Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (review)

As the author explicitly intends, this book will be accessible and helpful to a wide audience: students of early Christianity and late antiquity but also those interested for more personal reasons in the history of the spiritual life. It has detailed background chapters and reading lists, well-constructed glossaries of names and places, and (as scattered appendices) translations of sources not widely available. It is also well written.

The chief cause for regret is a loss of opportunity. "Desert," "literature," and "monasticism" are problematic categories. Harmless wants to counter the notion that Egypt was "the birthplace of monasticism" (17). Yet, it is on Egypt that he concentrates. Caution, once expressed, is then ignored. The author admits that there were other sides to the story. He defers frequently to James Goehring and makes some forays into other parts of the empire. Monastics, he acknowledges, "might live in town, remain members of the local community, own property, and carry on business" (24). Yet, he fails to deconstruct the older account—reinforces, indeed, a line of argument that he knows is outmoded. The wider world is occasionally alluded to: the "foreign" audience of the Life of Antony (69) and the preoccupations of the various historiae (travelogues for readers distant from the desert [298]). But allusions are not allowed to govern our understanding of Egypt itself. The theological controversies of the age are not made to explain, for example, how trinitarian and christological issues might have affected ascetic culture at a theoretical level. And by taking for granted the reality of the Egyptian "desert," the author prevents us from asking what an imaginary "desert" might have looked like outside Egypt.

Equally problematic is the concept of "literature." A literary and theological analysis of the Life of Antony (68–74, 85–93) reaches beyond context and description but without setting in train (as it should) a sustained skepticism about the essentially calculated character of the text. The Apophthegmata are better handled in the most satisfying section of the book. The contrast with the Life of Antony is made explicit (168). "The Apophthegmata," writes Harmless, "does not have one theology of the monastic life, but many" (227). Unfortunately, when it comes to the "themes" of the collection (227–51), he depends largely on the categories of the systematic corpus. He does not seem interested, for example, in the different motives that inspired the alphabetical and systematic collections (a point explored exhaustively by Jean-Claude Guy). Harmless's most salutary admission is that they were chiefly an exercise in memory. Memory "can record, but it also selects and edits" (193). That is the closest he comes to criticism of the sources as declarations of belief or intent.

And what about "monasticism"? "How did monasteries arise?" asks Harmless. "How did monks—those who choose to live alone—choose to live together?" He restricts himself here to the achievements of Pachomius, assessed largely in terms of structure and authority without reflection on the variety of purposes behind the different accounts of Pachomius's life. So, Pachomius is made thereby an exception. He was certainly not a "desert Christian" as Antony may have been: "Pachomius and his disciples did not live in the desert; they lived near the Nile. They did not make the desert a city; they turned deserted villages into thriving communities" (141). Where does that leave the "monasticism" of the book's title? Why do we find no other clear examples of the institution?

The final three main chapters are devoted to the "monastic theologians" Evagrius and Cassian. They are handy to have, but fall short of novelty. It is unwise to the distinguish Evagrius's "ascetic theory" from his "mystical theology," and the tense ambiguities of Cassian's work are (not unusually) little explored.

Only in the last chapter, "Reflections," are those difficulties fully acknowledged. We hear at last about the "alternative forms of asceticism" that the sources "downplay or ignore" (418). Readers should have been supplied with...