4. Desert Fathers: Early Monastic Life and Writings

Saints, as we all know, are regular people. Or are they? The Catholic Church does not canonize saints willy-nilly. To be deemed a saint, one must have reportedly lived a holy life and performed at least one miracle. Today, in an age of cynicism, miracles are more difficult to prove, but from biblical times to the Renaissance and beyond, their validity was typically taken for granted. Moreover, miracles were performed in the names of holy men and women long after they died.

Last year I was diagnosed with shingles, a painful neurological malady that is first manifested by a rash. In my case I knew something was wrong when I began feeling sharp pains above my ear, radiating down my neck. Two days later I spotted a rash on my chest. I immediately called my doctor and got a prescription that promised to relieve the pain and irritation. The medicine worked, though more than a year later my ear still itches.

Had I been living in medieval times, a physician would have had little or nothing to offer me. I would have prayed for healing, but not necessarily to God. I would more likely have prayed to St. Anthony, the saint called upon to cure infectious diseases— especially shingles (herpes zoster). Indeed, the affliction is still known in Italy and elsewhere as Anthony’s Fire.

Credited with even greater responsibility is Laziosi Peregrine, the patron saint of people afflicted with cancer or AIDS. Saint Dymphna is called upon to cure insanity. But when all hope is gone — when other saints have failed— Saint Jude remains. One of the twelve disciples, Jude is the patron saint of “lost causes.” The prayer is “Saint Jude, hope of the hopeless, pray for me.”

Modern medicine and technology, we might imagine, thwart an impulse to depend on saints. But saints have come of age on the Internet. They thrive right alongside news alerts on medical breakthroughs.

We are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

It is naïve for a historian to assume that everything he or she publishes is objective truth. If we had to prove the veracity of every word we wrote, there would be little left but sterile facts and figures — and much of that might be fictitious. Exaggeration is an art form in some historical accounts, both ancient and modern. The more we dig, the more we realize that fictitious narrative is not found in fiction alone. So it is with the stories of Desert Fathers — and Mothers — and the early monasticism of the Mediterranean world.

There was no clear line of demarcation in the early church between theologians and contemplatives as there often is today. Athanasius, with his razor-sharp mind, for example, could just as easily write the fabled Life of Antony as a heavy theological tome. Mysticism, supernaturalism, and theological studies were easily blended in the writings of the early desert monks and their contemporaries such as Anthony of Egypt, Simon Stylites, Marcella and Paula, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Monica, and Mary of Egypt.

Surely Athanasius was exaggerating when he said that the mass exodus of ascetic Christians from the population centers turned the Egyptian desert into a city. It was hardly that. But who knows, if someone were to have hurled an egg (to paraphrase H. L. Mencken) from a camel caravan, it just might have landed on a penitential praying hermit.

The desert has served as an alluring focal point, both allegorical and geographical, throughout Christian history. Moses and the children of Israel wandered for forty years in its rugged and unforgiving terrain. The prophet Isaiah was “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” John the Baptist was a desert ascetic wearing camel’s hair and acting crazy. Jesus ventured into the barren wilderness for forty days and nights, enduring torment and temptation. Paul went straight away into the Arabian desert after his conversion.

Among the first of the desert monks were Christians fleeing imperial persecution. There they hid in caves rather than facing prison or execution. But word spread that this was also a place to find God. There was beauty in the desert — the beauty of God’s presence and of spiritual victories over Satan. “O Desert, bright with the flowers of Christ,” sang Jerome, himself a desert monk. “O Solitude, whence come the stones of which the Apocalypse, the city of the Great King, is built! O Wilderness, gladdened with God’s special presence! What keeps you in the world, my brother, you who are above the world? How long shall gloomy roofs oppress you? Oh, that I could behold the desert, lovelier to me than any city.”

PARADE OF HISTORY

As the parade of the early church moves forward, we see a pilgrimage of ascetics moving into the desert. They hide in caves and mountain cliffs. Simon Stylites finds solace — and celebrity — on a pillar. Soon the desert is dotted with pillars, and processions of tourists arrive, seeking spiritual support from these saints of the sand. Among the ascetics is Mary of Egypt, converted from her sinful life at a parade in Jerusalem — a parade marking the holy day of the Exaltation of the Cross.

But the desert was callous, cold-hearted — surely no environment for sissies. Its punishing sun, frigid nights, and disdain for nourishment tested even the most muscular ascetics. Here the spirit was either broken or rejuvenated. Temptation thrived in the parched soil. Demons slithered like serpents among the rocks. That was its appeal. As incidents of persecution and martyrdom declined, the desert became a venue for suffering with Christ. There were no beds, no baths, and barely bread for shrunken stomachs. Indeed, the desolate landscape sucked the physical satisfactions of life out of its inhabitants as surely as did state persecution.

Those who ventured out regarded themselves athletes engaged in a perpetual contest with demons. Many of these cave-dwelling holy men and women lived solitary lives. Others lived in community. But there was no safety in numbers either from the elements or from enemy attacks. In 380 an unruly army of marauders from the north swept down on a remote Egyptian monastery, killing thirty-eight of its residents. A survivor has left behind a chilling account:

For who, even if his heart were of stone, would not weep for the holy martyrs who had grown old in the garb of Christians, flung upon the ground in merciless suffering; each one of them struck down, one with his head cut off and another with his head split in two. What can I say about the number of merciless blows which struck the saints who were killed limb by limb and were flung upon the ground?

Nevertheless, the solitary ascetics kept on coming, though few of them having taken formal monastic vows. Tourists came as well, staying on as long as their desert vacations allowed. Not all the ascetics were pleased with this turn of events. Swarms of people and spirituality were not as easily meshed in the fourth-century monastic mindset as they are in the megachurch mentality today. Nor were government officials overjoyed. Where had all the soldiers gone — and the taxpayers?

Perhaps an anorexic holy man had little to offer a crumbling empire, but the insight and spiritual sayings of these Desert Fathers and Mothers have had a remarkably long shelf life. Twenty-first-century Christians continue to mine for treasure among the words and wisdom of these saints and sages of old.

Anthony of Egypt: First of the Desert Monks

“If you want to be perfect, go and sell everything you have and give the money to the poor.” These are the words that stopped the rich kid dead in his tracks. His parents had died, and now all their wealth belongs to him. The much-heralded city of Alexandria offers infinite opportunities for luxurious living. His whole life is ahead of him. He can travel in comfort and see the wonders of the world if he so desires. But he hears the call of God in that very pointed gospel passage. His only travel will be to the desert. His journey of the soul begins by giving his wealth to the poor and leaving his childhood home. His goal is to become a true lover of God — to give himself entirely to Christ, ever vigilant in resisting the devil. His motto: “The mind of the soul is strong when the pleasures of the body are weak.” He nourishes himself on bread and water, fasting altogether every other day and denying himself sleep, preferring to pray through the night.

Anthony’s life in panorama

Anthony (251 – 356), whose life story is told by Athanasius, lives among the tombs, where he is assaulted by wild animals and demons. This is God’s way of training him to fight and win spiritual battles like an athlete prevailing in the arena. After a time he leaves the tombs, seeking an even more secluded area, where he remains for twenty years, becoming a celebrity — a superstar among desert saints. Disciples seek him out, and their encounters with him inspire generations of ascetics.

In one instance when a would-be follower tells him that he has given all his wealth away but for a small amount for necessities, the response is vintage Anthony: “If you want to be a monk, go into the village, buy some meat, cover your naked body with it and come here like that.” When the man returns, his body is bloody and torn by wild dogs and vultures. The moral of the story: “Those who renounce the world but want to keep something for themselves are torn in this way by the demons who make war on them.”

Anthony’s activities intersect with the lives of other well-known figures of the era. During the brutal persecution under Emperor Diocletian in 303, he travels to Rome to minister to the suffering. He is also enmeshed in the theological controversies of the day. Athanasius persuades him to come to Alexandria from his desert hideaway to speak out against Arius, whose views are catching fire. Though he is no theologian, Anthony epitomizes sainthood. His life of self-denial is the support Athanasius most desires. Saint Augustine will later be put to shame by reading Athanasius’s story of Anthony.

FIGHTING DEMONS

As he was watching in the night the devil sent wild beasts against him. And almost all the hyenas in that desert came forth from their dens and surrounded him; and he was in the midst, while each one threatened to bite. Seeing that it was a trick of the enemy he said to them all: ‘If ye have received power against me I am ready to be devoured by you; but if ye were sent against me by demons, stay not, but depart, for I am a servant of Christ.’ When Antony said this they fled, driven by that word as with a whip.

A few days after … he saw a beast like a man to the thighs but having legs and feet like those of an ass. And Antony only signed himself and said, ‘I am a servant of Christ. If thou art sent against me, behold I am here.’ But the beast together with his evil spirits fled, so that, through his speed, he fell and died. And the death of the beast was the fall of the demons. For they strove in all manner of ways to lead Antony from the desert and were not able.

Athanasius, Life of St. Antony

EVERYDAY LIFE

Asceticism and Sexuality

The suffering ascetic looked not only to Jesus as the ultimate ideal but also to the first man, Adam. In the garden, Adam communed with God in sinless perfection. His paradise may have been lush with fruit trees and other vegetation, but there was no sin of gluttony or lust — at least, not until the introduction of Eve. In order to reconstruct Adam’s sinless state, ascetics went to the desert, living as far from women as possible. But they quickly discovered that lust erupted in solitude more often than amid company. To rid oneself of lustful thoughts, many reasoned, one must starve oneself. If hunger pangs became all-consuming, the sex drive would likely diminish.

The monastic worldview regarded chastity in terms of redemption or salvation. While ordinary lay people could inherit eternal life if they maintained their sacramental duties, ascetics could attain angelic — or Adamic—status here on earth. Celibacy without lust allowed the ascetic to sever attachments to worldly pleasures and arrive at a heavenly state — a oneness with God.

But celibacy was considered more than a mere human construct. It was a mark of the Trinity. Those who find ultimate godliness visualized the triune God in virginity. Sexual desire was a result of the fall and God’s curse on humankind. Attaining true godliness demanded the eradication of all sexual desire. Jerome testified about how difficult that was for him:

How often, when I was living in the desert, in the vast solitude which gives to hermits a savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the pleasures of Rome! … I had no companions but scorpions and wild beasts, I often found myself amid bevies of girls. My face was pale and my frame chilled with fasting; yet my mind was burning with desire, and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me when my flesh was as good as dead. Helpless, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus.

Women as well as men sought oneness with God through asceticism. But women faced an additional burden, as was true of Macrina, sister of Gregory of Nyssa. A fourth-century holy woman known for her wisdom, she was hindered by her gender. In writing about his saintly sister, Gregory wonders “if indeed she should be styled woman, for I do not know whether it is fitting to designate her by her sex, who so surpassed her sex.” Another “desert mother” confessed: “According to nature I am a woman, but not according to my thoughts.” True godliness, then, was manly virginity, minus lust—a most difficult state to attain.

After his trip to Alexandria, Anthony returns to the desert with two companions who care for him in his final years. Despite all the privations he endures he lives to age one hundred and five, according to Athanasius, having secured the promise that his body will be buried in an unmarked grave. His concerns are not for dogs or vultures. He does not want his bones and remnants of clothing fought over and revered as relics. For him spirituality is self-denial and sacrifice, not saint-worship.

Simon Stylites: Saint on the Pillar

Among all the so-called Desert Fathers, Simon Stylites (390 – 459) is often regarded as the most bizarre. His claim to fame was his perch on a pillar in a Syrian desert for nearly forty years. Today his celebrity has faded, but in his own day pilgrims came from great distances to hear him preach and offer counsel.

Simon grew up a shepherd boy profoundly influenced by his pious mother, Martha. By the age of thirteen he is fasting and denying himself the normal pleasures of life. At sixteen he enters a monastery but finds monastic life too comfortable. He leaves the community and begins a regimen of self-mutilation and starvation. Indeed, he is close to death before he is discovered and nursed back to life. As time passes, his ways become still more eccentric — even among the desert monks themselves. He escapes to a tiny hut, now not only starving himself but also forcing himself to stand upright until he faints and falls to the ground.

Simon Stylites tempted by the devil

After three years he moves to a narrow mountain crevasse, where he expects to be left alone. But pilgrims are on his trail, eager that his holiness rub off on them. He has no place to hide, until he comes up with an ingenious idea. With the help of sympathizers, he devises a pillar that grows in stages to rise, eventually, several stories high. His platform offers him no more floor space than a small bedroom. Now even more tourists arrive. Every afternoon he speaks to the crowds, though never encouraging them to follow him in his extreme asceticism. He maintains a wide-ranging correspondence and gains the respect of common people and emperors, including Theodosius and his wife, Eudocia. His support for the Council of Chalcedon is much sought after by Emperor Leo.

During his lifetime and after his death, living on pillars as “stylite” monks became the rage among the desert ascetics. Indeed, the desert was said to be dotted with pillars.

Marcella and Women in Monasticism

Monasticism attracted more men than women. Women were rarely found in wilderness caves or atop desert pillars, but from the earliest centuries they did play important roles in houses of charity. In the early centuries, the houses were loosely formed without a monastic rule or formal vows. Marcella (c. 325 – 410) exemplifies this way of life that caught on among other women of the time.

Growing up in Rome, she was influenced by her pious mother, Albina, an educated woman of wealth and benevolence. Childhood memories centered around piety, and one in particular related to Athanasius, who lodged in her home during one of his many exiles. He may have taken special interest in her, thinking back to his own youthful practice of playing church. Athanasius interacted with his hosts on theological matters and recounted anecdotes of his own monastic life. His most spellbinding stories, however, were the miraculous tales of the desert monks. As a parting gift he left behind the first copy of his biography, Life of St. Anthony.

Marcella’s wealth and beauty placed her at the center of fashionable Roman society. She married young, to a wealthy aristocrat, but less than a year later he died. Her time of mourning over, young men soon come calling again. However, convinced that God is directing her to a life of poverty and service, she shocks her social circle when she leaves behind her fashionable dresses for a coarse brown garment and abandons her usual extravagant hair styling and makeup. Appearing as a low-class woman, she starts a trend as other young women join her. They form a community known as the brown dress society, spending their time praying, singing, reading the Bible, and serving the needy. Her palatial home is now a refuge for weary pilgrims and for the poor.

Summoned by Bishop Damasus (who arranges lodging at Marcella’s hospitality house), Jerome arrives in 382. It is an exhilarating time for this woman of letters, who has immersed herself in both Greek and Hebrew, to be entertaining one of the great minds of the age. He spends the next three years in what he calls her “domestic church,” translating the Bible into Latin. She learns under his teaching even as she critiques his translation. He speaks and writes of her Christian devotion and scholarship and commends her influence on Anastasius, bishop of Rome — particularly in his condemning Origen’s doctrines, which Jerome declares a “glorious victory.” Indeed, his admiration of Marcella is unbounded, not only for her intellectual acumen but also for her deference to men who might be threatened by her vast store of knowledge:

All that I had gathered by long study and constant meditation, she drank in, learned and possessed, and after I left Rome, she answered any arguments that were put to her about scripture, including obscure and ambiguous inquiries from priests, saying that the answers came from me or another man, even when they were her own, claiming always to be a pupil even when she was teaching, so that she did not seem to injure the male sex because the apostle [Paul] did not permit women to teach.

Marcella, however, is also known for her efforts to restrain Jerome from quarrelling with his opponents — or at least helping him control his legendary temper. Eleven of his extant letters are addressed to her, and she is mentioned in many of his other writings. In one of his letters he responds to her query about the truth of Montanism. Someone is apparently attempting to convert her, and she is deeply interested in what she is hearing, though suspecting that the claim that they possess a more authentic spirituality might be false. Jerome writes a lengthy point-by-point refutation of the movement and then concludes:

To expose the infidelity of the Montanists is to triumph over it. Nor is it necessary that in so short a letter as this I should overthrow the several absurdities which they bring forward. You are well acquainted with the Scriptures; and, as I take it, you have written, not because you have been disturbed by their cavils, but only to learn my opinion about them.

It was at the home of Marcella that Jerome first met Paula, a devoted and scholarly woman who would become his long-time intellectual counterpart. When Jerome returns to the Holy Land, Paula later relocates there as well. They invite Marcella to join them, but she remains in Rome to oversee her growing house of virgins, where she is addressed as Mother. But hard times are ahead of her. She is in her late seventies in 410, when the Goths, led by Alaric, pillage the city. Soldiers storm the residence demanding she relinquish her hidden jewels and wealth, which long before had been sold to fund her charitable work. When she has nothing to give them, they strike her down. She is taken to a church set up as a sanctuary, but she dies the next day. Marcella was later canonized by the Roman Catholic Church; her feast day is January 31.

Jerome’s sudden departure from Rome to Bethlehem and Paula’s own departure soon afterward is shrouded in mystery. Paula, also a widow and relative of Marcella, was the mother of five children In Palestine she established a monastery for women and her prestige grew — but not without lingering rumors whispered in Rome Both she and Jerome promote celibacy; however, this practice does not preclude a very close friendship — so close that it would be associated with scandal “Before I knew the house of saintly Paula,” writes Jerome, after he has left Rome, “my praises were sung through the city.” But that has quickly changed due to an “evil report.” He laments that “the only fault found in me is my sex, and that only when Paula comes to Jerusalem.”

THE STORY OF AN AGED ABBESS

In this city of Antinoe there are twelve convents of women; in one of them I met Amma Talis, an old woman who had spent eighty years in asceticism, as she and the neighbors told me. With her dwelt sixty young women who loved her so greatly that no key even was fixed on the outer wall of the monastery, as in other monasteries, but they were kept in by love of her. Such a height of impassivity did the old woman reach that when I entered and sat down she came and sat by me and put her hands on my shoulders in a transport of freedom.

Palladius, Lausiac History

(early 5th century)

“She was in the front line in condemning the heretics.”

Jerome, speaking of Marcella

Jerome: Monk, Scholar, and Bible Translator

“Make knowledge of the Scripture your love and you will not love the views of the flesh.” These are the words of Jerome (c 331 — 420), who is regarded by some as the greatest of all translators of the Bible He was far more than a Bible translator, however In addition to his Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, he wrote numerous biblical commentaries and was deeply involved in theological controversies of the day as well as with matters of asceticism and spiritual formation His historical writing and vast correspondence offer a fascinating insight on an era when doctrinal disputation blends easily with the asceticism of the Desert Fathers.

Jerome is also the subject of a medieval legend that draws from pre-Christian stories In one account Jerome removes a thorn from the paw of a lion, who returns the kindness by staying on to guard the monastery and watch over the donkey. When the donkey goes missing, the lion is blamed, but Jerome stands by his pet, and the lion takes over the work of the donkey. When the donkey is eventually found, they all live happily ever after. In medieval art, Jerome is depicted with a grateful lion lying at his feet.

At age twenty Jerome journeys to Rome to be baptized. The details of his conversion are hazy, but according to one source he becomes involved with the homosexual community in Rome and experiences terrible remorse that draws him on Sundays to holy places — especially to the catacombs, where the martyrs are interred: “Often I would find myself entering those crypts, deep dug in the earth, with their walls on either side lined with the bodies of the dead, where everything was so dark.”

Following his baptism, Jerome’s educational pursuits and various ministries take him from one region to another until he eventually settles down at a monastery in Bethlehem, the setting for the legend of the lion. Jerome’s celebrated wisdom and kindness is only one side of this often-volatile man, however. He is harsh in his criticism of other church leaders and pointedly condemns the corruption of the bearded clerics in Rome, of whom he sarcastically writes, “The only thought of such men is their clothes — are they pleasantly perfumed, do their shoes fit smoothly… If there is any holiness in a beard, nobody is holier than a goat.”

Having been forced out of Rome in his forties, he resents these enemies of the truth. But more controversies continue while he is residing in Bethlehem. One of his best-known correspondents is his younger contemporary, Augustine, who first writes to him challenging his translation of a phrase in Galatians. The letter takes nearly a decade to reach its destination in Bethlehem, after apparently being read by many people along the way. And, as Jerome assumed, it may very well have been written for public consumption: “It is a sign of youthful arrogance to try to build up a reputation by assailing prominent figures.” Nevertheless, the correspondence — both harsh and pleasant — continues for many years.

“Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, ‘Why do you not practice what you preach?’“

Jerome

Jerome’s writings span a wide range of subjects, including his perspective on marriage and monasticism. In comparing celibacy with marital bonds, he gives marriage a numerical value of thirty, rating widowhood and virginity sixty and one hundred, respectively. He insists, however, that he has high regard for marriage — but only for its potential to increase the number of virgins: “To prefer chastity is not to disparage matrimony…. Married ladies can be proud to come after nuns, for God Himself told them to be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth…. A child born from marriage is virgin flesh…. I praise matrimony. But only because it produces virgins.”

His concern for the education of children prompts him to write a lengthy letter to Paula’s daughter-in-law about home-schooling her baby girl, also named Paula — a letter written for public dissemination.

Let your child of promise have a training from her parents worthy of her birth … Let boys with their wanton frolics be kept far from Paula: let even her maids and attendants hold aloof from association with the worldly, lest they render their evil knowledge worse by teaching it to her. Have a set of letters made for her, of boxwood or of ivory, and tell her their names. Let her play with them, making play a road to learning, and let her not only grasp the right order of the letters and remember their names in a simple song, but also frequently upset their order and mix the last letters with the middle ones, the middle with the first. Thus she will know them all by sight as well as by sound. When she begins with uncertain hand to use the pen, either let another hand be put over hers to guide her baby fingers, or else have the letters marked on the tablet so that her writing may follow their outlines and keep their limits without straying away. Offer her prizes for spelling, tempting her with such trifling gifts as please young children. Let her have companions too in her lessons, so that she may seek to rival them and be stimulated by any praise they win. You must not scold her if she is somewhat slow; praise is the best sharpener of wits. Let her be glad when she is first and sorry when she falls behind. Above all take care not to make her lessons distasteful; a childish dislike often lasts longer than childhood.

Jerome with Marcella and Paula

Paula’s wealth funded Jerome’s library in Bethlehem, and from his cell came a steady stream of scholarly works. During his thirty-four years in that location he wrote commentaries and annotated bibliographies as well as treatises against heresies, particularly against the teachings of Pelagius and Origen. In fact, so blistering are his attacks on Pelagianism that some partisan thugs break into the monastery, set fire to the buildings, and assault the monks, killing one of them, although Jerome himself escapes. He dies some years later, poring over manuscripts to the very end.

Ambrose: Orator and Bishop

The stories of the saints formed an important part of popular Christian literature in the early church and the centuries immediately following. Frequently, the accounts included tales of infant and childhood miracles — some that strain credulity. St. Nicholas, for example, stands upright only hours after he is born to announce he is beginning a schedule of fasting by nursing only once a day on Wednesdays and Fridays. Other infancy tales are more believable but no less decisive in indicating God’s favor. Pointing to his future greatness, the infant Saint Ambrose endures a frightful encounter with bees:

Ambrose … was sleeping in his cradle with his mouth open, in the courtyard of the governor’s palace, when suddenly a swarm of bees came and so covered his face and mouth that they kept on going in and out of his mouth in continuous succession…. And presently the bees flew off and soared to such a height in the air that it was impossible for human eyes to see them. It frightened his father. “If that little one lives,” he said, “he will become something very big.”

The patron saint of beekeepers, Ambrose (c. 338 — 397) was born into a Christian family in Gaul. He followed his father, a government official, into that profession and became a popular administrator in Milan.

In 374, when Ambrose is in his mid-thirties, his life is suddenly upended. The bishop of Milan dies in the midst of bitter Arian strife, and Ambrose is seen as a mediating figure. The Arians in Milan are opposing the one designated to succeed the bishop, and the election at the basilica is in turmoil. Ambrose, an interested bystander, suddenly hears a call from the crowd, “Ambrose for bishop!” Others join in, and before he fully realizes what is happening, he is elected the next bishop of Milan.

He has two strikes against him. He is neither trained in theology nor baptized. Without proper credentials, he takes the most logical course: he goes into hiding. But bringing peace to Milan is more than a local matter. When the emperor learns of the election, he praises the choice. This prompts the guard giving cover to Ambrose to reveal his whereabouts. Brought to the basilica against his will, Ambrose is baptized and installed as bishop of Milan.

Any optimism that the Arian controversy would diminish with Ambrose in high-church office is premature. He averts open combat with Arians until 386, when the Emperor Valentinian and his mother, Justina, insist that two churches in Milan be turned into Arian strongholds. Ambrose refuses. He meets the emperor’s officials with powerful words: “If you demand my person, I am ready to submit: carry me to prison or to death, I will not resist; but I will never betray the church of Christ. I will not call upon the people. to succour me; I will die at the foot of the altar rather than desert it.” He does not want strife. “The tumult of the people I will not encourage,” he promises, “but God alone can appease it.”

The emperor backs down and later calls on Ambrose to serve as an ambassador and mediator. Some years later, Ambrose confronts Emperor Theodosius I. When rioters murder the Roman governor, Theodosius sends in troops and slaughters some seven thousand people. Ambrose is outraged and is prepared to excommunicate him. He backs down only when the emperor admits his guilt and repents. After several months of penance, he is permitted the Eucharist.

Characteristic of his ability to compromise and make peace, Ambrose holds to a form of universalism. In the end, he believes, all will find God. “Our Savior has appointed two kinds of resurrection in the Apocalypse,” he argues. “‘Blessed is he that hath part in the first resurrection,’ for such come to grace without the judgment. As for those who do not come to the first, but are reserved unto the second resurrection, these shall be disciplined until their appointed times, between the first and the second resurrection.”

Most students of church history remember Ambrose as the great preacher who inspired Augustine. Having heard of his rhetorical skills, Augustine seeks him out. In fact, it was Augustine who prompted Ambrose’s famous line, When in Rome do as the Romans do. When Augustine wonders why the churches in Milan do not follow Rome in fasting on Saturday, Ambrose responds: “When I am at Rome, I fast on a Saturday; when I am at Milan, I do not. Follow the custom of the Church where you are.”

Augustine makes other personal references to Ambrose, including one that reminds moderns that reading silently to oneself was not always a common practice: “When he read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud.”

Augustine, insightful in sizing up emotions (as is evident in his Confessions), analyzed his mentor: “Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man, as the world counted happiness, because great personages held him in honor. Only his celibacy appeared to me a painful burden.”

Augustine: Saint for all Seasons

Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) is one of the giants of church history. In the fifteen-hundred-year span between the apostle Paul and Martin Luther, no one looms larger in the minds of most Protestants. With the possible exception of Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, his influence as a theologian is unparalleled. He was deeply entrenched in the theological debates of his day — debates that still invoke his name today. And his memoir, Confessions, is given a place in literature as the first recorded memoir. Augustine was an African, and it is fitting that this man of such great stature is still read and debated today, when the African church, having come full circle, is again a center of vibrancy and scholarship.

Much of what we know about Augustine from a personal perspective comes from his Confessions. But memoirs are, among other things, unreliable truth. He writes his story, as is often the case, long after the events have occurred. And like all memoirists, he presents a portrait of himself that offers lessons from a particular perspective. The theme moves from sin to salvation.

Augustine and his mother, Monica

As a sexually charged youth, Augustine finds himself in “the thorny branches of sex and temptation trapped … in a briar patch that grew over my head.” The reader might be surprised to read of this great saint lusting after naked street women in Carthage, “where a caldron of unholy loves was seething and bubbling around me.” And he places himself at the center: “I was looking for something to love, and … so I took joy with the body of my lover, and so polluted the spring of friendship with the slime of lust.” But if he struggled with sexual temptations after his garden conversion, he does not divulge that to the reader.

Before converting — or returning — to the Christian faith of his mother in which he had been reared, Augustine sows his wild oats for several years as an adherent of Manichaeism, a dualistic religion that reveres Jesus as well as Buddha and other prophets. As in Gnostic cults, in Manichaeism the spiritual realm is manifested in conflict between light and darkness — between spirit and body. There is no good God who reigns supreme or has the wherewithal to save sinners. Individuals are essentially on their own, seeking knowledge to save themselves. Reflecting back on these years, Augustine writes:

I still thought that it is not we who sin but some other nature that sins within us. It flattered my pride to think that I incurred no guilt and, when I did wrong, not to confess it…. The truth, of course, was that it was all my own self, and my own impiety had divided me against myself. My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner.

Manichaeism eventually proves to be intellectually unsatisfying for the teacher of rhetoric and budding scholar. He turns to skepticism for a time, and then his interest in philosophy brings him (in the form of Neo-Platonism) to the feet of Plato, whose reputation from the grave had grown with every succeeding century. Here is a philosophy of transcendence — a secular spirituality extolling truth, goodness, and beauty. This intellectual shift parallels a geographical move from Carthage to Rome, in part to escape his meddling mother. From Rome he moves to Milan, where his mother joins him and soon becomes enamored with Ambrose and influences her son to attend his sermons. All the while, Augustine is moving away from his Manichaeism and philosophical worldview toward orthodox Christianity. His “garden conversion” is the spiritual climax — and the most quoted scene — of his memoir. In his Confessions (a prayer to God), he writes:

I cast myself down, I know not how, under a fig-tree, giving full vent to my tears; and the floods of mine eyes gushed out, an acceptable sacrifice to Thee…. I spake much unto Thee: “And Thou, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord, wilt thou be angry, for ever?” … So was I speaking, and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo!, I heard from a neighboring house a voice, as of a boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and often repeating, “Take up, read; take up, read.” Instantly my countenance altered and I began to think most intently, whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words, nor could I remember ever to have heard the like.

AUGUSTINE, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, FICTION, PSYCHOLOGY

Then we reach Augustine, who tells us everything — his jealousies in infancy, his thieving as a boy, his stormy relationship with his overbearing mother (the ever-certain Monica), his years of philandering, his breakdowns, his shameful love for an unnamed peasant woman, whom he finally sends away. His self-loathing is as modern as that of a character in Camus or Beckett — and as concrete: “I carried inside me a cut and bleeding soul, and how to get rid of it I just didn’t know.”

No one had ever talked this way before. If we page quickly through world literature from its beginnings to the advent of Augustine, we realize that with Augustine human consciousness takes a quantum leap forward — and becomes self-consciousness. Here for the first time is a man consistently observing himself not as Man but as this singular man — Augustine. From this point on, true autobiography becomes possible, and so does its near relative, subjective and autobiographical fiction. Fiction had always been there, in the form of storytelling. But now for the first time there glimmers the possibility of psychological fiction: the subjective story, the story of a soul. Though the cry of Augustine — the Man Who Cried “I” — will seldom be heard again in full force until the early modern period, he is the father not only of autobiography but of the modern novel. He is also a distinguished forebear of the modern science of psychology.

Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization

Augustine takes this as a sign from God, remembering St. Anthony, who, when he heard the words of the gospel, gave away his wealth and followed the Lord. So he returns to his friend Alypius (who is with him in the garden) and reaches for a manuscript of Paul they had been reading. And there his eyes fall on these words: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in concupiscence” (Rom. 13:13 – 14).

“No further would I read, nor did I need to,” he writes, “for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light of serenity infused into my heart, all darkness of doubt fled away.” Biographers and historians have pointed out that this was a conversion to a celibate monastic life as much as a recommitment to the Christian faith of his heritage and that it had been some time in coming. Indeed, some historians have suggested that the garden story is little more than symbolic fiction that Augustine imagined when he wrote it down some ten years later.

Another aspect of this story that is frequently highlighted (and sometimes challenged) is the fatherly role played by Ambrose. Augustine’s life was supposedly turned around by listening to the powerful sermons of Ambrose, who convinced Augustine by pointing to the Jewish scriptures that prophesied of Christ. In reality, Augustine found Ambrose to be a first-rate orator; it was style, not content, that enthralled him. But when Augustine sought out the bishop of Milan, he found him unapproachable — consumed with other matters (administration and diplomacy).”He was unaware of my seethings at the pit of peril,” Augustine recalled. “I could not inquire of him what I wished, crowded out as I was from his hearing and speaking by a swarm of those with worldly needs, to whose demands he gave his attention.”

Still another key aspect of Augustine’s life is his relationship with his mother, Monica, and her influence on his conversion. In his Confessions he portrays himself as a young man seeking to escape an overbearing, meddling mother, nagging him about his wayward lifestyle and erroneous beliefs. He sails from Africa to Rome without informing her. From Rome he moves on to become a professor of rhetoric in Milan.

And, soon enough, Augustine’s mother will arrive on the scene [in Milan], creating, as she always does, emotional tornadoes and hurricanes — a sort of one-woman African Sturm und Drang.

Thomas Cahill

So why does Augustine come across as the adoring son when penning his Confessions? That he had come full circle in returning to the Christian faith of his childhood is a factor. Likewise, Monica has been dead for several years when he eulogizes her. His gratitude for her is offered in a prayer to God:

That faithful servant of yours, my mother, came to you in my behalf with more tears than most mothers shed at a child’s funeral. Her faith in you had made plain to her that I was spiritually dead. And you heard her, Lord…. You heard her and sent her a dream…. In her dream she saw herself standing on a kind of measuring rule or wooden yardstick, wailing and overcome with grief. A radiant young man approached her in a happy and laughing mood and asked her the reasons for all this protracted weeping…. She replied that she was mourning the ruin of my soul. He then admonished her and, in a reassuring way, ordered her to look more carefully and she would see that I was standing next to her on the same measuring rule…. When Mother told me about her dream, I tried to disparage it, saying I interpreted it to mean she shouldn’t give up hope, because one day she would be as I was. She, however, came back at me immediately, saying, “No, it was not told me ‘Where he is, there you will be,’ but rather, ‘Where you are, there he will be. ‘“ … Nearly nine years were to pass during which I sank deeper into the mire and false darkness…. And all the while this devout, gentle, modest widow … was heartened by this hope.

His mother’s dream comes true on Easter Sunday 387, when her favorite preacher Ambrose baptizes not only Augustine but also her grandson Adeodatus. Augustine leaves behind his teaching position to immerse himself in Scripture for the next few years. He then returns to Africa to live in his hometown of Tasgate as a monk with his books and his theological contemplations. But the locals have other ideas. They recognize his capabilities and elect him to be their priest. Then, in 395, only eight years after his baptism, he is elected bishop of Hippo. Unlike many bishops of the era, he seeks to retain a monastic way of life while preaching several times a week and writing more than a thousand treatises in addition to extensive correspondence. His letters are primarily biblical and theological in nature but rarely without a personal touch — sometimes scolding and caustic. In an introductory letter to Jerome in 394, he writes with graciousness and warmth:

Never was the face of any one more familiar to another, than the peaceful, happy, and truly noble diligence of your studies in the Lord has become to me. For although I long greatly to be acquainted with you, I feel that already my knowledge of you is deficient in respect of nothing but a very small part of you — namely, your personal appearance; and even as to this, I cannot deny that since my most blessed brother Alypius … has seen you, and has on his return been seen by me, it has been almost completely imprinted on my mind by his report of you; nay, I may say that before his return, when he saw you there, I was seeing you myself with his eyes.

At times, Augustine is seething with rage — particularly when he is dealing with Donatists. The Donatist sect arose in the aftermath of the Great Persecution of Emperor Diocletian in the early years of the fourth century, fifty years before Augustine was born. The issue that bound Donatists together more than any other was how one responds in the face of persecution. Imperial officials demanded that Christians hand over the Scriptures under penalty of death. Some handed over their precious manuscripts; others refused and paid the penalty. Still others voluntarily stepped forward, baiting the officials by brashly refusing to surrender the Scriptures they claim to have hidden. In the eyes of many, these martyrs were hero saints, while those who surrendered were traditors.

How then should a traditor be disciplined by the church? Is it enough for a priest to say “I’m sorry” and go back to work administering the sacraments? The Donatists regarded denial of the faith to be the ultimate crime against the church and against God. Such an individual was no longer even part of the church. Penance was not enough. Only rebaptism by a “pure” bishop could restore the one to the true church. What had begun as a serious matter of church discipline deteriorated quickly into a cult of martyrs and shrines and relics, with a violent streak that lead to intervention by Constantine and his successors. In the end, the Donatists were suppressed.

In defense of priests and bishops who had surrendered the Scriptures, Augustine argues that the sacrament is valid irrespective of the sinfulness of the priest who administers it. He is not the first to hold this position, but he develops what will become official Catholic doctrine. The grace of Christ, he argues, is operative in the sacrament; thus the worthiness of the priest is irrelevant. Conferring grace through the sacraments finds theological support with Augustine.

But differences with Donatists are not doctrinal only. In some cases they are personal and are based on hearsay as much as solid facts. In a letter to Eusebius in 396, Augustine begins by emphasizing that he is a man of peace and that he does not wish “that any one should against his will be coerced into the Catholic communion.” Rather, the truth should “so commend itself as to make them embrace and follow it.” Then he becomes very specific and emotional in reporting a story. Not only do the Donatists preach another gospel, but they also open their doors to the most vile individuals. Indeed, the facts of this case are so despicable that Augustine’s fury is almost palpable:

“What could be more worthy of detestation than what has just happened?” he demands. “A young man is reproved by his bishop for frequently beating his mother like a madman, and not restraining his impious hands from wounding her who bore him.” Augustine does not explain why the mother is not taken to a safe haven, but he reports that the man continues to “beat with incredible ferocity” and threatens to kill her. What does the man do next? He “then passes over to the Donatists, and is rebaptized while filled with wicked rage, and is arrayed in white vestments while he is burning to shed his mother’s blood. He is placed in a prominent and conspicuous position within the railing in the church; and … exhibited as a regenerate man.”

Augustine praises Eusebius “as a man of most mature judgment” and “wisdom” and then demands to know: “Can these things find favor in your eyes?” He reminds Eusebius in this open letter that there are two mothers involved in this case: “A [biological] mother is wounded by … the ungrateful wretch; and when the Church, his spiritual mother, interferes, she too is wounded in those sacraments by which, to the same ungrateful son, she ministered life and nourishment.” Augustine rails against anyone who could so violate the church. Indeed, it appears that his primary concern is for the second of these mothers, and it leaves the literary critic wondering if the first mother might be more metaphorical than real.

“Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.”

Augustine, Confessions

Countering heresies is a major focus of Augustine’s writing, and the Donatists rank high on his list. But whether censuring Manichaeism or philosophical rationalism or Donatism, he is above all defending his Mother Church. The one-time eclectic freethinker is now solidly in the camp of orthodox Christianity—the One True Church. That Donatists dare make the same claim is as repugnant as it is heretical. Although he has earlier insisted that no one should be coerced into professing the true faith, he later argues that civil authority has not only the right but also the obligation to force heretical sects such as the Donatists back into the church. Without such unity, both the church and civil government are vulnerable to barbarian attacks from the outside. Such reasoning is later cited in defense of the terrorist tactics of the Inquisition.

The first condition of happiness is that it be permanent. To love what can be lost is to live in fear. Freedom of fear, therefore, can be found only in the immutable possession of an unchanging object, and the only object independent of flux is God.

Augustine

Augustine’s most bitter theological controversies involve Pelagius, a devout and stout British monk, also born in 354, who catches the attention of both clerics and laity with his alluring emphasis on free will. Augustine’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty and election and human sinfulness is thought by some to be too deterministic. Pelagius, on the other hand, teaches that individuals are responsible for their sins, even as they are for their good deeds. That humans inherit original sin from Adam he deems patently false; whether one sins or not is a matter of self-control and choice, free will rather than determinism. Augustine counters that our sinful nature propels us to sin and that no one has the innate capability to do good.

Augustine’s philosophical background thwarts any temptation he might have to offer easy theological answers — at least for the biggest question: Who is God? He knows above all else that God is entangled with mystery. “Since it is God we are speaking of,” he cautions, “you do not understand it. If you could understand it, it would not be God.”

On more down-to-earth matters, he is less hesitant to play the mystery card. He is quick to point out the close connection between original sin and sex. In his correspondence with Julian of Eclanum, a spirited young married priest, he argues that original sin is passed from one generation to the next not only through seminal fluid but also through the very act of sex itself. Since the fall, he reasons, sexual intercourse is a sin because it is no longer rationally controlled as it was in the Garden of Eden. Julian baits him by insisting sex is good and that he and his wife enjoy the activity whenever they desire. Augustine is outraged by such iniquity. He lives in perilous times. Life is serious. There is no time for frivolous entertainment, surely not sexual intimacies. At least not in a manner that would bring pleasure.

Mary of Egypt: Sex Addict and Saint

Augustine’s Confessions is often regarded as the ultimate fourth-century tell-all tale. But his story pales in comparison to that of Mary of Egypt (344–421). Like many such confessions, hers may have been embellished with sleazy stories for the desired effect: a scoundrel saved from the garbage pails of sin. However, few Christians, contemporary or ancient, have a more spellbinding story of redemption than does Mary.

Her narrative was passed on to a desert pilgrim, Father Zosimas, though not written down until St. Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem put it in print some two centuries after her death. The story is best told in her own words as she relates it during a chance meeting in the desert with Zosimas. She is naked and seems to appear out of nowhere. After some introductory small talk and spiritual salutations, Zosimas asks Mary to reveal her circumstances, and she bares her soul:

I am ashamed…. But as you have already seen my naked body I shall likewise lay bare before you my work, so that you may know with what shame and obscenity my soul is filled…. Already during the lifetime of my parents, when I was twelve years old, I renounced their love and went to Alexandria…. For about seventeen years … I was like a fire of public debauchery…. Then one summer I saw a large crowd of Lybians and Egyptians running towards the sea. I asked one of them … “Will they take me with them if I wish to go?” [He said], “No one will hinder you if you have money to pay for the journey and for food.” And I said to him, “To tell you truth, I have no money, neither have I food. But I … have a body…. Seeing some young men standing on the shore, about ten or more of them, full of vigour and alert in their movements, I decided that they would do for my purpose…. I frequently forced those miserable youths even against their own will. There is no mentionable or unmentionable depravity of which I was not their teacher…. At last we arrived in Jerusalem. I spent the days before the festival in the town, living the same kind of life…. The holy day of the Exaltation of the Cross dawned while I was still flying about—hunting for youths. At daybreak I saw that everyone was hurrying to the church, so I ran with the rest. When the hour for the holy elevation approached, I was trying to make my way in with the crowd which was struggling to get through the church doors…. But when I trod on the doorstep which everyone passed, I was stopped by some force which prevented my entering….

Mary of Egypt with Father Zosimas

At this point Mary is stricken with remorse, and soon after she confesses her sin before an “icon of the most holy Mother of God.” After that she crosses the Jordan and retreats into the desert, living as a hermit for forty-seven years until she meets Zosimas and tells her story. After her story is over, they go their separate ways with the promise to meet each year so that she can take communion from him. On one such appointed meeting, he finds her dead. She is today celebrated as a saint in both the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

For the desert fathers and mothers, self-denial was the ultimate sign of holiness. They were sincerely striving for a deeper spiritual path. There is no doubt they truly loved God. Yet in the eyes of twenty-first century Christians, they are surely a strange lot. But how will we appear seventeen centuries hence?

What if….

What if Simon Stylites had never climbed atop a pillar? What if Mary of Egypt had not become a Christian and changed her errant ways? Have the stories of their lives made an impact on the Christian faith?

What if Jerome had not translated the Bible into the Latin Vulgate? That volume served the church for many centuries, and it is difficult to imagine the medieval — or Reformation — church without it.

What if Ambrose, innocently standing in the midst of a mass of people in a Milan sports arena, had walked away — and kept on walking — when the crowd started screaming his name for bishop?

What if his hiding place not been discovered, and he would not have been in a position to sway Augustine to follow in his footsteps?

What if Augustine had gone the way of the Manicheans and put his persuasive powers to work for that cultic movement? What if he had not become such an influential theologian and if Pelagius had prevailed instead? It is difficult to imagine the Reformation playing out as it did without the profound influence of Augustine. Luther, an Augustinian monk, drew heavily from him, as did Calvin and Knox and countless Puritans and others in the generations that followed.

4. Desert Fathers: Early Monastic Life and Writings

4. Desert Fathers: Early Monastic Life and Writings

CHAPTER 4

Desert Fathers

Early Monastic Life and Writings

PARADE OF HISTORY

Anthony of Egypt: First of the Desert Monks

FIGHTING DEMONS

EVERYDAY LIFE

Simon Stylites: Saint on the Pillar

Marcella and Women in Monasticism

THE STORY OF AN AGED ABBESS

Jerome: Monk, Scholar, and Bible Translator

Ambrose: Orator and Bishop

Augustine: Saint for all Seasons

AUGUSTINE, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, FICTION, PSYCHOLOGY

Mary of Egypt: Sex Addict and Saint

What if….

Further Reading