Imago Dei--The Anthropomorphite Controversy & St Gregory the Great

In large part because of my great devotion to St John Cassian and his writings, I have long taken a keen interest in the 4^th- to 5^th-century ‘Anthropomorphite-Origenist’ controversy in Egypt, and for the same reason I have for the most part tended to identify heavily with the ‘Origenist’ side of the controversy. St Cassian’s points in Conference 10 in fact seem fairly uncontroversial, and the ‘anthropomorphite’ position seems fairly indefensible from an Orthodox perspective.

This view was beautifully complicated for me by Bishop Alexander’s contribution to the festschrift for Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware)—‘The Vision of God & the Form of Glory: More Reflections on the Anthropomorphite Controversy of AD 399’ (see an earlier contribution by His Grace to the subject here). While I definitely appreciated His Grace’s ‘final word’ attempting to ‘make up a little for the injustices I may have done a Cassian, an Origen, or an Evagrius in the course of making my argument’ [1], I also appreciated in a different sense his main argument that the simplistic ‘Serapion’ of Conference 10 may not be entirely representative of the anthropomorphites themselves or of their position.

Well, today I was finally getting round to reading Tim Vivian’s introduction to his little volume for the SVS Popular Patristic Series—Four Desert Fathers: Pambo, Evagrius, Macarius of Egypt & Macarius of Alexandria. Vivian—in his discussion of Evagrius’s emphasis on imageless prayer and its possible role in the controversy—seems to hold a nuanced understanding of the controversy very similar to that of Bishop Alexander and informed by some of the same sources. Among others, he also refers to an essay by Fr Georges Florovsky that I don’t believe I have yet read myself entitled ‘Theophilus of Alexandria and Apa Aphou of Pemdje’. Vivian quotes Fr Georges’s explanation of the position of one of the ‘anthropomorphites’:

The sting of his argument was directed against the denial of God’s image in man, and there was no word whatever about any ‘human form’ in God. Aphou only contended that man, even in his present condition and in spite of all his misery and destitution, had to be regarded still as being created in the image of God, and must be, for that reason, respected. Aphou was primarily concerned with man’s dignity and honor. Theophilus, on the other hand, was embarrassed by man’s misery and depravity. [2]

I found this connection between the anthropomorphites’ emphasis on the imago Dei in man and the Origenists’ rejection of an imago hominis in God particularly interesting in light of something I had just read this morning in an author rather far removed in time and place from the controversy: St Gregory the Great. In his Homilies on Ezekiel, St Gregory links the human soul and God Himself in the process of mystical ascent, describing a kind of likeness between the two, but specifically rejecting the conception of not only the latter but of the former in terms of images. I shall quote this passage at length:

For we often wish to ponder the invisible nature of Almighty God but by no means avail, and the soul, wearied by the very difficulties, withdraws into herself and makes for herself and from herself the steps of her ascent, so that she first considers herself, if she can, and then examines insofar as she can that nature which is above her. But our mind, if spread out in carnal images, by no means suffices to consider itself or the nature of the soul because it is led by as many thoughts as it is, so to speak, blinded by obstacles. [3]

It is then that St Gregory begins to discuss precisely how God and the soul are connected and why they must both be approached without images. In the next passage the ellipses indicate where I have attempted to shorten the quote without, I hope, obscuring the argument.

9. Then the first step is to compose oneself, the second to see the like of this composure, the third to rise above oneself and by intention submit to the contemplation of the invisible Creator. But one by no means composes himself unless he has first learned to curb the apparitions of earthly and heavenly images from his mind’s eye and cast out and tread down whatever of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste occurs to his bodily thought, in order that he may inwardly seek such as is free thereof….Then all things are to be driven away by the hand of discernment from the mind’s eye so that the soul may regard herself as she was created, above the body but below God, so that being quickened by her superior she may quicken the inferior which she administers….And when she performs such different actions through the senses she arranges them not by a diversity, but by that one reason in which she was created. When therefore the soul thinks of herself without bodily images she has already entered the first door. But this door leads on to the other in order that something from the nature of Almighty God may be contemplated. So the soul in the body is the life of the flesh, but God Who quickens all is the life of souls. Then if the quickened life is of such magnitude that it cannot be comprehended, who avails to comprehend with his understanding how great is the majesty of the Life which quickens? But the very consideration and discernment thereof is already to enter to some extent, because from her appraisement the soul gathers what she perceives of the uncircumscribed Spirit which incomprehensibly rules those things which He incomprehensibly created. [4]

Now, this is a very difficult passage, in part because St Gregory seems to be speaking of a lofty mystical experience which most of us have not shared. But I note that even in speaking of what one might call the contemplation of one’s own soul, he teaches that images must be driven out. The necessity of imageless contemplation of God, then, is even greater, for if the creature is incomprehensible, how much more the Creator?

What’s interesting to me about this is that it clearly appears to belong to the Origenists’ tradition (I’d be interested to see research on what St Gregory knew of Origen and Evagrius), and yet it does not—as one might expect from the quoted passage from Fr Georges’s essay—deny the imago Dei in man. Indeed, St Gregory seems to make much indeed of the divine image in the human soul—ascribing to it the very incomprehensibility that for the Origenists required the cultivation of total imagelessness in prayer to its divine Prototype.

[1] Bishop Alexander (Golitzin), ‘The Vision of God & the Form of Glory: More Reflections on the Anthropomorphite Controversy of AD 399’, Abba—The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West: Festschrift for Bishop Kallistos Ware, ed. Fr John Behr, Fr Andrew Louth, & Dimitri Conomos (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2003), p. 295.

[2] Fr Georges Florovsky, ‘Theophilus of Alexandria and Apa Aphou of Pemdje’, Aspects of Church History, Vol. 4 of Collected Works (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1975), p. 119; qtd. in Tim Vivian, Introduction, Four Desert Fathers: Pambo, Evagrius, Macarius of Egypt & Macarius of Alexandria (Crestwood, NY: 2004), p. 45.

[3] St Gregory the Great, The Homilies of St Gregory the Great On the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, tr. Theodosia Gray, ed. Presbytera Juliana Cownie (Etna, CA: CTOS, 1990), p. 209.

[4] Ibid., pp. 209-10.

'The Servant of God / Hero Hardy'—St Guthlac of Crowland

Today, 11 April on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Guthlac (c. 673-714), Hermit of Crowland. I first learned of St Guthlac through Fr Andrew Phillips, who writes of ‘Guthlac, another desert-father in spirit, who lived in the marshes and lonely fenlands of Lincolnshire, and fought a great war against that ancient foe of mankind, that Old Dragon, the Adversary, and who “spoke with the angels of the heavenly mysteries”, from whose mouth there came forth “a fragrance like unto the scent of the sweetest flowers” and whose passing away was marked by the appearance of “a fiery tower, reaching from the earth to the height of heaven, turning the light of the sun itself to paleness”’ (here). Here is the account of St Guthlac’s life in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints:

Guthlac (c. 673-714), hermit of Crowland (Lincs.). Of royal blood from the Mercian tribe of Guthlacingas, he became a soldier (C.S.P. called him robustus depraedator) from the age of fifteen, but after nine successful years gave up warfare to be a monk at Repton, a double monastery where some Mercian kings were buried, rule by Abbess Ælfirth. He was rather unpopular at first because of his total abstinence from intoxicating drink; later he was better appreciated. In about 701 he moved on to the solitary life at Crowland on a site accessible only by boat. Here his life resembled the regime of the Desert Fathers; annoyances included attacks by Britons who had taken refuge in the Fens, and violent temptations by devils; consolations were visions of angels and of his patron Bartholomew the Apostle. After fifteen years as a hermit, he knew that his death was near. Edburga, abbess of Repton, sent him a shroud and a leaden coffin. His sister Pega, an anchoress at Peakirk, came to his burial with his disciples Cissa, Bettelin, Egbert, and Tatwin, who occupied cells near by. A year later the grave was opened and the body found incorrupt. The Guthlac cult began, centred on his shrine at Crowland, to which Pega had given his psalter and scourge. [1] It soon became popular, with Wiglaf, king of Mercia (827-40), and Ceolnoth, archbishop of Canterbury (who was cured of ague by the saint in 851), among its devotees. The feast soon spread through Mercia to Westminster, St Albans, and Durham and eventually became general.

. . . The cult flourished also in the 12th century. His relics were translated in 1136 in the abbey church built on the site of his cell and the shrine was embellished with gold, silver, and jewels. Yet another translation took place in 1196. [2]

St Guthlac’s Life was recorded in Latin prose, as well as in Old English prose and verse. His various hagiographers early noted the the likeness of St Guthlac’s struggles with those of St Anthony the Great, and often recorded them in nearly identical terms. Here is a passage from the Old English poem, Guthlac B:

Oft were the fens by foul fiends haunted;
Hordes of demons, dark and menacing,
Swarmed round the spot where the saint of God,
Dauntless of courage, kept his abode.
Filled was the air with uproar confused;
Riotous battle-din raised in the wilderness
The fiendish rout, bereft of all beauty,
Sundered from joy. But the servant of God,
Hero hardy, the hellish rabble
Boldly defied. They fled for a space,
Not long the delay; the loathly guests,
The trouble-smiths, quickly the turmoil renewed
With yelpings loud and long-drawn yells.
At times they would bellow like beasts of prey,
Or howl in troops; at times they would change
Into human form, the fierce man-haters,
With deafening clamor, or don the shape
Of creeping serpents, those spirits accurst,
Spewing venom, the vile deceivers.
Yet Guthlac ever on guard they found;
Watchful and wary, he waited in patience,
Though the thronging demon-bands threatened to slay him. [3]

The reference to St Guthlac’s ‘watchfulness’ is a reminder of the hesychastic nature of his struggles. Similarly, although considered a characteristic of the ‘folk psychology’ of the Anglo-Saxons and not as a universal part of the Christian ascetic lexicon, [4] it has been noted that the Old English poems on St Guthlac are explicitly concerned with what we as Orthodox can only call the Saint’s noetic activity. Antonina Harbus writes:

The narrative of Guthlac A is predicated on the ideas that the mental life is at the heart of spiritual existence, and is the site of grace and therefore of commerce with the divine. . . . In the model of faith offered in this poetic saint’s life and also in its narrative presentation, conscious mental focus on the divine is the major priority. [5]

But surely 7th- and 8th-c. English monks could have got this from St Cassian, who in Institutes 8.X speaks of how ‘the mind (that is, the nous or reason) . . . surveys all the thoughts and judgments of the heart’. [6] Unfamiliarity with the terms and theory of Christian ascetic theology has apparently even led to some outright confusion on the part of scholars of Old English hagiography whose focus is so exclusively philological. As Thomas Hill notes:

There has been some debate recently about whether the Guthlac A poet believed Guthlac was troubled by ‘real’ demons or whether the demons are in effect emblems of Guthlac’s inner conflicts. This debate seems to me misguided. I know of no early medieval Christian authority who doubted the existence and malign influence of demons, but at the same time patristic and early medieval Christians were profoundly aware that it is precisely our own inner conflicts which render us vulnerable to such forces. [7]

I myself was inspired by the Old English vernacular poems on St Guthlac’s Life, and produced my own—mercifully brief—alliterative poem several years ago. I entitled it ‘Osbeorh’, and the final revision I recorded was done on 3 April 2004 (pardon me that I can’t reproduce the characteristic caesuras):

In wilderness wild, in woods and bogs,
In deserts and fens, undredged their murks,
Those seeking virtue venture unsought,
Daring to fight the dragon in gloom;
Our foe most fearsome, the fens a-haunting,
A host he calls the hero to fell.
The dwimmer of beasts display themselves,
Framing and fashioning fiends accursed.
Battles untold in barrow are fought,
Prepared of old for pagan dead,
Hewn out of hillock, a harrowing den,
Dwelling in darkness, his deeds unknown,
A sea of mists concealing the Holy,
A stout heart might stagger, stooped under hardship.
But habit and cowl, when crossed with the rood,
Will slip from the fingers of fiendish ghosts.
Thus many a year the Mercy he delves
In chapel of green o’ergrown with soft tufts,
Till lit with light, such letters he finds
To spell with glory the God-words he heard,
Outstripping the science of senses and grammar,
Till songs of the Saint were sung by our people—
Chants now forgotten, though godly and pure,
Of sanctity’s sleep in silence now dreamed,
Long promised by prophets who passed on of old.

In conclusion, here is a troparion for St Guthlac from the canon at Matins in the Service to All Saints of Britain in Moss’s Saints of England’s Golden Age:

Thy tears in the wilderness brought forth fruit an hundredfold, O Holy Father Guthlac, and by the weapon of thy prayers thou didst conquer demons and receive from Heaven the Grace to heal the diseases of those who honour thee. [8]

[1] David Farmer notes that the scourge ‘was not for self-flagellation but for use as a defensive and offensive weapon against diabolical attacks’ (The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 5th ed. [Oxford: Oxford U, 2004], pp. 239-40). The incident is depicted in the image at the top taken from the late 12th-c. Harleian Roll Y.6 at the British Museum, usually called the ‘Guthlac Roll’.

[2] Ibid., p. 239.

[3] J. Duncan Spaeth, Old English Poetry: Translations into Alliterative Verse with Introductions & Notes (Princeton: Princeton U, 1922), pp. 107-8 (here).

[4] Antonina Harbus, The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry (NY: Rodopi, 2002), p. 3 (here).

[5] Ibid., p. 107 (here).

[6] St John Cassian, The Institutes, tr. Boniface Ramsey, OP (NY: Newman, 2000), p. 198.

[7] Thomas D. Hill, ‘The Middle Way: Idel-Wuldor & Egesa in the Old English Guthlac A’, The Review of English Studies XXX.118 (1979), p. 182 (here).

[8] Vladimir Moss, Saints of England’s Golden Age: A Collection of the Lives of Holy Men & Women Who Flourished in Orthodox Christian Britain (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1997), p. 242.

On the Teachings of Evagrius

While acknowledging that the Church has not recognised him as a Saint, in a previous post (here) I cautiously honoured the life of the 4th-c. ascetic theologian, Evagrius Ponticus. I also expressed my hope to revisit some of the controversial issues surrounding his teaching and influence, and that is what I intend to do in this post. This was initially prompted by a comment I received on a post back in January (here):

St Basil is ‘sidelined’ as the father of monasticism because he is the father of that monasticism that finally condemned Origen, Evagrius, Didimus [sic], that the ‘West’ annointed as the fathers of ‘Christian mysticism and ascetics’. [1]

Now, we all know that the speculative teachings of these three writers were anathematised at the Fifth Œcumenical Council, some of the most obvious problems in them being the preexistence of souls and universalism. But it is also clear that the Orthodox Tradition has not dismissed them entirely. Ss Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian themselves compiled a collection of passages from Origen’s works called the Philokalia, both were early mentors of Evagrius, and the latter’s influential ascetic works were much later incorporated into the more well-known Philokalia compiled by Ss Macarius of Corinth and Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (though some of Evagrius’s writing was passed down under the name of St Nilus the Ascetic). (Most of Didymus’s works were apparently lost and as far as I can tell seem to have had little subsequent influence.)

But these observations hardly do justice, on the one hand, to the simple diligence of countless Orthodox scribes, monks, and even Saints in copying the words of these writers, without which none of their work would have survived, and on the other, to the well-documented influence they exercised on subsequent Orthodox Fathers throughout the centuries in their terminology, patterns of thought, and even their exegetical and spiritual teaching. All of this suggests that, while we accept the discernment of our Fathers in condemning the heretical teachings of these writers, there is yet something worthwhile in them from which we can profit. While I personally can’t say much about Origen, I have read quite a bit of Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345-399), and I would like to respond to what reads like a sneering dismissal of his writings in the above comment. As St John the Prophet of Gaza writes in response to the question, ‘Should we not, then, read even the works of Evagrius?’, in Letter 602:

Do not accept such doctrines [e.g., apokatastasis] from his works; but go ahead and read, if you like, those works that are beneficial for the soul, according to the parable about the net in the Gospel. For it has been written: ‘They placed the good into baskets, but threw out the bad’ (Mt 13.48). You, too, should do the same. [2]

Thus, Jean Leclerq, OSB, notes, ‘The writings left by Evagrius have contributed to the building of the spiritual tradition from which we all draw’, [3] and according to Fr Placide (Deseille), ‘The Greek hesychast tradition follows entirely in its wake.’ [4] Similarly, Fr Andrew Louth observes that Evagrius’s ‘mystical theology’, which ‘clearly arose out of his own participation in the lived tradition of the Desert Fathers, out of his own experience of the eremitical life’,

was gratefully accepted by Eastern monasticism and his most important works on the monastic way of prayer (as opposed to speculation about the metaphysical presuppositions of that way)—the Praktikos and On Prayer—were preserved in Greek, and exercised an enormous influence on Eastern Orthodox spiritual and mystical theology. [5]

Of course, this influence was not absolute. The editors of the Faber edition of the Philokalia note that St John Cassian, ‘transmitted the “practical” aspect of Evagrios’ teachings to the Latin West’, but abandoned ‘the suspect theories that Evagrios derived from Origen’. [6] Fr Andrew Louth sketches ‘the Evagrian pattern’ as it influenced St Maximus the Confessor, then observes:

But it is not present in Maximus’ writings unchanged. To begin with, behind Evagrius’ teaching on prayer and ascetic struggle there lay his ‘Origenist’ metaphysic, with which Maximus profoundly disagreed, and of which he was its greatest critic. But he was a critic with great sympathy for what he criticized, and extremely anxious not to throw out the baby with the bath-water. At the level of ascetic theology, Maximus is able to preserve most of what Evagrius taught, and he does. But he thinks it through again, and though many of the concepts and terms he uses are clearly Evagrian, what is expressed is no less distinctively Maximian. [7]

But both of these comments assume an absolutely Origenist reading of Evagrius’s Kephalaia Gnostika, a reading which also calls the framework of the Pontian’s other writings into question. This reading has, however, itself been called into question. Fr Placide observes:

Nowhere has Evagrius given a systematic exposition of this cosmology, nor of the Christology integral to it. Rather than accepting it as a literal doctrine, he undoubtedly understood it as a ‘myth’ in the Platonic sense, refracting it through the thousand facets of his Gnostic Chapters. Reduced to a system by later agitated disciples of Evagrius in the first half of the sixth century, the doctrine was first condemned in 543, then in 553, at the Fifth Ecumenical Council. [8]

Augustine Casiday has gone even further in discussing the lineaments of this Origenist reading of Evagrius. He notes that the contention of Antoine Guillaumont that the more Origenist of the two texts of the Kephalaia Gnostika was the original and, furthermore,

was directly responsible for the Christological controversies that resulted in the anathemas promulgated against Origen in 553 . . . relies on configuring Evagrius’ disconnected utterances in a specific way and (perhaps more troublingly) claiming that hostile statements resolving the Second Origenist Controversy provide the correct template for this reconfiguration. What justification have we for thinking that the later crisis provides us with the best pattern for Evagrius’ beliefs? [9]

Casiday notes that there are, in fact, ‘multiple traditions—some in direct competition with each other—that look back to Evagrius for inspiration’, thus contradicting ‘the idea that a privileged insight into his thinking was preserved by a single school of thought.’ Confronted with the task of interpreting Evagrius’s work as a whole, Casiday argues that ‘it is surely better to rely on the core of undisputedly authentic texts’. [10] He concludes:

In the light of how trenchantly orthodox Evagrius is shown to have been by his letter On the faith [Epistula fidei]—in which, incidentally, he has already begun to use the categories for the mystical contemplations that are found in his Great letter [Ad Melaniam] and Gnostic chapters [Kephalaia Gnostika]—it seems more sensible to begin our attempts to understand his admittedly obscure writings from the presumption of Cappadocian orthodoxy rather than to work backword from the presumption of Origenist heresy. This is not to cast doubt on the claim that Evagrius himself drew inspiration from Origen, which is beyond dispute. It simply means that we are now able to work forward from Origen (via the Cappadocians and Egyptians) to Evagrius and reconstruct Evagrius’ thinking with reference to a reasonably large corpus, without having to rely upon subsequent interpretations or evaluations of Evagrius’ writings. [11]

The ‘presumption of Cappadocian orthodoxy’ is greatly helped of course by the letter ‘On the faith’. Indeed, William Harmless recalls Palladius’s comment that Evagrius was ‘most skillful in confuting all the heresies’, noting: ‘The accuracy of this assessment has become clear with the discovery that a famous letter probing subtle aspects of Trinitarian doctrine, a letter long attributed to Basil, was in fact composed by Evagrius.’ [12] In other words, if Evagrius was capable of writing such a letter, was he capable at the same time of teaching that Christ is ‘different to all other rational beings only insofar as the human soul of Christ is further along the spectrum of spiritual progress that all rational beings must inevitably make’? [13]

I do not offer the opinions of Fr Placide and Casiday to say that I accept them whole-heartedly, but merely to call attention to the fact that there is another approach to be considered. To tell the truth, I have rather avoided looking into the Kephalaia Gnostika precisely because of its ‘suspect’ nature. What little I have seen confirms Harmless’s evaluation:

Unlike most literature of the desert, Evagrius’s works are not easy reading. . . . We know that he consciously cultivated a certain obscurity, at least on some matters. . . . This studied obscurity poses a real challenge for contemporary commentators. One has to decode Evagrius. [14]

One point that I do feel I can pronounce to be right on target, however, is that made by Marcus Plested in the chapter on ‘Macarius & Evagrius’ in his study of the Macarian Homilies. Plested notes the tendency, apparently initiated by Irenee Hausherr in a 1935 article, to bifurcate the entire history of Eastern spirituality into ‘Evagrian’ and ‘Macarian’ traditions. Thus, Fr John Meyendorff claims ‘writers can rightly be classified as disciples of Evagrius or of Macarius’. [15] Plested points out that Fr Alexander (Golitzin) has been one of the few ‘to seriously detract from what we might call the “dichotomist viewpoint”’. [16] Fr Alexander sees the Evagrian/Macarian dichotomy as perpetuating a false dichotomy between Hellenistic and Semitic traditions in Christianity—a dichotomy he has eloquently dismissed in the note I have quoted here, as well as in the following passage quoted by Plested:

The contradistinction of ‘mind’ and ‘heart’ reflects the Medieval Western opposition between ‘intellective’ and ‘affective’ mysticisms a little too much for my comfort. Evagrius is not an Eckhardt, nor is Macarius a Bernard of Clairvaux […]. Then too, the contrast implicit in this definition between a ‘biblical’ and a ‘platonizing’ Christianity strikes me as very questionable. Plato and company were quite as much involved in first-century Palestine as they were anywhere else in the Graeco-Roman world, and the ‘Greeks’ thus had a say in the formation of both Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. I do not, in short, believe that Evagrius’ nous and Macarius’ kardia are all that different from each other. [17]

But Plested finds Fr Alexander’s closing statement ‘too simple’. He agrees, ‘It is debatable whether either of the authors with whom we are dealing perceived any opposition between “head” and “heart”, between “intellective” and “affective” mysticisms.’ But then Plested adds, ‘In fact, Evagrius’ nous is contained within Macarius’ kardia—as we shall see.’ [18] Having considered the ‘intellectual-immaterial element in Macarius’, including the statement in Collection 1, 3.6.1 ‘the soul has been overpowered by material and unclean thoughts’ and that it must ‘rise out of such materiality’, [19] Plested writes:

It is misleading to depict Evagrius’ nous as straining to be released from the material creation—the body and soul are there to help the intellect and not to hinder it. Evagrius insists that to denigrate the body is to blaspheme the Creator and to deny the workings of providence. Evagrius has, in his own way, a unified understanding of the human person. Intellect, soul, and body form a whole: the intellect is directly linked to the rational part of the soul, the body to the irascible and desiring parts of the soul. Thus the soul constitutes the bond uniting the human person, taking a comparable role to that of the heart in Macarius. Furthermore, the quest for apatheia does not ential the quenching but rather the harnessing of the passionate parts of the soul—a Platonic insight—so that the soul desires knowledge and virtue and is angry and fights against the thoughts. . . . The spiritual life is not a struggle to transcend but to transform body and soul. This process is fulfilled in the eschaton. [20]

As promised, Plested has a number of things to say about Evagrius’s use of the words nous and kardia. He notes that in the Kephalaia Gnostika, Evagrius writes, ‘According to the word of Solomon, the nous is joined with the heart.’ [21] But Columba Stewart, OSB, believes that Evagrius ‘read “heart” as the biblical equivalent to “mind”’, [22] citing a comment from the Commentary on the Psalms: ‘it is customary in Scripture to have kardia instead of nous’. [23]

But at any rate, Plested’s conclusions are quite enlightening. He argues that ‘both may be seen as groping towards the expression of the same spiritual reality’, and notes: ‘In this light the Byzantine reading of Macarius and Evagrius (often under the guise of Nilus) becomes more readily comprehensible. Far from distinguishing ‘currents of spirituality’ the classical Byzantine approach was one of synthesis.’ [24] Finally, Plested concludes:

This interaction [between the Evagrian and Macarian teachings] was not one of opposing—or even sharply contrasting—spiritual currents, but rather the interplay of distinctive yet complementary insights into the nature of the Christian life. Despite coming from very different angles, the teachings of our authors—both of whom have nourished many generations of Christians . . . –are far from incompatible. [25]

I wish Plested’s approach was more common among patristic scholars, particularly those who claim to be working within the Orthodox Tradition. Alas, it seems so many are more interested in finding, first, handy but oversimplified classification schemas that cater to modern intellectual fashions, and second, the ‘originality’ and ‘uniqueness’ of the various patristic authors, that they are completely blind to that truth noted by St Ignatius (Brianchaninov):

When on a clear autumn night I gaze at the clear sky, sown with numberless stars, so diverse in size yet shedding a single light, then I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers! When on a summer day I gaze at the vast sea, covered with a multitude of diverse vessels with their unfurled sails like white swans’ wings, vessels racing under a single wind to a single goal, to a single harbor, I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers! When I hear a harmonious, many-voiced choir, in which diverse voices in elegant harmony sing a single Divine song, then I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers! [26]

[1] Of course, attributing this ‘sidelining’ to Western scholars is an over-generalisation, and was not meant to be pressed too far in my initial post. John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO, even in the middle of his ‘Introduction’ to Evagrius, uses a footnote to discuss the monasticism of St Basil in some detail (see The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer, by Evagrius Ponticus, tr. John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1981), p. xxxvii, n. 56). Furthermore, it is by no means clear that he in any way prefers Evagrius's to St Basil's.

[2] Ss Barsanuphius & John, Letters, Vol. 2, tr. Fr John Chryssavgis (Washington, DC: Catholic U of America, 2007), p. 183; see Fr Louth on St Maximus, p. 38

[3] Jean Leclerq, OSB, ‘Preface’, The Praktikos, p. vii.

[4] Archimandrite Placide (Deseille), Orthodox Spirituality & the Philokalia, tr. Anthony P. Gythiel (Wichita, KS: Eighth Day, 2008), p. 18.

[5] Fr Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor, Early Church Fathers Series (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 113.

[6] G.E.H. Palmer, et al., tr. & ed., The Philokalia, Vol. 1 (London: Faber, 1983), p. 30.

[7] Fr Louth, pp. 37-8.

[8] Fr Placide, p. 18.

[9] Augustine M. Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus Early Church Fathers Series (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 28.

[10] Ibid., p. 29.

[11] Ibid., p. 30.

[12] William Harmless, SJ, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (NY: Oxford U, 2004), p. 313.

[13] Casiday, p. 28.

[14] Harmless, pp. 321-2.

[15] Qtd. in Marcus Plested, The Macarian Legacy: The Placeof Macarius-Symeon in the Eastern Christian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford U, 2004), p. 60.

[16] Ibid., p. 61.

[17] Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin), ‘Hierarchy vs. Anarchy? Dionysius Areopagita, Symeon the New Theologian, Nicetas Stethatos, & Their Common Roots in Ascetical Tradition’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38,2 (1994), p. 153; qtd. in Plested, pp. 61-2.

[18] Ibid., p. 62.

[19] Ibid., p. 65.

[20] Ibid., p. 66.

[21] Qtd. in ibid, p. 67.

[22] Columba Stewart, OSB, Cassian the Monk (Oxford: Oxford U, 1998), p. 42.

[23] Ibid., p. 166, n. 13.

[24] Plested, p. 70.

[25] Ibid., p. 71.

[26] Qtd. in Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), Father Seraphim Rose: His Life & Works (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2003), p. 464.

'You Sit Here as a Stranger'—Evagrius Ponticus

Twice now, here and here, I have posted on the life of St John Cassian the Roman. I have also posted passages from his writings—here and here—which I have deliberately linked with those of one of St Cassian’s primary teachers and sources of monastic theology, the 4th-century deacon, intellectual, and ascetic, Evagrius Ponticus the Solitary (c. 345-399). Evagrius is not a Saint, and indeed, in some of his writings he seems to have advocated some Origenist ideas that led to his condemnation at the Fifth Œcumenical Council. Columba Stewart argues that the persecution of Origenism, which famously and tragically led to the exile of another of St Cassian’s mentors, St John Chrysostom, created a climate in which St Cassian ‘felt constrained to down play his links with the Evagrian Origenism of Nitria and Kellia’. As Stewart sadly notes, ‘The impossibility of openly repaying his debt to his master must have been deeply painful to Cassian, who identified monastic tradition so closely with those who embodied it.’ [1]

For Evagrius’s ascetical, monastic writings, ‘so far from being condemned, have exercised a decisive influence upon subsequent writers’. [2] He is accorded a place in the Apophthegmata Patrum, or Gerontikon, the Lausiac History of Palladius, the Evergetinos, and the Philokalia. Stewart argues that ‘Evagrius was the single most important influence on Cassian’s monastic theology, although Cassian never mentions him by name.’ [3] Indeed, Evagrius’s monastic theology, in particular his terms and categories, have led many to ‘the conclusion that Evagrius is the chief source of the properly contemplative spirituality of the Byzantine tradition, to such an extent that its centuries old tradition should properly be described as Evagrian spirituality’. [4]

It is for these reasons that I have decided to offer a post on Evagrius’s life and person. By way of honouring St Cassian, whose feast day was two days ago, I hope to do what he could not and pay some modicum of honour to his master. I intend as well to revisit in future posts some of the controversial issues surrounding Evagrius’s teaching and influence.

Let’s begin with the biographical note composed by St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain as a preface to Evagrius’s Philokalic writings:

Wise and learned Evagrios flourished around the year 380. He was ordained a Reader by Basil the Great, and a Deacon by Basil’s brother Gregory of Nyssa. He was educated in sacred learning by Gregory the Theologian, and served him as Archdeacon at the time when Gregory was Patriarch of Constantinople, according to Nikephoros Kallistos (Book 11, chapter 42). Later, renouncing worldly things, he embraced the monastic life.

Being acute in intellectual perception, and very skillful in giving expression to what he grasped, he left many and varied writings. Among them are the present discourse to hesychasts and chapters concerning the discrimination of passions and thoughts. These have been included in the ‘Philokalia’ because they present to an iminent degree what is needful and profitable. [5]

But much of what was known about Evagrius by monastic authors like St Nicodemus, would have been learned from the classic text, passed down as a paradigm of monastic life: the Lausiac History of Palladius. Palladius, who knew Evagrius personally, produced an entire chapter on him which, while considerably briefer in the Lausiac History than in a closely related Coptic version, also seems to have passed through some ‘anti-Origenistic editorial pruning’. [6] For that reason, I shall largely confine my remarks to a few things about the Lavsiakon as the ‘safer’ of the two.

Palladius tells us that Evagrius was ‘of the Pontic race, of the city of Ibora, [and] son of a chorbishop’, [7] i.e., ‘a bishop of a country district in full episcopal orders, but with restricted powers’. [8] Palladius tells us that St Gregory the Theologian ordained the young Pontian having taken ‘note of his fitness’, and that during his career in Constantinople, Evagrius was ‘most skillful in confuting all the heresies . . . with youthful exuberance’. [9] But this career was not to last. Here is William Harmless’s summary of the story:

Not long after this [i.e., St Gregory’s resignation as Patriarch], Evagrius fell in love with an upper-class woman, the wife of a high imperial official. Apparently the risk of scandal was great, and, as Palladius notes, a sexual scandal would have risked the fragile hegemony of the Nicene cause in the capital city. Evagrius decided to break off the affair, but the woman was ‘by now eager and frantic’. One night he had an ominous dream. He imagined himself under military arrest, standing in chains and an iron collar. Suddenly an angel appeared and compelled him to swear on the book of the Gospels that he would leave town. When he awoke, he decided to fulfill the oath he swore in the dream vision and caught the first available ship to Jerusalem. [10]

But Evagrius’s troubles were not to end there immediately, for as Palladius writes, ‘Soon the devil hardened his heart, as in the case of Pharaoh.’ [11] In Jerusalem, the young man had become connected with the Cappadocian theologians St Melanie the Elder and Rufinus and their monastic community at the Mount of Olives. But he unwisely concealed the cause of his departure from Constantinople, and, ‘intoxicated with vainglory’, fell into a prolonged sickness. [12] According to Palladius:

9. Now when the doctors were in a quandary and could find no treatment to cure him, the blessed Melania addressed him: ‘Son, I am not pleased with your long sickness. Tell me what is in your mind, for your sickness is not beyond God’s aid.’

Then he confessed the whole story.

She told him: ‘Promise by the Lord that you mean to aim at the monastic life, and even though I am a sinner, I will pray that you be given a lease on life.’

He agreed, and was well again in a matter of days. He got up, received a change of clothing at her hands, then left and took himself to the mountain of Nitria in Egypt. [13]

Evagrius lived at Nitria for two years, beginning a lifelong diet of uncooked food and joining what Harmless calls ‘that remarkable circle of intellectual monks led by Ammonius the Earless and the Tall Brothers’, disciples of the Abba Pambo who later took refuge in Constantinople with St John Chrysostom. [14] Palladius writes that he earned his living as a calligrapher, ‘for he wrote very gracefully the Oxyrhynchus character’ [15]—‘so called because it was “sharp-snouted”’ and not because of the place name. [16]

After two years in Nitria, Evagrius ‘went off to the desert’, [17] staying for the rest of his life at Cellia, where he became a disciple of St Macarius the Great and St Macarius of Alexandria (as we shall see, a matter of irony). According to the historian, Socrates Sozomen, ‘Evagrius became a disciple of these men and acquired from them the philosophy of deeds, whereas before he knew only a philosophy of words.’ [18] In the case of St Macarius the Great, this involved ‘the dangerous trek from Kellia to Scetis’. [19] It seems to have payed off. According to the Coptic Life, Evagrius spent his time alone thusly:

14 With regard to sleep, he followed a rule: he would sleep a third of the night, but during the day he would not sleep at all. He had a courtyard where he would spend the middle part of each day walking, driving away sleep from himself, training his intellect to examine his thoughts systematically. When he had finished sleeping a third of the night, he would spend the rest of the night walking in the courtyard, meditating [meaning ‘to quietly utter on one’s lips the words of Scripture’] and praying, driving sleep away from himself, training his intellect to reflect on the meaning of the Scriptures. [20]

It is not surprising then that we read in the Lausiac History, ‘Within fifteen years he had so purified his mind that he was deemed worthy of the gift of knowledge and wisdom and the discernment of spirits.’ [21] Consequently, Evagrius himself eventually became recognised as a teacher of the monastic life. According to the Coptic Life:

17 This was his practice: The brothers would gather around him on Saturday and Sunday, discussing their thoughts with him throughout the night, listening to his words of encouragement until sunrise. And thus they would leave rejoicing and glorifying God, for Evagrius’ teaching was very sweet. When they came to see him, he encouraged them, saying to them, ‘My brothers, if one of you has either a profound or a troubled thought, let him be silent until the brothers depart and let him reflect on it alone with me. Let us not make him speak in front of the brothers lest a little one perish on account of his thoughts and grief swallow him at a gulp.’

18 Furthermore, he was so hospitable that his cell never lacked five or six visitors a day who had come from foreign lands to listen to his teaching, his intellect, and his ascetic practice. [22]

Interestingly, the demons of fornication and concupiscence continued to plague Evagrius throughout much of his life. Palladius writes of his time at Cellia, ‘The demon of fornication bothered him so oppressively, as he himself told us, that he stood naked throughout the night in a well.’ [23] Finally we read, ‘Near the time of his death he said: “This is the third year that I am not tormented by carnal desires”—this after a life of such toil and labor and continual prayer!’ [24] Evagrius reposed ‘after having communicated in the church at Epiphany’. [25]

Whatever we may conclude for now about his Origenism, on the basis of the history of honour accorded to Evagrius’s own person and his more practical writings I think Bamberger is at least partly right to refer to his ‘personal sanctity and good faith’. [26] As one last piece of evidence in his favour, and to begin drawing this post to a conclusion, I would cite the last of the apophthegmata under Evagrius’s name in the Gerontikon:

7. One day at the Cells, there was an assembly about some matter or other and Abba Evagrius held forth. Then the priest said to him, ‘Abba, we know that if you were living in your own country you would probably be a bishop and a great leader; but at present you sit here as a stranger.’ He was filled with compunction, but was not at all upset and bending his head he replied, ‘I have spoken once and will not answer, twice but I will proceed no further’ (Job 40.5). [27]

Concerning this story, Harmless observes that one can read it in several ways. He writes:

At one level, it lays bare what Evagrius’s choice of the desert had cost him: home, ecclesiastical honors, even the right to the public voice normally accorded the educated. In this sense, it is a telling demonstration of Evagrius’s humility—likely the reason it appears in the Apophthegmata.

But it can also be read as a foreshadowing of what was to come: while Evagrius accepted Egypt, Egypt did not accept Evagrius. In 399, on the feast of the Epiphany, Evagrius was near death. He had to be carried to church to receive the Eucharist and died soon after. He was fifty-five—comparatively young, given the long lives that desert literature normally accords its leaders. That year, the patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus, embarked on a ruthless persecution against Evagrius’s friends and disciples. They were accused of Origenism and force to flee Egypt. Death spared Evagrius the bitter experience of exile and condemnation. [28]

[1] Columba Stewart, OSB, Cassian the Monk (NY: Oxford, 1998), p. 12.

[2] The Philokalia, Vol. 1, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1983), p. 29.

[3] Stewart, p. 11.

[4] John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO, ‘Introduction’, The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer, by Evagrius Ponticus, tr. John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1981), p. xxxii.

[5] St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, ‘Brief Biography of Evagrios the Monk’, The Philokalia, tr. Constantine Cavarnos (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, 2008), p. 121.

[6] Tim Vivian, tr., with Rowan A. Greer, Four Desert Fathers: Pambo, Evagrius, Macarius of Egypt, & Macarius of Alexandria—Coptic Texts Relating to the Lausiac History of Palladius (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2004), p. 69.

[7] Palladius, The Lausiac History, tr. Robert T. Meyer, No. 34 in Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation (NY: Paulist, 1964), p. 110. Bamberger points out that this is very close to St Basil’s family estate at Annesi, where the latter had pursued the ascetic life for a while (Bamberger, p. xxxvi).

[8] Palladius, p. 200, n. 340.

[9] Ibid., p. 111.

[10] William Harmless, SJ, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford U, 2004), p. 313.

[11] Palladius, p. 112.

[12] Ibid., p. 112.

[13] Ibid., pp. 112-3.

[14] Harmless, p. 314.

[15] Palladius, p. 113.

[16] Ibid., p. 201, n. 350.

[17] Ibid., p. 113.

[18] Qtd. in Harmless, p. 315.

[19] Ibid., p. 315.

[20] Vivian, pp. 81-2.

[21] Palladius, p. 113.

[22] Vivian, pp. 83-4.

[23] Palladius, p. 113.

[24] Ibid., p. 114.

[25] Ibid., p. 114.

[26] Bamberger, p. lxxxi.

[27] Benedicta Ward, SLG, tr., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984), p. 64.

[28] Harmless, p. 316.

'The Demon of Noonday—St Cassian & Evagrius on Acedia

The subject of that vice known as ‘acedia’ (from the Greek, ἀκηδία), classically translated as ‘sloth’, but perhaps more accurately rendered ‘despondency’ or ‘listlessness’, is an enormous one, with an enormous literature to boot. The poet and writer on things ‘spiritual’, Kathleen Norris, recently followed up the brief chapter on the subject in her best-selling The Cloister Walk with an entire book devoted solely to acedia—Acedia & Me. A blog post is obviously a paltry thing compared to a book, and this is not the place to look for a comprehensive treatment. I intend merely to post a couple of passages on acedia from patristic authors that interest me, and one or two comments from modern writers on the subject.

In her classic anthology of Desert Fathers material translated from Latin sources, Helen Waddell prefaces her selections from the writings of St Cassian with the following words:

The two passages translated are not from his high rare moments of exaltation—their habitation is eternity. These illustrate his ironic human perception, and make intelligible the more alien experience of the desert, its concentration within the four walls of one’s cell. To read Cassian on Accidie is to recognise the ‘white melancholy’ of Gray in Pembroke, [1] and the sullen lethargy that is the sterile curse of the scholar and the artist. [2]

The passage Waddell refers to is from The Institutes, Book 10. [3] This book, which is entirely taken up with the subject of acedia, was translated into Greek in a greatly condensed version and included in the Philokalia. [4] Here is Waddell’s selection:

1. Of Accidie

Our sixth contending is with that which the Greeks call ἀκηδία, and which we may describe as tedium or perturbation of heart. [5] It is akin to dejection and especially felt by wandering monks and solitaries, a persistent and obnoxious enemy to such as dwell in the desert, disturbing the monk especially about midday, like a fever mounting at a regular time, and bringing its highest tide of inflammation at definite accustomed hours to the sick soul. And so some of the Fathers declare it to be the demon of noontide which is spoken of in the xcth Psalm [Ps 90:6 LXX].

When this besieges the unhappy mind, it begets aversion from the place, boredom with one’s cell, and scorn and contempt for one’s brethren, whether they be dwelling with one or some way off, as careless and unspiritually minded persons. Also, towards any work that may be done within the enclosure of our own lair, we become listless and inert. It will not suffer us to stay in our cell, or to attend to our reading: we lament that in all this while, living in the same spot, we have made no progress, we sigh and complain that bereft of sympathetic fellowship we have no spiritual fruit; and bewail ourselves as empty of all spiritual profit, abiding vacant and useless in this place; and we that could guide others and be of value to multitudes have edified no man, enriched no man with our precept and example. We praise other and far distant monasteries, describing them as more helpful to one’s progress, more congenial to one’s soul’s health. We paint the fellowship of the brethren there, its suavity, its richness in spiritual conversation, contrasting it with the harshness of all that is at hand, where not only is there no edification to be had from any of the brethren who dwell here, but where one cannot even procure one’s victuals without enormous toil. Finally we conclude that there is not health for us so long as we stay in this place, short of abandoning the cell wherein to tarry further will be only to perish with it, and betaking ourselves elsewhere as quickly as possible.

Towards eleven o’clock or midday it induces such lassitude of body and craving for food, as one might feel after the exhaustion of a long journey and hard toil, or the postponing of a meal throughout a two or three days fast. Finally one gazes anxiously here and there, and sighs that no brother of any description is to be seen approaching: one is for ever in and out of one’s cell, gazing at the sun as though it were tarrying to its setting: one’s mind is in an irrational confusion, like the earth befogged in a mist, one is slothful and vacant in every spiritual activity, and no remedy, it seems, can be found for this state of siege than a visit from some brother, or the solace of sleep. Finally our malady suggests that in common courtesy one should salute the brethren, and visit the sick, near or far. It dictates such offices of duty and piety as to seek out this relative or that, and make haste to visit them; or there is that religious and devout lady, destitute of any support from her family, whom it is a pious act to visit now and then and supply in holy wise with necessary comforts, neglected and despised as she is by her own relations: far better to bestow one’s pious labour upon these than sit without benefit or profit in one’s cell. . . .

The blessed Apostle, like a true physician of the spirit . . . busied himself to prevent the malady born of the spirit of accidie. . . . ‘Study to be quiet . . . and to do your own business . . . and to work with your own hands, as is commended you’ [I Thess. 4:11]. . . .

And so the wise Fathers in Egypt would in no way suffer the monks, especially the young, to be idle, measuring the state of their heart and their progress in patience and humility by their steadiness at work; and not only might they accept nothing from anyone towards their support, but out of their own toil they supplied such brethren as came by, or were from foreign parts, and did send huge stores of victuals and provisions throughout Libya, a barren and hungry land, and to those that pined in the squalor of the prisons in the towns. . . . There was a saying approved by the ancient Fathers in Egypt; that a busy monk is besieged by a single devil: but an idle one destroyed by spirits innumerable.

So when the abbot Paul, revered among the Fathers, was living in that vast desert of Porphyrio secure of his daily bread from the date palms and his small garden, and could have found no other way of keeping himself (for his dwelling in the desert was seven days journey and more from any town or human habitation, so that more would be spent in conveying the merchandise than the work he had sweated on would fetch), nevertheless did he gather palm leaves, and every day exacted from himself just such a measure of work as though he lived by it. And when his cave would be filled with the work of a whole year, he would set fire to it, and burn each year the work so carefully wrought: and thereby he proved that without working with his hands a monk cannot endure to abide in his place, nor can he climb any nearer the summit of holiness: and though necessity of making a livelihood in no way demands it, let it be done for the sole purging of the heart, the steadying of thought, perseverance in the cell, and the conquest and final overthrow of accidie itself. [6]

Of course, St Cassian is greatly indebted here to a corresponding passage in the Praktikos of Evagrius Ponticus which Norris calls a ‘classic description’ of the vice. [7] Indeed, according to Siegfried Wenzel, it was Evagrius who, ‘as far as the present state of patristic and Oriental scholarship allows us to tell, was the first to describe the peculiar temptation of ἀκηδία in full detail’. [8] Here is that text:

12. The demon of acedia—also called the noonday demon [Ps 90:6 LXX]—is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. He presses his attack upon the monk about the fourth hour and besieges the soul until the eighth hour. First of all he makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. Then he constrains the monk to look constantly out the windows, to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the ninth hour, to look now this way and now that to see if perhaps [one of the brethren appears from his cell]. Then too he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, a hatred for manual labor. He leads him to reflect that charity has departed from among the brethren, that there is no one to give encouragement. Should there be someone at this period who happens to offend him in some way or other, this too the demon uses to contribute further to his hatred. This demon drives him along to desire other sites where he can more easily procure life’s necessities, more readily find work and make a real success of himself. He goes on to suggest that, after all, it is not the place that is the basis of pleasing the Lord. God is to be adored everywhere. He joins to these reflections the memory of his dear ones and of his former way of life. He depicts life stretching out for a long period of time, and brings before the mind’s eye the toil of the ascetic struggle and, as the saying has it, leaves no leaf unturned to induce the monk to forsake his cell and drop out of the fight. No other demon follows close upon the heels of this one (when he is defeated) but only a state of deep peace and inexpressible joy arise out of this struggle. [9]

Having carefully read these passages, I confess I have doubts about Helen Waddell’s hasty identification of Thomas Gray’s ‘white melancholy’ or scholarly lethargy with monastic acedia. For one thing, the chances of an 18th-c. English poet, no matter how Christian he may be, reproducing some obscure aspect of patristic ascetic teaching, seems rather improbable. For another, I think Solomon Schimmel, a professor of Jewish education and psychology at Hebrew College in Brookline, MA, has rightly emphasised the specifically spiritual nature of acedia. He makes the interesting observation, ‘Sloth is the most explicitly religious of the seven deadly sins’, [10] and goes on to write:

The special religious essence of sloth is first of all evidenced by the lack of attention to any such vice in the Graeco-Roman philosophical tradition which dealt extensively with the other six deadly sins. Sadness and depression (or tristitia) are ascribed to the ‘disease’ of melancholia rather than the realm of moral vice. Only Judaism and Christianity link these phenomena to man’s resistance to divinely imposed obligations. [11]

Gray strikes me as standing more in the tradition of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, where the impression I have had is almost certainly one of a disease rather than a moral vice. Indeed, while I may be mistaken, I don’t believe Burton ever actually mentions the word ‘acedia’, whether in its Latin or Greek forms—an odd oversight for an author such as he. Anyway, I certainly find the history of this notion an interesting one and would love to pursue the matter further some day.


[1] The phrase is from a ‘celebrated’ 1742 letter of Thomas Gray to Richard West. Here is the text, taken from this site:

TO THE SAME

A poet’s melancholy

London, 27 May, 1742.

Mine, you are to know is a white Melancholy, or rather Leucocholy for the most part; which, though it seldom laughs or dances, nor ever amounts to what one called Joy or Pleasure, yet is a good easy sort of a state, and ca ne laisse que de s’amuser. The only fault is its insipidity; which is apt now and then to give a sort of Ennui, which makes one form certain little wishes that signify nothing. But there is another sort, black indeed, which I have now and then felt, that has somewhat in it like Tertullian’s rule of faith, Credo quia impossibile est; for it believes, nay, is sure of everything that is unlikely, so it be but frightful; and on the other hand excludes and shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and everything that is pleasurable; from this the Lord deliver us! for none but he and sunshiny weather can do it. In hopes of enjoying this kind of weather I am going into the country for a few weeks, but shall be never the nearer any society; so, if you have any charity, you will continue to write. My life is like Harry the Fourth’s supper of Hens, ‘Poulets a la broche, Poulets en Ragout, Poulets en Hachis, Poulets en Fricassees’. Reading here, Reading there; nothing but books with different sauces. Do not let me lose my desert then; for though that be Reading too, yet it has a very different flavour. The May seems to be come since your invitation; and I propose to bask in her beams and dress me in her roses.

Et caput in verna semper habere rosa.

[2] Helen Waddell, tr., The Desert Fathers (NY: Vintage, 1998), p. 163.

[3] St John Cassian, The Institutes, tr. Boniface Ramsey, OP (NY: Newman, ), pp. 219-34.

[4] The Philokalia, Vol. 1, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1983), pp. 88-91; The Philokalia, tr. Constantine Cavarnos (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, 2008), pp. 208-13

[5] Here I like Ramsey’s translation—‘a wearied or anxious heart’ (St Cassian, p. 219).

[6] Waddell, pp. 163-6.

[7] Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (NY: Riverhead, 1996), p. 132. Norris also offers a couple of interesting epigrams to this chapter:

The malice of sloth lies not merely in the neglect of duty (though that can be a symptom of it) but in the refusal of joy. It is allied to despair.—Evelyn Waugh, Acedia, in The Seven Deadly Sins

Amma Syncletica said: There is a grief that is useful, and there is a grief that is destructive. The first sort consists in weeping over one’s own faults and weeping over the weakness of one’s neighbors, in order not to lose one’s purpose, and attach oneself to the perfect good. But there is also a grief that comes from the enemy, full of mockery, which some call accidie. This spirit must be cast out, mainly by prayer and psalmody.—The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (p. 130)

[8] Siegfried Wenzel, ‘Akedia. Additions to Lampe’s Patristic Greek Lexicon’, Vigiliae Christianae 17 (1963), p. 176.

[9] Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer, tr. John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1981), pp. 18-9.

[10] Solomon Schimmel, The Seven Deadly Sins: Jewish, Christian, & Classical Reflections on Human Nature (NY: The Free P, 1992), p. 197.

[11] Ibid., p. 198.