Literacy and Memory in Evagrius’s Monasticism

This paper examines Evagrius’s monastic literacy, that is, his views on how to write and read monastic texts, in order to argue for the central role of memory in that literacy. Evagrius’s textuality is Origenist because of the hierarchical relationship between material text and spiritual meaning; that textuality shapes Evagrius’s identity as a monastic writer and the esoteric quality of reading in his monastic community. A collective monastic memory is one element that is necessary to read his texts properly, namely, in a way that will allow access to the spiritual strength in the text. Yet memory, like texts, engages the same tension between corporeal reality and immaterial goals that is at the heart of Evagrius’s monasticism. The relationship between literacy and monasticism shapes the memory of Evagrius in the works of two of his followers, Palladius and John Cassian.