Who were these urban ascetics, and what role did they play in the development of Egyptian monasticism? Why are mainstream Greek and Latin sources nearly devoid of information concerning these ascetics? This essay will seek to answer these questions by examining pertinent documentary and literary sources in order to present a more accurate history of this critical period.
It will also posit that the apotactic movement developed—at least in part—out of the much-earlier forms of female asceticism that were manifested through institutionalized virginity and widowhood.
Village ascetics A documentary papyrus P. This document is unique in that it contains the earliest known application of the term monachos to a Christian ascetic figure in the papyrus record,8 and because it suggests that early monks, rather than having fled into the desert to escape the impeding demands of the world and society as later monks would do, were both living within village boundaries and involving themselves in the daily happenings of the village.
Rather, he lives in the village and participates actively in civil and church affairs. Youtie II Judge provides the full Greek text, as well as his translation and analysis, in E. Youtie and A. Hanson eds.
Youtie Habelt, Bonn: ; James E. The praepositus was an official appointed to supervise the tax collection system of a given pagus, as well as to appoint local officials. Pearson, Gnosticism and Christianity, Judge studied this document and saw a connection between the variety of monk represented by Isaac, and one of the three varieties of monks mentioned in the writings of both Jerome Epist. Bagnall, et al. Interestingly, this appellation is found in no other extant Egyptian or Greek sources, although Walter E.
Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms etc. See Monica J. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie [eds. What had been the public buildings and temples of a former superstitious age were now occupied by monks, and throughout the whole city there were more monasteries than houses…We were told by the holy bishop of that place that it contained twenty thousand virgins and ten thousand monks. This is an Egyptian word, meaning persons who have deserted their communities and live each to himself.
They are descended from Ananias and Sapphira. They do not follow the perfect way: they prefer to pretend to follow it. The anonymous author of the History of the Monks in Egypt originally wrote his work in Greek; Rufinus c. Historia Monachorum in Aegypto 5. Although perhaps exaggerated, the claims that large amounts of ascetics dwelt in cities and villages certainly hold value.
But why has so little evidence of their existence been preserved in mainstream literary sources? They are rejected as those who pervert the monastic life for their own gain and are unworthy…of even bearing the title of monk.
The title is reserved for those who withdraw from the social world of the village and leave the village thereby under the authority of the clergy. Egeria, Travels Egeria is traditionally thought to have been a nun or abbess from either Spain or Gaul who recorded her pilgrimage to Palestine, Egypt, Edessa, and Asia Minor in the late fourth century.
Egeria, Travels. John Wilkinson ed. Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, , Jerome, Epist. Cassian, Conlat. Such power struggles led ultimately to the suppression of early monachoi within mainstream literary sources. Youtie II 77 in C. Norris eds. For the Nag Hammadi materials, see Marvin Meyer ed. Timbie eds. Johnson Washington, D. Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.
So I do not run aimlessly…but I These early injunctions found in the New Testament did however serve as models for later ascetic practice, and that is my point.
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For example, the renunciation of personal property that was often enjoined by Jesus on aspiring disciples as a prerequisite to following him is a recurring theme throughout the New Testament. Basil, Ep. All scriptural references are from the NRSV unless noted.
Owen Chadwick, Western Asceticism, vol. The crowd of believers in Jerusalem was of this sort… The whole Church, I assert, lived then as the coenobites live, now so few that it is difficult to find them. They began to keep privately and as individuals the rules which they remembered were given by the apostles to the whole Church.
Property ownership was the source of bitter contention between local ecclesiastical leaders and monks who labored for profit and refused to turn their goods over to church officials for general distribution. The story is told in the Apophthegmata Patrum how Abba Theodore of Parme, who, possessing three beautiful books, would loan them out and receive a profit in return.
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A short summary of this paper. Reviews 1. A concise version of the received history of monastic origins would run something like this: Antony is the first monk ever; influenced by his anchoritism, Pachomius initiates the cenobitic life; from these two men and in these two distinct forms, all Christian monasticism spreads throughout Egypt, the East, and the West.
In this collection of twelve essays written within the past twenty years, James Goehring, Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion at Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia, seeks to prove that such a notion is "oversimplified" and in fact "erroneous" Contemporary scholars are now beginning to see that monasticism appeared more or less simultaneously in the various Christian areas as a development of the Church's premonastic asceticism largely inaccessible to historians , from which a diverse tradition of apotactic ['renunciative'] monasticism, or ascetic renunciation, developed.
In Egypt, these ascetic renunciants practiced various forms of "ethical withdrawal" anachoresis from family ties, ranging from the solitary to the fully communal, while remaining physically, socially, and economically bound to their villages.
Goehring relates that Antony and Pachomius were really part of early Egyptian monasticism's evolving apotactic tradition and that both became preeminent innovators within it.
Antony seems to be one of the first to withdraw not only ethically but also physically from the village, and Pachomius the first to organize an affiliated system of cenobitic monasteries into a koinonia although one of the essays tentatively questions Pachomius's originality. The introductory essay entitled "The Origins of Monasticism" outlines Goehring's basic methodology: a sensitive reading of the literary sources of early Egyptian monasticism, such as the Life of Antony and the various writings from the Pachomian milieu, which pays keen attention to their details and interprets them in the light of recently discovered papyrological documentary sources and archeological evidence, reveals that "the common understanding of Egyptian asceticism as primarily a desert movement" rigidly distinguished into anchoritic and cenobitic forms and scrupulously orthodox "is fundamentally flawed" 3.
The book is divided into three sections.
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