Asceticism

The proximity of the Judaean wilderness had historically and periodically drawn pious Jews into it: the sectaries at Qumran had established a community devoted to prayer and study in the second century bc (Davies et al. 2002). Individually, the piety of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth included periods of withdrawal and seclusion in isolated places. The latter was reported to have urged followers to abandon the familial and familiar (Luke 14:26, cf. 9:60). Consequently, among the earliest expressions of Christianity was a readiness to renounce some of the most fundamental social institutions of the ancient world. Paul found followers of Jesus at Corinth who within a generation of the latter’s death had forsaken marriage, and he was compelled to suggest delicately that celibacy was a special vocation not issued to all (1 Cor. 7). These ideas took their place among the many Greco-Roman meditations on the world of the senses and the pursuit of the moral life (Goehring 1992; Meredith 1976). Epictetus considered the philosopher’s struggle to master the senses and emotions to be like an athlete’s training regime (askesis), but so demanding that a student might find himself crying out kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) to his loving divine protector (2.7.12).

In Egypt in the third century the great Origen knew of the impulse for “flight” (anachoresis) from the world, but observed that one could not flee one’s mind; his own struggles culminated in self-emasculation (Euseb. HE 6 8.1-3). Around ad 270 in Egypt, however, a charismatic 18-year-old Antony renounced worldly wealth and family connections to pursue a spiritual path in the limen between Egyptian desert and city (Athanasius, Life of Antony). The generation which followed witnessed the appearance of significant numbers of ascetic individuals throughout the Christian Near East (P. Brown 1971a; 1988; T. Shaw 1998). The monk Pachomius (ad 292346) led both men and women to seek “a life in common” (koinobion) in Egypt under close supervision and guidance, establishing a pattern of community life that was to exert a powerful influence on Christian culture.