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

The book under review draws the reader's attention to an important phenomenon in late ancient monasticism—the practice of xeniteia, or, in Caner's translation, "voluntary alienation" as a form of asceticism. Caner explores the social implications of wandering but also exhibits commendable sensitivity to the presumed theological motivations of the wanderers. In a panoramic overview of the late ancient world, he draws evidence from Southern Gaul, North Africa, Lower Egypt, Constantinople, and Syria. Consequently, the primary sources reflected here are Latin and Greek, but Syriac and Coptic are also included. The breadth of the book is undoubtedly one of its most attractive features.

Caner begins with some fairly conventional theoretical observations on "the model holy man" and "normative tradition and historical realities" (1-19). He then turns to the Apophthegmata and other sources on Egyptian monasticism. In this first chapter he documents and analyzes the tension in these sources between recounting tales of early monastic wanderers and stressing the importance of manual labor. This leads to a second chapter in which Caner looks to third-century Syria. On the basis of the popular Acts of Thomas and ps.-Clement's Letters to Virgins, he offers a bold conjecture of the early history of Syrian monasticism. He claims that the mendicant behavior which these documents are taken to support represents the ongoing relevance of "the apostolic paradigm" in Syria (see esp. 77-82).

The third chapter applies the apostolic paradigm to the Messalian controversy. Caner seeks to characterize the so-called Messalians on the basis of their behavior, which is, he argues, in conformity with the apostolic paradigm. Thus, he prescinds from the vague claims of heretical doctrine found in conventional accounts of the Messalians. In place of the term "Messalian," Caner uses "People Who Pray," for although he wants to acknowledge the movement, he simultaneously wants to distance himself from the "Messalian profile" that evolved over time (83-86).

In the fourth chapter, Caner proposes that in the career of Alexander the Sleepless we can appreciate the sharp division between those who adhered to the apostolic paradigm and those whose practices were more integrated into civic society. He argues that authors hostile to "People Who Pray" were threatened by their charismatic authority. He further argues that it was precisely this authority that constituted their claim to material support. The fifth chapter focuses on the impact which begging ascetic teachers had in John Chrysostom's Constantinople and in Nilus' Ancyra. The final chapter explores the role played by Constantinopolitan monks in ecclesiastical politics and controversies.

Caner's argument is broad, learned, and daring. Perhaps his most important methodological decision was to eschew the traditional focus on doctrine and opt instead for behavior as the basis for recognizing the eponymous wandering, begging monks. Sometimes his posture toward the traditional sources is aggressive as when he warns that ". . . scholarship has perpetuated the labels, distinctions, and typologies that late antique authorities used to discredit and marginalize beliefs and practices contrary to their own" (13). But we should be aware of the risks inherent in the selective use of ancient authors, especially when their writings constitute our only source of information. Caner offers no principles for determining when Epiphanius, inter alios, is describing people accurately and when he is indulging in typological exaggerations. This fact gives Caner's analysis an ad hoc feel.

The author sometimes seems hasty in homogenizing the outcasts—and also their opponents—and attributing motives and beliefs to people about whom we know practically nothing. At one point, he takes an admittedly "otherwise unattested" phenomenon as representative of "what was happening in church dioceses outside our view" (18). In his discussion of how Basil responds to monastic argia (104-5), Caner arbitrarily identifies the object of Basil's denunciations as "Messalians." The fact...