Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity (review)

How did the men who renounced the world for monastic life become the models and most sought-after candidates for ecclesiastical power? How did monks become the obvious, indeed, "ideal" candidates for bishops? This book, based on the author's Princeton dissertation, traces the development of this theme in late antiquity with a focus on the fourth and fifth century Greek East but also reaching to glimpse hagiographical and historical texts as late as the Iconoclastic period and into the early fourteenth century.

Despite this chronological palette, the book is really about the Cappadocians; a more specific subtitle would be The Influence of Basil of Caesarea on the Monk-Bishop Ideal. While late antique studies often pit ascetics against bishops, Basil, Sterk argues, set the stage for their convergence: the asceticization of the episcopate and clerical institutionalization of asceticism in the ascendance of the monk-bishop.

After an introductory glimpse at ascetic models in Egypt and Syria, Sterk devotes her first three chapters (Part 1) to exploring the emergence of this ideal in Basil's life and work, looking especially at his Asceticon, Moralia, his letters, and Gregory of Nazianzus' funeral oration for Basil (Or. 43) together with a brief consideration of Basil's homilies. Exploring key tensions and harmonies in Basil's relationships as bishop and monastic leader and key themes in the construct of his monk-bishop ideal, Sterk argues that Basil sets the stage for later authors who point back to him in supporting images of church leadership. The life of Moses is a key paradigm for Basil and one traced throughout the study, particularly Moses' three-stage progression from education in the wisdom of the world, to renunciation in order to embrace the contemplative life, to reluctant emergence from solitude for a leadership modeled on philanthropy.

Part 2 explores the development of the monk-bishop ideal in Gregory of Nyssa (ch. 4), Gregory of Nazianzus (ch. 5) and John Chrysostom (ch. 6). For Gregory of Nyssa, Sterk focuses on his ambiguous episcopal gifts and his hagiographical biographies (especially those of Moses), Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Basil. For Gregory of Nazianzus, she discusses his asceticism, episcopal tensions, and Or. 43. And John Chrysostom, she suggests, embodies the ideal monk-bishop "in spite of himself," one who took for granted a unified concept of monastic asceticism as integral to clerical leadership.

Part 3 explores the gradual "triumph" of the monk-bishop ideal as seen in the eventual official pairing of the two in legal texts (ch. 7), fifth-century church histories (ch. 8), and hagiographies (ch. 9). Especially fascinating is chapter seven which traces the monk-bishop theme from pre-Chalcedonian diversity to legal codification (beginning with Canon 4 of Chalcedon), culminating in Justinian's civil laws, most notably his ruling in the 530s that no bishops may be married nor have any living descendants. Initially aimed at controlling potentially troublesome monks by enforcing ordination and thus regulating monasticism, these laws, Sterk suggests, eventually created a "vast, legitimate pool from which to draw future bishops and patriarchs" (173).

Finally, the Epilogue ambitiously touches on how the monk-bishop ideal may have weathered the tensions of the iconoclastic controversy (at least as seen in one iconoclastic text) and concludes with an example from thirteenth-century Serbia and a brief discussion of hesychasm.

Sterk's study is a serious and dedicated exploration of the complex relationship between late antique Christian renunciation and power. Its strength lies in its attempt to tease out the strands of a thematic coupling which church historians have often traditionally assumed or ignored. For this reviewer, however, the study is not without problems. Its representation of Basil as the dominant referent, for example, often seems inadvertently to perpetuate rather than correct the stereotype, entirely subordinating both the profound influence of Chrysostom on liturgical models and the importance of the Gregories in constructing Basil's image. For example, Basil's description of Gregory...