of the philosopher who acted as a teacher and guide for his disciples, as Pierre Hadot has so beautifully shown.83 The spiritual guide acted like the pneumatophoroi who were discussed earlier. He was able to offer guidance to others because he had attained certain spiritual qualities: the discernment between good and evil thoughts in himself and in others, the gift of immediate recognition of the causes of a troubled soul, and the ability to gauge accurately the degree to which a young disciple needed to be challenged to stimulate his growth, without the risk of breaking him.84 In the context of eremitic monasticism, the spiritual father was the person to whom the disciple bared his soul and made full confession of his sins and of the thoughts that troubled him, in order to receive words of encouragement and concrete advice on the most effective way to ameliorate his current tribulation. The ultimate aim of the intervention of the spiritual father was to facilitate the reconciliation of the disciple with God, so that the the disciple could attain a state of spiritual tranquility. It was often the prayers of the spiritual father that assisted the disciple in this process. Barsanuphius, who, as we have seen, was willing to shoulder the burdens of his disciples, acted in such a way through his promises to his disciples.
In the communal monastic setting of the coenobia the reconciliation of the younger monk who had strayed from the path to perfection and had committed a sin was directed not only toward God, but also toward the community. The individual who had separated himself from the community through his impious actions and his impure thoughts was assisted by his spiritual father in the monastery in making amends for his misdeeds, often by undergoing some kind of punishment. This kind of discipline was commonly practiced already in the Pachomian monasteries and was also advocated by Basil of Caesarea for his monastic foundation. The Byzantine monastic tradition has continued to value such spiritual guidance and kept it separate from administrative responsibility. The former was entrusted to one or several Old Men or spiritual fathers; the latter was the task of the abbot. The spiritual father performed in the monastic context, whether eremitic or coenobitic, the same function as the priest or bishop in his congregation: he heard confession, prayed for the sinner, and imposed penance. In this manner, he facilitated the renewed access of the individual to God, and brokered his readmission into the community of his brothers.
Monasticism as a State of Penance
Penance and prayer were essential components of the monastic life. These aspects of the monastic life have not been sufficiently explored in scholarship, obscured as they have been by an emphasis on the Christian continuation of pagan and Jewish asceticism that is perhaps most obvious in the voluntary abstinence from food, sex, and sleep.85 But a closer look at the penitential practices of the Christian church in the first centuries shows remarkable similarities with what are usually thought of as ascetic practices of the monks. In his treatise On Penance, written in 203/204, about seven years after his baptism, Tertullian explained the meaning of the Greek word exomologēsis, which encompasses aspects of confession, public declarations of regret and repentance, and propitiation of the community and the clergy, all in the hope of attracting the mercy of God’s forgiveness:
And thus exomologesis is a discipline for man’s prostration and humiliation, enjoining a demeanor calculated to move mercy. With regard also to the very dress and food, it commands (the penitent) to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover his body in mourning, to lay his spirit low in sorrows, to exchange for severe treatment the sins which he has committed; moreover, to know no food and drink but such as is plain, not for the stomach’s sake, to wit, but the soul’s; for the most part, however, to feed prayers on fastings, to groan, to weep and make outcries unto the Lord your God; to bow before the feet of the presbyters, and kneel to God’s dear ones; to enjoin on all the brethren to be ambassadors to bear his deprecatory supplication (before God).86
Tertullian was the first author to lay out in such detail the actions expected of the penitent. For the purposes of this study, it is irrelevant whether each and every one of the practices he described were particular to the church of Carthage or whether they were more widespread. The most prominent acts he enumerates continue to be mentioned in the context of penance throughout our period and beyond: fasting, the wearing of sackcloth, weeping, and confession. In addition to the practices that literally reshaped the outward appearance of the penitent sinner, it was often also advised that he or she engage in the giving of alms, an activity that contributed to the wellbeing of the symbolical “body of Christ” as represented by his church. Origen indicates seven different ways that are open to Christians for the remission of sins. In descending order, these are baptism, martyrdom, almsgiving, forgiveness of the sins of one’s neighbor, assisting a sinner in mending his ways, abundance of charity, and finally penance through the shedding of abundant tears and confession to a priest.87 These penitential practices were recommended for the sinners in the churches of the cities and towns of the Roman Empire. But is it important to note that they were also part of the daily routine of the monks who lived in the seclusion of a monastery and especially of those who had withdrawn to the solitude of the desert. Penitential asceticism was a spiritual necessity for the individual who felt the burden of his sinfulness, but its effects could radiate beyond its practitioner. The Bohairic Life of Pachomius, which celebrates the foundation of communal monasticism by Pachomius and his disciples, made this point very eloquently, showing that the founder’s penitential practices of fasting and prayer, even if they were performed behind monastery walls, were directed toward the benefit of others: Hearing reports of a famine and an epidemic, Pachomius fasted and prayed for the duration of the crisis, and then took the additional preventive measure of praying for the swelling of the Nile to assure an ample harvest. This passage is followed by a very extensive description of how “when he [Pachomius] prayed he would pray for the whole world in kind,” asking God for the needs of monks, married people, sinners, pagans and heretics, rulers, and the clergy.88 We will have occasion further below to observe such all-embracing generosity in prayer for the whole world on the part of other holy men and also of martyrs.
The practice of Christian asceticism in our period is loaded with admissions of sinfulness and the need for repentance. In the words of one of the desert fathers, Abba Matoes, “The nearer a man draws to God, the more he sees himself a sinner.”89 This is not limited to the prominent practitioners of the holy life with their spectacular feats of physical endurance. The penitential intention behind ascetic practices was evident in communal as much as in eremitic monasticism. By the mid-fourth century, repentance (metanoia) had been integrated into the annual liturgical cycle of monastic communities in Middle Egypt, where, as Tim Vivian has recently shown, the monks gathered every year for a day of ritual prostrations and prayer.90 At the end of the fourth century, the newly founded Pachomian monastery at Canopus near Alexandria was given the name Metanoia. The name was intended to invoke the association of purification with repentance, for the monastery was built directly above a former pagan site.91 Still in the early seventh century, John Climacus noted the existence of a monastery on the Sinai especially for the penitent. These were not necessarily men with a heavy conscience or even a criminal record, such as Moses the Robber, one of the more colorful figures in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, but monks who had made repentance for their sinful state their personal vocation.92 Farther away, in the Tur Abdin area of Mesopotamia during the fifth and sixth centuries, “the mourners” developed their own kind of asceticism with an emphasis on personal penitence.
The outward appearance of the desert hermits as the result of their asceticism—the parched and emaciated body, the long and matted hair, the ragged cloak, the piercing eyes—was the externally visible affirmation of their internal self-consciousness as penitent sinners. In addition to fasting, vigils, meditation, and prayer, it was the gift of tears, the ability to weep over the sins of oneself and of others, that was especially valued. A fantastic story was told about Irene of Chrysobalanton, an aristocratic nun in tenth-century Constantinople: her flow of tears reached such torrential proportions that a basin had to be installed next to her seat in the church to collect the precious liquid.93 Irene’s story serves to underline the continued importance of compunction (penthos) in the spiritual life of the Greek East from late antiquity through the Byzantine
