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Representations.
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In Christ, the original beauty of Adam had blazed forth;and it is forthat reason that
the life of the Christian holy man could be treated as a prolonged and deeply circum-
stantial "imitation of Christ."
We should begin, however, by making a careful (though inevitably somewhat
schematic) distinction between this, the Late Antique form of the Imitation of
Christ, and that disciplining of the religious sensibilityassociated with later Christo-
centric devotion in the late Middle Ages and Reformation. This latter strand of the
Western religious sentiment is so far better known, it still runs so imperceptiblyin
the blood of modern Christians, that the Late Antique ideal of the "Christ-carrying
man" is frequently not even recognised as such. Somehow the well-known face of
our sufferingSavior seems refracted,in the Early Christian and Byzantine tradition,
into too bewildering a scatter of images, some too grandiose, others too inconsequen-
tial, and some, even downright inappropriate to modern Western eyes.37
At the risk of an oversimplification,by which I do not in any way intend to
diminish the richness of the more recent Western concept, the Late Antique Imita-
tion of Christ, though it did include a powerful affectiveaspect, which frequently
took visual form,38did not take as its startingpoint the projection of the imagination
and the sensibilityof the believer on to a relatively fixed and delimited image of the
historical Jesus and the circumstances of His life and Passion. That passing of the
mind to a precise image "out there," such as would cause Margery Kemp to fall to
"great boisterous weeping" at the sight of a pieta on the altar of a side-chapel, or the
sight of a man carryinga plank across his back, was notably less prominentin Early
Christian disciplines of meditation. Late Antique men did not tend to kneel, as do
the donors on Flemish Primitive paintings, gazing with sad eyes at a hill of Golgotha
fixed foreverwith a merciless exactitude. A leap of the imagination across time seen
as a thrillingbut real chasm, demanding to be crossed by the Christian heart, lies at
the back of late medieval and modern devotion:
There is a greenhill faraway,
Outside a citywall . ..
The late classical sense that the present still lay wide open to permeation by a past
conceived of as distant fromit merely through the accident of time led Early Chris-
tians to look in a differentdirection in order to imitate Christ. Gregory of Nyssa-
and many Christians less profound and idosyncratic than himself-scanned the
The idea had a long past in the pagan philosophical tradition: in his Life of
Pythagoras,Jamblichusspoke of the wise man reflectingGod in his life,as the
blazing disc of the sun is caughtin the water at the bottomof a still well.41 The
theologicalbackgroundand the implicationsof the idea have been studiedwithre-
newed sympathyand justifiableenthusiasm.42 It mightbe worthour while,there-
fore, to step aside for a moment, from theology, to consider some of the concrete
circumstances that rendered such a belief, in its various forms,eminentlyadapted to
the rise of Christianity in the Late Antique world.
I would like to begin by acknowledging a debt to the recent work of Edward
Shils and CliffordGeertz, on the nature of charisma itself,and on the subtle manner
in which charisma can be seen to be distributed and "reactivated" in complex so-
cieties. I do not think that to apply their methods does violence to the nature of our
period. Rather, like a traveller returned home after a spell of residence abroad, I
have found that their work has helped me to see, with the claritythat can come from
an instantof unfamiliarity,some of the centralproblemsof a veryfamiliartopic-
the Christianizationof the Mediterraneanworld.
For Shils, the main concernis how the "centralvalue system,"that is, "the
values which are pursued and affirmedby the elites of the constituentsub-systems"
comesto penetratethe cluttered"periphery"of moresensible,imme-
of a society,43
diateloyaltiesand preoccupations, thatmake up thedayto day lifeofa largesociety.
For onlywhenthis"centralvalue system"permeatesparts,at least,ofitsperiphery,
if at verydifferent can a societymaintainthe minimumsense of
levelsof intensity,
commonpurposeand continuity. For
call thecentralvalues or beliefsystemofa society
what sociologistsand social anthropologists
can be lived up to only partially,fragmentarily, and only in an approximate
intermittently
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Only we, who can hide behindbooks and machinesforthe propagationof the Gos-
of the
the crucial importance,in the frontier-life
pel, can affordto underestimate
Early Church,of the humanexemplar:
I am convincedthat God added to the lengthof their days [wrote the cultivatedCon-
stantinopolitanlawyerSozomenof the holymen of Syria]fortheexpresspurposeof further-
ing the interestsof religion.52
The idea oftheholyman as Christmade accessibleadds a ratherdifferent shade
ofcolorthanI had firstthoughtpossible,to thepictureof the holy man, whose "Rise
and Function"I had sketchedout a decadeago, in moregrisaille tones.In thatstudy,
the holyman was presentedas "rural patron"and as a "charismaticOmbudsman"
in the villagesof the easternMediterranean.53
At the riskof appearingundulyautobiographical,it mightbe helpfulif I were
to make plain some of the intellectualcircumstancesunder which I came to this
view,and the furtherconsiderations thatwould lead me, at thismoment,to modify
it. If thereis any virtuein such a personal approach, it is to add a sense of the
slownessof fleshand blood to changesof perspectivethatcan so easilybe portrayed,
in modern academic circumstances,as deceptivelyeffortless,as dispassionate
"switches"fromone currentmethodology to another.I can only say that I have
neverfoundthe matterso simple.
I would not have writtenthat articlein the way in which I did withoutthe
decisiveimpetusof a specifictraditionof anthropologicalwork available to me at
that time.To be candid,this traditionamountedto the literatureand the seminal
ideas to whichI had accessby theonlymeansproperto a scholar:thatis, notbythe
dutifulscanningofbibliographies;butthroughfirmand nurturing tiesoffriendship,
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It still strikes me that "A society that wanted nothing less than saints seems to have
paid insufficientattention to the gradual improvement of sinners."55 If a modern
version of Lecky's disdainful History of European Morals from Augustus to Char-
lemagne is to be written,this would be a central theme. The appearance in 1964 of
A. H. M. Jones's magnificentlysane Later Roman Empire reinforcedthis impres-
sion.56 But this reading of Baynes did not prepare me as well, as a historian, to deal
with figures in Late Antiquity who were thought of as less dramatically removed
from the average ethical life of their fellows, as were the heroes of the Christian
ascetic movement: thus it took me a long time to begin to understand the pagan
thelos anir, the rabbi, even the saintly bishop; and the later role of the Muslim holy
man was, at that time, unknown to me.57
The second concern was psychoanalytic: This was a time when historians with
Freudian interests,such as E. R. Dodds, had been concerned to apply psychoanalytic
insights to the emotions and behavior of the holy men themselves.58By contrast, I
was more implicated in and deeply indebted to the later insights of Melanie Klein,
of which I had direct experience through psychoanalysis throughout the late 1960s
and early 1970s. As a result, I tended to look, rather, at the psychological dynamics
of groups, especially of small groups. It was the tendency of such groups to invest
persons or things with heightened qualities of good or evil that struck me. The
mechanisms of "cathecting" with good feelings, of the "projection" of bad feelings
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Having livedwithoutconceit,
Having honouredas is due,
Lucian the martyr,
He who nurturedyou.
With him Christmade you
A followerof Himself,
A carrierof His Cross:
A Cross dwelton divinelyin the mind,
And touchedby you [themartyrLucian]
In concretepains [ofdeath].
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Totally poor, and so with no goods to leave behind except the robe he had stood up in
and the mat on which he had lain; even if educated, largely (if not totally) deprived
of the expensive and time-consumingtools of literaryfame: there was really only one
legacy that an Abba could leave to the world-his words and his example. And, in
that, they have done us proud:
Abba Or and Abba Athredid notcome fromthe same partof the countryyet,untiltheyleft
theirbodies, therewas great peace betweenthem.Abba Athre'sobediencewas great,and
great was Abba Or's humility.I spentseveraldays with them,withoutleavingthemfora
moment,and I saw a greatwonderthatAbba Athredid. Someonebroughtthema littlefish
and Abba Athrewanted to cook it forthe old man. He was holdingthe knifein the act of
cuttingup thefishand Abba Or called him.He lefttheknifein themiddleofthefishand did
notcut up therestofit. I admiredhis greatobedience,forhe did notsay,"Wait tillI have cut
up the fish."I said to Abba Athre,"Where did you findsuch obedience?"He said to me, "It
is notmine,but theold man's." He tookme withhim,saying,"Come and see his obedience."
He tookthefish,intentionally cookedsomeof it badly,and offeredit to theold man who ate it
withoutsayinganything.Then he said to him,"Is it good,old man?" He replied,"It is very
good." Afterwardshe broughthim a littlethatwas well cookedand said, "Old man, I have
spoiled it," and he replied,"Yes, you have spoiled it a little."Then Abba Athresaid to me,
"Do you see how obedienceis intrinsicto theold man?" I came away fromthere[concludes
Abba Sisoes, our narrator]and what I have told you, I have triedto practiceas far as I
could.79
These anecdotes grip us: "the flash of a signal light, brief,arresting,intense."80 But
the monk's journey moved on from such delightfulparticularity. It took him out on
to a plateau, surrounded by a mountain range of breath-taking immensity.For the
greatest figuresin the long historyof the righteous on earth stood behind him. To be
a "man of God" was to revive, on the banks of the Nile, all other "men of God" in
all other ages. "The ascetic must observe most closely [said Anthony] the life and
practice of the great Elijah."'81 Occasionally, the lost countenance of Adam could
blaze again among these humbled faces:
Just as Moses, while his face was glorified,tookon the gloryof Adam, so the face of Abba
Pambo shone like lightning,and he was like a kingsittingon his throne.82
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we catcha hintoftheresourcesofthepersonality,
In thisveryvisual uncertainty, as
conceivedby Late Antique Christians,when they looked at the "Christ-bearing
man.)"
At death,all of thisbecame plain. The greatmen ofthe desertwere greetedby
carefullyorderedprocessionsof guides and protectors.It is, at one and the same
time,the finalmeetingof mastersand theirpupil, on whichthe patient"makingof
personsintoclassics"had always depended;and it is themomentwhen,in themeet-
ing ofChristand man,thegloryofthehumanselfcouldbe glimpsedin its awesome
fullness:
It was said ofAbba Sisoesthatwhenhe was at thepointofdeath,whiletheFatherswere
sittingbesidehim,his faceshonelikethesun.He said to them,"Look,Abba Anthony is
coming."A littlelater,he said,"Look,thechoirofprophets is coming."Againhiscounte-
nanceshonewithbrightness and,lo, he spokewithsomeone. Thentheold menaskedhim,
"Withwhomareyouspeaking, Father?"He said,"Look,theangelsarecoming tofetchme,
and I am begging themto letme do a littlepenance.... TrulyI do notthinkI haveeven
madea beginning yet...." Oncemorehiscountenance becamelikethesunandtheywereall
filledwithfear.He saidtothem,"Look,theLordis coming...." Thentherewas a flashof
lightningand all thehousewas filledwitha sweetodor.105
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The Late Roman saints had tried to answer just such a question in their own
time. To uncover with sympathywhat resources they could hope to bring to bear in
acting as exemplars to a profoundly pre-Christian society might bring us 3 little
closer to understanding the rise and functionof such persons in the Mediterranean
and Near Eastern world of Late Antiquity.
Notes
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