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Pilgrimage of Etheria

Egeria, tr. McClure and Feltoe, 1919

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6. The Monks and Nuns of the Narrative

It is a matter of common knowledge that monasticism took its rise in Egypt about the middle of the third century, perhaps as the result of the Decian persecution, many of those who then fled to the desert never returning, and that from the beginning of the fourth century the movement developed mainly along two lines which were almost contemporaneous¹: (1) under the method of S. Antony, whose monks were mostly solitary hermits in the strict sense, though in some places they lived near one another in small companies and met together for common worship on Saturdays and Sundays: (2) under the rule of S. Pachomius, who founded the conventual type of monasticism. Here the brethren lived together in much larger bands, and not only combined for common worship but were organized for regular work (on the land, etc.), though they took no meals together and were each allowed to practise that amount of austerity which his strength and zeal prompted beyond the fixed minimum which was obligatory on all.² Thus the spirit of individualism was a strongly marked feature in both these systems. It was from Egypt by way of Rome that monasticism was quite early brought to western Europe, and there for some time it retained many of its more especially Eastern characteristics. The community of feeling and atmosphere, therefore, between the monastic institutions of the West and those of Egypt, Syria and Palestine was considerable, and will account for the readiness with which Etheria was received everywhere on her journeys and for the highly appreciative way in which she commends the saintliness of her entertainers and informants, who were in the greater number of instances closely associated with the monastic and ascetic life.

The rule of S. Pachomius, which sprang into a full organization almost at once (like Minerva from the head of Jove), spread rapidly, but into Palestine the monastic life was introduced early in the fourth century, not by him, but by a disciple of S. Antony, Hilarion. There “the original impulse to the eremitic life survived, and the cenobitic ideal made little headway either now or later. In Syria and Mesopotamia asceticism was, so to speak, indigenous.”³ Consequently most if not all the monks and nuns that Etheria met in Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia were probably either of the strictly eremitic or semieremitic kind (see e.g. p. 37).

The names she uses to describe these monks (and nuns) are various. In the former part of the narrative her regular name for them is monachi. We have already mentioned (p. xiii) the three instances, where she also brings in the word ascitis (ἀσκητής) and the three doubtful instances of the use of the word “confessor” in connexion with monks. The ascitis whom she heard of or met at Carneas on the east of Jordan was evidently a solitary, and so probably was the priest on Mount Sinai: also the monachus at Thisbe, it would seem (p. 28). A number of them came into Haran from the Mesopotamia desert on the Feast of S. Helpidius (April 24). At Seleucia in Isauria we read for the first time of women (virgines) as well as men, the former under the direction of a deaconess named Marthana⁴ (see p. 42) whom she had previously met at Jerusalem: and also there she first uses the term apotactitae (ἀποτακτιταί), which for her includes members of both sexes. This term recurs several times at Jerusalem, where monazontes (μονάζοντες) and parthenae (παρθένοι) are likewise mentioned.⁵ Monazontes should strictly denote “solitaries,” but so should monachi: probably neither have always their strict significance in Etheria’s vocabulary. The term apotactitae seems to have been an unusual one for Christian ascetics. Palladius in his Lausiac History frequently uses the verb ἀποτάξασθαι of those who renounced the pleasures and pursuits of the world, and Cassian gave his book the title of de institutis renuntiantium, where renuntiantes bears the same sense, but otherwise apotactites was one of the names assumed by such ascetic heretics as the Manichaean Encratites, etc.⁶ Evidently, however, in Etheria’s usage it is more or less equivalent to monachi (monazontes) and parthenae (virgines) and has not the least sinister association.

One other word, which is connected with this subject, needs a little explanation. Etheria constantly speaks of the monks’ monasteria. It follows from what has been said that with her in the singular monasterium means a cell, mostly that of a solitary, and in the plural monasteria means a collection of cells, where monks were living under semi-eremetic conditions, more probably under the method of S. Anthony than under the rule of S. Pachomius. Thus the aged priest on Mount Sinai came out de monasterio suo (p. 4), and the bishop of “the city of Arabia,” whom she had known ever since she was in the Thebaid, had been brought up a pisinno (from his boyhood) in monasterio. [This man, in passing, is quite worthy of further notice, because Etheria tells us that “in consequence he was both well learned⁷ in the scriptures and chastened in his whole life,” besides being “courteous and most kind in receiving pilgrims” — truly a charming picture of an old-world church dignitary.] For instances of monasteria (collections of cells) we may refer to what is said of them under Mount Sinai on p. 5, where the monks’ successful cultivation of the lower slopes is well described, and again to those she visited round Rachel’s well near Haran, and the monasteria sine numero virorum ac mulierum which she found surrounding the church at Seleucia.⁸ These last were all enclosed in a high wall which had been raised to protect them from the inroads of the brigands who infested the district (p. 42).

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