Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza

Abstract

Reviewed by Dennis D. Martin, Loyola University Chicago Building upon the fact that the correspondence of two leading hermits of the monastery and hermitage at Tawatha near Gaza was recently published in a critical edition in Sources Chrétiennes (1997-2002), Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper has undertaken a careful study of the correspondence of Barsanuphius (the "Great Old Man") and his colleague, John (the "Other Old Man"), focusing on the thoroughgoing integration of ascetic holy men and women with late antique Byzantine Christian society, both lay and ecclesial. "Frequent challenges to authority, a strong commitment to cooperative leadership, and ready interchange between lay and monastic Christians characterized the daily affairs of the Christian community in Gaza. Occasionally one notes a lapse: the author uses the term "schema" on page 98 but does not explain it until note 8, referring to page 123 (the monastic habit). Because Hevelone-Harper simply uses "laity" as the alternative to "monastic," the porousness of the boundaries between those inside and those outside the monastery surprises her in chapter four more than it might have if she had conceived both monastics and non-monastics as "laity" living the same Christian life but in different intensities.

Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper, Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Pp. xii + 211. $39.95.

Reviewed by Dennis D. Martin, Loyola University Chicago

Building upon the fact that the correspondence of two leading hermits of the monastery and hermitage at Tawatha near Gaza was recently published in a critical edition in Sources Chrétiennes (1997-2002), Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper has undertaken a careful study of the correspondence of Barsanuphius (the "Great Old Man") and his colleague, John (the "Other Old Man"), focusing on the thoroughgoing integration of ascetic holy men and women with late antique Byzantine Christian society, both lay and ecclesial. "Society" here includes interaction between spiritual masters and their disciples both inside and outside the monastery, in most cases by written correspondence rather than direct contact, even within the monastery. "Frequent challenges to authority, a strong commitment to cooperative leadership, and ready interchange between lay and monastic Christians characterized the daily affairs of the Christian community in Gaza. The network of authority at Tawatha is a local expression of the system that undergirded spiritual authority in Christianity throughout eastern Mediterranean" (5).

Following an initial chapter introducing the ecclesial, theological, and spiritual setting presented by early-sixth century Gaza and its environs (based more than subsequent chapters on previous work by other scholars), Hevelone-Harper then describes (chapter two) from the correspondence how spiritual direction functioned within the monastery, which was composed of a coenobium under the administration of an abbot, surrounded by cells of a number of hermits. Maintaining their own eremitical seclusion, Barsanuphius and John dealt with their disciples, whether those within the monastery or lay people or clerics in Gaza and environs entirely by letters. The main gobetween, functioning both as courier and in many instances as amanuensis, was a disciple of Barsanuphius who became abbot of the coenobium for several decades, Seridos.

Chapter three then describes the development, to fully formed spiritual director, of Dorotheos of Gaza, who today represents the best known disciple of Barsanuphius and John. Hevelone-Harper mines the correspondence of John and Barsanuphius to describe in chapter four just how these hermits remained fully active in the lives of lay people, acting as spiritual directors and mentors to lay people via correspondence. Chapter five takes up similar interaction with ecclesial officials (bishops) and lay officials or civic leaders as these leaders navigated their way through conflicts and controversies. The final chapter (six) examines from the corpus of letters the abrupt leadership transition that came with the deaths of Abbot Seridos and John, as well as Barsanuphius's withdrawal from all human contact around the year 543. The new abbot, Aelianos, a wealthy layman, had been formed by correspondence with the two Old Men and others over an extended time prior to their death/withdrawal and his assumption of leadership, and this chapter thus offers a valuable twist on the monastic interaction with lay people-completing a sort of monastic-lay-monastic circle.

Although life in a bustling late-antique city offered little room to avoid interaction between clergy, laity, monks, and public officials, still, Hevelone-Harper's point (eg., 5) is that lay people and officials deliberately sought out spiritual direction, mentoring, leadership formation, from Old Men. Such spiritual direction required cooperation. The disciples were not passive recipients but active participants (6). Not infrequently, the monks who ended up in leadership positions initially appeared as troublemakers who caused dissension-competent spiritual direction could see past initial appearances and discern leadership potential (6).

The author has interacted with the best literature on late antique culture and early monasticism, making her bibliography and notes extremely valuable. Often we bemoan the fragmentary surviving evidence from the early centuries of Christian history. Here we have a full dossier of correspondence, which Hevelone-Harper competently makes accessible to the general community of historians rather than those who can read ancient Greek and Syriac (7). The reader is grateful for a lucid map on page 2.

Without taking anything away from the book's author, perhaps we are not wrong to glimpse at least a reflection of the touch of the author's Doktorvater, Peter Brown, both in the theme of the social role of holy men and women in ancient Christianity and in its attention to well-crafted, limpid prose. Occasionally one notes a lapse: the author uses the term "schema" on page 98 but does not explain it until note 8, referring to page 123 (the monastic habit).

Because Hevelone-Harper simply uses "laity" as the alternative to "monastic," the porousness of the boundaries between those inside and those outside the monastery surprises her in chapter four more than it might have if she had conceived both monastics and non-monastics as "laity" living the same Christian life but in different intensities. In this reviewer's judgment, the opposite of "laity" should be "clergy" (priests, bishops, deacons). Monks ordained as priests obviously are no longer "laity," but non-ordained monastics remain laity, remain lay people who live in vowed commitment to a higher degree of poverty, chastity, and obedience and in wearing a monastic habit. The difference between lay monastics and lay non-monastics is one of degree, not kind. Christian lay people outside the monastery have always been expected to live a degree of poverty (detachment from one's own property, not being avaricious) and to live chastely within marriage rather than in total continence celibately. In the ancient world, most people "in the world" were under some form of obedience to superiors (though not the complete obedience vowed by a monastic).

The widespread conventional view that monks and ascetics contemptuously withdrew from the world into isolation from the world is false and has been false throughout the entire scope of monastic history, in the opinion of this reviewer. Hevelone-Harper's fine study offers vivid and persuasive evidence from the early centuries of monasticism of just how central to Christian life the monastic impulse was. For this reason, the book should be part of the field of vision not just for specialists in monastic history but for all who wish to understand Christianity in its historic context.