him, intercessory prayer on behalf of others is the highest form of prayer, as it requires a self that is completely devoid of its own needs, combined with immense compassion for humankind.
The precondition for a holy man’s spiritual authority, including his ability to approach God in prayer, was thus spiritual perfection, achieved with the help of ascetic efforts that turned his soul into the fertile ground where parrhēsia could take root and grow. The purpose of his intercessory prayer was often to propitiate God to remove the sin of others. Here, however, the holy man did often not remain passive but assisted in the process of bringing down divine forgiveness by offering to shoulder half the burden of the sin of others. This process of vicarious penance has been aptly termed “Bussübernahme” by Joseph Hörmann.111 The stories of accomplished abbas carrying the burden of others are so frequent that they might almost be considered an integral part of the process of spiritual guidance. We have already encountered the example of Barsanuphius, who offered to help his disciple Andrew by carrying half of his burdens. Other holy men offered to take the entire weight of the sin of others upon themselves. Four centuries before Barsanuphius, Clement of Alexandria in his What Rich Man Will Be Saved related what he called “a great example of sincere repentance and a great token of regeneration, a trophy of a resurrection that can be seen.” On a visit to an unidentified city, the apostle John “noticed a strongly built youth of refined appearance and ardent spirit” and entrusted him to the local bishop for upbringing and education. Not long after his baptism, the young man fell into bad company and eventually became the leader of a band of robbers. The bishop gave him up for dead. Not so John. As soon as he found out about the fate of the young man, he went to the robbers’ lair to seek him out in person. The young man reacted first with fear, then with shame and compunction when he heard John’s assuring words: “I myself will give account to Christ for you. If need be, I will willingly undergo your penalty of death, as the Lord did for us. I will give my own life in payment for yours.” The young robber was moved to tears, threw away his weapons, embraced John, and was “baptized a second time through his tears.” John assisted his renewed conversion with his prayers and through continual fasting, as well as with soothing words of counsel.112 The penitential fasting of John, combined with his willingness to shoulder the burden of the sins of the young man under his tutelage, here has the effect of bringing about a second baptism through tears of compunction. The final embrace of John and the repentant robber points to a special ritual gesture that in later centuries was sometimes said to accompany the reconciliation of sinners with their spiritual fathers: the holy man took the hands of the penitent and guided them to his own neck, then embraced the neck of the penitent in his turn.113 In the early seventh century, John Klimax told a similar story of a monk who had been so afflicted by the sin of pride that he wrote his confession down and gave it to his spiritual father, while lying prostrate on the ground. The father then asked the monk to put his hand on his neck and explained: “This sin shall be on my neck, brother.”114
An equally touching story was told of Mary, who had been brought up in seclusion by her uncle Abraham of Qidun, a Syrian ascetic who lived in the fifth century. She yielded to temptation once, then ran away and became a prostitute. Abraham, assuming the disguise of a soldier, went to seek her out at the tavern she now called home. He played along in his role until they were alone in her bedroom. Then, removing his disguise, he pleaded with her to return with him: ‘Won’t you speak to me, my daughter? . . . Wasn’t it for your sake that I have come here? The sin shall be upon me, and I will answer on your behalf to God on the day of judgment. I will be the one who does penance for this sin.” Mary finally relented, softened by Abraham’s compassion. She declared her complete dependence on him as a negotiator with God on her behalf: “If you are certain that I can repent, and that God will receive me, then I come and fall at your feet, supplicating your venerable person; I kiss your holy feet because your compassion stirred you to come after me in order to raise me up from this foul abyss of mine.”115 For a murderer like the robber in Clement’s story, or for an adulteress like Mary, it took the promises of a holy man to pay the debt for their sin, coupled with a dramatic gesture of compassion, to convince them that God’s forgiveness was available to the penitent.
The vicarious penance and the prayers performed by the holy men, whose ascetic authority enhanced and solidified their spiritual authority, had the effect of reconciling sinners with God and their neighbors. Martyrs were able to accomplish the same by virtue of their spiritual authority alone, as we shall see next.
The Role of the Martyrs
Christian martyrdom was often conceived of as a second baptism, a “baptism of blood” that washes away sins.116 This concept would later also be applied to monastic tonsure, as has been noted above. Martyrdom was also a form of participation in the history of salvation, in that the martyr imitated and relived in his or her own body the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. The spiritual benefits that were generated by this experience were myriad. During the period prior to their execution, when the future Christian martyrs were undergoing judicial trials, tortures, and imprisonment, they became the center of attention of their fellow Christians. Members of the community and the clergy paid them frequent visits, attended to their needs, and joined with them in the celebration of the liturgy or in prayer. The imprisoned martyrs were surrounded by an almost palpable aura of holiness. They were rendered oblivious to the pain that was inflicted on their bodies, and received premonitory visions of their imminent ascent to paradise—expressions of divine pleasure and assurance of divine assistance with their ordeal. The true focus of the martyrdom stories, however, was on the benefits that the future martyrs could bestow on their fellow Christians. It was especially the martyrs’ ability to pray effectively on behalf of others that was highlighted. Their intercessory powers appeared to increase in the measure of their anticipated suffering. Once the martyrdom was consummated in death, the martyrs were regarded as powerful intercessors in heaven, and their tombs became the locus of a cult. Even the confessores (homologetai) who had been preparing themselves for a martyr’s death, but whose lives were spared, were held in special regard. Several confessors of the Great Persecution of Diocletian, for example, became bishops and later attended the Council of Nicaea. One of them was Paphnutius from Egypt (not identical with the spiritual father mentioned earlier), who had lost an eye in the persecution. The emperor Constantine demonstrated his reverence for Paphnutius’s ordeal by kissing the scar on his face.117
Martyrs and Prayer
The idea of martyrdom as bestowing a special ability for intercessory prayer was particularly prevalent in the Christian communities in Gaul, North Africa, and Egypt in the second and third centuries.118 The imprisoned martyrs assumed an active role in dispensing their prayers liberally for the benefit of others. The Letter from the Church at Vienne and Lyon, preserved in Eusebius’s Church History, reports the local martyrdom of Christian men and women in the year 177, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The Letter devotes much space to the praise of the imprisoned martyrs for their selflessness and brotherly love, noting especially their readiness to forgive even their torturers, and their prayers on behalf of others: “They defended all and accused none; they loosed all and bound none; they prayed for those who treated them so cruelly, as did Stephen, the fulfilled martyr.”119 The prayers of these Gallic martyrs were general and generous; they included “all,” even their adversaries, and refrained from specifying an intention.
The prayers of the imprisoned martyrs in third-century North Africa, by contrast, were explicit in their intent and direction. In 203, in the amphitheater of Carthage, there took place the public execution of Perpetua, a young nursing mother, and her servant Felicity, who had given birth to a daughter in prison. Perpetua’s imprisonment, trial, and execution must have caused quite a stir in Carthage, for her father was a prominent man. Not only that, he and most of her relatives were pagans. Perpetua recorded her experiences in a diary, which was completed after her death by another author and now constitutes one of the most interesting and touching documents of the self-fashioning of martyrs in the Roman Empire. As is perhaps not surprising, Perpetua was very alert to her own spiritual growth during
