It is surprising to consider how the rehgion of Jesus (which focused so much on preaching in village and town environments, using the shared meal as a central symbol of communion, and prioritizing the values of mutual philanthropy) could so quickly elevate the ascetic ideal as one of its mainstays. Yet such was the case from earhest times of formal Christian organization and certainly from the second century onwards. Recent research has pointed to the preponderance of the ascetical imperative in the Hellenistic environment that formed the nurturing culture of the earhest Christian communities (Wimbush 1990; Kirschner 1984). The patterns of preaching and the basic structures of Christian worship retained their presumption that the Church would be primarily an urban, a missionary, and a socially philanthropic phenomenon, but monasticism sang a slightly different song, and it was one that resonated deeply within the Christian movement, not least in its Byzantine embodiments. This was certainly true in the original heartlands of Christian monasticism: Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and Cappadocia. From Syria and Egypt there arose a Uvely and highly popular body of literature relating tales of the early monks. These Lives and Apophthegms of the Desert Fathers are a unique combination of apocalyptic biblical wisdom Uterature, with Hellenistic philosophical traditions of the schoolroom chreia, along with vivid aspects of popular reUgiosity of the fourth and fifth centuries. The fertile mix gave a powerful new impetus to late antique asceticism, and was the veritable birth of Christian monasticism at the very dawning of the Byzantine era. Apologists in the late fourth century and after spread the fame of the desert monks far afield, giving the movement a great vogue even in Byzantium. Notable examples are the Life of Antony by Athanasios, the Lausiac History of Palladios, Cyril of Skythopolis’ Lives of the Palestinian Monksy and the Spiritual Meadow by John Moschos.
Monasticism was, and remains, a highly successful paradox (see also III.9.3 Clergy, monks, and laity). It derives from the concept of living a solitary life (monazein) seriously concentrated on the salvation of one’s soul; but it flourished phenomenologically as closely bonded societies of dedicated men and women who were so well organized, and so focused in their intentions, that within a few generations they radically reshaped the international Christian agenda. Monasticism may have begun as a movement of withdrawal among the laity, a leaving of the cities of Late Antiquity in order to live a simplified and quiet life in the hinterland, but almost simultaneously many of these very solitaries (despite all protests to the contrary) became occupiers of the highest positions in the Church, claiming the roles of bishops and priests which by their very nature were urban and political offices. Within a few hundred years the lay monastic movement of withdrawal had been so successful that it transformed the very nature of Christian leadership into a predominantly ascetic endeavour. The profuse rhetoric of monastic texts (the predominant literature of the Byzantine world) continually stresses its role apart, its eremitical withdrawal from the affairs of society. This should not blind the reader to the fundamentally important political and social functions monasticism played out within the Byzantine experience—not least after the tenth century when monasteries often became significant landowners. In the Middle Byzantine era perhaps half the literate class of the empire were monks. This accounts for the wholesale glorification of the ascetic imperative: its more or less total subsuming of the ideals of Christian sanctity and church order within the Byzantine world. The Byzantines (so adept in their delight in paradoxes) soon perfected the idea of the city-monk, the cosmopolitan hermit. The image of emperors seeking advice on intimate matters of state policy from the leading ascetics of the day is not merely a rhetorical trope.
World History
