The Conferences 18.1–18.14

After we had seen and conversed with those three elders whose conferences we have set down as best we could at the urging of our holy brother Eucherius, we longed with still greater ardor to visit the farther parts of Egypt, where a larger and more perfect number of saints lived. We came to a village called Diolcos, which lies on one of the seven mouths of the river Nile, drawn there not so much by the needs of the journey as by the desire of seeing the saints who lived in that place. For when, like the most eager merchants, we had heard that very many famous coenobia had been founded there by the ancient fathers, we at once undertook what was, so to speak, a voyage of uncertain inquiry, persuaded by the hope of greater gain. There, as we drifted about for a very long time and turned our curious eyes on every side toward those mountains conspicuous for the loftiness of their virtues, the first thing the gaze of our searching caught sight of, like a very high lighthouse, was Abba Piamun, the eldest of all the anchorites who lived there and their presbyter. For like that city of the Gospel, set on the summit of a high mountain, he at once shone out before our eyes. His virtues and wonders, which divine grace worked through him even in our sight, bearing witness to his merits, we think we must pass over in silence, so as not to exceed either the form of our plan or the measure of this volume. For we promised to hand down to memory not the wonders of God but some of the practices and pursuits of the saints, as far as we are able to remember them, so as to offer our readers only the instruction necessary for the perfect life, not a useless and superfluous admiration that brings no amendment of faults. So when blessed Piamun had received us with the greatest joy and refreshed us with fitting kindness, he understood that we were not of that region. He first asked carefully where we came from and why we had sought Egypt, and when he learned that we had come there from a coenobium in Syria out of desire for perfection, he began thus.

“My sons, anyone who longs to gain skill in any art will wish in vain, with empty desires, to attain the likeness of those whose care and industry he declines to imitate, unless he gives himself with all care and watchfulness to the study of the discipline he wants to learn and keeps the precepts and practices of the most accomplished masters of that craft or knowledge. For we know that some have come to these places from your regions only in order to go round the monasteries of the brothers for the sake of getting to know them, not in order to take up these rules and practices for which they had traveled here, nor to withdraw into cells and try to put into practice what they had learned by sight or by teaching. Keeping the habits and pursuits in which they had been trained, they were thought, as some are wont to reproach them, to have changed provinces not for the sake of their own progress but from the necessity of escaping poverty. For through the obstinacy of a stubborn mind they not only could gain no learning, they could not even stay long in these parts. Since they had changed neither their manner of fasting nor their order of psalms, nor even the style of their clothing, what else could they be believed to seek in this region but the mere securing of their livelihood?”

“Therefore, if, as we believe, it is for God’s sake that you have been drawn to imitate our understanding, then utterly renounce all the practices with which your beginnings were formed there, and follow with the greatest humility whatever you see our elders do or teach. Do not let it disturb you or turn you aside and draw you back from imitating them, even if for the present the reason or cause of some thing or deed is not clear to you. For those who think well and simply about everything, and are eager faithfully to imitate rather than to debate whatever they see handed down or done by the elders, will come to the knowledge of all things as well through the experience of practice. But whoever begins to be taught by debating will never enter into the reason of the truth. For the enemy, seeing him trust his own judgment rather than that of the fathers, will easily drive him to the point where even things that are most useful and wholesome seem to him superfluous and harmful. So the cunning foe will make sport of his presumption, so that, clinging obstinately to his own unreasonable definitions, he persuades himself that only that is holy which in the error of his own obstinacy he has judged right and most just.”

“So you must first learn the order and origin of our profession: how and from where it has come down. For a person can gain the discipline of the art he desires more effectively, and be spurred more ardently to practice it, when he has learned the dignity of its authors and founders. There are three kinds of monks in Egypt, of which two are excellent and the third lukewarm and to be avoided in every way. The first is that of the cenobites, who live together in a community and are governed by the judgment of one elder; the greatest number of monks throughout Egypt live in this way. The second is that of the anchorites, who were first trained in coenobia and, having been made perfect in the active life, chose the secrecy of solitude; we too long to share in this profession. The third, blameworthy, is that of the Sarabaites. We shall discuss each of them more fully in order. As I said, then, you must first learn the founders of these three professions. For from this very knowledge may arise either hatred of the profession that is to be avoided or desire for the one that is to be followed, since every way must draw its follower to the same end which its author and discoverer reached.”

“The discipline of the cenobites took its beginning at the time of the apostles’ preaching. For such was that whole multitude of believers in Jerusalem, which is described in the Acts of the Apostles as follows: ‘The multitude of believers was of one heart and soul, and none of them said that anything he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. They sold their possessions and goods and divided them to all, as each had need.’ And again: ‘For there was no one in need among them; for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of what they sold and laid them at the feet of the apostles; and it was distributed to each as each had need.’ Such, I say, was the whole church then, as it is now hard to find even a very few in the coenobia. But after the death of the apostles the multitude of believers began to grow lukewarm, especially that part of it which flowed together into the faith of Christ from foreigners and various nations. Because of their rudimentary faith and their long-rooted pagan habits, the apostles asked nothing more of them than that they abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood. This liberty, granted to the Gentiles because of the weakness of their first belief, gradually began to taint the perfection of the church at Jerusalem as well; and as the number of natives and newcomers grew daily, the fervor of that first faith cooled, and not only those who had streamed into the faith of Christ but even the leaders of the church relaxed that strictness. For some, thinking that what they saw conceded to the Gentiles because of weakness was lawful for them too, believed they would suffer no loss if they followed the faith and confession of Christ while keeping their property and wealth. But those in whom the apostolic fervor still lived, mindful of that former perfection, left their cities and the company of those who thought the negligence of a laxer life lawful for themselves and for the church of God, and began to live in places near the towns and more secluded, and to practice privately and on their own what they remembered the apostles had established for the whole body of the church in general. So grew up this discipline of which we have spoken, of the disciples who had separated themselves from the contagion of the others. As time went on they were gradually set apart from the crowds of believers; and because they abstained from marriage and separated themselves from the company of their relatives and from the life of this world, they were called monks, or monazontes, from the strictness of their single and solitary life. Hence it followed that, from their sharing a common life, they were called cenobites, and their cells and lodgings coenobia. This alone, then, was the most ancient kind of monks, first not only in time but also in grace, and it lasted unbroken for very many years until the age of Abba Paul and Abba Antony; and even now we see traces of it remaining in the strict coenobia.”

“From this number of the perfect, and, if I may so call it, this most fruitful root of saints, there were afterward brought forth the flowers and fruits of the anchorites as well. We know that the founders of this profession were those whom we mentioned a little earlier, namely Saint Paul and Antony. They sought the secrecy of solitude not, as some do, out of faintheartedness or the disease of impatience, but from the desire of higher progress and of divine contemplation, although the first of them is said to have gone into the desert under the pressure of necessity, while avoiding the plots of his kinsmen in a time of persecution. So there came forth from the discipline we have spoken of another kind of perfection, whose followers are rightly called anchorites, that is, those who withdraw. For they are by no means content with the victory by which they have trodden down the hidden snares of the devil among men, but long to meet the demons in open combat and plain battle, and so they do not fear to go into the vast recesses of the desert, in imitation of John the Baptist, who remained in the desert all his life, and of Elijah and Elisha, and of those of whom the apostle speaks thus: ‘They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, in distress, afflicted, in want, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes of the earth.’ Of them too the Lord speaks figuratively to Job: ‘Who has let the wild ass go free, and loosed his bonds? I have made the desert his dwelling and the salt land his tents. He scorns the multitude of the city and does not hear the cry of the taskmaster. He will look over the mountains of his pasture and seeks after every green thing.’ And in the Psalms: ‘Let them now say, who have been redeemed by the Lord, whom he redeemed from the hand of the enemy’; and a little after: ‘They wandered in the wilderness, in a waterless place; they did not find the way to a city of habitation. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. And they cried to the Lord when they were in trouble, and he delivered them from their distresses.’ Jeremiah too describes them thus: ‘Blessed is he who has borne the yoke from his youth; he will sit alone and keep silence, because he has taken it upon himself’; and they sing in feeling and in deed that word of the Psalmist: ‘I have become like a pelican of the wilderness. I have watched, and have become like a sparrow alone on the housetop.’”

“While the Christian religion rejoiced in these two professions of monks, this order too gradually began to fall back into a worse state. There then emerged that worst and faithless kind of monks, or rather, that harmful plant sprang up again which had sprouted at the beginning of the church in Ananias and Sapphira and was cut down by the severity of the apostle Peter. Among monks it was judged detestable and accursed and was taken up by no one for as long as the dread of that very severe sentence remained fixed in the memory of the faithful, the sentence by which the blessed apostle did not allow the founders of that new crime to be healed by repentance or by any satisfaction, but cut off the most pernicious shoot by swift death. So when that example, the apostolic severity with which Ananias and Sapphira were punished, had gradually faded from some people’s view through long neglect and forgetfulness over time, there emerged this kind of Sarabaites. They are called Sarabaites in the idiom of the Egyptian language because they separated themselves from the communities of the coenobia and each looked after his own needs. They come from the number of those we mentioned before, who preferred to feign the perfection of the Gospel rather than take hold of it in truth, spurred by rivalry with, or by the praise of, those who prefer the perfect poverty of Christ to all the riches of the world. So while with a feeble mind they aim at something of the highest virtue, or are driven by necessity to come to this profession while hastening only to be counted by the name of monks without any zeal for its pursuits, they by no means seek the discipline of the coenobia. They do not submit to the judgment of the elders, nor, trained in their traditions, do they learn to overcome their own wills, nor do they receive any rule of sound discernment through proper instruction. They renounce the world only publicly, that is, before the eyes of men, and either stay in their own houses, under the privilege of this name, bound up in the same occupations as before, or build themselves cells, call them monasteries, and live in them at their own discretion and liberty. They never submit to the precepts of the Gospel, that is, to be occupied with no anxiety about daily food and no distractions of household affairs. Only those fulfill this, without any faithless doubt, who, freed from all the goods of this world, have so subjected themselves to the superiors of the coenobia that they do not even confess themselves to be masters of themselves. But those who, as we said, decline the strictness of the coenobium and live two or three together in cells, not content to be governed by the care and command of an abbot, but seeing to this above all, that, freed from the yoke of the elders, they may have liberty to do their own wills, to go out or wander wherever they please, and to do whatever they like, are worn out with daily work day and night even more than those who live in the coenobia, but not with the same faith and purpose. For they do this not in order to submit the fruit of their labor to the judgment of a steward, but to acquire money to store up. Notice what a difference there is between them. The one group, taking no thought for tomorrow, offer to God the most welcome fruits of their sweat; the other extends its faithless anxiety not only to tomorrow but to a span of many years, and believes God either false or poor, as if he either could not or would not provide them the sufficiency of daily food and clothing he has promised. The one group longs with all its prayers to possess aktēmosynē, that is, destitution of all things and perpetual poverty; the other, to obtain an abundance of all supplies. The one labors eagerly at daily work so as to exceed the fixed amount, so that whatever is left over from the holy uses of the monastery may be distributed at the abbot’s discretion to prisons, to the guesthouse, to the hospital, or to the needy; the other, so that whatever is left over from the daily gluttony may either serve extravagant desire or at any rate be stored up through the vice of avarice. Finally, even if we grant that what these gather with no excellent purpose might be distributed better than we have said, not even so do they aspire to the merit of that virtue and perfection. For the first, while bringing such returns to the monastery and renouncing them daily, persevere in such humble subjection that they are deprived of power over what they gain by their own sweat, just as over themselves, and continually renew the fervor of their first renunciation as they strip themselves daily of the fruits of their labor. The others, precisely because they give something to the poor, are lifted up and fall headlong every day. The patience and strictness with which the first so devoutly persevere in the profession they have once embraced, never fulfilling their own wills, make them daily crucified to this world and living martyrs; the lukewarmness of their own choice plunges the others into hell. These two kinds of monks, then, are nearly equal in number in this province. But in other provinces, which the needs of the catholic faith forced me to travel through, we found that this third kind, of Sarabaites, abounds and is almost the only one. For in the time of Lucius, who was bishop of the Arian unbelief, under the emperor Valens, when we were bringing aid to our brothers, namely those who had been banished from Egypt and the Thebaid to the mines of Pontus and Armenia for their steadfastness in the catholic faith, although we saw the discipline of the coenobia, very rarely, in some cities, we found that not even the name of the anchorites had been heard among them.”

“There is indeed yet another, a fourth kind, which we have lately seen emerge among those who flatter themselves with the appearance and image of anchorites. At their beginning, with a certain brief fervor, they seem to seek the perfection of the coenobium, but soon grow lukewarm. Scorning to cut off their former habits and vices, unwilling to bear the yoke of humility and patience any longer, and disdaining to be subject to the command of the elders, they seek separate cells and wish to sit alone, so that, provoked by no one, they may be thought by men patient, gentle, or humble. This way of life, or rather this lukewarmness, never lets those whom it has once infected come to perfection. For in this way their vices are not only not cut off but grow stronger for the worse, since, provoked by no one, like some deadly internal poison, the more they are hidden the more deeply they creep and produce an incurable disease in the sick man. For out of respect for the solitary cell no one dares to rebuke the faults of the solitary any longer, faults he preferred to keep unknown rather than to have cured. But virtues are brought forth not by hiding vices but by conquering them.”

Germanus: “Is there any difference between a coenobium and a monastery, or is one thing meant by both names?”

Piamun: “Although some commonly call coenobia monasteries without distinction, there is this difference: monastery is the name of a dwelling and means nothing more than the place, that is, the habitation of monks, whereas coenobium also indicates the character and discipline of the profession itself. Even the dwelling of a single monk can be called a monastery; but a place cannot be called a coenobium unless a united community of many living together dwells there. Indeed, places where groups of Sarabaites live are also called monasteries.”

“Therefore, since I see that you have taken up the beginnings of this profession from the best kind of monks, that is, that you are striving from the praiseworthy training-ground of the coenobia toward the lofty heights of the anchoritic discipline, pursue with true feeling of heart the virtue of humility and patience, which I do not doubt you learned there. Do not feign it, as some do, by a false humbling of words, or by an affected and superfluous bowing of the body in certain services. Abba Serapion once wittily mocked this pretense of humility. A certain man came to him who displayed the greatest self-abasement in dress and words. When the old man, according to custom, urged him to offer the prayer, he would not agree to the request, but declared that he was entangled in such crimes that he did not deserve even to breathe this common air; he even refused to sit on the mat and sat on the ground instead. And when he agreed still less to the washing of his feet, then Abba Serapion, after the meal, when the custom of the conference gave occasion, began to admonish him kindly and gently not to run about everywhere idle and wandering with unstable levity, especially as he was a young man and so strong, but to sit in his cell according to the rule of the elders and choose to be supported by his own work rather than by the generosity of others. For even the apostle Paul would not fall into this, and although this support was rightly owed to him as one who labored in the Gospel, he preferred to work night and day so as to provide daily food with his own hands for himself and for those who ministered to him and could not do the work. At this the man was filled with such sadness and resentment that he could not hide even in his face the bitterness conceived in his heart. The old man said to him: ‘Until now, my son, you were loading yourself with every weight of crime, not fearing to incur a mark on your reputation by confessing such dreadful sins. What is it, I ask, that at our simple little admonition, which not only contained no reproach but carried the feeling of edification and love, I see you so moved with indignation that you could not hide it even in your face or disguise it with a calm brow? Or were you perhaps, while humbling yourself, expecting from our mouth the verdict, “The righteous man is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech”?’ True humility of heart, then, is to be kept, which comes not from an affected humbling of body and words but from an inward humbling of the mind. It will shine with the clearest signs of its patience when a person does not boast about himself of crimes that others would not believe, but disregards those arrogantly heaped on him by another, and bears the injuries inflicted on him with a gentle equanimity of spirit.”

Germanus: “We long to know how this tranquillity may be acquired or kept, so that, just as we close the doors of our mouth when silence is imposed on us and restrain the license of words, so we may also guard the gentleness of the heart, which sometimes loses its calm within even when the tongue is bridled. And so we think that no one can keep the good of meekness except by the seclusion of the cell and a solitary dwelling.”

Piamun: “True patience and tranquillity are neither acquired nor kept without deep humility of heart. If they come from this spring, they will need neither the help of the cell nor the refuge of solitude. For what is upheld inwardly by the virtue of humility, its mother and guardian, seeks the protection of nothing outside. But if we are disturbed when someone provokes us, it is certain that the foundations of humility are not firmly laid in us, and so at the onset of even a small storm our building is shaken with a ruinous tremor. For patience would not be praiseworthy or admirable if it kept its purpose of tranquillity when struck by no darts of enemies; it is splendid and glorious in this, that it stands unmoved when the storms of temptation rush on it. For in the very thing by which it is thought to be troubled and broken by adversity, it is rather strengthened; and it is sharpened more in the very thing by which it is thought to be blunted. For everyone knows that patience takes its name from suffering and endurance, and so it is clear that no one can be called patient except one who bears without indignation everything inflicted on him. And so it is not without reason that Solomon praises him: ‘Better is the patient man than the strong, and he who restrains his anger than he who takes a city’; and again: ‘For the long-suffering man is great in prudence, but the fainthearted is very foolish.’ So when someone, overcome by an injury, is set on fire with anger, the harshness of the insult offered is not to be thought the cause of his sin, but rather the revealing of a hidden weakness, according to the parable of the Lord and Savior about the two houses, one founded on the rock and the other on the sand. He says that the storms of rain and floods and winds beat equally on both, but that the one founded on the solid rock felt no harm at all from so violent a shock, while the one built on the shifting sand at once collapsed. It is plain that it fell not because it was struck by the flood of rains or torrents, but because it was foolishly built on the sand. For the holy man differs from the sinner not in that he is not tempted in the same way, but in that he is not overcome even by a great assault, while the other is overcome even by a small temptation. For, as we said, the fortitude of a righteous man would not be praiseworthy if he conquered without being tempted, since there can surely be no place for victory without the opposition of combat. ‘For blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been tried he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.’ According to the apostle Paul too, strength is made perfect not in ease and pleasures but in weakness. ‘For behold,’ it says, ‘I have made you this day a fortified city, and an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, over all the land, against the kings of Judah and its princes and its priests and all the people of the land. And they will fight against you and will not prevail, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you.’”

“I want to set before you at least two examples of this patience. The first is of a certain devout woman who pursued the virtue of patience so eagerly that she not only did not avoid the onsets of temptation but even procured for herself occasions of trouble, so that, provoked more often, she might not give way. She lived in Alexandria, was born of no obscure ancestors, and served the Lord devoutly in the house her parents had left her. She came to Athanasius, the bishop of blessed memory, and begged him to give her one of the widows supported at the church’s expense to look after. To express her request in her own words, she said, ‘Give me one of the sisters to care for.’ The bishop praised the woman’s purpose, seeing that she was most ready for the work of mercy, and ordered that a widow be chosen from all of them who surpassed all in honesty of character, seriousness, and discipline, lest the desire to give be overcome by the fault of the one receiving, and she who sought a reward should, offended by the bad character of a needy woman, suffer harm to her faith. She took the widow home and served her with every attention, but experienced the virtue of her modesty and gentleness and saw that she was honored by her every moment with thanks for her kindness. After a few days she went back to the bishop and said, ‘I had asked you to have someone given me whom I might refresh and serve with obedient attentions.’ He did not yet understand the woman’s purpose and desire, and thought that her request had been neglected through the carelessness of the official in charge. Inquiring, not without some displeasure, into the reasons for the delay, he at once learned that the most respectable of the widows had been assigned to her. He secretly ordered that the one who was worst of all be given her, namely the one who surpassed all those ruled by these vices in anger, quarreling, drunkenness, or talkativeness. This one was found much more easily and given to her. She began to keep her at home and to serve her with the same diligence as the former widow, or even more zealously, and received from her this sole thanks for such services: she was continually subjected to shameful insults and vexed by constant abuse and reproaches, the widow charging her and berating her with slanders that she had asked the bishop for her not for her refreshment but rather for her torment and humiliation, and had moved her from rest to toil rather than from toil to rest. When the constant quarreling went so far that the insolent woman did not even keep her hands off her, she only redoubled her offices of humbler service, and learned to overcome the raging woman not by resisting but by subjecting herself more humbly, so that, provoked by all manner of indignities, she softened the madness of the quarreler by gentle kindness. Fully strengthened by these exercises, and having attained the perfect virtue of the patience she desired, she went to the bishop to thank him both for his judgment in the choice and for the benefit of her training, because according to her desire he had at last provided her with a most worthy teacher of patience, by whose constant insults, strengthened daily as with the oil of the wrestling-school, she had reached the height of patience. ‘At last,’ she said, ‘you have given me someone to care for; for the former one rather honored and refreshed me with her services.’ Let this be enough to have said about the female sex, so that by this remembrance we may not only be edified but also put to shame, we who cannot keep our patience unless we are shut up in the cages of our cells like wild beasts.”