Early Monasticism and the Rhetorical Tradition

One would be hard put to find even one reader of early monastic texts who is unfamiliar with the Athanasian portrayal of Antony, ‘founder’ of the anchoretic strain of early Egyptian monasticism, as not only ‘unlettered’, but also explicitly uninterested in becoming otherwise. ¹ Many could recite the pertinent lines of Athanasius’ Vita by heart:

Καὶ παιδίον μὲν ὢν, ἐτρέφετο παρὰ τοῖς γονεῦσι, πλέον αὐτῶν καὶ τοῦ οἴκου μηδὲν ἕτερον γινώσκων· ἐπειδὴ δὲ καὶ αὐξήσας ἐγένετο παῖς, καὶ προέκοπτε τῇ ἡλικίᾳ, γράμματα μὲν μαθεῖν οὐκ ἠνέσχετο, βουλόμενος ἐκτὸς εἶναι καὶ τῆς πρὸς τοὺς παῖδας συνηθείας· τὴν δὲ ἐπιθυμίαν πᾶσαν εἶχε… ὡς ἄπλαστος οἰκεῖν ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὐτοῦ.

[Antony was] cognizant of little else besides [his parents] and his home. As he grew and became a boy, and was advancing in years, he could not bear to learn letters, wishing also to stand apart from friendship with other children. All his yearning… was for living, an unaffected person, in his home. ²

Conjoined with Antony’s studied a-literacy, two apophthegms featuring the famously literate monks Arsenius and Evagrius are as familiar. ³ In one well-rehearsed exchange, Evagrius queries Arsenius:

Quomodo nos excitati eruditione et scientia nullas virtutes habemus, hi autem rustici in Aegypto habitantes tantas virtutes possident?

How is it that we educated and learned men have no goodness, and the Egyptian peasants have a great deal?

Arsenius responds:

Nos quia mundanae eruditionis disciplinis intenti sumus, nihil habemus; hi autem rustici Aegyptii ex propriis laboribus acquisierunt virtutes.

We have nothing because we go chasing after worldly knowledge. These Egyptian peasants have got their goodness by hard work. ⁴

In a second account, Arsenius is challenged while consulting an Egyptian γέρων about his thoughts. Here an unidentified interlocutor queries:

Ἀββᾶ Ἀρσένιε, πῶς τοσαύτην παίδευσιν Ῥωμαϊκὴν καὶ Ἑλληνικὴν ἐπιστάμενος, τοῦτον τὸν ἀγροῖκον περὶ τῶν σῶν λογισμῶν ἐρωτᾷς;

Abba Arsenius, how is it that you with such a good Latin and Greek education, ask this peasant about your thoughts?

Arsenius replies:

Τὴν μὲν Ῥωμαϊκὴν καὶ Ἑλληνικὴν ἐπίσταμαι παίδευσιν· τὸν δὲ ἀλφάβητον τοῦ ἀγροίκου τούτου οὔπω μεμάθηκα.

I have indeed been taught Latin and Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet of this peasant. ⁵

Numerous narrative allusions to early monks reading, writing and commenting on scripture overtly challenge these well-worn depictions. ⁶ However, in subsequent scholarship, it is the caricatured binaries of ‘a-’ and ‘exceptional’ literacy, assigned to Antony, Evagrius and Arsenius, that have routinely shaped representation of early monastic investment in education and literate pursuits. ⁷