Egypt: The Community Witness

Following the lead of Severus of Antioch, Monophysite bishops by choice began to gather in Egypt even before the order of banishment reached their sees; for others, it was the nearest point of refuge.^[1] It was not surprising that exiled ascetics should arrive also, drawn as much by the tradition of Egypt's deserts as by the hope for safety.^[2] The first arrivals set the tone: a community was formed, noted for its discipline in faith and in practice. When John of Ephesus set out for Egypt in the early 530s, it was to visit this exiled community.^[3]

The community that interested John was from Palestine, but its roots were Syrian and its fame in John's time rested largely on its identity as a Syrian group. Its founder was the holy woman Susan, by birth from

the Persian territory of Arzanene, an area with strong ties to Syriac Christianity.^[4] Susan had turned to asceticism as a child. At the age of eight she left home, first in pilgrimage to Jerusalem and then to enter a convent in Palestine between Ascalon and Gaza. Some ten years later the persecutions began. Palestine was a major target, and Susan's convent, "since it was large and celebrated," was soon attacked. Facing the alternatives of confrontation or flight, Susan decided to leave for the desert outside Alexandria. Her choice distressed the sisters, who held her in high regard; five chose to follow her, despite her admonitions to the contrary.

From Alexandria the women soon found a suitable place to settle: an area in the desert, not far from the village of Mendis, with an abandoned fortress for shelter.^[5] Removed from the pressure of harassment and with Susan as spiritual guide, the nuns resumed their routine of prayer and labor. The village provided handiwork by which they could earn their keep and also looked after their general welfare.

Susan, however, had longed for solitude, and a nearby cave offered seclusion.^[6] But her testing of her vocation as a hermit brought panic to the sisters, for the nuns looked to her for leadership: "Don't you know that we came out to the desert trusting in you after our Lord? . . . Don't you know that without you we cannot exist?"^[7] At last a compromise had to be reached, and Susan agreed to a split routine, divided between solitude and interludes with her nuns. Susan's contemplative labors provided the embryonic community with a testimony to spiritual authority that did not go unnoticed; the community began to grow. At the same time, its reputation spread. The nuns' story reached a small community of monks, also of Mesopotamian origin, who had lived near to their convent in Palestine but were now suffering pursuit by the Chalcedonian authorities. Hearing of "the quietude and sweetness of that desert," the men soon found their way to the nuns and established themselves in the same area. Numbers in both communities increased as the persecutions elsewhere wore on. Still, the safety of Egypt did not provide an escape from the responsibilities of the religious crisis. Susan desired the anchoretic life, but the congregation outside Mendis required strong leadership because of the circumstances that had brought them together. In the eyes of both the men and the women, Susan alone was capable of this role. For her part, Susan understood that times of crisis demand critical action; although unhappy to assume the role of director for the community of men and women, Susan did so—and she did so very well.^[8]

But Susan's community and others like it were more than resettlement camps for refugees. They were places in which the Monophysite

faith was nourished and practiced, providing a steady witness in the midst of persecution. Their impact was strengthened by the parallel activity of Severus himself,^[9] a situation John of Ephesus emphasizes specifically in his Lives of the Eastern Saints .^[10] Fleeing Antioch in 518, Severus had gone first to Alexandria and the hospitality of the patriarch Timothy IV.^[11] From there he went on to the desert, where he "carried out to the full" the monastic vocation of his youth.^[12] As in the case of others with similar experience, Severus' standing as church leader had been reinforced by his early ascetic training at the hands of Peter the Iberian in the monastery of Maïouma outside Gaza.^[13] The return to the ascetic life enhanced his status in the broader world, all the more since withdrawal did not lighten his workload. Severus continued to conduct affairs internal and external for the Monophysite body.^[14] There were, however, some who took the patriarch's retreat as an excuse to slacken their ecclesiastical discipline.^[15] Severus' fear, unhappily prophetic, was that internal problems were diverting the believers' energy from the real battle at hand.^[16] By the nature of his presence and activity in Egypt, Severus enacted the model that John of Ephesus propagated: under persecution the Monophysites witnessed the soundness of their faith, and that witness was grounded in an ascetic practice responsive to times of crisis. John himself praised the religious vehicle Egypt had become in its position as Monophysite base. His account of Thomas the Armenian, for example, relates how this ascetic, while founding a monastic community in his homeland, came to Alexandria both to obtain books and to converse with the leaders and the religious who were gathered there.^[17]

Elsewhere John offers praise for the Egyptian Monophysite body itself.^[18] But in his Lives he hints that Egypt's spiritual authority was heightened by the presence of those who brought to it the particular witness of his own ascetic roots; so it is that John includes the story of the two deacons Thomas and Stephen.^[19] When the persecutions reached Mesopotamia, Amida's episcopal throne suffered from a crisis in leadership. The bishop Thomas, who had guided Amida since 504/5, died upon the arrival of an imperial order for his banishment in 519. He was succeeded by Nonnus, who survived only three months. The distinguished Mare was then consecrated and expelled, probably in 521. Finally the seat was taken over by the Chalcedonian Abraham bar Kaili, who held it for the next thirty years.^[20]

Mare was banished to Petra; with him there went a small retinue that included the deacons Thomas and Stephen.^[21] Petra proved a harsh place for the Amidans. In desperation, Mare sent Stephen to Constantinople for help.^[22] There Stephen encountered the future empress Theo-

dora, at the time a newly married patrician. In the peculiar pattern that later became their standard, the royal couple intervened: the place of exile was changed to Alexandria.^[23] Soon after, when Mare and his followers were resettled in Egypt, they heard of other Amidans in the region and of Susan's community in the desert of Mendis.^[24] It did not take long for Thomas and Stephen to find their way there. Thomas in particular was inspired and longed to partake of their spiritual discipline. In a "pit" not far from the community—possibly the "cave" that Susan herself had used for solitary practice—the deacon undertook the hermit's vocation.

But Thomas' story is joined to that of his comrade Stephen, and their partnership, as John writes it, is essential.^[25] Stephen himself was no less fervent than Thomas, but chronic infirmity had modified his own asceticism. At the time of Thomas' decision, Stephen, showing a sentiment near to John's, begged his friend not to seek so rigorous a practice: "For ourselves, this is too great a thing to live in the desert on account of our feebleness; but, my brother, let us look after our soul, and gain a desert by our manner of life and our heart, and always entreat the Lord to cause his grace to shine upon us."^[26] Thomas was undeterred; after one brief trip home to sort out his affairs, he labored in his pit for many years until his death. But John leaves no doubt in the reader's mind as to Stephen's own excellence: the gentler deacon went on to achieve great works as a leader in the refugee community of Constantinople and as an adviser to the empress Theodora, so touched by her first meeting with the Amidan. As elsewhere in John's Lives, these two men and their respective works are shown as two halves of the same whole; each completed the other.

However, it was the likes of Thomas that made Monophysite Egypt more than a cauldron of discontent, a point that John does not fail to underscore. Eventually Egypt had to be dealt with as the haven it had become. A Chalcedonian government could not allow the continued nourishment of a dissenting church. Justinian's efforts towards Chalcedonian restoration in Egypt began in 536, following the final breakdown that year of religious negotiations in Constantinople. His measures led to bloodshed that was to last decades and in Alexandria in particular was to flare up at every excuse.^[27] It was not until John the Almsgiver assumed the patriarchal seat in 611 that serious attempts were made to win over the Egyptian Monophysites, rather than to force submission.^[28] In fact, John's eight years on the throne were spent pacifying memories of Chalcedonian atrocities committed at a level "unknown even among the pagans."^[29]

Still, Egypt's deserts were vast, its ascetic communities numerous and remote. Imperial officials could not compete with the loyal monastic networks; Egypt continued to offer escape for the persecuted. In the Lives of the Eastern Saints , John of Ephesus speaks of Severus' exile after his final banishment by imperial decree in 536; at the same time, he points to the nature of the authority that the Monophysites gained by practice in Egypt, such as that of Thomas or, indeed, such as that found in Susan's community.^[30] Working for the Monophysite faithful—and in irreproachable company—Severus completed his days. But the kind of refuge Egypt now offered gradually transformed the haven into a house prison.