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CHAPTER THREE

Spiritual Authority

Spiritual authority is the authority that comes from the possession of the Holy Spirit. In its purest form, it is received as a divine gift, without any participation or preparation on the side of the recipient. The active involvement of the individual to prepare himself for the receipt of this gift, or to enhance the gift that has already been received, falls under the purview of what I call ascetic authority and will be discussed in the next chapter. The present chapter begins with an investigation of the conception of spiritual authority among the Greek church fathers. The distinction they made between bearers of the Spirit (pneumatophoroi) as passive recipients of the Spirit and bearers of Christ (christophoroi) as conscious collaborators of the Spirit shows how ascetic authority—with its emphasis on an individual’s active contribution—could be placed at the service of spiritual authority. The Spirit is, by its very nature, expansive and communicates itself, through the pneumatophoros, to others. One of its effects on the individual is to open up and maintain unclogged his channels of communication with the divine, which he can then impart to his surroundings. In this way, the Spirit-bearer becomes a holy man in communication with others. The second part of this chapter therefore examines how individual holy men were appreciated by their contemporaries for their ability to work intercessory prayer. The third and last part of the chapter studies a specific kind of intercessory prayer, namely, that for the remission of sins as it was offered by martyrs, holy men, and bishops. It is in this context that the nexus to ascetic authority is most pronounced, because the efficacy of intercessory prayer is thought to correlate directly with an individual’s personal conduct.

The critical modern reader may find it strange or unnecessary to treat spiritual authority in isolation, given that it is in reality often coupled with ascetic authority. But there are exceptions where spiritual authority is operative by itself—for example, in the holy fools who employed every trick in the book to disguise their holiness from their contemporaries. Moreover, since the Christian authors themselves deal with spiritual authority as a separate category, we must take them at their word. Finally, a clear (perhaps artificially so) definition of spiritual authority can serve as an important diagnostic tool in identifying the commonalities among holy men who practice different lifestyles.

CARRIERS OF THE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT

Pneumatophoros and Christophoros

In the growing Christian communities of the first centuries, certain individuals were singled out by their spiritual authority—the presence of the Holy Spirit or a special connection with Christ made manifest in special gifts or qualities. When Jesus was gathering his disciples, they became his “brothers” and “sisters.” As children of the same “father” in heaven, they formed one large spiritual family, whose members had been touched, transformed, and elevated by their personal encounter with God. These men and women had associated themselves with Jesus before his death, had been in the presence of the resurrected Christ, or had received the grace of the descent of the Holy Ghost. The apostles’ personal experience with God lent a special force to their preaching, and those who followed their beliefs looked to them as leaders and teachers. Some of the men and women who had joined the Christian community after the events of Pentecost were privileged as recipients of the Holy Spirit, even though they had not known the living or the resurrected Christ. In the Jerusalem church described in the Acts of the Apostles and the communities to whom Paul addressed his epistles, some members had the gift of the Spirit to exorcise, speak in tongues, and utter prophecies. These people were recognized as bearers of the Spirit (pneumatophoroi; sing., pneumatophoros) or bearers of Christ (christophoroi; sing., christophoros).

The idea that certain individuals are invested with the gifts of the Spirit did not come to an end with the apostolic age. In subsequent centuries, the application of the designation “bearer of the Spirit” or “bearer of Christ,” which had originally been reserved for the prophets and teachers, was enlarged to include martyrs, monks, holy men, priests, and bishops. They were recognized as such because the Spirit was manifest in a myriad of different ways. As Pseudo-Macarius put it in the late fourth century: “And even though there are thousands of pneumatophoroi, [God’s] grace is manifest in them in this way or that, in many parts and in many ways.”¹ The concept of Spirit-bearers is central to the writing of the theologians Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 220) and Origen (185–253). It plays an important role in the monastic spirituality of the fourth century, especially among authors of a mystical bent, such as Pseudo-Macarius and Didymus the Blind. To bear the Spirit becomes such a distinctive feature in the monastic pursuit of holiness that many authors of the fourth century and later invoked this concept if they wanted to bestow especially high praise on certain holy men. The emphasis these authors placed on the possibility of the Spirit to make itself manifest in individuals in their own day and age enabled them to link the present with the past in way that transcended time and history.

The most prominent gift of the Spirit that a pneumatophoros communicates for the benefit of others is that of teaching and preaching. Anyone whose teaching was believed to be invested with divine authority was considered a pneumatophoros. The divinely inspired gift of teaching was given first and foremost to the apostles, the evangelists, and the prophets, as well as to Moses.² The fourth-century biblical commentator Didymus the Blind remarked that the first verse of Psalm 20 was said “either by the man who was a bearer of the Spirit, or by the Holy Spirit himself who was in him.”³ Elsewhere, he compared the pneumatophoros to a flutist, playing on the double meaning of the Greek word pneuma as “breath” and “spirit”: “In the same way as the flute-player produces the sound through the breath (ek pneumatos), so also the Spirit-bearing men (pneumatophoroi) are praiseworthy flutists.”⁴ In other words, the Spirit flows through the pneumatophoros and inspires his words in the same way as the flute-player uses his breath to produce a tune, an idea that was revisited by Didymus’s contemporary Macarius of Alexandria.⁵ The same connection between the Spirit and inspired preaching was made by Epiphanius of Salamis in the late fourth century in his rebuttal of the teachings of Paul of Samosata: “Whom shall I believe? With whom shall I agree? From whom shall I receive life in their teaching? From the holy evangelists and Spirit-bearers, who speak the Word that has been sent by the Father, or from these followers of Paul the Samosatian?”⁶

In addition to preaching and teaching, the pneumatophoros has the gift of discernment. He is able to recognize the true character of people he encounters. According to Pseudo-Macarius, “The inner man, who is called soul and mind, precious vessel, can be recognized and known only by God and by those who are perfect and Spirit-bearers.”⁷ It was thus high praise when Palladius referred to his teacher Evagrius Ponticus, the great theorist of monasticism in the fourth century, as “the blessed Evagrius, a man who was a Spirit-bearer and who had discernment (aner pneumatophoros kai diakritikos).” ⁸ Discernment further enabled the bearer of the Spirit to recognize demons even of the most deceitful kind. The mere presence of a pneumatophoros could force demons who had long been concealed to identify themselves and to reveal truths about others. As Pseudo-Macarius put it: “The spirits of evil [are] burnt up when they come near to a Spirit-bearing soul.”⁹ Countless hagiographical narratives tell such stories. One incident involves Macarius himself, who came across a skull by the roadside. The skull first introduced himself as belonging to a pagan priest and then identified his interlocutor: “But you are Macarius the Spirit-bearer.”¹⁰ Of particular relevance to the present study is the ability of pneumatophoroi to pray on behalf of others, which will be explained in greater detail below.

It was crucial to distinguish the true bearers of the Spirit from charlatans and pretenders. How was this done? In the early second century, Hermas suggested: “Evaluate the person who says that he is a bearer of the Spirit, on the basis of his works and his life.”¹¹ The “works” that confirmed the legitimacy of a pneumatophoros were usually miracles as the result of intercessory prayer. The “life” of a pneumatophoros that lent credence to his spiritual abilities had to show his observance of the scriptures at the very least, and intense ascetic practices at best. The frequent application of pneumatophoros to holy men, monastic leaders, and bishops thus begs the question of the interrelation of divine grace and spiritual authority, on the one hand, with personal conduct and ecclesiastical office, on the other.

The bearer of Christ (christophoros) is a related concept. While this designation does not apply to the prophets of the Old Testament, who came before Christ, it is frequently used with reference to the apostles and, more generally, all those who are followers of Christ. A spurious letter by Ignatius of Antioch employs both terms in its address: “To Hero, the deacon of Christ, and the servant of God, a man honoured by God, and most dearly loved as well as esteemed, who carries Christ and the Spirit within him (christophoros kai pneumatophoros), and who is mine own in faith and love.”¹² In the same, over-arching sense, Athanasius referred to his fellow orthodox Christians as “lovers of Christ and bearers of Christ.”¹³ More specifically, though, the designation “Christ-bearer” was applied to martyrs and holy men whose lives, conduct, and deaths bore witness to their imitation of Christ. “After Christ [came] the Christ-bearers,” declared Gregory of Nyssa in his Encomium on Saint Stephen.¹⁴ Likewise, the martyrs of the Great Persecution were “Christ-bearers” who were “striving for the greater gifts,” according to Phileas of Thmuis.¹⁵ Women, too, could earn this epithet. In a letter attributed to Ignatius of Antioch, the author conveyed greetings “to Mary, my daughter, most faithful, worthy of God, and bearing Christ,”¹⁶ while Gregory Nazianzen used this epithet to praise his mother, Nonna.¹⁷

While there is some overlap in the meaning and application of “bearers of the Spirit” and “bearers of Christ,” it is important to keep in mind what distinguishes these concepts. Spirit-bearers are most prominently, although not exclusively, recognizable because of their teaching and preaching, which is inspired by the Holy Ghost. They can thus be equated with holders of spiritual authority. Christ-bearers are identified as such because they have followed the example of Christ, either in the course of their life, as is the case with ascetics and monks, or through their manner of death, as is the case with martyrs. They thus represent what we have termed ascetic authority. The essential difference between Spirit-bearers and Christ-bearers is that the former exist in a definite state of grace upon which they have no influence, while the latter exist in a tentative state of spiritual distinction that allows for and indeed requires augmentation in the lifelong effort to imitate Christ. To some degree, this conscious and sustained effort of the individual to mold himself or herself after Christ should be the goal of every Christian. John Chrysostom spoke of those “who walk on the Christ-bearing road”¹⁸ and encouraged spiritual leaders to help others in this process: “Let us strive to become fathers of genuine [i.e., spiritual] children, let us be builders of Christ-bearing temples, let us be caretakers of heavenly athletes.”¹⁹

Gnōstikos and Pneumatikos

The need for divinely inspired instruction was especially relevant in the context of the quest for spiritual perfection. Long before the establishment of monastic communities with their well-regulated daily routines, small circles of disciples gathered around their teachers in much the same way as philosophical schools had grown around Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus.²⁰ The followers of a Christian teacher sought not merely knowledge in matters of faith, but true insight into the divine mysteries, a kind of revelatory participation in the eternal truth. More than that, they desired to transform their lives after the model of Christ. The role of the teacher in this process was paramount. In order to guide others, he first had to have attained perfection himself, often by following his own teacher. The gift of discernment enabled such a teacher to dole out the right portion of insight or to impose the proper amount of practical exercise that fostered the spiritual growth of each disciple according to his abilities and needs. This kind of instruction became extremely popular in Egypt from the late third century. The desert fathers attracted to Egypt individuals from all over the Roman Empire who came to emulate their lifestyle and receive instruction from them. Anthony is the most prominent, but by no means the first, hermit who withdrew to the solitude of the desert and there attracted disciples. Side by side with eremitic monasticism emerged the more formal arrangement of coenobitic, or communal, monasticism, which was pioneered by Pachomius in the 320s. Some of the greatest hermit-teachers lived in the fourth century. Macarius the Egyptian and Didymus the Blind have already been mentioned. To their number should be added Evagrius Ponticus, who will concern us below.

There is a discernible lineage in the thinking about spiritual guidance that begins with Clement of Alexandria in the late second–early third century, moves on to Origen (d. ca. 253), and from him to Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399). They all discuss the qualities of the ideal teacher in some detail. To Clement, the person in a position to provide spiritual instruction is the gnōstikos. The word comes from the same root as gnōsis, true knowledge of the divine. Knowledge of the divine is coupled with love of divine wisdom. Hence the gnōstikos is also the true philosopher (the literal meaning of philosophia being “love of wisdom”). Here is Clement’s definition of the gnōstikos in a nutshell: “Our philosopher holds firmly to these three things: first, contemplation; second, fulfilling the commandments; third, the formation of people of virtue. When these come together they make the Gnostic Christian [gnōstikos].”²¹ All aspects of the individual are thus involved in being a gnōstikos: the soul and the mental capacities in order to attain knowledge of God, the body and the will that governs it in order to observe the teachings of Christ, and a man’s social ability to communicate in order to instruct others. Insight, practice, and teaching are intimately linked. The gnōstikos’s highest goal is to emulate Christ: “It is the Christian Gnostic [gnōstikos] who is ‘in the image and likeness,’ who imitates God so far as possible, leaving out none of the things which lead to the possible likeness, displaying continence, patience, righteous living, sovereignty over the passions, sharing his possessions so far as he can, doing good in word and deed.”²² According to Clement, every Christian should strive to become a gnōstikos, to observe the Christian teachings at all times and in every aspect of his existence.²³

Yet Clement implicitly acknowledges a gradation in the attainment of gnōsis when he discusses those gnōstikoi who become teachers of others. It is unthinkable to Clement that the man who has been privileged with divine gnōsis would not pass his knowledge on to others: “Human beings learn to share as a result of justice; they pass on to others some of what they have received from God out of a natural attitude of kindliness and obedience to the commandments.”²⁴ Just as the gnōstikos strives to become “like unto” God, the disciple desires to emulate his teacher. This involves a succession of several steps: faith, knowledge (gnōsis), love, and the “heavenly inheritance.” ²⁵ The kind of spiritual love that Clement has in mind is a formative process in which the lover’s desire for the beloved makes him become like the beloved: “An ignorant man has sought, and having sought, he finds the teacher; and finding has believed, and believing has hoped; and henceforward having loved, is assimilated to what was loved—endeavouring to be what he first loved.”²⁶

Clement’s definition implies not only that the gnōstikos is, by his very nature, a teacher, but also that he is, in the truest sense, a priest: “For it is possible even now for those who practice the Lord’s commandments, and who live perfectly according to the Gospels and who are gnōstikoi, to be registered in the list of the apostles. Such a man is truly a priest of the Church and a veritable servant (diakonos) of God’s will, when he practices and teaches the things of the Lord; and he is not ordained with the imposition of human hands, neither is he believed to be just, because he is a priest, but rather, he is enlisted in the priesthood because he is just.”²⁷

Clement here draws a critical distinction between true priests and priests by ordination, a distinction that will continue to trouble the church through the ages. It allows for the possibility that true priests do not receive ordination, while those who are ordained to the priesthood may fall short of the mark for true priests. Both scenarios bear great danger, the former because people with spiritual gifts may operate outside the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the latter because the ranks of the clergy may be filled with unworthy men.

Origen, Clement’s disciple and later successor as instructor at the catechetical school in Alexandria, was the first Christian theologian to produce commentaries on most of the books of the holy scriptures. In Origen’s writings, the perfected Christian is usually called pneumatikos, although Origen sometimes also uses Clement’s designation gnōstikos. As the Greek word pneuma means “Holy Spirit,” the word pneumatikos has its exact correspondence in the English word “spiritual.” Origen follows Clement in recognizing the pneumatikos as the true Christian.²⁸ The pneumatikos perfects himself through constant study of the scriptures; he practices asceticism in order to increase his spiritual and mental abilities in the same measure as he minimizes attention to the needs of his body; and he demonstrates his state of perfection through his actions. In other words, Origen identifies ascetic living and its visible effects as both the preparation for and the manifestation of spiritual authority. As the pneumatikos shares in the divine Spirit and continually lives in its presence, he is a true successor of the apostles; he is equal to the apostles; he is like an angel—indeed, he is a divine man (theios anēr) and a friend of God. These laudatory designations will later become a staple of hagiographical literature, applied in the praise of martyrs and saints.

Like Clement before him, Origen distinguishes between clergy by ordination and the “true priests” who, as partakers of the spirit, are imbued with divine authority to fulfill the priestly functions of preaching and teaching, and who can act as physicians of souls. But Origen exhibits greater boldness than his teacher in following this thought to its logical consequence. He proclaims that not only those who are seen to belong to the college of priests, but even more so those who comport themselves in a priestly manner are the true priests of God.²⁹ He also insists that the man who conforms to the Pauline injunctions about the ideal bishop (presumably those in the First Letter to Timothy) is a bishop not before men, but before God, having attained this rank without the need for ordination by human hands.³⁰ Such proclamations could easily become the seed of conflict and competition between “true priests” and “priests by ordination.” One arena in which this conflict would flare up again and again is that of the formulation of Christian doctrine, when those who claimed to speak with divine authority were confronted by those who claimed to represent the ecclesiastical tradition. The complicated process by which heresy became heresy and orthodoxy became orthodoxy need not concern us here. Of greater interest to the present inquiry are Origen’s and Clement’s “true priests,” the gnōstikoi and the pneumatikoi. They were the holy men of late antiquity. They were the martyrs and the desert fathers who were endowed with special spiritual gifts of teaching, prayer, and miracle working.

There is one further area in which Origen stakes out potentially dangerous ground for conflict, and does so with greater clarity than Clement, and this regards the guidance of souls. One of the paramount tasks of the pneumatikos, as a follower of Christ, is to bring sinners to repentance through his love and compassion. This is accomplished not only through teaching and exemplary living, but also in no small degree through admonition. The pneumatikos weeps with sinners over their sins, shares the burdens of their misdeeds, prays on their behalf, and assures them of divine forgiveness for their sins. In other words, he exercises in concrete terms the power to bind and loose that Jesus granted to Peter (Matt. 16:18–19). Because the pneumatikos is imbued with the same spirit as Peter, he has a claim to the same authority. This, of course, places the pneumatikos in direct competition with the bishop, whose penitential authority is based both on the continuity of the institution that he represents and on the moment of ordination when the Spirit was passed on to him. The complex issue of penitential authority will be explored in the following section.

The most influential theorist of spiritual instruction during the flourishing of Egyptian monasticism in the fourth century was Evagrius Ponticus. He composed an entire treatise entitled Gnōstikos. Evagrius himself had chosen the life of a hermit in the Egyptian desert in a sudden and radical departure from the world. The son of a chorepiscopus from the Pontus region south of the Black Sea, Evagrius had been ordained as a lector by Basil of Caesarea, and as a deacon by Gregory of Nazianzus, whom he accompanied to Constantinople. His reputation and popularity in the capital received a harsh blow when he developed a strong and insuppressible affection for a married woman of the nobility. Guilt-ridden and encouraged by a dream vision, Evagrius made a hasty departure for Egypt. He lived there as a hermit for sixteen years, first in Nitria and then in Kellia, until his death in 399. Evagrius was equally famous for his ascetic practices as for his teaching. One of his disciples was Palladius of Helenopolis, who devoted a whole chapter of his Lausiac History to him. Evagrius’s thought was greatly influenced by Origen, and thus indirectly also by Clement.

Two centuries after Clement had declared that every Christian should strive to be a gnōstikos, Evagrius addressed the limited and self-selected circle of monks who made the attainment of gnōsis their life’s goal. Evagrius’s writing gives a concrete locus to the quest for gnōsis: it now becomes firmly anchored in the monastic environment. His lasting influence on monastic philosophy can hardly be overestimated. His ideas also laid the foundation for a potential competition between monks and clergy over the possession and administration of the Spirit. If, as Evagrius intends, the monk strives to be a gnōstikos, and if, as Clement and Origen have argued, the gnōstikos is also a true priest, this opens the door for the monastic rejection of the institutional clergy and the services it has to offer, especially the eucharistic liturgy. Some instances of this attitude and the attempts to contain it will be discussed below.

To offset these theoretical treatments by Clement, Origen, and Evagrius, it is useful to look briefly at a concrete description of a pneumatikos. The spiritual teacher in question is none other than Origen. The work in his praise was composed by his disciple Gregory the Wonder-worker. The Address of Thanksgiving to Origen is Gregory’s farewell speech to his beloved teacher, delivered in Caesarea in Palestine at the end of his studies in the presence of other students and Origen himself. It depicts Origen as the true pneumatikos who has the power to transform the lives of those who become his followers. Gregory had experienced this in person. True to the social standing of his family as part of the local nobility in Cappadocian Pontus, he had received an extensive education in the traditional vein, and was on his way to acquire further qualifications in jurisprudence in Berytus, when he met Origen in a chance encounter in Caesarea, where the latter was teaching at the time. Gregory immediately fell under the spell of Origen’s eloquent teaching and profound erudition, gave up all prospects for the career in the civil service for which he had been so carefully groomed, and dedicated himself to a life of Christian study. After five years in the classroom of Origen, he returned to Neocaesarea, where he led a monastic existence together with a few like-minded friends. It did not take long until the local community and the neighboring bishops recognized Gregory’s talents and he was made bishop of his city, a position he held for at least two decades until his death, which occurred sometime between 270 and 275. Gregory’s career follows a pattern that would become typical in the fourth century: a son of the provincial upper crust who is groomed for a position of civic leadership then adopts the monastic life, only to be recruited into a leadership role within the church. His Address of Thanksgiving presents Origen as a larger-than-life figure, whose sanctity radiated to all those around him, including Gregory himself, who probably found this speech a convenient literary vehicle to stake his own claim to holiness by association with his revered teacher.

According to Gregory, Origen “looks and seems like a human being but, to those in a position to observe the finest flower of his disposition, has already completed most of the preparation for the re-ascent to the divine world.”³¹ In their first encounter, Origen displayed the gift of discernment in teaching for which the desert fathers would become famous: “We were pierced as by a dart by his discourse even from the first.”³² His teaching was carefully tailored to suit the needs of his disciples, as Gregory explains by invoking the metaphor of his own soul as a rocky and overgrown Weld that first needed to be tilled to ensure that the seeds of Origen’s wisdom fell on prepared soil.³³ Being with Origen afforded his disciples a foretaste of paradise. ³⁴ To them, Origen’s personal example was as eloquent a lesson as his words, for he refused to lecture on anything that he did not himself strive to put into practice.³⁵ Origen had attained such a level of intellectual acuity and purity that he could communicate matters of the Spirit directly and unsullied by the sluggishness of his own mind. Gregory expresses his boundless admiration:

He [Origen] is the only living person whom I have either met myself or heard others tell about who could do this, who had trained himself to receive the purity and brightness of the sayings into his own soul, and to teach others, because the Leader [i.e., Jesus, or the divine Logos] of them all, who speaks within God’s friends the prophets, and prompts every prophecy and mystical, divine discourse, so honored him as a friend as to establish him as his spokesman.³⁶

As his oration winds down to a tearful close, and Gregory professes to be bracing himself for his return to the cares of the world, he asks one last thing of his teacher: “But you, our beloved head, arise and send us off now with prayer. As you saved us by your holy instruction during our stay, save us also by your prayers as we depart.”³⁷ A true pneumatikos in the eyes of his devoted disciple, Origen passed on the divine Spirit through word and deed and inspired others to follow his example. In addition to his instruction, his prayers are also valued and sought after. This ability to pray connects the figure of the pneumatikos, who is prominent in the theological literature of the second and third centuries, with the holy men of the fourth century and beyond, who are known to us through documentary and hagiographical sources. These men will concern us next.

SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP AND PRAYER

In their strict asceticism and inspired teaching, the desert fathers of the fourth century claimed their place as heirs of the pneumatophoroi of early Christianity.³⁸ The true pneumatophoros in whom the Spirit overflows is always also a teacher. His teaching, however, is different from that of the preacher who regularly addresses a large gathering of people in his homilies. The pneumatophoros instructs his disciples individually or in small groups, both by giving them words to contemplate and live by and by his example. Spiritual guidance is the foundation of monastic spirituality as it first took shape in Egypt and then spread to Palestine and beyond.³⁹ The desert fathers who had left civilization behind in order to concentrate on a life of meditation and prayer soon attracted visitors who wanted to partake of their wisdom. Groups of disciples clustered around the “Old Men,” some staying for a few months before moving on to be inspired by another Old Man or returning to the world, others remaining for a lifetime. The sharing of the Spirit thus generated the nucleus of monastic communities joined in the common pursuit of personal perfection. The Spirit that was channeled through an Old Man could radiate even beyond his inner circle of disciples to the laypeople who simply wanted to reap the benefits of being loosely associated with him, but without making a dramatic change in their lives.

The activity that gives purpose and cohesion to these followers of a holy man—both the inner circle of monastic disciples and the outer circle of laypeople—is prayer. The ability to intercede for others before God is one of the distinctive marks of the spiritual individual, as will become clear in the following. The Greek term for this ability is parrhēsia, which literally means “the freedom to say everything” and is best translated “boldness of speech.” Parrhēsia is the common ground where the spiritual abilities of the pneumatophoros and the miraculous powers of the holy man overlap. For what else are miracles if not the result of successful intercessory prayer? This function of the holy man has not been sufficiently appreciated until recently and therefore deserves to be treated in some detail here.

Intercessory prayer is of vital importance in joining a spiritual father to his followers and vice versa. It is, as it were, the daily bread of their interaction. Spectacular miracles may sometimes be the result, but those are more like the icing on the cake. Essentially sensationalist in their approach, the hagiographers of late antiquity tend to overemphasize miracles. Their accounts are carefully crafted literary productions with the purpose of lionizing a particular holy man. Closer to the original setting of this interaction through personal conversation are the actual letters exchanged between a holy man and his followers. In some instances, the actual papyri or ostraca bearing such letters have survived; in other cases, we depend on the later compilation by an editor of the correspondence of a holy man. This kind of documentary evidence provides a useful corrective to hagiographical writing because it is largely unadulterated by literary embellishments. It gives us actual snapshots of a spiritual leader at work. What emerges from these texts with great clarity is the existence of prayer communities, centered around one or several holy men, which are conceptualized in kinship terms as a family of “brothers,” “sons,” and “fathers.” In view of the frequent emphasis, in the sources and in modern scholarship alike, on the towering importance of the holy man within his community, it is perhaps surprising to note that these people offer prayers on behalf of each other. It is not only the holy man who prays for his followers, but his correspondents also offer up prayers for him. Still, they readily acknowledge and anticipate that the holy man’s prayers are more efficacious than theirs in bringing forth miraculous relief of all kinds of ills and ailments. In their view, there is a direct connection between the personal conduct, possession of virtues, and ascetic lifestyle of their “father” and the efficacy of his intercession, echoing the connection made by Clement, Origen, and others between spiritual gifts and ascetic living.

There are four clusters of such correspondence of living holy men from late antique Egypt, and an additional one from sixth-century Palestine.⁴⁰ The Egyptian letters are documentary in character in that they are autographs, written by the authors on papyrus or pottery shards; the correspondence from Palestine has been subject to minimal editorial revision and was circulated in manuscript form. The earliest holy man to have engaged in such correspondence was Paphnutius, who lived in the mid-fourth century. Eight letters addressed to him survive. Most of his correspondents asked for Paphnutius’s prayers, sometimes offering their own prayers on his behalf,⁴¹ always using the standard formulae that are the staple of late antique epistolography.⁴² Some asked with a specific intention, hoping to obtain divine favor in illness or other tribulation through Paphnutius’s intercession.⁴³ The establishment of personal relations and the exchange of prayers are to be expected in the context of spiritual guidance in the monastic milieu. Paphnutius’s correspondents, however, were not monastic apprentices, but pious people who lived in the world, such as the woman Valeria, the prefect of Augustamnica Ausonius, and perhaps even the patriarch of Alexandria.⁴⁴ Equally surprising is that some of the prayer requests asked for Paphnutius’s intercession not for a particularly concrete benefit, but on behalf of the sins of his correspondents. Ammonius, for instance, wrote: “I always know that by your holy prayers I shall be saved from every temptation of the Devil and from every contrivance of men, and now I beg you to remember me in your holy prayers; for after God you are my salvation.”⁴⁵

The boundless confidence of Paphnutius’s correspondents in the efficacy of his prayers was expressed by a certain Athanasius, who may be identical with the patriarch of Alexandria of the same name: “For the prayers which you offer are taken on high owing to your holy love, and according as you ask in your holy prayers so will our state prosper.”⁴⁶ This mention of Paphnutius’s “holy love” indicates that, in the perception of his correspondents, the efficacy of his prayers was directly linked to his spiritual state. In the words of Justinus, another of Paphnutius’s correspondents: “For we believe that your citizenship is in heaven, and therefore we regard you as our master and common patron.”⁴⁷ Valeria declared: “I trust by your prayers to obtain healing, for by ascetics and devotees revelations are manifested.”⁴⁸ She addressed Paphnutius as christophoros, Christ-bearer, a designation that—as has been noted above—was often used for ascetics and holy men who through their life and conduct had acquired certain gifts of the Spirit. Another correspondent was confident that he could depend upon Paphnutius “by reason of your most glorious and most revered way of life, since you renounced the boasting of the world and abhorred the arrogance of the vainglorious . . . because God in abundant measure, it seems, granted you favour to find a fitting and salutary renunciation accordant with the times.”⁴⁹ The letters addressed to Paphnutius thus show us with a concreteness and immediacy that is often lacking in the polished literary products of this period that there was a shared conviction about the dependence of efficacious intercessory prayer on personal conduct. Paphnutius’s correspondents confirm from a grass-roots perspective what the theologians discussed in the previous section had formulated in the abstract: that an elevated spiritual state is both a gift from God and a reward for ascetic efforts.

This nexus between intercessory abilities and asceticism is also evident in the letters addressed to other holy men: Nepheros, a holy man who lived in the mid-fourth century in the Herakleopolite nome of Egypt,⁵⁰ received a letter from one of his numerous correspondents saying that because Nepheros was “just,” his prayers would be heard by God.⁵¹ More telling is the correspondence of the hermit John in the region of Hermopolis.⁵² One of the three letters addressed to him is a request for prayers on behalf of the author and his whole household. The author called John a “man of God” and expressed his hope that just as John’s prayers had relieved him in the past of a great “burden,” they would continue to do so in the future.⁵³ It has been suggested that the “burden” may have been an onerous labor or an illness, ⁵⁴ but it may also, in my view, refer to the burden of sins that weighed on the conscience of John’s correspondent. Those who had spiritual authority were often expected to intercede specifically for sinners, as the next chapter will show.

The most ample documentation for the concrete worries and prayer needs of a large group of followers is offered by the several hundred papyri and ostraca of limestone and pottery, dating from the turn of the seventh century, which were found at the monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes. Epiphanius was only one of several holy men to whom letters and prayer requests were addressed, albeit the most prominent one. Often, the letter writers specified their concerns. They either asked the “fathers” for help from the torment of their sins⁵⁵ or they hoped to obtain more concrete benefits, such as the restoration of health in sickness.⁵⁶ The men and women who approached Epiphanius and his fellow ascetics were emphatic and explicit in their belief that these men were holy and possessed the power of intercession. They were convinced that the exemplary ascetic lifestyle of these holy men assured their prayers being heard by God. Acknowledging these men’s privileged connection to the divine, they often praised them for having perfected all virtues⁵⁷ and addressed them as christophoroi.⁵⁸ It was only through the mediation and intercession of these holy men that the letter writers hoped for access to God. The extent to which the supplicants depended on the holy men is expressed in terms such as these: “I have set my heart upon thy fatherhood next after God” or “I have no helper beside God and thee.”⁵⁹

The Egyptian papyri and ostraca support three important points. First, living holy men of the fourth century were considered “bearers of Christ,” thus continuing to make manifest in a tangible way the tradition regarding christophoroi and pneumatophoroi that Clement and Origen had expounded in the preceding centuries in more abstract terms. Second, in the eyes of the petitioners who address the holy men there is a direct dependence between personal conduct, specifically an ascetic lifestyle, and the efficaciousness of intercessory prayer. Third, the prayers of these holy men are sought for spiritual tribulations, especially the burden of sins, in addition to physical ailments and similar such concerns.

The need for spiritual assurance continues to be a concern even as we move on in time. It is also very pronounced in the correspondence of Barsanuphius and John, two holy men who lived near Gaza on the coast of Palestine, during the first two decades of the sixth century. The corpus of their correspondence consists of 850 letters that they dictated in response to the queries and requests addressed to them.⁶⁰ These letters were subjected to some editorial touch-ups before being circulated in manuscript form. They thus lack the direct immediacy of the papyri and ostraca from Egypt, but their documentary character is still significantly greater than that of the literary hagiographical production of the same period. The correspondents of Barsanuphius and John represented a cross section of society: pious laypeople, philosophy professors, and military leaders, as well as priests, bishops, and monks. Besides concrete concerns such as how best to deal with an infestation of grasshoppers⁶¹ or whether it is appropriate to share one’s winepress with a Jewish neighbor,⁶² many of the correspondents asked for guidance in spiritual matters. The Letters of Barsanuphius and John highlight how spiritual guidance is connected with personal holiness, and they clarify a further aspect that is of great importance for the present investigation: the holy men’s ability to “bear the burden” of others.

The forty-nine letters that Barsanuphius wrote to his disciple John of Beersheba show his full awareness of his personal responsibilities as a spiritual adviser.⁶³ Especially striking is his willingness to lend support to his disciples and fellow monks by shouldering part of the share that has fallen to them. Barsanuphius spoke about himself with a confidence bordering on boastfulness that is otherwise present only when hagiographers write about others. He instructed John to regard him as a role model and to follow in his footsteps, held by his hand.⁶⁴ In his last letter in the sequence to John, Barsanuphius looked back on their correspondence, asserting that he had given John a complete course of instruction, from the novitiate to perfection. John should meditate on his words as a means to his personal salvation, for they contain the Old and the New Testament.⁶⁵ Barsanuphius knew and let it be known that he was the channel through which the divine logos was communicated to John.

Barsanuphius also maintained relationships with other fellow monks.⁶⁶ One of them, Euthymius, confidently expected to be buried in the same tomb as Barsanuphius. He was certain that, on the Day of Judgment, the Old Man’s abundant good deeds would also be counted in his own favor.⁶⁷ In other words, Barsanuphius’s ample stock of virtues was expected to compensate for any deficiencies on the part of Euthymius.

A further fifty-one letters of correspondence between Andrew and Barsanuphius and John the Prophet, the holy man’s closest associate and author of some of the letters in the collection, highlight Barsanuphius’s ability to convey the certainty of God’s forgiveness of sins and his willingness to shoulder part of his brothers’ sins.⁶⁸ Andrew was a complainer. Plagued by a chronic illness and irritated by the “brother” who lived with him, he was anxious about his inability to fast, troubled by his unkind thoughts toward his cell mate, and concerned about these impediments to his spiritual progress. Barsanuphius sent him numerous letters of assurance, promising to pray for him, invoking their spiritual unity, and expressing his desire to take Andrew to heaven with him.⁶⁹ Like Euthymius, who in his request for his burial arrangement hoped on the Day of Judgment to benefit from the abundance of Barsanuphius’s good deeds, Andrew was assured that he could depend on the Old Man’s pledge to carry half of his burdens.⁷⁰ But Andrew was not to remain passive. He was expected to bear the full weight of the remaining half. Barsanuphius not only asserted that his prayers would sustain Andrew in times of tribulation;⁷¹ he even had the confidence to announce that, through him, Christ assured Andrew of the complete remission of all his sins from the time of his birth to the present.⁷² Barsanuphius’s and John’s entire correspondence with their fellow monks is permeated by the idea that a fraternal relationship based on mutual prayer and the bearing of each other’s burdens provides a safeguard against the dangers on the path to perfection and a remedy against the punishment that follows sin. Barsanuphius often encouraged his associates by quoting Galatians 6:2 (“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ”) and Proverbs 18:19 (“A brother who is assisted by a brother is like a strong and fortified city”).⁷³

The Letters of Barsanuphius and John forcefully underscore the crucial importance of prayer in shaping the interaction between a holy man and his followers. More specifically, the prayers that were most valued were those for the lightening of the burden of one’s sins. The efficacy of Barsanuphius’s prayer was directly linked to the intensity of the asceticism he practiced. His virtues had reached such a level that he could share their benefits with others, making up for their deficiencies as if from a well-stocked bank account of good deeds. This confluence of asceticism, intercessory prayer, and the ability to alleviate the burden of the sins of others distinguished the holy men and monastic leaders who were pneumatophoroi from other Christians, and which attracted admirers, followers, and disciples. Assistance to sinners, however, was not given by these outstanding individuals alone. It was also one of the main tasks of the bishop.

CARRYING THE BURDENS OF OTHERS’ SINS

The complex ways in which spiritual authority, ascetic authority, and pragmatic authority at times intersect, at other times overlap, and at yet other times are in competition are brought into focus through consideration of the alleviation of one man’s sin by another. We need not be concerned here with the difficult collateral issues of man’s ability to sin, the nature of sin itself, and the distinctions between capital and other sins, nor will we deal with the development of penitential discipline in the church. The question is this: What exactly are the personal qualities of the man who has the ability to assure others that their sins are forgiven and who can alleviate others of the burden of their sins?⁷⁴

The Role of Monks and Hermits

The cleansing of all sins was provided through the Christian initiation ritual of baptism. The full-body immersion into the baptismal waters brought complete purification and signaled a new birth in the Spirit. The adults who sought baptism thereby indicated their willingness to undergo a complete transformation of their spiritual state and to adjust their lifestyle in accordance with the teaching of the church.⁷⁵ An analogous decision to lead an even more intensified Christian life was entry into the monastic state. Any sins committed in this state weigh that much more heavily. This view of monasticism was not formulated until monastic life was institutionalized and the ritual of monastic initiation was regularized. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the elusive author of the early sixth century who posed as the disciple of Paul known from Acts 17:34, was the first to attribute sacramental character to monastic consecration by a priest when he called it a mysterion.⁷⁶ He also gave voice to the concept of entry into the monastic life as a second baptism, which became popular in the religious literature of Byzantium.⁷⁷ The analogy with baptism is enforced by the fact that the newly initiated monk received a new name and that he had a sponsor (anadochos) who fulfilled the same ritual role as the godfather at baptism, vouching with his own good reputation for the postulant.⁷⁸ The seventh-century Life of Symeon the Fool gives vivid expression to this idea. On the eve of their admission into the monastic life, Symeon and his companion John were told by their future brethren: “Blessed are you, for tomorrow you will be reborn and become pure from all sin, as when you were born, as if on the day you were baptized.”⁷⁹ In the true manner of fools, the postulants take this comment literally and begin to fret at the prospect of receiving baptism a second time, re-baptism being strictly prohibited by the church.

The Spiritual Guide and the Penitent Monk

The monastic state is usually presented as a state of real or intended absence of sin in thought and in deed. As I shall argue below, monasticism can also be conceived as a state of extended penance to obliterate existing sin. The early hermits and monks made every effort through their askēsis to attain physical and mental purity. They adopted a regimen of limited food intake, reduced sleep, extended periods of prayer and meditation, combined with manual labor to provide for their upkeep. The physical exertions of hermits and monks were not a goal in themselves but were meant to increase their spiritual abilities. Asceticism was a tool to achieve spiritual growth. Hermits and monks subjected their bodies to a lifetime of ever more demanding physical rigors. The duration of their ascetic efforts set them in contrast to the martyrs whose bodily suffering was compressed into the short period of time prior to their execution. In this way, those who lived the monastic life, whether in solitude or in a community, became the successors of the martyrs, once the Edict of Milan (312) had declared an end to the persecutions and thereby removed the opportunities for dramatic singular acts of martyrdom. ⁸⁰ Saint Anthony set the example for this when he translated his disappointment at being passed over for martyrdom in the Great Persecution into the resolve to subject himself to a “daily martyrdom” in his conscience. ⁸¹ Parallel to Anthony’s “daily martyrdom” as a solitary in the desert was the “continual martyrdom” of Pachomius, who pioneered monastic life in a communal setting. His disciple and successor Theodore affirmed that Pachomius had after his death joined the saints, apostles, prophets, and martyrs in heaven, “because he was at all times a martyr, through hunger, thirst, and vigils.”⁸²

The control of the body through ascetic practices was intended to create the conditions for mental and spiritual growth. Striving for perfection was a continuous process. More advanced monks were therefore in a position to provide guidance as spiritual fathers for younger, less experienced apprentices. Their role was analogous to that of the philosopher who acted as a teacher and guide for his disciples, as Pierre Hadot has so beautifully shown.⁸³ The spiritual guide acted like the pneumatophoroi who were discussed earlier. He was able to offer guidance to others because he had attained certain spiritual qualities: the discernment between good and evil thoughts in himself and in others, the gift of immediate recognition of the causes of a troubled soul, and the ability to gauge accurately the degree to which a young disciple needed to be challenged to stimulate his growth, without the risk of breaking him.⁸⁴ In the context of eremitic monasticism, the spiritual father was the person to whom the disciple bared his soul and made full confession of his sins and of the thoughts that troubled him, in order to receive words of encouragement and concrete advice on the most effective way to ameliorate his current tribulation. The ultimate aim of the intervention of the spiritual father was to facilitate the reconciliation of the disciple with God, so that the the disciple could attain a state of spiritual tranquility. It was often the prayers of the spiritual father that assisted the disciple in this process. Barsanuphius, who, as we have seen, was willing to shoulder the burdens of his disciples, acted in such a way through his promises to his disciples.

In the communal monastic setting of the coenobia the reconciliation of the younger monk who had strayed from the path to perfection and had committed a sin was directed not only toward God, but also toward the community. The individual who had separated himself from the community through his impious actions and his impure thoughts was assisted by his spiritual father in the monastery in making amends for his misdeeds, often by undergoing some kind of punishment. This kind of discipline was commonly practiced already in the Pachomian monasteries and was also advocated by Basil of Caesarea for his monastic foundation. The Byzantine monastic tradition has continued to value such spiritual guidance and kept it separate from administrative responsibility. The former was entrusted to one or several Old Men or spiritual fathers; the latter was the task of the abbot. The spiritual father performed in the monastic context, whether eremitic or coenobitic, the same function as the priest or bishop in his congregation: he heard confession, prayed for the sinner, and imposed penance. In this manner, he facilitated the renewed access of the individual to God, and brokered his readmission into the community of his brothers.

Monasticism as a State of Penance

Penance and prayer were essential components of the monastic life. These aspects of the monastic life have not been sufficiently explored in scholarship, obscured as they have been by an emphasis on the Christian continuation of pagan and Jewish asceticism that is perhaps most obvious in the voluntary abstinence from food, sex, and sleep.⁸⁵ But a closer look at the penitential practices of the Christian church in the first centuries shows remarkable similarities with what are usually thought of as ascetic practices of the monks. In his treatise On Penance, written in 203/204, about seven years after his baptism, Tertullian explained the meaning of the Greek word exomologēsis, which encompasses aspects of confession, public declarations of regret and repentance, and propitiation of the community and the clergy, all in the hope of attracting the mercy of God’s forgiveness:

And thus exomologesis is a discipline for man’s prostration and humiliation, enjoining a demeanor calculated to move mercy. With regard also to the very dress and food, it commands (the penitent) to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover his body in mourning, to lay his spirit low in sorrows, to exchange for severe treatment the sins which he has committed; moreover, to know no food and drink but such as is plain, not for the stomach’s sake, to wit, but the soul’s; for the most part, however, to feed prayers on fastings, to groan, to weep and make outcries unto the Lord your God; to bow before the feet of the presbyters, and kneel to God’s dear ones; to enjoin on all the brethren to be ambassadors to bear his deprecatory supplication (before God).⁸⁶

Tertullian was the first author to lay out in such detail the actions expected of the penitent. For the purposes of this study, it is irrelevant whether each and every one of the practices he described were particular to the church of Carthage or whether they were more widespread. The most prominent acts he enumerates continue to be mentioned in the context of penance throughout our period and beyond: fasting, the wearing of sackcloth, weeping, and confession. In addition to the practices that literally reshaped the outward appearance of the penitent sinner, it was often also advised that he or she engage in the giving of alms, an activity that contributed to the wellbeing of the symbolical “body of Christ” as represented by his church. Origen indicates seven different ways that are open to Christians for the remission of sins. In descending order, these are baptism, martyrdom, almsgiving, forgiveness of the sins of one’s neighbor, assisting a sinner in mending his ways, abundance of charity, and finally penance through the shedding of abundant tears and confession to a priest.⁸⁷ These penitential practices were recommended for the sinners in the churches of the cities and towns of the Roman Empire. But is it important to note that they were also part of the daily routine of the monks who lived in the seclusion of a monastery and especially of those who had withdrawn to the solitude of the desert. Penitential asceticism was a spiritual necessity for the individual who felt the burden of his sinfulness, but its effects could radiate beyond its practitioner. The Bohairic Life of Pachomius, which celebrates the foundation of communal monasticism by Pachomius and his disciples, made this point very eloquently, showing that the founder’s penitential practices of fasting and prayer, even if they were performed behind monastery walls, were directed toward the benefit of others: Hearing reports of a famine and an epidemic, Pachomius fasted and prayed for the duration of the crisis, and then took the additional preventive measure of praying for the swelling of the Nile to assure an ample harvest. This passage is followed by a very extensive description of how “when he [Pachomius] prayed he would pray for the whole world in kind,” asking God for the needs of monks, married people, sinners, pagans and heretics, rulers, and the clergy.⁸⁸ We will have occasion further below to observe such all-embracing generosity in prayer for the whole world on the part of other holy men and also of martyrs.

The practice of Christian asceticism in our period is loaded with admissions of sinfulness and the need for repentance. In the words of one of the desert fathers, Abba Matoes, “The nearer a man draws to God, the more he sees himself a sinner.”⁸⁹ This is not limited to the prominent practitioners of the holy life with their spectacular feats of physical endurance. The penitential intention behind ascetic practices was evident in communal as much as in eremitic monasticism. By the mid-fourth century, repentance (metanoia) had been integrated into the annual liturgical cycle of monastic communities in Middle Egypt, where, as Tim Vivian has recently shown, the monks gathered every year for a day of ritual prostrations and prayer.⁹⁰ At the end of the fourth century, the newly founded Pachomian monastery at Canopus near Alexandria was given the name Metanoia. The name was intended to invoke the association of purification with repentance, for the monastery was built directly above a former pagan site.⁹¹ Still in the early seventh century, John Climacus noted the existence of a monastery on the Sinai especially for the penitent. These were not necessarily men with a heavy conscience or even a criminal record, such as Moses the Robber, one of the more colorful figures in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, but monks who had made repentance for their sinful state their personal vocation.⁹² Farther away, in the Tur Abdin area of Mesopotamia during the fifth and sixth centuries, “the mourners” developed their own kind of asceticism with an emphasis on personal penitence.

The outward appearance of the desert hermits as the result of their asceticism—the parched and emaciated body, the long and matted hair, the ragged cloak, the piercing eyes—was the externally visible affirmation of their internal self-consciousness as penitent sinners. In addition to fasting, vigils, meditation, and prayer, it was the gift of tears, the ability to weep over the sins of oneself and of others, that was especially valued. A fantastic story was told about Irene of Chrysobalanton, an aristocratic nun in tenth-century Constantinople: her flow of tears reached such torrential proportions that a basin had to be installed next to her seat in the church to collect the precious liquid.⁹³ Irene’s story serves to underline the continued importance of compunction (penthos) in the spiritual life of the Greek East from late antiquity through the Byzantine Empire, a topic that has been explored and documented in a magisterial study by Irénée Hausherr.⁹⁴ Back in the fourth century, Abba Macarius, who himself had been a disciple of Anthony, gave this advice to another desert dweller: “Flee from men, stay in your cell, weep for your sins, do not take pleasure in the conversation of men, and you will be saved.”⁹⁵ Heartfelt penance, the monks knew well, could blot out sin. The flow of tears could have the same cleansing effect as the baptismal font. Nilus of Ancyra advises on the solitary life: “Consider fasting a weapon, prayer a wall, and tears a wash basin.”⁹⁶ In a sermon on the theme of the baptism of Christ, delivered on the Feast of Epiphany in the year 381, Gregory of Nazianzus reminded his congregation that penance constitutes a form of baptism:

I know of a fifth [kind of baptism] also, which is that of tears, and is much more laborious, received by him who washes his bed every night and his couch with tears; whose bruises stink through his wickedness; and who goeth mourning and of a sad countenance; who imitates the repentance of Manasseh and the humiliation of the Ninerites upon which God had mercy; who utters the words of the Publican in the Temple, and is justified rather than the stiffnecked Pharisee; who like the Canaanite woman bends down and asks for mercy and crumbs, the food of a dog that is very hungry.⁹⁷

Anastasius Sinaites expressed the same idea, but in fewer words: “Tears are the true bath of the Christian.”⁹⁸ His Questions and Answers provide us with a rare glimpse of Egyptian monastic spirituality in the late seventh century, long after the heyday of the monastic settlements in Kellia and Nitria. Elsewhere, he illustrated this point with the story of the tear-soaked handkerchief of a robber that blotted out his heinous deeds.⁹⁹ Such tears of repentance over concrete actions could move God’s forgiveness. Tears were also shed out of a general sense of humility and the recognition of one’s sinful nature. This is the advice of Evagrius Ponticus, the great theologian of Egyptian monastic spirituality in the fourth century:

When you are of the mind that you do not stand in need of tears for your sins along with your prayer, then give some thought to the distance that separates you from God, whereas you ought to be in him constantly. Then you will shed more abundant tears than ever.¹⁰⁰

Evagrius knew that the shedding of tears was a very special gift. It was prized so highly that he even had to warn those who were able to weep copiously against becoming boastful of their ability.¹⁰¹

Intercessory Prayer by Holy Men

Weeping and prayer were intimately connected. Weeping was the outward gesture that accompanied fervent prayer for the remission of sins. In Evagrius’s words: “Pray with tears and your request will find a hearing. Nothing so gratifies the Lord as supplication offered in the midst of tears.”¹⁰² Those who had, through long experience, reached a certain degree of perfection were capable of praying (and weeping) not only for themselves, but also for others. An inscription at the monastic site of Saqqara in Egypt records: “This is the spot on which our lord and father Apa Jeremias bowed himself, until he removed the sins of the people of the whole world. May his (?) holy blessing descend upon us. Amen Amen, so be it, Amen (?).”¹⁰³

The ability of holy men to pray for others was highly valued by their contemporaries and certainly contributed to their popularity.¹⁰⁴ Holy men and pneumatophoroi were expected to pray on behalf of those in need of assistance. ¹⁰⁵ The spiritual fathers whom we encountered in the documentary evidence discussed above may have performed fewer miracles than the sensationalistic hagiographical record of late antiquity would lead us to expect from holy men, but they did offer up prayers for their correspondents. In some instances, they even gave assurance for the forgiveness of sins or promised their help to alleviate the burden of the sins of their followers. The life of retreat in prayer was very different from that of asceticism and almsgiving, and an apa who decided to embark exclusively on this path could meet with the consternation of his monastic colleagues. This is what happened to Apa Banes, according to an apophthegma preserved in the Coptic collection. The monks were so irritated at Banes’ rejection of the lifestyle they held dear that they needed the reassurance of the local prophet Abraham:

Why do you trouble yourselves? In fact, during the time when Apa Banes distributed alms, did he nourish a village, a town, a county? Now, Banes is able to raise both hands [in prayer] to make sure that barley comes to the whole world in abundance. He is also able to ask God to forgive the sins of this entire generation.¹⁰⁶

The ability of holy men to pray for others is a recurring theme in the monastic literature of late antiquity, where it usually serves the dual purpose of underlining their compassion for others, which motivates their prayer, and of emphasizing their advanced state of holiness, which guarantees its success. Miracles were often, but not always the result.

In hagiography, the holy man’s intercession on behalf of sinners is usually couched in colorful stories that culminate in a miracle.¹⁰⁷ Typically, a sinner who had suffered divine punishment for a misdeed—in the form of paralysis, sudden voice loss, or some other ominous occurrence—approached the holy man with the request to be “loosed” by him. This is exemplified in the story of the prominent Ishmaelite who broke his vow to God to abstain from meat, and then found that the bird he had shot and was about to eat had turned into stone. In his shock and distress, he appealed to Symeon the Stylite, who had been instrumental in his conversion, and asked “that through his all-powerful prayers he [Symeon] might free him from the bonds of sin.”¹⁰⁸

The necessity to remain in communication with God through prayer was so much taken for granted that there is little theoretical reflection on the nature of prayer itself. An exception is John Cassian, who had spent many years with the fathers in Egypt. Not long after his return to the West in 404, he founded a men’s and a women’s monastery in Marseilles where he composed his Institutes and Conferences to communicate his experience to a Latin readership, becoming the first to translate the monastic ideal to the West. Cassian made a distinction between four different kinds of prayer—supplication, prayer, pleading, and thanksgiving. He lists them in ascending order, each correlated with the spiritual state of the individual:

These, then, are the four rich sources of prayer. Out of contrition for sin is supplication born. Prayer comes of the fidelity to promises and the fulfillment of what we have undertaken for the sake of a pure conscience. Pleading comes forth from the warmth of our love. Thanksgiving is generated by the contemplation of God’s goodness and greatness and faithfulness. [. . .] The first type seems especially appropriate for beginners, for they are still goaded by the stings and by the memory of past sin. The second type is appropriate for those who are making progress in the acquisition of virtue and in the exaltedness of their souls. The third is suitable for those who live as they have promised to do, who see the frailty of others and who speak out for them because of the charity that moves them. The fourth suits those who have pulled the painful thorn of penitence out of their hearts and who in the quiet of their purified spirit contemplate the kindness and mercy that the Lord has shown them in the past, that He gives them now and that He makes ready for them in the future. Aflame with all this their hearts are rapt in the burning prayer which human words can neither grasp nor utter. Sometimes the soul which has come to be rooted in this state of real purity takes on all the forms of prayer at the same time. It flies from one to the other, like an uncontrollable grasping fire. It becomes an outpouring of living pure prayer which the Holy Spirit, without our knowing it, lifts up to God in unspeakable groanings. . . . In no way can our spirit attain those more exalted modes of prayer of which I have been speaking except by the step-by-step journey upward through all those pleas we pour forth.¹⁰⁹

Cassian derived this four-part scheme of supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings from Paul’s First Letter to Timothy (1 Tim. 2:1). Origen had already commented on this passage in his On Prayer. He noted that prayer on behalf of others or for specific things (enteuxis) was incumbent upon those who had greater parrhēsia, access to God.¹¹⁰ However, the hierarchical arrangement of all four kinds of prayer and the correspondence of each of them to a particular degree of personal perfection was Cassian’s own contribution. According to 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 the period leading up to her martyrdom. She describes how she experienced the work of the Spirit as it directed her thoughts, moved her tongue, and inspired her dreams with visions. The passage is worth quoting in full:

A few days after, while we were all praying, suddenly in the midst of the prayer I uttered a word and named Dinocrates [Perpetua’s younger brother, now deceased]; and I was amazed because he had never come into my mind save then; and I sorrowed, remembering his fate. And straightway I knew that I was worthy, and that I ought to ask for him. And I began to pray for him long, and to groan unto the Lord. Immediately the same night, this was shown me.

I beheld Dinocrates coming forth from a dark place, where were many others also; being both hot and thirsty, his raiment foul, his color pale; and the wound on his face which he had when he died. This Dinocrates had been my brother in the flesh, seven years old, who being diseased with ulcers of the face had come to a horrible death, so that his death was abominated of all men. For him therefore I had made my prayer; and between him and me was a great gulf, so that either might not go to the other. There was moreover, in the same place where Dinocrates was, a font full of water, having its edge higher than was the boy’s stature; and Dinocrates stretched up as though to drink. I was sorry that the font had water in it, and yet for the height of the edge he might not drink.

And I awoke, and I knew that my brother was in travail. Yet I was confident I should ease his travail; and I prayed for him every day till we passed over into the camp prison. (For it was in the camp games that we were to fight; and the time was the feast of the Emperor Geta’s birthday.) And I prayed for him day and night with groans and tears, that he might be given me.

On the day when we abode in the stocks, this was shown me.

I saw that place which I had before seen, and Dinocrates clean of body, finely clothed, in comfort; and the font I had seen before, the edge of it being drawn to the boy’s navel; and he drew water thence which flowed without ceasing. And on the edge was a golden cup full of water; and Dinocrates came up and began to drink therefrom; which cup failed not. And being satisfied he departed away from the water and began to play as children will, joyfully.

And I awoke. Then I understood that he was translated from his pains.¹²⁰

Perpetua’s anticipated martyrdom enabled her to work a vicarious baptism for her brother, who had been raised, like herself, in a pagan household and had died at too young an age to seek Christian baptism for him-self. Her visions are permeated with baptismal imagery: the fountain of water is evocative of the baptismal fountain, and Dinocrates’ transformation from the ragged appearance of severe illness to a picture of health and purity is reminiscent of the white garments that neophytes wear after their baptism and alludes to the notion of baptism as a ritual of healing and restoration. Perpetua’s confidence in her own ability to bring on this transformation through her prayers, only barely mitigated by her insistence that she was moved to do so by the Spirit, may seem exaggerated to the modern reader. But it was not an isolated phenomenon.

Several decades later, during the persecution that the emperor Decius (249–251) unleashed with his empire-wide order to perform sacrifices, the martyrs in Carthage were yet more specific in the purpose of their intercession. They prayed for those in the community who had committed sins, and especially for those who had, under pressure from the Roman authorities, taken part in pagan sacrifice. More than that, they issued written confirmation of their prayers in the form of libelli pacis. Apostasy from Christianity was considered one of the capital sins—a perpetration so monstrous, as most ecclesiastical authorities at the time agreed, that no penance could ever be sufficient to expiate it. Baptism removed all pre-baptismal sins, and after baptism a graduated system of penance existed for the atonement of lighter offenses, but the ecclesiastical mediation of divine forgiveness was powerless when it came to the capital sins of apostasy, murder, and adultery. The perpetrators of capital sins could only hope for God’s mercy on the Day of Judgment, and perhaps for reconciliation with the church on their deathbed. The willingness of the Carthaginian martyrs to pray for those who had lapsed was a stunning demonstration of confidence in their powers of intercession, both on the side of the imprisoned martyrs and on the side of those who sought their assistance. It was a bold declaration of spiritual authority, born out of the need of a Christian community to make a new beginning after it had been traumatized by the order to sacrifice and humiliated by the compliance of some of its members.

The consequences of Perpetua’s prayers for her dead brother were known only to herself. But the lapsed Christians of Carthage were very much alive, and those who had been assured of the intercession of the martyrs expected to be reintegrated into the congregation. The value of the prayer of those who were on the threshold of martyrdom was accepted by all. But the belief of some that the prayers of Carthaginian martyrs could effect a renewal of the baptismal purification from sin and blot out even the gravest sin of apostasy placed Bishop Cyprian (248/249–258) in an awkward position, between the need to uphold his penitential authority as a bishop and his desire to recognize the prayers of the martyrs. At the core of the conflict was the question of who could claim possession of spiritual authority, in this instance hinged on the power of conciliatory prayer. Was it the future martyr, who was assured through his suffering for the sake of Christ of a special proximity to God? Or was it the bishop, who had in his ordination been placed in the succession of the first pneumatophoroi, the apostles, and whose pastoral responsibilities elevated him above the rest in practical terms?

The confessors of the Decian persecution in Alexandria engaged in similar acts of compassion toward the lapsed, causing Bishop Dionysius no small amount of consternation, which he shared in a letter to Bishop Fabius of Antioch, preserved by Eusebius:

Thus even the divine martyrs among us, who now sit by Christ’s side as partners in His kingdom, share His authority, and are His fellow-judges, opened their arms to their fallen brethren who faced the charge of sacrificing. Seeing their conversion and repentance, they were sure that it would be acceptable to Him who does not in the least desire the death of a sinner, but rather his repentance; so they received them, admitted them to the congregation as “bystanders,” and allowed them to take part in services and feasts. What then, brothers, is your advice to us in this matter? What must we do? Shall we take our stand in full agreement with them, uphold their merciful decision, and deal gently with those they pitied? Or shall we condemn their decision as improper, and set ourselves up as judges of their attitude, wound their gentleness, and turn their practice upside down?¹²¹

We don’t know how Dionysius of Alexandria solved this dilemma, but we are well informed about Cyprian’s response. Cyprian had come to the episcopal throne of Carthage without much prior experience in the church, let alone the clergy. Converted as an adult, he chose a life of celibacy, disposed of most of his estate, and then, in short succession, was made presbyter and bishop in 248/249. His appointment was welcomed by the Christian congregation, which valued his prior training as a rhetorician and his network of connections. But as a newcomer to the clergy, he was met with less enthusiasm by a number of priests. Within a year or two after his election, the Decian persecution broke out. Cyprian himself went into hiding, convinced that he would serve his flock better by counseling them through his letters than by attracting the attention of the persecutors. His thought on the libelli developed over the course of the persecution, in response not only to the letters of the confessors in prison, but also with a view to preserving peace and unity within his church,¹²² for during Cyprian’s absence, some priests had honored the martyrs’ libelli and readmitted penitent apostates to the eucharist. Their decision could not easily be revoked.

Cyprian’s solution was to defuse the conflict by redefining the contested ground. The martyrs, he affirmed, had intercessory power with God with regard to admission to the kingdom in heaven. The bishop’s prayer could do the same, but, in addition, the bishop was responsible for the welfare of the kingdom of heaven as it exists, however imperfectly and insufficiently, in the here and now in the church. While the martyrs could issue recommendations, it was only the bishop’s prerogative to readmit sinners into the community. In essence, Cyprian was carving out a sphere of competence that was exclusively the bishop’s. And it belonged to the bishop because of the authority invested in his office. The question of the possession of spiritual authority in the individual was thus diverted and became a question over the area in which this authority was operative and effective. The persecutions resumed a few years later under Valerian. This time, Cyprian remained with his congregation. He suffered a brief period of exile, and then was martyred in Carthage in 258.

Martyrdom and Ecclesiastical Rank

The suffering that the confessors had endured during their trials translated into a special status within their communities after their return. Many confessors were made part of the clergy by their congregation, which wished to give recognition to their spiritual achievement and hoped to benefit from their spiritual gifts. According to the Apostolic Tradition, a confessor who had suffered judicial trial, imprisonment, or any other form of punishment, including binding in chains, was considered to hold the same honor (timē) as a deacon or priest: “But if a confessor has been in chains in prison for the Name [of Christ], hands are not laid on him for the diaconate or the presbyter’s office. For he has the honor (timē) of the presbyterate by his confession. But if he be appointed bishop, hands shall be laid on him.”¹²³ Likewise the Testament of Our Lord, a fifth-century church order from Syria that is heavily indebted to the Apostolic Tradition: “For he [the confessor] has the honor of the clergy having been sheltered by the hand of God by his confessorship.”¹²⁴

These statements regarding the confessors bring into focus the complex character of the episcopate. First of all, they make an implicit distinction between dignity and office. The confessors are automatically entitled to the former but achieve the latter only through proper initiation. Such niceties may well have been lost on the congregations, and the two were easily conflated. It was in order to avoid such misunderstandings that the Apostolic Constitutions, a compilation of the late fourth century, unambiguously declared that confessors ought not to usurp the dignity (axiōma) of the clergy.¹²⁵ Further, these guidelines take for granted that the superior spiritual qualities of the confessors translate into the corresponding ecclesiastical rank of deacons and priests with the privilege to stand at the altar. Implicit in this ruling is the acknowledgement that the episcopate does not carry any increment in honor above the presbyterate but was rather an administrative position of elevated rank. It was for this reason, as we shall see momentarily, that Cyprian wanted to groom the confessors he had admitted into the clergy for their future tasks before promoting them to the episcopate. These statements seem to indicate that the higher dignity that the bishop enjoyed as the head of his clergy was the result of the spiritual nature inherent in his office, which placed him in the succession of the apostles, and which was conferred on him at the moment of his ordination. The spiritual authority that an individual acquired through his efforts in martyrdom—or asceticism for that matter—had its exact correspondence in the dignity of the priesthood or, in the case of young men or neophytes, of the deaconate.

Cyprian’s practice during the Decian persecution in Carthage shows how this question of dignity versus office could be resolved in practical terms. He appointed two young confessors, Aurelius and Celerinus, as readers. In this way, he noted, they could continue to give witness to their faith and be an inspiration and example to the congregation while they were performing their task of reading from the scripture during the liturgy. They were held in the same honor as priests through the allocation of a regular stipend and could expect eventually to be ordained to the priesthood and later the episcopate as the need arose. A third confessor, Numidicus, was made a priest immediately, again with the prospect of later elevation to the episcopate.¹²⁶ He was more advanced in age and had endured greater physical suffering than the other two, which may explain his direct appointment to a higher rank in the clergy. Cyprian thus combined recognition of the special status of the confessors with integration into the ecclesiastical hierarchy at the appropriate level, sealed by a proper ordination rite. For many Christian believers, such distinctions between clergy and otherwise holy men were immaterial when their own salvation and well-being were at stake. A Syriac letter addressed by the presbyter Cosmas on behalf of his community to Symeon the Stylite contains the solemn promise to obey all his teachings lest they be cursed by him, and proclaims Symeon “the anointed priest given to us by God who effected reconciliation between God and his creation.”¹²⁷

The Clergy and the Penitent

Holy men and martyrs offered intercessory prayer and vicarious penance on behalf of sinners, but their penitential abilities were limited to post-baptismal sins. The initial cleansing from sin and acceptance into the church through baptism was the exclusive purview of priests or bishops. They were also the ministers of penance for post-baptismal sins within the context of the church.