Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (review)

For many, the history of early Christian monasticism has lingered in remote spaces, whether desert, cell, monastery, or cave. Thanks to the work of James Goehring, David Brakke, and now Daniel Caner, our picture of urban monasticism is coming into sharper focus, with a detailed study of vagrant monks who dedicated their lives to wandering and prayer, while living off alms. Focusing on disputes between bishops and monastics over voluntary poverty, Caner's six chapters capture the regional diversity of vagrant monasticism between the 360's and 451, the year the Council of Chalcedon imposed strict limits on monastic wandering. Although the tension between church order and itinerancy goes back to the earliest decades of the Jesus movement, Caner draws attention to a fascinating period, when problems of vagrancy and material support intersected with pitched theological controversy and rising urban homelessness.

Informed by close study of sermons, spiritual guides, ecclesiastical histories, and saints' lives, Caner tracks bishops' growing embarrassment with, and disdain for, wandering monks. At issue was what constituted legitimate forms of voluntary poverty and who would control material support of these monks. Should monks be expected to support themselves through manual labor? Or, might itinerant teachers expect material support from the lay Christians they instructed and visited? Opponents of mendicant itinerancy appealed to passages in Paul's letters that stressed the value of respectable manual labor, whereas itinerant groups invoked Jesus' call to simplicity and freedom from care. That critics relied so heavily on Paul's advice in the letters raises interesting questions about the legacy of other memories of Paul, such as the Acts of Paul, which stressed his wanderings as a radical ascetic.

Caner devotes the first three chapters to the Egyptian and Syrian countryside. Although Egyptian monastic lore highlighted the settled monk, Caner detects a nostalgia for wandering combined with an impulse to keep the monk in place, both physically (through manual labor) and mentally (through careful regulation of thoughts). Two chapters examine the Syrian tradition of ascetic wandering, already found in third-century manuals and apostolic legends, along with their impact on later ascetics who shunned manual labor to devote themselves to prayer. As Caner argues, what united these groups were common practices more than any consistent doctrine. Their "radicalism" committed to "material renunciations and identification with the poor" (pp. 100-101) defies the catch-all labels ancient heresiologists imposed on their beliefs.

A chapter on the fifth-century Life of Alexander the Sleepless (with a fine translation provided in the appendix) teases out the tensions between charisma, poverty, and urban unrest that Caner expertly lays out in the final chapters. The wandering monk's confrontations (sometimes violent) with bishops in Antioch and Constantinople provide the springboard for a detailed study of vagrant monks in those cities. To critics, the sight of able-bodied panhandlers and showy destitution was a blemish on more dignified forms of monasticism. What also rankled detractors was the influence these monks acquired among wealthy patrons and the poor. Yet, far more was at stake, as Caner highlights how escalating tensions between bishops and monks shaped Christological controversies central to fifth-century ecumenical councils. If at times the presentation is densely written, Caner's assessment of the problems is consistently sound and compelling. He offers a first-rate study of how the politics of reputation, bonds of patronage, and competition for scarce resources culminated in the bishops' tightened grip on monasteries and their networks of supporters. In addition to advancing scholarship on urban monasticism, ecclesiastical responses to poverty, and the social history of doctrine, Caner's thoroughly researched study will enhance future work on female asceticism and pilgrimage.