21.3.krawiec

Literacy and Memory in Evagriuss MonasticismRebecca Krawiec

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 21, Number 3, Fall 2013,pp. 363-390 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/earl.2013.0034

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Journal of Early Christian Studies 21:3, 363390 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press

I am grateful to my co-presenters on the Origenist textualities panels at the Inter-national Patristics Conference (Oxford, August 2011) for all their comments and insights, both in reading earlier drafts and in conversation during the conference. Jeremy Schotts response to the panel in particular provided guidance to the Life of Plotinus. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments that greatly improved my article. While writing this paper, I received financial support in the form of a Deans Summer Grant from Canisius College in 2011. Finally, the audiences at the Oxford conference, as well as the Late Antique Religion of Central New York reading group, both provided useful feedback.

1. Letter to Melania 1. Much of the Syriac text is available in: Wilhelm Frankenberg, Euagrios Ponticus, Abhandlungen der kniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu

Literacy and Memory in Evagriuss Monasticism

REBECCA KRAWIEC

This paper examines Evagriuss monastic literacy, that is, his views on how to write and read monastic texts, in order to argue for the central role of memory in that literacy. Evagriuss textuality is Origenist because of the hierarchical relationship between material text and spiritual meaning; that textuality shapes Evagriuss identity as a monastic writer and the esoteric quality of reading in his monastic community. A collective monastic memory is one element that is necessary to read his texts properly, namely, in a way that will allow access to the spiritual strength in the text. Yet memory, like texts, engages the same tension between corporeal reality and immaterial goals that is at the heart of Evagriuss monasticism. The relationship between literacy and monasticism shapes the memory of Evagrius in the works of two of his followers, Palladius and John Cassian.

INTRODUCTION

In his comparison between letters and creation, Evagrius includes memory as part of a letters message, itself accessible only to recipients who have a kindred mind with the author. Even if letter writers are dead, he says, they live because letters can communicate not only the things present, but also the things past and the things to come.1 The meaning within a

364 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Gttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, Neue Folge 13.2 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1912), 61018, here 610. Additional portions are available in Gsta Vitestam, Second partie du trait qui pass sous le nom de Le grande letter dEvagre le Pontique Mlanie lAncienne, publie et traduite daprs le manuscript du British Museum Add. 17192 (Lund: Glerrup, 1981). I have alternatively used, sometimes with modifications, the translation in Evagrius Ponticus, trans. August Casiday (London: Routledge, 2006), 6477, here 64, and M. Parmentier, Evagrius of Pontus Letter to Melania, in Forms of Devotion, ed. E. Fergusson (New York: Garland, 1999), 272309, here 278. In addition, I have consulted Gabriel Bunge, Evagrios Pontikos: Briefe aus der Wste, Sophia 24 (Trier: Paulinus-Verlag, 1986), 30328.

2. My notions of what constitutes literacy and reading communities draws on Wil-liam Johnson, Toward a Sociology of Reading in Classical Antiquity, American Journal of Philology 121 (2000): 59367. See also William Johnson, Constructing Elite Reading Communities in the High Empire, in Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome, ed. William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 32030.

3. The threefold distinction in the meaning of Scripture is in Origen, On First Principles 4, see 4.4 specifically for the distinction between the flesh of Scrip-ture, likened to the human body, and the soul and spirit of Scripture. My interest in Evagriuss Origenist tendencies is here largely textual, which engages issues of eschatology but less so Christology. The debate over his theological Origenism is well documented. As both OLaughlin and Konstantinovsky discuss, it centers on the work of Antoine Guillaumont and Gabriel Bunge. While Guillaumonts work on the Kephalaia Gnostica, which argues for Egvagriuss Origenism, is seminal, a later article traces Evagriuss thought in his monastic works, particularly the Praktikos; see Un Philosophe au Dsert: vagre le Pontique, in Aux Origenes du Monachism Chrtien, Spiritualit Orientale 30 (Bgrolles en Mauges, 1979), 185212. Elizabeth Clark also places Evagriuss theology in the center of the Origenist controversy (The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992], esp. 4384). Bunge, on the other hand, seeks to separate Evagriuss own life from the later Palestinian Origenist movement and suggests the theological crises of Evagriuss lifetime, as well as what theological topics were still unsettled, are a better lens to understand his claims (Origenismus- Gnosticismus. Zum seistesseschichtlichen Satndort des Evagrios Pontikos, VC 40 [1989]: 2454, esp. 2527); cf. also Bunges discussion of Origenism in Briefe, 5470. For excellent

text exists in relationship to memory, the past, and yet propels the reader towards the future. A crucial aspect of Evagriuss monasticism is how he defines and teaches a monastic literacy, by which I mean not simply a cognitive deciphering of letters and words, but rather being able to access the intelligible knowledge within the text.2 Evagriuss monastic literacy includes both a textuality, that is, a belief that spiritual truth is embed-ded in and can be retrieved from a material text, and a social memory, the collective experiences of the monastic community that are a required element for reading texts properly. Because Evagrius believes that mate-rial texts can contain a superior, spiritual meaning, his textuality can be labeled Origenist.3 For Evagrius, writing and reading engage the same

KRAWIEC / LITERACY AND MEMORY 365

overviews of the debate between these scholars, see Michael OLaughlin, New Ques-tions Concerning the Origenism of Evagrius, in Origeniana Quinta, ed. R. J. Daly (Leuven: Peters, 1992), 52834, who urges scholars to avoid concerns about implica-tions of heresy in examining Origenist positions in Evagrius; Luke Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 16; and especially the work of Julia S. Konstantinovsky, Evagrius Ponticus: The Making of a Gnostic (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), see 19 for an overview of recent Evagrian scholarship including the above, and 1822 (esp. n.55) where she argues that if Evagrius was an Origenist, his was an Origenism of an original type (19).

4. Dysinger argues that for Evagrius spiritual progression, which he links to gaining intelligible meaning, is prescient of the eschaton (Dysinger, Psalmody, 5).

tension between materiality and incorporeality that is at the heart of the ascetic enterprise: the act of writing engages the body and the senses are needed to read material texts, but both processes hold the potential to lead to contemplating a higher, immaterial communication.4 His literacy is an expression of his overall theological view of a fall into materiality and a return of the nous to God. So too his view of memory shows how it can, when used by demons, root a monk to his material existence. Memory is thus an extension of his textuality. His texts shape a monastic memory as they simultaneously move the readers towards an incorporeal goal, a for-getting of materiality that is necessary for contemplation, particularly of the things to come. Evagrian spiritual ascent through reading requires the community, which provides the memory necessary for his monastic literacy.

To support this argument, I will first show that Evagrius creates a par-ticular Evagrian literacy, that is, he locates spiritual progression in the ability both to transmit (write) and access (read) the deeper sense of the text. Writing is a textual expression of spiritual reality and reading is an ascetic exercise that leads to comprehension of, and so ascension to, that reality. The key to correct reading for Evagrius is to move beyond the material aspects either of the text or of the perceptions necessary to decode language. Evagrius thus defines literacy in noetic terms, and so identifies his reading community similarly. I will demonstrate that reading, and also the memory that is part of reading, needs to be properly disciplined so as to serve the nous rather than the demons. I then turn to the role of memory in Evagriuss teachings, to explain how it functions like texts and engages similar ambivalences about material reality. Memory, for Evagrius, is material in terms of its relationship to bodily passions and in creating imprints on the mind. An important part of Evagrian monasticism, I will argue, includes reshaping and restraining memory, including a desire to be remembered textually. Finally, I conclude by turning to the next genera-tion of monastic writers, particularly Palladius and John Cassian, where


5. See Dysinger above; Adam Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: Nisibis and the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 132; Catherine Chin, Rufinus of Aquileia and Alexandrian Afterlives: Translation as Origenism, JECS 18 (2010): 61747, at 63940. For a discussion of Evagriuss self-presentation in letters, see Robin Darling Young, Cannabalism and Other Family Woes in The World of Early Egyptian Christianity: Language, Literature and Social Context, ed. James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press of America, 2007), 13039.

6. Letter to Melania 4 (Frankenberg, 612; Casiday, 65, modified). This letter is alternatively known as the Great Letter (the beginning of the title, which avoids the question of whether it was actually written to Melania, a matter of some debate); it is one of the main texts used as evidence of Evagriuss Origenism. Its implications for an Origenist textuality follows from its theological position, particularly in regards to creation and eschatology. I argue that this textuality also influences Evagriuss concept of writing texts of monastic formation, thereby avoiding a dogmatic versus asceti-cal dichotomy in his works (OLaughlin, New Questions, 52829).

7. Letter to Melania 1 (Frankenberg, 612; Casiday, 64). 8. Letter to Melania 2 (Frankenberg, 612; Parmentier, 279). Konstantinovksy shows

that the same relationship, where God creates the intellect but Christ is the creator of the material diversity through the act of the second natural contemplation, is expressed in the Kephalaia Gnostica (Konstantinovsky, Evagrius, 128).

these intersections between literacy and memory continue. These men shift Evagriuss literary practices, not just in response to the controversy over teachings associated with Evagrius, but also because they need to estab-lish a boundary between monasticism and the world. Evagrius is thus remembered as subjugating his literacy to monastic values, rather than engaging it as part of an intellectual process of spiritual progress.

EVAGRIAN LITERACY: WRITING AND READING MONASTIC TEACHINGS

Evagriuss comparison, in the Letter to Melania, between writing letters and the process of Gods creation, forms the basis of his textual theory.5 Because letters are a type for creation, creation can bridge the gap between Creator (the Author of the letter) and created beings (the recipi-ents of the letter). Evagrius emphasizes the bodily and material aspects of writingthe hand, finger, pen, ink, paper, and the rest of the things used for writingas the carriers of intelligible meaning, put there by the author.6 The physical means of writing inscribe the intentions and hidden secrets which are not for everyone into the material text.7 So too the Creators hand and finger, which are the Son and Spirit, are dis-cernible in creation, as in texts; someone who reads letters . . . senses the power and ability of the hand and the finger which wrote them together with the intention of the writer, says Evagrius.8 His analogy includes the


9. Evagrius makes explicit the relationship between hand and finger and Son and Spirit when he asks rhetorically, And if you say to me: How can the hand and fin-ger be equated with power and wisdom, that is to say, with the Son and the Spirit? and then uses biblical passages to support the analogy. A. Guillaumont provides a discussion of the stages of creation as evident in the Kephalaia Gnostica in Une Philosophe, 2023. Bunge argues that much of Evagriuss Origenist positions are more generally Alexandrian (see Bunge, Briefe, 56).

10. See also William Harmlesss characterization of Christ as a calligrapher both in the Letter to Melania and the Kephalaia Gnostica (which he translates as Gnos-tic Chapters); Evagriuss monasticism thus requires a spiritual literacy (William Harmless, S.J., Mystics [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008], 15455).

11. Chin, Translation as Origenism, 622 where she makes this distinction with regard to Rufinus and connects it to his Origenist theology of authorship.

12. Evagrius says he will relate not as much as we have seen or heard but what we have learned from [the elders] to say to others (Prakitkos prologue 9). For the Greek text: Antoine and Claire Guillaumont, ed., vagre le Pontique: Trait Pratique ou Le Moine, Tome 2, SC 171 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1971), 492. For Evagriuss Greek corpus, I have used, with occasional modification, Evagrius of Pontus: The

entire Trinity in his textuality, just as it is apparent in creation: he who looks upon creation with understanding perceives the hand and finger of is creator and so learns the intention of the Author, which is to make knowable his love.9 While God is the Author, the source of the hidden meanings of the text, Christ, as the hand, provides the means to the material expression of that spiritual intention.10 Writing is thus a corporeal practice that puts immaterial intention into material text.

Although this analogy refers to letters in particular, it expresses Evagriuss overall notion of textuality that shapes his monastic works. In this section, I will argue that Evagrius presents himself as the writer of the monastic tradition: how he writes allows him to capture and transmit safely into textual form the spiritual teachings of monasticism that come from pre-vious monks. Particularly, his belief that texts can hide deeper meaning, which has been inscribed into them through the bodily process of writ-ing, furthers our understanding of his process of concealment not just in his pedagogical works, but throughout his works of monastic theory. Evagriuss monastic literacy centers on the tension between writing and reading as bodily and noetic practices. Both the images that accompany writing and reading, and the memory necessary for these processes, are loci of that tension.

Evagrius prioritizes his role as writer over any claims to authorship, which he often rejects. This differentiation is, as Catherine Chin has argued for Rufinus, a marker of the literary expression of Origenism.11 In his open-ing to the Praktikos, Evagrius disavows his own role as author of the text, denying that he is reporting anything that he might have seen or heard in favor of what he has learned from the elders.12 Evagriuss description


Greek Ascetic Corpus, trans. with introduction and commentary, Robert E. Sinkewicz, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), here 96.

13. [To Eulogios] On the Vices Opposed to the Virtues (PG 1140B; Sinkewicz, 61). For a description of manuscript problems, varying titles, and the general unre-liability of Migne, see Sinkewicz, 13. For the passage here and at n.70, Migne has proven reliable.

14. Evagrius of Pontus: Talking Back, Antirrhtikos: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons, trans. David Brakke (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 17, for the identification of the blessed fathers as those who handed down talk-ing back from its biblical founders. Brakke notes the role of authority in this text with his argument that Evagrius himself would never have claimed to have invented Talking Back (Talking Back, 16).

15. Letter 4.1 (Brakke, Talking Back, 47). For the Syriac text, see Frankenburg, 568. 16. Likewise, Chin points to Rufinuss view of textual tradition, a vehicle for the

Logos as being subject to both corruption and correction (Translation as Ori-genism, 643).

also implies a valorization of these teachings over any bodily deeds that he might have witnessed, thus distancing himself even more from the text. Evagrius also claims that for On the Vices Opposed to the Virtues he had as our pattern the sound discourses which we have heard from our fathers.13 Likewise, Evagrius roots part of his authority to write Talking Back in the traditions he has received from the blessed fathers.14 The collective sources for the work can include the recipients of his text. Again with regard to Talking Back, Evagrius invites Loukios, who requested the text, to change it if necessary: you might read it, correct it, or complete whatever is lacking. Evagriuss particular concern seems to be about any imprecision in his explanations or whether we have not found the answer that properly opposes the demons.15 It is pertinent, moreover, that this request appears in a letter, given Evagriuss description elsewhere of how letters function. Loukioss status as recipient of the letter marks him as having a noetic relationship, a kindred mind with Evagrius. This view of composition, stemming from shared experience, means that this tex-tual tradition remains fluid and correctable,16 rather than fixed and static. These aspects of Evagriuss writing process thereby contribute to his texts having an Origenist textuality both in their content and their composition.

Yet, despite his renunciation of authorship, it remains the case that Evagrius is writing his texts. This process allows Evagriuss own hand and finger (what, in his analogy, is the role of the Son and Spirit) to engrave hidden meanings into the ink and paper of his texts. That is, writing implies authorship, thus creating a tension that leads to conceal-ment in Evagriuss texts. Although he claims to be conveying traditions, Evagrius includes his own teachings throughout his works and he hides


17. Robin Darling Young, Evagrius the Iconographer, JECS 9 (2001): 5371, 61; David Brakke argues that Evagrius includes his own experiences within the tradi-tions of Talking Back (Introduction, 32); Robert Sinkewicz has noted that Evagrius conceals his own teachings in Foundations, which only an astute reader would be able to pick out from the generic monastic traditions it contains (Sinkewicz, Evagrius, 3); for an analysis of the critical editions that shows how Evagrius uses material from his scholia in his other works, see Luke Dysinger, Psalmody, 2225.

18. Sinkewicz argues for this later editing in his introduction to the Praktikos (9192).

19. I pray the brothers who come upon this book and wish to copy it not to join one chapter to another, nor to place on the same line the end of the chapter just written and the beginning of the one about to be written, but to have each chapter begin with its own beginning according to the divisions which we have marked also by numbers. In this way the ordering of the chapters can be preserved and what is said will be clear (Praktikos [SC 171:496; Sinkewicz, 97]).

20. Paul Connerton has argued that reading and writing are social habit memo-ries and as such are performances that can only be judged as valid or invalid within the social community (Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989], 22 and 35).

Scripture in his teachings in the Gnostikos, a process that Robin Darling Young refers to as double concealment.17 Evagriuss claim to be a writer, not an author, must also have been the general expectation of the com-munity since, when his concealment was less obvious, he apparently had to edit the Praktikos to subordinate his contributions to received teach-ings.18 Evagriuss teachings are present but hidden (that is, unmarked as his) in his texts so as to obscure the authorship that is implicated. Further, although he encourages a collective and corrective approach to Talking Back, Evagrius also famously sets the text of the Praktikos. Evagriuss directive to future copyists of the Praktikos not to join chapters but to keep the lines as they are shows his awareness of the afterlife of a mate-rial text, and the corresponding need for proper transmission of its spiri-tual meaning. His command does not just shape correct readers but also controls the writing performance of these subsequent scribes.19 They must copy the text correctly because Evagriuss structure mediates the meaning that is obscured within it. Evagriuss Praktikos, as composed, creates a means for the transmission of monastic memory, since writing itself is a social memory habit based on the material and bodily practices associated with it.20 The future scribes writing performance passes on the memory that is engraved into the material text. As I will argue below, proper read-ing of the text requires access to monastic memory and so participation in Evagriuss community.

The afterlife of a text is also a reason for not including information that might harm unprepared readers, a trope also found in Alexandrian


21. Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 105.

22. Letter to Melania 17 (Frankenberg, 616 and Vitestam, 6; Casiday, 67).23. Letter to Melania 17 (Frankenberg, 616; cf. Casiday, 6768 and Parmentier,

11, both here modified).24. Origen Cels. 6.6: We will show, on the other hand [in contrast to Plato],

that our prophets also had certain truths in their minds that were too exalted to be written down and which they did not record (Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1965], 320).

25. Letter to Melania 19 (Frankenberg, 616 and Vitestam, 6; Casiday, 68). Indeed, Evagrius notes earlier in the letter that some people are pure enough not to require letters/creation, but to be able to have more direct access to God (Letter to Melania 8).

writers.21 For Evagrius, however, the writer can also be constrained by the materiality of the text itself. Both of these reasons combine in Evagriuss explanation for why he refuses, in the Letter to Melania, to include some teachings within his text. The teachings he wants to explore are limited by the materiality of textual expression: I can truly say that many pathways full of various distinctions meet me herebut I am unwilling to write them down for you because I am unable to entrust them to paper and ink and because of those who might in the future happen to come upon this let-ter.22 Evagrius suggests that the content of his teachings, which he links to a divine source, cannot be fully expressed in the material items of the text, because the powerful matters make the paper overpowered because of boldness.23 The notion that he had more knowledge than the text could contain puts Evagrius in a similar position that Origen attributes to the authors of Scripture, who knew things they did not include because they were too exalted to be written down.24 Here the danger lies in fixing some teachings in the materiality of the text. Evagrius, like other Christian writers, has knowledge of the divine that cannot be expressed in writing, that is, the textual. In that case, Evagrius continues, the Word and Spirit make themselves known directly rather than through an intermediary, like the word and breath of a friend who is close by, rather than far away.25 Monastic progression must lead beyond the text, which can only bridge the distance, to more direct contact with the divine. The materiality of the text is a necessary condition of material existence yet, as we have seen, all Evagriuss texts have hidden information, put there through his writing but coming from a divine author, which will lead to contemplation. All texts engage in the tension between materiality and intelligible meaning that lies at the heart of Evagriuss monastic theorizing.

In order to move beyond the material text, monks need to read in a particular way. The hidden meanings within the texts parallel Evagriuss well-known pedagogical practice of concealment where esotericism allows


26. For the pedagogical aspects of hiding teachings, see David Brakke, Mystery and Secrecy in the Egyptian Desert: Esotericism and Evagrius of Pontus, in Mys-tery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, ed. John Turner, Ismo Dunderberg, Christian H. Bull, and Liv Ingeborg Lied (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 20519. Brakkes article examines the same passages about concealment in texts that I have independently in mine.

27. I am particularly indebted to my co-panelist Blossom Stefaniw for discussion about this point.

28. Thomas Habinek, Situating Literacy at Rome, in Ancient Literacies, 11440, 133, and 127.

29. Letter to Melania 1516 (Frankenburg, 614; Parmentier, 28081). It should be noted that the Syriac word for mind in the opening of the letter (kindred mind) is not the same as this discussion of the mind. For a discussion of the noetic process of reading the Bible, see Blossom Stefaniw, Mind, Text, and Commentary: Noetic Exegesis in Origen of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind, and Evagrius Ponticus, Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity 6 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010).

30. For a similar concern about control of texts, again with Platonic roots in the Phaedrus, see Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 4, where the esotericism of the community determines access to texts. Greek text and English translation in A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus vol. 1, LCL 440 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966; rev. 1989), 1213. Cf. Brakke, Mystery and Secrecy, who gives examples of places where Evagrius also withholds information even from those with a kindred mind.

spiritual development.26 In terms of his monastic literacy, Evagrius sees his texts as having indefinable layers that provide the spiritual strength neces-sary for monastic contemplation and demonic combat; the reader/monk is only able to decipher the texts through the development of self.27 This literary concealment requires the same literacy that Thomas Habinek has argued is necessary to decode acrostics and other word games. This type of reading defamiliarizes the word, so that readers become aware of the arbitrariness of writing practice and of the materiality of their own perceptual processes.28 This awareness, in monastic reading, is part of the process necessary to access the power within the text. For Evagrius, literacy cannot solely be rooted in the human body, but has to engage the mind as the link between corporeal and intellectual existence. The mind knows what the body does (but not vice versa), and the mind is the body of the Spirit and Word as well as the body of the Father; as the true image, it alone is capable of knowing the Father.29

This emphasis on the mind contributes to the esotericism of Evagri-uss literacy. Texts are not meant, in Evagriuss monasticism, to be read and understood by all but, like letters, only by those who have a kin-dred mind with the author.30 Since, as I argued above, Evagrius sees the author of his monastic texts as a collective monastic tradition rooted in a biblical, and so divine, source, these kindred minds arise from monastic


31. Praktikos prologue 9 (SC 171:494; Sinkewicz, 96).32. Notes on Ecclesiastes 53 (Paul Ghin, ed., vagre le Pontique: Scholies a

lEcclsiaste, SC 397 [Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1993], here 152. I have here used the English translation available in Evagrius Ponticus, trans. Casiday, 145).

33. Letter 4.5 (Brakke, Talking Back, 48 plus see Brakkes discussion of this passage at 34). Origen also argued for a combination of reading and meditating on Scrip-ture and asceticism to create a self who is receptive to divine grace (Henri Crouzel, S.J., Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall [London: T&T Clark, 1999], 100).

34. Praktikos prologue 9 (SC 171:492; Sinkewicz, 96).35. Dysinger, among others, makes the point that practical discipline is not neglected

once a monk is able to achieve more spiritual contemplation (Psalmody, 3435).

practice. Not everyone who reads Evagriuss texts can access the mean-ings that are meant only for those who embark upon the same path.31 As Evagrius says when describing names, texts themselves are not good or bad but only gain those distinctions in their application.32 Literacy thus defines the monastic reading community that Evagrius creates with his texts. This community is not necessarily a physical grouping, though it can include those who regularly converse together about Scripture and their shared experiences using Scripture to combat demons. Rather anyone who has the correct nous can participate within the community, because the nous will engage the texts, either biblical or Evagrian, properly. In his Letter 4, Evagrius argues that nothing is as conducive to pure prayer as reading Scripture. Bodily askesis prepares one for reading, but read-ing allows further progress towards monastic spiritual goals because it removes even love for representations by transferring it [the intellect] to the formless, divine, and simple knowledge required to access the hid-den Father in the text.33

Moreover, this literacy is hierarchical because of its progressive nature; the amount that Evagrius hides, and how he does so, is affected in part by his audience. When, at the beginning of the Praktikos, Evagrius says that we have kept some things concealed and have shaded others,34 his wording suggests that the more experienced monkswhat I would term the less material readerswill be able to access more hidden and obscured meanings. Just as a monk does not progress beyond practical discipline to pure contemplation, but moves between these practices, so too it is not just that once done with the Praktikos, one simply leaves it to move to the Gnostikos.35 Rather part of monastic formation will include different reading experiences of the same texts. Further, Evagrius gives greater care to protecting his readers by omitting unsafe information in his earlier texts, while greater obscurity of expression characterizes his more advanced texts. Evagrius thus understands the spiritual progression of the monastic intel-


36. Chin makes a similar argument about Rufinuss texts participating in the fall and return and argues that these tropes in the Letter of Melania show that Evagriuss notion of the fall, which includes bodies and names, is essentially textual (Chin, Translation as Origenism, 639).

37. Here there is an interesting contrast with Porphyry, who discusses Plotinuss lack of revision in terms of his poor eyesight (Life of Plotinus 8; Armstrong, 2831). For a full discussion of the role of light in Evagriuss thought more generally, see Konstantinovsky, Evagrius Ponticus, Chapter 4, 77107.

38. Letter to Melania 3 (Frankenberg, 612; Paramentier, 8). 39. See below.40. Letter to Melania 14 (Frankenberg, 614; Casiday, 67). As Evagrius makes

clear in this section, the person is staring at visible creation, but not seeing the intelligible meaning.

lect as essentially textual. Evagriuss monastic pedagogy is implicated in the same course of a (material) fall and an (incorporeal) return as the texts that represent that teaching.36

The best reading depends on sight, and so literacy is defined in terms of being able to see.37 In the Letter to Melania, Evagrius distinguishes between reading a text oneself, using sight, and being read to, using hear-ing. While both are useful, the latter is secondary, seemingly due to the double mediation it requires: he who is able to read, rejoices and so, I would say, does he who cannot read: he can be helped, where necessary, by him who can read. The latter profits by what he sees, the former by what he hears. Yet the profit of hearing is not as great and secure as the profit of seeing.38 This prioritization also appears in Evagriuss own use of the gaze in being able to write the Gnostikos.39 Further, this approach to reading is then mapped onto Evagriuss general definition of monas-tic literacy, connected to the spiritual ability to contemplate true reality: Just as the affairs {written} in letters are hidden from those who do not know how to read, likewise one who fails to understand the visible cre-ation also fails to be aware of the intelligible creation which is deposited and hidden in it, even as he stares at it.40 Evagrius again makes clear that literacy is not just being able to read but also being able to retrieve the masked meanings within texts, a process that will allow true contempla-tion of Christs presence in creation.

Both writing and reading texts also engage the topic of images, which for Evagrius are also instantiations of material existence that need proper discipline to be transcended. Monastic teachings, oral or written, are the best images because they convey understanding of Christ. Evagrius con-cludes the Gnostikos with the claim that having gazed always at the archetype, the gnostikos (including himself) strives to write the images. This writing seems to refer both to the teaching a gnostikos performs, as


41. Luke Dysinger (http://www.ldysinger.com/evagrius/02_Gno-Keph/00a_start.htm) translates as I strive; however, Robin Darling Young and Antoine and Claire Guillaumont translate it as an imperative (SC 356:193; Young, Iconographer, 62). The latter seems more likely (cf. Gnostikos 48)given that it is a teaching, or instruc-tional, text that would be more apt to address the readers. In either case, however, the result of being a gnostikos is writing an image, and this writing is linked to the monastic teachings that precede it and to the divine as the archetype. This passage is central to Robin Darling Youngs arguments about Evagriuss pedagogy within the Gnostikos. Cf. also Brakke, Mystery and Secrecy, 210.

42. Robin Darling Young uses this phrase to describe Evagriuss pedagogy in Gnos-tikos (Iconographer, 64). Konstantinovsky discusses Evagriuss other link between creation and text, Evagriuss Scholion 8, where he equates creation with Gods book (Evagrius Ponticus 5657); cf. also Brakke, Mystery and Secrecy, 21516, for the implications for reading Scripture. In addition, Evagrius includes a saying attributed to Antony at the end of the Praktikos where he links books with the nature of beings, where is it possible to read the words of God (Praktikos 92 [SC 171:694; Sinkewicz, 112]); cf. Chin, Translation as Origenism, 639.

43. See Jeremy Schotts paper in this same volume for the (neo)platonic aspects of this position, particularly how writing is an image of speech in the Phaedrus, a notion that infuses the Alexandrian intellectual tradition, specifically Clement.

44. Thoughts 16. For the Greek text: Paul Ghin and Claire Guillaumont, ed., vagre le Pontique: Sur les Penses, SC 438 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1998). The Eng-lish translation used is Evagrius Ponticus, trans. Sinkewicz, here 163. Evagrius adds, This evil demon also contrives a myriad of other schemes, which it is not necessary to publish or to commit to writing. Yet somehow monks must know what those schemes are in order to be prepared to combat them.

45. Origen, Cels. 4.50 (trans. Chadwick, 225). Origen also believes Scripture is written perfectly for the simple-minded. Cf. Stefaniw, Mind, Text, 79 on this passage.

Robin Darling Young has argued, and to the text Evagrius himself has written. Part of that text includes recording the teachings of four of his predecessors, which leads to this conclusion.41 Thus both the visible and hidden traditions in Evagriuss writings combine to create these images. He conceals and reveals within his texts just as God does with the Logos in creation.42 As a result, his own teachings are part of the images he has written, but only available to those who can see, which is to say, read them.43

But there are also images that texts need to refrain from producing, and so Evagrius refrains from writing them. He presents his unwillingness to engrave some images in terms of the need for a proper relationship between text and reader. He does not want an illiterate reader having access to a text beyond his abilities: I am not able to write about all the villainies of the demons, and I am ashamed to enumerate their evil machinations, fearing for the more simple among my eventual readers.44 Evagrius in this text (On Thoughts) corrects the error that Origen charged Greek writ-ers with: that a lack of concern about future simple readers allowed a creation of fictitious stories.45 For Origen, simple readers were


46. For Origen, texts can contain not just access to the divine but divine power itself, specifically in the divine name. See Naomi Janowitz, Theories of Divine Names in Origen and Pseudo-Dionysius, History of Religions 30 (1991): 35972. I wish to thank Catherine Chin for this reference.

47. Praktikos 46 (SC 171:6024; Sinkewicz, 105). 48. See Columba Stewart, Imageless Prayer in Evagrius Ponticus, JECS 9 (2001):

173204, 188. The noemata that create these imprints are those that the demons intro-duce through thoughts, either in memory or in dreams. Dysinger notes that noemata stem from angels, whereas logismoi come from demons (Psalmody, 35).

49. See David Brakkes observation about this withholding in Talking Back where Evagrius writes, those who have been tempted by this demon will understand what I am saying (Brakke, 33, citing Talking Back 2.55).

50. My arguments about Evagrius in relation to a shared memory among his com-munity stem from the arguments of Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. and ed. Louis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Connerton, How

those who did not engage in allegory.46 For Evagrius, simple readers were those without the necessary spiritual strength who were less able to combat the demons; as a result the monastic texts, rather than providing that force, instead can provide an occasion for demonic attack. Evagriuss textuality engages his cosmological vision: the Son is mediated through creation, like writing, but the fallen demons can use the materiality of the text to their advantage.

Similarly, Evagrius refuses to entrust experiences to writing because of the images they can produce: Let us not allow ourselves to be troubled by the demon that carries the mind off to blaspheme God and to imag-ine those forbidden things which I dare not confide to writing.47 Once again the danger is that the text could inadvertently provide an oppor-tunity for a demon to instigate a logismos that the mind, in processing, would receive imprints from. Furthermore, Evagrius elsewhere describes this mental process (noemata) through an analogy of writing, just as he describes the act of creation in the Letter to Melania.48 It thus may also be implied that Evagrius dare not write the forbidden things because in the act of writing the same imaginative process would occur. These bodily actionsreading and writingthus carry with them memories of monastic experiences that Evagrius indirectly includesbut only for those whose knowledge includes these memories.49 Some readers can use their monastic experiences to fill in what has been left unwritten, and are sug-gested to do so by Evagriuss coy interruption of his writing performance.

Monastic experience, and so monastic memory, is therefore another of the criteria that contributes to the hierarchy within this monastic reading community. The shared experiences of the community create a collective memory that Evagrius here is both tapping into but also structuring in rela-tion to his readers.50 By creating a necessary connection between the text


Societies Remember; Jan Assman, Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). In addition, Stephen Daviss arguments about cultural practices being the location for social memory have shaped my thinking about Evagrius; Stephen J. Davis, The Category of Memory in Recent Scholarship on the Desert Fathers, in Coptic Studies from Old Cairo to the New World. Studies Presented to Gawdat Gabra on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Colloquia Antiqua 9, ed. S. Moawad and Y. N. Youssef (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 5976. I am grateful to Steve for sharing his paper pre-publication with me.

51. In his theories about cultural memory, Jan Assman argues that writing is both for storage of data and communication of a message (Assman, Religion and Cul-tural Memory, 85). For the latter, the communication requires conditions for proper retrieval. This retrieval process helps form cultural memory.

52. This claim, which is from Thoughts, is one of the relatively few places where Evagrius reveals himself in the text. This assertion seems necessary here because of his contention with rival teachings. Evagrius must justify the teaching he is includ-ing and he does so through a combination of the authority of his experience and the authority of his teacher, below.

and the collective memory of his readers Evagrius instills a monastic social memory in his writings.51 These intersections between reading and social memory are apparent in Evagriuss description of the demon who attacks monks while reading. The effects of this demon are primarily bodily; the demons cause the monk to yawn more than they are accustomed and they instill a very deep sleep quite different from usual sleep. The demons create this sleep through an intricate method of making the monks eyes and head as cold as the demons body; as a result the head feels as if it is being sucked by a cupping glass. In his description, Evagrius coun-ters the position of some brothers who have imagined that becom-ing sleepy while reading is in accordance with an unintelligible natural reaction. Evagrius instead explicitly draws on his own learning stemming from observing how this demonic attack takes place: I for my part have learned this by frequent observation.52 Evagriuss language here is sig-nificant: the rejected teaching is based on imagining (), a term which for Evagrius refers to unreliable and indeed dangerous sug-gestions from potentially demonic sources. His own teaching, however, stems from the gaze and has developed into learning, metaphors that I have argued are the basis for being able to comprehend a higher reality through and beyond the material.

Furthermore, there is another part of the attack which Evagrius has experienced but which he claims not to understand, namely, the unnatu-ral and prolonged yawning the demon produces such that the demon can make itself small enough to touch the interior of the mouth. In lieu of his own teaching then, Evagrius calls upon two traditions: the teachings


53. The entire account of this demonic attack is Thoughts 33 (SC 438:26670; Sinkewicz, 176).

54. For the connection between passions and memories, see Thoughts 24; Prak-tikos 34 and 37. For Evagriuss description of how mental representations are linked with passions see Thoughts 17, 19, and 25.

of his own monastic instructor, Macarius, and an ancient ritual of form-ing a cross in front of the mouth when one yawns: This phenomenon I have not understood to this day, though I have often experienced it, but I heard the holy Makarios speak to me about it and offer as proof the fact that those who yawn make the sign of the cross over the mouth accord-ing to an old and mysterious tradition. The meaning of the tradition is concealed, but its efficacy is apparent through its inclusion in the monastic tradition that Evagrius here combines with his own teachings to create a fully developed defense against this demon.

This demon strikes at the heart of Evagriuss monastic formationread-ingand so threatens both the monks asceticism but also the subjectivity that is to result from those practices. His description calls upon shared memories of demonic attacks and extends those memories to include his readers. They can now draw on this shared social memory to recognize the attack, and be ready to combat it. The monks ability to focusand so combat the demonstems from Evagriuss teaching, the monastic tradi-tion that he passes on, and the mental discipline Evagrius forms, unironi-cally, through reading techniques, namely being vigilantly attentive to the reading and remembering that we are reading the holy words of the living God.53 The ability to create this mental focus requires, as is evident, proper memory. Thus memory is not just part of reading, but having a correct social memory is a necessary part of the formation of a monk who is prepared to read Evagriuss texts.

CREATING MONASTIC MEMORY

Evagrius is justly famous for his theories about the interactions between memories, images, mental representations, and the intellect (nous). The connection between passionate memoriesof past relationships and past possessionsand the imprints they create is a crucial point that the monk must eliminate in his spiritual progression away from the mate-rial, corporeal world and towards the apatheia necessary for pure prayer, and ultimately for the mystical contemplation of the Trinity.54 The same ambiguity about texts and their material limits shapes Evagriuss view of


55. Praktikos 36 (SC 171:582; Sinkewicz, 104).56. Notes on Ecclesiastes 3 (SC 397:6062; Casiday, 132).57. For examples of memories being connected with vices that need to be over-

come, see Praktikos 10, 11, 12.58. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 37; here in particular Connertons argu-

ments specifically draw on the collective memory theory of Maurice Halbwachs.

memory. A monk who has attained a higher knowledge will have memo-ries, but these will not incite the passions for the object (animate or not) that is being remembered, as Evagrius describes to the novice monk: And so anachoresis is sweet after the elimination of the passions, for then the memories are only bare ones and the struggle no longer disposes the monk to combat but to the contemplation of it.55 Further, Evagriuss notion of the role of memory is extended in his Notes on Ecclesiastes. There Evagrius comments on 1.11, which he records as: There is no memory of the first things. Clearly this passage cannot be taken at face value, as Evagrius suggests by pointing out that such a memory is necessary for David to have remembered days of old and ages of years (Ps 76.5). Memory is rather something that the monastic intellect is able to move beyond, as it separates from the concepts of things. Contemplation of the Holy Trinity, Evagriuss monastic goal that presages final unity of the nous with God, means the mind . . . will forget everything that is created.56 Just as reading a material text leads to the immaterial spiritual strength within it, so too conquering material memory allows the monk to progress to the immaterial state of forgetfulness that is the eschatological goal.

Before reaching this point, memory, like reading, needs to be disciplined because memories serve as yet another weapon in the demonic arsenal con-stantly aimed at the monk. Monks can be tempted by memories of their past: family life, people who angered them, homes, anything that connects them to the existence that they had renounced.57 These memories, although attacking the individual monk, are social memories. They are social not just because most monks would have had these experiences prior to join-ing the monastic life, but because they stem from the relationships that had existed in that group and because the same group [was] interested in those memories.58 Monks in the dessert existed in new social relation-ships with a new identity, even as they have continued memories (and at times interactions) with their former social world. This new group has dif-ferent interests that affect both what the monks need to forget and what they should now remember, that is, their new social memory. These monks might be solitary in their contemplative and combative efforts, but what and how they remember in (and about) that solitariness is social memory. Part of the process of forming social memory is in the oral experience


59. For a discussion about the role of orality, and texts secondary status, with regard to Evagriuss pedagogy and texts, see Brakke, Mystery and Secrecy, 213.

60. I borrow Catherine Chins phrase here; cf. Chin, Short Words on Earth, at page 412 in this volume.

61. Praktikos 33 (SC 171:57476; Sinkewicz, 103).62. Dysinger, Psalmody, 13149.63. Brakke, Talking Back, 911. Cf. also David Brakke, Making Public the Monas-

tic Life: Reading the Self in Evagrius Ponticus Talking Back, in Religion and the Self in Antiquity, ed. D. Brakke, M. Satlow, and S. Weitzman (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 22233.

of sharing and teaching about monasticism, particularly demonic com-bat. This orality lies behind Evagriuss texts; further, because texts were regarded as secondary to oral teaching, Evagrius needs to infuse the texts with this social memory in order to secure their spiritual efficacy.59 His textuality includes the social memory of the group as a necessary part of the ability of the text to provide the spiritual force necessary for demonic combat. Evagrius creates a monastic memory that is also a textual event, that is, the monks method of what and how to remember is inscribed in the texts they are to read and memorize.60

Evagrius (like other monastic writers) strives, as part of monastic forma-tion, to redirect and/or replace earlier social memories with those that are more connected to the values of the new communities. Thus some residual social memory becomes assigned to demonic temptation while others can be properly disciplined. In order to combat pride, for example, Evagrius instructs the monk to remember his earlier life and what prompted the monk to renounce that life to move to the desert. Such reflection focuses on the monks need for the mercy of Christ rather than the monks own accomplishments.61 The monastic group, represented by the text, here helps a monk remember his past as part of the process of renunciation. Given that this is advice for a beginning monk, the practical advice, one can map a progression in memory that a more knowledgeable monk would achieve. As a monk moves towards being a gnostikos, he would move beyond these (past) social memories in order to have (new) monas-tic memories, that is, memories that the monastic social group shares and helps each other remember to shape the identity of the group. The texts themselves can create these memories. The main source of textual monastic memory would have been the Bible itself, which was memorized in order to participate in liturgical practices, particularly the Psalmody, but also in order to combat demons.62 Talking Back functions, as David Brakke has argued, as a notebook (hupomne\mata). While this genre allows Brakke to examine the construction of Evagriuss self through his writing,63 it also, in


64. Michel Foucault, Self-Writing in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley, et al. (New York: The New Press, 1997), 210.

65. Thoughts 9 (SC 438:18084; Sinkewicz, 159, with modifications).

Foucaults description, constitute[d] . . . a material and a framework to be carried out frequently: reading, re-reading, meditating, conversing with others, and oneself.64 This framework essentially constructs the monastic reading community, defining it in relation to these types of interactions with the text, here both Scripture and Talking Back itself. This commu-nity participates in its own memory; it is not simply using the text as a memory aid to recall Scripture but restructures its memory in relation to the text. This restructuring is a social process because it happens within the community the text forms.

Evagrius also requires monks to reshape their memories to focus on their other main interaction, combat with demons. Much of Evagriuss discussion of memory and images appears in one of his few narrative texts, On Thoughts, and so can be read as a general handbook for this redirection of memory. For example, Evagrius describes a demon called wanderer who, near dawn, will rouse the monks intellect to envision travels around various villages and towns to have social encounters with others. This demon needs to be allowed a few days to try to achieve its goal in order for the monk to learn how it operates, and so be combated. However, Evagrius warns that the monks mind might be confused after the temptationapparently especially because the mind is wandering through imagined conversations. After a period of attack, then, the monk should sit and recall to yourself the things that have happened to you . . . examine these things closely and hand them over to memory so that you will be able to reprove () him when he approaches.65 Here the memory of the attack works the way biblical texts function in Evagriuss Talking Back: the monk relies on his memory, here of an event rather than a text, in order to combat the demon. The level of detailswhence you departed, where you were going, in what place you were apprehended . . . again, how the things that happened, happenedcreates images that need to be called to mind, but these are under the monks control rather than being inflicted upon him. Like Evagriuss well-known distinction among sources of thoughtsdemonic, human, and angelicmemories too seem to have different sources: demonic (external) reminders that distract the monk and human (internal) reminders. These latter, which can carry images as well, aid the monk in combat by being able to replace danger-ous images with ones that are useful.

Alongside reading Scripture and combating demons, this community


66. Konstantinovsky, Evagrius Ponticus, 40.67. The entire passage reads: For we eat his flesh and drink of his blood, becom-

ing communicants of the Word and Wisdom through his Incarnation and physical life. For he calls flesh and blood everything to do with the holy secret of his dwell-ing [among us] and disclosed that teaching (consisting of ascetical, physical and theo-logical elements) by which the soul is nourished and prepared for contemplation of ultimate realities (On the Faith {4}14). Greek text: Roy J. Deferrari, St. Basil: The Letters vol. 1, LCL 190 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 6263. Trans: Evagrius Ponticus, trans. Casiday, 50.

68. Commemorative ceremony is Connertons phrase for one of the means of transfer of social memory. He specifically discusses the Eucharist (How Societies Remember, 4647), but there he focuses on the Eucharist transmitting the memory of the historical event. Evagrius instead sees the ceremony as providing the memory of the meaning of that event, which was to convey particular teachings into mate-rial existence.

69. A description of this treatise, including its differences from the better known of Evagriuss works, can be found in Sinkewicz, 1228.

celebrated the Eucharist; this ritual is also crucial to the transfer of social memory. First, the words of Scripture that describe the Last Supper stamp the mind because they treat material objects.66 The ritual itself, however, transmits Christs teaching, including the ascetical, physical, and theo-logical elements that (like monastic progression) prepare the soul for contemplation of ultimate realities. This transmission is possible pre-cisely because of the Logoss presence in the material existence during the incarnation. Eating the flesh and blood makes the monks communicants of the Word and Wisdom through his incarnation and physical life. For he calls flesh and blood everything to do with the holy secret of his dwell-ing [among us].67 The commemorative ceremony of the Eucharist and the Evagrian texts combine to transfer particular wisdom to the monas-tic community.68 This wisdom is both the memory of the community and the basis for being able to participate within the community, particularly through reading.

Finally, one last way that demons can use memory to derail monks helps explain Evagriuss writing of the monastic tradition. This is the temptation that the monk himself be remembered by other monks, that is, by his larger monastic community, for his deeds. In his treatise to the monk Eulogios,69 Evagrius warns against the vanity that demons can provoke: They [the demons] speak interiorly through the thoughts (), introducing such notions as these: Just as so-and-so undertook a very rigorous askesis and so-and-so attained a great reputation and after he died was still talked about, so you too, mount to the height of ascetic achievement so you can bring glory on yourself and have your great reputation spread abroad so


70. Eulogios 31 (PG 1137AB; Sinkewicz, 58). The Greek for gaining a reputation is specifically rooted in being named or called by name.

71. Evagriuss own texts reveal a community where monks both heard stories and read stories about other monks (On Prayer 106, 108, 109).

72. Evagrius also had read the Life of Anthony, suggesting that a deliberate choice of genre in his texts is at stake. Dysinger has argued that Evagrius chooses gnomic sentences to imitate proverbs, the genre best suited to convey intelligible things (Psalmody, 21). In addition, Simon Goldhill has shown the invention of the anec-dote as a form of literacy grounded in orality in the Second Sophistic; Evagriuss texts show a similar process in the use of these gnomic teachings (Simon Goldhill, The Anecdote: Exploring Boundaries between Oral and Literate Performance in the Second Sophistic, in Ancient Literacies, 96113). Evagriuss literary texts reflect his oral performance, and preserve them in a form that, like the anecdote, can be re-performed orally in other settings.

73. The vice of vainglory insinuates itself within the virtuous person with the intention of publishing () his struggles. The verb is more linked to mak-ing public than to writing per se (Praktikos 13 [SC 171:52830; Sinkewicz, 100]). Interestingly, Evagrius specifically claims to have made public the monastic life in Talking Back.

74. Stephen J. Davis points to this distinction in creating social memory (Davis, Introduction, Coptica 7 [2008]: 29 and 31).

that even after your death people will speak of you profusely!70 Although Evagriuss description is of an oral memory-keeping (story-telling), such tradition is what culminates in texts that are associated with late antique Egyptian monasticism.71 Evagrius also makes clear that such stories, both oral and written, form part of the reading material for his monastic com-munity.72 Further, in Praktikos, this same temptation is specifically linked to making public (or publishing texts) the monks particular struggles in order to gain the esteem that comes from people.73 This demonic temptation, then, can be understood as trying to achieve an individualized afterlife in memory, which would also be textual: a continued existence in the stories of deeds done by holy people in the desert. Memory here is passed on, remembered and recorded; it moves from social memory to memorialization.74

This notion of an enduring memory after death not only engages the vice of pride but also works against Evagriuss eschatological notions of a loss of individuality in the collective unity of nous with God. Evagriuss texts thus must record the social memory of his group but without engaging in this potential danger of memorialization of deeds. He achieves this in two ways. First, he in effect drives out a nail with a nail by writing texts that are not quite the sort the demon uses as temptation because Evagrius hides his own struggles in a collective experience. Evagrius can safely claim that his text does not glorify himself but transmits a tradition, yet he can


75. I wish to thank Virginia Burrus for her comments that helped me develop the points of these two sentences (International Patristics Conference, Oxford, England; August 2011).

76. Notes on Ecclesiastes 52 (SC 397:15052; Casiday, 145).77. Letter to Melania 23 (Frankenberg, 618; Casiday, 68).78. All those people who have contemplated certain of the realities present in

natures on the basis of objects have also produced proofs on the basis of what they contemplated. My own proof in most cases is the heart of my reader (), especially if it possesses intelligence and accomplishment in the monastic life (Thoughts 25 [SC 438:240; Sinkewicz, 170, here slightly modified in word choice]). Note that the Greek term for reading engages the role of memory, that recognition leads to reading ability.

explore the pleasure that results from the tension of not quite fulfilling the demon-inspired textual desire.75 In addition, when Evagrius does use names or speaks of particular experiences, he generally associates them with teachings, that is, the part of monasticism associated with developing the nous, and not with the ascetic achievements, by which he seems to mean bodily feats. Just as Evagrius distinguishes between bodily and bodi-less names,76 so too he distinguishes between what parts of monasticism should and should not be memorialized. Evagrius repeatedly acknowledges the role of sight in learning, but his texts largely report what has been learned, rather than just what has been seen; that is, his texts do not just contain corporeal experiences but the meanings arising from them. In the Eulogios, he only records teachings even though he claims to have been equally a witness to some of their deeds; in the Praktikos, he does not record what he has seen and heard. This both accounts for the role of the senses, the corporeal, but progresses to the intellect, the immaterial nous. This selectivity of writing teachings as image over writing bodily deeds as image again reflects Evagriuss Origenist eschatology in which bodily names will fall away even as the three persons of God and of his image will endlessly remain.77

In Evagrius, memories are like texts: they have a materiality that, through askesis, can be spiritualized such that they no longer tie the monk to mate-rial existence but guide him towards experiences that presage the eschaton. The proof that Evagrius offers for his monastic theorizing reflects this link: Evagrius suggests that the heart of my reader, having been shaped by the teachings in his texts and by monastic experience, has become free of the mental representations that are associated with passionate memo-ries.78 What is left are those memories that do not incite passions, which Evagrius constructs as new social memories. It cannot be gained simply through individual effort, but has to be shaped in relation to the new community. The restructuring of memory is a textual process: it results


79. Cf. also William Johnsons description of a reading community in Aulus Gell-ius, which includes the interrogating as well as seeking authorities for interpreting texts (Johnson, Constructing Elite Reading Communities, 328). It is the idea that these interactions with the texts are the defining element of the group that constitutes a reading community for Johnson.

80. Dysinger describes Evagriuss monastic culture as constantly steeped in the rich language and imagery of scriptures (Psalmody, 96).

81. Derek Krueger, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 2004).

82. For a discussion of Evagrian influence on the Lausiac History, see Renee Draguet, LHistoire Lausiaque: Une ouvre crite dans lespirit dvagre, RHE 41 (1946): 32146. There are, of course, other important monastic texts that remember Evagrius and his teachings. A full examination of these, and their treatment of Evagriuss educated literacy in relation to monastic literacy, is beyond the scope of this article.

from memorizing new texts that shape the self and from communal interac-tion with the texts, to recall Foucault, reading, rereading, interrogating, meditating, conversing with others, and with oneself about the texts.79 The result is a community that has the same relationship to memory, and its images, as it has to Scripture, and its images: it is rooted in memory in order to be able to move to forgetting.80

EVAGRIUS IN TEXTUAL MEMORY

When we turn to the texts that create the social memory of monasti-cism, we can see continued debates about literacy and textuality, that is, about the propriety of writing and the ability of the text, and writer, to express spiritual matters. While writing was becoming a holy activity in late antiquity, anxieties remained about the relationship between the materiality of writing and the spirituality of monastic teaching.81 This is particularly true for some works that are implicated in the transmission of Evagrian spirituality, namely, Palladiuss Lausiac History and Cassians Institutes and Conferences.82 Rather than examine these sources either for evidence of Evagriuss life (Palladius) or for unacknowledged transmis-sion of Evagriuss teachings (Cassian), I am interested in how each author presents the relationship between literacy and monastic practice as part of a social memory of Evagrius. Paying attention to how these accounts transmit proper monastic practices adds to an understanding of Evagrius as an authoritative monastic figure: one whose literate background has to be presented in correct relationship to monastic values as part of larger project of remembering a monasticism ripped apart by the Origenist con-troversy and its effects.

Like Evagrius, several later monastic writers claim to be recording a received tradition rather than presenting innovative teachings. Unlike


83. Palladius, h. Laus., prologue 3. Greek text: Cuthbert Butler, ed., The Lausiac History of Palladius: A critical discussion together with notes on early Egyptian monas-ticism (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsnuchhandlung, 1967), 10. English translation: Palladius: The Lausiac History, trans. Robert T. Meyer, ACW 34 (London: Newman Press, 1965), here 24 (modified).

84. The following passages are from Historia Monachorum, preface 12. For the Greek text: Andre-Jean Festugiere, ed., Historia Monachorum in Aegypto: Edition critique du texte grec et traduction annotee (Brussels: Socit des Bollandistes, 1961), 56. I have used, with some modifications, the translation in The Lives of the Des-ert Fathers: The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, trans. Norman Russell, Cisterian Studies 34 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1980), 45.

85. Palladius, h. Laus., prologue 7 (Butler, 11; Meyer, 7). Palladius later uses this same term to defend his inclusion of Evagrius (see below).

Evagrius, however, these authors have as their motivation preserving the memory of past figures and to serve, in Palladiuss words, as a holy reminder against forgetfulness ().83 Their anxiety about writing is no longer about the effects of the texts material or materiality, but about whether their own abilities as writers can adequately transmit the sublime quality of their spiritual topic. This general humility is both a long-established literary trope and a reflection of monastic self-effacement. Despite its commonality, these claims specifically point to the monastic concern about the tension between the material practice of writing and the spiritual content, either edification or deeds. Thus, for example, the author of the History of the Monks of Egypt believes that the things the monks did are worthy of being remembered and written.84 Yet he is concerned about his abilities as an author to be able to express adequately, in writ-ing, their greatness. In general he believes that unworthy men should not address great topics that are meant to provide guidance. They do not have the ability (power, ) to declare the truth in a worthy manner, particularly when the deeds are fixed in writing. Nevertheless, he proceeds in order to be able to provide his audience (a monastery in Palestine) with material that will assist them, and he requires their prayers in order to be able to proceed. This anxiety about writing, particularly his designation as too daring () the writing of this most sublime theme, reflects the textuality of Evagrius. The need to record, and so to remember, engages a material process of writing and memory that is at odds with the subject.

Palladius and Cassian also grapple with this tension in their texts, both in terms of what they record and how they approach writing itself. Pal-ladius focuses on the ascetic lives of those he visited and learned about, and he includes their miracles; he also implies that he, like his predeces-sors, writes to help his readers.85 Cassian, however, specifically jettisons


86. Cassian, Conlationes Patrum, 18.1.3 (SC 64:12). The Latin text for the Con-ferences is Dominic E. Pichery, ed., Jean Cassian: Confrences, SC 42, 54, 64 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1955, 1958, 1959). English translation is from John Cassian: The Conferences, trans. Boniface Ramsey, O.P., ACW 57 (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), with occasional modifications.

87. Palladius, ep. Laus. 2 (Butler, 7; Meyer, 21). 88. Palladius, h. Laus. 38.1 (Butler, 116; Meyer, 110).89. This same theme appears in the most likely spurious forward to the Lau-

siac History: the writers lack of skill in writing and of spiritual development left him unequal to the task (Forward 4: Butler, 4; Meyer, 18).

90. Cassian, Coll. 17.30.3 (SC 54:28384; Ramsey, 613). For a fuller discussion of notions of sublimity in Cassians monastic writings, see Rebecca Krawiec, Monastic Literacy in John Cassian: Toward a New Sublimity, CH 81 (2012): 76595.

91. Cassian, Coll. preface 1.5 (SC 42:76; Ramsey, 30).

an emphasis on ascetic deeds, particularly miracles, in favor of monastic instructions.86 Palladius believes that writing about the monastic way of life serves to create models for readers, whereas Cassian argues that monastic teachings are more valuable and edifying. Palladiuss textual theorizing points to an Evagrian sensibility where the meaning is beyond the physi-cal text. He writes to his dedicatee, Lausus: For words () and syl-lables do not constitute teaching . . . but teaching consists of virtuous acts of conduct, of freedom from injuriousness, of dauntlessness, and of an even temper.87 This reasoning also constitutes his defense of the need to include an account of Evagrius in particular in his history: one should put these things in writing for the spiritual edification of those who hap-pen to come across this account.88 Because the esotericism of monastic teachings, so prominent in Evagriuss texts, has been left aside, Palladius can engage the afterlife of a text for the benefit of readers, rather than as a potential danger.

Cassian, on the other hand, echoes the concerns of the author of the History of the Monks of Egypt in taking on the task of recording monas-tic teachings.89 He writes at the end of Conference 17 that he hopes the sublime thoughts of the monks will overcome his various failings as a writer, including his rusticity.90 Yet despite this hierarchy of spiritual teaching over written expression, Cassian lends a materiality to his text by arguing that the textual record of the spiritual teachings was a mate-rial embodiment of the monks themselves.91 Thus, while both authors are regarded as conveying an Evagrian spirituality, each has a transformed Evagrian textuality: Palladius memorializes the deeds Evagrius himself often dismissed, but argues for a textual process of spiritual progression. Cassian focuses on teachings over deeds and, like Evagrius, engages a weak sense of authorship wherein he is merely the writer of books the monks


92. Palladius, h. Laus. 38.2 (Butler, 117; Meyer, 111).93. Palladius, h. Laus. 38.8 (Butler, 119; Meyer, 112).94. Palladius, h. Laus. 38.10 (Butler, 120; Meyer, 113). An interesting contrast

appears in Porphyrys account of Plotinus, who did not create elegant letters or even divide words properly in his writing. There Plotinuss genius shapes the noetic con-tent of the text, such that he can write what he thinks as if he were writing straight from a book, but this does not create beautiful writing itself, leaving some to not fully appreciate his texts. See Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 8 (Armstrong, 2831).

95. Palladius, h. Laus. 38.10 (Butler, 121; Meyer, 113).

have authored; yet his textuality contains a materiality and a memory that Evagrius sought to transcend. Both Palladius and Cassians texts convey a memory of Evagriuss textuality; in neither case are Evagriuss teachings explicitly transmitted in his name, but in each case they are transformed to fit the normative framework for each author.

Palladiuss account of Evagrius himself contributes to defining the proper role of writing as a monastic practice. Evagriuss earlier life, while certainly Christian, reflects a city-based emphasis on rhetoric. His status as a speaker, particularly in refuting heresies, led to renown.92 Later in Jerusalem, Pal-ladius tells us he met Melania but returned to his old life, including his former manner of speech.93 Once in the Egyptian desert, however, Evagrius abandons this civic value of rhetoric and takes on monastic writ-ing in its place. He composed one hundred prayers and he wrote during the year only the price of as much as he ate, for he wrote very gracefully the Oxyrhynchus character.94 His abilities in the mechanics of writing now carry monastic values: they promote prayer and provide the correct amount of financial support. The social memory of his own writing prac-tice now re-inscribes these values, rather than remembers his earlier train-ing. Indeed, Palladius follows this description with the claim that within fifteen years, he had so purified his mind that he was deemed worthy of the gift of knowledge and wisdom and the discernment of spirits. Writ-ing is included alongside fasting as a monastic practice, an activity that has been properly disciplined. The result is a monastic echo of the goals of traditional paideia: knowledge, wisdom, and discernment. Once these are in place, then he drew up three holy books for monks . . . on the arts to be used against demons.95 Evagriuss correct writing, as a monastic practice, progresses not to authorship but rather to his ability to record the results of that monasticism. Palladiuss account emphasizes the ability to discipline writing successfully, and so his monastic literacy shapes this social memory of Evagrius.

Cassians texts, which do not name Evagrius, nevertheless participate


96. Dysinger has recently argued that although Cassian is generally regarded as Evagriuss student, it is only known that Cassian studied in the same community at the time of Evagrius, until slightly after Evagriuss death when the erupting Origenist controversy caused him, and many others, to flee (Dysinger, Psalmody, 1).

97. This brother, identified as de pouincia Ponti, is thought to be Evagrius; see Stewart, Monastic Pedagogy, 248. This tale is from Cassian Inst. coen. 5.32.13; Latin text: Jean-Claude Guy, ed., Jean Cassien: institutions cnobitiques, SC 109 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1965), here 24042; trans.: John Cassian: The Institutes, trans. Boniface Ramsey, O.P., ACW 58 (New York: Paulist, 2000), 13536.

98. Evagrius, Praktikos 11 (SC 171:51618; Sinkewicz, 99).

in creating an indirect memory through issues of Evagrian textuality.96 In Institute 5, Cassian provides a long tale of a monk who refused to read letters from friends and family members because the emotions they would provoke would interfere with his monastic goals.97 This monk had, over fifteen years, received numerous letters from both family and friends. These texts he ends up burning, because he knows that reading them will lead to the recollection of those who sent them. Cassian emphasizes the text-reader relationship as the basis of a continued connection between the monk and those who wrote them: It would be of no use whatsoever to have deserted them bodily if he should begin to look upon them in heart and by reviving admit into himself again the memory that everyone who renounces this world has rejected as though he were dead. So too Evagrius warns the novice monk about memories of faces in interfering with monas-tic progress; the face of the one who has hurt the monk appears to him in order to distract him.98 But whereas Evagriuss memory is the result of demonic activity, Cassians stems from the general view that was held by the educated elite in late antiquity; texts can stand as proxy for people and so the social bond is transferred to the text-reader relationship. The danger of the text, however, is Evagrian in terms of the material effects of read-ing. Ideally, letters, in Evagriuss description at the beginning of the Letter to Melania, allow for an intellectual bonding, a transmission of meaning. Yet, as I have argued, Evagrius was also aware that not all meaning was compatible with material expression. Here Cassian presents the flipside of that textuality: that material expression can have material effects. The monk avoids the lettersindeed he burns them after deciding not only not to open a single letter, but not even to unfasten the bundlebecause reading the letters will effect the passions. These passions would then cre-ate images in the intellect through the use of memory; the memory of the words and faces (sermones ac uultus) of the letter writers will allow the monk to see them again, [to] live with them. Memory here becomes corporeal through the effects of reading.


99. See also my discussion about this process for Cassians monastic literacy in Krawiec, Monastic Literacy in John Cassian, at 776 and 787.

100. For a discussion of Cassians formation of the monk as a civic speaker, see Conrad Leyser, Lectio Divina, Oratio Pura: Rhetoric and the Techniques of Asceti-cism in the Conferences of John Cassian, in Modelli Di Santit e Modelli di Com-portamento, ed. Giulia Barone, Marina Caffiero, and Francesco Barcellona (Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1994), 79105.

101. Cassian, Coll. 10.12 (SC 54:93; Ramsey, 385). Cf. Krawiec, Monastic Lit-eracy in John Cassian, 788.

102. Simon Goldhill argues for this same process in Philostratuss Lives of the Soph-ists, which includes an account of a rustic who impresses the most sophisticated

At the heart of the story, then, is not the actual people but this textual experience. Cassian does not reject the textual relationship nor does he argue for it merely to be disciplined like bodily appetites. Even though the emotions a letter can create could be calmed down, the effort neces-sary to do so is declared to be itself a distraction. Rather, Cassian seeks to replace these memories with new ones, created now by his Institutes and Conferences, themselves works of memory. Cassian places his readers into his own memories and fixes that memory through material expression of the abbas spiritual teachings.99 Cassian transmits but changes Evagriuss more Origenist textuality. Cassians monasticism, and its eschatological goals, are more civic-oriented and cities rely on memory.100 Cassian there-fore creates a textuality that, while like Evagriuss in its sense of authorship and content, creates a spiritual progression not towards a forgetting of creation but a memory of God.101

CONCLUSION

Palladius and Cassians works serve as illustrative examples of how textu-ality shapes the social memory of monasticism generally and of Evagrius, and his notions of monastic literacy, particularly. Reading and writing were problematic issues for monasticism because of the role of memory that is inherent within them. They contain the recollections of learning how to read and write and so they must be properly re-shaped in a monastic context. This transformation extends beyond textuality and into issues of literacy and secular education more generally. Literacy thus becomes a contested area within the social memory of monasticism. Part of the effort of late antique monastic histories includes creating a pure past, particu-larly one that has a strict delineation between paganism and Christian-ity and between the world and the monk. Literacy, or learning, serves as a trope both for paganism, since paideia depended on pagan texts, and for the world, or, more accurately, the city.102 Evagrius is a contested


member of the elite with his pure Attic Greek, possible because he lives a life untouched by the city (Simon Goldhill, The Anecdote, 107).

103. Evagrius, Talking Back, 6.5 and 6.8 (Frankenberg, 522; Brakke, 134 and 135).104. The Life of Antony presents Antony as not having received standard schooling

(VA 1) yet later being able to memorize the entirety of Scripture such that Antonys memory replaces the book (VA 3). Evagriuss admonitions, however, are in the sec-tion on the demon of listlessness, suggesting that the problem with these temptations is that they are meant to avoid the work necessary to attain monastic literacy.

105. For example, Cassian tells the story of a monk who was able to learn Scrip-ture even though he knew little to no Greek (Inst. coen. 5.33). There are two monks in the h. mon. who are reported to have learned to read through the charism of God (h. mon. 2.5 and 10.7).

figure within this emerging social memory since his monastic literacy, with its emphasis on incorporeality and forgetting, stands at odds with the needs of social memory, which inscribes memory into bodily practices.

Two contrasting images of the formation of a literate monk illustrate this tension. Evagriuss own writings contain two warnings about demonic temptations with regard to learning Scripture: first, that monks might be tempted not to memorize all of Scripture and second, that they be tempted to ask to be able to memorize Scripture through Gods gift, rather, pre-sumably, than through their own labor.103 In both cases, Evagriuss admo-nitions present his particular monastic literacy, and the work of memory that is part of it, as preferable to other models.104 Later monastic works also emphasize a monk who has learned Scripture, but now the trope of the rustic monk who is able to learn to read through Gods grace, and not secular learning, becomes favored.105 All monastic writers agree that memorization of Scripture is a monastic ideal, but there is disagreement about how to achieve that ideal. Evagrius had located the spirituality of monasticism in the learning process, of gaining the esoteric meanings of texts. That literacy is replaced in a monasticism that seeks to obscure its own relationship with paideia and learning in order to present itself as having a pure literacy, closer to the Word. Rather than the Word being present in the text, and so accessible only through the work of learning to read it, the Word manifests itself in monks who have the necessary purity to receive it.

Rebecca Krawiec is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Theology at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York

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