What I want to do today is easily finish Palestinian monasticism, and from there we'll go to begin
our discussion of Syrian monasticism, and when I get to that I'll pass some maps out
for you.
First, some announcements.
Next week, on Monday, I meet with the novices, the four novices.
Tuesday, you have class with Bruno.
How many weeks is that still going?
Just a few more, so we get through the process.
And then, of course, there's another class starting up, but I don't know how long the
interval will be.
Wednesday, we have class here, as normal, but Thursday's rec day.
Friday, I've got the Friday trip.
So, again, I've got to go to Wednesday and Saturday next week.
I can't cancel these classes, because otherwise we're not going to get the course done before
June.
If you have made some other arrangements on Saturday and you're going to go to a doctor's
appointment, that's fine.
That's why we have the tape, so don't worry about that.
But if you can make it on Saturday at 10, please come.
Okay.
For that class on Saturday, then, you want to have your reader assignment from Augustine,
because we'll probably begin Augustine at that time.
And I think it's a selection from his On the Work of Monks.
So you don't need to bring the reader until next Saturday.
Okay.
We left off yesterday with Jerome and Paula near Bethlehem.
Remember, this is the Roman, quote, Roman monasticism in Palestine.
Paula's community itself was rather Baconian in style.
She had a number of deans in the community.
It was sort of like three sub-communities in her community, and each sub-community had
a dean or a minor superior.
And these three communities, it's like a little congregation.
These three communities ate separately, worked separately, as separate communities.
But they had five common prayer hours, and on Sunday they had the liturgy together.
They had the common liturgy together.
But other than that, these three communities were separated.
Jerome used his Vulgate translation within the community to help the community members
in their studies of scripture and their Lectio Divina.
And, excuse me, and evidently Jerome spent an awful lot of his time, even though he was
co-superior of this place, he was somewhat of a recluse, but for reasons of studies more
than anything else.
Studies and all of the writing he was doing, and the polemics he was waging.
Well, probably, remember that Calchaeus, is it?
That desert experience near Syria?
Probably, at that time, there were pictures of the paintings of him doing the Vulgate
in a cave, if you think about it.
Also, you see, iconographically, that can portray that he was near Bethlehem, at the
grotto, and all of that.
So I don't know the real answer.
Probably both.
Wouldn't be surprised if he lived out in a cave going south of Antioch during that Syrian
succession.
I was at the English Academy as the Pope's secretary, living in a cave.
Wearing red.
Wearing red, yes.
As an aesthetical sort of experience.
Okay.
Paula died in the year 404, as you see on the board there.
And she was succeeded by Eustochium, one of her daughters.
I remember Blasilla died in Rome, and Marcella, I don't know what happened to Marcella.
Anyway, she didn't become one of the biggies here.
Eustochium succeeded Paula, and the quality kept up, the vocations kept coming, by the
year 417, the community numbered a good solid 50 members.
Not as big as the Greek side, but it's not always quantity that counts.
Paula, the younger, I don't have dates for her.
But she succeeded the reign of Eustochium.
I just understand by the way things are worded that Eustochium, oh I see, we have a date
for Eustochium.
She died in 419, same year as Jerome.
And Paula, the younger, took over at that time.
But this was a very short-lived experience.
By the time Eustochium and Jerome died and Paula, the younger, took over, they were already
down to 20, and the writing was on the wall.
In Jerusalem, changing cities now, in Jerusalem, there was a Spanish noblewoman, Melania the
Elder, she was called.
I guess I don't have her on now.
Anyway, I have Melania and the younger there.
And she had left for a tour of Egypt.
Guess who she went with?
Rufinus, the tour guide, in the year 410.
No, excuse me, excuse me, 372.
In the year 372, she left from Spain, which wasn't Spain at that time.
Hibernia, Hibernia.
They visited, and there were other women that went along.
Rufinus always gathered these groups of women for these tours.
And they visited the desert monastic settlements of Cetus and Nitrea.
And she followed the Egyptian monks who fled at the end of that century, the ones who went
to Palestine, she followed them there.
Okay, so we're looking at 399, 400, right around there.
And she built a community there, in Jerusalem, a community of 50 monastics.
And this community helped the pilgrims who were coming to the holy lands.
It was kind of like a little hostel situation, excuse me, a T.E.L., an inn-type situation.
And also, on a number of occasions, tried to make peace.
She was a peacemaker for various factions there and problems that arose at that time
in the city of Jerusalem.
She died in 409, Melania the Elder.
Melania the Younger, who was her granddaughter, okay, so we're down two generations, this
is her granddaughter.
And she, already in Spain, was living with her husband as brother and sister.
They had decided to live chastity together.
And they decided to go on a trip to Sicily.
Now, this is not 372, this is 410.
And guess who took them?
Rufinus is still ticking, and his travel agency is still going.
His management, amazing.
And they went to North Africa for seven years.
Rufinus is incredible.
And then on to Palestine and over to Egypt, visiting again desert monastic places.
She was an anchoress on Mount Olivet in the Holy Land for 11 years.
So she was a hermit for 11 years.
And then she gathered a community around her of 90 in Jerusalem, of 90.
She was evidently a charismatic individual.
She founded a men's house also.
But she didn't want anything to do with that.
I mean, she didn't want to rule over both houses.
She just ruled over the women's house.
But she founded a men's house and got things started.
Let me put it this way.
Her communities celebrated the Roman rite.
What was going on in Rome at that time was celebrated in her communities in Jerusalem.
And they were the representatives of the Roman faction within the church liturgically at that time.
It's just rudimentary, what's going on.
We're talking early 5th century.
And their community also devoted themselves to taking care of all the holy places in Jerusalem during this time.
And she died in the year 439.
All of these Roman influences that we've been looking at, and there aren't many but they're substantial,
had a very strong influence and a very intense life.
But they were very short-lived.
So short but intense.
On the Greek-speaking side, of course, the experience was mostly on the crags and ravines and wadis of the desert.
It was a much longer-lived phenomenon.
And what I would like to finish up with Palestinian monastics is to backtrack again to these three aides and just take a little look at them.
Remember, again, if you want to read the lives of these people, colorful, wonderful, very readable material, just go to Cyril of Cythopolis.
We have a couple copies in the library.
Great fun.
Euthymius, 377 to 473, was from Armenia.
And he came to Chariton's Lara at Pharaon.
You have all these spellings from yesterday.
And settled in the caves northeast of Jerusalem.
And slowly disciples came and joined them and flocked around them.
And eventually they built a synobium to house all these disciples that kept coming.
And then they moved further out into the wilderness because things got a little too close to the city or the city was growing or there was too much noise for whatever reason.
But wherever he did move.
And this was a number of times Euthymius did this.
More disciples gathered around him and he built another Lara or he built another synobium and then moved away once it got going, once it was too noisy again.
Because of the people who were there.
Human noises.
This was a pattern.
A pattern that really you can remember not just for Euthymius but for Palestinian monasticism itself in the Greek experience.
You had a number, so many really.
So many foundations made and a lot of them were by these anchorites who wanted to live as anchorites.
But gathered disciples, people followed them.
They'd start a monastery and get out of town.
And they'd find them again and more people would go to them down the line.
And you end up with quite a few monastic foundations in the deserts of the Holy Land.
Right near the Holy Land.
Euthymius set a pattern for Judean monasticism by having the lower monastery, that is the synobium, served as a novitiate for the Laura, which was up above.
What does this remind you of?
No.
And so the synobium became an auxiliary house.
And it was the normal procedure to live down the hill or down the wadi in the synobium, get your formation, and then move into your own cell or your own cabin or cave or whatever their setup was.
It was different from monastery to monastery.
In the beginning, often it was caves, either natural caves or caves that they would dig out of the wadis.
Two of his disciples, and his two famous disciples, St. Theodosius and St. Sabas, whom you have on the board there, became the chief archimandrites of Palestinian monasticism, as I mentioned yesterday.
And they set themselves to the tasks of codifying how we are to live monastically in the desert here in Palestine and how we are to celebrate liturgy here in Palestine.
And it's through these two that we have a lot of our evidence of what was going on here.
The patriarch would actually give them some kind of authority. This was a recognized authority for the patriarch.
Not like an ordinary bishop.
Right. Right.
That was mentioned yesterday. Is this confusing you? Did you listen to it?
I completed the first two.
Okay. Well, that will fill you in.
Theodosius was predominantly renowned for his huge monastery near Bethlehem, in the desert near Bethlehem, which had hundreds of monks.
Monks and also solitaries who were attached to the monastery, as well as the Cenobites who lived in the monastery, numerous.
He sort of followed the Basilian ideal.
What do you think that would be? How could he follow the Basilian ideal? Here they are out in the desert.
Pilgrims.
Okay.
Or some people in the desert.
Well, I think that theory is near enough.
But what was Basil known for in his type of monasticism? Pilgrims. Running what?
Schools. Hospitals.
And academics.
Okay. So of those three, let's say, pilgrims, or four, pilgrims, schools, hospitals, and academic studies, what do you suppose this refers to then?
In a Greek-speaking, Palestinian desert situation, how would he seem some quasi-Basilian then?
Academics.
Schools?
No, those two you knock out. The other two.
Hospitals?
Hospitals. Taking care of the sick.
Bring them in from Bethlehem?
Well, I suppose they would, yeah. Or all along the road, they got a, they were renowned for it.
So they set up a hospital. They would bring sick pilgrims to them, that type of thing.
Remember, there's lots of pilgrimage going on to the Holy Land, from all parts.
And people would get sick.
And so they, needless to say, they took care of the sick travelers, the sick pilgrims.
They also, though, in the local area, took care of old people.
So they had, it was like a hospice situation, where they took care of those who were too old, or absolutely too destitute to make it in society.
So in that sense, it's mirroring part of what Basil was doing with his monasteries.
He had there, near Bethlehem, four houses, four monastic houses.
And they numbered, the total numbered 400. So the average is 100 per house.
And he is the one who has made the archimandrite of all the anchorites, all the hermits.
So all these solitaries out there look to him as their superior.
Sabas, as I mentioned yesterday, was from Cappadocia.
And he joined the Synovium in Cappadocia at the age of seven.
And then at the age of 18, so 11 years later, he went to Palestine.
And he spent four years there in Palestine as a hermit in the desert.
In the year 478, he founded a monastery in the Sidran Gortz, or the Wadi Sidran.
478?
Yeah, 478.
And each monk lived in a cave there.
Eventually, he founded three laura set-ups.
So three big serfs he set up.
And built six monasteries besides Synovium.
And built four hospices.
Again, to care for pilgrims.
His disciples who followed after him founded even more.
These are just the ones he founded.
His disciples founded even more monasteries, more lauras, and more hospices.
Incredible how many there were in Palestine.
In some ways, it's more incredible what happens in Palestine than what went on in Egypt.
But, if you want to look to the incredible, just wait ten minutes.
We'll get to them soon.
What's going on a little north.
Sabas himself found himself trapped in a somewhat hectic life.
And it wasn't his plan.
It's a good thing he had his anchoritic experience in the early years.
Because he was very, very busy.
He was made, again, the Archimandrite of all the Cenobites in Palestine.
Monasticism.
So he was a busy, busy abbot.
His most famous disciples were John the Silent.
Cyril of Sephopolis, who wrote the lines of these great articles.
And Saint John of Damascene.
You will remember, I think it was Aylward who had Damascene this year,
mentioning Sabas in his homily.
He had a colorful life, too.
Was that something from early Judaism?
Pardon?
Was icon something carried over from Judaism?
Oh, no. Anything but.
They were not into that type of thing.
Why not? They couldn't have jigs.
They didn't have paint.
As far as I know.
They had decorative motifs.
Well, a lot like what we tend to find in contemporary Islam,
but on a different scale.
The Laura was really the most...
If you want to think of Palestinian monasticism, think of Laura,
because that is probably the most significant and central way to be a monk
in the Palestinian experience.
There were these other big houses and everything,
but the most important one was the Laura.
Which was, again, semi-hermetic.
So they came together for certain functions in common,
but each lived in his own cell or cave.
Their Laura type of monasticism was very appreciative
and celebratory of liturgy.
It was not a-liturgical at all.
It was very big on liturgy.
Well, certainly, coming through the Greek experience,
we're going to see that all through the centuries.
The Greek side of the spectrum,
liturgy is going to be the penultimate way to worship God
or to approach the cosmic consciousness at all.
At the same time, one has to remember
that these Roman and Greek and Basilian and Egyptian
monastic ways of living were affecting one another.
And so they do have the hospices.
Even these Laura out in the desert had hospices
which mirror Basil and the Roman experience.
So it isn't like they were totally different from one another.
They borrowed, they affected one another,
but in general were different monastic types.
Gradually, more and more through these years,
so during the years of the disciples and then beyond,
until it fairly well ended under Islam,
to a great extent anyway,
at least for any continuity sequence,
they gradually became more institutionalized.
And so you see them moving more towards synovia
and big buildings rather than living up in caves
and on their own and whatnot.
Gradually, well, that's true of the West as well.
And there's any number of reasons going into that,
some of them very basic, like survival.
Just like in Egypt, remember the Egypt situation.
Does anyone have anything to add or subtract
regarding Palestinian monasticism before we move up to Syria?
Can I ask something about Jerome Refinas?
Did he ever join a monastery?
Not that I know of.
Wasn't he with Jerome for his devotive experience?
No, was that somebody else?
Yeah?
No, he lived an ascetical life with his friend Refinas at Aquileia.
He did that.
But other than that, I don't know.
He's always taking these...
Do you write a good work?
Yeah.
The big study.
Yeah, which one is it?
It's not the Loziak history.
It's the history of the monks of Egypt?
The story of the monks?
Yeah, I think so.
Which basically adds up to a collection of sayings
and stories of these devotees.
It's a lot like the author, Frank Refinas.
Do we?
I have no idea.
I don't even know of one.
You can find him mentioned in, for instance,
on secondary works on Jerome.
You can find quite a bit on Refinas
and what there can be found.
We also have the translations of his work,
if you were to perhaps look at the introductions of those.
I think it was the history of the monks of Egypt at the time.
Unless that was the Loziak, which would be hilarious.
But they both were doing the same thing, more or less.
Palladius also.
Palladius also was taking tours through the earth,
but not like Refinas.
Refinas was doing it for a long time.
Do any of these places still exist as ruins
or functioning monasteries?
Some of them do, yeah.
This is a lot like the...
You know how harsh the desert is.
Through the centuries,
a number of the places are...
They'll point and say,
well, we think it was in this part of the gorge or whatever,
because some of the settlements were left rustic.
I mean, they really lived in caves and whatnot,
so it's hard to...
You know, they have these digs.
And of course, the desert covers up,
into tales,
so many layers of experience and civilization.
But they have some.
Savvas was still active as of 1950.
Oh, really?
And St. Hyacinth is still active.
Active again.
Active again.
There's no continuity all the way through.
Because there are moments where it's impossible.
We're going to see that all over.
It's rather sad in certain parts.
It's the Western Napoleonic era, in fact.
Different congregations are squelched,
or they go out of existence.
Monasticism in certain countries ends
except for one old monk
and his cow in Switzerland or wherever.
You know, we'll see that.
There are examples of this.
One number of congregations down to four
that they hadn't slaughtered or exiled.
But, you know,
there has been, whenever possible,
a monastic presence in Palestine.
I've got some maps here, then.
Is anyone else missing besides Jeff?
Daniel, he has to do something.
But that's all right.
This one.
Temporary interest.
You notice that a lot of these maps are in French.
But the map is a map.
It's easy enough to figure out.
Again, the best stuff we have on Syrian monasticism...
No, I won't say that.
Now that we have the works of Brock,
Sebastian Brock,
which are in your bibliography,
we have a good selection of English stuff
from the Syrians.
But the really excellent stuff
on the monastics, per se,
the Syrian monastics, are in French.
We have some excellent stuff in French.
But just for your general information,
let me point out these three books,
again, through Cistercian Press,
Cistercian Publications,
that you can get right in the library
if you're really interested in following this up,
or in the bookstore and get your own copy
if you want to annotate.
And then I'll begin my treatment.
The first one I want to point out
is A History of the Monks of Syria
by Theodoret of Cyr,
or Theodoret of Cyrus.
Last name over here.
Okay?
And that's Cistercian Studies, Volume 88.
Another one is Cistercian Studies, Volume 101,
and it's entitled
The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life.
And that is exactly what it is.
It's a collection of looking at various Syrian Abbas
and what they have to say about spirituality
and the prayer life.
It's wonderful.
Oh, this is an anthology, yeah.
You want to know who edited it?
Sebastian Brock.
This guy's devoting his whole life
to the Syrian experience of Christianity.
We have, I think, five or six of his books now.
At least four.
That Bruno put on his shelf
is translated by Sebastian Brock, too.
But we have five or six of his own books,
mainly through Variarum that we were able to get.
They're not common books,
and we paid a penny for them.
But again, we have good selection.
The third one is Cistercian Studies, Volume 112.
This one is... this is great stuff.
This is the various lives of St. Simeon Stylianus.
He's up here.
He stays.
And here's a nice little drawing of him
living in his pillar.
Sorry.
For whatever reason, during this time...
Remember now, this is contemporary to Egypt,
to Basel, to Palestine.
We're still in the same time,
but in a different place.
For whatever reasons,
all the strangest ways to be a monk
ended up in Syria.
Just to give you a little preview
and show you how very different
the Syrian experience was.
A dendrite is a person who lives in a tree.
I'm not talking about building a house in a tree,
but living in a tree.
A browser is a monastic
who eats and chews grass like a cow
and walks on all fours.
We'll go back to browsers.
A stylite is one who lives his entire life
on the top of a pillar.
Now, these pillars really were like towers,
more than pillars.
They could be as big as 40 feet across.
But that was it.
That was the whole thing.
And they lived up there,
and people flocked to these pillars,
and there was a rope,
and you could get food.
There's some very colorful stories
about some of the stylites
who didn't want to see people around them,
how they chased them away.
Let your imagination go on that much.
We'll get to that.
A static is a monastic
who just stands there.
For life.
Just stands static.
This is humorous, I know.
And the amazing thing is,
is there were lots of these.
I mean, lots of them.
This is the monastic experience
in Syria during this time,
to a great extent.
Very strange, ascetical.
Now, there's going to be
all kinds of colorations to these, too,
and I will get to some of that,
like wearing jeans and all of this stuff.
So their situation is very different from Egypt's.
The climate.
I don't mean meteorologically either.
The whole cultural climate
in Syria was so different
that it couldn't help but influence
what kind of monasticism
was going to grow up there.
Just geographically speaking,
Syria faced inland
toward Mesopotamia, towards Persia.
Not to the sea.
Egypt is very sea-conscious.
Not Syria.
And although Antioch,
the city of Antioch itself
was a Hellenic center,
so the Greek culture,
Greek philosophy,
Greek speaking,
is going to be predominant
in that city.
And although Syria, technically,
was under Greece
and under Rome for centuries,
still, it was far enough out of the way,
and not that many Greeks or Romans
wanted to be in Syria,
that they were able to keep
a lot of their own particular ways.
So they are not all that influenced
by what Basel was doing,
or what the Roman influence
in monasticism in Palestine shows.
So it's sort of like the outpost
at this time.
The monastic outpost
within the monastic world
now, at this time.
Unlike Egypt,
although it had various
kinds of paganism
throughout the centuries,
and cults,
a lot of different cults,
influenced by what was going on
east of them,
they never had a real deep-rooted
ancient religion that went
centuries back, like Egypt.
Also, for the most part,
Egypt had an ethnic unifying factor,
which influenced how the monasticism
developed.
Remember the Coptic
nationalistic flavor they had
about them.
You don't find that in Syria.
It's a whole mixed bag in Syria.
All kinds of peoples there,
all kinds of, well,
a conglomeration of Syrians,
and right there you've got
a conglomeration of what went
into making a Syrian.
Greeks, Romans,
Jews, and the et cetera,
who lived in Syria.
So Syria found itself feeling
a lot more freer about how
we were going to live
in monasticism in Syria,
to the extent that its culture
and its literature and art
and architecture were
completely reformed,
beginning at the end
of the fourth century.
And although they knew,
you know, they knew the names
of the great saints who had,
you know, within their lifetime
or just before them,
had lived in Egypt,
and although they had access
to the vita, the life of Antony
by Athanasius,
and although they knew
the works of Jerome,
whose works were spreading
throughout the then-known
Christian world,
these works mainly,
monastically speaking,
being but.
Jerome's works that had
anything to do with monasticism.
Yes, Latin translations.
We just did it yesterday.
Eh?
Okay, he's translating.
What did he translate?
The Vulgate of monasticism.
The Rule of the Communes.
Eh?
Very good.
And Horsiace,
if you like that name.
Horsiace and the Communes.
And there was something else.
There was one other thing.
Now even I have to look that.
Hilarion.
Life of Hilarion.
Yeah.
So it's one of these Abba stories.
Hilarion was the first baby
in Palestinian monasticism.
Okay, but Syria has access to this,
but none of that stuff
had much influence on Syria.
Its influence was really negligible
of what else was going on
in monastic life
in the then-Christian world.
Syria is very different
at this time.
Not just topographically, even.
Even topographically, though,
the geography,
the geology, geography,
and meteorology of the climate
of ancient Syria
lent itself to
certain forms of asceticism
that aren't going on elsewhere.
They have a lot of mountainous,
forested mountains,
regions,
between Antioch and the sea.
And that's where the recluses went.
Especially the dendrites
and the browsers
moved into this area of the wilderness
between Antioch and the sea.
There is a place called
the Plain of Dana, D-A-N-A,
between two cities,
between Antioch and Aleppo.
Aleppo should be on the map.
And there's a plain there.
And it was on this plain
that a lot of the skylight towers were built.
Or they're pillars.
Let's use the word mostly for these.
Pillars.
In other words,
they built them outside the cities,
on the plain,
near enough to the cities
to get supplies.
And also, later on,
some of the greatest spiritual directors
went over on top of these towers
and people flocked to them
for spiritual direction,
so that they could minister to people
by screaming down the pillars, I suppose.
Also, the desert in the south of Syria
had conditions similar to
what Egyptian monasticism dealt with
in Ctes and Nitrea.
And that led itself
to monastics also,
ascetics going there
and living in the wilds there.
Interestingly enough,
there was a bond
between the type of topology we have
and the kind of asceticism
that grew out of that,
which is, again, obviously,
very unique.
You don't find people living in trees
in the other monastic experiences.
We're not talking about,
well, okay,
lived in a tree for a month
and then got over it.
No!
We're talking about whole lifetimes
spent in a tree,
in a hole in a tree,
or in a, you know...
These are probably the strangest,
the browsers.
We'll get to them in a minute.
But, I mean, that's pretty unique
to want to live that way.
The thing is,
with the topography of this area,
you have a very restricted setting.
That is, just nature itself
was kind of negated.
You had a lot of what dead nature
looks like, you know,
a lot of rocks,
lack of vegetation,
a lack of water,
for the most part,
lack of animal life
to a great extent also.
Very restricted,
quiet,
desert-type wilderness.
And the mentality of these people
was very, very strongly Fugamundi.
Get away from the world.
If you're going to get away from the world,
that would be a good place to do it.
Because the world's
sure ain't going to follow you out there.
Morrissey is really,
to a great extent,
generally,
a wilder wilderness
than you'd have
in the Egyptian experience.
And it's very open, also.
Open settings.
That is,
it's very hard to
very hard to keep up
with what's going on in the world,
or to have much converse
with that world
out in these wilderness areas,
except for that plain
where the stylites built
between the two cities,
which kept close enough
to the cities
for whatever reasons.
They went through
extreme ascetical practices
to overcome their own
sense of sinfulness
in order to discipline the body
and fight the temptations
they were experiencing.
And
they went about it
in a very unique way,
which it comes across
as somewhat artificial.
So a person looking on this
would say,
why did they go to such extremes?
Why did they just
live in solitude?
Why did they wear chains
and sit in a tree trunk?
Why go through
these strange things?
...at the time,
or converse with the empire,
is minimal.
And so they found themselves
repressing
even
the very human attributes,
like moving.
Or walking.
Or eating
normal food.
Or talking.
All of this was severely
curtailed.
And so we end up with
quite a few,
and there's numerous examples
of this going on,
especially of stylites.
I could have given you
some maps also of stylites.
I think on your maps
there's probably one of them.
That's what the one is.
One of them, yeah,
but it's not the solar one.
It gives you the famous stylites.
I have another one
that gives you
whole centers of stylites.
And also covers Turkey
and Bulgaria.
Anyway, it isn't just
this little portion,
it's spread out.
There are people doing this stuff
all over that area,
once it gets going.
The type of reclusive life
that was lived in Egypt
is intensified
in the Syrian experience.
This reclusion,
this movement towards
reclusion in Syria
was characterized
more by a darkness,
like the dark night
type approach
to spirituality.
Absolute silence,
dark night.
Lack of any
occluderness at all.
So they would
not have any huts
or at the most,
very, very rudimentary branches
put around them,
or something like that.
Or they borrowed holes
out of the ground
and lived in that,
in those holes.
Or in hollow trees,
and that's where you got
the dendrites.
The dendrites lived
in hollow trees.
And that's all the shelter
they had.
They fasted in extreme,
extreme ways,
and they wore chains
for penance
to a great extent.
I don't know how long,
what the average lifespan
of these people were.
It could have been,
the average could have been
all that long.
Of course, it probably
wasn't all that long anyway
at that time and place.
Specifically, the browsers
were unique.
These ascetics
fed on plants
and roots to live,
but they did it on all fours,
like browsing animals
do,
in order to live on
what God provides
on the earth.
That is a very simplistic,
if not simpletonic,
approach to
how to go about
living with what
God provides.
It would appear
that the browsers
were most numerous
between Syria
and the Dead Sea,
so in that area between
what we think of as Syria
and the Dead Sea,
and also in the deserts
of Judah, Calamon,
and Sidron.
So, you see here
where Syrian, remember
the barriers between
what's Syrian
and what we think of as Palestine,
you have to erase those barriers
because it's all
mingled. I said I could have
referred to it all as Palestinian
monasticism, generically.
You have these browsers
down in Palestine as well,
down in those deserts
that we talked about yesterday.
One wonders what the
Greek speakers
who ran into these groups
of browsing,
ruling Syriacs
thought about them.
Here's a quote.
Let me read the quote
first. This is a quote from
St. Ephraim's eulogy on the
solitaries of Mesopotamia.
Let us visit their abodes,
the places where they
live like dead men in their graves.
Let us gaze on their
bodies and ponder the fact that only
clothing or ornament,
the only clothing or ornament they wear
is their own hair.
Let us see their
drink, always mingled with their
tears, and their tables
with wild herbs.
Behold the stones they place
beneath their heads.
They would hang stones from
thongs in order
to bow them down to the earth.
In order to what?
Not stand up straight like a human being.
If a robber should
see them, he throws himself to the ground
in their honor.
And if wild beasts glimpse their
sackcloth,
now suddenly they have a sackcloth,
they take flight at once as if
from some amazing prodigious thing.
They tread
underfoot all kinds of snakes.
They live in caves
and hollow rocks as if in
beautiful rooms.
They shut themselves up in the mountains
and hills as if between
inaccessible walls and
ramparts. The ground
serves as their table.
The plants of the earth
are their usual fare.
They go wandering about
the deserts with the wild beasts
as if they themselves
were animals.
Like birds, they fly
about the hills.
They graze like stags with creatures
of the wild. Their tables
are always prepared, always
accept, for they feed upon
roots and grass,
the natural produce of
the earth." And one more quote.
This is from Evagrius the
Scholastic, his
Ecclesiastical History.
They have chosen to live in a desert
exposed to the scorching rays
of the sun. There are men
and women who are
almost naked when they began
their life in the desert and who are
disdainful of the seasons
of bitter cold and sweltering
heat alike. They despise
the kind of
food eaten
by other humans and are content
to graze like cattle.
They have even much of their outward
appearance of animals, for as soon
as they see a man, they run away.
If they are pursued, they
make off with incredible speed, it sounds
like Bigfoot, and hide
in inaccessible places.
Yeah.
Their lifestyle
is rather interesting,
but did they have any spirituality
behind it? What was the grounding of their
spirituality? Did they read
Scripture? No. Scripture did
they do? Well, some of
the great stylites did.
Some of these were great
spiritual saints.
These browsers, I came
down with.
Oh, no doubt.
The whole thing is very simple.
It's a very simplistic
approach to just get back
to the original
gardening
idea.
But what a way to do it.
I don't know if they
read Scripture. How could they read it?
You know, that's too human.
One wonders
if they were even Christian,
you know.
How much of the stylites
did they have an interior
to their tower as well?
Maybe you could set up a pretty nice
head that way.
It would seem that before,
it would seem the one that would offer people
the most opportunities.
Yeah, I'm going to treat stylites. Why don't we wait until
we get there? Just a minute.
Or next time.
But anything on browsers,
what can you say?
Would that be a cultural
thing again?
If that's unique to that area?
What?
The browser type of thing.
It just seems so unique to that
area and everything. I'm thinking about
other religions that might have
expressions of it.
Or whether there were other...
Yeah, that sort of phenomenon
happened.
I just wonder.
A Zen browser?
I don't know.
And you have
this sort of thing that happens
occasionally in...
I'm thinking of the Moravian Brotherhood
during the post-Reformation
time.
Von Zinzendorf and his group
who took the words,
unless you become my children.
And so his whole
religion, within a Christian
ambit, was
playing children's games and talking
like little babies.
They had to do that.
And they gathered
a whole adult
church who all
stood together and did that.
And did Mary bring around
the Rosie and stuff.
This was their liturgy.
Very strange.
And so once in a while you have these things
popping up and everybody just goes,
what?
I can't answer
that. I don't know enough about
browsers, whether they read
scripture or had
how they could be
considered Christian or anything
like that. They just seem
so far off the wall that
you'd probably say, well,
they were Syrian ascetics at this
time, but whether they were
Christian or...
I don't know how one can...
The stylites are different,
again. The stylites are very different.
The dendrites and statics and
browsers are just so strange.
Although the statics, there are probably
some...
We're going to do statics. I've got
two minutes and that's all I can say about
statics anyway. These were
people who remained upright and motionless
for
long periods of time.
It was their
life profession.
So obviously once in a while they had to
bend a knee or eat or
leave nature or whatever.
But this is what they did. And they would
go out into society, out into the
marketplace or whatever, and do this
as witness.
Witness to
the present moment
or witness to...
as a
negative witness to society.
And
society's disregard for
Jesus' message or
disregard for
the ways of God
or what
is more meaningful than
the accoutrements of
society, etc.
And so this was
their way.
And while they did this, often they
punished themselves severely.
So I imagine a lot of
psychologists could look at these
things and say, well, a lot
of masochists must have joined these
groups.
And their anthropology certainly
is lacking
in
much
at all.
What kind of anthropology
looks upon the human
being with such
disdain that you live your whole
life like a cow?
Or
your whole life
as much as possible standing up
straight and not speaking
or looking at anyone?
You're just sort of
like you negate reality.
I mean, that's
really an extreme situation.
And I don't know if you
really can say these people
are Christians.
Even
taking into the Christian orb
all the extreme examples
we have through the
centuries of
movements which go way off into left field,
this is really something.
This is like
beyond left field.
But I mention
them because they are
particular to this time
and it was a way to
live a monastic,
reclusive,
ascetical life
in the Syrian wilds
while the rest of this was going
on in other places.
The rest of monastic groups were
in the Syrian experience.
Even the ones who became
famous and were holy saints
and incredible people, some of them
scholars and what not, is
still strange.
Could it be interpreted psychologically as
some sort of mass group hysteria?
I bet a psychologist
would, you know, tend to.
I had a Nazi journey and it was a whole country
that kind of mess up. You've got a whole group
of people whose spirituality just goes...
Of course now we're talking
centuries.
We have centuries of starlights.
We have starlights
all the way down to
the 15th century, I think.
14th, 15th, 16th.
Well, I'm going to start with starlights next time.
And yeah,
16th century.
So it's not like,
you know, short-lived.
Of course, these are the
healthier...
These are the healthier.
They're the ones that
remain. The other
three are kind of like short-lived.