that these people offer prayers on behalf of each other. It is not only the holy man who prays for his followers, but his correspondents also offer up prayers for him. Still, they readily acknowledge and anticipate that the holy man’s prayers are more efficacious than theirs in bringing forth miraculous relief of all kinds of ills and ailments. In their view, there is a direct connection between the personal conduct, possession of virtues, and ascetic lifestyle of their “father” and the efficacy of his intercession, echoing the connection made by Clement, Origen, and others between spiritual gifts and ascetic living.
There are four clusters of such correspondence of living holy men from late antique Egypt, and an additional one from sixth-century Palestine.40 The Egyptian letters are documentary in character in that they are autographs, written by the authors on papyrus or pottery shards; the correspondence from Palestine has been subject to minimal editorial revision and was circulated in manuscript form. The earliest holy man to have engaged in such correspondence was Paphnutius, who lived in the mid-fourth century. Eight letters addressed to him survive. Most of his correspondents asked for Paphnutius’s prayers, sometimes offering their own prayers on his behalf,41 always using the standard formulae that are the staple of late antique epistolography.42 Some asked with a specific intention, hoping to obtain divine favor in illness or other tribulation through Paphnutius’s intercession.43 The establishment of personal relations and the exchange of prayers are to be expected in the context of spiritual guidance in the monastic milieu. Paphnutius’s correspondents, however, were not monastic apprentices, but pious people who lived in the world, such as the woman Valeria, the prefect of Augustamnica Ausonius, and perhaps even the patriarch of Alexandria.44 Equally surprising is that some of the prayer requests asked for Paphnutius’s intercession not for a particularly concrete benefit, but on behalf of the sins of his correspondents. Ammonius, for instance, wrote: “I always know that by your holy prayers I shall be saved from every temptation of the Devil and from every contrivance of men, and now I beg you to remember me in your holy prayers; for after God you are my salvation.”45
The boundless confidence of Paphnutius’s correspondents in the efficacy of his prayers was expressed by a certain Athanasius, who may be identical with the patriarch of Alexandria of the same name: “For the prayers which you offer are taken on high owing to your holy love, and according as you ask in your holy prayers so will our state prosper.”46 This mention of Paphnutius’s “holy love” indicates that, in the perception of his correspondents, the efficacy of his prayers was directly linked to his spiritual state. In the words of Justinus, another of Paphnutius’s correspondents: “For we believe that your citizenship is in heaven, and therefore we regard you as our master and common patron.”47 Valeria declared: “I trust by your prayers to obtain healing, for by ascetics and devotees revelations are manifested.”48 She addressed Paphnutius as christophoros, Christ-bearer, a designation that—as has been noted above—was often used for ascetics and holy men who through their life and conduct had acquired certain gifts of the Spirit. Another correspondent was confident that he could depend upon Paphnutius “by reason of your most glorious and most revered way of life, since you renounced the boasting of the world and abhorred the arrogance of the vainglorious . . . because God in abundant measure, it seems, granted you favour to find a fitting and salutary renunciation accordant with the times.”49 The letters addressed to Paphnutius thus show us with a concreteness and immediacy that is often lacking in the polished literary products of this period that there was a shared conviction about the dependence of efficacious intercessory prayer on personal conduct. Paphnutius’s correspondents confirm from a grass-roots perspective what the theologians discussed in the previous section had formulated in the abstract: that an elevated spiritual state is both a gift from God and a reward for ascetic efforts.
This nexus between intercessory abilities and asceticism is also evident in the letters addressed to other holy men: Nepheros, a holy man who lived in the mid-fourth century in the Herakleopolite nome of Egypt,50 received a letter from one of his numerous correspondents saying that because Nepheros was “just,” his prayers would be heard by God.51 More telling is the correspondence of the hermit John in the region of Hermopolis.52 One of the three letters addressed to him is a request for prayers on behalf of the author and his whole household. The author called John a “man of God” and expressed his hope that just as John’s prayers had relieved him in the past of a great “burden,” they would continue to do so in the future.53 It has been suggested that the “burden” may have been an onerous labor or an illness, 54 but it may also, in my view, refer to the burden of sins that weighed on the conscience of John’s correspondent. Those who had spiritual authority were often expected to intercede specifically for sinners, as the next chapter will show.
The most ample documentation for the concrete worries and prayer needs of a large group of followers is offered by the several hundred papyri and ostraca of limestone and pottery, dating from the turn of the seventh century, which were found at the monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes. Epiphanius was only one of several holy men to whom letters and prayer requests were addressed, albeit the most prominent one. Often, the letter writers specified their concerns. They either asked the “fathers” for help from the torment of their sins55 or they hoped to obtain more concrete benefits, such as the restoration of health in sickness.56 The men and women who approached Epiphanius and his fellow ascetics were emphatic and explicit in their belief that these men were holy and possessed the power of intercession. They were convinced that the exemplary ascetic lifestyle of these holy men assured their prayers being heard by God. Acknowledging these men’s privileged connection to the divine, they often praised them for having perfected all virtues57 and addressed them as christophoroi.58 It was only through the mediation and intercession of these holy men that the letter writers hoped for access to God. The extent to which the supplicants depended on the holy men is expressed in terms such as these: “I have set my heart upon thy fatherhood next after God” or “I have no helper beside God and thee.”59
The Egyptian papyri and ostraca support three important points. First, living holy men of the fourth century were considered “bearers of Christ,” thus continuing to make manifest in a tangible way the tradition regarding christophoroi and pneumatophoroi that Clement and Origen had expounded in the preceding centuries in more abstract terms. Second, in the eyes of the petitioners who address the holy men there is a direct dependence between personal conduct, specifically an ascetic lifestyle, and the efficaciousness of intercessory prayer. Third, the prayers of these holy men are sought for spiritual tribulations, especially the burden of sins, in addition to physical ailments and similar such concerns.
The need for spiritual assurance continues to be a concern even as we move on in time. It is also very pronounced in the correspondence of Barsanuphius and John, two holy men who lived near Gaza on the coast of Palestine, during the first two decades of the sixth century. The corpus of their correspondence consists of 850 letters that they dictated in response to the queries and requests addressed to them.60 These letters were subjected to some editorial touch-ups before being circulated in manuscript form. They thus lack the direct immediacy of the papyri and ostraca from Egypt, but their documentary character is still significantly greater than that of the literary hagiographical production of the same period. The correspondents of Barsanuphius and John represented a cross section of society: pious laypeople, philosophy professors, and military leaders, as well as priests, bishops, and monks. Besides concrete concerns such as how best to deal with an infestation of grasshoppers61 or whether it is appropriate to share one’s winepress with a Jewish neighbor,62 many of the correspondents asked for guidance in spiritual matters. The Letters of Barsanuphius and John highlight how spiritual guidance is connected with personal holiness, and they clarify a further aspect that is of great importance for the present investigation: the holy men’s ability to “bear the burden” of others.
The forty-nine letters that Barsanuphius wrote to his disciple John of Beersheba show his full awareness of his personal responsibilities as a spiritual adviser.63 Especially striking is his willingness to lend support to
