There is a change in the nature of ascetism.
Plotinus epitomises a classical ascetism. He lives as one ashamed to have been born into a human body and is admired for achieving a godlike mastery of mind over body. He is at the very peak of a tradition grounded in a training in classical literature and philosophy and the ancient grooming in the ways of the civilised gentleman. Plotinus is a pagan, but the average Christian bishop [of this time] came very close to sharing this ideal – austere, literate, exclusively urban.
The new ascetism is demonstrated by Anthony, who just about overlaps with Plotinus. He took the saying of Jesus, sell all you have, literally and became a hermit. He moved progressively further from the Egyptian village and into the desert wilderness.
(Other hermits came later, especially from Syria, and include characters such as the fifth century Stylites like Simeon who lived atop pillars.)
The difference between the two groups is stark. Plotinus lives within society, almost a role model. These new hermits are wild vagrants, dressed in skins. They have mentally and physically abandoned the norms of the civilised world.
Somewhere between the two extremes lie the first monasteries, created by Pachomius at the start of the fourth century, in Egypt. These hermits lived in cells organised into settlements and opted for humility and a limited, but relentless routine of prayer and manual labour.
The origins of this monastic ascetism are obscure. Brown talks of well-to-do eccentrics whose talents found no outlet in the prudent and well-rooted routines of successful peasant communities. It certainly seems like an idea whose time had come – by the late 300s there are monastic communities as far away as Rouen.
It also seems like these ascetic monks fulfil a role. This was a conservative world – not a world of great oppression and dislocation, so much as of unremitting thoroughness and of villages stubbornly organised for survival and dedicated for millennia to holding their own against nature.
The ascetics have placed themselves beyond the boundaries of this culture, mentally and physically, and in doing so they have gained power over the supernatural. They are prize-fighters against the devil and have won a freedom to speak before God and the worldly authorities, including the emperor’s forces.
This also heralds a change in how religion is perceived. Brown talks of classical religion as consisting of ‘things’ – great temples and ceremonies and gods who spoke impersonally through anonymous oracles. This now changes to the named holy man. Brown asserts that the emergence of the holy man at the expense of the temple marks the end of the classical world.
Within the monasteries something predictable happened. Thousands of young men living hard lives together, struggling to control their thoughts, and learning of the omnipresence of demonic enemies was a led to an atmosphere of explosive aggression.
At the end of the fourth century this broke out. Many pagan temples were by now secularised and viewed by cultivated Christian townsfolk as public monuments. Bishops took a less tolerant view, but the monks, in vigilante bands, ‘burned’, ‘terrorised’, and ‘purged’.
To an extent this is happening with the tacit acceptance of the (now Christian) emperors. Towns of the later empire were jungles, under-policed and constantly threatened by famine and rioting. Unrest on the borders meant that taxes were rising and had to be collected from somewhere. At the same time Christianity was now the majority religion in the empire.
The emperor lets the bishops, with their large congregations and violent monks take the lead in the cities. He allies himself with these grass-roots movements and pays respect to their leaders, but is happy to lead from behind. The only condition is that tax collection is unimpeded – let off steam by burning the temple of Serapis, but make sure to pay your dues…
The changing nature of the Christian flock also provided another role for the ascetics and monks. In earlier times the religion had been inward-looking and centred on small communities. Gaining access was a long process involving and arduous induction. But, at the end of it the new Christian knew that they were in the elite community of the saved.
By the late fourth century mass adoption via perfunctory baptism made for a less dedicated community whose converts were less sure of their salvation and worried about the last judgement. A mood as tense and purposeful [as] the antechamber of a courthouse pervaded the empire and this, paradoxically, gave the ‘otherworldly’ ascetics a major role in establishing Christianity within society. The monks provided an example for the Christian layman. Perhaps more importantly the bishops believed that they would have to answer for the sins of the populations of their cities. This led to increasing restrictions on pagans and heretics. The emperor too was responsible for the souls of his subjects and so became increasingly susceptible to the demands of the clergy.
(As an aside, wealth, for the remission of sins was one manifestation of public piety and led to amazing artistic achievements in the fifth and sixth centuries.
The ascetic movement’s influence and form was not the same across the whole empire. To begin with they were concentrated in the areas only fairly recently joined to the ‘civilised’ world. Egypt and Syria, which fringed the pagan heartlands.
Major differences between the East and West underlined other, wider, changes occurring between the two halves of the empire.
In the West ascetism and monasticism were aloof from society. A highly articulate, but narrow, section of the aristocracy became land-owner bishops. The clergy moved from being ‘local’ figures to professionals, raised in monasteries, and sharing little culture with their environs. Brown detects in their superior attitudes and denunciation of the worldly a Latin aristocrat’s enduring contempt for the petit bourgeoisie and an ancient longing for the great estate.
The East was different. The monks and bishops consolidated positions of power within the towns and through their engagement they were the midwives of Christianity becoming the religion of the masses.
This openness included welcoming Coptic and Syraic speakers, but also took more active roles. Chronic underemployment was assuaged through monastic support roles and monks were known to provide impromptu ambulance services during emergencies. These activities brought their presence into many new homes.
Both halves of the empire soon had to deal with the barbarian invasions of the fifth century though. In fourth century Christian art there is no room for the ferocity of a warrior society. It would be about to change…
Moritasgus 