to observe such all-embracing generosity in prayer for the whole world on the part of other holy men and also of martyrs.
The practice of Christian asceticism in our period is loaded with admissions of sinfulness and the need for repentance. In the words of one of the desert fathers, Abba Matoes, “The nearer a man draws to God, the more he sees himself a sinner.”89 This is not limited to the prominent practitioners of the holy life with their spectacular feats of physical endurance. The penitential intention behind ascetic practices was evident in communal as much as in eremitic monasticism. By the mid-fourth century, repentance (metanoia) had been integrated into the annual liturgical cycle of monastic communities in Middle Egypt, where, as Tim Vivian has recently shown, the monks gathered every year for a day of ritual prostrations and prayer.90 At the end of the fourth century, the newly founded Pachomian monastery at Canopus near Alexandria was given the name Metanoia. The name was intended to invoke the association of purification with repentance, for the monastery was built directly above a former pagan site.91 Still in the early seventh century, John Climacus noted the existence of a monastery on the Sinai especially for the penitent. These were not necessarily men with a heavy conscience or even a criminal record, such as Moses the Robber, one of the more colorful figures in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, but monks who had made repentance for their sinful state their personal vocation.92 Farther away, in the Tur Abdin area of Mesopotamia during the fifth and sixth centuries, “the mourners” developed their own kind of asceticism with an emphasis on personal penitence.
The outward appearance of the desert hermits as the result of their asceticism—the parched and emaciated body, the long and matted hair, the ragged cloak, the piercing eyes—was the externally visible affirmation of their internal self-consciousness as penitent sinners. In addition to fasting, vigils, meditation, and prayer, it was the gift of tears, the ability to weep over the sins of oneself and of others, that was especially valued. A fantastic story was told about Irene of Chrysobalanton, an aristocratic nun in tenth-century Constantinople: her flow of tears reached such torrential proportions that a basin had to be installed next to her seat in the church to collect the precious liquid.93 Irene’s story serves to underline the continued importance of compunction (penthos) in the spiritual life of the Greek East from late antiquity through the Byzantine Empire, a topic that has been explored and documented in a magisterial study by Irénée Hausherr.94 Back in the fourth century, Abba Macarius, who himself had been a disciple of Anthony, gave this advice to another desert dweller: “Flee from men, stay in your cell, weep for your sins, do not take pleasure in the conversation of men, and you will be saved.”95 Heartfelt penance, the monks knew well, could blot out sin. The flow of tears could have the same cleansing effect as the baptismal font. Nilus of Ancyra advises on the solitary life: “Consider fasting a weapon, prayer a wall, and tears a wash basin.”96 In a sermon on the theme of the baptism of Christ, delivered on the Feast of Epiphany in the year 381, Gregory of Nazianzus reminded his congregation that penance constitutes a form of baptism:
I know of a fifth [kind of baptism] also, which is that of tears, and is much more laborious, received by him who washes his bed every night and his couch with tears; whose bruises stink through his wickedness; and who goeth mourning and of a sad countenance; who imitates the repentance of Manasseh and the humiliation of the Ninerites upon which God had mercy; who utters the words of the Publican in the Temple, and is justified rather than the stiffnecked Pharisee; who like the Canaanite woman bends down and asks for mercy and crumbs, the food of a dog that is very hungry.97
Anastasius Sinaites expressed the same idea, but in fewer words: “Tears are the true bath of the Christian.”98 His Questions and Answers provide us with a rare glimpse of Egyptian monastic spirituality in the late seventh century, long after the heyday of the monastic settlements in Kellia and Nitria. Elsewhere, he illustrated this point with the story of the tear-soaked handkerchief of a robber that blotted out his heinous deeds.99 Such tears of repentance over concrete actions could move God’s forgiveness. Tears were also shed out of a general sense of humility and the recognition of one’s sinful nature. This is the advice of Evagrius Ponticus, the great theologian of Egyptian monastic spirituality in the fourth century:
When you are of the mind that you do not stand in need of tears for your sins along with your prayer, then give some thought to the distance that separates you from God, whereas you ought to be in him constantly. Then you will shed more abundant tears than ever.100
Evagrius knew that the shedding of tears was a very special gift. It was prized so highly that he even had to warn those who were able to weep copiously against becoming boastful of their ability.101
Intercessory Prayer by Holy Men
Weeping and prayer were intimately connected. Weeping was the outward gesture that accompanied fervent prayer for the remission of sins. In Evagrius’s words: “Pray with tears and your request will find a hearing. Nothing so gratifies the Lord as supplication offered in the midst of tears.”102 Those who had, through long experience, reached a certain degree of perfection were capable of praying (and weeping) not only for themselves, but also for others. An inscription at the monastic site of Saqqara in Egypt records: “This is the spot on which our lord and father Apa Jeremias bowed himself, until he removed the sins of the people of the whole world. May his (?) holy blessing descend upon us. Amen Amen, so be it, Amen (?).”103
The ability of holy men to pray for others was highly valued by their contemporaries and certainly contributed to their popularity.104 Holy men and pneumatophoroi were expected to pray on behalf of those in need of assistance. 105 The spiritual fathers whom we encountered in the documentary evidence discussed above may have performed fewer miracles than the sensationalistic hagiographical record of late antiquity would lead us to expect from holy men, but they did offer up prayers for their correspondents. In some instances, they even gave assurance for the forgiveness of sins or promised their help to alleviate the burden of the sins of their followers. The life of retreat in prayer was very different from that of asceticism and almsgiving, and an apa who decided to embark exclusively on this path could meet with the consternation of his monastic colleagues. This is what happened to Apa Banes, according to an apophthegma preserved in the Coptic collection. The monks were so irritated at Banes’ rejection of the lifestyle they held dear that they needed the reassurance of the local prophet Abraham:
Why do you trouble yourselves? In fact, during the time when Apa Banes distributed alms, did he nourish a village, a town, a county? Now, Banes is able to raise both hands [in prayer] to make sure that barley comes to the whole world in abundance. He is also able to ask God to forgive the sins of this entire generation.106
The ability of holy men to pray for others is a recurring theme in the monastic literature of late antiquity, where it usually serves the dual purpose of underlining their compassion for others, which motivates their prayer, and of emphasizing their advanced state of holiness, which guarantees its success. Miracles were often, but not always the result.
In hagiography, the holy man’s intercession on behalf of sinners is usually couched in colorful stories that culminate in a miracle.107 Typically, a sinner who had suffered divine punishment for a misdeed—in the form of paralysis, sudden voice loss, or some other ominous occurrence—approached the holy man with the request to be “loosed” by him. This is exemplified in the story of the prominent Ishmaelite who broke his vow to God to abstain from meat, and then found that the bird he had shot and was about to eat had turned into stone. In his shock and distress, he appealed to Symeon the Stylite, who had been instrumental in his conversion, and asked “that through his all-powerful prayers he [Symeon] might free him from the bonds of sin.”108
The necessity to remain in communication with God through prayer was so much taken for granted that there is little theoretical reflection on the nature of prayer itself. An exception is John Cassian, who had spent many years with the fathers in Egypt. Not long after his return to the West in 404, he founded a men’s and a women’s monastery in Marseilles where he composed his Institutes and Conferences to communicate his experience to a Latin readership, becoming the first to translate the monastic ideal to the West. Cassian made a distinction between four different