Rufinus' Historia Monachorum in Aegypto and the Promulgation Of

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Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto and the Promulgation of Evagrian Ascetic Teaching

Andrew Cain University of Colorado, Classics Department [email protected]

Abstract

Around 403 Rufinus composed his Historia monachorum in Aegypto, a Latin translation of Ἡ κατ’ Αἴγυπτον τῶν μοναχῶν ἱστορία (“Inquiry about the Monks of Egypt”). This Greek work, authored anonymously years earlier by one of the monks in his monastery on the Mount of Olives, chronicles the author’s months-long travels throughout Egypt, where he met notable monastic personalities and recorded for posterity their deeds and teachings. In rendering the Greek original into Latin Rufinus made certain amendments which point to possible reasons why he undertook this ambitious translation project. In this article I draw attention to amendments he made pertaining to the figure and teachings of Evagrius of Pontus and I argue that one of his principal authorial objectives was to promulgate and popularize the core principles of Evagrius’ ascetic mysticism among a western readership.

Keywords

Historia monachorum – Rufinus – Evagrius of Pontus – Egyptian monasticism – hagiography

From September 394 to early January 395, seven monks from Rufinus of Aquileia’s monastery on the Mount of Olives made a pilgrimage to Egypt in order to visit monastic personalities and communities from the Thebaid in the south to the delta town of Diolcos in the north. Within months of their return to Jerusalem one of the party anonymously composed an engaging account in Greek of the journey ostensibly for the spiritual edification of the brothers in his monastery, though he clearly intended it for wider dissemination.

This work,1 which has come down to us under the name Ἡ κατ’ Αἴγυπτον τῶν μοναχῶν ἱστορία (“Inquiry about the Monks of Egypt”2), was translated into Latin by Rufinus perhaps in 403 or 404,3 several years after his return to Italy from Palestine. Rufinus entitled it Historia monachorum in Aegypto, the desig- nation by which the Greek original is best known to readers today. Accordingly, for our purposes in this study, the Greek original will be referred to as GHM, Rufinus’ translation as LHM,4 and the anonymous author of the GHM as “Anon.” (shorthand for “Anonymous”).5 Despite having been one of Rufinus’ most popular and widely diffused works throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages,6 the LHM has received from modern scholars surprisingly little focused attention as a literary artifact.7 As a result, certain fundamental contextual questions remain unexplored, such as: what were Rufinus’ primary objectives in undertaking this ambitious

1 For a recent comprehensive study of this work, see A. Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum in Aegypto: Monastic Hagiography in the Late Fourth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 2 This title sometimes has been translated into English as “History of the Monks of Egypt.” However, ἱστορία here does not have historiographic connotations. As is evident from the form and content of his narrative, the author did not venture to write anything resembling a linear “history” of contemporary Egyptian monasticism. This Greek abstract noun is ety- mologically related to the Indo-European verbal root weid-, woid-, wid- (“see,” “know”) and it here involves the gathering of knowledge through autopsy and the subsequent writing down of the results of these investigations. See B. Snell, Die Ausdrücke für den Begriff des Wissens in der vorplatonischen Philosophie (Berlin: Georg Olms Verlag, 1924), 59-71; R. Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science, and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 161-167; L. Zgusta, “History and its Multiple Meaning,” in L. Zgusta, History, Languages, and Lexicographers (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 1-18. 3 So C.P. Hammond, “The Last Ten Years of Rufinus’ Life and the Date of his Move South from Aquileia,” JThS n.s. 28 (1977): 372-429 (394-395); A. de Vogüé, Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l’antiquité, 3: Jérôme, Augustin et Rufin au tournant du siècle (391-405) (Paris: Cerf, 1996), 317-320. 4 All quotations of the GHM come from A.-J. Festugière (ed.), Historia monachorum in Aegypto. Édition critique du texte grec (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1961), and all those of the LHM are taken from E. Schulz-Flügel (ed.), Tyrannius Rufinus, Historia monachorum sive De vita sanctorum patrum (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990). 5 On the issue of his self-imposed anonymity, see Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum, 49-57. 6 For an overview of the manuscript tradition, see Schulz-Flügel, Historia monachorum, 90-142. 7 As partial evidence of this general neglect we may cite the fact that the LHM has been translated into a modern language only once—into Italian, by Giulio Trettel (Rufino di Concordia, Storia di Monaci [Rome: Città Nuova, 1991]). My own translation of the LHM into English is forthcoming in 2018 in the Fathers of the Church series (Catholic University of America Press).

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 287 translation enterprise in the first place? Since he elected not to affix a preface explaining the occasion of the work,8 as he did, for instance, in the case of his translation and continuation of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History,9 we must inspect other aspects and features of the LHM. When he translated the Greek works of Origen,10 Eusebius,11 Basil,12 Gregory of Nazianzus,13 and others,14 Rufinus exercised considerable freedom in

8 On this (and other) conventional uses of authorial prefaces in patristic literature, see A. Cain, “Apology and Polemic in Jerome’s Prefaces to his Biblical Scholarship,” in E. Birnbaum and L. Schwienhorst-Schönberger (eds.), Hieronymus als Exeget und Theologe: Der Koheletkommentar (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 107-128. 9 See P.R. Amidon (trans.), The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia, Books 10 and 11 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3-4. Cf. H. Crouzel, “I prologhi di Rufino alle sue traduzioni di Origene,” in A. Scottà (ed.), Storia ed esegesi in Rufino di Concordia (Udine: Antichità Altoadriatiche, 1992), 121-124. 10 C.H. Bammel, “Rufinus’ Translation of Origen’s Commentary on Romans and the Pelagian Controversy,” AAAd 39 (1992): 131-149; H. Crouzel, “Rufino traduttore del Peri Archon di Origene,” AAAd 31 (1987): 129-139; A. Grappone, Omelie origeniane nella traduzione di Rufino: un confronto con i testi greci (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2007); A. Muraru, “Strategies of Translation in Late Antiquity: Rufinus and the Bilingual Readers of Origen’s Homilia in Exodum 9,” Adamantius 17 (2011): 297-302; N. Pace, Ricerche sulla traduzione di Rufino del De principiis di Origene (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1990). 11 M. Humphries, “Rufinus’s Eusebius: Translation, Continuation, and Edition in the Latin Ecclesiastical History,” JECS 16 (2008): 143-164. 12 C. Lo Cicero, “Come romanizzare Basilio ancora sul vertere di Rufino,” RFIC 130 (2002): 40-75; Lo Cicero, “Rufino traduttore di Basilio: emulazione e citazioni bibliche,” in I. Gualandri (ed.), Tra IV e V secolo: studi sulla cultura latina tardoantica (Milan: Cisalpino, 2002), 97-117; Lo Cicero, Tradurre i greci nel IV secolo: Rufino di Aquileia e le omelie di Basilio (Rome: Herder, 2008); H. Marti, “Rufinus’ Translation of St. Basil’s Sermon on Fasting,” StudPatr 16 (1985): 418-422; C. Moreschini, “La traduzione di Rufino dalle Omelie di Basilio: motivi e scopi di una scelta,” in C. Moreschini and G. Menestrina (eds.), La traduzione dei testi religiosi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1994), 127-147; A. Salvini, “Sulla tecnica di traduzione dal greco in latino nelle Homiliae Morales di Basilio-Rufino,” SCO 46 (1998): 845-889; K. Zelzer (ed.), Basili Regula a Rufino Latine versa (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1986). 13 C. Moreschini, “Rufino traduttore di Gregorio Nazianzeno,” AAAd 31 (1987): 227-285. 14 See e.g. A. Carlini, “Le Sentenze di Sesto nella versione di Rufino. Vel enchiridion si Graece vel anulus si Latine,” in G. Fornasir (ed.), Studi forogiuliesi: in onore di Carlo Guido Mor (Udine: Deputazione di storia patria per il Friuli, 1984), 109-118; F. della Corte, “L’Anulus Sexti di Rufino,” AAAd 31 (1987): 195-205; C. Moreschini, “Motivi romanzeschi e inter- essi cristiani nelle Recognitiones dello Pseudo Clemente tradotte da Rufino,” Koinonia 35 (2011): 179-196; B. Neil, “Rufinus’ Translation of the Epistola Clementis ad Iacobum,” Augustinianum 43 (2003): 25-39.

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 288 Cain making his own phraseological (and conceptual) adjustments, translating sensus pro sensu rather than verbum pro verbo.15 He applied this same meth- odology when he translated the GHM, liberally adding to, subtracting from, and retouching the content of his source-text in numerous ways. These alterations and amendments serve as a reliable index of not only Rufinus’ translation technique but also his authorial intentions. For, while most of the changes are relatively minor and ultimately inconsequential in the grand scheme of the narrative, some substantively impact how we interpret the LHM as a whole and invite us to make reasonable inferences about Rufinus’ aims in releasing the work to a western readership. There has been no scholarly attempt yet to taxonomize the scores of Rufinian alterations, and so, in order that we may gain a sense of their variety, it will be instructive first, in Part I of this study, to take a bird’s-eye inventory of them. In Part II I isolate one particularly significant category of amendments (pertaining to the figure and teachings of Evagrius of Pontus), and in Part III I explore the potentially far-reaching implications that these amendments have for our understanding and appreciation of Rufinus’ authorial designs for his LHM.

I Rufinus’ Alterations: A Synopsis

We begin our survey of Rufinus’ miscellaneous retouchings of the GHM by noting that he sometimes omits circumstantial geographical and other details reported in the Greek text. Anon. states that Abba Or was “the father of the hermitages of a thousand brothers” (πατέρα μοναστηρίων ἀδελφῶν χιλίων),16 but Rufinus drops this numerical specificity and calls him simply “the father

15 E.C. Brooks, “The Translation Techniques of Rufinus of Aquileia (343-411),” StudPatr 17 (1982): 357-364; H. Hoppe, “Rufin als Übersetzer,” in A. Gemelli (ed.), Studi dedicati alla memoria di Paolo Ubaldi (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1937), 133-150; C. Lo Cicero, “Φρόνημα σαρκός: Tertulliano e Rufino,” in M.S. Celentano (ed.), Ricordo di Maria Laetitia Coletti (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2002), 295-311; M.M. Wagner, Rufinus the Translator. A Study of his Theory and his Practice as illustrated in his Version of the Apologetica of St. Gregory Nazianzen (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1945); F. Winkelmann, “Einige Bemerkungen zu den Aussagen des Rufinus von Aquileia und des Hieronymus über ihre Übersetzungstheorie und –methode,” in P. Granfield and J. Jungmann (eds.), Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten (Münster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1970), 532-547. 16 GHM 2.1. In contemporary Christian idiom the word ἀδελφός (“brother”), when used in monastic contexts, had the specialized meaning of “monk.” See E. Wipszycka, Moines et communautés monastiques en Égypte (IVe-VIIIe siècles) (Warsaw: Journal of Juristic Papyrology, 2009), 292.

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 289 of many hermitages” (multorum monasteriorum pater).17 Whereas Anon. says that the three monks appointed by Apollo to be his party’s guides could speak Greek, Latin, and Coptic,18 Rufinus lists only Greek and Coptic as their languages of proficiency.19 Other Rufinian deviations from the Greek text concern the particulars of topography. Whereas Anon. specifies that the blacksmith- turned-ascetic Apelles lived in “the district of Achoris” (ἐν τοῖς μέρεσι τῆς Ἀχωρέως),20 Rufinus omits any specific toponym and says only that he lived “in the neighboring region” (in vicina regione), which vaguely locates Apelles somewhere in the Thebaid.21 Anon. states that Abba Or spent considerable time as an ascetic in both the “further desert” and “nearer desert,”22 but Rufinus mentions only one “desert.”23 Along similar lines, Anon. situates the hermit Elias “in the desert of Antinoë” (ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ τῆς Ἀντινόου),24 but Rufinus defines the area somewhat less precisely as “the region outlying the city of Antinoë” (in finibus civitatis Antinoo).25 Rufinus’ and Anon.’s respective notices on John of Diolcos, when compared synoptically, nicely illustrate Rufinus’ penchant for treating his source-text with liberal hands:

GHM 26 LHM 33.1-2 We also visited another John in Diolcos, In those parts there was a holy man who was the father of hermitages. He, named John who was completely too, was endowed with much grace.26 full of grace. He possessed such a

17 LHM 2.1. 18 GHM 8.62. 19 LHM 7.16.3. 20 GHM 13.1. 21 LHM 15.1.1. Prior to the phrase in vicina regione, the reader is given geographical orienta- tion only as recently as two chapters earlier, where the narrator comments on visiting Pityrion’s community of monks on a mountain in the Thebaid. Achoris is not mentioned once in LHM, and so in vicina regione cannot refer back to a previous occurrence in the work. 22 GHM 2.2: οὗτος πολλὰ πρότερον καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ ἀσκήσας τῇ πορρωτέρᾳ, ὕστερον ἐν τῇ πλησίον ἐρήμῳ τὰ μοναστήρια συνεκρότησεν. 23 LHM 2.2: hic prius in ultima eremo plurimis abstinentiae laboribus exercitatus postremo in vicino urbis monasteria instituit. 24 GHM 7.1. 25 LHM 12.1. 26 Cf. John Cassian’s remark about “the grace with which [John of Diolcos] was endowed” (gratiam viri qua erat praeditus) (coll. 19.2).

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He looked like Abraham and had a powerful grace for offering comfort beard like Aaron’s. He had performed that by whatever feeling of dejec- many miracles and cures, and was es- tion or depression a soul had become pecially successful at healing people oppressed, it would be filled with afflicted with paralysis and gout.27 cheerfulness and joy after a few words from him. Furthermore, a significant grace for healing was bestowed upon him by God.28

Rufinus modifies the meaning of the Greek text in two striking ways. Anon. specifies that John of Diolcos had the charism of healing paralysis and gout,29 but Rufinus refers only generically to his “healings” and does not mention any particular afflictions that he was specialized in curing. Even more notably, Rufinus focuses exclusively on John’s ability to cure ailments of the mind and body and says nothing about his physical appearance, thus dropping Anon.’s physiognomic description of John’s face and beard whereby he tries to link the monk typologically to Abraham and Aaron.30

27 Εἴδομεν δὲ καὶ ἄλλον Ἰωάννην ἐν Διόλκῳ, πατέρα μοναστηρίων καὶ αὐτὸν πολλὴν χάριν ἔχοντα τό τε Ἀβραμιαῖον σχῆμα καὶ τὸν πώγωνα τὸν Ἀαρών, δυνάμεις τε καὶ ἰάσεις ἐπιτελέσαντα καὶ πολλοὺς παραλυτικοὺς καὶ ποδαλγοὺς θεραπεύσαντα. 28 Erat in ipsis locis vir sanctus ac totius gratiae repletus, Iohannes nomine, in quo tanta erat consolationis gratia, ut quamcumque maestitia, quocumque taedio oppressa fuisset anima, paucis eius sermonibus alacritate et laetitia repleretur. Sed et sanitatum gratia plurima ei a deo donata est. 29 Sozomen (hist. eccl. 6.29.8), echoing Anon., reports the same details: Ἰωάννῃ δὲ τοσαύτην ὁ θεὸς ἐδωρήσατο δύναμιν κατὰ παθῶν καὶ νοσημάτων, ὡς πολλοὺς ἰάσασθαι ποδαλγοὺς καὶ τὰ ἄρθρα διαλελυμένους. 30 How precisely John resembled Abraham is unclear, especially because no physical description is given for the patriarch in the Bible. Aaron’s beard is mentioned only once in Scripture, in Ps. 133 [132].2, where the psalmist likens unity among the Israelites to “the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron.” This verse may have inspired Anon. to mention this facial feature, though of course in what respect (length? coloring?) John’s beard is imagined to resemble Aaron’s is not specified. We need not assume that our narrator is allusively referencing contemporary Christian iconographic traditions about either Aaron or Abraham on the basis of which he would be cueing his readership to visualize John’s appearance. The purpose of the comparison, after all, is not to take an accurate verbal snapshot of the monk’s face so that he can then be recognized by other pious pilgrims, but rather to depict him, in strictly typological terms, as a holy man of such monumental stature that he channels not one but two titans of the biblical past, the one a venerable patriarch and the other the miracle-working first

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Every now and then Rufinus amends the Greek by adding an explanatory aside for his Latin readers’ benefit. Two examples may be noted. Anon. re- counts that when his party was in the vicinity of Babylon and Memphis, they saw “Joseph’s granaries, where he stored grain in biblical times” (τοὺς θησαυροὺς τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ ἔνθα τὸν σῖτον κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν ἐκεῖνον συνήγαγεν).31 In his rendering of this passage Rufinus clarifies that some people think that these “granaries,” where Joseph stockpiled grain in preparation for seven years of famine,32 are the pyramids of Giza.33 In his introductory remarks about the famous monastic settlement at Nitria, Rufinus inserts an etymological sidebar, not present in the Greek, claiming that Nitria received its name from the natron extracted from nearby lakebeds. On the basis of this etymological derivation, which is ac- cepted by modern scholars,34 and because natron was used as a cleaning agent to purify linen, Rufinus fancifully speculates that God foreordained Nitria to be so named because this would be a place where souls were purified.35 In his handling of the Scriptural quotations and allusions in the Greek text, Rufinus usually follows faithfully in the footsteps of his model, though in some cases he diverges from Anon. For instance, in the GHM Abba Helle’s pyrokinet- ic ability is noted as follows: “He would often carry fire in the fold of his tunic to his neighboring brothers” (τοῖς πλησίον ἀδελφοῖς αὐτοῦ πολλάκις πῦρ ἐν κόλπῳ ἐβάσταζεν).36 There is a phraseological echo here to Proverbs 6.27 (ἀποδήσει τις πῦρ ἐν κόλπῳ, τὰ δὲ ἱμάτια οὐ κατακαύσει; “Shall anyone carry fire in his bosom and not burn his clothes?”). Anon. cleverly uses this intertext to make the point

high priest of Israel. This twofold synkrisis suggests that John possesses a level of intrinsic sanctity comparable to theirs and it thereby explains how he came to be endowed by God with healing powers. 31 GHM 18.3. 32 Gen. 41.47-49. 33 LHM. 18.5: Ibi autem tradunt esse loca illa, in quibus Iosef fertur recondidisse frumenta, quos et thesauros Iosef vocant, alii vero pyramidas quas dicunt ipsas esse, in quibus frumenta tunc congregata sunt, putant. Incidentally, Rufinus appears to be the earliest literary witness to the Christian association of the pyramids with Joseph’s grain storehouses, a tradition that would last throughout the Middle Ages. 34 See e.g. R. Bagnall and D. Rathbone (eds.), Egypt from Alexander to the Early Christians (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2004), 110. 35 This sentiment is paralleled, in a more compressed form, in Jerome’s Epitaphium sanctae Paulae. When taking stock of Paula’s travels in monastic Egypt, Jerome says this about Nitria: Nitriam, in quo purissimo virtutum nitro sordes lavantur cotidie plurimorum; see A. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 62. 36 GHM 10.1.

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 292 Cain that Helle could do what the biblical writer pronounced to be impossible.37 Rufinus dispenses altogether with the biblical allusion38 and, along with it, its typological nuances. In other cases Rufinus replaces Anon.’s biblical allusion or quotation with one of his own choosing. In one of the anecdotes attributed by Anon. to John of Lycopolis, an unnamed monk is seduced by a demon disguised as a woman, and in the course of succumbing to the temptation he is said to become a “lusty stallion” (θηλυμανὴς ἵππος γενόμενος).39 This comparison is reminiscent, both verbally and conceptually, of the Lord’s condemnation of the wayward Jews at Jeremiah 5.8: “They became lusty stallions (ἵπποι θηλυμανεῖς ἐγενήθησαν), each neighing for his neighbor’s wife”;40 this statement continues the sentiment from the previous verse, where the sinful Jews are rebuked for having “committed adultery and trooped to the houses of whores.”41 Anon.’s likening of the prurient monk to a breeding stallion is not only an arresting analogy which serves to reprove his behavior by reducing him to an irrational beast enslaved to his passions, but it also is an implicit biblical intertext which employs the same animalistic imagery to cast aspersions on illicit sexual behavior. In Rufinus’ description of the monk (efficitur sicut equus et mulus, quibus non est intellectus),42 the phraseology from Jeremiah is exchanged for a verbal allusion to Psalm 31.9a (nolite fieri sicut equus et mulus, quibus non est intellectus), with the wayward monk now being likened to not one but two irrational animals. There are places in which Rufinus embeds Scriptural allusions in his Latin translation, yet there are no corresponding allusions in the Greek. A prime example is found in one of the discourses attributed to John of Lycopolis in which this renowned mystic draws an identikit sketch of the divinely enlight- ened ascetic:

37 See P.W. van der Horst, Woestijn, begeerte en geloof. De Historia monachorum in Aegypto (ca. 400 na Chr.) (Kampen: Kok, 1995), 85 n. 143: “Kennelijk wil de auteur van ons verhaal laten zien dat zijn held Helle wél kon wat volgens de bijbelschrijver niet kon.” 38 LHM 11.9.2: Denique cum adhuc puer esset in monasterio, si necessarius fuisset ignis, ut e vicino peteretur, ardentes prunas vestimento deferebat inlaeso. 39 GHM 1.34. 40 Jer. 5.8 is alluded to in a saying attributed to Hyperechius, where the monk who discards fasting is called a “lusty stallion” (PG 65:429). 41 On the prophet’s use of this equine metaphor, see B. Foreman, Animal Metaphors and the People of Israel in the Book of Jeremiah (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 118-120. 42 LHM 1.4.7.

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GHM 1.28 LHM 1.3.24 Therefore, he who has been found Therefore, if he knows God—inasmuch worthy of a partial knowledge of God— as it is possible for a man to know God— for it is not possible for anyone to receive he will acquire the knowledge of all it all—also acquires the knowledge of all remaining things which exist (reliquorum other things (τυγχάνει καὶ τῆς τῶν ἄλλων quae sunt scientiam capiet).44 ἁπάντων γνώσεως).43

Rufinus’ reliquorum quae sunt scientiam capiet deviates from τυγχάνει καὶ τῆς τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων γνώσεως. His phraseological adjustment was inspired by Wisdom of Solomon 7.17a: ipse enim mihi dedit horum quae sunt scientiam veram.45 This statement introduces a list of all the branches of learning over which “Solomon” says God (ipse) gave him a firm command.46 This list, which encompasses disciplines such as zoology, astronomy, physics, and medicine, reflects the Alexandrian curriculum in the late first century BC,47 the most likely period in which Wisdom of Solomon was written.48 Rufinus knew this whole passage well, and especially the verset in question (ipse enim mihi dedit horum quae sunt scientiam veram), because he had translated it in Origen’s writings.49 In fact, he encountered the verset when he translated Origen’s

43 Ὁ οὖν γνώσεως θεοῦ ἐκ μέρους καταξιωθείς—τὴν πᾶσαν γὰρ οὐδενὶ δυνατόν ἐστιν ὑποδέξασθαι—τυγχάνει καὶ τῆς τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων γνώσεως. 44 Si ergo cognoverit deum, in quantum homini cognoscere possibile est, tunc demum etiam reliquorum quae sunt scientiam capiet. 45 The Latin faithfully preserves the Greek (αὐτὸς γάρ μοι ἔδωκε τῶν ὄντων γνῶσιν ἀψευδῆ), the language in which Wisdom of Solomon was composed; see J.M. Reese, Hellenistic Influence on the Book of Wisdom and its Consequences (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1970), 25-31. 46 “For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements; the beginning and end and middle of times, the alternations of the solstices and the changes of the seasons, the cycles of the year and the constellations of the stars, the natures of animals and the tempers of wild animals, the powers of spirits and the thoughts of human beings, the varieties of plants and the virtues of roots; I learned both what is secret and what is manifest, for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me” (Wis. 7.17-22a). 47 D. Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Garden City: Doubleday, 1979), 172-177. 48 C. Kurzewitz, Weisheit und Tod. Die Ätiologie des Todes in der Sapientia Salomonis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 40. 49 E.g. in his translations of Origen’s commentary on the Song of Songs (GCS 33:146) and homilies on Numbers (GCS 30:95).

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 294 Cain homilies on Leviticus in c.403-550 and thus around the same time he translated the Greek HM. His retouching of the original here typifies his tendency to am- plify it by inserting biblical (or, in this case, Apocryphal) quotations and verbal echoes where none are present in the original.51 From the extensive and strategically sophisticated deployment of traditional rhetorical devices in his prose it is clear that Anon. had in his youth received advanced training in rhetoric52 which, according to the educational cursus of the day, would have been preceded by formal study of classical Greek authors such as Homer, Demosthenes, Euripides, and Menander.53 His erudition being what it was, one might reasonably expect to find at least some verbal reminis- cences of classical literature in his prose, whether deliberately planted or un- consciously seeped, yet no plausible one has yet to be pointed out by modern scholars. Rufinus, by contrast, does embellish the prose of his translation with the occasional intertext from classical Latin literature. Two examples may be adduced in which he introduces Virgilian intertexts into his narrative.54 The first Virgilian allusion is found in John of Lycopolis’ commendation of the party’s diligence to undergo significant hardship to come and see him:

50 Hammond, “Last Ten Years,” 403, 428. 51 Moreover, the intertextual allusion to Wisdom of Solomon 7.17-22 is apt. Both John and “Solomon” speak of acquiring universal knowledge: in Wisdom it is of the physical uni- verse and runs the gamut of human learning, but in Rufinus this knowledge has more of an esoteric and mystical flavor (mysteria dei agnoscet, et quanto purior in eo fuerit mens, tanto plura ei revelat deus et ostendit ei secreta sua). 52 See A. Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum, 92-124. 53 See R. Cribiore, “Higher Education in Early Byzantine Egypt: Rhetoric, Latin, and the Law,” in R. Bagnall (ed.), Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300-800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 47-66; T. Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 316 (and passim); N.G. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium (London: Medieval Academy of America, 1983), 18-27. Cf. F. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 323: the curriculum in which Theodoret was educated included readings from Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, and Thucydides. 54 On Rufinus’ phraseological borrowings from classical literature in other writings, see N. Adkin, “Rufinus Terentianus,” RPL n.s. 9 (2006): 142-144; Adkin, “Rufinus Vergilianus,” Orpheus n.s. 27 (2006): 1-4; Adkin, “Rufinus Ciceronianus,” RBén 117 (2007): 5-8; C. Lo Cicero, “Rufino, Basilio e Seneca: fra aemulatio e arte allusiva,” FAM 14 (1998): 177-182; Lo Cicero, “I cristiani e la traduzione letteraria: il caso di Rufino di Aquileia,” in F. Consolino (ed.), Forme letterarie nella produzione latina di IV-V secolo: con uno sguardo a Bisanzio (Rome: Herder, 2003), 91-126.

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 295

Vnde plurimum miror intentionem vestri laboris ac studii quod profectus animae vestrae causa tantas superare regiones tantosque labores adire voluistis, cum nos eo usque pigritia desidiaque constringat, ut nec cellulas nostras progredi audeamus.55

I therefore am very much astonished at the resolve underlying your effort and zeal, because you have been willing to traverse such vast lands and to undergo such daunting trials for the advancement of your souls, whereas laziness and idleness have such a grip on us that we do not dare to come out of our cells.

With this passage we may compare Aeneid 1.8-11:

Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso quidve dolens regina deum tot volvere casus insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores impulerit.56

Tell me, Muse, the reasons: how galled in her divine pride, and how sore at heart, the queen of the gods forced a man distinguished for his pietas to weather so many perils and to undergo so many trials.

Rufinus adapts Virgil’s tot adire labores, replacing tot with tantos to emphasize the qualitative rather than the quantitative aspect of the party’s travel ordeals. John of Lycopolis and his cohort of Egyptian monks, then, are cast implicitly as Christian Aeneases,57 though rather ironically so, inasmuch as they under- take their journey willingly (voluistis), whereas Aeneas’ is thrust upon him by a vengeful goddess (impulerit). Rufinus invokes a Virgilian intertext also in the story about Apollo’s tense encounter with the thuggish leader of a faction of pagan villagers who had made war against fellow villagers who were Christians. This man, the instiga- tor of the war, opposed Apollo’s attempts to broker a truce between the two rival groups, and so the monk cursed him, and soon thereafter he died and his

55 LHM 1.2.14. 56 R.A.B. Mynors (ed.), P. Vergili Maronis Opera (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 103. 57 Such a literary synkrisis was not unprecedented. In his Epitaphium sanctae Paulae, composed in 404 and thus around the same time as the LHM, Jerome implicitly casts Paula as a feminized Christian Aeneas who made her own “epic” journey from Rome to the Holy Land; see Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 204.

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 296 Cain corpse was devoured by wild animals. Rufinus labels him as “the leader of the pagans and the reason for that conflict” (inter gentiles quasi caput et causa belli illius).58 In doing so he is parroting the epithet that Drances,59 the leader of the Latin emissaries to Aeneas and rival of Turnus, applies to Turnus in his speech before the Latin council: “Latium’s source and reason for these woes” (Latio caput horum et causa malorum).60 Thus, Rufinus typologically likens Apollo’s unnamed opponent to Turnus, both of whom not coincidentally met with an ignominious death at the hands of their respective arch-enemies (Apollo and Aeneas). Finally, a few words should be said about the prose style of Rufinus’ LHM as it compares with that of Anon.’s GHM. When he translated Greek texts into Latin, Rufinus sometimes adorned his Latin prose with rhetorical figures not present in the Greek.61 As for the LHM, Caroline Bammel judged it unquestionably to be stylistically superior to the GHM, whose style she calls “primitive” and “clumsy and incompetent.”62 However, as I have shown elsewhere,63 this unflattering verdict of the GHM is completely unwarranted. For, far from being an unrefined, rhetorically impoverished work, the GHM actually is rich in rhetorical embellishment and registers the same stylistic pretensions that are associated with the literary aesthetic of the so-called Second Sophistic.64 Although Rufinus’ LHM is not itself lacking in rhetorical refinement, generally speaking it is manifestly inferior to the Greek original in this regard. By way of

58 LHM 7.9.2. 59 On Virgil’s portrayal of Drances, see P. Burke, “Drances infensus: A Study in Vergilian Character Portrayal,” TAPA 108 (1978): 15-20; U. Fröhlich, “Nulla salus bello: Vergils Drances,” in A. Heil, M. Korn, and J. Sauer (eds.), Noctes Sinenses: Festschrift für Fritz- Heiner Mutschler zum 65. Geburtstag (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011), 15-20; U. Scholz, “Drances,” Hermes 127 (1999): 455-466. 60 Aen. 11.361; Mynors, Vergili Maronis Opera, 374. 61 See e.g. A.M. Silvas, “Rufinus’ Translation Techniques in the Regula Basili,” Antichthon 37 (2003): 71-93. 62 “Problems of the Historia monachorum,” JThS n.s. 47 (1996): 92-104 (92, 99). Similarly, G. Matino, “Per lo studio del greco in epoca tardoantica. L’uso delle preposizioni nella Historia monachorum in Aegypto,” Koinonia 1 (1977): 139-177 (144), pronounces the GHM to be “senza appariscenti aspirazioni retoriche,” and Eva Schulz-Flügel, Tyrannius Rufinus, Historia monachorum, 8-17, is hard pressed to see any redeeming rhetorical qualities in this work. 63 A. Cain, “The Style of the Greek Historia Monachorum in Aegypto,” REAug 58 (2012): 57-96; Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum, 92-124. 64 On the stylistic aesthetic of the Second Sophistic, see W. Schmid, Der Atticismus in seinen Hauptvertretern von Dionysius von Halikarnass bis auf den zweiten Philostratus, 5 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1964).

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 297 illustrating this observation, let us consider two occasions on which Rufinus compromises Anon.’s rhetorical vivacity with his own Verschlimmbesserungen. In a discourse attributed to him in the GHM, John of Lycopolis tells of the various physical and psychic trials that a young, inexperienced monk under- goes at the hands of demons, who, finally realizing that their efforts to de- stroy him are in vain, relent and withdraw as they lament: ἐνίκησας, ἐνίκησας, ἐνίκησας (“You have won, you have won, you have won”).65 Here Anon. employs the figure of epizeuxis, the deliberate repetition of the same word in immedi- ate succession for emphasis or emotive excitement.66 The demons’ admission of defeat is sufficiently poignant for its brevity, especially when it is contrasted with their loquacious taunting of the monk which is detailed earlier in the story,67 but it receives more forcefulness from the threefold repetition as well as from the asyndetic omission of connecting conjunctions. In his Latin rendi- tion of this passage Rufinus economizes, reducing the Greek tricolon to: vicisti, inquiunt, vicisti.68 While the postpositive hyperbatic inquiunt makes the twofold repetition more emphatic than it otherwise would be,69 it fails to compen- sate for the diminished rhetorical effect resulting from the elimination of the third leaf of the Greek triptych, not least because Rufinus’ version relinquishes the potency of the traditional Christian symbolism of the number three.70 In the GHM Anon. records the following saying of Apollo of Bawit about the virtue of showing hospitality to fellow monks: εἶδες γάρ, φησί, τὸν ἀδελφόν σου, εἶδες κύριον τὸν θεόν σου (“You have seen your brother, you have seen your God”).71 This is a palmary example of symploke, a highly artificial and contrived rhetorical device in which anaphora and antistrophe coincide.72

65 GHM 1.43. 66 See e.g. Isidore, orig. 1.36.10: Epizeuxis in uno sensu congeminatio verbi, ut “sic sic iuvat ire per umbras” (Virgil, Aen. 4.660); cf. H. Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (Munich: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1960), § 617. 67 GHM 1.38-39. 68 LHM 1.5.11. 69 On inquam as a reinforcer in cases of geminatio, see Lausberg, Handbuch, § 616. 70 On the importance of number symbolism in the HM, see P. Devos, “Les nombres dans l’Historia monachorum in Aegypto,” AB 92 (1974): 97-108. 71 GHM 8.55. 72 The example discussed above is the only pure, non-inflectional form of symploke in the GHM. This device has a comparably low rate of incidence also in Basil’s sermons (J.M. Campbell, The Influence of the Second Sophistic on the Style and Sermons of St. Basil the Great [Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1922], 36) and in the correspondence of Jerome (J.N. Hritzu, The Style of the Letters of St. Jerome [Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1939], 25) and Augustine (W. Parsons, A Study of the

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 298 Cain

Furthermore, symploke here also appears alongside three devices of parallel- ism (paromoiosis,73 perfect parison, isocolon), and the cumulative rhetorical effect is to endow the succinct saying with a memorable, apophthegmatic qual- ity. Rufinus’ translation of Apollo’s words bears little resemblance to Anon.’s version, and it also is rhetorically flaccid by comparison with the Greek: “Tradition requires that brothers be shown reverence so that their arrival may be regarded unquestionably as the Lord’s arrival” (adorari fratres propterea traditio habet, ut certum sit in adventu eorum adventum domini haberi).74 The Greek saying in question is attested as early as Clement of Alexandria, and the Latin equivalent (vidisti fratrem, vidisti dominum tuum) had been in cur- rency since at least Tertullian’s day.75 Rufinus may or may not have been aware of the Latin form of this saying, but whatever the case, his loose translation captures the basic sense of the Greek but is rhetorically flaccid by comparison with it.

II Evagrius of Pontus and his Teachings in the LHM

In the Prologue (§ 12) to the GHM, Anon. asserts that the aim of his writing is to edify his pious readers and provide a catalyst for their advancement in the ascetic life.76 Throughout the work he takes a two-pronged approach to this edification: he sets up the Egyptian monks as Christ-like exemplars who are to be imitated by his readership, and he presents them as divinely inspired teachers, preserving their teachings as a chrestomathy of discourses, anecdotes, and aphorisms, all of which they ostensibly relay in their own voice.77 Now, as he

Vocabulary and Rhetoric of the Letters of St. Augustine [Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1923], 235). By contrast, in Hilary’s works it appears, in its perfect and imperfect forms, nearly sixty times (M.F. Buttell, The Rhetoric of St. Hilary of Poitiers [Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1933], 54). 73 See Lausberg, Handbuch, § 732. 74 LHM 7.15.1. 75 Tertullian, orat. 26: fratrem domum tuam introgressum ne sine oratione dimiseris—vidisti, inquit, fratrem, vidisti dominum tuum—, maxime advenam, ne angelus forte sit. 76 “Because I have derived much help from [the monks], I have undertaken this work to provide the perfect (τῶν τελείων) with a stimulus to emulation (ζῆλον) and a reminder (ὑπόμνησιν), and beginners in the ascetic life (τῶν ἀρχομένων ἀσκεῖν) with edification (οἰκοδομήν) and guidance (ὠφέλειαν).” 77 Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum, 214-244.

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 299 frequently reminds his readers, during his Egyptian travels he had heard from his monastic hosts an indefinitely larger number of spiritual discourses and apophthegmata than he ended up including in the GHM.78 Since he had so much potential narrative material at his disposal, he must have exercised considerable editorial discretion to arrive at the precious small remnant he personally deemed most useful to his readers. Recently I have demonstrated that the monks’ teachings have conpicuously strong affinities to those of the famed ascetic theologian Evagrius of Pontus (345-399),79 as the monks both collec- tively and individually invite readers to view crucial aspects of spiritual reality through the same prism that Evagrius offers to the readers of his writings.80 In particular, several of the monks featured in the GHM—including its two head- lining “stars” John of Lycopolis and Apollo of Bawit—are fashioned into vocal advocates of the core principles of Evagrian ascetic mysticism, which include the sharp distinction between the active and contemplative monastic life,81

78 See e.g. GHM 12.16; 13.12; 15.2; 21.1; Epil. 1. 79 The principal ancient sources for Evagrius’ life are the church historians Socrates (hist. eccl. 4.23) and Sozomen (hist. eccl. 6.30) and his disciple Palladius, both the Greek version of the Lausiac History (ch. 38) and the Coptic version, which contains additional material; on this latter, see G. Bunge and A. de Vogüé (eds.), Quatre ermites égyptiens d’après les fragments coptes de l’Histoire Lausiaque (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1994); T. Vivian, “Coptic Palladiana II: The Life of Evagrius (Lausiac History 38),” CCR 21 (2000): 8-23. On Evagrius’ life and thought, see Antoine Guillaumont’s magisterial mono- graph Un philosophe au désert: Évagre le Pontique (Paris: J. Vrin, 2004). 80 Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum, 245-59. For scholarly discussions of Evagrius’ ascetic theory, see e.g. K. Corrigan, Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the 4th Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); R.E. Sinkewicz (trans.), Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), xxi-xl. The finer points of Evagrian theology have recently been analyzed by A. Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); see also E.A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 43-84. 81 In Evagrius’ hierarchy of spiritual progress, the monk who lives the “active life” (βίος πρακτικός) advances in personal holiness while practicing the monastic social virtues (e.g. almsgiving and hospitality), but with spiritual maturity he eventually moves on to the “gnostic life” (βίος γνωστικός), or “contemplative life” (βίος θεωρητικός), in which, having left behind the mundane, he directs his attention to contemplation (θεωρία) and the acquisition of mystical knowledge (γνώσις), first of the cosmos in both its visible and invisible dimensions and then of the Holy Trinity.

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 300 Cain the theory and practice of pure prayer,82 the monastic ideal of impassibility (ἀπάθεια),83 and the demonic inspiration of impure thoughts.84 In translating the GHM into Latin Rufinus not only retained the pro-Evagrian material present in the Greek original, but he also made his own substantive additions to it. His favoritism in this regard is readily visible from a synoptic comparison of Anon.’s notice on Evagrius and his own:

GHM 20.15 LHM 27.7.1-5 We also saw Evagrius, a wise and erudite We also saw there a man named Evagrius, man, who was gifted at discerning who was extremely wise and wonderful

82 I.e. prayer in which the mind is undisturbed by the passions (πάθη) and harmful thoughts (λογισμοί). The Evagrian doctrine of pure prayer (καθαρὰ προσευχή) was, for its time, an in- novative concept which lies at the very heart of Evagrius’ mystical theology. See G. Bunge, “The Spiritual Prayer: On the Trinitarian Mysticism of Evagrius of Pontus,” MonStud 17 (1987): 191-208; Bunge, Das Geistgebet: Studien zum Traktat De oratione des Evagrios Pontikos (Cologne: De Gruyter, 1987); Bunge, “La Montagne intelligible: De la contemplation indirecte à la connaissance immédiate de Dieu dans le traité De oratione d’Évagre le Pontique,” StudMon 42 (2000): 7-26; L. Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Guillaumont, Un philosophe, 298-306; I. Hausherr, Les leçons d’un contemplatif: Le traité de l’Oraison d’Évagre le Pontique (Paris: Beauchesne, 1960); D. Ousley, Evagrius’ Theology of Prayer and the Spiritual Life (diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1979). On the far-reaching posthumous influence of Evagrius’ doctrine of pure prayer, see e.g. B. Bitton-Ashkelony, “The Limit of the Mind (ΝΟΥΣ) Pure Prayer according to Evagrius Ponticus and Isaac of Nineveh,” ZAC 15 (2011): 291-321. 83 I.e. the condition in which the monk experiences perfect emotional and intellectual sta- bility because he has learned to keep the passions in check. Even though Evagrius was by no means the only fourth-century eastern Christian thinker to advocate apatheia as an ethical norm, he nevertheless was the only one to make this concept a centerpiece of his system of thought. See J. Driscoll, Steps to Spiritual Perfection: Studies on Spiritual Progress in Evagrius Ponticus (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), 76-93; Driscoll, “Apatheia and Purity of Heart in Evagrius Ponticus,” in H.A. Luckman and L. Kulzer (eds.), Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature: Essays in Honor of Juana Raasch (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999), 141-159; B. Maier, “Apatheia bei den Stoikern und Akedia bei Evagrios Pontikos: ein Ideal und die Kehrseite seiner Realität,” OC 78 (1994): 230-249. R. Somos, “Origen, Evagrius Ponticus, and the Ideal of Impassibility,” in W.A. Bienert and U. Kühneweg (eds.), Origeniana septima (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 365-373, argues (against the current majority opinion) that Evagrius derived his doctrine of impassibility from Origen. 84 See Guillaumont, Un philosophe, 242-253; C. Stewart, “Evagrius Ponticus and the Eight Generic Logismoi,” in R. Newhauser (ed.), In the Garden of Evil: The Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2005), 3-34.

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 301 thoughts, having acquired this skill in every way. On him was bestowed, through experience. He often went among other powers of the soul, such a down to Alexandria and would reduce gift of discerning spirits and of purifying the pagan philosophers to silence.85 He thoughts (as the Apostle says) that none admonished the brothers who were with other among the fathers is believed to have us not to gorge themselves on water: arrived at such knowledge of lofty and “For the demons,” he said, “habitually spiritual matters. Although he was granted congregate in well-watered places.” He great understanding through personal gave us many other discourses about trials involving the matters themselves87 the ascetic life, thereby strengthening and most of all through the grace of God, he our souls.86 nevertheless added this [to his repertory], namely that he was instructed for a long period of time by the blessed Macarius, who, as all are aware, was extremely famous for having God’s grace and working miracles and for being distinguished in virtuousness. This Evagrius practiced unbelievable abstinence, yet above all he would admonish any brothers who

85 ἀπεστόμιζεν = “he reduced to silence” (cf. G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969], sv 1), which is more literal than “he refuted in disputations” (N. Russell [trans.], The Lives of the Desert Fathers: The Historia monachorum in Aegypto [Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1980], 107). 86 Εἴδομεν δὲ καὶ Εὐάγριον, ἄνδρα σοφὸν καὶ λόγιον, ὃς τῶν λογισμῶν ἱκανὴν εἶχεν διάκρισιν ἐκ πείρας τὸ πρᾶγμα παρειληφώς. ὃς πολλάκις κατελθὼν εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν τῶν Ἑλλήνων τοὺς φιλοσόφους ἀπεστόμιζεν. οὗτος παρήγγελλεν τοῖς μεθ’ ἡμῶν ἀδελφοῖς ὕδατος μὴ κορέννυσθαι· “Οἱ γὰρ δαίμονες, φησί, τοὺς ὑδροτελεῖς τόπους συνεχῶς ἐπιβαίνουσιν.” ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς πρὸς ἡμᾶς περὶ ἀσκήσεως ἐποιήσατο λόγους ἐπιστηρίξας ἡμῶν τὰς ψυχάς. 87 I read rebus ipsis et experimentis not literally as “through the matters themselves and through personal trials” but rather as a case of hendiadys, hence “through personal trials involving the matters themselves,” these “matters” being a reference to the “lofty and spiritual matters” mentioned in the previous sentence. Thus, Rufinus is saying that Evagrius achieved his hard-earned enlightenment in divine matters in the crucible of human experience (as well as through the grace of God). Rufinus employs the same hendiadic collocation in Book 2 of his translation of Origen’s commentary on the Song of Songs: Haec autem patieris, donec rebus ipsis et experimentis intelligas, quantum mali sit animam nescire semet ipsam neque pulchritudinem suam, per quam praecellit ceteras, non virgines, sed mulieres, illas scilicet, quae corruptionem passae sunt nec in virginitatis integritate per- manserunt (W.A. Baehrens [ed.], Origenes Werke, vol. 8 [Leipzig, 1925], 142).

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happened to be engaged in an exer- cise to subdue the body or to repel from it [i.e. the body] the imagined forms brought on by demons, not to drink a large amount when consum- ing water. For he would say that if the body is inundated with water, it gives rise to more powerful imagined forms and provides larger dwelling-places for demons. He taught many other things about abstinence with the utmost ju- diciousness. Moreover, he himself not only drank water very sparingly, but he also abstained entirely from bread.88

Rufinus has considerably amplified his Greek precursor. Omitting any mention of Evagrius’ prowess as a Christian apologist,89 which Anon. duly touts,90 he

88 Vidimus ibi et sapientissimum virum ac per omnia mirabilem, Evagrium nomine, cui inter ceteras animi virtutes tanta concessa est gratia discernendorum spirituum, et purgan- darum, sicut apostolus dicit, cogitationum [cf. 2 Cor. 10.4], ut nullus alius putetur ex pa- tribus ad tantam subtilium et spiritalium rerum scientiam pervenisse. Cui, quamvis rebus ipsis et experimentis et, quod est super omnia, per gratiam dei magna conlata fuerit intel- legentia, accessit tamen et hoc, ut multo tempore instructus fuerit a beato Macario, quem famosissimum in dei gratia signisque et virtutibus insignem fuisse omnibus notum est. Hic ergo Evagrius incredibilis erat abstinentiae, super omnia tamen monebat fratres, si qui forte studium gererent vel humiliandi corporis vel fantasias ab eo daemonum propellendi, ne in bibenda aqua largiore mensura uterentur. Dicebat enim quia si aqua multa corpus infun- datur, maiores fantasias generat et largiora receptacula daemonibus praebet. Sed et multa alia de abstinentia summa cum libratione edocebat. Ipse autem non solum aqua parcissime utebatur, sed et pane penitus abstinebat. 89 Palladius (hist. Laus. 38.11) mentions Evagrius’ encounters with heretics but none with pagan philosophers (cf. Antony’s debates with pagan philosophers; see Athanasius, Life of Antony 72-80); on Evagrius’ participation in the intellectual culture of Alexandria, see A.D. Rich, Discernment in the Desert Fathers: Διάκρισις in the Life and Thought of Early Egyptian Monasticism (Waynesboro: Paternoster, 2007), 12-15; E. Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (Berkeley, 2006), 184-186. Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology, 81-82, suggests, as a literary parallel to this passage, Athanasius’ report in the Life of Antony (69.2) of Antony going to Alexandria to publicly denounce Arius’ supporters. 90 Anon. furnishes this intriguing bit of information presumably to support one of the leit- motifs of the GHM, namely the desert monks’ decisive triumph over paganism in all its forms; see Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum, 183-188.

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 303 is concerned solely with firming up Evagrius’ credentials as a seemingly un- rivalled authority on ascetic theory and practice. His “great understanding,” which made him superior to even the most venerable desert monks of his cohort (“the fathers”), had a divine origin and was cultivated through the trial and error of daily struggle. In eremitic spirituality, vast personal experience with the monastic life was absolutely foundational to any and all claims a would-be teacher might make to spiritual authority,91 and so in citing Evagrius’ experience in the ascetic life Rufinus is attempting to validate his authority along recognizable lines. He authenticates Evagrius’ credibility by invoking another conventional component of the eremitic cursus honorum, namely the need for a novice monk to serve as an apprentice under a seasoned elder monk (abba) from whom he was to learn the ropes of the monastic life.92 Before acquiring his own disciples (i.e. the “brothers” mentioned above) Evagrius had interned under Macarius the Great.93 Rufinus does not just name Macarius but he also trumpets some of his accomplishments to imply that Evagrius inherited his master’s prophetic greatness.94 In order to capitalize further on Evagrius’ ties to Macarius, Rufinus, after concluding his entry on Evagrius, proceeds with a chapter in which he profiles Macarius’ miracles. One of these miracle stories differs significantly from the version found in the Greek:

GHM 21.17 lHM 28.3.1-4 A certain evildoer changed a girl The virgin daughter of a certain father consecrated to virginity into a mare from a nearby town appeared to people through certain magic arts. Her parents as if she had been turned into an equine brought her to him and asked if he would animal through the illusions of magic, such

91 See A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 30-42, 144- 167; R.J. Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian: Aristocrats, Asceticism, and Reformation in Fifth-Century Gaul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 32-116. On ascetic experience as a form of practical wisdom, see Athanasius, v. Ant. 39.1; Gregory of Nazianzus, orat. 16.20. 92 See G. Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 26-87; A. Louf, “Spiritual Fatherhood in the Literature of the Desert,” in J.R. Sommerfeldt (ed.), Abba: Guides to Wholeness and Holiness East and West (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1982), 37-63. 93 Evagrius became Macarius’ disciple upon moving to Kellia in 385. See G. Bunge, “Évagre le Pontique et les deux Macaire,” Irénikon 56 (1983): 215-227, 323-360. 94 For added effect, Rufinus follows the entry on Evagrius immediately with accounts of some of Macarius’ thaumaturgical exploits.

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 304 Cain be willing to pray and change her into that she was thought to be a mare and a woman. So, having locked her up by not a girl. They brought her to him. After herself for seven days, while her parents he had asked them what they wanted, her remained close by, he devoted himself parents said: “This mare, which your eyes to prayer in another cell. Entering with see, was a virgin girl and our daughter, but her parents on the seventh day, he wicked men have through evil arts turned anointed her all over with oil. He bent her into this animal you see. We therefore his knees and prayed with them and ask you to pray to the Lord and change her after getting back up they found her into what she was.” But he said: “I see this changed into a girl.95 girl whom you point out; she has nothing bestial in herself. To the contrary, what you are referring to is not in her body but in the eyes of onlookers, for these are the imagined forms (fantasiae) of demons, not the truth of reality.” After he had brought her in, he bent his knees inside the cell with her parents and began to pray to the Lord, and at the same time he encouraged the parents to entreat the Lord along with him. Afterward he anointed her with oil in the name of the Lord and, once all the deceptiveness of the illusion had been driven away, he made her appear as a virgin to all, as she used to appear to herself.96

95 Κακούργου τινὸς παρθενεύουσαν κόρην μαγείαις τισὶν εἰς φοράδα μεταβαλόντος καὶ τῶν γονέων αὐτῆς ταύτην αὐτῷ προσαγαγόντων καὶ δεηθέντων αὐτοῦ εἰ βουληθείη ταύτην εὐξάμενος μεταβαλεῖν εἰς γυναῖκα, ἑπτὰ οὖν ἡμέρας ἐγκλείσας αὐτὴν καταμόνας, τῶν γονέων αὐτῇ παραμενόντων, αὐτὸς εἰς ἕτερον κελλίον τῇ δεήσει ἐσχόλαζεν, τῇ δὲ ἑβδόμῃ ἡμέρᾳ εἰσελθὼν μετὰ τῶν γονέων ἤλειψεν αὐτὴν ὅλην ἐλαίῳ καὶ κλίνας τὰ γόνατα ηὔξατο σὺν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀναστάντες εὗρον αὐτὴν εἰς κόρην μεταβληθεῖσαν. 96 Cuiusdam e vicino oppido patris familias virgo filia per fantasias magicas videbatur hom- inibus in equinum animal versa, ut putaretur equa esse et non puella. Hanc adduxerunt ad eum. Tum ille percontatus quid vellent aiunt parentes eius: “Equa haec, quam vident oculi tui, puella virgo et filia nostra fuit, sed homines pessimi malis artibus in animal hoc quod vides eam verterunt. Rogamus ergo, ut ores dominum et commutes eam in hoc quod fuit.” At ille ait: “Ego hanc quam ostenditis puellam video, nihil in se pecudis habentem. Hoc autem quod dicitis non est in eius corpore, sed in oculis intuentium, fantasiae enim daemonum sunt istae, non veritas rerum.” Et cum introduxisset eam, cum parentibus suis intra cellulam fixis genibus orare dominum coepit simulque et parentes hortatur secum domino supplicare et

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Rufinus has modified his source in several ways, but for our purposes here his most substantive alteration concerns the nature of the virgin’s affliction: in the Greek she is turned into a mare (presumably by means of a curse spell97), but in the Latin she never becomes an actual mare and is only perceived to be one by others. On one level Rufinus may be making a conscious conces- sion to contemporary western readers who might find the idea of an actual bodily metamorphosis to be too fantastical (i.e. the stuff of mythology or of novels98), and this incredulity obviously would undercut Macarius’ authority as a thaumaturge. But there is another, more pressing reason why Rufinus rewrites Anon.’s version of the story, and that is to superimpose a distinctly Evagrian template onto it. For one thing, he casts Macarius essentially as the consummate Evagrian ‘gnostic’ monk who has reached such a high level of discernment, and acquired such intimate knowledge of creation in its visible and invisible dimensions, that he sees things for what they truly are. Whereas ev- eryone with whom the girl comes into contact is fooled by the optical illusion and is horrified that she has turned into an animal, Macarius, in direct speech invented by Rufinus to make the point more forceful, identifies it as a demonic ruse and even uses the Evagrian catchword fantasia (φαντασία) to describe the phenomenon. Rufinus occasionally augments a monk’s discourse to infuse even more of an Evagrian element than is already present in the Greek. An excellent example is the following passage from his account of John of Lycopolis’ discourse on pure prayer:

It is the monk’s chief occupation to offer pure prayer to God while having nothing blameworthy on his conscience . . . If, as I said earlier, we stand before God with a clean heart and are free of all the vices and passions I mentioned earlier, we will be able—insofar as this is possible—even to see God and to direct the eye of our heart toward him while we pray and to see him who is invisible with the mind, not with the body, and with the perception gained through knowledge, not with the flesh’s faculty of

post hoc perungens eam oleo in nomine domini omni fallacia visus expulsa virginem videri omnibus, ut etiam sibi videbatur, effecit. 97 On the wide variety of curse spells cast in the ancient world, see M. Meyer (ed.), Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (San Francisco, 1994), 183-256. On women in particular as victims of curse spells in late Roman Egypt, see E. Pachoumi, “The Erotic and Separation Spells of the Magical Papyri and Defixiones,” GRBS 53 (2013): 294-325. 98 E.g. Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, in which the protagonist Lucius is changed into an ass at the beginning of the novel but transformed back into a human in the final book.

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sight. For let no one imagine that he can gaze upon the very essence of God in and of itself, such that in his heart he would devise for himself some appearance or image that is similar to some corporeal image. In God there is no form, no limitation, but only perception and thought. Although he certainly can be perceived and can arouse the mind’s feeling, he nevertheless cannot be apprehended or described or captured in words. Therefore, it is necessary to approach God with all reverence and fear and to focus the gaze of our mind on him so that the human mind, whatever all it can conceive of that is splendid, bright, effulgent, and ma- jestic, may always realize that he is above all these things. As I have said, this is the case if the mind is pure and not enslaved to any filth of a de- praved intention. Therefore, those who seem to renounce the world and follow God are duty-bound to devote their utmost attention to this, just as it is written: “Be still and know that I am God” [Ps. 46.10]. If he knows God—insofar as it is possible for a human being to know him—then he will acquire knowledge about the remaining things which exist and will learn the mysteries of God. The purer his mind is, the more things God reveals to him and shows him his secret counsels.99

This passage, virtually none of which is reproduced from the Greek,100 is a grab-bag of cardinal Evagrian teachings on ascetic mysticism and epistemology.

99 LHM 1.3.19-24: Monachi autem opus illud est praecipuum ut orationem puram adferat deo nihil habens in conscientia reprehensibile . . . Si ergo mundo, ut supra diximus, corde adsti- terimus ante deum et liberi ab omnibus his vitiis et passionibus, quae supra memoravimus, poterimus, in quantum possibile est, etiam deum videre et orantes oculum cordis nostri in ipsum dirigere et videre invisibilem mente, non corpore, intellectu scientiae, non carnis aspectu. Nemo enim putet posse se ipsam, sicut est, divinam substantiam contueri, ita ut speciem sibi aliquam aut imaginem fingat in corde corporeae alicuius imaginis similem. Nulla forma in deo, nulla circumscriptio, sed sensus et mens; qui sentiri quidem possit et per- stringere mentis affectum, non tamen conprehendi aut describi aut enarrari. Et ideo oportet cum omni reverentia et metu accedere ad deum et ita in eum librare mentis intuitum, ut, omne quicquid potest splendoris claritatis fulgoris maiestatis mens humana conspicere, super haec omnia esse eum sentiat semper, et hoc, sicut diximus, si pura mens fuerit nec ullis pravae voluntatis sordibus occupata. Et ideo in hoc maxime oportet operam dare eos, qui renuntiare saeculo et deum sequi videntur, sicut scriptum est: “vacate et cognoscite, quoniam ego sum deus.” Si ergo cognoverit deum, in quantum homini cognoscere possibile est, tunc demum etiam reliquorum quae sunt scientiam capiet et mysteria dei agnoscet, et quanto purior in eo fuerit mens, tanto plura ei revelat deus et ostendit ei secreta sua. 100 See P. Tóth, “Lost in Translation: An Evagrian Term in the Different Versions of the Historia monachorum in Aegypto,” in G. Heidl and R. Somos (eds.), Origeniana, IX (Leuven:

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Pure prayer is the foundation of the monk’s life and can only become possible once he has achieved impassibility, and it also is the meditative means by which he acquires progressive knowledge of God and the cosmos (i.e. “the remaining things which exist”). Yet, while God is “perception and thought” (sensus et mens = αἴσθησις καὶ ἔννοια101), the finite mind is incapable of fully knowing him in his infinitude. The praying mind therefore must approach him humbly and reverently and resist the temptation to imagine him in reductive anthropomorphic terms, for he is a purely immaterial being without form or shape.102

III Rufinus’ LHM and Evagrius’ Legacy in the West

The present study began with a survey of the various kinds of minor alterations that Rufinus made to the content and meaning of the GHM through the process of translation. No critical significance should necessarily be assigned to any of these additions, subtractions, or substitutions, in that none of them fundamentally impacts how we interpret the work as a whole or provides vital insight into Rufinus’ motivation(s) for undertaking his translation enterprise. His pro-Evagrian amendments, however, do offer promising clues about his authorial intentions. In their respective works both Anon. and especially Rufinus not only extol the figure of Evagrius of Pontus but also give a highly favorable, not to mention rather prolific representation, of the very teachings that stand at the center of his ascetic mysticism and indeed help to define this “system” of spirituality as peculiarly Evagrian. This phenomenon becomes explainable once we view it against the backdrop of Evagrius’ close, longstanding ties to Rufinus’ monastery on the Mount of Olives, where Anon. and his six traveling companions were living as monks at the time of their Egyptian excursion in 394-5.

Peeters, 2009), 613-621; Tóth, “Honey on the Brim of the Poison [sic] Cup: Translation and Propaganda in Rufinus’ Latin Version of the Historia monachorum in Aegypto,” in J. Glucker and C. Burnett (eds.), Greek into Latin from Antiquity until the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2012), 117-129. 101 Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer 4. On God as “mind” or “thought” in Evagrius, see J. Konstantinovsky, Evagrius Ponticus: The Making of a Gnostic (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 53-54. 102 See Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer 67-75, 114-118, 120.

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Evagrius evidently met Rufinus for the first time in 381.103 For the previous few years he had been in Constantinople serving as a deacon under Gregory of Nazianzus and then briefly under Gregory’s successor Nectarius. After leaving Constantinople Evagrius headed for Jerusalem, presumably to become a monk, for at that time Jerusalem was known as not only a destination for religious pilgrims but also a nerve center for Christian monasticism. Evagrius ended up staying for approximately two years at the monastic complex (monastery, convent, and pilgrim hostel) recently established on the Mount of Olives by Rufinus and Melania the Elder.104 This was a formative period in his spiritual development: it was there that he resolved to become a monk, and in fact it was from Rufinus’ hands that he received the monastic habit. By 383 Evagrius had become intent upon experiencing firsthand the monasticism of the Egyptian desert and so he moved on to the famed monastic settlement at Nitria, probably at the suggestion of Melania, who had personal connections to some of its resident celebrities. After two years in Nitria, he relocated to the quieter atmosphere of nearby Kellia and lived there until his death in 399, though according to his Coptic Life he returned briefly to Rufinus’ monastery in Palestine when Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria tried to ordain him bishop of Thmuis against his will.105 During his time in Egypt Evagrius maintained close ties with Rufinus and Melania through regular correspondence. The eminent Evagrian scholar Gabriel Bunge,106 in his German translation of Evagrius’ extant epistolary

103 For a detailed reconstruction of Evagrius’ biography, see Guillaumont, Un philosophe, 25-64. 104 Melania’s and Rufinus’ monastic complex, like the one co-founded by Paula and Jerome a few miles south in Bethlehem, conformed to the contemporary eastern pattern of what might be termed the “double monastery” (duplex monasterium/διπλοῦν μοναστήριον), i.e. a male and a female monastic community which had separate sleeping and living quarters and yet were located within close proximity to each other and were interdependent financially. Another example of the “double monastery” phenomenon from a slightly later period is the 80-person monastery and 130-person convent established by Melania the Younger and Pinianus outside Thagaste (Gerontios, v. Mel. 22). For the prevalence of double monasticism in the East, see D.F. Stramara, “Double Monasticism in the Greek East, Fourth through Eighth Centuries,” JECS 6 (1998): 269-312; Wipszycka, Moines et com- munautés, 568-588; cf. M. Serrato Garrido, Ascetismo femenino en Roma (Cádiz: University of Cádiz, 1993), 109-120. 105 E. Amélineau, De Historia Lausiaca quaenam sit huius ad monachorum Aegyptiorum histo- riam scribendam utilitas (Paris: Leroux, 1887), 115; cf. Socrates, hist. eccl. 4.23. 106 For an overview of his significant contributions to our understanding of Evagrius’ mystical theology and asceticism, see A. Casiday, “Gabriel Bunge and the Study of Evagrius Ponticus: Review Article,” SVTQ 48 (2004): 249-298.

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 309 corpus,107 identifies six letters he definitely wrote to Rufinus and Melania108 and nine others he probably wrote to them.109 The most famous among the group of six is an item traditionally known as the Great Letter to Melania (though it may have been written to Rufinus), in which Evagrius gives an epitome of his theological system.110 From all of these letters we see Evagrius emerge as a spiritual mentor to both Melania’s and Rufinus’ respective monastic communities. He enacted this same advisorial role in other literary contexts. For instance, he composed his short treatise Exhortation to a Virgin most likely as a primitive monastic rule for Melania’s convent,111 he addressed his To Monks in Monasteries and Communities to Rufinus’ community in Jerusalem,112 and his treatise Chapters on Prayer, in which he elaborates on the theoretical and practical dimensions of “pure prayer,” was dedicated probably to Rufinus.113 Rufinus was not the only monk in the monastery on the Mount of Olives who was a devotee of Evagrian spirituality. Bunge convincingly argues that one of Evagrius’ surviving letters (Ep. 25) was addressed to a Spaniard named Anatolios, a former senior imperial official (notarius) who by the early 380s had renounced his public position and taken up residence in Rufinus’ monastery.114 Bunge posits reasonably that Evagrius first met Anatolios when he stayed at this monastery between 381 and 383.115 In his letter, written from Kellia at least

107 Evagrios Pontikos: Briefe aus der Wüste (Trier: Beuroner Kunstverlag, 1986). For the critical edition of Evagrius’ letters, see W. Frankenberg (ed.), Evagrius Ponticus (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912). 108 Epp. 22; 31; 32; 35; 36; 37. 109 Epp. 1; 5; 7; 8; 10; 19; 40; 44; 49. 110 This work survived out of antiquity in Syriac; for a critical edition of the Syriac text and a French translation, see G. Vitestam (ed.), La seconde partie du traité qui passe sous le nom de La Grande Lettre d’Évagre le Pontique à Mélanie l’Ancienne (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1964). For a German translation, see Bunge, Briefe, 303-329, and for an English translation, see M. Parmentier, “Evagrius of Pontus’ Letter to Melania,” in E. Ferguson (ed.), Forms of Devotion: Conversion, Worship, Spirituality, and Asceticism (New York: Routledge, 1999), 272-309 (278-291). 111 S. Elm, “The Sententiae ad Virginem by Evagrius Ponticus and the Problem of the Early Monastic Rules,” Augustinianum 30 (1990): 393-404; Elm, “Evagrius Ponticus’ Sententiae ad Virginem,” DOP 45 (1991): 265-295. 112 Guillaumont, Un philosophe, 110. 113 J.E. Bamberger (trans.), Evagrius Ponticus: The Praktikos, Chapters on Prayer (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 51; Guillaumont, Un philosophe, 128; Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus, 184. 114 See O. Zöckler, Evagrius Pontikus: seine Stellung in der altchristlichen Literatur- und Dogmengeschichte (Munich: Beck, 1893), 25-26 n. 37. 115 Bunge, Briefe, 35.

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 310 Cain a decade after this possible first meeting, Evagrius enunciated what by then had become familiar themes of his ascetic mysticism when he exhorted Anatolios to graduate from the “active” life to the “contemplative” life,116 to stay on guard against evil λογισμοί,117 to strive to attain ἀπάθεια, and to practice pure prayer.118 This extant letter represents the tip of the iceberg of their communication and of Evagrius’ discipling of Anatolios: at Anatolios’ request, Evagrius dedicated to him his great trilogy of Praktikos, Kephalaia gnostika, and Gnostikos.119 So, then, from his cell in rural Egypt Evagrius maintained a strong virtual presence in Rufinus’ monastery in Jerusalem throughout the mid-380s and 390s, and his theoretical writings found an eager readership there in two con- firmed cases (Anatolios and Rufinus). It is safe to assume that the rest of the monks in that monastery had also been exposed, probably to a great extent, to the principles of Evagrian spirituality.120 After all, their abbot was a vocal proponent of these principles and actively encouraged this interest among his monks, even to the point of regularly sending groups of them to visit Evagrius in Egypt so that they could interact with him in person.121 Indeed, this very well may have been one of the impetuses for Anon.’s trip to Egypt in 394-5. Rufinus tried to spread Evagrius’ teachings on a broader scale as well by making some of his writings available to western readers through his own Latin translations.122 His efforts were successful enough by 415 that Jerome, in a letter written that same year to a certain Ctesiphon,123 was able to lament: “A great many people read [Evagrius’] books in Greek throughout the East and in Latin in the West thanks to his disciple Rufinus who translates them.”124 Prior to his departure for Italy in 397, Rufinus had transformed his monastery in Jerusalem into a hub for disseminating Evagrius’ writings at home and abroad,125 and he employed his monks, who occupied themselves in their cells with copying

116 Ep. 25.5 (Bunge, Briefe, 237). 117 Ep. 25.4 (Bunge, Briefe, 237). 118 Ep. 25.6 (Bunge, Briefe, 237-238). 119 Bunge, Briefe, 34. 120 Clark, Origenist Controversy, 190. 121 See Evagrius, Ep. 37.1 (Bunge, Briefe, 250). 122 F.X. Murphy, Rufinus of Aquileia (345-410): His Life and Works (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1945), 227. 123 Ctesiphon’s precise identity is unknown, but it has been conjectured that he was one of Pelagius’ wealthy lay supporters; see J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London: Hendrickson, 1975), 314. 124 Epist. 133.3: Huius libros per orientem Graecos et interpretante discipulo eius Rufino Latinos plerique in occidente lectitant. 125 Guillaumont, Un philosophe, 171.

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 311 texts,126 as the front-line workers in this cottage industry. After he had returned to Italy, and especially after Evagrius’ death in 399, Rufinus continued to act as a self-appointed publicist and apologist for Evagrius and his teachings. This sense of purpose, I submit, was one of the main driving forces behind his Latin translation of the GHM around 403, which (as we have seen) not only retains the pro-Evagrian material already present in the Greek original but also sub- stantially adds to it. Going one step further, I propose also that Rufinus conceived the LHM to be, on one level, a creative platform for popularizing the foundational principles of Evagrian ascetic theory, to make these accessible in a streamlined form to a far broader readership than would normally be predisposed to study Evagrius’ corpus of theoretical treatises. The weighty authority of the great Egyptian monks themselves, which Rufinus carefully constructs throughout the LHM, only lends to the allure and intrinsic legitimacy of the teachings being con- veyed. Hence he touts the spiritual credentials of the main “Evagrian” teachers in his monastic portrait-gallery. Apollo is widely regarded by his fellow monks and countrymen as a “prophet” and “apostle.”127 Pityrion is a noted exorcist as well as Antony’s monastic successor and the heir to his “spiritual gifts.”128 John of Lycopolis “had made so much progress in purifying his mind that he not only received from the Lord the knowledge of things in the here and now but he also was deemed worthy of foreknowledge of things to come.”129 This description is not found in the GHM but is an addition whereby Rufinus explains the origin of John’s clairvoyance in terms conspicuously reminiscent of Evagrius’ conceptualization of spiritual progress: John’s divinely acquired “knowledge” and “foreknowledge” was predicated upon sufficient mental purification. In invoking these and other illustrious monks in the LHM as standard- bearers of Evagrian monastic ideology, Rufinus also may well have had apolo- getic designs. As is well known, Evagrius was condemned, along with Origen and Didymus, at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553.130 Even in his own lifetime and shortly thereafter, some of his monastic teachings were met

126 See Rufinus, apol. c. Hier. 2.11. 127 LHM 7.2.8. 128 LHM 13.2. 129 LHM 1.1.6: In tantum denique mentis sinceritate profecerat, ut non solum eorum quae erant scientiam consequeretur a domino, verum et eorum quae futura erant praescientiam mereretur. 130 Although Evagrius is not named explicitly in the Council’s fifteen anathemas, there is general agreement that he was an intended target (Konstantinovsky, Evagrius Ponticus, 20). The Council’s condemnations were later ratified by the Third Council of Constantinople (680/1), the Second Council of Nicea (787), and the Fourth Council of Constantinople

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 312 Cain with derision and disapproval in some quarters.131 His doctrine of apatheia in particular was a polemical lightning-rod: Jerome famously mocked it, claiming that true impassibility would make a human being either a stone or God,132 and John Cassian, a disciple of Evagrius, translated the term ἀπάθεια with the more positive-sounding phrase puritas cordis (“purity of heart”) so as to avoid certain negative connotations that the Greek term had acquired through Evagrius’ usage of it.133 If Rufinus had a sense of the controversial nature of this and other Evagrian teachings, he might have hoped that the sterling reputation of Egypt’s monastic luminaries would provide some protective insulation for these ideas and enhance their credibility among the skeptical segments of his readership. Rufinus’ stated objective in composing the LHM was to establish the lives and teachings of the Egyptian monks as the touchstone of authentic ascetic spirituality for his pious readers. Thus he declares in the Prologue (§ 12):

Because it was granted to me by God’s favor both to see them and to be a witness to their way of life, I will now attempt to elaborate on particular things that the Lord has brought to my memory, so that people who have not seen them in person, in learning about their deeds and gathering information about the perfect life from reading, may be incited to emulate their holy effort and seek the prize of perfect patience.134

(869); see N. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), 1.125, 135, 161. 131 For other contemporary opposition to Evagrius’ anthropology and theology, see Clark, Origenist Controversy, 105-121, and on his troubled Nachleben more generally, see Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology, 46-71. 132 Jerome, epist. 133.3; cf. S. Driver, John Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture (London: Routledge, 2002), 53-58; A. Guillaumont, Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’origénisme chez les Grecs et chez les Syriens (Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1962), 79-80; B. Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1999), 395-396. 133 B. Ramsey (trans.), John Cassian: The Conferences (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 19. On Cassian’s understanding of this concept, see further A. Casiday, “Apatheia and Sexuality in the Thought of Augustine and Cassian,” SVTQ 45 (2001): 359-394. 134 Quia ergo dei munere donatum mihi est et videre eos et interesse conversationi eorum, de singulis iam nunc quae ad memoriam dominus reduxerit enarrare temptabo, ut et hi qui non viderunt eos in corpore opera eorum discentes vitamque perfectam lectionis indicio col- ligentes ad aemulationem sancti operis invitentur et perfectae patientiae palmam requirant.

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto 313

He then proceeds immediately to open the chapter on John of Lycopolis by emphasizing John’s supreme exemplarity in a passage which, like the one just quoted from the Prologue, is not found in the Greek but is his own personal addition.135 Rufinus, then, was like all other authors of hagiographic literature in Late Antiquity in that he aspired to magnify his holy subjects while simul- taneously edifying his readership.136 Now, more often than not, these authors had propagandistic aims in mind as well, which were bound up tightly with the twin goals of encomium and edification.137 Many, for instance, enlisted their hagiographic subjects as the authoritative faces of the various causes they themselves were keen to promote. Athanasius made the hero of his Life of Antony a champion of Nicene orthodoxy in his campaign to quash Arianism and other rival theological systems.138 Gregory of Nazianzus composed his funeral oration on Basil, which has been called “the single greatest exemplar of Christian hagiographic writing,”139 in large part to rehabilitate his own reputation and to reclaim Basil as a fellow trinitarian Homoousian.140 In his letters and other works, Jerome idealized the women in his circle as “saints” who

135 LHM 1.1.1: “Let us then take John first, as truly being the foundation of our work, as the model of all the virtues, for indeed he all by himself is more than capable of inspiring pious minds devoted to God to reach the pinnacle of the virtues and to spur them on to the lofty heights of perfection” (Primum igitur tamquam vere fundamentum nostri operis ad exemplum bonorum omnium sumamus Iohannem, qui vere etiam solus satis superque sufficiat religiosas et deo devotas mentes ad virtutum culmen erigere et ad perfectionis fas- tigia concitare). 136 H. Delehaye, Les légendes hagiographiques (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1905), 2; A.G. Elliot, Roads to Paradise: Reading the Lives of the Early Saints (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1987), 3. 137 See e.g. E.A. Clark, “Piety, Propaganda, and Politics in the Life of Melania the Younger,” in E.A. Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 61-94; I.N. Wood, “The Use and Abuse of Latin Hagiography in the Early Medieval West,” in E.K. Chrysos and I.N. Wood (eds.), East and West: Modes of Communication (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 93-109 (108). 138 See D. Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); J. Roldanus, Le Christ et l’homme dans la théologie d’Athanase d’Alexandre: Étude de la conjonction de sa conception de l’homme avec sa christologie (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 277-348; Roldanus, “Die Vita Antonii als Spiegel der Theologie des Athanasius und ihr Weiterwirken bis ins 5. Jahrhundert,” Th&Ph 58 (1983): 194-216. 139 J.A. McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 373. 140 See F.W. Norris, “Your Honor, My Reputation: St. Gregory of Nazianzus’s Funeral Oration on St. Basil the Great,” in T. Hägg and P. Rousseau (eds.), Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 140-159.

Vigiliae christianae 71 (2017) 285-314 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:21:53PM via free access 314 Cain personally endorsed his controversial ascetic and scholarly special interests and thereby legitimized these pursuits.141 To this list I propose now to add Rufinus, whose monastic hagiography, I have argued, had a narrowly focused propagandistic thrust, and that was to promulgate covertly the central principles of Evagrian monastic ideology.142

141 See Cain, Letters of Jerome, 68-98; Cain, “Rethinking Jerome’s Portraits of Holy Women,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 47-57; Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 23. 142 I say “covertly” because he chose to allow these principles to be voiced not by the character of Evagrius but by other characters in the LHM who are given far more prominence in the narrative.

Vigiliae christianaeDownloaded from 71 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 285-314 04:21:53PM via free access