Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (review)

Within months of his death, and possibly earlier, Evagrios Pontikos became a figure of controversy, and that controversy has rarely died down. It is generally blamed for the Origenist controversy that erupted in the late fourth century, and provoked the condemnation of some of the Egyptian monks by Pope Theophilos of Alexandria, though, by the time of the condemnation, Evagrios was already dead (on Pope Theophilos, see now Norman Russell's Theophilus of Alexandria [2007], in Routledge's alas doomed series, "Early Church Fathers"). Evagrios was certainly among the "Origenists" condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Synod of 553, though the nature of this "Origenism" is far from clear. As a result of these condemnations, Evagrios' works struggled to survive in their original Greek, though they were more successful than one might have expected owing to the peerless wisdom they contained, especially for ascetics pursuing the monastic life. However, several important works were lost in Greek and survive only in Syriac and Armenian, mostly, the languages of those independent of the imperial conciliar tradition from Chalcedon onwards (in Armenia, Evagrios receives veneration as a saint). Evagrios once more became controversial in modern times, especially after Antoine Guillaumont discovered in the British Museum Library (as it was then) a Syriac manuscript of the Evagrios' Kephalaia Gnostica. Guillaumont argued that this manuscript contained a more faithful translation of the Greek original than the text already known, and was, moreover, the source of the "Origenist" opinions condemned by the council of 553. He then proceeded, in a book which transformed Evagrian studies (Les «Kephalaia Gnostica» d'Évagre le Pontique et l'histoire de l'origénisme chez les grecs et ches les syriens [1962]), to reconstruct the "Evagrian" system on the basis of the anathemas, supported by passages from Evagrios' authentic works, especially the newly discovered manuscript of the Kephalaia Gnostica. Guillaumont's reconstructed Evagrianism has been widely accepted in the scholarly world, despite the fact that using anathemas as a blueprint for heresy seems methodologically quite unsound, and the further fact that these anathemas date from more than a century and a half after Evagrios' death; his disciples must have been remarkably faithful, for Guillaumont's reconstruction to be valid.

Guillaumont's views did not pass without challenge, notably from the scholar-hermit, Father Gabriel Bunge, who has done more than anyone to rehabilitate Evagrios, producing translations and commentaries on his works, as well as sharply argued articles dismantling various aspects of Guillaumont's reconstruction, and in general presenting Evagrios as a great master of the spiritual life, whose wisdom needs to be heard today. If Bunge's impact on Western scholarship has been limited, his reception in the Orthodox world has been much more enthusiastic. Parallel to Bunge's work has been the rediscovery of the importance to Evagrios of the Scriptures. Although much of his scriptural commentary is lost, it seems that Evagrios devoted a great deal of time to the genre of commentary called "scholia," brief comments on individual verses, and indeed words. His scholia on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes have been published in Sources Chrétiennes, and there has been available for some years now in electronic form to those with persistence enough to track it down a working edition of his scholia on the Psalms, prepared by Marie-Josèphe Rondeau on the basis of a manuscript in the Vatican Library. The Scholia on the Psalms emerges as one of Evagrios' longest works. Luke Dysinger's book is the first attempt to approach Evagrios through what, on the face of it, has a good claim to be his most important work.

It is a wonderful book, opening up whole new vistas in our understanding of Evagrios. Like most great works, it all seems so obvious: why has no one done this before? Psalms were, and to some extent still are, the bedrock of the monastic life. As Dysinger, himself a Benedictine monk, shows, Evagrios entered...