Training the mind: The ascetic path to self-transformation in late antique Christian monasticism

ABSTRACT

Christian asceticism assumes that human beings can profoundly transform themselves over years of systematic training, with divine aid. This contribution joins recent scholarship in stressing the therapeutic and transformative dimensions of asceticism, but argues that it was not solely or primarily through bodily training that asceticism implemented this program. In the Eastern monastic tradition of late antiquity, it was primarily the mind that needed to be transformed and renewed through ascetic practice. The form of asceticism at the center of this study thus involves a disciplined and systematic attempt to purify the mind and train attention, in the service of contemplation.

KEYWORDS:

• Asceticism
• Christian monasticism
• self-transformation
• attention
• contemplation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Society of Biblical Literature Group on Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity was unable to reach consensus on the function, motivation, and purpose of asceticism. On this disagreement, see Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 14–15.

2. According to Diogenes Laertius, for example, Diogenes the Cynic (d. 323 BCE) “used to affirm that training was of two kinds, mental and bodily (διττὴν δ’ἔλεγε εἶναι τὴν ἄσκησιν, τὴν μὲν ψυχικήν, τὴν δὲ σωματικήν) […] and the one half of this training is incomplete without the other” (Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 6.70.1).

3. More recently, Richard Valantasis has suggested that the first-century Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus developed two interrelated systems of asceticism, one for the soul and body, and one for the mind alone. See Valantasis, “Musonius Rufus and Roman Ascetical Theory,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 40 (1999): 207–231, at 213.

4. Edward Gibbon set the agenda for the negative interpretation in chapter 37 of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Oddy, 1809). See also E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), esp. 36 and 135–156; Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, trans. James Moffatt (New York: Harper, 1962), 145–146. Peter Brown criticized the thesis that late antiquity is marked by a sharpening of the dichotomy between the soul and the body, in The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993 [1978]), 68.

5. The substantives ἄσκησις and ἀσκητής do not occur in the New Testament, and the verb ἀσκέω is used only once, at Acts 24:16. On Paul’s advice concerning asceticism in this passage, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 44–57. On asceticism in early Christianity, see Duncan M. Derrett, “Primitive Christianity as an Ascetic Movement,” in Asceticism, ed. Valantasis and Wimbush, 88–107; On Greco-Roman asceticism, see John Pinsent, “Ascetic Moods in Greek and Latin Literature,” in Asceticism, ed. Valantasis and Wimbush, 211–219.

6. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus explains in the first century CE: “Whatever things are applied to the body by those who train (τῶν γυμναζόντων) it, so may these be used in our [philosophical] training (ἀσκητικά)” (Dissertationes 3.12.16, ed. Henricus Schenkl [Leipzig: Teubner, 1916], 270). Cf. Dissertationes 2.18.27 (ed. Schenkl, 188).

7. Clement teaches, for example, that the commands to give up all one’s possessions (Luke 14:33) and to sell all one’s property (Matt. 19:21) refer to the passions (Quis dives salvetur? 14.5–6 [SC 537: 138]). See also Clement, Stromata 4.151.1 (SC 463: 308). On Clement’s moral theology, see Michael White, “Moral Pathology: Passions, Progress, and Protreptic in Clement of Alexandria,” in Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought, ed. John T. Fitzgerald (London: Routledge, 2008), 284–321.

8. The geographical form of ἀναχώρησις as a flight from social responsibilities had long been practised in Egypt, but did not take a permanent and organized form until the fourth century. See James E. Goehring, “The Εncroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,” JECS 1 (1993): 281–296. On pre-monastic withdrawal, see Antoine Guillaumont, Aux origines du monachisme chrétien: Pour une phénoménologie du monachisme (Begrolle-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1979), 223–224; Anthony Meredith, “Asceticism – Christian and Greek,” JTS 27 (1976): 313–322; Nancy Ševčenko, “The Hermit as Stranger in the Desert,” in Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider, ed. Dion C. Smythe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 75–86.

9. On the philosophical practice of ἀναχώρησις, see André-Jean Festugière, Personal Religion among the Greeks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 54–67; Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 9–11.

10. The gender-biased language throughout this contribution mirrors monastic discourse, which assumes that the paradigmatic monk is a man. Even works that present female monks in their own right describe them as “manly,” e.g., Pseudo-Athanasius, Vita Syncleticae 30 (PG 28: 1505) and 49 (PG 28: 1516); see also Clement. Stromata 2.18.81.3 (SC 38: 98).

11. On the daily routine of Egyptian monks, see Graham Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Lucien Regnault, The Day-to-Day Life of the Desert Fathers in Fourth-Century Egypt, trans. Étienne Poirier Jr. (Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1999).

12. The numbers furnished by such writers as Rufinus of Aquileia and Palladius suggest that, in the 370s, three thousand or more ascetics lived at the monastic center of Nitria alone, and that, by the 390s, their number increased to around five thousand (e.g., Palladius, HL 7.6 and 32.8 [ed. G.J.M. Bartelink, Palladio: La storia Lausiaca [Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1974], 40 and 156]). For a discussion of the reliability of these figures, see Clark, Reading Renunciation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 18.

13. The site of Kellia was in continuous use by monks until its abandonment by the end of the ninth century; that of Nitria was abandoned during the first half of the seventh century. Scetis has remained as an important Egyptian monastic center through the medieval period to the present, although its community gradually declined. See Roger S. Bagnall and Dominic W. Rathbone (eds), Egypt from Alexander to the Early Christians: An Archeological and Historical Guide (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004), 112–116.

14. Lucien Regnault argued that the composition of the first major collections of sayings took place in Palestine, in “Les Apophtegmes des Pères en Palestine aux Ve–VIe siècles,” Irénikon 54 (1981): 320–330. Jean-Claude Guy identified the oral grouping of material as an early stage in the formation of the Apophthegmata; see Guy, Recherches sur la tradition grecque des Apophthegmata Patrum (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1962). See also Guy, “Note sur l’évolution du genre apophtegmatique,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 32 (1956): 63–68; René Draguet, “L’Histoire lausiaque: Une oeuvre écrite dans l’esprit d’Évagre,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 41 (1946): 321–364. Currently most scholars treat the Apophthegmata patrum as a reliable source for the study of early monasticism.

15. Inscriptions from the sixth and seventh centuries show that the world and cultural horizons of Sinaite monks were very similar to those of Egypt and Palestine. See John Chryssavgis, John Climacus: From the Egyptian Desert to the Sinaite Mountain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 10.

16. According to Evagrius, for instance, this process takes place “when the mind (νοῦς) has put off the old man (τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον) and put on the man who comes from grace” (On Thoughts 39; SC 438: 286). Cf. On Thoughts 3 (SC 438: 162). See also Barsanuphius and John, Ep. 49 (SC 426: 262).

17. It must be noted, however, that “mind” in this context refers to something broader than the reasoning brain emphasized today. Whereas “mind” implies for us the faculty of logic and rational deduction, for Christian theologians the mind is our intuitive side, which enables us to know and recognize the truth of things instantly. On the distinction between νοῦς and διάνοια, see Raoul Mortley, From Word to Silence, vol. 1: The Rise and Fall of Logos (Bonn: Hanstain, 1986), 61.

18. Participation in the church’s sacramental life also had an important role in bringing the believer closer to spiritual perfection, yet in the view of the Alexandrian theologians, it was primarily contemplation that allowed the believer to achieve deification. See Russell, The Doctrine of Deification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 153; Samuel Rubenson, “Argument and Authority in Early Monastic Correspondence,” in Foundations of Power and Conflicts of Authority in Late-Antique Monasticism: Proceedings of the International Seminar Turin, December 2–4, 2007, ed. Alberto Camplani and Giovanni Filoramo (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 75–87, at 85.

19. Brian Stock traces two ways of looking at the self in antiquity and late antiquity – as closely related to the soul, or as independent of the soul – and argues that Christian writings on the subject adopt the latter view (Stock, “Self, Soliloquy, and Spiritual Exercises in Augustine and Some Later Authors,” The Journal of Religion 91 [2011]: 5–23, at 14). However, the Alexandrian theologians and their followers sometimes talk about “soul” (ψυχή) rather than “mind.” Following Plato, they consider the soul to be tripartite, and ruled by the reasoning faculty (νοῦς, λογιστικόν, or ἡγεμονικόν). In this context, νοῦς is seen as the ruling part of the soul (e.g., John Cassian, Collationes 24.15 [CSEL 13: 691]; Evagrius, On Thoughts 17 [SC 438: 210]). In other cases, however, “soul” is given a wider significance than νοῦς: it involves one’s entire spiritual being in an abstract way, in contrast to one’s bodily aspect.

20. Clement of Alexandria, for example, bases his views on Matt. 6:21 (“Where your treasure is, there your heart [καρδία] will be also”) and asserts that “our treasure is in the mind” (θησαυρὸς ἡμῶν ἔνθα ἡ συγγενεία τοῦ νοῦ; Stromata 4.6.33.5 [SC 463: 112]). Cf. Origen, De principiis 1.1.9 (SC 252: 108); Pseudo-Athanasius, Vita Syncleticae 41 (PG 28: 1512). See also Christopher Stead, “The Concept of Mind and the Concept of God in the Christian Fathers,” in The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology, ed. Brian Hebblethwaite and Stewart R. Sutherland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 39. Nevertheless, the mind and the heart, though different, are sometimes described as inseparable (e.g., John Climacus, Scal. 29.1 [PG 88: 1148B]). On this subject, see Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966), 3.

21. Clement, Stromata 2.19.102.6 (SC 38: 113); cf. 4.25.155 (SC 463: 316). In arguing in this manner Clement set himself against the view of Irenaeus, who regarded the body as the image. See Macdonald, History of the Concept of Mind, 129.

22. Origen, De principiis 1.1.6 (SC 252: 99; trans. ANF 4: 430); cf. De principiis 4.4.10.

23. Origen, De principiis 2.9.2 (SC 252: 355–356).

24. On Origen’s concept of satiety, see Brooks Otis, “Cappadocian Thought as a Coherent System,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958): 95–124, esp. 103.

25. Origen, De principiis 1.4.1 (SC 252: 166). Origen explains: “For the Creator gave, as an indulgence to the understandings created by Him, the power of free and voluntary action, by which the good that was in them might become their own, being preserved by the exertion of their own will; but slothfulness […] furnished the beginning of a departure from goodness” (De principiis 2.9.2 [SC 252: 354]).

26. Origen, De principiis 2.8.3 (SC 252: 342) and 2.9.2 (SC 252: 354).

27. E.g., Origen, De principiis 1.5.1–5 (SC 252: 174–192).

28. The emphasis on the mind as the center of human nature in the Alexandrian theological tradition should not be confused with a hatred of the body. For Evagrius, God created nothing evil, and hence the body is not evil (E.g., KG 4.59; ed. Frankenberg, 297). Thus, the “mind” (or in some cases “soul”) here does not stand in opposition to the body, but merely as a more central aspect of human identity.

29. For Evagrius’ Origenism, see Antoine Guillaumont, Les Képhalaia Gnostica d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’origénisme chez les Grecs et chez les Syriens (Paris: Seuil, 1962). Gabriel Bunge opposes Guillaumont’s depiction of Evagrius as a faithful disciple of Origen, in “Origenismus-Gnostizismus: Zum geistesgeschichtlichen Standort des Evagrios Pontikos,” Vigiliae Christianae 40 (1986): 24–54. Scholars remain divided over this subject.

30. Evagrius’s metaphysical speculations were implicated in the condemnation of Origenism by the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553, yet his ascetic treatises were enormously influential and were preserved and copied in the Greek-speaking world and elsewhere, albeit sometimes under someone else’s name. See John Eudes Bamberger (ed. and trans.), Evagrius Ponticus: The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), xxiv–xxviii. Jean Leclercq traces the spread of Evagrian influence in the Latin West in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), chap. 6. For Evagrius’s influence on Western monastic spirituality through his disciple John Cassian, see Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 24–25; Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 83.

31. E.g., Evagrius, Praktikos 84 (SC 171: 674); The types of contemplation are further distinguishable by their objects. On this distinction, see Russell, The Doctrine of Deification, 239; Kevin Corrigan, “Suffocation or Germination: Infinity, Formation and Calibration of the Mind in Evagrius’ Notion of Contemplation,” in Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2011, vol. 5: Evagrius Ponticus on Contemplation, ed. Markus Vinzent and Monica Tobon, Studia Patristica 57 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 9–25. The distinction between ὁ βίος πρακτικός and ὁ βίος θεωρητικός stems from Plato and Aristotle and had already been employed by Philo of Alexandria to describe monastic communities (De vita contemplativa 1.1 [ed. Wendland and Cohn, 6: 46]).

32. Evagrius, Eulogios 11 (PG 79: 1108). On this distinction, see André Derville, “Maîtrise de soi,” DSAM 10: 119; Thomas Spidlik, La spiritualité de l’Orient chrétien, vol. 1: Manuel systématique, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 206 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1978), 179–180.

33. Ammonas, About the Joy of the Soul of One Beginning to Serve God 11 (PO 11: 475): “ἡ ἄσκησις τῆς ψυχῆς ἐστι τὸ μισῆσαι τὸν περισπασμόν. ἡ δέ ἄσκησις τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ἡ ἔνδεια” (trans. Bernadette McNary-Zak, Useful Servanthood: A Study of Spiritual Formation in the Writings of Abba Ammonas [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010], p. 144).

34. The Book of Paradise, Being the Histories and Sayings of the Monks and Ascetics of the Egyptian Desert According to the Recension of “Anan-Isho” of Beth Abbe, ed. and trans. E.A. Wallis Budge (London: Printed for Lady Mieux by Drugulin, 1904), 2: 1047.

35. Apophth. patr. alph. Agathon 8 (PG 65: 112). Cf. Matt. 3:10.

36. Hesychius, On Watchfulness and Holiness 112 (PG 93: 1514).

37. Mark the Monk, Disputatio cum causidico 18 (SC 455: 80).

38. According to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, for example, control over the movements of the soul (τῆς ψυχῆς κινημάτων) is attained through attentiveness (προσοχή). See Apophth. patr. sys. prologue, 11 (SC 387: 98).

39. The concern with attention was also widespread among Jewish sages of the first centuries. See Jonathan Schofer, “Spiritual Exercises in Rabbinic Culture,” AJS Review 27 (2003): 203–225.

40. According to Hesychius the Priest, “The great lawgiver Moses […] says: ‘Give heed to yourself, lest there be a hidden thing,’ speaking especially of the manifestation of a single thought (μονολόγιστος) of some evil matter that is hated by God” (On Watchfulness and Holiness 2 [PG 93: 1481]).

41. On hesychast spirituality, see Vincent Rossi, “Presence, Participation, Performance: The Remembrance of God in the Early Hesychast Fathers,” in Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East, ed. James S. Cutsinger (Bloomington: World Wisdom Books, 2004), 64–111.

42. Hesychius, On Watchfulness and Holiness 1 (PG 93: 1479). The term νῆψις has its scriptural foundation in 1 Pet. 5:8: “Be sober, watchful (νήψατε, γρηγορήσατε).” See also 1 Thess. 5:6: “γρηγορῶμεν καὶ νήφωμεν”; cf. Clement, Stromata 4.22.140.3.

43. John Cassian, Collationes 7.4.2 (CSEL 13: 183).

44. The fourth-century desert fathers employed a wide variety of formulae. Yet, between the fifth and the eighth century the Jesus Prayer emerged as a recognized spiritual method. See Kallistos Ware, “The Origins of the Jesus Prayer: Diadochus, Gaza, Sinai,” in The Study of Spirituality, ed. Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright, and Edward Yarnold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 175–184.

45. On these strategies, see Columba Stewart, “Evagrius Ponticus and the Eastern Monastic Tradition on the Intellect and the Passions,” Modern Theology 27 (2011): 263–275. Physical practices too, such as manual labor, served as strategies against distraction. Evagrius recommends: “Do the work of manual tasks […] [as] a guide to contemplation and a winnowing of thoughts (λογισμῶν ἀποβρασμός)” (Eulogios 9 [PG 79: 1105 C]; cf. Antirrhetikos 25).

46. Diadochus, Hundred Gnostic Chapters 59 (SC 5: 119).

47. John Cassian, Collationes 24.6.1–3 (CSEL 13: 680); cf. Apophth. patr. N 435.

48. E.g., Barsanuphius and John, Ep. 842 (SC 468: 324).

49. E.g., Evagrius, On Thoughts 9 (SC 438: 184).

50. Evagrius, Praktikos 50 (SC 171: 614); cf. On Thoughts 9 (SC 438: 180); Apophth. patr. alph. Elias 4 (PG 65: 184). Evagrius specifies the benefits of this form of self-examination: “It is necessary to know these things, so that when thoughts begin to move their own particular matter (τὰς ἰδίας ὕλας), and before we are driven too far from our proper state, we may speak out to them and indicate which one is present” (Praktikos 43 [SC 171: 600]). Cf. Apophth. patr. N 670: “We must arm ourselves prior to temptations […], and in this way we will be clearly seen to be ready for them when they come upon us” (ed. Wortley, 536).

51. John Cassian, Collationes 1.20.1 (CSEL 13: 29).

52. Evagrius, On Thoughts 19 (SC 438: 218–219).

53. According to Abba Hyperechios, the purpose of this strategy is to “arm ourselves prior to temptations, for they will come, and in this way we will be clearly seen to be ready for them when they come upon us” (Apophth. patr. N 670 [ed. Wortley, 536]). Cf. Apophth. patr. N 742 (ed. Wortley, 598), and Barsanuphius and John, Ep. 498 (SC 451: 618), where monks are exhorted to alienate (ἀφίστημι) themselves from sinful thoughts.

54. At this stage, as Hesychius the Priest explains, the mind “sees with perceptive insight the thoughts that come, and hears what they say,” but does not become involved in these interior dialogs (On Watchfulness and Holiness 6 [PG 93: 1483A]).

55. The Book of Paradise, trans. Wallis Budge, 2: 1020.

56. The Book of Paradise, trans. Wallis Budge, 2: 1021.

57. Athanasius, Vita Antonii 67 (SC 400: 312; NPNF 2.4: 570).

58. Evagrius, Praktikos 56 (SC 171: 630): “ἀπάθειαν ὑγείαν ἐροῦμεν εἶναι ψυχῆς.”

59. As Theodoret of Cyrrhus explains, “The love of God enables these men to transcend the limits of their nature” (in P. Canivet [ed. and trans.], Histoire des Moines se Syrie, SC 257 [Paris, 1979], 262). According to the Spiritual Homilies, “Such a person is endowed by divine power … and transcends his very self” (Ps. Macarius, Spiritual Homilies 35 [trans. G. Maloney, Paulist Press, 1992, 87]).