Between the Judean Desert and Gaza: Asceticism and the Monastic Communities of Palestine in the Sixth Century
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 4-8-2020 Between the Judean Desert and Gaza: Asceticism and the Monastic Communities of Palestine in the Sixth Century Austin McCray Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons, Cultural History Commons, European History Commons, History of Christianity Commons, History of Religion Commons, Medieval History Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, and the Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation McCray, Austin, "Between the Judean Desert and Gaza: Asceticism and the Monastic Communities of Palestine in the Sixth Century" (2020). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 5214. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/5214 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. BETWEEN THE JUDEAN DESERT AND GAZA: ASCETICISM AND THE MONASTIC COMMUNITIES OF PALESTINE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY A Dissertation Submitted to the to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by Austin McCray B.A., University of North Florida, 2013 M.A., University of Florida, 2015 May 2020 ©2020 Austin Stephen McCray ii For Tierra iii Acknowledgements I thank my advisor Maribel Dietz for her continuous support, advice, edits, and revisions. This dissertation would not have been possible without her guidance and our numerous conversations which always helped to clarify and strengthen my own ideas from their infancy to maturity. I would also like to thank Brad Storin and Sherri Johnson for their own suggestions and improvements. They both provided alternative perspectives and critiques which challenged my scholarly assumptions and assisted in refining my arguments. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Tierra for reading through multiple drafts of papers, articles, and chapters and, more importantly, her continued patience and loving support. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………. iv Abstract………………………………………………………………………………. vi Introduction................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. Monastic Legacies and Palestinian Communities………………………… 37 Chapter 2. The Way to Perfection……………………………………………………. 63 Chapter 3. Forms of Authority……………………………………………………….. 100 Chapter 4. Theology and the Monastic Life………………………………………….. 128 Chapter 5. Monastic Mobility in Palestine………………………………………….... 167 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………… 201 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………... 205 Vita……………………………………………………………………………………..214 v Abstract The dissertation focuses on the religious culture of Christian monasticism in sixth- century Palestine. Rather than see the monastic communities of the Judean Desert, just to the east of Jerusalem, and those around Gaza as two independent monastic regions, as much scholarship has done, the dissertation focuses on the common threads that can be seen in the monastic teachings and idealized ascetic practices in the literature of the area. This dissertation reveals ways to redefine the boundaries between the monastic communities of Palestine during the sixth century as well as emphasizes the continuities between the monks of the Judean Desert and Gaza by providing an alternative perspective by which to examine their monastic traditions. This is achieved by focusing on the monastic teachings and idealized ascetic practices emphasized in the Greek monastic literature of sixth-century Palestine, particularly the hagiographies of Cyril of Scythopolis and the Correspondence of Barsanuphius and John the Prophet. Rather than look outward, examining how Palestinian monks impacted ecclesiastical and social structures, the dissertation instead faces inward towards the monastic communities themselves. Through this method the dissertation provides a textually rich description of the monastic landscape of late antique Palestine while highlighting the varieties of monasticism which persisted through the sixth century. vi Introduction Writing in the mid-sixth century, Cyril of Scythopolis described Euthymios’ prime motivation for leaving his hometown monastery at Melitene in Armenia and coming to Palestine as a desire to inhabit the desert.1 The actions involved with this transition can be conceived of as pilgrimage. Euthymios’ first actions on arriving at Jerusalem were to venerate the holy places and then the holy men of the nearby Judean Desert. It was only after these acts of pilgrimage that Euthymios settled in a cell to learn how to attain the proper ascetic virtues and seek perfection. This transition from pilgrimage to the monastery and the ascetic self also represents the intellectual peregrination which led to the creation of this dissertation. What began as an interest in pilgrimage developed into an examination of the monks that engaged in this practice and the sources which described them, especially those of Palestine itself. The process of examining the place of pilgrimage in the monastic life required further investigation into what it meant to be a monk, what the idealized monk should look like, and how they were presented in the surviving sources. This investigation soon became the central focus, with a particular interest in the monastic communities of both the Judean Desert to the east of Jerusalem and Gaza that prospered in the sixth century. Despite the fact these two regions lie less than 70km (43mi) apart and in the same Roman province—Palestina Prima—modern scholarship on late antique Christian monasticism within Palestine has created intellectual boundaries between the monastic communities of the Judean Desert and Gaza. The communities of the Judean Desert and those in 1 Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Euthymius, in Kyrillos Von Skythopolis, ed. E. Schwartz, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 49/2 (Leipzig, 1939), 14.1. 1 the region of Gaza are seen as distinct from one another, part of two divergent monastic traditions.2 I seek to complicate this scholarly understanding of the monastic communities of Palestine by providing an alternative perspective by which to examine the monastic traditions the Judean Desert and Gaza. This dissertation reveals ways to redefine the boundaries between the monastic communities of Palestine during the sixth century as well as emphasizes the continuities between the monks of the Judean Desert and Gaza. This is achieved by focusing on the monastic teachings and idealized ascetic practices emphasized in the Greek monastic literature of sixth-century Palestine, particularly the hagiographies of Cyril of Scythopolis and the Correspondence of Barsanuphius and John the Prophet. Rather than look outward, examining how Palestinian monks impacted ecclesiastical and social structures, the dissertation instead faces inward towards the monastic communities themselves. The interest is on how Christological controversies and imperial decrees impacted the monastery rather than the other way around. Through this method I provide a textually rich description of the monastic landscape of late antique Palestine. 2 Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, “Territory, Anti-Intellectual Attitude, and Identity Formation in Late Antique Palestinian Monastic Communities,” Religion & Theology 17 (3–4) (2010): 247; Brouria Bitton- Ashkelony & Aryeh Kofsky, The Monastic School of Gaza (Boston: Brill, 2006), 7: “While Judean Desert monasticism in late antiquity grew to a large extent around the holy places, looking to Jerusalem as the holy city, this was not the case with Gaza monasticism. As reflected in the Life of Hilarion—the first Palestinian monk from the Gaza region known to us—Gaza monasticism throughout this period is marked by the influence of Egyptian Monasticism.”; Jennifer Hevelone-Harper, Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza (Baltimore, MD.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 15: “South of Jerusalem and the Judean Desert, monasticism had another orientation. Asceticism in the region of Gaza was rooted in the deserts of Egypt.”; Jan-Eric Steppa, John Rufus and the World Vision of Anti-Chalcedonian Culture, (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2002), 24-25: “…the cultural dependency of Palestinian monasticism to Egypt, based on the veneration of the great fathers of the Egyptian deserts and the theological heritage of Athanasius, Cyril and Dioscorus, remained as strong as ever.”; Daniël Hombergen, The Second Origenist Controversy: A New Perspective on Cyril of Scythopolis’ Monastic Biographies as Historical Sources for Sixth-Century Origenism (Roma: Centro studi SAnselmo, 2001), 32. 2 It is important to note that I do not wish to create a homogeneous visage of monasticism in the region. There was not a single monastic community, but instead there were multiple communities, as I have chosen to indicate in the title. The monastic communities of Palestine were an amalgamation of peoples and ideas from throughout the Mediterranean world. 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