The Making of Monastic Demonology - Three Ascetic Teachers On Withdrawal and Resistance PDF

TheMakingof Monastic Demonology:
ThreeAscetic Teacherson Withdrawal

and Resistance
DAVID
BRAKKE
Although in recent years fourth- and fifth-century Egyptian monasticism has received much scholarly attention of increasing methodological and theoretical sophistication, conflict with demons, a primary metaphor for the ascetic life in the literature of the period, has
been left relatively unexplored.1 One reason for this lack of attention
is a shift in the intellectual paradigms through which scholars approach ascetic literature:as they have moved from psychological and
theological models to social and performative ones in interpreting
ascetic theory and practice, seemingly subjective or theological
themes such as demonological theory have given way to more culEarlier versions of this paper were read at the American Society of Church History (ASCH)
Winter Meeting (Chicago, January 2000) and at the Princeton University Seminar on Late
Antiquity (February 2000). I am grateful to the organizers of those sessions, Elizabeth A.
Clark (ASCH) and Jaclyn L. Maxwell and Peter Brown (Princeton), and to the participants,
especially Teresa Shaw, Virginia Burrus, Sarah Iles Johnston, and Peter Struck, for their
questions, criticisms, and suggestions. For comments on the written version, thanks go to
Bert Harrill and to the anonymous readers for this journal. Research for this paper was
supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
American Council of Learned Societies.
1. Some of the most significant recent works on early Egyptian monasticism are Philip
Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jeromeand Cassian (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1978); idem, Pachomius:TheMaking of a Communityin Fourth-CenturyEgypt,
Transformations of the Classical Heritage 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1985); Samuel Rubenson, The Lettersof St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint,
Studies in Antiquity and Christianity (1990; reprint, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995);
Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in
Early ChristianMonasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Graham Gould,
The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1993); Susanna Elm, "Virgins of God": The Making of Asceticism in Late
Antiquity, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 226-372; and the
essays of James E. Goehring, now collected in his Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies
in Early Egyptian Monasticism, Studies in Antiquity & Christianity (Harrisburg, Penn.:
Trinity Press International, 1999). For a measure of the neglect of demons, see the
sparse entry "demons" in the index to Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis,
eds., Asceticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), admittedly focused not on
early Christianity alone.
David Brakkeis an associateprofessorof religiousstudies at IndianaUniversity.

@ 2001,The AmericanSociety of ChurchHistory
ChurchHistory70:1(March2001)
19
20
CHURCHHISTORY
tural topics, such as constructions of the body and formations of

ascetic institutions and practices, with their accompanying politics.2
But the neglect of demons is a function also of the weighty influence
exercised by two fourth-century demonologists, Athanasius of Alexandria and Evagrius of Pontus, and of the powerful modern explications of monastic demonology based on these important sources.3
Together the Life of Antony and the works of Evagrius construct, it
seems, the monastic demonology, upon which later sources only
elaborate.4
There is some truth in this view, for Athanasius and Evagrius both
epitomized views that were widespread among monks of their contexts and provided paradigms for later monastic authors, such as John
Cassian and John Climacus. Still, recent scholarship has warned
against allowing especially the Lifeof Antony to determine our understanding of the nature and development of ascetic and monastic
movements in fourth-century Egypt: in comparison to what Athanasius presents, many of the early monks, including Antony himself,
were better educated and less rustic, more urban and less solitary,
more diverse in their lifestyles and less naive in their philosophical
outlooks.5 Likewise, the best of more recent studies of monastic demonology have, so to speak, made an end-run around Athanasius and
Evagrius to examine other sources, sometimes from more social and
cultural perspectives.6 Such is the strategy of this essay, which examines the construction of monastic demonology in three sets of writings
whose authors most likely developed their views of demons apart
from that of the Life of Antony: the letters or treatises attributed to
Antony the Great, his disciple Ammonas, and Paul of Tamma.
All of these sources come from monastic teachers, the quality and
longevity of whose ascetic discipline had made them authoritative
2. The changing scholarly approaches are well surveyed by Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading
Renunciation:Asceticism and Scripturein Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 14-38.
3. The classic exposition is the section on "la plus ancienne litt6rature monastique" by
Antoine and Claire Guillaumont, in "D6mon," Dictionnaire de spiritualite ascetique et
mystique: doctrine et histoire 3 (1957): 189-212.
4. So the Guillaumonts state that the demonology of Athanasius, Evagrius, and Cassian
"devient la demonologie classique du desert" ("Demon," 210).
5. See esp. Rubenson, Letters of St. Antony and Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert.
Not everyone is convinced: see Graham Gould, "Recent Work on Monastic Origins: A
Consideration of the Questions Raised By Samuel Rubenson's The Letters of Antony,"
Studia Patristica 25 (1993): 405-16.
6. Rousseau, Pachomius, 134-41; Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 81-101; Richard Valantasis, "Daemons and the
Perfecting of the Monk's Body: Monastic Anthropology, Daemonology, and Asceticism," Semeia 58 (1992): 47-79.
MAKINGOF MONASTICDEMONOLOGY
21
figures and whose literary works are addressed to disciples. Stylistically, these writings are closely related to the tradition of wisdom
literature, rooted both in such biblical books as Proverbs and Sirach
Aland in such Egyptian texts as the Instructionsof Ankhsheshonqy.7
ready Alexandrian Christians had adapted this genre for the presentation of theological and ascetic teaching in the Teachingsof Silvanus,
AuthoritativeTeaching,and other works. The literary features of wisdom-addresses to the reader(s) as "son" or "children," exhortations
to understand and to know, short declarative statements without
extensive justification, frequent use of the connective "for" (y
6p)indicate its basis in or its attempt to emulate the interaction between
teacher and student.8 Making use of this genre, monks such as
Antony, Paul, and Ammonas represented a new incarnation of antiquity's venerable figure of the spiritual guide.9 In the cities of the
Roman empire, ad hoc study circles formed and disbanded around
charismatic philosopher-teachers of a variety of philosophical and
religious stripes.1oIn Christian Egypt such figures included Clement
of Alexandria, Valentinus, Origen, and Arius. While it may once have
been possible to consider monks of Middle and Upper Egypt such as
Antony to be clearly distinct from such Alexandrian intellectuals, it is
so no longer. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices, the newly
described presence of Hermetic circles in upper Egyptian cities,11and
7. On the wisdom style of Antony's letters, see Rubenson, Letters,49; of Paul's writings,
see Tim Vivian, "Saint Paul of Tamma on the Monastic Cell (de Cella)," Hallel 23 (1998):
86-107, at 89.
8. William R. Schoedel, "Jewish Wisdom and the Formation of the Christian Ascetic," in
Aspects of Wisdom in Judaismand Early Christianity, ed. Robert L. Wilken (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 169-99. See Pierre Hadot's discussion of
the relation between the literary forms of ancient philosophical works and the oral
context of teaching in "Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,"
in his Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercisesfrom Socrates to Foucault (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1995), 49-70, at 61-64.
9. Hadot, "Ancient Spiritual Exercises and 'Christian Philosophy,' " in his Philosophyas a
Way of Life, 126-44; see Richard Valantasis, Spiritual Guides of the Third Century: A
Semiotic Study of the Guide-DiscipleRelationshipin Christianity, Neoplatonism,Hermetism,
and Gnosticism, Harvard Dissertations in Religion 27 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991);
Michel Foucault, "Sexuality and Power," in his Religion and Culture (New York:
Routledge, 1999), 115-30, at 125.
10. From among a substantial body of literature, see esp. Hans von Campenhausen,
Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries
(London: Black, 1969), 194-212; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and
Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Lectures on the History of Religions 13 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 103-108; Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes:
A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (1986; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 186-95.
11. Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 168-76.
22
CHURCHHISTORY
the re-evaluation of an ascetic teacher like Hieracas of Leontopolis,12

among other scholarly developments, have enabled scholars to imagine identities for early monks more sophisticated than "simple
Copts."
Likewise, while it may seem instinctually right to attribute the
monastic interest in demons to the lower sophistication and pagan
backgrounds of many Egyptian monks ("folklore"), demonologythat is, sustained theoretical reflection on the nature and activities of
demons-was an intellectual endeavor that engaged the interests of
precisely the philosophers who functioned as spiritual guides in
antiquity's elite academic milieu. Within the Egyptian tradition, Origen and the Valentinians most extensively developed understandings
of how demons challenged the person attempting to make spiritual
progress. Antony, Ammonas, and Paul constructed their monastic
demonologies by adapting these earlier views on the demonic role in
philosophical self-cultivation to the new monastic projects of the
fourth century. Their differing theories of demons reveal the diversity
of ends for which such "ambiguous and anomalous" beings could be
employed.13 In Antony's teaching, elements of Origenist and Valentinian thought are most apparent as demons emerge as principles of
differentiation resistant to the ascetic's return to an original unity of
"spiritual essence." In the Lettersof Ammonas, we are able to observe
a monastic teacher creating a demonology that responds to crises in
the spiritual development of his disciples and that justifies one form
of the monastic life as superior to others. Stressing the need for
complete isolation in one's cell, Paul of Tamma considers demons to
have been rendered weak by the power of God; human beings represent a far greater danger to the monk's virtue. Despite these differences, all three authors articulated their demonologies out of an
inherited set of traditions to address a new series of tensions created
by monastic withdrawal: unity vs. difference, solitude vs. community,
desert vs. city. Resistance to virtue became increasingly located in the
existence and influence of the multitude of other people and the
means of overcoming such resistance, in the focused instruction of the
single ascetic teacher. Withdrawal created its own momentum, however, which could at its extreme leave demons powerless and even the
monastic guide dangerous.
12. James E. Goehring, "Hieracas of Leontopolis: The Making of a Desert Ascetic," in his
Ascetics, Society, and the Desert, 110-33.
13. The quoted phrase is from Brown, Making of Late Antiquity, 20.
MAKING OF MONASTIC DEMONOLOGY
23
I. ANTONY: PRINCIPLES OF DIFFERENCE
Scholars had long suspected that the portrayal of Antony the Great
in Athanasius's Life of Antony may not present a completely reliable
portrait of the famous monk since its shape clearly reflected Athanasius's own theology as well as commonplaces in the literary lives of
pagan sages. Although the letters attributed to Antony were available
in Latin translations, scholars did not turn to them for more trustworthy information about him, but to the sayings traditions (apophthegmata);14the authenticity of the letters seemed dubious, and their
transmission in several different languages is complex and disordered.15 In 1990, however, Samuel Rubenson published his thorough
study of the letters and made a compelling case for their authenticity.
His work contributed substantially to the new perspectives on early
Egyptian monasticism that I described above. Rather than Athanasius's simple, uneducated Copt (a picture undermined even within
the Life itself), Antony has emerged as a thoughtful, philosopically
inclined ascetic, whose teaching emphasizes the transformative nature of "knowledge" (gnosis) of self and God.
In its basic elements Antony's demonology is indebted to that of
Origen.16 All created beings, including angels, heavenly bodies, human beings, and demons, originated in a lost unity, from which they
fell due to their "evil conduct." Antony speaks of the resulting diversity of creatures in terms of the "names" that God assigned to themarchangel, principality, demon, and the like-based on the quality of
their conduct, and thus Antony echoes Origen's discussion of such
names in Book I of First Principles."7The devil and his demons, "since
their part is in the hell to come," plot against human beings: "they
want us to be lost with them."18Their means of attack are diverse, and
thus monks require "a heart of knowledge and a spirit of discern14. Hermann Dorries, "Die Vita Antonii als Geschichtsquelle" (1949), reprint in his Wort
und Stunde, 3 vols. (G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966-70), 1: 145-244.
15. Only fragments of Antony's original Coptic survive; otherwise, there are multiple
versions, of which the Georgian and Latin are most important (Rubenson, Letters,
15-34). I am dependent, therefore, on Rubenson's translation, which is based on
comparison of the several versions, although at times I have preferred the older
translation by Derwas Chitty, The Letters of St. Antony (Fairacres, U.K.: SLG, 1974).
16. Rubenson, Letters, 64-68, 86-88.
17. Antony, epp. 5.40-42; 6.57-62 (Rubenson, Letters, 215, 220); see Origen, Princ. 1.5.2-3
(Sources Chretiennes [SC] 252:176-82).
18. Antony, ep. 6.19-20 (Rubenson, Letters, 217). Rubenson takes the reference to "hell"
and "perdition" here to indicate that, unlike Origen, Antony does not believe that the
demons can be restored to unity with God (Letters, 87). But it is doubtful that this
passage alone can support such a conclusion since even Origen can speak of the devil
and the demons being condemned to hell (see Jeffrey Burton Russell, Satan: The Early
Christian Tradition [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981], 143, with refs.).
24
CHURCHHISTORY
ment" to recognize their "secret evils."19 In particular, the monk must

discriminate among three kinds of bodily movements: those that are
natural to the body, those caused by the monk's own negligence in
food and drink, and those caused by demons.20 The mind or soul that
fails to attend to the teachings of the Spirit of God becomes disordered, allows the demons to stir up movements within the body, and
serves as "a guide to the evil spirits working in its members." Still,
even this condition will bring the monk to weariness and despair, to
reliance on God's help, and thus to conversion and healing.21 The
demons themselves are invisible, but a monk's capitulation to their
suggestions renders them visible on the monk's person: "And if you
seek, you will not find their sins and iniquities revealed bodily, for
they are not visible bodily. But you should know that we are their
bodies, and that our soul receives their wickedness; and when it has
received them, then it reveals them through the body in which we
dwell."22 Demons are "all hidden, and we reveal them by our
deeds."23
Antony's demons operate as products, agents, and symbols of
diversity and separation as opposed to uniformity and unity; thus,
like all fallen creatures, they have names. Demons are "all from one in
their spiritual essence; but through their flight from God great diversity has arisen between them since their deeds are varying. Therefore
all these names have been imposed on them after the deeds of each
one."24 There is, then, something deceptive and unreal about names,
"all" of which have been "given" to creatures, "whether male or
female, for the sake of the variety of their deeds and in conformity
with their own minds, but they are all from one."25Onomastic diversity belies essential unity. Although the basis of this teaching on
names derives from Origen, Antony's pervasive reflection on names
as secondary and as masking the origination of all spiritual beings in
a unity owes as much to the Valentinian tradition as to Origen.
Speculation about the power and mystery of divine names was
characteristic of Alexandrian and Egyptian Christianity from their
origins.26 Such speculation was part of a wider philosophical and
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
Antony, ep. 6.27-29, 49 (Rubenson, Letters, 218-19).

Antony, ep. 1.35-41 (Rubenson, Letters, 199).
Antony, ep. 1.42-45, 72 (Rubenson, Letters, 200, 202).
Antony, ep. 6.55 (Rubenson, Letters, 220).
Antony, ep. 6.56-57 (Rubenson, Letters, 220, alt.).
Antony, ep. 6.62 (Rubenson, Letters, 220, alt.).
Colin H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt, Schweich
Lectures of the British Academy 1977 (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), 26-48.
25
religious conversation about names that addressed epistemology, language, and the effectiveness of magic.27 The Christian apologist
Theophilus of Antioch adopted the theory that names reveal accurately the natures of their referents in his attempt to create a history of
culture that would legitimate Christian claims to truth.28In Egypt,
however, Valentinus and his followers articulated a more ambivalent
view of names as they extended Alexandrian name-mysticism into
reflection on how both ordinary and sacred names do and do not
evoke the presence and identity of the beings they purport to identify.29 Valentinus used the concept of naming to transform "what in
the Gnostic version [of the creation of humanity] was a metaphor of
lack or deficiency into a metaphor of fullness and plenitude."30 But
Valentinus's evocation of fullness depended on a contrast between
"proper" or "lordly" names and more defective names "on loan."31
Followers of Valentinus elaborated on this contrast. According to the
Gospelof Philip, "names given to worldly things are very deceptive,
since they turn the heart aside from the real to the unreal"; they can
be tools of "the rulers," who seek "to deceive humanity by the names
and bind them to the nongood."32 Although the name "Christian"has
great power, persons who have been baptized only and who have not
received the Holy Spirit have only "borrowed the name."33The original unity of the fullness is associated with a single true Name, "an
unnamable Name" (Ovoa 6Mvov6~oacrTov),which is the Son; the
fallen aeons, who have moved into multiplicity and away from unity,
possess now only "a shadow of the Name" or a "partial name" (T6
As the Valentinianssaw it, naming in this
Uppos
xoT(
is deceptive, a function of the fall away from reality and
world6ioLo).34
present
unity into materiality and diversity. The illusory characterof ordinary
names plays into the hands of the demonic rulers, whose existence
itself bears witness to this fall.35
27. See M. Hirschle, Sprachphilosophieund Namenmagie im Neuplatonismus, Beitriige zur
klassischen Philologie 96 (Meisenheim an Glan: Heim, 1979).
28. Arthur J. Droge, Homer or Moses? Early ChristianInterpretationsof the History of Culture,
Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 26 (Tiibingen: J. C. B. M6hr, 1989),
104-108.
29. David Dawson, Allegorical Readersand Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), 127-82, esp. 153-67.
30. Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 139, interpreting Valentinus's Fragments C and D (trans.
Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1986], 234-37).
31. Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 161.
32. Gospel According to Philip 53:23-27; 54:18-25 (Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 330-31).
33. Gospel According to Philip 62:26-35; 64:22-28 (Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 338-39).
34. Clement of Alexandria, Exc. Theod. 31.3-4 (SC 23:126-28).
35. The Valentinians developed this ambivalent teaching about names in a controversy
with "ecclesiastical Christians," in which all parties were using the same terms ("Fa-
26
CHURCH HISTORY
Antony likewise associates multiple names with the fall away from
unity into diversity, epitomized by the diversity of the evil spirits. The
names of "Jesus" and "saint" can themselves be deceptive, cloaks that
cover with the "form of godliness" persons who actually "act according to their own hearts and bodies."36 Ordinary names, meanwhile,
fail completely to name people's true identities, that is, "themselves as
they were created, namely as an eternal substance, which is not
dissolved with the body."37 Multiple names of transient flesh must
give way to the single real name through self-knowledge:
A sensible man who has prepared himself to be freed at the coming
of Jesus knows himself in his spiritual essence, for he who knows
himself also knows the dispensations of the Creator, and what he
does for his creatures. Beloved in the Lord, our members and joint
heirs with the saints, I beseech you in the name of Jesus Christ to act
so that he gives you all the Spirit of discernment to perceive and
understand that the love I have for you is not the love of the flesh,
but the love of godliness. About your names in the flesh there is
nothing to say; they will vanish. But if a man knows his true name
he will also perceive the name of Truth. As long as he was struggling
with the angel through the night Jacob was called Jacob,but when it
dawned he was called Israel, which means "a mind that sees God"
(see Gen. 32:24-28).38
Antony contrasts the monks' "names in the flesh" with their identity
as "holy Israelite children, in their spiritual essence";39 the monks'
diversity as "young and old, male and female," with their unity as
"Israelite children, saints in your spiritual essence."40 "There is,"
Antony tells his readers, "no need to bless, nor to mention, your
transient names in the flesh."41 In light of these passages, it comes as
no surprise that, with the exception of the author, the only contemporary person whose name appears in the letters is the heresiarch
Arius, who "did not know himself."42 People have multiple names of
flesh-Jacob, Antony, Arius, and many other besides--just as, in their
fallen condition they have diverse bodies and individual wills; but
they share only one true name, Israel, as they share only one spiritual
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
ther," "church," "resurrection") to refer to different realities. See Klaus Koschorke,

"Die 'Namen' in Philippusevangelium: Beobachtungen zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen gnostischen und kirchlichen Christentum," Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche
Wissenschaft64 (1973): 307-22, esp. 314-20.
Antony, epp. 3.35; 7.46-48 (Rubenson, Letters, 208, 228).
Antony, ep. 5.1-2 (Rubenson, Letters, 212); see ep. 7.5 (Rubenson, Letters, 225).
27
essence. Names, like demons, are symptoms of individuality, which

is, in Rubenson's words, "a result of the fall and of diversity, and
something that belongs to corporeal and transient existence."43
Antony is drawing on a long tradition of Alexandrian ascetic exegesis of Genesis 32. According to Philo, whom Clement and Origen
follow, Jacob's wrestling with the angel represents the ethical life of
struggle with the passions, while the name Israel, meaning "one who
sees God," signifies the contemplative life, which victory over the
passions allows.44 But Antony elaborates on this tradition by associating "Jacob,"one's "name in the flesh," with transience, diversity,
corporeality, as well as struggle with the demons, and "Israel,"one's
"true name," with eternity, unity, spirituality, and thus overcoming
the condition of fallenness represented by the demons. Antony's
teaching further echoes Valentinian tradition when it connects discovery of one's "true name" with the ability to "perceive the name of
Truth," a mysterious term, most likely related to, but not identical
with, "the name of Jesus Christ." The "name of Truth"that belongs to
God may ground the validity of the "true name" that belongs to
humanity in its single spiritual essence just as for the Valentinians the
name of the Son provided the only reality in which the "partial
names" of fallen beings shared. The Antonian monk must withdraw
from his individual, separate, surface self of the fleshly name to the
shared, united, hidden self of the true name.
Demons oppose this effort by promoting difference on two levels:
through embodied vice they encourage a movement away from the
invisible unity of spiritual essence, and through interpersonal strife
they incite division within the social unity of the church. These two
aspects come together in the metaphor of "the house." At the level of
the person, the fallen existence of corporeal individuality, in which
the true spiritual self is hidden in the visible body, is troped as
confinement in an inhospitable "dwelling."45"We dwell in our death
and stay in the house of the robber," also known as "this house of
clay," "a house full of war," "this house of dust and darkness," and so
forth.46 In this metaphor, a person's true identity as spiritual essence
is "invisible," while externality takes on the negative valence of "out-
43. Rubenson, Letters, 68.

44. Mark Sheridan, "I1mondo spirituale e intellettuale del primo monachesimo egiziano,"
in L'Egitto cristiano: aspetti e problemi in etli tardo-antica,ed. Alberto Camplani, Studia
Ephemeridis Augustinianum 56 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1997),
177-216, at 197-99.
45. Antony, ep. 1.71 (Rubenson, Letters, 201-202).
46. Antony, epp. 5.6, 10; 6.45, 83; 7.12, 20 (Rubenson, Letters, 212, 219, 222, 226).
28
CHURCHHISTORY
ward confusion."47 Still, it is unlikely that Antony equates external

corporeality with materiality; for most of the ancients, such incorporeal entities as souls were not immaterial, but rather extremely rarefied matter.48The complicated transmission of Antony's letters in
multiple languages makes precise recovery of Antony's own philosophical vocabulary (vois, 7Trveip), and the like) difficult, if not impossible,49 but certain passages suggest that Antony shares the common view and thus that the invisible spiritual essence to which the
human mind and the demons belong is material and incorporeal. For
example, "the soul" of the self-oriented monk is, Antony writes, "the
breath of evil spirits," in which "breath"is the Greek 0&6p,transliterated in Georgian. Demonic "air" has replaced such a person's soul;
this interior change has negative exterior effects, as the monk's "body
[is] a store of evil mysteries which it hides in itself."50
Succumbing to demonic suggestion, then, emerges as a process of
negative externalization. Demons, because they share the same spiritual essence as human beings, are "hidden" and "not visible bodily,"
but they become "revealed bodily" through the monk's actualizing of
their sinful potential, by creating embodied deed from spiritual
thought. The result is that "we are their [the demons'] bodies."'51Just
as the demonic came into being due to a fall away from unity caused
by activity, so too the demonic now incites a movement from interior
invisible spirituality to exterior visible corporeality, but one that embodies or exteriorizes negative invisible spirituality, namely, the demons. In contrast, virtuous acts effect a positive exteriorization because by them "we shall reveal the essence of our own mercy."52The
demons try to cover their tracks by similarly distracting the monk's
attention from his own interior life to his monastic colleagues and
external circumstances: we are "accusing each other and not ourselves, thinking that our toil is from our fellows, sitting in judgment
on what appears outwardly, while the robber is all within our
house."53 Although the appellation is a biblical and traditional one,
based especially in exegesis of the Parable of the Good Samaritan
(Luke 10:29-37),54 the demons are "robbers"for Antony because they
47. Antony, ep. 6.80, 84, 98 (Rubenson, Letters, 221-23).
48. On the distinction between incorporeality and immateriality in ancient thought, see
Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 6-15.
49. Rubenson, Letters, 69.
50. Antony, ep. 6.47 (Rubenson, Letters, 219).
51. Antony, ep. 6.49-55 (Rubenson, Letters, 219-20).
53. Antony, ep. 6.36-37 (Chitty, Letters, 19).
54. G. J. M. Bartelink, "Les demons comme brigands," Vigiliae Christianae21 (1967): 12-24.
See Matt. 21:13, Mark 3:27, Luke 11:21, John 10:8, Eph. 6:10-18. To the many patristic
MAKING OF MONASTIC DEMONOLOGY
29
provoke embodiment or exteriorization of a false identity, one foreign

to the monk's actual identity as spiritual essence, thus making the
body "their home" rather than the site of a legitimate revealing of
one's natural essence and of one's future, resurrected "spiritual
body."55
The demons' creation of alienation among monastic colleagues
represents their attempt to undermine the social unity of the church,
which anticipates the eventual return to the single spiritual essence
and is also a "house." In several letters Antony repeats the following
social history of salvation, found most completely in Letter 2:
In his irrevocable love the Creatorof all desired to visit our afflictions
and confusion. He thus raised up Moses, the Lawgiver, who gave us
the written law and founded for us the house of truth, the spiritual
Church, which creates unity, since it is God's will that we turn back
to the first formation. Moses built the house, yet did not finish it, but
left and died. Then God by his Spirit raised up the council of
prophets, and they built upon the foundation laid by Moses, but
could not complete it and likewise they left and died. Invested with
the Spirit, they all saw that the wound was incurable and that none
of the creatures was able to heal it, but only the Only-begotten, who
is the very mind and image of the Father, who made every rational
creature in the image of his image.... He gave himself for our
and by the word of his power he gathered us from all lands,
sins,....
from
one end of the earth to the other, resurrectingour minds, giving
us remission of our sins, and teaching us that we are members of one
another.56
The church, as "the house of truth" (see Num. 12:7; Heb. 3:2-6), is the
mechanism through which God restores dispersed and divided crea-
references collected by Bartelink add from Nag Hammadi Teachingsof Silvanus 85:2-3,
13-14; 113:31-33; Interpretationof Knowledge6:19.
55. Antony, epp. 6.53; 1.71 (Rubenson, Letters, 219, 202). The sayings tradition preserves a
different Antonian use of the "robber" metaphor: "The monks praised a certain brother
before Abba Antony. When the monk came to see him, Antony tested him to see
whether he would bear dishonor; and seeing that he could not bear it, he said to him,
'You are like a village magnificently decorated on the outside, but plundered within by
robbers'" (Apoph. Patr. 8.2 [SC 387:398-400] = Ant. 151; trans. Benedicta Ward, The
Sayings of the Desert Fathers,Cistercian Studies 59 [Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1975],
4, alt.). More could be said regarding the role of the body in demonic temptation and
ascetic transformation in Antony: see Rubenson, Letters, 68-71; Tim Vivian, " 'Everything Made by God is Good': A Letter from Saint Athanasius to the Monk Amoun,"
?glise et Theologie24 (1993): 75-108, at 80-84; and David Brakke, "The Problematization
of Nocturnal Emissions in Early Christian Syria, Egypt, and Gaul," Journal of Early
Christian Studies 3 (1995): 419-60, at 436-38.
56. Antony, ep. 2.9-14, 20-22 (Rubenson, Letters,203-204); see epp. 3.15-25; 5.15-28; 6.6-13;
7.26-30 (Rubenson, Letters, 207, 213-14, 216, 227).
30
CHURCHHISTORY
tures to the original unity.57 Although it originated with Moses and

the prophets, only Christ could heal the "incurablewound" of human
sin, and he was able to gather people from all lands and teach them
about their essential unity. Since restoration of unity and the suppression of corporeal individuality are the goals of the church, the demons
prey especially on the monk who attends to his own will ("every man
who delights in his own desires"), and they "sow the seed of division"
among monastic colleagues since "he who loves his neighbor loves
God."58The "house of truth" should, through a harmony of wills in
love, socially embody the unity of undifferentiated essence. Demonically inspired division exposes the house's characteras a collection of
individual and therefore conflicting wills.59 The demonic intruder is,
then, "a robber in our house" because it alienates the monk from his
spiritual essence at the levels both of his own personality and of the
monastic community.
Once again Antony's teaching echoes that of at least one stream of
Valentinian thought. Valentinus himself drew on the language of the
Parable of the Good Samaritan to describe the fallen human heart as
a "caravansary" ('rrv8cv0XEov)(Luke 10:34), rendered "impure by
being the habitation of many demons."60 The Valentinian author of
the Interpretationof Knowledgeelaborated on this demonic inhabitation
of the person and, like Antony, on its consequences for the church:
"Since the body is a caravansary (rravsoxeov [sic]) that the rulers and
the authorities have as a dwelling place, the inner person, having been
imprisoned in the modeled form, came into suffering. And having
compelled him to serve them, they forced him to assist the powers
They divided the church (exxXrlau), so that they might
(ev/pyeaLot).
inherit."61Although much of the preceding text is lost in a lacuna, the
phrases that remain-"robbers," "down to Jericho" (6:19-21)-indicate that this discussion too works from the Good Samaritan Parable.
In this case the demonically inspired social division took the specific
57. On the origin of the phrase "house of truth" in exegesis of Num. 12:7 and Heb. 3:2-6,
see Janet Timbie, "Biblical Interpretation in the Letters of Antony: Exploring the House
of Truth," paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the North American Patristic
Society, Chicago, May 2000.
58. Antony, ep. 6.46-48, 104-105 (Rubenson, Letters, 219, 223-24).
59. Asked why he avoided his fellow monks, Arsenius is said to have replied, "God knows
that I love you, but I cannot live with God and people. The thousands and ten
thousands of the heavenly hosts have but one will, while people have many. So I
cannot leave God to be with people" (Apoph. Patr. Ars. 13; Ward, Sayings, 11).
60. Valentinus, Epistle on Attachments (Fragment H; Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 245).
61. Interpretationof Knowledge 6:30-38. In monastic sayings the term
becomes
shorthand for the demonic, especially the demon of fornication (foriv/pyaL
example, Apoph.
Patr. 5.27, 30, 32, 42 [SC 387:264, 266, 270, 282]).
31
form of controversy over spiritual gifts (15:26-18:38). While Valentinus had identified the "heart"as the dwelling that the robber demons
invade, this teacher anticipates Antony by making it the body and
extending the demons' work to dividing the church. Antony's labeling of the body as "the house of the robber" and as potentially the
demons' body belongs to this tradition. But Antony departs from his
Valentinian predecessors by understanding the estranged body not as
the natural, created state, but as the result of succumbing to demonic
temptation, and thus as amenable to restoration through the ascetic
program.
Still, the Antony of the Lettersfaces demons that are far subtler and
more dangerous than those faced by the Antony of Athanasius's
Life.62Because Antony considers the ascetic life to be a process of
return to an original undifferentiated unity, the demons represent the
tendency toward separation, division, and individuality. Although
they incite a movement toward false externality, they are themselves
not forces external to the monk because the monk's very existence as
a separate individual implies the demonic pull of division. Demons
are built into the structure of the fallen cosmos as the principles of
differentiation. There is no individual existence without demonic
estrangement, but Antony believes that eventually existence will give
way to essence: "Now therefore, I beseech you, my beloved, in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, not to neglect your true life, and not to
confound the brevity of this time with time eternal, nor mistake the
skin of corruptible flesh with the reign of ineffable light, and not to let
this place of damnation squander the angelic thrones of judgment."63
Antony's sense of the radical fallenness of this "place of damnation"
suggests currents in his thought that run not only from Origen and
from Christian wisdom such as the Teachingsof Silvanus,64 but also
from the Gnostics and the Valentinians. Antony himself may betray
his awareness of such proclivities in his teaching and so his need to
renounce them when, speaking of "forerunners"of Christ, he says, "I
do not hesitate to say that Moses, who gave us the law, is one of
them."65In any event, his demonology harnessed insights from such
philosophical traditions of Egyptian Christianity to a monastic goal of
annihilation of the individual self or, rather, its reabsorption into an
original undifferentiated unity. This objective is similar to what Hadot
62. See Rubenson, Letters, 139-40.
64. On Antony and wisdom literature from Nag Hammadi, see Wincenty Myszor, "Antonius-Briefe und Nag-Hammadi-Texte," Jahrbuchfiir Antike und Christentum32 (1989):
72-88.
65. Antony, ep. 3.16-17 (Rubenson, Letters, 207).
32
CHURCHHISTORY
identifies as the aim of note-taking for ancient philosophers: "the

point is not to forge oneself a spiritual identity by writing, but rather
to liberate oneself from one's individuality, in order to raise oneself up
to universality... to accede to the universality of reason within the
confines of space and time."66Antony adapts previous demonologies
to create a philosophical ideology, in a cosmological or mythological
mode, for monastic withdrawal; as principles of differentiation, the
demons render problematic individuality and difference, the symptoms of society as a collection of selves.
II. AMMONAS: ENEMIES IN THE DESERT
As epistles of spiritual direction that reflect actual interaction between the monastic guide and his disciples, the Lettersof Ammonas
present a particularly welcome form of evidence. If the attribution to
Ammonas the disciple of Antony is correct,67 the letters must be dated
to the third quarter of the fourth century, a period of change in many
of the monastic groups of Egypt, as recognized leaders passed away
and their successors struggled to carry on their legacies.68 Unlike
Antony's letters, which remain abstractin their content and consistent
in their themes, the fourteen letters of Ammonas speak to concrete
difficulties in the lives of the recipients and reveal an ascetic master
adapting his teaching to changing circumstances. Fortunately, the
collection of the letters in Syriac retains the sequence of this interaction; the extant Greek text is the result of a cut-and-paste job that has
obscured changes in Ammonas's thought, while at least preserving
some of his original Greek vocabulary.69 Examined in sequence, the
letters reveal how a monastic teacher constructed simultaneously
theories of demons and of his own authority.
The letters divide roughly into four moments in the relationship
between Ammonas and his disciples, moments defined by the evolving authority of Ammonas and by crises that Ammonas identifies as
"trials" or "temptations" in the ascetic lives of the recipients. In
66. Hadot, "Reflections on the Idea of the 'Cultivation of the Self,' " in his Philosophy as a
Way of Life, 206-13, at 210-11.
67. The most extensive discussion of their authenticity remains Franz Klejna, "Antonius
und Ammonas: Eine Untersuchung tiber Herkunft und Eigenart der iltesten Mbnchsbriefe," Zeitschriftfiir katholischeTheologie62 (1938): 309-48, at 320-26.
68. In general, see Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church,33-67.
69. Klejna, "Antonius und Ammonas," 312-20. The Syriac text was edited by Michael
Kmosko, Ammonii Eremitae Epistolae, Patrologia Orientalia (PO) 10.6 (Paris: FirminDidot, 1913); the Greek by F. Nau, Ammonas:Successeurde saint Antoine, PO 11.4 (Paris:
Firmin-Didot, n.d.). I have used but have regularly altered the translation by Derwas
J. Chitty and Sebastian Brock, The Letters of Ammonas, Successor of Saint Antony (Fairacres, U.K.: SLG, 1979).
33
Letters 1 to 4 Ammonas presents a relatively simple map of the

monk's spiritual progress. The struggle to attain virtue with one's
"whole heart" through ascetic discipline is rewarded when the monk
receives from God first a "divine power" (&6viotps OFix) or "guardian" (<pXka),
which protects the soul from Satan and the demons, and
then revelations of "mysteries." The divine power is called also
"sweetness" (yXkuxirrr's),
"joy" (Xolp&),and "fervor" (0ptq).70 Letters
5 to 8 concentrate on the advanced monk who has received such
"secrets set in heaven" and who helps others as a model and an
intercessor.71Ammonas adduces biblical figures such as Elijah,Elisha,
and especially Moses as persons who received the Spirit, saw the
Kingdom of God, and then prayed for others, not themselves;72 but
the author implicitly presents himself as such a figure as well when he
speaks of things that he would reveal to his recipients but which
cannot be written on papyrus.73 These first eight letters present a
relatively serene picture of the ascetic life; although the reception of
the divine power requires effort and is achieved by "few,"74it appears
virtually guaranteed to the one who works hard. And Ammonas's
unaffected presentation of himself as spiritual guide to his disciples
suggests an untroubled relationship between himself and his addressees.
The tone changes dramatically in Letter 9, the first of a series of
letters, culminating in the twelfth, that addresses the role of "trials"
and "temptations" in the monastic life. Clearly Ammonas's disciples
have discovered that the struggle for virtue is not easy and that the
divine power or fervor does not guarantee steady progress toward
spiritual insight, as Ammonas's earlier letters implied. Thus, Ammonas must complicate his scheme: he admits now that receiving God's
"blessing" always provokes trials from Satan and the demons and that
the original divine fervor departs from the monk, who must then
persevere in ascetic discipline to receive a new, better "second fervor."75 Letters 11 and 12 respond to a specific crisis: the recipients
wish to leave their monastic retreat, a desire that Ammonas calls a
"temptation" (rrELpato-6S).76 Confronted by rebellious disciples, Am-
monas now states that the monk's original "fervor"may not be divine
at all, but may come from Satan, and he insists on the necessity of
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
See esp. Ammonas, epp. 2.1; 3.1-4 (PO 10:570-71, 573-77; see PO 11:435-37, 450-52).
For example, Ammonas, ep. 6 (PO 10:582-85).
Ammonas, ep. 8 (PO 10:586-88; see PO 11:445-46).
Ammonas, epp. 5, 8 (PO 10:581.11; 586.7-8).
Ammonas, ep. 6.1 (PO 10:582.9).
Ammonas, epp. 9-10 (PO 10:589-98).
Ammonas, ep. 11.1 (PO 10:598.9-10; see PO 11:447.4-7).
34
CHURCHHISTORY
withdrawal to fight the devil before one can return to society to direct
others." He makes his most explicit claim to authority thus far,
stating that "he who is writing this to you" has "attained"to the status
of saints who have the divine power and to whom "heavenly mysteries" have been revealed.78Letters 13 and 14 return to the theme of
the master-disciple relationship, speaking in general of the "righteousness" monks receive from their "fathers" and in particular of
Ammonas's solitude and reception of revelations.
The letters then reveal four moments in the relationship between
Ammonas and his disciples: first, original instruction in the ascetic's
ascending path to spiritual insight (Letters 1-4); second, enlarged
exposition of the reward of the ascetic life, implicitly figuring the
master as the model of such achievement (Letters 5-8); third, revision
of the original instruction in light of a crisis in the master-disciple
relationship (Letters 9-12); fourth, renewed and more explicit assertion of the master's authority in terms of the revised paradigm (Letters
13-14). As players in this ascetic drama, Satan and the demons perform their roles as appropriate to each moment. Originally present but
not prominent, they disappear entirely in the second moment, only to
reappear dramatically and strongly in the moment of crisis and then
to assume their limited but essential role in the final letters.
According to Ammonas's original scheme, as described in Letters 1
to 4, demons perform their standard function in monastic life of
resisting the monk's attempt to attain virtue, but their effectiveness is
offset by the "divine power" that the persevering monk receives.
Ammonas speaks of the struggle for virtue as acquiring either a
"living body," characterized by grace, joy, and love of the poor, or a
"dead body," characterized by vainglory and entanglement in pleasures.79 The vice of vainglory (xevooSao) is key: the monk who
successfully resists it demonstrates the "whole heart" that is necessary
to make his body alive, to persuade God to hear his prayers, to receive
the divine power, and to gain access to mysteries. The demons, in
contrast, try to persuade the monk to practice his ascetic discipline for
the praise of human beings; the monk who succumbs to this temptation is revealed to be "in two minds" (Ev4rvLQ),and thus his body
is destroyed, God ignores his prayers, and he receives no divine
power.so These early letters contain no extended discussion of the
77. Ammonas, epp. 11.2; 12 (PO 10:660.6-7; 603-607; see PO 11:448.4-6; 432-34).
78. Ammonas, ep. 12.4 (PO 10:606.5-6).
79. Ammonas, ep. 1.1-2 (PO 10:567-69). For "death" or "being dead" as a metaphor for
lacking virtue, see Teach. Silv. 89:12-14; 90:19-27; 98:28-99:4; 105:1-7; 108:12-16; "living" is contrasted at 106:5-9.
80. Ammonas, ep. 3 (PO 10:573-77; see PO 11:450-52).
35
means by which the demons seek to disrupt the monk's discipline;

rather, Ammonas dwells at length on the divine gift, the "power
s x Q0p
encompassing the soul" (?vacv xU
rXs), which repels
qsof the
Satan and guides the soul past "the powers
air" (Eph. 2:2) in its
ascent to God.81 This power takes the form also of "the great wealth
of knowledge" or "new vision" (&v6f3PXeLs),which provides the
discernment to see through any human or demonic deception that
would cloak evil as good.82 Any temporary loss of fervor is easily
remedied by a period of renewed self-examination.83
In Ammonas's early view, the demons serve as weak foils for the
divine power, which is simultaneously the reward for and enabler of
the monastic life. While Ammonas explicitly says that his recipients
do not yet possess the divine power, which "not many" monks have
and which must be sought and cultivated,84he can also call this power
the "joy" or "fervor" that inspires the monk to world renunciation,
prayer, and fasting.85In its guise as "guardian"of the soul, the power
seems to be either the guiding angel that such earlier Christians as the
Shepherdof Hermasand Origen promised would aid the one seeking
virtue or even the Holy Spirit itself.86But Ammonas more characteristically speaks of the power in subjective terms, as a feeling of
that the monk both cultivates as the inspira"sweetness"
(yXxasrr'q)
tion for his ascetic labors and seeks as the penultimate reward for
them, the ultimate goal being access to revealed mysteries. It is this
subjective aspect of Ammonas's teaching, its emphasis on the monk's
experience of "sweetness," that will cause him problems later. But for
the moment the pervasive role of the divine power, fervor, or sweetness lends Ammonas's early account of the ascetic life an optimistic,
confident mysticism that leaves the demonic forces lurking in shadows.
Indeed, demons disappear almost completely from Letters 5 to 8, in
which Ammonas discusses the revelatory powers of the advanced
ascetic, whose "purity of heart" has led to the indwelling of "the
divinity" (
) and to translation into the Kingdom, from which
,? guide others.87The "blessing of the fathers" that subsehe returns to
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
Ammonas, ep. 2.1-2 (PO 10:570.5-10; 571.13-572.3; see PO 11:435.6-12; 436.11-14).

Ammonas, ep. 4.1 (PO 10:577.6-579.3; see PO 11:438.5-439.11).
Ammonas, ep. 3.4 (PO 10:576.3-577.5).
Ammonas, epp. 2.1; 4.2 (PO 10:571.2-8; 579.4-7; see PO 11:435.15-436.6; 439.12-16).
Ammonas, ep. 2.2 (PO 10:572.4-8; see PO 11:436.15-437.5).
Luc. 35.3-5
Guiding angel: Shepherd,Mand. 6.2; Origen, Princ. 3.2.4 (SC 268:170); Hornm.
(SC 87:414-18). On the notion of one's "invisible companion," see Brown, Making of
Late Antiquity, 68-71, 89-91.
87. Ammonas, epp. 6, 8 (PO 10:582-83, 586-88).
36
CHURCHHISTORY
quent monks inherit is the vision of "hosts of angels," exemplified by

Jacob, who "even wrestled with an angel and prevailed.""88
Although
Ammonas prays, as Jesus did for his disciples (John 17:15), that his
addressees will be "kept from the evil one," struggle here is not with
Satan, but with angels. Ammonas's presentation of himself as having
achieved the highest level of spiritual insight is a restrained one. His
numerous references to his prayers on behalf of his disciples implicitly indicate that he has reached the stature of Moses, who "having
received the Spirit, prayed for the people." Ammonas assures his
readers that they, too, will advance to this state of insight and intercession and praises them as persons who already are "wise and
understand everything." They are, in the final words of Letter 8,
"growing and gaining strength day by day."90
But the ninth letter opens with the addressees "in travail of heart,"
having "entered into great trial";faced with this challenge, Ammonas
revises his original vision of the monastic life to highlight the struggle
with Satan and his demons as essential to ascetic progress: "Forif trial
does not come upon you, either openly or secretly, you
[rrELpourp6-s]
cannot progress beyond your present measure. For all the saints,
when they asked that their faith might be increased, entered into
trials. For when someone receives a blessing from God, at once his
trial is increased by the enemies, who want to deprive him of the
blessing with which God has blessed him. For the demons, knowing
that in being blessed the soul acquires progress, wrestle against it
either in secret or in the open."91 The example of Jacob returns, but not
his wrestling with the angel as in Letter 8. "The evil one" inspires Esau
to fight with Jacob in order to take away his blessing, but Jacob
prevails. Ammonas now explicitly speaks of what he has achieved:
"And I, your father, have also endured great trials, both in the open
and in secret. I persevered, expecting and supplicating, and the Lord
delivered me."92 It is Ammonas's new-found emphasis on the necessity of trials to spiritual progress that leads him to the Ascension of
Isaiah,which describes how martyrdom, the ultimate trial, is followed
by the prophet's ascension through the seven heavens.93Although the
basic model of the ascetic life remains ascent to the revelation of
heavenly mysteries, the necessity of demonic trial for that ascent is a
new feature, added under the pressure of the disciples' experience.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
Ammonas,
Ammonas,
Ammonas,
Ammonas,
Ammonas,
Ammonas,
ep. 7 (PO 10:584-85).

ep. 7.2 (PO 10:585.11-12).
ep. 8 (PO 10:588.2-11).
ep. 9.1 (PO 10:589.1-8; see PO 11:441.3-9).
ep. 9.1 (PO 10:589.8-590.6; see PO 11:441.9-442.2).
ep. 10.1 (PO 10:594; see PO 11:444-45).
37
While in the first four letters, Ammonas had evinced great confidence in the ability of "the divine power" to repel Satan from the soul,
in Letters 9 to 11 he struggles to articulate a new theory of this power
that can account for his disciples' difficulties, one that finds an increasing role for Satan. In Letter 9 he suggests that the loss of original
motivation is the work of God: the Holy Spirit first visits the soul and
brings it "joy and sweetness," but then departs. How the monk
responds to this loss-whether with resigned inactivity or with intensified asceticism-determines whether he ends up "fleshly" or receiving "greater joy."94But Ammonas was clearly dissatisfied with this
response, and his opening words of Letter 10 present that epistle as a
kind of amendment to the previous letter.95Now Ammonas presents
a theory of two "fervors." The first fervor granted by God still gives
the monk a "sweetness" that motivates his ascetic discipline, but
Ammonas now sees it as also unstable, potentially lost through the
trials that inevitably follow it. It is "troubled and irrational"compared
to the second fervor, which is "peaceful, rational, and persevering." It
is now the second fervor that "gives birth to the capacity in a person
to see spiritual things as he struggles in the great contest, having a
patience that is unperturbed." What determines whether a monk
receives the second fervor is how he responds to trials: "If a person
resists Satan in the first trial, and conquers him," God will give him
the second fervor.96Ammonas's disciples now face this test, and he
encourages them to attain the second fervor through constant selfreproach.97 In contrast to the previous letter, in which it was the
departure of the Holy Spirit that prompted the monk's spiritual crisis,
Ammonas now sees an inevitable loss of enthusiasm exacerbated by
attack from Satan.
When the disciples' dissatisfaction crystallizes into a resolve to
leave their monastic retreat and return to society, Ammonas further
enlarges the role of Satan. Ammonas characterizes the disciples' inclination to leave their "place" (T6-rros)
as a "temptation" that comes
from themselves and does not represent "the will of God."98 While he
could previously speak of the divine fervor as an unproblematic
impulse to ascetic discipline and virtue, Ammonas must now reckon
with impulses that are wrong, that suggest an incorrect monastic life,
94. Ammonas, ep. 9.4-5 (PO 10:592.7-593.12; see PO 11:443.10-444.11).
95. "After I had written the letter, I remembered a certain word, which moved me to write
..."; Ammonas, ep. 10.1 (PO 10:594.1).
96. Ammonas, ep. 10.2 (PO 10:595.1-596.10). The extant Greek text has removed any
discussion of two fervors.
97. Ammonas, ep. 10.3 (PO 10:596.11-598.8).
98. Ammonas, ep. 11.1 (PO 10:598.9-599.5; see PO 11:447.4-10).
38
CHURCHHISTORY
in this case one that is not withdrawn. The possibility thus arises that
the original fervor and its accompanying "sweetness" could be demonic: "Solomon says in the Proverbs, 'There are many ways that are
good among people, but their end leads to the pit of hell' (Prov. 14:12).
He says this about those who do not understand the will of God, but
follow their own will. For such people, not knowing the will of God,
at first receive from Satan a fervor which is like joy, but is not joy; and
afterwards it gives them gloom and public shame. But the one who
follows the will of God endures great labor in the beginning, but
afterwards finds rest and gladness. Do nothing therefore out of joy,
until I have come to talk to you."99This passage represents a striking
change from the early letters, which do not address the possibility of
false "joy";here an initial feeling of "joy" is a likely sign that one's
fervor comes from Satan, since divine fervor is marked by "greatlabor
in the beginning" and by "gladness" only "afterwards." He brands
the disciples' inclination to leave their solitude as coming "out of
(false) joy" (hrC , missing in the Greek). Ammonas then generalizes,
echoing Origen, that every human motivation comes from one of
three sources: Satan, the self, or God, only the last being acceptable.100
Inasmuch as most people cannot easily discern among these, obedience to one's monastic guide becomes essential. Jacob returns yet
again, now exemplary because he obeyed his parents when they told
him to leave (Gen. 28:2). Ammonas himself obeyed his "spiritual
parents," and the disciples should stay where they are until their
"father," Ammonas, tells them what to do.101In Letter 4 Ammonas
had spoken in passing of the possibility of demonic deception in
discerning good and evil actions, but now one's entire motivation for
ascetic discipline, one's presumed "divine fervor," can be a Satanic
counterfeit. In the face of this much graver demonic threat, obedience
to the spiritual master becomes fundamental. Demonic resistance and
paternal authority intensify together.102
Ammonas's disciples were not considering abandoning the ascetic
life for secular society. They were choosing another monastic path, a
less socially isolated one, at a time when full-fledged desert withdrawal of the kind seen in the Lifeof Antony was only beginning to
emerge as the ideal. In fact, one of the effects of Athanasius's influential work was to raise up, out of the numerous and diverse ascetic
99.
100.
101.
102.
Ammonas, ep. 11.2 (PO 10:600.3-10; see PO 11:448.2-8).

See Origen, Princ. 3.2.4 (SC 268:168-74).
Ammonas, ep. 11.3-5 (PO 10:600.11-602.10; see PO 11:448.9-449.5).
On asceticism's requirement of demons and authority in the Byzantine state, see Averil
Cameron, "Ascetic Closure and the End of Antiquity," in Asceticism, eds. Wimbush and
Valantasis, 147-61, at 157-58.
39
lifestyles practiced in Egypt at this time, one particular mode, extreme

withdrawal into the desert, as the model for all monks. The literary
shadow cast by the Life eclipsed more city-based monastic lifestyles,
which "orthodox" church leaders such as Jerome eventually vilified as
"false."103Ammonas wrote his letters in the decades following the
publication of the Life,a time when the process of eclipse was underway. His twelfth letter defends desert withdrawal in Athanasian
fashion as the only way in which the monk can "see the adversary"
and "overcome" him, practice quietness, receive the divine power,
and finally return to human society as a spiritual guide. Elijah and
John the Baptist are biblical examples of "holy fathers" who "were
solitary in the desert" and were able to achieve "righteousness" not
among people, but only after "having first practiced (&o~xEv)much
This language picks up on themes that Athanasius
quiet
(oar-Xa)."104
had enunciated
decades earlier in his second Festal Letterand then
more recently dramatized in the Lifeof Antony.105In turn, Ammonas
attacks city-based monks as "unable to persevere in quiet" and enslaved to "their self-will." Because they receive their "comfort" from
their neighbors rather than from God, such monks are "unable to
conquer their passions or to fight against their adversary." They do
not receive the divine power.106 The presence of people enervates the
contesting monk. Ammonas employs the view that the demons inhabit the desert in particular and that one can fight them only when
alone to argue for the superiority of one form of the monastic life over
another. In his effort to maintain his authority over his disciples and
to prevent them from taking up another discipline, Ammonas has
made combat with Satan and withdrawal into solitude for this combat
central to his ascetic program. Perhaps because this ideology of full
desert withdrawal became paradigmatic in monastic thought, the
Greek tradition preserved this twelfth letter of Ammonas as his first.
Ammonas's final two surviving letters (13 and 14) elucidate this
new scheme apart from the context of crisis that motivated Letters 9
to 12. Written from one monastic teacher to another, the thirteenth
letter presents Ammonas himself as someone who has completed the
103. Goehring, "The Origins of Monasticism" and "The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt," in his Ascetics, Society, and the
Desert, 20-26, 73-88, building on the important essay of E. A. Judge, "The Earliest Use
of Monachos for 'Monk' (P. Coll. Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism," Jahrbuch
fir Antike und Christentum 10 (1977): 72-89.
104. Ammonas, ep. 12.1-2 (PO 10:603.3-605.2; see PO 11:432.5-433.13).
105. Athanasius, ep.fest. (cop.) 24 (=2) (CorpusScriptorumChristianorumOrientalium [CSCO]
150:37.5-38.26; trans. David Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism [1995; reprint, Baltimore,
Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998], 320-21); V. Ant. 49.1-4 (SC 400:266-68).
106. Ammonas, ep. 12.5-6 (PO 10:606.7-607.9; see PO 11:434.3-15).
40
CHURCHHISTORY
spiritual program that he has developed in the earlier letters: reception of the Spirit, withdrawal into solitude, trial from Satan, revelations from God, and finally guidance of others. More than in any other
letter, Ammonas is explicit about his own experience: "I went forth
from you... I came to my place... I am in my solitude.., .the revelations given to me... I also at this time have been afflicted by
temptation... ," and so forth.107Ammonas's journey culminates in a
spiritual interpretation of the living creature seen by Ezekiel, of which
the visionary ascetic can offer "only a little" in writing.108Satanic trial
has found its place in Ammonas's version of the ascetic life and has
brought with it a chastening of the original sense of confidence and
optimism. This more restrained tone is evident when Letter 14 is
compared with Letter 7. In the earlier letter, "the blessing of the
fathers" (older monks) that their succeeding "sons" might "inherit"is
the visionary "joy of God," which enables the monk to see "face to
face the hosts of angels."109In the later epistle, having developed in
the meantime the possibility of a false joy, Ammonas tells his disciples
that "the inheritance which your fathers give you is righteousness."110
In the Lettersof Ammonas, we can see a monastic teacher developing his demonology in response to the changing conditions of his
disciples and their relationship with him. Originally not a prominent
aspect of his optimistic program of ascetic ascent to visionary insight,
Satan and his demons become increasingly useful to Ammonas as his
students encounter discouragement in their spiritual progress and
exhibit disturbing desires for independence from their teachers. Resistance, trial, and temptation, once encountered by the disciples,
become essential to their monastic path and, correspondingly, so does
obedience to their father, Ammonas. In this case, the effective powers
of Satan as adversary and Ammonas as teacher rise in tandem. The
newly articulated necessity for struggle with the demonic then serves
as the basis for a defense of Antonian desert withdrawal and a
criticism of urban monasticism. The "polarization"created by demonology brings the clarity of an either/or ideology--either the desert or
human society-to a situation that was, on the ground, diffuse and
messy.111 The desert appears now as the necessary condition for a
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
Ammonas, ep. 13.4-6 (PO 10:610.1-611.9).

Ammonas, ep. 13.8-9 (PO 10:612.3-613.6).
Ammonas, ep. 7 (PO 10:584-86).
Ammonas, ep. 14.2 (PO 10:616.3).
On the polarizing effect of demonology bringing clarity to the confused religious
situation in late ancient Egypt, see David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 273-77.
41
social relationship, that of the guide and disciple, that had earlier
flourished in the cities.112
III. PAUL
OF TAMMA: DISTURBERS OF SOLITUDE
Practicallyunknownto modern-dayscholarsuntil fragmentsof his

works were publishedin 1988,Paul of Tammawas a Coptic-speaking
monk of Middle Egypt whose ascetic discipline reached legendary
status among his late-fourth-and early-fifth-centurycontemporaries.113Accordingto his ancientbiography,he "diedsix times (sevenin
the Arabictext) from the excesses of his ascetic practices"(by, for
example, burying himself in sand and impaling himself on a sharp
The surviving
stone) "and each time was resuscitatedby Jesus."114
of
his
but they do
works
are
not
so
sensational,
fragments
nearly
reveal an uncompromisinginsistenceon isolationin one's monastic
cell:the truemonk is poor,humble,vigilant,and alone.115The author
exhibits a certain distance from the emerging episcopal orthodoxy
representedby Athanasius.He quotesthe ActsofPaulandTheclain the
same manner as he does any other authoritativebook of Scripture
("forit is written"),refers to Lake Acherusiafrom the Apocalypse
of
Paul, and alludes to the Acts of Andrew and Matthias.116 Correspond-
ingly, Paulrejectedordinationof monks,figuringthe solitarymonk as

the typological fulfillmentof the biblical priest.117In his view, the
isolated monk relies on the power of God, which renders demons
harmless,especiallyin comparisonto people, who representthe real
danger to Paul's monasticideal. The risk involved in human contact
112. See Goehring, "Encroaching Desert," 86, on the desert fostering the guide-disciple
pattern and its characteristic literary form, the apophthegmatum.
113. Paul of Tamma, Opere, ed. and trans. Tito Orlandi (Rome: C.I.M., 1988). The translations from the Coptic text are my own. I have consulted Tim Vivian's translations of On
Humility, On Poverty, Letter,and Untitled Workin his "Paul of Tamma: Four Works on
Spirituality," Coptic Church Review 18 (1997): 105-16, and his translation, with Birger
Pearson, of On the Cell in idem, "On the Monastic Cell," 95-107. The dating of Paul to
the late fourth and early fifth centuries seems required by a tradition that associates
him with St. Bishoi at the time of a barbarian attack on Scetis in 407-408 (idem, "On
the Monastic Cell," 87-88).
114. Ren&-Georges Coquin, "Paul of Tamma, Saint," in The Coptic Encyclopedia,ed. Aziz S.
Atiya, 8 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 6:1923-25, at 1924.
115. See Sheridan, "I1mondo spirituale," 201-207.
116. Paul of Tamma, On Humility 10 (Opere, 128), quoting Acts of Paul and Thecla 6; On the
Cell 2 (Opere,88), referring to Apocalypseof Paul 22; On the Cell 117 (Opere,112), referring
to Andrew's sojourn "in the city of the cannibals." Several additional quotations that
Paul introduces with "it is written" remain unidentified (Vivian, "Four Works," 107 n.
16; idem, "On the Monastic Cell," 89 n. 18).
117. L. S. B. MacCoull, "Paul of Tamma and the Monastic Priesthood," Vigiliae Christianae
53 (1999): 316-20.
42
CHURCH HISTORY
led Paul to reject even the guide-disciple relationship that Ammonas's

demonology had supported.
Paul's most extensive surviving work is On the Cell, which is extant
in two versions: a short version survives intact, while a long version
lacks its opening section. It is possible that Paul created the short
version from the long for the benefit of a particular person, for the
former, unlike the latter, is identified as a "letter."118 In any case, the
long version includes Paul's most important discussion of demons:
Therefore, you shall give yourself to God while in your cell. You
shall guard yourself against your enemies and drive them away with
the name of the Lord your God while in your cell. Do not fear the
demons. I myself have waged war against them in the desert, and
God scattered them by his love, not by my power. As for me, I am
weak and powerless; God alone is the strong one. Now, therefore, do
not fear them, for they are powerless before him. It is rather humanity from which you are going to be saved as you take flight for
yourself, knowing that "it is the constricted time" [Rom. 13:11;1 Cor.
7:29]. For David constricted himself and was saved-[he became]
very constricted on account of humanity. For by means of human
beings the saints and our Lord died, and I have suffered more on
account of human warfare than on account of the warfare of the
desert. Now, therefore, flee by yourself.119
This passage summarizes the key elements of Paul's demonology: the
ascetic life is indeed a battle with demonic enemies, who are located
in the desert; these enemies are, however, weak in comparison to the
power of God, on whom the monk in his cell relies; people are the real
dangers to the monk. "It is rather humanity from which you are going
to be saved."
Paul's basic metaphor for the ascetic life is a "battle" with evil
"enemies"-Satan
and the demons-who
are defeated in the monk's
cell.120 The monastic lifestyle of "estrangement, poverty, need, and
rejection from everyone" leads to "triumph over the enemy."121 While
"lack of self-control" in one's speech "delivers you into the hands of
your enemies," the vigilant monk nonetheless "shall look boldly upon
your enemies like the lions that roar (see Prov. 28:15) and 'a bear
deprived of her cubs' (2 Sam. 17:8)."122 The desert is where the
demons reveal themselves and attack the monk; they have "no mercy
118. Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 101 (Opere, 100).
119. Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 108-16 (Opere, 110-12).
120. For battle imagery, see esp. Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 40-42; Untitled Work101 (Opere,
92-94, 116).
121. Paul of Tamma, On Poverty 6 (Opere, 122).
122. Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 23, 25 (Opere, 90-92).
43
for the human being who is sitting alone quietly" because of their
resentment at having already been defeated ("stripped naked") by
God.123 Remaining in the cell and desiring its "grace"124 are the
fundamental means of achieving quietness and victory over the demons. If the monk stays with God in his cell, he will draw the devil
out of hiding and "subdue him"; if the monk abandons God, the devil
will "mock" the monk and give him "sufferings." It is by the cell that
the monk gains the "acquaintance of God."125
Since the goal of the cell-bound monk is a state of tranquility
or a "lack of
described as "quietness" (io-vux), "rest"
(&vtrrcaxTUs),
the demons'
primary strategy is to
preoccupations" (UpyEpvplWVL),126
introduce "disturbance" into the monk's life, especially by leading
him into concern for or contact with other people. Paul warns against
spirits that are "disturbing" or "lying" and against "confusion"; "the
devil" may be the supernatural source of such disturbance, but human contact is even more perilous: "Do not listen to anyone speaking
with you who is disturbed, lest you become disturbed yourself and
abandon your cell."127 "Human speech" and demonic "disturbance"
are twin temptations to leave the cell.128 Demons make use of other
people in their efforts to disturb the monk. For example, Paul warns
against the "evil spirit" of "vainglory";he contrasts this vice with the
virtue of keeping one's "labor between you and God" and thus
indicates that he understands vainglory to be doing one's labor in
order to receive the praise of other people. Staying alone in one's cell,
hidden from the admiring gaze of others, is the clear antidote to such
"pride."129Or, even more insidiously, the demons suggest that the
monk can aid other people by leaving his cell: "When you come upon
the grace of the cell, guard yourself on the right (see Zech. 3:1)because
they [the demons] wage war against you by means of false mercy, as
if you might save humanity, in order to take from you the grace of the
cell."'13 Demonic deception, then, introduces disturbing concern for
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
130.
Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 60-61 (Opere, 94-96, 102-104).

Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 88 (Opere, 100, 108).
Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 34-35 (Opere, 92).
Paul of Tamma, On Poverty 2-4; On Humility 10; On the Cell 61 (Opere, 122, 128, 96);
Sheridan, "I1mondo spirituale," 203-204.
Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 99-103, 118 (Opere, 108-12).
Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 62 (Opere,96, 102-104). This translation represents my own
composite of the two versions, which are individually obscure. See Orlandi's note
(Opere, 146) and Vivian and Pearson's similar translation (Vivian, "On the Monastic
Cell," 100).
44
CHURCH HISTORY
other people, by tempting the monk either to seek the praise of others
or to be of spiritual benefit to them.
Inasmuch as the weak demons work their little power to disturb by
encouraging attention to other people, human beings are the real
danger to the monk seeking the tranquillity of the cell. Paul condemns
all human attachments, even renouncing the monastic guide-disciple
relationship for the cell-based monk. While at times Paul warns
against "walking with" specific kinds of people-"strong," "weak,"
"dissolute"-his general principle is absolute solitude: "For this reason do not walk with any person: so that you do not abandon your
way and become confused."131In contrast to having "many friends,"
Paul advises, "Acquire for yourself a counselor, one from a thousand"
(Sir. 6:6), a "faithful friend" (Sir. 6:15) who will "bear all your troubles."132 Although it is tempting to think, in accord with other monastic literature, that Paul refers here to adherence to a single monastic teacher, the grand claims that he makes for this "faithful
friend"-"a strong wall," "a shady tree," and so forth-suggest that
the "one from a thousand" is actually God, not any human counselor.133 Another citation of Sirach 6:6 supports this reading: "You
shall become a sage when you are in your cell, when you are building
up your soul in your cell, when the glory is with you, when the
humility is with you, when the fear of God surrounds you day and
night, when your anxiety rests in him, when your soul and your
thoughts are gazing at him, looking toward him all the days of your
life. Do not look toward any human being. Do not permit any human
being to look toward you. 'Take for yourself a counselor, one from a
thousand' (Sir. 6:6), and you are going to be at rest all the days of your
life. You shall test the teaching that you follow, walking alone, while
God is with you."134Here Paul reworks a portion of the Teachingsof
Silvanus,which likewise uses Sirach 6:6-13 to encourage its reader to
"entrust yourself to God alone as father and as friend" (97:3-98:22).
This passage of Silvanusis known to have been transmitted separately
from the remainder of the text under the name of Antony the Great,15
and Paul's knowledge of it may date its independent circulation to the
fourth century. Elsewhere Silvanus identifies Christ as the "faithful
friend" of Sirach 6:15 (110:14-16). While the Silvanus passage seems
131. Specific: Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 94-97 (Opere, 100, 108). General: idem, On Poverty
10 (Opere, 124).
132. Paul of Tamma, On Humility 14-19 (Opere, 128).
133. Paul of Tamma, On Humility 18 (Opere, 128); pace Vivian, "Four Works," 108.
134. Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 77-81 (Opere, 98, 106).
135. Wolf-Peter Funk, "Ein doppelt Uiberliefertes Stuick spiitaigyptischer Weisheit,"
Zeitschriftfiir iigyptische Spracheund Altertumskunde 103 (1976): 8-21.
45
still to envision its reader as having a human counselor (97:19-21),

Paul's solitary monk relies not on any human being, but on God alone;
God is the one who "directs him by his counsel." 36 God's strength is
that which defeats the monk's demonic enemies. The isolated monk's
total reliance on God rules out even a human counselor: "Do not be
hypocritical by seeking the word of the Lord from a godly person."137
Ironically, the monk learns of his need to sever all human ties and
to acquire God as his counselor from a human monastic teacher, Paul
himself, in his textual incarnation. Paul was not reluctant to offer
guidance in writing to other monks. In addition to the five works that
fragmentarily survive, we know the titles of at least five more works
attributed to him that have yet to surface.138In fact, he commands,
"You shall not approach the cell without instruction because of (or,
about) deception."139Possibly Paul refers here to a period of instruction that precedes the monk's withdrawal into his cell, after which he
is to have only God as his teacher. He may be exhorting his reader to
advance to such a stage when he writes, "Therefore,fight for yourself
from now on, O human one, for I have done my utmost with you."140
Just as Paul acts as spiritual director through his books, so having God
as one's teacher appears to mean study of the Scripture, for Paul
precedes his lengthy discussion of the monk's single "faithful friend"
with biblical exhortations to "meditation" and to "persist in reading."141 Paul's works indicate contact with the tradition of learned,
spiritualizing exegesis based in Alexandria and exemplified by figures
like Didymus the Blind,142 and his Scripture appears to have included
works that did not make the canonical list that Athanasius promulgated in 367, such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla.His canon, like that of
Didymus and other "academic" Christians in Alexandria, was determined not so much by any episcopally defined list as by the ascetic's
quest for spiritual guidance in his effort to contemplate God.143 The
cell is the privileged location for solitary study of Paul's monastic
136. Paul of Tamma, Untitled Work 105-107 (Opere, 116).
137. Paul of Tamma, On Humility 29 (Opere, 132).
138. Michel Pezin, "Nouveau fragment copte concernant Paul de Tamma (P. Sorbonne inv.
2632)," in Christianisme d'Egypte: Hommages ai Rend Georges Coquin, ed. Jean-Marc
Rosenstiehl (Louvain: Peeters, 1995), 15-20.
139. Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 59 (Opere, 94, 102).
140. Paul of Tamma, On Humility 31 (Opere, 132).
141. Paul of Tamma, On Humility 12-14 (Opere, 128), citing Pss. 38:4, 118:92; 1 Tim. 4:13.
142. Sheridan, "I1mondo spirituale," 204-207.
143. David Brakke, "Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria's Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter,"Harvard TheologicalReview 87 (1994):
395-419, esp. 399-410, 418. In this respect Paul resembles, but in a desert mode, his
urban ascetic predecessor Hieracas of Leontopolis (Goehring, "Hieracas of Leontopolis," esp. 130-33).
46
CHURCHHISTORY
Bible, understood as having God as one's counselor, "one from a

thousand." "Books"-whether the writings of Paul himself or works
drawn from Paul's comparatively expansive sense of Scripture-"are
the true spiritual guide."144
For Paul's cell-based reading monk, demons are merely weak victims of God's power who can only disturb him by suggesting renewed contact with other people. This monk's real enemy is now his
own self: "Do not obey your heart; rather, let your heart obey you."145
His only real companion is his cell: "Do battle bravely in behalf of
your dwelling place, for it is what is going to remain with you."146As
for other beings, whether human or divine, for them the monk has
vanished: "The measure of a sage sitting in his cell is the Lord, for he
resembles God in that he is invisible."147 Antony, the reputed pioneer
of desert withdrawal, retained a prominent role for the church in his
spirituality, and his demons were subtle and pervasive. In comparison, Paul of Tamma's withdrawal is complete; the organized church
plays no role, and demons have lost their power.
IV.
CONCLUSION:
FROM CHURCH TO CELL
Unlike Athanasius, the author of the Lifeof Antony and thus of the
best known monastic demonology of the fourth century, the three
authors I have discussed were desert monks, actual practitioners of
the discipline that Athanasius so eloquently celebrated. Their writings, in terms both of their literary forms and of their ideas, show that
Antony, Ammonas, and Paul were the intellectual heirs to the spiritual guides of the second and third centuries who directed their
disciples' ascent to virtue within and alongside the Christian communities of urban Alexandria. By striking out into the desert, however,
the monachosor "single one" radicalized the quest for simplicity of
heart and likewise intensified an ambivalence about the multiplicity
of human relationships that was deep-rooted in the Late Antique
project of self-cultivation and particularly acute for Egyptian villagers
of this period.148 A series of tensions arising from this ambivalence
shaped how these monks appropriated their predecessors' teachings
about resistance to the ascetic project, that is, the demonic. Their
varied demonologies may reflect a gradual trend over the course of
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.
Valantasis, Spiritual Guides, 61, discussing the Life of Plotinus and the Enneads.
Paul of Tamma, Untitled Work210 (Opere, 120).
Deep-rooted: see Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self, vol. 3 of The History of Sexuality
(New York: Random House, 1986), 71-95. Egyptian villagers: Brown, Making of Late
Antiquity, 82-86.
47
the fourth century, in which some eremetical monks increasingly

emphasized the cell as the locus of solitude: an original emphasis on
the desert as providing isolation from "the world" narrowed to an
emphasis on the cell as providing isolation from even the monastic
community.149
The earliest demonology of those I have studied, that of Antony, the
purported pioneer of desert withdrawal, represented essentially a
third-century mythology adapted to a spirituality of unity, in which
the church continued to play a significant role. For Antony, demons,
incorporeal as they were, embodied the fallen state of diversity, in
which a multiplicity of selves provided, paradoxically, the essential
context for achieving a simplicity that would transcend difference.
Antony did not mention the desert explicitly in his letters, and his
demons, coextensive with fallen creation itself, could hardly be limited to any particular place. In contrast, the demonology of Antony's
disciple, Ammonas, placed the combat with demons precisely in the
desert. For Ammonas, demons became increasingly essential to ascetic progress as his disciples' original fervor became dangerously
misdirected; the demonic served to legitimate obedience to the monastic guide and to reduce the diversity of possible monastic paths to
the single practice of desert withdrawal. Finally, Paul of Tamma's
demons lived in the desert, but the monk battled them in his cell. For
Paul, the demons, although real enemies of the monk, served mainly
as a rhetorical foil for the danger of human beings, whose capacity for
disturbing a monk's ascetic tranquility necessitated complete solitude
in the cell and renunciation even of the guide-disciple relationship.
Marking a journey from church to desert to cell, all three authors
articulated demonic resistance within the space between simplicity
and multiplicity, desert and city, solitude and community.
These polarities were not the primary concerns of Athanasius. His
dramatic picture of a monk beset by a frightening but ultimately
powerless onslaught of appearances, oracles, and possessed persons
suggests a bishop anxious to prevent a possible failure of Christian
nerve just as the divine Christ appeared to have triumphed over the
demonic gods. Athanasius's Lifeof Antony addressed an international
audience, lay and monastic, that had experienced Christian emperors
for only fifty years and still lived among a lively pagan culture: "And
if there is need, read this even to the pagans, so that even in this way
they might recognize not only that our Lord Jesus Christ is God and
Son of God, but in addition that the Christians, those who serve him
149. Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church, 45; once again Gould is skeptical (Desert
Fathers, 154-57).
48
CHURCHHISTORY
truly and believe in him piously, not only prove that the demons,
whom the Greeks themselves consider gods, are not gods, but also
tread on them and chase them away as deceivers and corrupters of
humankind, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory for ever
and ever. Amen."150To monks who could still hear the voices of their
pagan past (and others' pagan present) in the cries of the demonically
possessed and the oracular predictions of the annual Nile flood, the
Athanasian Antony exhorts, "The Lord, as God, silenced the demons,
and it behooves us, instructed by the saints, to do as they did and to
imitate their courage."151As vivid and influential as the Athanasian
vision was, we should not see in it the only important monastic
demonology before Evagrius. Rather, a number of demonological
proposals, experiments in adapting inherited wisdom to new modes
of withdrawal, prepared the way for Evagrius's articulate and controversial intervention into Egyptian ascetic theory.
150. Athanasius, V. Ant. 94.2 (SC 400:376).
151. Athanasius, V. Ant. 27 (SC 400:210).

The Making of Monastic Demonology - Three Ascetic Teachers On Withdrawal and Resistance PDF

Diunggah oleh

Informasi Dokumen

Deskripsi Asli:

Judul Asli

Hak Cipta

Format Tersedia

Bagikan dokumen Ini

Bagikan atau Tanam Dokumen

Opsi Berbagi

Apakah menurut Anda dokumen ini bermanfaat?

Apakah konten ini tidak pantas?

Hak Cipta:

Format Tersedia

The Making of Monastic Demonology - Three Ascetic Teachers On Withdrawal and Resistance PDF

Diunggah oleh

Hak Cipta:

Format Tersedia

TheMakingof Monastic Demonology:

ThreeAscetic Teacherson Withdrawal

David Brakkeis an associateprofessorof religiousstudies at IndianaUniversity.

tural topics, such as constructions of the body and formations of

the re-evaluation of an ascetic teacher like Hieracas of Leontopolis,12

MAKING OF MONASTIC DEMONOLOGY

I. ANTONY: PRINCIPLES OF DIFFERENCE

ment" to recognize their "secret evils."19 In particular, the monk must

Antony, ep. 6.27-29, 49 (Rubenson, Letters, 218-19).

ther," "church," "resurrection") to refer to different realities. See Klaus Koschorke,

essence. Names, like demons, are symptoms of individuality, which

43. Rubenson, Letters, 68.

ward confusion."47 Still, it is unlikely that Antony equates external

MAKING OF MONASTIC DEMONOLOGY

provoke embodiment or exteriorization of a false identity, one foreign

tures to the original unity.57 Although it originated with Moses and

identifies as the aim of note-taking for ancient philosophers: "the

Letters 1 to 4 Ammonas presents a relatively simple map of the

means by which the demons seek to disrupt the monk's discipline;

Ammonas, ep. 2.1-2 (PO 10:570.5-10; 571.13-572.3; see PO 11:435.6-12; 436.11-14).

quent monks inherit is the vision of "hosts of angels," exemplified by

ep. 7 (PO 10:584-85).

Ammonas, ep. 11.2 (PO 10:600.3-10; see PO 11:448.2-8).

lifestyles practiced in Egypt at this time, one particular mode, extreme

Ammonas, ep. 13.4-6 (PO 10:610.1-611.9).

OF TAMMA: DISTURBERS OF SOLITUDE

Practicallyunknownto modern-dayscholarsuntil fragmentsof his

ingly, Paulrejectedordinationof monks,figuringthe solitarymonk as

led Paul to reject even the guide-disciple relationship that Ammonas's

Paul of Tamma, On the Cell 60-61 (Opere, 94-96, 102-104).

still to envision its reader as having a human counselor (97:19-21),

Bible, understood as having God as one's counselor, "one from a

FROM CHURCH TO CELL

the fourth century, in which some eremetical monks increasingly

Anda mungkin juga menyukai