The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (review)

It is likely that more than a few readers of early monastic literature have felt the stab of E. R. Dodds’ question: “where did all this madness come from”? Indeed it is difficult to avoid this impression if one focuses attention primarily on the spectacular solitary feats of asceticism in the literature or on the most deeply hellenized sources such as the Historia Lausiaca (on which Dodds relied most heavily). But if one shifts the focus of inquiry to the role and function of relationships in the ascetic life and to a primary source such as The Apophthegmata Patrum [AP], a very different picture of desert asceticism emerges, one characterized by balance, communal responsibility and personal generosity. Gould’s fine study of personal relationships among the desert fathers helps to show how central these qualities were to the early monastic ethos and as such makes an important contribution to our growing understanding of the ascetic world in late antiquity.

In situating his work, Gould acknowledges the importance of recent studies of monastic origins, the social and economic dimensions of Egyptian monasticism and the relationship between the monastic movement and the Church as a whole. But, he says, “studies of the life and thought of the monastic communities themselves have been less common, and it is this approach to the phenomenon which . . . now seems to deserve some attention.” He consciously eschews the use of a specific methodological perspective and instead strives to “allow the text to speak for itself and for the pattern of Christian spirituality for which it stands. . . .” In this sense, he says, the work is “almost purely descriptive in approach” (vii).

The first chapter is a dense but lucid analysis of the numerous critical questions relating to the formation of the AP. Gould argues persuasively for the historical reliability and internal integrity of the AP, calling it “the most important single source for our knowledge of the monasticism of fourth and fifth-century lower Egypt” (4). He arrives at this conclusion by demonstrating the internal coherence of the tradition—both oral and written—that produced the AP. Building on the work of Lucien Regnault, Gould draws attention to related collections of sayings, like those of Abba Isaiah and the Ethiopic Collection, which provide strong evidence for the coherence and reliability of the oral tradition underlying the sayings, and for the continuity between this tradition and the AP as we now have it. This represents a significant departure from the influential view of Jean-Claude Guy, who argued for a clear distinction between the shorter, pithier sayings (seen as earlier and more reliable) and the longer narratives (presumably reflecting the concerns of later generations of monks). Gould by contrast sees no such clear distinction, but rather claims that the alphabetico-anonymous collection of the AP as a whole (with some notable exceptions) ought to be seen as providing reliable testimony to the life and beliefs of the earliest generation of monks. This is important for two reasons. First, it serves as a corrective to the tendency of some scholars to devalue the AP (seen most recently in Samuel Rubenson’s The Letters of St. Antony). Second, it provides a firm historical basis for Gould’s own work on the subject of personal relationships in the desert tradition.

He organizes his investigation of this theme around five main subjects: the abba and his disciple, the monk and his neighbor, the problems of anger and judgement, solitude and interaction, and relationships and prayer. Gould’s treatment of the teaching relationship between the abba and his disciple is noteworthy for its attention to the complexity and delicacy of the pedagogical process and its centrality in the monks’ spiritual quest. He draws attention to the charismatic power of the abba’s word, to the monks’ recognition that access to such a word often depended on the attitude of the questioner, to the radical character of self-disclosure that characterized the discernment process, to the importance of example in the teaching relationship...