Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (review)

With this learned volume, David Brakke gracefully interweaves an intellectual biography of Athanasius with the history of asceticism in the fourth century. In addition to treating many well known works, Brakke brings to his portrait of Athanasius a number of important documents previously underutilized both in studies of the bishop of Alexandria and in the history of Egyptian Christianity, in part because their attribution has been questioned. Having established Athanasius as the author of these texts, mostly preserved in Coptic or Syriac, in his article, “The Authenticity of the Ascetic Athanasiana” (Orientalia 63 [1994]: 17–56), Brakke now brings these writings center stage to reconstruct Athanasius’s career-long efforts to integrate various branches of the ascetic movement in Egypt into the greater episcopal structure of his Church. An extensive appendix generously offers the reader the first English translations of these writings; the Letters to Virgins in particular will be a boon for courses on Christianity and gender.

Chapter one treats Athanasius’s interaction with cells of urban ascetic virgins in Alexandria, arguing in large part from a perceptive exegesis of two Letters to Virgins, the first of which Brakke tentatively dates to the period from 337–339, immediately following Athanasius’s return from his first of five exiles. The bishop attempted to steer these women away from intellectual ascetic teaching circles that had a long history in Alexandrian Christianity, stretching back to Valentinus, Clement, and Origen. In Athanasius’s day these coeducational study groups resisted episcopal authority associating themselves variously with Arian or Melitian points of view, and perhaps most markedly with the Leontopolis-based teacher Hieracas who doubted whether sexually active Christians were Christians at all. Athanasius linked marriage and virginity as legitimate forms of Christian life by explicating the virgins’ identity as “brides of Christ.” By presenting virginity as a higher form of marriage, Athanasius attempted to divert these women from an ascetic perfectionism of spiritual liberation, while imposing on them a restrictive model of marriage; he appealed to Christ’s brides to remain silent and submissive—removing themselves both from public roles in the Church and from intellectual discussions of theological controversies with independent male teachers. Thus he attempted to render ascetic women bound and subordinate to the greater Church hierarchy that he represented.

In chapter two Brakke moves to Athanasius’s relations with different classes of male monks in the Egyptian desert, beginning, for the most part, around 350, in the years between his second and third exiles. As in the case of the virgins, Athanasius’s goal was to subordinate ascetic groups to ecclesiastical oversight, asserting his role as bishop by claiming authority to instruct in matters of ascetic practice. Reading the Letter to Amoun and the less well known and fragmentary On Sickness and Health, Brakke shows how Athanasius used his episcopal role as interpreter of scripture to teach semi-eremitical monks moderation with regard to sleep habits and nocturnal emission. Proper ascetic practice thereby became a matter of orthodoxy. Elsewhere, Athanasius attempted to deputize monks by elevating them to sees along the Nile, thus solidifying the loyalty of whole monastic communities. Securing the allegiance of the powerful Pachomian communities of the Thebaid required greater subtlety, and trudging (perhaps inevitably) through a muddle of sources, Brakke charts Athanasius’s involvement in Pachomian politics, culminating (after the founder’s death) in the bishop’s successful intervention in the delicate transfer of leadership from Horsisius to Theodore and back again.

Athanasius’s program for professed ascetics complemented similar efforts to develop the ascetic sensibilities of ordinary worshippers. Chapter three explores Athanasius’s ascetic interpretation of the whole of Christian life based on ideas of imitation of the saints and an interpretation of scripture that tied regular parishioners to the work of the renouncers while differentiating the degree of heavenly reward to gleaned by the two groups. Brakke illuminates a shift in theological emphasis away from an approach to God through intellectual achievement and contemplation and toward salvation through asceticism; away from...