 Those documents which report on his life are comparatively numerous. Robert Durrer and Father Rupert Amschwand researched them thoroughly. Three Latin vitae were translated twice before the Reformation and with them scattered historiographical notes and letters from the entire Empire as well as several dozen testimonials mainly from the immediate vicinity of the Waldbruder. The writers of these vitae did not agree about Brother Klaus’s motivation to renunciate the world. They were equally in disagreement as to what he looked like. After all, each one wrote for a different audience and strove to be responsive to that audience’s imagination and desires. What these diverse versions share is that they all draw on the literary foundation of the Vitae patrum.

29 Regarding the idea of the living saint, see Bernhard Kötting, ‘Wallfahrten zu lebenden Personen im Altertum,’ in Wallfahrt kennt keine Grenzen, eds. Lenz KrissRettenbeck and Gerda Möhler (Munich and Zurich, 1984), pp. 226-234, as well as Aviad M. Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country. Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago and London, 1992), pp. 40-70. According to Kleinberg, late medieval hagiography was concerned with testimonials and as acting as notary for eye-witness reports primarily for “word and deed,” that is statements, revelations, visions or miracles, but not with recording what a saint looked like. 30 His desire to turn his back on the world was shared at that time by many. See, for example, Paul Joachimsen, Geschichtsauffassung und Geschichtsschreibung in Deutschland unter dem Einfluss des Humanismus [Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance 6] (Leipzig, 1910), pp. 36-7; Karl Schädle, Sigmund Gossembrot, ein Augsburger Kaufmann, Patrizier und Frühhumanist (Ph.D.-thesis, Munich, 1938), p. 35; Michael Seidlmayer, ‘Wandlungen des humanistischen Lebensgefühls und Lebensstils,’ in Wege und Wandlungen des Humanismus. Studien zu seinen politischen, ethischen, religiösen Problemen, mit einem Gedenkwort von Hans Barion, ed. Michael Seidlmayer (Göttingen, 1965), pp. 107-24; Hartmut Boockmann, Laurentius Blumenau. Fürstlicher Rat — Jurist — Humanist (ca. 1415-1484) [Göttinger Bausteine zur Geschichtswissenschaft 37] (Göttingen, 1965), pp. 201-3; Nikolaus Grass, ‘Abgeschieden Leben. Via antiqua und devotio moderna in Auseinandersetzung um eine Waldklause im Hochgebirge Tirols,’ in Cusanus Gedächtnisschrift, ed. Nikolaus Grass (Innsbruck and Munich, 1970), pp. 339-73; Catherine Santschi, ‘Errance et stabilité chez les ermites des Alpen occidentales,’ Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte 82 (1988), 53-75; idem, ‘L’érémitisme princier,’ in Amédée VIII — Félix V, premier duc de Savoie et pape (1383-1451), eds. Bernard Andenmatten and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani [Fondation Humbert II et Marie José de Savoie. Bibliothèque historique vaudoise, 103] (Lausanne, 1992), pp. 71-87.

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Albrecht of Bonstetten Albrecht of Bonstetten († ca. 1504), the learned abbot from the Einsiedeln monastery,31 wrote his Historia fratris Nicolai for magnates in France, Venice, Milan, and various German states within the Empire.32 He humanistically combined hagiography and chronology in the first part of his Historia.33 Chronology means descriptive geography, descriptions of the country combined with historical and ethnographic information.34 This principle is taken from Bonstetten’s Beschreibung der Eidgenossenschaft.35 The second part of the Historia concentrates on the encounter with Brother Klaus and his learned alter ego Brother Ulrich of Memmingen († 1491). Bonstetten distuinguishes several sources of information: sight, hearing, and hearsay.36 The dramatic highpoint of this report remains however the eyewitness testimony of his encounter with the saint. Bonstetten completed his Historia in 1479 and had it translated into German six years later (1485). Both the original and the translation were thus created while the saint was still alive, the latter at the request of the clergy, mayor, and city council of Nuremberg.37 31 See Hans Füglister, ‘Bonstetten, Albrecht von,’ in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, 11 vols., eds. W. Stammler et al., 2nd ed. (Berlin and New York, 1977-2000), 1: 178-9. 32 Albrecht of Bonstetten, Briefe und ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Albert Büchi [Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte 13] (Basel, 1893), pp. 114-5 (no. 2). 33 Albrecht of Bonstetten, Leben des seligen Bruder Klaus von der Flüe vom J. 1482, ed. Pater Gall Merel, Der Geschichtsfreund 18 (1862), 18-35, there 27-8: Jn der ordnung der alten vereinigung ist Vnderwalden an zwey das letzst ort, ein lendly zumal drispitzig . . . See for the fundamentals David J. Collins, ‘Chorography and Hagiography. Johannes Cincinnius’s Revision of Uffing’s “Vita sanctae Idae”,’ in “Heiliges Westfalen.” Heilige, Reliquien, Wallfahrt und Wunder im Mittelalter, ed. Gabriela Signori [Religion in der Geschichte 11] (Bielefeld, 2003), pp. 211-26. 34 Max Wehrli, ‘Der Schweizer Humanismus und die Anfänge der Eidgenossenschaft,’ Schweizer Monatshefte 47 (1967-1968), 127-47; Peter Johanek, ‘Weltchronistik und regionale Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter,’ in Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im späten Mittelalter, ed. Hans Patze [Vorträge und Forschungen 31] (Sigmaringen, 1987), pp. 287-330; Thomas Maissen, ‘Literaturbericht Schweizer Humanismus,’ Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 50 (2000), 515-44. 35 In 1479 Bonstetten had written Superioris Germaniae confoederationis descriptio (in the High Middle German translation: “Der Obertütscheit Eidgenosschaft stett und lender gelägenheit und darin der mentschen sitten vil kurze beschribung”) for the Venetian Doge, in Bonstetten, Briefe und ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Büchi (see above, n. 32), pp. 251-67. 36 Bonstetten, Leben des seligen Bruder Klaus, ed. Merel (see above, n. 33), 29-30, 32-4: Man sagt . . ., wie ich gesehen hab . . . in dem warff ich hin vnd her wider mine ougen, alle ding besehende . . . was ich von gleubshafftigen gehört. 37 Bonstetten, Leben des seligen Bruder Klaus, ed. Merel, 27: durch üweren willen das genant latin transfferirt vnd getütschet.

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Bonstetten sent a Latin copy of the vita to them at the beginning of 1485. Shortly thereafter came the request to translate the text into German for them, a task which was completed by mid-May 1485.38 Heinrich Gundelfingen One year after Brother Klaus died Heinrich Gundelfingen († 1490) dedicated his Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae to the sherriff, the senate, and council of the city of Lucerne.39 He addressed his lords with the superlatives “most powerful” and “most powerful warriors.” Gundelfingen had earlier written a laudation of Lucerne as thanks for the Beromünster canonry the city conferred on him in 1480.40 His Historia presents itself as a traditional laudation of the eremitical life with numerous allusions to the Vitae patrum.41 The Vitae patrum is

38 Bonstetten, Leben des seligen Bruder Klaus, ed. Merel, 26. He later conveyed a request to the Nuremberg city council to also have a translation of the Meinrad legend printed up along with indulgences: Bonstetten, Briefe und ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Büchi (see above, n. 32), pp. 141-3 (no. 10). 39 Heinrich Gundelfingen, Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. in Robert Durrer, Bruder Klaus. Die ältesten Quellen über den seligen Niklaus von Flüe, sein Leben und seinen Einfluss, 2 vols. (Sarnen, 1917, repr. 1981), 1: 419-58 (no. 65); Rupert Amschwand, Bruder Klaus. Ergänzungsband zum Quellenwerk (Sarnen, 1987), pp. 101-18. For Gundelfingen himself: Joseph Ferdinand Rüegg, Heinrich Gundelfingen. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Frühhumanismus und zur Lösung der Frage über die ursprüngliche Königsfelderchronik (Fribourg, 1910), pp. 66-71; Dieter Mertens, ‘Gundelfingen, Heinrich,’ in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters (see above, n. 31), 3: 306-10. 40 Heinrich Gundelfingen, Amoenitates urbis Lucernensis. We know this text only through a translation by Melchior Russen, Ritters von Lucern Eidgenössische Chronik, geschrieben im Jahr 1482, ed. Joseph Schneller (Lucerne, 1834), pp. 18-24, Rüegg, Heinrich Gundelfingen (see above, n. 39), pp. 55-7. See Hermann Goldbrunner, ‘ “Laudatio urbis.” Zu neueren Untersuchungen über das humanistische Städtelob,’ Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 63 (1983), 313-27; Hartmut Kugler, Die Vorstellung der Stadt in der Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters [Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 88] (Munich and Zurich, 1986). Gundelfingen also mentions the canonry in his biography of Brother Klaus, in the Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 424. 41 We also find indirect allusions in Albrecht of Bonstetten when he writes of, for example, wueste, Bonstetten, Leben des seligen Bruder Klaus, ed. Merel (see above, n. 33), 29. The idea that at the beginning of his life as a hermit the Evil Spirit thrashed Brother Klaus so badly that he often lay half dead on the floor (in the same work, p. 33) originally comes from the Life of Antony. Bonstetten is reporting hearsay. In order to substantiate this tale, the learned man claimed to know with certainty where it came from. Heinrich Wölflin also recounted this episode, ed. in Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 534 (no. 83). Many suspected that Wölflin added the raven delivering heavenly fare to the hermits (ed. in Durrer, 1: 545). This motif comes from Saint Paul the Hermit’s Life, as Peter Numagen (ed. in Durrer, 1: 291) already reported.

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a collection of legends with no fixed content, which contains aphorisms, biographies, and travelogues regarding the desert fathers. The narrative framework, subsequently subject to continual amplification, originated at the end of the fourth/beginning of the fifth century and is associated with personages such as Saint Jerome, Evagrius Ponticus, Rufinus, and Palladius.42 Gundelfingen affirmed that Nikolaus of Flüe dedicated himself to nothing other than “the re-establishment of the eremitical life as was established by Saint Antony, Saint Paul the Hermit, and other founding fathers, but has since been repressed completely.”43 Comparison of the past with the present is ubiquitous.44 Brother Klaus acquires a clear identity in this way. His daily routine matches that of the monks.45 Ascetic renunciation became the defining criterion for living quarters, clothing, and fare. His stringent abstinence from every earthly dish, Gundelfingen eulogized, was seldom observed, even amongst the desert fathers.46 This was a theme of late medieval

42 Walter Berschin, Griechisch-lateinisches Mittelalter. Von Hieronymus zu Nikolaus von Kues (Bern and Munich, 1981), pp. 77-81; Eva Schulz-Flügel, ‘Zur Entstehung der Corpora Vitae Patrum,’ Studia Patristica 20 (1989), 289-300. For the later reception, confined to the German-language area, see Ernst Benz, ‘La littérature du Désert chez les Évangéliques allemands et les Piétistes de Pennsylvanie,’ Irénikon 1 (1978), 338-57; Louise Gnädinger, ‘Das Altväterzitat im Predigtwerk Johannes Taulers,’ in Unterwegs zur Einheit. Festschrift für Heinrich Stirnimann, eds. Johannes Brantschen and Pietro Selvatico (Fribourg, 1980), pp. 253-67; Klaus Klein, ‘Frühchristliche Eremiten im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit. Zu Überlieferung und Rezeption der deutschen “Vitaspatrum”-Prosa,’ in Literatur und Laienbildung im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit, eds. Ludger Grenzmann and Karl Stackmann (Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 686-95; Konrad Kunze, Ulla Williams and Philipp Kaiser, ‘Information und innere Formung. Zur Rezeption der “Vitaspatrum”,’ in Wissensorganisierende und wissensvermittelnde Literatur im Mittelalter. Perspektiven der Erforschung, ed. Norbert Richard Wolf [Wissensliteratur im Mittelalter 1] (Wiesbaden, 1987), pp. 123-42; Werner Williams-Krapp, ‘ “Nucleus totius perfectionis.” Die Altväterspiritualität in der “Vita” Heinrich Seuses,’ in Festschrift Walter Haug und Burghart Wachinger, 2 vols., ed. Johannes Janota (Tubingen, 1992), 1: 405-21; Rüdiger Blumrich, ‘Überlieferungsgeschichte als Schlüssel zum Text. Angewandt auf eine spätmittelalterliche bairische Übersetzung der Vitaspatrum,’ Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 41 (1994), 188-222; Ulla Williams, ‘Vitas patrum,’ in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 10 vols., eds. R. Auty et al. (Munich, 1980-2000), 8: 1765-68; Ulla Williams and Werner J. Hoffmann, ‘Vitaspatrum,’ in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters (see above, n. 31), 10: 449-66. 43 Gundelfingen, Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 426; Amschwand (see above, n. 39), p. 107. 44 Gundelfingen, Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. Durrer, 1: 441-4. 45 Gundelfingen, Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. Durrer, 1: 439. 46 There were also desert fathers who survived only on the Body of Christ, Gundelfingen continued, referring to Caesarius of Heisterbach and not to the Vitae

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hagiographical writing, as shown by the life history of Catherine of Siena († 1380).47 Gundelfingen alluded to the year-long Waldbruder’s fast which had attracted the attention of the more curious of his contemporaries,48 but repeated that one should also be critical and skeptical.49 As proof that it is possible to fast for a year, Gundelfingen named the example of a young, pious maiden from the diocese of Toul recorded by Caesarius of Heisterbach († after 1240) in his Dialogus miraculorum.50 The anecdote originally appeared in the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini’s Facezie from 1452 or 1453.51 This, however, is not the citation he evidently wanted; perhaps he mixed up his sources. Similar in construction to Gundelfingen’s Historia is Peter Numagen’s († 1518) treatise on the Waldbruders’ miraculous fasts which appeared in 1483 — thus also during Nikolaus’s lifetime. It appears as if Gundelfingen was familiar with the text. Numagen, like Gundelfingen

patrum, deliberately stressing the great similarities between the Waldbruder and the founding fathers: Gundelfingen, Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. Durrer, 1: 430; Amschwand (see above, n. 39), pp. 108-10. 47 Gundelfingen, Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 430; Amschwand (see above, n. 39), p. 108. See Peter Browe, ‘Die eucharistischen Speisewunder des Mittelalters,’ Theologie und Glaube 20 (1928), 18-25; Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago and London, 1985), pp. 22-53; Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 82, 120, 167, 198-9, 335; Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Heilige und unheilige Anorexie im ausgehenden Mittelalter,’ in Das Wunderbare in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. Dietrich Schmidtke [Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 606] (Göppingen, 1994), pp. 177-208. 48 These kinds of curiosities spread surprisingly fast, as the life histories of Sybilla of Marsal, Alpaïs of Cudot († 1211), Magdalena Beutlerin († 1458), Elisabeth Achler († 1420) and Anna Laminit show (see above, n. 14); Dinzelbacher, Heilige oder Hexen? (see above, n. 20), pp. 76-82, 90-100. 49 Jacob of Waltheym (see below, n. 80) and Bonstetten, Leben des seligen Bruder Klaus, ed. Merel (see above, n. 33), 29 also report this. Nikolaus of Flüe spoke both with officials in Unterwalden as well as with the bishop of Constance, ed. in Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 31-4 (no. 7). While the request to the bishop for an investigation of the hermit has survived, his final report has not. See Werner WilliamsKrapp, ‘Mardach, Eberhard,’ in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters (see above, n. 31), 5: 1237-38; Gerold Hayer, ‘Von Unterscheidung wahrer und falscher Andacht,’ in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, 10: 101-2; Werner Williams-Krapp, ‘Sendbrief vom Betrug teuflischer Erscheinungen,’ in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, 8: 1075-6. See Bynum, Holy Feast (see above, n. 47), pp. 46, 96, 338. 50 Gundelfingen, Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 430; Amschwand (see above, n. 39), p. 108. 51 Poggio Bracciolini, Facezie, ed. and trans. Stefano Pittaluga (Cernusco, 1995), pp. 266-8 (no. 249).

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before him, uses the Vitae patrum as example and proof of the possibility of living without eating.52 Numagen was also familiar with Bracciolini’s Facezie.53 He cited them by name. He also recounted the story of the twelve-year-old shepherd girl Alpaïs of Cudot († 1211) who is reported to have gone extended periods without eating. Numagen referred to Vincent of Beauvais’s († 1264) Speculum historiale and not to Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum.54 Heinrich Wölflin For Walter Muschg and other twentieth-century students of literature, Brother Klaus is one of the last of the late medieval mystics, a “Gottesfreund” similar to Henry Suso, Henry of Nördlingen or Rulman Merswin.55 This idea can be traced back to Heinrich Wölflin († 1532), the third of the Waldbruder’s biographers/hagiographers.56 He repeatedly refers to Brother Klaus as amicus Dei. Gundelfingen uses the term eremita, and Bonstetten heremita. Wölflin just as often simply calls him frater Nicolaus. Wölflin (who in a humanistic gesture named himself Lupulus)57 linked hagiography and biography in the first part of his Historica narratio on the Waldbruder, as had Bonstetten. His purview stretched

52 Treverus Nicolaum inedium Numagen Petrus probat quem vocant sub Rupe Subsilviensem, ed. in Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 291-4, 304-14, 320-1. On Numagen see PeterJohannes Schuler, ‘Peter von Numagen,’ in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters (see above, n. 31), 6: 440-2. 53 Treverus Nicolaum inedium Numagen Petrus, ed. Durrer, 1: 279. 54 Treverus Nicolaum inedium Numagen Petrus, ed. Durrer, 1: 295. On the artful life of Alpaïs of Cudot see Elisabeth Stein, ‘Leben und Visionen der Alpais von Cudot (1150-1211). Neuedition des lateinischen Textes mit begleitenden Untersuchungen zu Autor, Werk, Quellen und Nachwirkung’ [ScriptOralia 77] (Tubingen, 1995). 55 Walter Muschg, Die Mystik in der Schweiz, 1200-1500 (Frauenfeld and Leipzig, 1935), p. 383. For a critical view see Santschi, ‘Errance et stabilité’ (see above, n. 30), 53-75; Peter Ochsenbein, ‘Frömmigkeit eines Laien. Zur Gebetspraxis des Nikolaus von Flüe,’ Historisches Jahrbuch 104 (1984), 289-308. 56 Regarding Wölflin see Jakob Stammler, ‘Heinrich Wölflin, genannt Lupulus, 1470-1534,’ in Sammlung Bernischer Biographien, 5 vols. (Bern, 1884-1906), 2: 352-8; Urs Martin Zahnd, Die Bildungsverhältnisse in den bernischen Ratsgeschlechtern im ausgehenden Mittelalter. Verbreitung, Charakter und Funktion der Bildung in der politischen Führungsschicht einer spätmittelalterlichen Stadt (Bern, 1979), p. 242; Anna Rapp Buri and Monica Stucky-Schürer, ‘Der Berner Chorherr Heinrich Wölflin (1470-1532),’ Zwingliana 25 (1998), 65-105. 57 Adolf Bach, Die deutschen Personennamen [Grundriss der germanischen Philologie 18] (Berlin 1943), pp. 442-4 (§ 373).

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from Unterwalden’s largest, i.e., Swiss, to its smallest, i.e. local (communitas, societas, universitas) concerns.58 He is also recognizable as a humanist by virtue of his use of divus (rather than sanctus) in the forword as well as by his characteristically humanist handwriting.59 Gundelfingen wrote his Historia in traditional medieval script. Only in the second part of his book does Wölflin turn to the life of the Waldbruder. His information refers almost entirely to the so-called Kirchenbuch von Sachseln.60 Wölflin wrote for the “men from Unterwalden,” as they had asked him to do.61 He forworded his work with a long-winded salutation to Mattäus Schiner, bishop of Sitten (1499-1522) in which he employed the humanistic familiar form of address (tu rather than vos).62 Like Wölflin, Schiner was a humanist as well as a venerator of Brother Klaus.63 He understood what the author had conceptualized in Latin. Twenty years later Wölflin’s Historia was translated into German by Sebastian Rhaetus († ca. 1547) in an Unterwald dialect.64 For Wölflin’s generation of humanists this translation was not as important as it had been for the circle of humanists around Niklas of Wyle († 1479), to which Bonstetten belonged.65

58 Henrici Lupuli de vita Undervaldensis Nicolai narratio, ed. in Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 528-30 (no. 83). 59 Amschwand, Bruder Klaus (see above, n. 39), p. 139. 60 Ed. in Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 459-80 (no. 66), see also the Sachsler Kirchenbuch 1488, hg. zum 50-Jahr-Jubiläum der Heiligsprechung von Bruder Klaus am 15. Mai 1947 (Zug, 1997). 61 Henrici Lupuli de vita Undervaldensis Nicolai narratio, ed. in Amschwand (see above, n. 39), p. 126. 62 Henrici Lupuli de vita Undervaldensis Nicolai narratio, ed. Amschwand, pp. 122-4. On the humanist use of the informal “you” see, for example, Helene Harth, ‘Poggio Bracciolini und die Brieftheorie des 15. Jahrhunderts. Zur Gattungsform des humanistischen Briefes,’ in Der Brief im Zeitalter der Renaissance, ed. Franz Josef Worstbrock [Mitteilung 9 der Kommission für Humanismusforschung] (Weinheim, 1983), pp. 81-99, there 92-4. 63 Henrici Lupuli de vita Undervaldensis Nicolai narratio, ed. Amschwand (see above, n. 39), pp. 126-7. On Schiner see Peter Braun et al., eds., Das Bistum Sitten/Le diocèse de Sion. L’archidiocèse de Tarentaise [Helvetia Sacra I, 5] (Basel, 2001), pp. 230-40. 64 Henrici Lupuli de vita Undervaldensis Nicolai narratio, ed. Amschwand (see above, n. 39), pp. 121-6. 65 Heinrich Gebhard Butz, ‘Niklaus von Wile. Zu den Anfängen des Humanismus in Deutschland und der Schweiz,’ Esslinger Studien 16 (1970), 21-105; Rolf Schwenk, Vorarbeiten zu einer Biographie des Niklas von Wyle und zu einer kritischen Edition seiner ersten Werke [Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 227] (Göppingen, 1978).

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As different as the three vitae mentioned thus far may appear, they are similar in that all three authors deal with the question of what Brother Klaus looked like. This is a special focus of attention which even Wölflin addresses, despite the fact that (unlike his predecessors) he had never seen Brother Klaus.66 Interest in the authentic face of the Waldbruder was enormous and also included paintings and decorative prints. The following information appears in old style German script (Fraktur) over an oil painting now hanging in the Fribourg Museum for Art and History (see Plate 1): “Abbildung/Der waren gestalt und bildnuß des seligen bruder/Niclausen zu Underwalden gantz gerecht contrafeht/Im leben. Durch Joan: Frieß. 1517.”67 A flyer published in Zurich between 1510 and 1515, now at the Veste Coburg, evidences the same claim (Plate 2): Dyß ist bru° der Klaussen gestalt, the caption reads, Jn synem leben han ich yn gesehen. Jm Ranfft in siner zell das mag ich jehen. (“This is the appearance of Brother Klaus. I can confirm this. I personally saw him in his cell.”). At that time speculation as to what the Waldbruder looked like and how he felt was not limited to the Confederation, but was widespread across central Europe.68 The question of his external appearance cannot be seen separately from his year-long fasts, the sign of his salvation and saintliness. The constant lack of nourishing food must have somehow had its effect and left visible traces. This was important, but it was not the only reason for this remarkably high level of interest paid to the authentic physiognomy of ascetics. Equally important was interest in what they looked like, as prevalence of 66 To the end Wölflin used testimonials from the pastor at Kerns in the Kirchenbuch von Sachseln which read (see above, n. 60), p. 468: Er habe ouch dozumal bruder Clausen bei unden und oben griffen, daran vast wenig fleischs gewesen ist, denn es were verzert biß an die huet und sin wangen gantz tuenn und sine leftzen vast zerschrunden. (“Then, he touched Brother Klaus, in the upper and the lower parts of his body; there was little flesh on it, it had shrunk to just skin; his cheeks were thin and his lips had shrunk.”). 67 Verena Villiger and Alfred A. Schmid, eds., Hans Fries. Ein Maler an der Zeitenwende (Munich, 2001), pp. 226-9. 68 At the end of the fifteenth century Brother Klaus was admired throughout German-speaking Europe. He was made pater patriae by the Swiss after the Reformation. The Heinrich Gundelfingen biography matches in certain points with the Swiss commendation (addressed to Lucerne). To Gundelfingen Brother Klaus is an important advocate (intercessor) for the Swiss Confederation: Gundelfingen, Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 432-3. Typical of his stylization as a national saint is the Wahre Historie, Legende und Leben by the intermittent Lucerne court reporter and schoolmaster Hans Salat († 1561): Ernst Walder, ‘Bruder Klaus als politischer Ratgeber und die Tagsatzungsverhandlungen in Stans 1481,’ Freiburger Geschichtsblätter 65 (1988), 83-119.

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Plate 1: Hans Fries, Image of Brother Klaus, 1517, by permission of the Museum für Kunst und Geschichte, Fribourg, inv. 1965-24.

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Plate 2: Woodcut, ca. 1510-1515, Kunstsammlung Veste Coburg, after Rupert Amschwand, Bruder Klaus. Ergänzungsband zum Quellenwerk (Sarnen, 1987), Plate 4.

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the volto santo indicates.69 Moreover, it had been a long time since a “living” cisalpine saint had been seen. They were only ever spoken about in legend. Those who came to Switzerland, mostly from France or Italy, soon died.70 Precisely because a living saint had not been seen for so long people wanted to know whether it was possible to recognize saintliness, by sight or touch, for example.71 Yet even when seen and touched, reports could never agree that they had seen or felt the same man. Accounts of their perceptions diverged on decisive points and one must ask why. Jacob of Waltheym Nikolaus of Flüe originally wanted to travel in order to search for God through “misery.” Soon however he returned home, to Unterwalden, and settled as a hermit in Ranft, very close to his large extended family.72 This was followed by a stream of admirers coming to see the incarnate, living saint as had been done in the Egyptian desert, the paradise for monks in Late Antiquity.73 Among the many

69 See, for example, Belting, Bild und Kult (see above, n. 10), pp. 342-7, 348-90; Gilbert Dagron, ‘Holy Images and Likeness,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991), 2333; Peter Schmidt, ‘Die Kupferstiche des Meisters E. S. zur Wallfahrt nach Einsiedeln. Einige Überlegungen zum Publikum, Programm und Kontext,’ in Artibvs. Kulturwissenschaft und deutsche Philologie des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit. Festschrift für Dieter Wuttke zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Stephan Füssel et al. (Wiesbaden, 1994), pp. 293-318; Jean-Claude Schmitt, ‘Les images d’une image. La figuration du Volto Santo de Lucca dans les manuscrits enluminés du Moyen Âge,’ in The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, eds. H.L. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf [Villa Spelman Colloquia 6] (Bologna, 1998), pp. 205-27; Gerhard Wolf, Schleier und Spiegel. Traditionen des Christusbildes und die Bildkonzepte der Renaissance (Munich, 2002). 70 André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge. D’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques [Bibliothèque de l’École française d’Athènes et de Rome I 241] (Rome, 1981); idem, Les laïcs au Moyen Âge. Pratiques et expériences religieuses (Paris, 1987). 71 Of particular value to this set of problems are Dagron, ‘Holy Images and Likeness’ (see above, n. 69); Patricia Cox Miller, ‘Desert Asceticism and “The Body from Nowhere”,’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994), 137-53; Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes. Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 2000). Grateful acknowledgement is made to David Collins (Philadelphia) for these valuable references. 72 The core of his Vita, his conversio, which he evidently told himself, initially appeared in the travelogue of Hans of Waltheym. 73 The bishop of Constance noted in 1469, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 31: Quod plures sexus utriusque homines circumcirca moram habentes et spirituales et seculares, illi fidem adhibentes diatim et alias captata oportunitate, ipsum Nicolaum et eius habitacionis locum

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foreigners who came was a nobleman from Halle in Saxony who in 1474 traveled as a pilgrim to the Mary Magdalene shrine in SaintMaximin near Aix-en-Provence — the competition to Vézelay in Burgundy, which has been researched much more. At Saint-Maximin Mary Magdalene was not worshiped as an ascetic, but as an anchorite, that is, as a hermit.74 Pilgrimages to this site were all the vogue at that time. Ten years after Waltheym, in 1483-1484, Geiler of Kaysersberg († 1510) visited the shrine in southern France.75 On the return trip the man from Saxony, pursuant to his preference for hermits, made a side trip to Ranfttobel. Jacob of Waltheym († 1479) kept a kind of travelogue filled with singular moments, lively descriptions of nature and vivid portraits of people he encountered along the way. Incidentally, it should be noted that as regards its form, this travelogue reads like a modern version of the old monk stories of Rufinus and Palladius, whose travelogues were staples of the Vitae patrum. That Waltheym was familiar with the “lives of the founding fathers” cannot be ruled out, for these stories had been very popular reading since the thirteenth century in lay circles as well.76 According to Albrecht of Bonstetten, Brother Ulrich probably also owned a copy in German.77 Waltheym was a religious man and serious hunter of relics with ears and eyes open for the edifying detail, a quality which in current research into the limits of the humanistic travelogue is seen as

frequentent et illic concursum habeant magnum, estimantes eum esse virum sanctum . . . (“That many people of both sexes, both secular and religious, when they had time, some striving for daily, others when possible, visited Brother Klaus and his dwelling frequently and went there very often, as they supposed him to be a living holy man.”). Among the visitors are many well-known names of that time, including Geiler of Kaysersberg, Albrecht of Bonstetten, Geiler’s friend, Peter Schott and his son Peter, Felix Fabri, and Peter Numagen (ed. in Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: nos. 12, 17, 21, 51, 59). 74 Victor Saxer, Le culte de Marie-Madeleine en Occident des origines à la fin du Moyen Âge [Cahiers d’Archéologie et d’Histoire 3] (Auxerre and Paris, 1959), pp. 266-84. Saxer does not deal with the pilgrim report. 75 Jakob Wimpfeling and Beatus Rhenanus, Das Leben des Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg, ed. Otto Herding, with Dieter Mertens [ Jacobi Wimpfelingi Opera Selecta 2.1] (Munich, 1970), pp. 32, 79-80. 76 Cf. Gabriela Signori, ‘Johannes Hertenstain’s Translation (1425) of the Grimlaicus’ Rule for the Anchoresses at Steinertobel near Saint Gall,’ in Saints, Scholars, and Politicians. Gender as a Tool in Medieval Studies, eds. Mathilde van Dijk and Renée Nip [Medieval Church Studies 15] (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 43-63. 77 Bonstetten, Leben des seligen Bruder Klaus, ed. Merel (see above, n. 33), 33.

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typically late medieval. We observe this same preference for the edifying detail also in travelers such as Hieronymus Münzer whose designation as a humanist nobody would seriously challenge.78 It often does not make sense to strictly differentiate between “late medieval” and “humanistic” in the context of piety. Much more characteristic is the coexistence of alleged opposites, also in the reports about Nikolaus of Flüe. Jacob of Waltheym first heard tell of Brother Klaus and his fasts lasting several years in September 1473 at the market in Halle.79 Since he lived nearby, Jacob of Waltheym wanted to see and touch a “living saint.” In May 1474 he left his horse in Lucerne, rented a ship and crossed Lake Lucerne in search of Brother Klaus.80 Waltheym’s depiction of the ascent is fascinating: a newly awakened sensibility for the beauty of creation combines with an old, traditional fear of the violence of nature in the mountains, as words like “savage,” “fierce” or “adventurous” indicate.81 High above, on the plateau, the image reverses and the landscape is suddenly “cheerful” and fertile, a veritable locus amoenus. People live in villages and cattle, oxen and horses pasture on lush meadows.82 Civilization and

78 E.P. Goldschmidt, Hieronymus Münzer und seine Bibliothek [Studies of the Warburg Institute 4] (London, 1938), pp. 68-72. 79 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym im Jahre 1474, ed. Friedrich Emil Welti (Bern, 1925), p. 74. 80 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym, ed. Welti, p. 70: Czu Lucerne liß ich myne pferde sten vnd dingitte eyn schiff vnd voer uff mittewochen Vrbani pape [25 May 1474] den Lucerner sehe uff zcu bruder Claüsen zcu deme lebenden heyligin. (“At Lucerne, I left my horse and rented a ship and sailed Lake Lucerne, Wednesday on the feast of Saint Urban, the pope, towards Brother Klaus, the living saint.”). See Dietrich Huschenbett, ‘Hans von Waltheym,’ in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters (see above, n. 31), 3: 460-3; Werner Paravicini, ‘Hans von Waltheym, pèlerin et voyageur,’ Provence historique 166 (1991), 433-64. 81 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym, ed. Welti, p. 70: Vnd do wir den Lucernen sehe uff gefaren worn czwo grosse mylen, do kommen wir an eyn grusam hoch gebirge, das wir wahen [Angst] hatten, das do keyne luthe noch keyn landt nicht were. Das gebirge müsten wir anstigen, das danne bose vnd ebenthurlich an zcu stigene was. Do was ouch keyn stig noch keyn wegk nicht vnd die waltbeche liffen vns grusamlich vndir oügen. See Walter Woodburn Hyde, ‘The Ancient Appreciation of Mountain Scenery,’ Classical Journal 11 (1915), 70-85; Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (New York, 1963), pp. 38-50; Ruth Groh and Dieter Groh, ‘Petrarca und der Mont Ventoux,’ Merkur 46 (1992), 290-307. 82 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym, ed. Welti, p. 70: Vnd do wir vff das hoche gebirge kommen, do funden wir uff den bergen gar eyn lustiges landt von dorffern, von gutem ackere, von wesen, von welden vnd ouch von guter weyde, ouch von guter viheczucht der kuwe, von ochsen vnd von pferden, wan do gar weydeliche hengiste gefallen.

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nature are reconciled.83 “This country is lovely,” Heinrich Wölflin reported of the Waldbruder’s home, “filled with fountains, lush meadows and rich pastures.”84 Only viticulture was missing, for the craggy hillsides had snow on them even into summer. Fruit trees were also sparse for the same reason, which was all the better for the huge numbers of domestic animals, large and small, the principle sources of income for the local inhabitants. Waltheym next looked for a place to sleep in the village hostel. The inn keeper inquired whether he had come to see Brother Klaus and explained he did not permit everyone an audience. If he wanted to be admitted to the Waldbruder’s presence, he absolutely needed to contact the lay priest, who was also Brother Klaus’s confessor. Waltheym invited the priest to dinner and told him what he had heard of the “living” saint in Halle (by which is meant especially his fasting). They started out the next day to visit the saint. Along the way the priest asked whether he would like also to see the Waldbruder’s wife and youngest son. Curious man that he was, Waltheym did not spurn the offer. The lay priest asked the woman to come to the chapel. She arrived when Mass started. The traveler was astonished.85 What he found was a surprisingly young woman (under 40) with startlingly smooth skin — so smooth it was altogether without a wrinkle. Then finally came the longed-for meeting. Waltheym later commented about Brother Klaus’s seven-year-old son in retrospect, that although at that point he had not yet seen the Waldbruder, the son was apparently the image of his father, as if they were made from the same mold.86 For the first time Waltheym’s interest in phys-

83 See Hartmut Kugler, ‘Stadt und Land im humanistischen Denken,’ in Humanismus und Ökonomie, ed. Heinrich Lutz (Weinheim, 1983), pp. 159-82; idem, Die Vorstellung der Stadt in der Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters (see above, n. 40), pp. 166-77 and 184-7. 84 Henrici Lupuli de vita Undervaldensis Nicolai narratio, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 529; Amschwand (see above, n. 39), p. 127. 85 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym, ed. Welti (see above, n. 79), p. 72: Alzo ist syne frouwe noch eyne suberliche, jünge frawe vndir XL iaren vnd had eyn suberlich angesichte vnd eyn glat vel. (“His wife was a nice young woman of under 40 years, having a nice face and a skin that had no wrinkles.”). 86 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym, ed. Welti, p. 72. On the similiarities between father and son see Walter Haug, ‘Francesco Petrarca — Nicolaus Cusanus — Thüring von Ringoltingen. Drei Probestücke zu einer Geschichte der Individualität

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iognomic detail manifests itself. He quickly struck up conversation with mother and son who readily answered his many questions. Then finally came the longed-for meeting. Divergent Models of Perception The two men first spoke about Mary Magdalene, for whose sake it was that Waltheym traveled Europe’s highways and byways. Then they turned to the subject of fasting.87 During the conversation the man from Halle stared spellbound into the hermit’s face. Contrary to expectation, he was not an old man, but a man “in the prime of his life.” Waltheym was equally surprised to observe that Brother Klaus had no signs of gray hair.88 His expectations were evidently based on stereotypes: hermits must be wizened, have long, white hair and an equally long, white beard. This is what was written in the Vitae and Verba patrum.89 This is how hermits were portrayed in the

im 14./15. Jahrhundert,’ in Individualität, eds. Manfred Frank and Anselm Haverkamp [Poetik und Hermeneutik 13] (Munich, 1988), pp. 291-324, there 300; Didier Lett, ‘L’expression du visage paternel. La ressemblance entre le père et le fils à la fin du Moyen Âge,’ Cahiers de recherches médiévales 4 (1997), 115-25. 87 Many were of the opinion that fasting was not a gift from God, but from the Evil Spirit. Brother Klaus told his visitors and admirers about the bishop of Constance’s activities in this regard. Waltheym portrayed the event in direct speech. Even the “Swiss” wanted to know what part of the rumor was true. They eventually came to the same conclusion as the bishop of Constance. Bonstetten also reported in detail on the fast as well as on his screening by the officials of Unterwalden. 88 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym, ed. Welti (see above, n. 79), p. 73: Bruder Claus ist eyn fyner man in mynem alder in synen besten tagen bie funffczig yaren. Her hat brün har vnd hat noch keyn graw har. Her hat ouch eyn wol gestaltes, wol geferwetes, durre angesichte, vnde ist eyn gerader dorrer man von eyner lieplichen, guten duczschen sprache. (“Brother Klaus is a handsome man in the prime of his life not yet my age, about 50 years old. He has brown hair and does not have any gray hair. He is well and well built, well colored, and is a friendly man who speaks German beautifully.”). 89 See also Bvrchardi, vt videtur, abbatis Bellevallis, apologia de barbis, ed. R.B.C. Huygens [Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis 62] (Turnhout, 1985), pp. 121-3, as well as Weisungen der Väter/Apophthegmata patrum, auch Gerontikon oder Alphabeticum genannt, trans. Bonifaz Miller [Sophia 6] (Trier, 1998), pp. 38-9 (no. 42): “Sein [father Arsenius’s] Ansehen war engelgleich, wie das des Jakob, völlig weiß, von wohlgebildeter Gestalt, jedoch mager. Er trug einen langen Bart, der bis zum Bauch herabreichte, und die Augenwimpern waren ihm vom Weinen ausgefallen. Er war groß, aber vom Alter gebeugt. Er wurde 95 Jahre alt.” See Dagron, ‘Holy Images and Likeness’ (see above, n. 69), 26-8; Frank, The Memory of the Eyes (see above, n. 71), pp. 134-70.

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hagiography90 and literature of the period91 as well as in the graphic arts.92 These were typical expectations for the period. Expectation and observation were not in accord here. Waltheym discovered that the Waldbruder’s face was indeed gaunt, but well shaped and fresh in color.93 To the man from Halle’s relief, Brother Klaus spoke an easily understandable Oberdeutsch, a noteworthy detail.94 Waltheym explained to the Waldbruder that in Saxony (where Halle lies) it was said that he (Brother Klaus) radiated no natural warmth. His hands were purportedly as cold as ice and his face was deathly white; he was constantly melancholy and never really happy.95 90 For example Guido of Anderlecht (near Brussels), in Acta sanctorum, September 4, ed. Jean Bolland, 2nd ed. J.B. Carnandet (Paris, 1868), p. 43: Jamque ejus barba prolixa, vultus et reliquum corpus illius fame et labore itinerum attenuatum, et capilli capitis ejus adeo increverant, ut a nullo sibi quondam noto omnino recognosci posset. See Paolo Golinelli, ‘Indiscreta sanctitas. Studi sui rapporti tra culti, poteri e società nel pieno medioevo,’ Studi storici 197-198 (1988), 157-91; D. Alexander, ‘Hermits and Hairshirts: The Meanings of Saintly Clothing in the Vitae of Godric of Finchale and Wulfric of Haselbury,’ Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002), 205-26. 91 Fritz Neubert, ‘Die volkstümlichen Anschauungen über Physiognomik in Frankreich bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters,’ Romanische Forschungen 29 (1911), 557-679, there 580-2. By this was meant thin, pale, naked, long beard and hair, bony chest, sunburned skin. 92 Regarding the arts, see for example Ellen Callmann, ‘Thebaid Studies,’ Antichità viva 14 (1975), 3-22; Daniel Russo, ‘Le corps des saints eremites en Italie centrale aux XIVe et XVe siècles: Étude d’iconographie,’ Le souci du corps. Medievales 8 (1985), 57-73; Eva Frojmovic, ‘Eine gemalte Eremitage in der Stadt. Die Wüstenväter im Camposanto zu Pisa,’ in Malerei und Stadtkultur in der Dantezeit. Die Argumentation der Bilder, eds. Hans Belting and Dieter Blume (Munich, 1989), pp. 201-16; Klaus Krüger, ‘Bildandacht und Bergeinsamkeit. Der Eremit als Rollenspiel in der städtischen Gesellschaft,’ in Malerei und Stadtkultur in der Dantezeit. Die Argumentation der Bilder, eds. Hans Belting and Dieter Blume (Munich, 1989), pp. 187-200; Elisa Catoni, ‘Dai Padri del deserto ad Agostino: iconografia degli affreschi del chiostro di Lecceto,’ in Santità ed eremitismo nella Toscana medievale. Atti delle giornate di studio, ed. Alessandra Gianni (Siena, 2000), pp. 109-27. 93 Groebner, ‘Haben Hautfarben eine Geschichte?’ (see above, n. 4), 8-9. 94 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym, ed. Welti (see above, n. 79), p. 73. 95 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym, ed. Welti, p. 74: Her hette keyne naturliche werme bie yme, sundern her hette hende, die wern yme so kalt alzo eyn yß, ouch so were yme syn angesichte geler [gelber] vnd bleicher wan eynem toten, den man solde in eyn grab legen. Her were ouch stetiglichen truriges mütes vnd nümmer frolich. (“He was not naturally warm, but his hands were as cold as ice. Furthermore, his face was yellow and pale like a dead man who should be put in the grave. He was also usually sad and never happy.”). This exact phrase, “sad and never happy” also appears in Michel Beheim’s poem on the four complexes, in Die Gedichte des Michel Beheim nach der Heidelberger Hs. cpg 334 unter Heranziehung der Heidelberger Hs. cpg 312 und der Münchener Hs. cgm 291 sowie sämtlicher Teilhandschriften, Bd. 2: Gedichte Nr. 148-357, eds. Hans Gille and Ingeborg Spriewald [Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters 64] (Berlin, 1970), pp. 371-2 (no. 246), see also Klaus Schönfeldt, Die Temperamentenlehre in deutschsprachigen Handschriften des 15. Jahrhunderts (Ph.D.-thesis, University of Heidelberg, 1962), pp. 62-4, 125-7.

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This is similar to the way Heinrich Wölflin96 and Hartmann Schedel portrayed hermits.97 Heinrich Gundelfingen beheld the suntanned skin, the uncombed hair and the ascetic’s neglected appearance.98 This type had been represented many times previously in word and image. The model differs however in so far as it links a meager exterior with cold, paleness, and a sad disposition. Albrecht of Bonstetten was also struck by the cold when he visited Brother Klaus. His hands were cold to the touch, he wrote.99 He also recalled that he had many wrinkles, uncombed, curly hair, and a short hermit beard. On the other hand, Brother Klaus’s eyes, teeth, and nose were quite normal, despite his fasting.100 The model of a hermit apparently was bound up with that of the melancholic in late medieval Europe.101 Both Waltheym and Schedel explicitly make this reference. The Nuremberg physician declared that their damp and cold complexion permitted them to fast longer than other people. Thus there was no miracle, but a natural phenomenon. In his Facezie Poggio Bracciolini had already made a casual connection between melancholia and the ability to fast for years at a time.102 Peter 96 Henrici Lupuli de vita Undervaldensis Nicolai narratio, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 541: Cumque tam pallidum os, tenuesque genas et arida labra atque ipsum corpus macilentum vix cute contegi videret. (“When he saw the pallor of his face, the shrunken cheeks, the dry lips and the thin body covered with nothing but skin.”). In other words, Brother Klaus was skin and bones. 97 Die Schedelsche Weltchronik von 1493, annotated by Rudolf Pörtner [Die bibliophilen Taschenbücher 64] (Dortmund, 1978), Bl. CCLVIr : der wz duerrs magers außgeschoepfts leibs. allain von hawt. geeder vnd gepeyn zusamen geschmuckt. (“His body was extremely thin, only skin, veins and bones.”). 98 Gundelfingen, Historia Nicolai Underwaldensis eremitae, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 433. 99 Bonstetten, Historia fratris Nicolai de Rupe heremite Underwaldensis et conmilitonis sui, ed. in Durrer, 1: 87: dum tangitur manus tota gelida notatur. 100 Bonstetten, Historia, ed. Durrer, 1: 87: Est bone stature, totus macer et fuscus et rugosus, capillos disiectos, minus pectine deductos, nigros mixte canicie, non perdensos, sic quoque barba longitudinem pollice habens, oculos mediocres bona in albedine, eburneos dentes optime serie et nasum faciei pulchre dispositum. (“He is tall, very thin, has a brown and wrinkled complexion, has uncombed, thin hair, black mixed with gray; a thumb length of beard, ordinary yes, white, regular teeth and a handsome nose in his face.”). A similar instance is the portrait of Saint Euthymius sketched by Cyril of Scythopolis († ca. 557-558), trans. R.M. Rice [Cistercian Studies Series 114] (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1991), pp. 56-7 (no. 40). There is no reason to believe that Bonstetten was familiar with this text. 101 Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Satur und Melancholie. Studien zur Geschichte der Naturphilosophie und Medizin, der Religion und der Kunst (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 165-99. It was known that melancholics were subject to states of rapture, ecstacy and paramystic experiences. See for this pp. 60, 63, 67. 102 Poggio Bracciolini, Facezie, ed. and trans. Pittaluga (see above, n. 51), p. 268:

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Numagen reported this too in his treatise on Brother Klaus in 1483.103 Consequently, the two oldest printings from Augsburg and Nuremberg illustrate Nikolaus of Flüe as a melancholic (Plates 3 and 4). The bearded Waldbruder sits gloomily before his ermitage. His left hand supports his head, his right hand rests on his knee.104 Jacob of Waltheym, however, could confirm neither cold, nor paleness, nor melancholia. This information was false. No, the Waldbruder did not match the hardened, cold, and melancholic image that had been drawn of the living saint in Halle. He was a warm-blooded — Waltheym checked carefully — and a warm-hearted person. He radiated the warmth which Aristotle considered the dynamic fundamental principle of nature. For this reason Waltheym often used the word “natural”: But I say that I did not find any of those signs in him. First, he was naturally warm; including his hands, like everybody else. My man Conze and I grabbed these for or five times, as described below. His face was not yellow or pale, but had a proper color, like it is with any living, natural, wellendowed, healthy person, in possession of his faculties. He was not inclined to sadness, but we found him gracious, open, friendly, happy and always kind.105

Alii humorem melancholicum asserunt praebere nutrimentum. The idea that melancholics have a smaller appetite is much older, as indicated by Pseudo-Polemon’s treatise, in Scriptores physiognomonici, ed. Foerster (see above, n. 4), 2: 159: Signa dominationis melancholiae: ardor in ventre, appetentia cibi fallax, decoloratio coloris, nigredo et crassitudo sanguinis, nigredo urinae vel rubor cum decoloratione. (“The signs of dominating melancholia: a hot stomach, a failing appetite, a dicolouring of the face, black and slow blood, urine black or red by discoloration.”). 103 Treverus Nicolaum inedium Numagen Petrus, ed. Durrer (see above, n. 39), 1: 279. 104 Henry Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow in Middle Byzantine Art,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31 (1977), 123-174, there 138-9; Horst Wenzel, ‘Melancholie und Inspiration. Walther von der Vogelweide L. 8, 4ff. Zur Entwicklung des europäischen Dichterbildes,’ in Walther von der Vogelweide. Beiträge zu Leben und Werk, ed. HansDieter Mück (Stuttgart, 1989), pp. 133-153. Sometimes Saint Jerome, who styled himself after the desert fathers, is posed as a melancholic, see Daniel Russo, Saint Jérôme en Italie: étude d’iconographie et de spiritualité (XIII e-XV e siècle) (Paris, 1987); Christiane Wiebel, Askese und Endlichkeitsdemut in der italienischen Renaissance. Ikonologische Studien zum Bild des heiligen Hieronymus (Weinheim, 1988); Andres, Antike Physiognomie (see above, n. 26), pp. 155-72. 105 Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym, ed. Welti (see above, n. 79), p. 74: Ich spreche abir, das ich der genanten keyns an yme erfandt, wan her was ym ersten naturlich warm. Die henden warn yme ouch naturlich warm alzo eynem andern menschin, wan Concze myn knecht vnd ich haben yme die zcu vier adir fünff malen vnser ixlicher an gegriffen, so hirnoch geschrebin stedt. Syn angesichte was yme ouch nicht gele noch bleich, sundern es was yme von rechter lipfarwe, alzo eynem andern lebenden naturlichen, wolmogenden, gesunden menschin. Her was ouch nicht truriges mütes, sündern in alle synem gekose, wandelünge vnd handelünge befunden wir on lutselig, medesam, behegelich, frolich vnd zcu allen dingen früntlich.

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Plate 3: Brother Klaus as a melancholic, after the earliest printed version of his life: Hie nachvolget ein loblicher Tractat, ed. in Robert Durrer, Bruder Klaus. Die ältesten Quellen über den seligen Niklaus von Flüe, sein Leben und seinen Einfluss, 2 vols. (Sarnen, 1917, repr. 1981), 1: 361.

Plate 4: Brother Klaus in front of his church, after Hartmann Schedel, Weltkronik. Kolorierte Gesamtausgabe von 1493, ed. Stephan Füssel (Ljubljana, 2004), p. ccvi r.

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Type and individual clash in Bonstetten and in Waltheym. Both first compared Brother Klaus as a matter of course with the common conception and noted any discrepancy. The man was not old, but in his prime. His hair was not white, but mixed brown with dark brown. His beard was not long, it was no longer than a thumb’s width. Despite similar approaches, both authors agree on only a single point: the man was really thin! As for the rest of their physical observations, one gets the impression they were describing two different people.106 Unlike Bonstetten, Waltheym was not only off in terms of type, but also in terms of the saint’s “nature,” in this case as a healthy person. The observed “natural warmth” enhances the fasting miracle in contrast to the melancholic ascetic whose complexion facilitates fasting. Experience and observation are no guarantee of authenticity, however. I must acknowledge that we do not know what Brother Klaus actually looked like. This is not the point. My interest is not in the portrait as an attempt to once again record the saint’s individuality, as Peter Dinzelbacher recently attempted (Plate 5).107 I focused on four different possibilities, with the aid of physiognomical details of different origin and meaning to construct a real, living saint. Physiognomy corresponds less with what one sees and more with what one expects to see. This expectation was created by having read the Vitae patrum. To a certain extent physiognomy superseded missing saintly words and deeds. For the only deed for which his world valued him was his inaction, that is, his fasting. In this sense before Brother Klaus was discovered by nationalism, he was a noteworthy, colorless saint (figuratively speaking) who was conspicuous only by virtue of his renunciation of food.

106 The theory of knowledge perspective is concerned with similarity, not equivalence. See Gabriela Signori, ‘Das spätmittelalterliche Gnadenbild: Eine nachtridentinische Invention of tradition?,’ in Rahmen-Diskurse. Kultbilder im konfessionellen Zeitalter, eds. David Ganz and Georg Henkel [Bild und Religion 2] (Berlin, 2004) pp. 275-301. 107 Peter Dinzelbacher, Himmel, Hölle, Heilige. Visionen und Kunst im Mittelalter (Wiesbaden, 2002), p. 146; this same effort was inspired by Father Ephrem Omlin, ‘Das neuentdeckte älteste Bruder-Klausen-Bild und der Hochaltar von Sachseln aus dem Jahre 1492,’ Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 8 (1946), 129-73.

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Plate 5: Earliest example of a statuette of Brother Klaus, in wood, 1504, Stans, Rathaus, by permission of the Bruder Klaus Museum, Sachseln, Switzerland.

DISCIPLES OF THE DEEP DESERT: WINDESHEIM BIOGRAPHERS AND THE IMITATION OF THE DESERT FATHERS* Mathilde van Dijk Abstract This article examines how biographers from the Chapter of Windesheim construed their brothers and sisters as the new desert fathers. In the Devotio Moderna, these first hermits, monks, and nuns were regarded as the epitomes of what true piety was about. Windesheim biographers like John Busch put their subjects forward as the new practitioners of true piety, as it had been coined by the desert fathers. But what did this mean to them? How did they interpret the desert father material? How did they use it to create new examples for religious practice?

Introduction In the Devotio Moderna, the concept of “Egypt” had two opposing meanings. On the one hand, it was a metaphor for that which the truly religious should abandon. John Busch of Windesheim used the concept in this sense in De viris illustribus, the biographies of the first brothers of his community of Regular Canons. He praised several among them for having left Egypt behind.1 According to him, they had completed a metaphorical Exodus, having achieved the aim of religious people from the time of the desert fathers: a liberated heart. As defined by the Egyptian hermit Moses in the Conferences, the mission of the religious person was to free the heart from all carnal desires, making room for an all-encompassing desire for God.2 Those who accomplished this had restored themselves to the perfect state of Adam before the Fall, after the model of the New Man, Jesus Christ.

* I thank Arjo Vanderjagt for his comments on an earlier version of this article. 1 E.g. John Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 8, ed. in Karl Grube, Des Augustinerprobstes Johannes Busch Chronicon Windeshemense und Liber de reformatione monasteriorum [Geschichtsquellen der Provinz Sachsen und angrenzender Gebiete 19] (Halle, 1886), p. 25. 2 John Cassian, Collationes patrum, prologus, ed. E. Pichery, 3 vols. (Paris, 19541959), 1: 1. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2006

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The reference to Moses points to another connotation of “Egypt.” It was also the site of true piety, that of the real religious life. Therefore, much as Busch denounces Egypt in other passages, he also hails his brothers as “new monks . . . devout like Palestinians, obedient like Thebaids, fervent like Egyptians, disciples of the Antonies and Macariuses of the deep desert;” and as the modern devout.3 In De viris illustribus, he puts them forward as the new desert fathers. According to Busch, the Devotio Moderna rekindled that which had started in Egypt and Palestine around the end of the third century, when men and women had withdrawn to the desert. These hermits, monks, and nuns from the past invented the religious life, which they presented as the best way to imitate Christ and the apostles after the persecution of Christians had ended. Busch was not alone in asserting that his brothers recreated their piety. The same is true for other male and female authors from the movement. The assertion that their fellow brothers and sisters were the new desert fathers was, of course, a fiction, if only because Busch and the other authors were operating in an entirely different context, both physically and metaphorically: the Devotio Moderna flourished over a thousand years later in the entirely different landscape of the Low Countries in the Later Middle Ages. Their reference to the desert fathers happened in a hostile environment. From the start of the Devotio Moderna with the Deventer canon Geert Grote (1340-1384), the adherents had been very outspoken in their criticism of the other religious men and women of their day. Particularly, they disapproved of the current practice in the forms of religious life that had originated in the thirteenth-century Poverty Movement, such as that of the Mendicants. According to Grote’s followers, these had strayed from the traditional ideals voiced by Moses the Egyptian hermit. On their part, the Mendicants accused the adherents of the Devotio Moderna of attempting to create a new religio, forbidden ever since the Fourth Lateran Council (1215).4 Grote’s

3 Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 9, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), p. 27: Novos enim Palestine devocionis Thebaide obediencie Egipciacique fervoris monachos . . . novosque Anthoniorum Machariorumque discipulos interioris heremi. 4 The Groningen Dominican lector Matthaeus Grabow filed a complaint about this at the Council of Constance in 1418. Such influential churchmen as Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson defended the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life. Now Grabow himself faced a charge of heresy. See Paul Fredericq, ed., Corpus documentorum inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis Neerlandicae, 3 vols. (Ghent and The Hague,

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followers made themselves vulnerable to criticism by living in communities of women and men without vows, the Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life. The creation of communities of Regular Canons like Busch’s Windesheim was a later development.5 Apart from arousing suspicion that the communities of men and women without vows were the first phase of a new Order, their semi-religious status made them easy targets for the charge of heresy.6 The Sisters and Brothers’ adversaries stressed their similarity with the Beguines, who had a reputation for heterodoxy.7 The devouts’ protests that they were no Beguines and that they did not create anything new but were in fact reviving time-honored religious tradition from the early Church, happened in this polemical context.8 Moreover, though the adherents of the Devotio Moderna would probably have been as shocked as 21st-century fundamentalists would be today by the notion that true piety was zeitgemässig, it is obvious that this was indeed the case. They were among the last medieval expressions of centuries of interpretation of what being pious meant, first from Scripture and second from authoritative early Church texts like the desert father material. As for the latter, in themselves, texts 1896) 2: 216-27. Busch also gives an account of this episode in the Liber de viris illustribus 58, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), pp. 172-4, which has been included in Fredericq, Corpus documentorum inquisitionis, pp. 227-9. 5 For an overview of the history of the Devotio Moderna, see R.R. Post, The Modern Devotion. Confrontation with the Reformation and Humanism (Leiden, 1968) and A.G. Weiler, E. Persoons and C.C. de Bruin, Geert Grote en de Moderne Devotie (Zutphen, 1984). 6 Evidence shows that, in some cases, they were actually accused of being heretics. See the chronicle of the Regular Canonesses’ convent Jerusalem at Venray, which began as a community of Sisters of the Common Life: L. Peeters, ‘Den beginne des cloesters Jerusalem, tot 1422,’ Limburg 7 (1900), 260-90, there 269. 7 W. Simons, Cities of Ladies (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 19-34 and 118-20. 8 Geert Grote apparently attempted to create an alternative for the Beguines when he organized a community of Sisters of the Common Life in his home, providing proper spiritual and material supervision and prohibiting an entrance fee. In his treatise De simonia ad Beguttas, ed. W. de Vreese (The Hague, 1940), Grote had condemned this practice as simony. The statutes offer evidence of how much the adherents of the Devotio Moderna strove to prevent the sisters going the same heretical route as had the Beguines. See R.R. Post, ‘De statuten van het Mr. Geertshuis te Deventer,’ Archief voor de geschiedenis van het aartsbisdom Utrecht 71 (1952), 1-46, there 21 and J. de Hullu, ‘Statuten van het Meester-Geertshuis te Deventer,’ Archief voor Nederlandsche kerkgeschiedenis 6 (1897), 63-76, there 69-70. The author of the statutes was particularly concerned that the sisters might adopt the heresy of the Free Spirit, common among the Beguines. See Grietje Dresen, ‘God in het hart sluiten. Ingekeerde vrouwen aan de vooravond van de Nieuwe Tijd,’ Amsterdams sociologisch tijdschrift 15 (1988), 310-36, there 315 and 317-8.

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such as the Vitae patrum and the Conferences were interpretations of what Scripture actually intended. They gave models for the way in which the truly pious, those who were serious about living after the model of Christ and the apostles, should practice their faith in the context of late antique Egypt and Syria (and in the case of John Cassian: Marseille), almost four centuries after the Parousia, when Jesus Christ had lived among us. Ultimately, the purpose of this article is to study how the adherents of the Devotio Moderna defined true piety. What were the characteristics of a truly pious individual? What was the state of such a man or woman’s inner person? How did he or she think, feel, or act? This article will focus on the way in which they used the lives and sayings of the desert fathers as a model for this definition. How did they use this material? In what way and how closely did they imitate the desert fathers? Last, was their presentation of themselves as the new desert fathers rather the appropriation of a label, a hallmark, which confirmed the adherents of the Devotio Moderna as practitioners of true piety? Gender is an important aspect of this discussion. John Cassian recorded only conversations with male hermits in his Conferences. Most texts in the Vitae patrum also refer exclusively to men. Very few are about women — yet they too could be considered “fathers,” as their gender was no longer an issue once they had adopted the spiritual life. As such, there was no problem in defining them as fathers, particularly because, while they usually defined the body as female, the soul constituted the male element of a human being. Thus, women who had renounced their bodies had become, in essence, male. At the same time, it was clear that women had to walk a different path than men to reach this status, if only because they were generally considered more carnal than men. It was harder for them to control their bodies.9 As a result, it would be much more difficult for them to reach spiritual perfection. The other side to this was that it would be a much greater accomplishment for them to do so.10 How do these notions affect the Devotio Moderna some thousand years later? Did the men and women also follow different paths

9 See Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages. Medicine, Science, Culture (Cambridge, 1993) for an explanation. 10 John Brinckerinck, Acht collatiën, ed. W. de Moll, Kerkhistorisch Archief 4 (1866), 98-167, there 150.


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towards perfection? How closely did they follow the original desert fathers in this respect? The present study concerns two sets of biographies from a specific group within the Devotio Moderna: the Chapter of Windesheim. This group consisted of houses of Regular Canons and Canonesses and was among the most influential achievements of the Devotio Moderna.11 De viris illustribus, written about the brothers in the leading monastery of the Chapter, and the sisterbook of Diepenveen, the collection of the lives of the sisters from this convent, will be discussed. The convent of Saints Agnes and Mary at Diepenveen was one of very few female communities within the Chapter of Windesheim. The following section briefly introduces these sources. Next I will provide some further data on the status of the desert fathers within the Devotio Moderna. Collections of Biographies Windesheim and Diepenveen were among the first foundations of the Devotio Moderna and were regarded as model communities, both inside the Chapter and among other adherents of the movement.12 They were in close proximity, both formally and informally. The prior of Windesheim was the spiritual and temporal overlord of the sisters at Diepenveen. In addition to this, it is obvious that the brothers and sisters felt close to each other. This is clear from the fact that some Diepenveen sisters appeared in the biographies of the Windesheim brothers and vice versa. De viris illustribus and the Diepenveen sisterbook are only two examples of Devotio Moderna biographical collections. Usually, the authors came from the same communities as their subjects. Some collections of biographies deal with members of other communities who were in some way connected to them (for instance, because they moved from one community to another). The purpose of the sets of lives was to provide models for present and future members of the author’s community. 11 S. Axters, Geschiedenis van de vroomheid in de Nederlanden, 4 vols. (Antwerp, 1956). Volume 3 gives details on Devotio Moderna influence in the Low Countries. 12 This much is clear from the fact that other communities called the sisters or brothers in to help reform their houses. John Busch gives details on his own activities as a reformer of monasteries in the Liber de reformatione monasteriorium, ed. in Grube (see above, n. 1), pp. 388-799.

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Both the Windesheim and the Diepenveen collections survive in two versions. Busch wrote the first version of De viris illustribus when he was still living at Windesheim during the years 1456-1459.13 According to Busch’s assertion, the prior, John of Naaldwijk, ordered him to do so. He produced the second version after he had moved to another Windesheim monastery, Saint Bartholomew’s at Sulta near Hildesheim. He wrote this during his second term as a prior (1459-1479), completing the work in 1464.14 The purposes of the two versions differ. Apparently, Busch intended his first version to be a traditional “brotherbook”: a history of a single religious community (Windesheim) written for that community. It survives in one complete manuscript and a fragment.15 The second version appears to aim at a more extensive history of the entire Chapter. It survives in eleven manuscripts, usually originating from Windesheim milieus. In most manuscripts, De viris illustribus is combined with another work, the Liber de origine devocionis moderne.16 As for the Diepenveen sisterbook, only two manuscripts survive. Each contains a different version, probably based on an original, now lost. The Diepenveen sister Griet Esschinges wrote the earliest version, completed in 1524. A certain sister Griete Koesters produced the later version in 1534. This manuscript was part of the collection of the Sisters of the Common Life at Master Geert’s house at Deventer. It is much shorter and focuses on sisters who had a connection to the Deventer community. Originally, the convent of Saints Agnes and Mary had been created from the Master Geert’s house. In the process, several sisters had transferred from Deventer to Diepenveen.17

13 Becker outlines the main differences between the first and the second versions in V. Becker, ‘Eene onbekende kronijk van het klooster te Windesheim,’ Bijdragen en mededelingen voor de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 10 (1887), 376-445. 14 See for details about Busch’s stays at Sulta, S. van der Woude, John Busch. Windesheimer kloosterreformator en kroniekschrijver (Edam, 1947), pp. 80-6, 130-7. 15 Brussels Royal Library, MS. IV 110 and Braunschweig, Stadtarchiv und Stadtbibliothek, no signature. 16 Edition of both texts in Grube (see above, n. 1). See Koen Goudriaan, ‘Het leven van Liduina en de Moderne Devotie,’ Jaarboek voor middeleeuwse geschiedenis 6 (2003), 161-236, there 224-30 for a list of manuscripts and printed editions. 17 The oldest manuscript (Deventer, City and Atheneum Library, MS. 101 E 26), is commonly known as DV and will henceforth be quoted as such. I am grateful to Wybren Scheepsma for allowing me to work with his transcription of this manuscript. The later manuscript (Zwolle, RA, Coll. Van Rhemen, MS. inv. no. 1) is


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The Desert Father Connection It would be no exaggeration to assert that religious texts, particularly Scripture, the lives of the martyrs, and the lives and sayings of the desert fathers, defined the lives of the adherents of the Devotio Moderna. These texts were also the basis for other texts that would occupy the adherents in some way or the other almost all day.18 This was particularly true for the men and women in the communities of Regular Canons and Canonesses, as the Rule and constitutions prescribed such exposure. First, they would sing the texts of the psalms in the hours, seven times a day, week after week. Second, they would use texts during daily Mass. Third, they would listen to readings at several other occasions, as during meals and manual labor, which itself could consist of the copying of texts. Finally, the Regular Canons and Canonesses would read texts in the periods reserved for private study. They generally regarded the latter as a most important element in the process of self-reformation in the Devotio Moderna. Texts offered inspiration for meditation and prayer, and often had this express purpose. For example, summaries of passages from the Bible or from hagiographical texts provided points of departure for meditation. Several works in this genre survived from Diepenveen.19 Moreover, texts provided models for the reader or copyist’s spiritual progress. Unfortunately, it is impossible to assemble a complete catalog of the texts that the Windesheim brothers and the Diepenveen sisters used. Few books survive from the communities’ libraries.20 This does

commonly known as D. It was edited in Van den doechden der vuriger ende stichtiger susteren van Diepen Veen (Handschrift D), ed. D.A. Brinkerink (Leiden, 1904). For an outline of the differences between the two versions, see Wybren Scheepsma, Deemoed en devotie. De koorvrouwen van Diepenveen en hun geschriften (Amsterdam, 1997) pp. 135-41. Recently, Anne Bollmann provided an extensive study: Frauenleben und Frauenliteratur in der Devotio Moderna. Volkssprachige Schwesternbücher in literarhistorischer Perspektive (Ph.D.thesis, University of Groningen, 2004), pp. 457-592. 18 Ann Matter defined such texts as “co-texts”: E. Ann Matter, ‘Biblical Co(n)texts and Twentieth Century Fiction: Three Models,’ in The Work of Co(n)texts/Il lavoro dei contesti, eds. C. Locatelli and C. Covi (forthcoming). 19 For instance in Deventer, Stads- en Atheneumbibliotheek MS. 101 E 15, ca. 1500-1510, fols. 158r-264v. See also Karl Stooker and Theo Verbeij, Collecties op orde. Middelnederlandse handschriften uit kloosters en semi-religieuze gemeenschappen in de Nederlanden, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1997), 2: 376. 20 For lists of surviving books see W. Kohl, E. Persoons and A.G. Weiler, Monasticon Windeshemense, 4 vols. (Brussels, 1980), on Windesheim 3: 487-9, on Diepenveen 3: 600-2.

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not mean that their reading and copying material is virtually unknown. Busch provides lists of books that his brothers copied in both versions of De viris illustribus.21 Occasionally, the authors of the sisterbook refer to texts the exemplary sisters liked to read.22 Usually, these concern works that had become classics of monastic literature. Next to relatively recent works like Saint Bernard’s sermons on various subjects or David of Augsburg’s Profectus religiosorum, the biographers mention Scripture, lives of the saints, works of the Church fathers (particularly Saint Augustine), and lives and sayings of the desert fathers. Such works were also common in other communities of the Chapter of Windesheim and, for that matter, in houses of Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life.23 In view of their wish to imitate Christ, the adherents of the Devotio Moderna looked first at His life and those of the apostles as models for their self-reconstruction. Both Latin and non-Latin readers were encouraged to study Scripture. In addition, adherents of the movement or earlier authors rewrote and interpreted the life of Christ in various commentaries and meditation guides.24 From the Diepenveen library, a manuscript survives which contains parts of Scripture and, among others, an “exercise divided in points on the life of Jesus.”25 Both the Old and New Testaments were important, as readers often interpreted the Old as a prophecy of the New Testament. The Exodus, for instance, seemed to be a metaphor for, and a foreshadowing of, the Salvation of humanity.26 Commentators further claimed that some figures from the Old Testament prefigured Christ. In this respect, they were similar to the lives of the saints, the accounts of which were also among the most important texts. While such Old 21 Busch gave a list in the first version of De viris illustribus, printed in Becker, ‘Eene onbekende kronijk’ (see above, n. 13), 402-5. In the second version, Busch inserted data about the works that the brothers copied in their biographies. 22 For instance sister Catherine of Naaldwijk liked to read works by Saint Augustine, DV (see above, n. 17), fol. 250r. 23 T. Kock, Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna. Handschriftproduktion, Literaturversorgung und Bibliotheksaufbau im Zeitalter des Medienwechsels (Frankfurt, 1999). 24 See for an overview of such works C.C. de Bruin, ‘Middeleeuwse levens van Jezus als leiddraad voor meditatie,’ Nederlands Archief voor de Kerkgeschiedenis 63 (1987), 129-73. 25 Deventer, Stads- and Atheneneumbibliotheek, MS. 101 E 15, see also Stooker en Verbeij, Collecties op orde (see above, n. 19), 2: 376. 26 H. de Lubac, Exegèse médiévale. Les quatre sens de l’Écriture (Paris, 1959). For this metaphor in the context of the Egyptian desert, see also Claudia Rapp, ‘Desert, City, and Countryside in the Early Christian Imagination,’ this volume, above, pp. 93-112, there 98-9, 102.


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Testament figures as Moses and the stories about him functioned as precursors, the saints and their lives functioned as “postcursors” of Christ and the Gospels. Ultimately, like the Gospels, and in fact like all the books of Scripture before and after Christ, the lives of the saints pointed the way toward salvation.27 This was certainly the case for the martyrs who, like Christ, had made the supreme sacrifice during their persecutions. Some vitae assert explicitly that the martyrs saved souls by their deaths.28 Living long after persecution had ceased, the adherents of the Devotio Moderna could not emulate them in this respect. However, they could strive to imitate the desert fathers, who were supposed to have found the way to emulate Christ, when it was no longer feasible to die a martyr’s death. Traditionally, the Egyptians among them had been the primary models. Many manuscripts and printed books both of the Vitae patrum and of Cassian’s Conferences and Institutes survive from the Devotio Moderna. Busch mentions such works in his listings.29 Their transmission within the Devotio Moderna is manifold and complex. This is the case for both the Latin and the vernacular versions. It is important to consider that works under the titles “lives” or “sayings of the fathers” have no fixed content. Copiers or translators made a selection of lives and sayings according to what they perceived to be the needs of their intended readers. In addition to the traditional material, they sometimes inserted other texts concerning the desert fathers.30 Material from the desert fathers was included in other collections as well, legendaries being the most obvious example. For instance, several legends about famous Egyptian hermits and other figures made their way into the Legenda aurea, in both the Latin and the vernacular versions.31 Like the Vitae patrum, this legendary

27 For an extensive discussion of this, see M. van Uytfanghe, Stylisation biblique et condition humaine dans l’hagiographie mérovingienne (600-750) (Brussels, 1987). 28 For instance some Lives of Saint Barbara. See Mathilde van Dijk, Een rij van spiegels. Levens van de heilige Barbara als voorbeeld voor religieuzen (Hilversum, 2000), p. 139. 29 Becker, ‘Eene onbekende kronijk’ (see above, n. 13), 403. 30 For instance a dialogue of Saint Antony and the Devil that was written by Alfons Buenhombre, Disputatio sancti Antonii, see Stooker and Verbeij, Collecties op orde (see above, n. 19), 2: 880 and 1056. 31 See for the Latin versions B. Fleith, Studien zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der Lateinischen Legenda Aurea [Subsidia Hagiographica 71] (Brussels, 1991), pp. 30-7 and for the Middle Dutch versions W. Williams-Krapp, Die deutschen und niederländischen Legendare des Mittelalters. Studien zur Überlieferungs-, Text- und Wirkungsgeschichte (Tubingen, 1986).

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had no fixed content. Some copiers and translators chose to include shortened versions of the legends, following the format that Jacobus de Voragine preferred in his original version of the legendary. Others inserted the full text from the Vitae patrum. In addition, fragments from the Conferences or the Vitae patrum were included in various other types of works, such as in the devotional collection commonly known as Der Sielen Troest or in the rapiaria, the collections of fragments that the brothers and sisters made for their own devotional uses.32 Even if it is difficult to chart exactly which Devotio Moderna community used which lives and sayings of which desert fathers, it is still obvious that the texts about the desert fathers did indeed serve as models for their practices. As John Cassian and others had done, they noted sayings of outstanding brothers and sisters, which sometimes happened to be exact quotes of famous desert fathers.33 Another example is the writing of the biographies of exemplary members of their communities. New Monks As mentioned above, the authors of Devotio Moderna biographies wrote these texts for the education of their fellow brothers and sisters. This had some impact on the content. They had to put all the facts and events into a certain format to ensure that the texts would fulfill their function. Several scholars noted the similarity of the biographies to the lives of the saints, particularly with respect to the collections of female biographies.34 Busch set out to present his brothers as the epitomes of what true piety was, as the new desert fathers. For him and for the other adherents of the Devotio Moderna, these inventors of the religious life were models beyond reproach. In practice, though, the connection

32 J. Deschamps, Middelnederlandse handschriften uit Europese en Amerikaanse bibliotheken (Leiden, 1972), pp. 193-7 (no. 68). I wish to thank Mirjam de Baar for her help in completing this reference. 33 See J.F. de Vregt, ‘Eenige ascetische tractaten afkomstig van de Deventerse broederschap van het gemeene leven,’ Archief voor de geschiedenis van het aartsbisdom Utrecht 10 (1882), 1-178. 34 For instance Wybren Scheepsma, ‘Illustere voorbeelden. De invloed van de Legenda Aurea op de geschriften van de koorvrouwen van Windesheim,’ in “Een boec dat men te Latine heet Aurea Legenda.” Beiträge zur niederländischen Übersetzung der Legenda Aurea, ed. A. Berteloot, H. van Dijk and J. Hlatky (Munster, 2003), pp. 261-82.


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of the Devotio Moderna to the desert father piety meant that Busch had to engage in two interpretive movements. First, he had to look at the desert father material in order to glean from it the essence of true piety, as it had been defined after persecution had ended. This essence would enable him to find a feasible way to be a desert father in his day. It is important to note that Busch stood in a continuous line of interpretation of the desert father material. Obviously, the ways in which other early Church and later classic monastic works had defined it informed his view on piety as lived by the desert fathers. Next, putting forward the Windesheim brothers as followers of the desert fathers, Busch had to interpret the former’s practices as examples of the latter’s true piety. As we shall presently see, this resulted in him describing the brothers not as exact copies (even though he claimed that they were such), but as the inventors of a way to be as desert father-like as possible in the context of the late medieval Low Countries. Incidentally, though Busch focused on the brothers at Windesheim, it is clear that he regarded the work of the entire Devotio Moderna as a rekindling of desert father piety. Moreover, Busch asserts repeatedly that the renewal of true piety was not limited to males. He mentions several exemplary Diepenveen sisters as well.35 Primarily, Busch directed his work internally: the first version to the brothers of Windesheim, the second to the members of the Chapter. He assured his readers that they were on the right track toward the liberated heart, by pointing to the exemplary brothers’ similarity to the desert fathers and by contrasting their practices favorably with those of other late medieval religious, implicitly and explicitly. Busch shows the similarity of his brothers to the desert fathers at three levels: at the structural level of both the entire work and the individual tales; at the level of the words and phrases used; and, finally, at the level of the actual content. One should point out that such distinctions are artificial, as all three levels are clearly interconnected. Thus, when Busch imitates desert father material, he imitates not only the form, but the content as well. Let us first discuss format. De viris illustribus contains 72 chapters. This is no coincidence: 72 is the number of disciples Jesus Christ 35 For instance in his account of a vision of Henry Mande, in which this visionary saw several brothers and sisters in heaven, among the saints, Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 44, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), pp. 125-32.

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sent out to spread the Word.36 The first nine chapters give general information about the early history of the Windesheim community, its historical context and the virtues and practices of the first brothers. The last chapter contains a conclusion, which amounts to an assessment of the brothers. In the remaining body of the work, Busch writes the biographies of 24 brothers.37 Nikolaus Staubach of Munster pointed out that this is the same number mentioned by John Cassian in the Conferences. In the 24th conference, Cassian links this number to the 24 elders of the Apocalypse.38 Even if Busch himself undermines the similarity somewhat by including a 25th brother from another community, he did not choose this number at random. Busch places the history of his monastery and of the Devotio Moderna movement in the context of Salvation history. He starts his work by recounting the origin of sin in Lucifer’s first rebellion against God, due to pride, and his later seduction of Man into the Fall. He then recounts that God sent his son Jesus Christ to save humankind with his blood and so guide us back to heaven. Furthermore, he claims that Jesus Christ established the communal life with his apostles. Later, the desert fathers and those who imitated them followed this example. Obviously, the religious life was not an invention dating from the fourth century. It had existed since the Parousia. Staubach also points to the connection of the De viris illustribus with the Liber de origine de devocionis moderne. It resembles the connection between Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences. As Cassian argues, the former work described the exterior practices of the Egyptian hermits; the second work was about their inner lives.39 This also seems to be the main interest in Busch’s work. Thus, the biography of the prior John Vos of Heusden provides scant information on what happened to the monastery while he was in charge. Busch refers the readers to his other work. Many suppose this to be a reference to the Liber de origine.40 Moreover, Busch’s biographies give very few details about

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Lk. 10,1. Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Das Wunder der Devotio Moderna. Neue Aspekte im Werk des Windesheimer Geschichtsschreiber Johannes Busch,’ in Windesheim 13951995. Kloosters, teksten, invloeden, eds. A.J. Hendrikman et al. [Middeleeuwse Studies 12] (Nijmegen, 1996), pp. 170-85, there 173-4. 38 Rev. 4,4. 39 Cassian, Collationes, prologus, ed. Pichery (see above, n. 2), 1: 1. 40 Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 12, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), p. 34. 37


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such matters as the subjects’ lives before entering the monastery, their descent, and their social background. If he includes such data, it is usually because it indicates the state of a subject’s heart. This is the case in the life of Albert Wijnbergen. According to Busch, he came from a wealthy, distinguished family and was very learned. Busch praises his aptitude as a grammaticus, which enabled him to teach his fellow brothers about the sense of Scripture. Despite these excellent qualities, the Windesheim Canons did not want to accept him as a choir brother, as he had a horrible voice. Instead, he had to content himself with the relatively humble position of a donatus. He continued to live with the lay brothers even after his ordination as a priest. These humiliations could have been a cause of great bitterness for him, particularly owing to the fact that he gave his entire heritage to the brothers, filling his relatives with anger. Nonetheless, he accepted the brothers’ decision without complaint. His humility and obedience were exemplary. For instance, when he bore the cross during processions, all dressed in priestly splendor, he seemed to his brothers not to notice that they looked on in admiration and reverence. They concluded that his focus was on God, rather than on what transpired around him. Busch writes that he was like “an Egyptian hermit or a Palestinian anchorite.”41 Busch further enhances the similarity of his brothers to the desert fathers by inserting typical elements such as collations, either in the form of full texts of sermons or as sayings. Usually, the latter are at the end of a given brother’s vita. As for the level of words and phrases, it is obvious that Busch strives to write in the same vein as the Vitae patrum and the Conferences. Often this is, in fact, a biblical vein. This is in accordance with the view that Busch’s brothers and the desert fathers imitated Christ. For example, the Historia monachorum, the Latin translation of which was later included as the second book of the Vitae patrum, tells the same story about the fathers in the desert.42 Frequently the authors of the texts about the desert fathers borrow words and phrases from Scripture. Either through them, or directly, Busch does the same thing. For example, some

41 Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 66, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), p. 199: Unus de Egipti solitariis aut Palestine anchoritis. 42 Historia monachorum, prologus, ed. Eva Schulz-Flügel [Patristische Texte und Studien 34] (Berlin, 1990), pp. 4-5.

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brothers spoke God’s language quite literally. Usually, their utterances were quotations from Scripture, according to Busch,43 and he further identifies his brothers with the desert fathers when he calls them “old fathers” or “living stones,” or asserts that they lived the “angelic life.”44 The phrase “living stones” is present in the Vitae patrum at several points, but is actually a reference to Christ. According to the First Letter of Peter, Christ is a living stone. The apostle encourages His followers to imitate Him in this respect: they should be the living stones of a spiritual building, which is pleasing to God.45 The angelic life meant that people living such lives had completely renounced carnality. Like angels, they had become spiritual beings. In the Vitae patrum, this is a common phrase to indicate the state of excellence attained by hermits, monks, or nuns. In De viris illustribus, the phrase defines excellent brothers. Readers of the Devotio Moderna would have understood the connection, as the tales of the desert fathers were constantly at the background in their milieus. Busch also emphasizes the status of his brothers as the new desert fathers on the level of content. He usually does so implicitly, particularly in tales of individual brothers. The biography of Albert Wijnbergen is an exception in this respect, because Busch explicitly claims that this brother was similar to an early Church hermit.46 Most such explicit references to the desert fathers occur in the introductory chapters. Incidentally, this part is one instance where Busch also uses “Egypt” in the opposing senses mentioned above. Busch praises his brothers for having removed Egypt from their hearts, contrary to religious in other communities.47 Yet, at the same time, he points to the desert fathers as inventors of the way to imitate Christ after the persecution. In what follows, he contrasts his brothers to other religious. He points to several attempts in monastic history to imitate them, all of which had lost their original fervor, particularly through the laxity of their leaders. In the following, he gives a list of appalling abuses, which, according to him, are common in the 43 For instance Gerlach Peters, above, n. 1), pp. 156-64. 44 For instance in Busch, Liber pp. 12-4. 45 1 Pet. 2,4-6. 46 Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 47 Busch, Liber de viris illustribus

Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 54-5, ed. Grube (see de viris illustribus 3, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), 67, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), p. 203. 8, ed. Grube, p. 25.


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monasteries of his day.48 In contrast, the Windesheim brothers recreated the piety of the early Church. As mentioned above, they were the “new monks, the disciples of the Antonies and Macariuses of the deep desert.” As for Busch’s implicit references, the most obvious example is the way in which he construed the brothers as angelic beings, even if he does not connect them to the desert fathers explicitly. Many brothers shared Albert Wijnbergen’s complete concentration on God. They did not care for carnal matters. They were supremely humble and obedient, as is obvious from the way in which they expressed themselves in word and practice. Among the latter, dress was an important issue. Busch praises the brothers for their simple clothes. Although he gives few details about the brothers’ ancestry, it is clear that most subjects of his biographies came from distinguished families. By preferring to dress in threadbare habits, they showed that they had renounced their former status.49 The level of content is also where Busch’s desire to construe his brothers as the new desert fathers strikes difficulties. Three examples are their dietary habits, their manual labor, and their weeping. Apparently, in the first two instances, Busch is conscious that an unkind reader could conclude that his claim that his brothers were the new desert fathers was false. Therefore, he employs some clever rhetoric to prove that, even if his brothers did not follow the desert fathers to the letter, they were entirely similar as far as the essence of their spirituality was concerned. In chapter five, Busch discusses the brothers’ eating, drinking, and fasting habits. First he describes them as frugal, but not excessively so. They were allowed to eat meat four times a week and to drink wine. Second, he details the reason for fasting: obedience. Here, he cites the sons of Jonadab as an example. According to the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, they did not drink any wine, as their father had forbidden them to do so. God contrasts their obedience with the disobedience of His people.50 Busch explains that God does not say that the drinking of wine is bad in itself. It would have been

48

Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 3, ed. Grube, pp. 13-4. Lynda Coon, Sacred Fictions. Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia, 1997), pp. 54-9. 50 Jer. 35,6-10. 49

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bad for the sons of Jonadab, however, because in doing so they would have disobeyed their father, just as the Israelites had done. Busch concludes that the meaning of this story is that a truly pious person should obey his Father, that is, God. Abstinence itself is not the issue. Continuing, Busch relates how the first brothers of his monastery wanted to live in strict abstinence in accordance with the earliest habits, no doubt in reference to the practices of the desert fathers.51 However, some did so with very bad results: two brothers went mad from too much fasting. Because of this, the other brothers concluded that excessive fasting was not useful: it diverted the mind from God rather than achieving the opposite. Henceforth, they asked all postulants three questions: whether they could eat well, sleep well, and obey well. Busch ends this chapter by asserting that these three points ensure a person’s perseverance in the religious life. Another problem was the connection of manual labor and books. The former had been a most important practice in religious life from the beginning. Its purpose was training in obedience and humility. Following Saint Paul’s lead, the Egyptian hermit Palaemon instructed his pupil Pachomius to weave baskets in order to have something to give to the poor, just as the apostle had done. In addition, he made him move piles of sand from one place to another and back again.52 The nature of the work seems a topos. The abbess of a female desert father, the Egyptian nun Euphraxia, gave the same orders concerning a heap of stones.53 Busch praises his brothers for their work on the actual building of the Windesheim monastery. In particular, the choir brothers receive high praise for not leaving such physical work to the lay brothers, as had become common practice in most religious communities. Showing how far they had progressed on the path towards humility, they moved heaps of stones as though they were the lay brothers’ equals. Busch considers the priest Henry Clingebijl even more praiseworthy, as he went so far as to learn masonry and carpentry.54

51 Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 9, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), p. 18: Iuxta pristinam morem. 52 Vitae patrum, Pachomius 7, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 73] (Paris, 1894), col. 234. Cf. Eph. 4,28. 53 Vitae patrum, Euphraxia 16-7, ed. Migne (see above, n. 52), col. 631. 54 Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 7, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), p. 22.


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These hard working choir brothers did not rest even at night, copying books for the new community’s library instead. In view of his Egyptian models, it is striking that Busch puts copying and writing forward as the principal manual labor of the choir brothers, particularly in the individual lives. After all, such a pillar of true piety as Saint Antony himself had refused to learn how to read and write. It seems that Busch regarded reading and writing as the essential task of the choir brothers. This explains his giving a reason when choir brothers specialized in menial work instead. In the biography of the builder-priest Henry Clingebijl, Busch explains that he needed to serve God in an alternative way to the other choir brothers because he had come to Windesheim later in life. Because of this, he could not reach their heights of inner devotion and ecstatic contemplation.55 Busch resolves the problem that his brothers seem to differ from the desert fathers in this respect by arguing that even if some past holy fathers had not shown much interest in writing, others had received this gift because of their spiritual fervor. John of Kempen, for example, had attained an aptitude for writing as a gift of divine grace.56 Interestingly, Busch does not use Saint Augustine to legitimize the brothers’ interest in books. Throughout his work, Augustine always promoted the indispensability of study for achieving true piety; he was himself a primary example of someone to whom God granted ability in intellectual pursuits. One would have thought that the author of the Rule of the Regular Canons would be the primary authority to offer proof for the usefulness of writing in the redirection of the heart. Apparently, Busch did not want to suggest that authorities like the Order’s founding father and the authors of the desert father texts disagreed about the nature of true piety. Busch’s description of another traditional religious practice is an example of how later interpretations informed his views: weeping. This was a common religious practice in the Egyptian and Palestinian milieus.57 In the medieval West, it had become an advised path for

55

Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 31, ed. Grube, p. 85. Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 35, ed. Grube, p. 95. 57 Christoph Benke, Die Gabe der Tränen. Zur Tradition und Theologie eines vergessenen Kapitels der Glaubengeschichte (Wurzburg, 2002) and Barbara Müller, Der Weg des Weinens. Die Tradition des “Penthos” in den Apophthegmata patrum (Göttingen, 2000). 56

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focusing on God. This continued in the Devotio Moderna.58 Busch gives several examples of brothers who could not contain their tears. However, he appears to restrict accounts of such practices to brothers who had distinct visionary abilities, such as Henry Mande and Gerlach Peters. It is useful to compare the occasions on which these men wept with those of the desert fathers. Like the early Church hermits, Mande and Peters wept from contrition. They also wept out of love for Jesus Christ, for instance out of pity for his suffering. The main occasion for weeping was during Mass, especially during the transubstantiation.59 This, however, corresponds to the affective piety introduced by Bernard of Clairvaux and others, rather than the practices of the desert fathers.60 Apparently, in Busch’s view, this different meaning of a traditional religious practice had become a regular ingredient of true piety, as first defined by Jesus Christ and the apostles and later by the desert fathers. If he distinguished weeping for love from weeping out of contrition at all, this was an elaboration of the practice, not a divergence. Hard-Working Sisters The comparison of Busch’s work to the Diepenveen sisterbook provides an insight into the gendered nature of his treatment of the brothers. It also allows a more detailed perspective on the way he used the desert fathers to create ideal modern devouts of both sexes that would serve as models for the devouts to come. Unlike Busch, the authors of the two versions of the sisterbook do not assert that their subjects were in fact desert fathers. All references are implicit. Nonetheless, there are still many similarities between the sisterbook and De viris illustribus. Of course, it is no great surprise that there should be. After all, the brothers and sisters were adherents of the same religious movement. For example, the

58 E.g. a popular author in the Devotio Moderna, Jordan of Quedlinburg, advised to weep regularly: Maastricht, Rijksarchief MS. 429 (Olim 3820), fol. 18r. On Jordan, see the article by Eric L. Saak, ‘Ex vita patrum formatur vita fratrum: The Appropriation of the Desert Fathers in the Augustinian Monasticism of the Later Middle Ages,’ this volume, above, pp. 191-228. 59 See for instance Busch, Liber de viris illustribus 43, ed. Grube (see above, n. 1), pp. 123-4. 60 See e.g. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in cantica canticorum, ed. J.-P. Migne [Patrologia Latina 183] (Paris, 1894), col. 50.


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Diepenveen authors, like Busch, provide collections of sayings by exemplary sisters. They also echo the lives of the desert fathers by not including many miracles.61 There are other similarities insofar as the contents of the sisters’ piety are concerned. This is the case with respect to weeping as a religious practice. The biographers shared Busch’s view: the sisters also wept both from contrition and from love, and usually at Mass.62 Moreover, the sisters were just as fierce in their condemnation of other religious of their day, even if they were not as explicit as Busch was. Their description of another convent, the nearby Secular Canonesses at Vreden, speaks volumes. Clearly, this community represented the competition. A former abbess of Vreden, Jutte of Ahaus, was among the first sisters to take vows at Diepenveen. Her biographer describes how her previous life was similar to that of highborn women in the world: the Secular Canonesses kept lapdogs, had personal servants, fought each other over matters of rank, and could leave the convent to get married. She reserves particular contempt for what passed for manual labor in this convent: embroidery. The author contrasts the humility of the former abbess with the pride of the Secular Canonesses. When Jutte of Ahaus began thinking about transferring to Diepenveen, she exchanged embroidery for spinning. The other sisters mocked her for engaging in this menial work. The unspoken comment is that, were the Vreden sisters genuine religious, they would rather have welcomed a chance to train themselves in humility as their converting abbess did.63 The extent to which Vreden had become everything a religious community should certainly not be is clear from the biography of a later sister. She announced her intention to become a Secular Canoness at Vreden to her brother. Shocked, he told her that she might as well have said that she intended to devote herself to the Devil’s service and advised her to report to Diepenveen instead.64

61 See for this Thom Mertens, ‘Het Diepenveense zusterboek als exponent van gemeenschapstichtende kloosterliteratuur,’ in Het ootmoedig fundament van Diepenveen. Zeshonderd jaar Maria en Agnesklooster 1400-2000, ed. Wybren Scheepsma (Deventer, 2002), pp. 77-94 and Wybren Scheepsma, ‘Illustere voorbeelden’ (see above, n. 34), pp. 261-82. 62 DV (see above, n. 17), fol. 209v and Van den doechden, fol. 12r, ed. Brinkerink (see above, n. 17), p. 23. 63 DV fol. 131v and Van den doechden, fol. 32v, ed. Brinkerink, p. 61. 64 DV fol. 378r.

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Another similarity with respect to the accounts of the brothers lies in the description of the sisters’ dressing practices. These descriptions are alike, although the sisterbook gives much more detailed accounts of the wonderful clothes that a sister wore when still in the world: how she loved them at the time and hated them now, preferring threadbare, patched-up clothes instead. Dress is also an important motive in the lives of male and female desert fathers but, in the Vitae patrum, there is a difference between the motives of men and women. Female fathers such as the Alexandrian actress Pelagia and Mary the Egyptian are said to have dressed well because of their lust, in order to seduce as many men as possible. In fact, Mary the Egyptian was so obsessed with the sin that she did not even accept pay for her services for fear that the cost might prevent any man from sleeping with her.65 Rather than omitting this motive from the Diepenveen sisterbook, the author deliberately rules it out. Thus, the life of the Diepenveen sister Elsebe Hasenbrocks makes it clear that she did not dress well because she wanted to seduce men, but out of pride. She wanted to outshine all other women with the splendor of her clothes.66 The effect of this change is twofold. First, the perspective on sin is less gendered in the Devotio Moderna biographies than it was in the Vitae patrum. As for perfection, sin was primarily located in the supposed “sexless” state of the inner man. The desert fathers would have agreed with this, but the balance shifted in the Devotio Moderna. Traditionally, the fathers considered lust primarily a feminine sin, as they linked it so closely to the body that women were, according to the thinking of the time, less able to control. By contrast, they considered pride more associated with men, as it was purely a sin of the heart, which did not necessarily lead to bodily action. In the Devotio Moderna, however, the difference between male and female sin appears somewhat reduced: sin resides more firmly in the heart, rather than in the body, both as far as men and women were concerned. Second, it should be noted that, bad as lust was, pride was even worse. Unchasteness could be purely a matter of the body, while pride was a sign of an utterly depraved heart. Moreover, the

65

Vitae patrum, Maria Aegyptiaca 13, ed. Migne (see above, n. 52), col. 680. DV (see above, n. 17), fols. 88r-102r and Van den doechden, fols. 107r-112r, ed. Brinkerink (see above, n. 17), pp. 203-11. 66


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sin of Lucifer was pride. In favoring pride over lust, Elsebe Hasenbrocks was more sinful than were her desert father “foremothers.” In some instances, the biographers construe the Diepenveen sisters differently from the brothers. Manual labor and their eating and fasting habits are examples. Like the brothers, the sisters exerted themselves by working with their hands. Usually, this meant housework, but they also made an active contribution to the building of the convent by carrying stones and other materials. However, for the sisters, such menial work constituted their principal activity. The biographers always give details of the sisters’ former status and those included in the sisterbook were always descendants of aristocratic or wealthy burgher families. This created as large a contrast as possible between their former and their present selves, their diligence in menial work being the primary sign of this. The biographers thought it significant that the sisters, who had come from the highest classes as far as their worldly background was concerned, insisted on performing the most menial tasks: cleaning chamber pots, cooking meals, and doing the laundry. The biographies always present their efforts as an expression of great humility: a sign of their renunciation of carnality. This motive is also present in the lives of some female desert fathers. The senator’s daughter Euphraxia, previously mentioned, is one example. She is also similar to the Diepenveen sisters in the poor quality of her housework.67 The authors of the sisterbook provide some stories of highborn women who were very clumsy in this respect. Of course, when they lived at the family home or with their husbands, they had never even seen a floor mop at close range. Such stories probably had a basis in truth. Yet, it is significant that both the Diepenveen lives and the lives of desert fathers like Euphraxia highlight this issue. On the other hand, writing and copying is absent from the accounts of the hard work of the sisters. This is true even in the biography of the second prioress, Salome Sticken, at least one of whose works survives.68 Even when they do praise the sisters for their love of

67 Vitae patrum, Euphraxia 21-2, ed. Migne (see above, n. 52), cols. 633-4. See also Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, ‘Heilige maagden aan de Maas,’ in Genoechlicke ende lustige historiën, eds. B. Ebels-Hoving, C.P.H.M. Tilmans and C.G. Santing (Hilversum, 1987), pp. 121-39, there 131. 68 Salome Sticken, Vivendi formula, ed. in W.J. Kühler, Johannes Brinckerinck en zijn klooster te Diepenveen, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1914), pp. 362-80. J. van Engen translated

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books or their knowledge of Latin, the biographers insist that this did not hinder them from being as diligent as the other sisters were in performing menial work.69 There is, unfortunately, no record of how intellectual activities were presented in the original version of the sisterbook. In 1455, the Chapter of Windesheim forbade its sisters to write about mystical theology.70 Probably because of the activities of the Ghent prioress Alijt Bake, the priors had come to agree with the common opinion that it was dangerous for women to write theological texts.71 In view of their greater tendency to carnality, the priors believed women could more easily fall into heresy. It is therefore not surprising that a sisterbook from the sixteenth century would suppress accounts of the sisters’ activities as writers. In fact, the sisters become apparently more like the desert fathers as a result, though one might doubt whether this was the conclusion drawn by readers of the Devotio Moderna. The sisters and the brothers also differed in their practices involving food and fasting. Like the brothers, the sisters ate and drank soberly, but not excessively so compared to the desert fathers. Interestingly, feasting and fasting do not seem to be much of an issue in the Diepenveen sisterbook. The accounts do not suggest that the sisters upheld the kinds of practices concerning food, corporeality, and the Eucharist that have been described as typical for the religious women of the Later Middle Ages.72 Yet, their practices were much stricter than the brothers’ were, as they exerted themselves by eating disgusting food. Much as the notion of sin had become more nearly unisex, this was apparently not entirely the case with gluttony, which, like lust, was a traditionally female vice.73 Yet it is clear Salome’s text into English in his Devotio Moderna. Basic Writings (New York, 1988), pp. 176-86. 69 See for this for example the biography of sister Catherine of Naaldwijk: Van den doechden, fols. 45v-70r, ed. Brinkerink (see above, n. 17), pp. 87-133 and DV (see above, n. 17), fols. 226r-266v. 70 Acta Capituli Windeshemensis. Acta van de kapittelvergaderingen der Congregatie van Windesheim, ed. S. van der Woude (The Hague, 1953), p. 53. 71 On Bake, see Anne Bollmann, ‘ “Een vrauwe te sijn op mijn selfs handt.” Alijt Bake (1415-1455) als geistliche Reformerin des innerlichen Lebens,’ Ons geestelijk erf 76 (2002), 64-98 and Grietje Dresen, Onschuldfantasieën. Offerzin en heilsverlangen in feminisme en mystiek (Nijmegen, 1990), pp. 53-131. 72 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987). 73 Compare the Life of Mary the Egyptian: Vitae patrum, Maria Aegyptiaca 19, ed. Migne (see above, n. 52), col. 684.


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that, in this instance too, the locus of sin moved more firmly toward the heart and thus became relatively sexless. Throughout, the sisterbook describes the desire for luxurious food and drink as not only a sign of gluttony, but also as a sign of pride. Indeed, such indulgence was possible only for the upper classes. Moreover, evidence shows that the organization of sumptuous feasts was a primary way of asserting status.74 Egyptians (m/f )? Writing biographies of exemplary fellow brothers and sisters, Busch and the authors of the sisterbook searched for models of true piety in order to shape religious practice in their communities. They defined this as an imitation of the desert fathers. In their view, these early hermits, monks, and nuns had found the best way to imitate Christ and the apostles. In this respect, they followed religious tradition established by the early Church. Over the centuries, the desert fathers had come to function as a hallmark of true piety. Yet, Busch and the sisters’ biographers did not always follow their spiritual forebears to the letter. They were informed by centuries of interpretation of what true piety, as it was commonly supposed to have been defined by the desert fathers, entailed. In addition, they had found that some practices just did not work in their context. Busch and the other biographers show that imitation to the letter was not the point: the challenge was to find and imitate the essence of the desert fathers’ piety. Thus, they had to perform a complicated movement. They had to make a careful study of the texts concerning the desert fathers to glean the essence of piety from it. In this they had centuries of interpretation to help them. They also had to describe their fellow brothers and sisters as people who had lived like desert fathers, at least as far as the essence of their piety was concerned. It was obvious to Busch and the sisters’ biographers that this essence had not changed and would be the same always, whether one lived during the Parousia, in late antique Egypt, or the late medieval Low Countries. Humility was its primary ingredient. Their 74 See e.g. J. Huizinga, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen. Studie over levens- en gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden (Groningen, 1919, repr. 1973), p. 261.

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brothers and sisters were to train themselves in this virtue by means of obedience, weeping, frugality in food and dress, and diligence in manual labor (in keeping with the desert father experience), but they differed in their execution of these practices. This, however, was no problem so long as they stuck to the essence and accomplished similar results. The most significant difference with the desert fathers is that Busch and the authors of the sisterbook focused more intently on the training of the inner person. This had already been an important issue with the first hermits, monks, and nuns, but the Windesheim and Diepenveen biographers stress it much more strongly, as evidenced by their treatment of virtue and vice. The heart is the primary locus of both. For both men and women, pride becomes the sin par excellence, at the expense of gluttony and lust. Unchaste or gluttonous behavior could be a matter of the body alone; pride, on the other hand, was always a sign of a totally depraved heart, whether or not it resulted in corporeal practices. This also made sin (and virtue, as well) less gendered. In the Vitae patrum lust and gluttony were associated primarily with the female sex because of their corporeal dimension. By putting forward pride as their primary problem, the Diepenveen sisters became more like their male counterparts. For both sexes, sin was rooted in the heart. They needed to reform their inner persons to reach perfection. Humility was its fundamental characteristic. The desert fathers, or the descriptions of the new desert fathers as inserted in De viris illustribus and the sisterbook, taught the readers of these works how to accomplish this.

INDEX OF NAMES Aaron (Old Testament), 95 Aaron of Philae (hermit), 25, 49-51, 77, 85-6, 91 Abihu, 95 Abraham, 119 Achler, Elisabeth, 239, n. 48 Adam, 102, 257 Aegos, 109 Agathos Daimon See Shai Agnes, 152 Aigrain, René, 68 Albrecht of Bonstetten, 236-7, 240-1, 246, 249, n. 87, 251 Alcuin, 159 Alexander IV (pope), 192, 197, 218, 223 Alpaïs of Cudot, 239, n. 48, 240 Alypius, 193, 205 Ambrose of Milan, 110, 127, 153, 159 Ammianus Marcellinus, 25 Amoun, 101 Amschwand, Rupert, 235 Amun, 34 Angelo Clareno, 185, 187 Anselm, 216 Antiochus II Epiphanes, 96 Antony, 1-2, 19, 44-5, 48, 68, 89, 98-9, 101, 106, 115, 119-23, 126-9, 137, 153, 164-5, 169-73, 189, 193-4, 202, 204-8, 212, 219, 222, 237, n. 41, 238, 258, 265, n. 30, 273 See also: Athanasius of Alexandria Aphrodite, 20 Apollo (god), 20, 32, 75-6 Apollo of Hermopolis (hermit), 15, 26, 31, 102 Apollonius (martyr), 71 Apollonius of Tyana, 83 Aquila, 152 Arbesmann, Rudolph, 196-8, 201 Ardo, 136, 140-2, 146 Aristotle, 99, 252 Arsenius, 249, n. 89 Asclepius, 86 Aseneth, 32, n. 69 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2006

Assmann, Jan, 74 Astratol, 33, n. 70 Athanasius of Alexandria, 1, 19, 49-50, 68, 77, 89, 98, 119-20, 126, 137, 164, 169-71, 189 Augustine of Hippo, 62, 102, 110, 115-7, 120-1, 125-8, 131, 153, 159, 166, 176, 192-206, 208-16, 218-28, 264, 273 Augustine of Ancona, 214, n. 89, 226 Aurelius of Le Puy, 123 Baal, 20, 32 Babion, Geoffrey, 197 Bagnall, Roger, 18 Bake, Alijt, 278 Balaam, 30, n. 61, 143-4 Bane, 72-3, 84 Banina, 31, n. 65 Bardis, Robert de, 198, 200-2 Basil of Caesarea, 100, 107-8, 110, 135, 140-1, 164, 183, 187, 194, 204, 212 Baugulf, 147 Bede, 137, 153, 159 Beheim, Michel, 250, n. 95 Belting, Hans, 231 Benedict XI (pope), 186 Benedict of Aniane, 135-6, 140-2, 146, 148, n. 46 Benedict of Nursia, 116, 118, 122, 129-33, 136-7, 140-1, 145, n. 36, 146, 153-4, 156, n. 85, 160, 170, 214-5, 226 Benvenuti Papi, Anna, 168 Bernard of Bessa, 180, 182 Bernard of Clairvaux, 214-5, 264, 274 Bes, 24-5 Besa, 16, 27, n. 46, 30, 35, 46 Beutlerin, Magdalena, 239, n. 48 Bevegnati, Giunta, 168 Bona of Pisa, 167 Bonaventure, 174, 182-3 Bonaventure of Bagnoreggio, 180, 184 Boniface, 137, 142, 143, n. 26, 144, 145, n. 34, 148, 149, n. 54, 150-3 Boniface VIII (pope), 187, 191, 223 chrc 86, 1-4

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Bonnes, J.-P., 197 Bourdieu, Pierre, 29 Bracciolini, Poggio, 232, 239, 251 Brown, Peter, 14, 64 Brunert, Marie-Elisabeth, 117 Bucolos, 109 Buenhombre, Alfons, 265, n. 30 Busch See John Busch Caesaria, 124 Caesarius of Arles, 124-7, 200 Caesarius of Heisterbach, 238, n. 46, 239-40 Callinicus, 71 Calypso, 108 Casagrande, Giovanna, 167-8 Cassian See John Cassian Cassiodorus, 159 Catherine of Naaldwijk, 264, n. 22, 278, n. 69 Catherine of Siena, 239 Cecelia, 152 Celano See Thomas of Celano Celestine V (pope), 187 Cerchi, Umiliana, 168 Charlemagne, 148, n. 46 Christ See Jesus Christ Christ (false-of Bourges), 123 Chrysostom See John Chrysostom Cicero, 93, 159 Clare of Assisi, 175 Clare of Montefalco, 168, n. 7 Claudius (martyr), 76, n. 66 Clement of Alexandria, 103 Clingebijl, Henry, 272-3 Colette of Corbie, 167 Colonna, Giacomo, 167 Colonna, Margherita, 167 Columbanus, 137, 153 Connerton, Paul, 29 Constantine of Lycopolis (bishop), 76, 85 Constantine the Great, 61, 67, 87, 139, 140 n. 14, 210 Conze, 252 Coon, Lynda, 28 Cosmas, 152 Cuthbert, 137

Cyriacus of al-Bahnasa, 53 Cyril of Scythopolis, 251, n. 100 Cyrus (martyr), 73 Damian, 152 Daniel, 20, 96 David (Old Testament), 41, n. 6 David of Augsburg, 180-2, 264 Décobert, Christian, 52 Delehaye, Hippolyte, 59-61, 63, 68, 83 Déroche, Vincent, 66 Diana, 123 Dijkstra, Jitse, 25, 49-50 Dinzelbacher, Peter, 254 Diocletian, 21, 69, 80, 87 Dominic, 214, 226 Domitius, 67 Durrer, Robert, 235 Eigil, 136, 142-51, 152, n. 65-7 Elijah, 17, 20, 28, 32, 73, 84, 98, 222 Elisha, 20, 98 Elm, Kaspar, 196, 200 Elsner, Ja≤, 139, 161 Endelechius, 108 Ephrem the Syrian, 100, 132 Epima, 77, 79 Erasmus, 195, 232 Esschinges, Griet, 262 Eucherius of Lyons, 109, 119, 181 Eugendus, 128, 130 Eugippius of Lucullanum, 129-32 Euphraxia, 272, 277 Eusebius of Caesarea, 62, n. 14 Eustochium, 115 Euthymius, 251, n. 100 Evagrius Ponticus, 31, 105, 132, 238 Ezekiel, 96 Fabri, Felix, 246, n. 73 Fernandus of Spain, 223-5 Francis of Assisi, 164-6, 169-80, 183-6, 188-9, 197, 214, 226 Frankfurter, David, 2-3, 58 Fulgentius of Ruspe, 127-8, 132 Gatti, Marcella, 165 Geiler of Kaysersberg, 246 Gelasius (hermit), 106 Gelasius (pope), 211 Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, 186 Gerasimus, 101 Gerson, Jean, 256, n. 4

index of names Gessios, 19, 82 Gilbert (recluse), 176 Giles of Assisi, 165, 185-6 Giles of Rome, 223 Goehring, James, 1, 97, 107 Grabow, Matthaeus, 258, n. 4 Gregory of Nazianzen, 126 Gregory of Nyssa, 110 Gregory of Rimini, 206 Gregory of Tours, 113-4, 118, 123-6, 133 Gregory the Great, 116, 118, 122, 127, 132-3, 141, n. 21, 153, 216, 230 Gressmann, Hugo, 78 Grote, Geert, 258-9 Guido of Anderlecht, 250, n. 90 Gundelfingen, Heinrich, 237-41, 242, n. 68, 251 Haistulf of Mainz, 149, n. 54 Hasenbrocks, Elsebe, 276-7 Helios, 32, n. 69 Helle, 101 Henry of Friemar, 194-5, 197-9, 214 Henry of Nördlingen, 240 Hildemar of Civate, 153-60 Homer (poet), 94, 108 Homer (priest of Kothos), 32, 75-6 Horace, 109 Horus, 97 Hrabanus Maurus, 136, n. 4, 138, 142, n. 23, 152, n. 65-6 Hugh of Saint Victor, 182, 215 Huizinga, Johan, 59, 84 Innocent III (pope), 174 Isaac of Syria, 165 Isaiah, 101 Isidore of Seville, 153, 159 Iskarat See Yazgird Jacob of Waltheym, 245-54 Jacobsen, Werner, 148, 151 Jacobus de Voragine, 266 Jacobus Intercisus See James the Persian Jacques de Vitry, 178 James the Persian, 39-44, 46, n. 28, 47, n. 36, 48-9, 52 Jeanne-Marie de Maillé, 168, n. 7 Jeremiah, 271

283

Jerome, 15, 100, 107-8, 110-1, 115-7, 119-20, 132, 143, n. 25, 144, n. 30, 183, 202, 214, 216, 238, 252, n. 104 Jesus Christ, 20, 40, 52-3, 65, 81, 83, 94, 96-7, 103, 120, 138, 152, 156, 168, 170, 171, n. 12, 173, n. 20, 174-5, 206-7, 209-10, 213, 215, 219-21, 225-8, 231, 238, n. 46, 257-8, 260, 264-5, 267-70, 274, 279 John (abbot), 209 John (apostle), 20, 233 John (deacon), 117 John (father), 201, n. 38 John (martyr), 73 John XXII (pope), 187, 191, 223 John Bono, 166 John Busch, 234, 257-9, 261-2, 264-75, 279-80 John Cassian, 1, 104-6, 109, 111, 116, 118, 121, 125, 128, 130-2, 143, n. 27, 154, n. 75, 157-8, 164, 181-3, 207-9, 214-6, 219, 260, 265-6, 268 John Chrysostom, 104, 110, 164, 183 John Climacus, 187 John Moschos, 101-2 John of Fermo, 186 John of Kempen, 273 John of Naaldwijk, 262 John of Parma, 186 John Rufus, 43 John the Almoner, 66 John the Baptist, 96, 98-100, 103, 226 Jonadab, 271-2 Jordan of Quedlinburg, 191-228, 274, n. 58 Julius of Aqfahs, 70, n. 42 Julian of Speyer, 165, 185 Julian the Apostate, 80 Jutte of Ahaus, 275 Kinsella, Sean, 170-1, 174 Klaus See Nikolaus of Flüe Koesters, Griete, 262 Kothos, 17, 20, 27, 29, 31-2, 34, 75 Krautheimer, Richard, 148-9, 151 Kronos, 20 Laminit, Anna, 239, n. 48 Lanata, Giuliana, 60

284

index of names

Lawrence, 152 Leclercq, Jean, 169 Leo of Assisi, 165, 185 Liberato, 187 Louis the Pious, 143, n. 26, 148, n. 46 Lubomierski, Nina, 16 Lucifer See Satan Luke, 171 Lull of Mainz, 151, n. 64 Lupicinus, 128, 130 Lupulus See Wölflin, Heinrich Luther, Martin, 195 Macarius (hermit), 47-9, 67, 101, 132, 258, 271 Macarius of Tkow (bishop), 17, 20, 26, 29, 31, n. 65, 32, 34-5, 75-6, 79 Macedonius, 25 MacMullen, Ramsay, 14 Magdalene See Mary Magdalene Malchus, 143, n. 25, 144, n. 30 Mande, Henry, 267, n. 35, 274 Marcian, 41, 43 Mareri, Filippa, 167 Margaret of Città di Castello, 187 Margaret of Cortona, 168 Mark, 28, 220-1 Maroveus of Poitiers, 124 Martha, 164, 177 Martin de Bois-Gaultier, 168, n. 7 Martin of Tours, 15, n. 7, 24, 31, 113, 123-4, 129, 153 Mary, 52, 63, 200 Mary (sister of the “false Christ of Bourges”), 123 Mary Magdalene, 164-5, 177, 246, 249 Mary the Egyptian, 276, 278, n. 73 Matoes, 106 Matthew, 171 Maximus, 67 McClendon, Charles, 148 Melitius of Lycopolis, 77, n. 66 Merrills, Andrew, 15 Merswin, Rulman, 240 Mertens, Benedikt, 165 Michael (archangel), 175 Michael of Cesena, 187 Migne, J.-P., 195-6 Monegundis, 124 Moore, Marianne, 22

Morrone, Peter See Celestine V (pope) Moses (hermit), 23, 257-8 Moses (native of Pemje), 41, 44, n. 17 Moses (Old Testament), 20, 94-5, 97, 101, 103, 110-2, 119, 152, n. 66, 265 Moses of Abydos (bishop), 20, 23-5, 32, 51, 73-5 Münzer, Hieronymus, 247 Muschg, Walter, 240 Nabraha, 67 Nadab, 95 Nebridius, 205 Nesteros, 158 Nicetius of Trier, 124 Nicholas of Alessandria, 193-4, 197-9, 204, 219, 224, n. 126 Nicholas of Tolentine, 214, 216 Niklas of Wyle, 241 Nikolaus of Dinkelsbühl, 233 Nikolaus of Flüe, 229-55 Numagen, Peter, 237, n. 41, 239-40, 246, n. 73, 251-2 On See Helios Origen, 103-4 Orlandi, Tito, 69 Orosius, 110 Osiris, 97 Ot, Guiral, 187 Ovid, 108-9, 159 Pachomius, 28, 44-6, 48, 68, 77, 135, 140-1, 145, n. 36, 194, 204, 212, 272 Palaemon, 272 Palladius of Helenopolis, 15, 68, 238, 246 Papaconstantinou, Arietta, 63 Paphnouti, 47 Paphnutius (hermit), 132 Paphnutius (martyr), 65, n. 24 Papnoute, 45 Patlagean, Evelyne, 18 Paul (apostle), 20, 80, 99, 152, 175, 182, n. 43, 272 Paul (deacon), 117 Paul of Thebes (hermit), 107, 137, 194, 202, 204-5, 207-8, 212, 219-27, 237, n. 41, 238

index of names Paulinus of Nola, 108, 110 Peeters, Paul, 67 Pelagia, 276 Pelagius, 116 Petephr, 32, n. 69 Peter (apostle), 151-2, 175, 210, 270 Peter (bishop and martyr), 172 Peter Comestor, 206 Peter Damian, 176 Peter of Macerata, 186 Peter the Iberian, 40-3, 44, n. 17 Peter the Venerable, 176 Peters, Gerlach, 270, n. 43, 274 Phileas, 63, n. 19, 69, 89 Philemon (martyr), 71 Philo of Alexandria, 103-4, 110 Piamon, 209 Pierre d’Ailly, 258, n. 4 Pippin, 201, n. 38 Plato, 83, 126 Polycarp, 44 Pomerius, 125 Ponticianus, 193 Praxede, 152 Prinz, Friedrich, 129 Priscian, 159 Priscilla, 152 Prosper of Aquitaine, 116 Proterius of Alexandria, 41, 43 Prudentius, 61 Psote, 69, n. 41, 71 Pudentiana, 152

285

Schiner, Mattäus, 241 Schott, Peter (sr.), 246, n. 73 Schott, Peter ( jr.), 246, n. 73 Senoch, 123-4 Serapion, 132 Seth, 97 Severus, 159 Shai, 17 Shenoute of Atripe, 16, 18-9, 24, n. 34, 26-7, 30, 33, 35-6, 45-7, 70-1, 77, 82-4, 122 Shâpûr, 39 Sigebert of East Anglia, 134 Sigismund of Burgundy, 128 Simeon the Stylite, 113-4 Simplicianus, 197, 204-6 Socrates (philosopher), 126 Socrates Scholasticus (Church historian), 47, n. 35 Sozomen, 31 Stancliffe, Claire, 134 Stark, Rodney, 82 Staubach, Nikolaus, 268 Stephen of Lenaios, 57, n. 2 Stephen the Protomartyr, 62, 69 Sticken, Salome, 277 Strabo, 77 Sturm, 142-8, 150, n. 58, 151-3 Sulpicius Severus, 15, n. 7, 24, 31, 216 Suso, Henry, 5, n. 9, 240 Sybilla of Marsal, 233, 239, n. 48 Sylvester of Assisi, 175 Syncletica, 107

Quintilian, 159 Raaijmakers, Janneke, 148, 150 Radegund, 124 Rano, Balbino, 197-200 Ratgar, 136, n. 4, 147, 149 Rhaetus, Sebastian, 241 Romanus, 128-30 Rufinus of Aquileia, 110, 216, 238, 246 Rutebeuf, 232-3 Rutilius Namatianus, 120 Sabina, 152 Sabôr See Shâpûr Salimbene of Parma, 184 Samuel, 206 Satan, 75, 98, 268, 277 Schedel, Hartmann, 251

Theodora (lady of Paim), 42-3, 44, n. 17 Theodore (disciple of Pachomius), 45 Theodore of Philae, 50 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, 107 Theophilus of Alexandria, 90 Thietmar of Merseburg, 234, n. 25 Thomas Aquinas, 226 Thomas of Celano, 169-76, 178 Thomas of Tolentine, 186 Tityrus, 109 Ubertino of Casale, 186 Ulrich of Memmingen, 236, 246 Umiltà of Faenza, 168, n. 7 Urban I (pope), 210, 247, n. 80 Valerius, 224 Verheijen, L., 196

286 Victorinus, 159 Vincent of Beauvais, 240 Virgil, 94, 108-9, 154 Vito of Cortona, 168 Vos, John-of Heusden, 268 Walsh, Katherine, 197-8, 200-1 Weber, Max, 88 Wijnbergen, Albert, 269-71

index of names William of Malavalle, 166 William of Saint Thierry, 182 Wimpfeling, Jakob, 195, n. 14 Wipszycka, Ewa, 14, 66 Wölflin, Heinrich, 237, n. 41, 240-5, 248, 251 Wulfoliac, 113-4, 117, 122-4, 134 Yazgird, 39, 43

ADDRESSES OF AUTHORS AND EDITORS Dr. L.L. Coon, Department of History, MAIN 416, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA; [email protected] Dr. M. van Dijk, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen, Oude Boteringestraat 38, NL-9712 GK Groningen; [email protected] Dr. J.H.F. Dijkstra, Department of Classics and Religious Studies, University of Ottawa, 70 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5; [email protected] Prof. D. Frankfurter, Religious Studies Program, Department of History, Horton Social Science Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824-3586, USA; [email protected] Dr. C. Leyser, Department of History, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, UK-Manchester M13 9PL; [email protected] Dr. P. van Minnen, Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati, 410 Blegen Library, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0226, USA; peter. [email protected] Dr. C. Rapp, Department of History, UCLA, Box 951473, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1473, USA; [email protected] Dr. B. Roest, Wettsteinplatz 4, CH-4058 Basel; [email protected] Dr. E.L. Saak, IUPUI, Department of History, Cavanaugh Hall 504P, 425 Michigan St., Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA; esaak@ iupui.edu Prof. Dr. G. Signori, Geisteswissenschaftliche Sektion, University of Konstanz, Universitätsstr. 10, D-78457 Konstanz; gabriela.signori@ uni-konstanz.de


chrc 86, 1-4

288

addresses of authors and editors

Dr. J. van der Vliet, Department of Egyptian Language and Culture, University of Leiden, PO Box 9515, NL-2300 RA Leiden; [email protected]

The Encroaching Desert: Egyptian Hagiography and the Medieval West

Treasure in the Medieval West

The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West

The Egyptian

Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography (Manchester Medieval Sources Series)

The Egyptian

The Egyptian

And the Desert Blooms

and the Desert Blooms

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and the Desert Blooms

Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West (Medieval Culture and Society)

Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West (Medieval Culture and Society)

Generation of Identity in Late Medieval Hagiography: Speaking the Saint (Routledge Research in Medieval Studies, 1)

The Assassin and the Desert

The Desert

The Desert

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The Nile and Egyptian Civilization

Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity

Saving the Souls of Medieval London (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West)

Buddhism and the West

Islam and the West

Islam and the West

Islam and the West

Pharos the Egyptian

The Egyptian Revival

People of the West Desert: Finding Common Ground

The Egyptian Maid

The Encroaching Desert: Egyptian Hagiography and the Medieval West

Treasure in the Medieval West

The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West

The Egyptian

Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography (Manchester Medieval Sources Series)

The Egyptian

The Egyptian

And the Desert Blooms

and the Desert Blooms

And the Desert Blooms

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Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West (Medieval Culture and Society)

Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West (Medieval Culture and Society)

Generation of Identity in Late Medieval Hagiography: Speaking the Saint (Routledge Research in Medieval Studies, 1)

The Assassin and the Desert

The Desert

The Desert

The desert

The Desert

The Nile and Egyptian Civilization

Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity

Saving the Souls of Medieval London (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West)

Buddhism and the West

Islam and the West

Islam and the West

Islam and the West

Pharos the Egyptian

The Egyptian Revival

People of the West Desert: Finding Common Ground

The Egyptian Maid

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