The Making of Monastic Demonology: Three Ascetic Teachers on Withdrawal and Resistance | Church History | Cambridge Core (original) (raw)

References

Earlier versions of this paper were read at the American Society of Church History (ASCH) Winter Meeting (Chicago, January 2000) and at the Princeton University Seminar on Late Antiquity (February 2000). I am grateful to the organizers of those sessions, Elizabeth A. Clark (ASCH) and Jaclyn L. Maxwell and Peter Brown (Princeton), and to the participants, especially Teresa Shaw, Virginia Burrus, Sarah lies Johnston, and Peter Struck, for their questions, criticisms, and suggestions. For comments on the written version, thanks go to Bert Harrill and to the anonymous readers for this journal. Research for this paper was supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

  1. Some of the most significant recent works on early Egyptian monasticism are Rousseau, Philip, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978);Google Scholaridem, , Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt, Transformations of the Classical Heritage 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);Google ScholarRubenson, Samuel, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint, Studies in Antiquity and Christianity (1990; reprint, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995);Google ScholarBurton-Christie, Douglas, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993);Google ScholarGould, Graham, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993);CrossRefGoogle ScholarElm, Susanna, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 226–372;Google Scholarand the essays of Goehring, James E., now collected in his Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism, Studies in Antiquity & Christianity (Harrisburg, Perm.: Trinity Press International, 1999).Google ScholarFor a measure of theneglect of demons, see the sparse entry “demons” in the index to Wimbush, Vincent L. and Valantasis, Richard, eds., Asceticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), admittedly focused not on early Christianity alone.Google Scholar

  2. The changing scholarly approaches are well surveyed by Clark, Elizabeth A., Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 14–38.Google Scholar

  3. The classic exposition is the section on “la plus ancienne littérature monastique” by Antoine, and Guillaumont, Claire, in “Démon,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique: doctrine et histoire 3 (1957): 189–212.Google Scholar

  4. So the Guillaumonts state that the demonology of Athanasius, Evagrius, and Cassian “devient la démonologie classique du désert” (“Démon,” 210).Google Scholar

  5. See esp. Rubenson, , Letters of St. Antony and Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert.Google ScholarNot everyone is convinced: see Gould, Graham, “Recent Work on Monastic Origins: A Consideration of the Questions Raised By Samuel Rubenson's The Letters of Antony,” Studia Patristica 25 (1993): 405–16.Google Scholar

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  36. Antony, , epp. 6.53; 1.71 (Rubenson, Letters, 219, 202).Google ScholarThe sayings tradition preserves a different Antonian use of the “robber” metaphor: “The monks praised a certain brother before Abba Antony. When the monk came to see him, Antony tested him to see whether he would bear dishonor; and seeing that he could not bear it, he said to him, ‘You are like a village magnificently decorated on the outside, but plundered within by robbers’ ” (Apoph. Patr. 8.2 [SC 387:398–400] = Ant. 15]; trans. Ward, Benedicta, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Cistercian Studies 59 [Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1975], 4, alt.).Google ScholarMore could be said regarding the role of the body in demonic temptation and ascetic transformation in Antony: see Rubenson, Letters, 68–71;Google ScholarVivian, Tim, “ ‘Everything Made by God is Good’: A Letter from Saint Athanasius to the Monk Amoun,” Église et Théologie 24 (1993): 75–108, at 80–84;Google ScholarBrakke, David, “The Problematization of Nocturnal Emissions in Early Christian Syria, Egypt, and Gaul,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 419–60, at 436–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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  38. On the origin of the phrase “house of truth” in exegesis of Num. 12:7 and Heb. 3:2–6, see Timbie, Janet, “Biblical Interpretation in the Letters of Antony: Exploring the House of Truth,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the North American Patristic Society, Chicago, 05 2000.Google Scholar

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  40. Asked why he avoided his fellow monks, Arsenius is said to have replied, “God knows that I love you, but I cannot live with God and people. The thousands and ten thousands of the heavenly hosts have but one will, while people have many. So I cannot leave God to be with people” (Apoph. Patr. Ars. 13; Ward, Sayings, 11).Google Scholar

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