ABSTRACT
Visions and visionaries always posed problems for the church. They were part of the very fabric of Christianity, but the visionary claimed direct contact with the God and, therefore circumvented and, implicitly, threatened the authority of the official hierarchy of the church. Holy men were always a potential threat. St. Simeon the Stylite (c. 396–459) held court for nearly forty years perched on a high column near Antioch in Syria, producing a rash of emulators whose indiscipline and excess had to be curbed by imperial legislation. They were sometimes linked to the Circumcelliones who terrorized North Africa. 1 The sense of righteousness which monasticism bred might easily lead to disorder and heresy. The monks from the Egyptian desert were all too ready to participate in the sack of the Serapeum, the greatest library of the ancient world, in 391. For this reason the church was deeply concerned to control monastic turbulence by strong discipline embodied in such rules as that of Pachomius and “The Master.” 2 In the church of the Roman Empire the bishop was the key officer, the guarantor of order amongst the faithful, whose truly Roman political spirit passed into medieval practice. It is no wonder that Pope Gregory I the Great (590–604) so strongly approved of the Rule of St. Benedict, for it firmly subordinated the potential turbulence of ascetic holy men to the power of the abbot and the local bishop; it domesticated monasticism and made it a buttress, not a challenge to the established social and religious order. 3 Gregory of Tours was only too happy to record the ignominious death of a self-proclaimed Messiah. St. Boniface and the Frankish church were much troubled by Aldebert, a “charismatic holy man” in the eighth century. 4
