Genre: Characteristics and Choices
Syriac hagiography was a well-developed genre long before John of Ephesus wrote. The passion narratives of the Edessan martyrs Shmona, Guria, and Habib; the Life of Simeon the Stylite ; the Life of the Man of God ; the Acts of Sharbil ; and the Life of John of Tella by the monk Elias are examples, exemplary for both content and style. Moreover, the increasing Hellenization of the fifth and sixth centuries did not diminish the standard. Elias' Life of John of Tella , written barely twenty years before John of Ephesus wrote his Lives , is a masterpiece of Syriac literature, with a prose of elegant simplicity. But Elias' account was above all a product of the cultural fusion that marked the early sixth century in the Syrian Orient. Excellent Syriac translations of Greek hagiography were also easily at hand.
John of Ephesus chose for his subjects a free-ranging style of cameo portraits, the most informal of hagiographical genres and best represented by the earlier Historia Lausiaca of Palladius and the Historia religiosa
of Theodoret of Cyrrhus. This genre took the form of collections of stories,[25] which might or might not be concerned with a biographical approach; a single incident would often suffice for the author's purpose. The style of these collections tends to be more informal than that of full-length vitae, but sometimes only by way of content; Theodoret's Greek surpasses what we find in many Greek Lives as far as language and style are concerned. The collections are notable for their roots in specific monastic communities; what they record are the traditions (often oral) of that community and the author's experiences within it.
John of Ephesus' Lives of the Eastern Saints share the main features of this collection genre, although his work is noticeably less serene than the collections of Palladius, of Theodoret, the Pratum spirituale of John Moschus, or the Historia monastica of the ninth-century Syriac writer Thomas of Marga. Religious controversy of one kind or another was present as a backdrop for each of these authors, but John alone integrates the religious and political upheavals of his time into the foreground of his collection. Nonetheless, John's Lives remain a monastic work, like the others of this kind.[26]
Thus John includes discourses on the ascetic life by solitaries and preachings on the temptations a monk or nun must expect to face.[27] He provides an exposition on "the basis of sound training," in which he describes the lengthy process through which a novice must pass before receiving the full habit in an Amidan monastery.[28] And, the final chapter of the Lives narrates the history of his own monastery of Mar John Urtaya, from its fourth-century foundation to his present time.[29] Again, his own experiences as a monk in quest of spiritual edification provide the loose (and familiar, in this genre) framework around which the Lives are set.
John's literary predecessors (so far as we know) were, however, men who wrote in Greek and not in Syriac; thus questions about John's bilingualism must be raised. What influence, if any, did these earlier works exert on John's collection? Is any cross-cultural borrowing apparent in John's choice of genre? Since John does not tell us anything specific in this regard, we can only assess circumstantial factors.
John was educated in a Syriac-speaking monastery known for its scholarly training.[30] At some stage he acquired a reasonable fluency in Greek, making possible his activities both as a Monophysite spokesman in the imperial court at Constantinople and as a missionary in Asia Minor where Syriac would not have been a language in use. Both Palladius' Historia Lausiaca and Theodoret's Historia religiosa would have been available to him on his travels in their original Greek.[31] Furthermore, at least parts of both of these collections were also available in Syr-
iac translation during John's lifetime.[32] But the question of heretical associations damaged the reputations of both these works during John's day and may have determined whether or not John was acquainted with either of them.
Palladius was hardly free of controversy during his career, and his Evagrianism, in particular, led the Greek church to suspect his work of harboring improper elements.[33] Nonetheless, these issues did not affect the general popularity of the Historia Lausiaca , although tamperings at the level of manuscript transmission reveal conflict between the love accorded this work and the anxiety caused to the church by its author's spiritual loyalties.[34] But Evagrius was highly thought of in Syrian tradition; much of his teaching survives only in Syriac.[35] To a Syrian monk such as John of Ephesus, Palladius' Evagrian spirit would have presented no problem.
About Theodoret, issues were sharper. Controversy concerning him had been more extreme than for Palladius: the Second Council of Ephesus (the "Robber Synod") in 449 deposed him from his see at Cyrrhus. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 reinstated him, but the vindication of Theodoret's faith proved a major obstacle for the Monophysites as far as the decisions of this council were concerned. To the Monophysites, Theodoret remained categorically the enemy of Cyril of Alexandria. Their obstinacy on this point enabled Justinian to resurrect the issue of Theodoret's teachings during the Three Chapters controversy of 544–554, and the Council of Constantinople in 553 reversed the reprieve of Chalcedon, condemning Theodoret's anti-Cyrillian writings.[36] His very name would have been anathema to the Monophysites, particularly during the years of John's novitiate and priesthood, as sentiments over Chalcedon hardened.[37] Moreover, a number of Theodoret's more important subjects—Jacob of Nisibis, Julian Saba, and Simeon Stylites, for example—would have been known in the Syrian Orient through Syriac writings about them. By John's time, a Syrian monk did not have to read Theodoret's collection to study Syrian ascetic tradition.
But if John was familiar with either or both of these predecessors (which seems likely at least in the case of Palladius), their works appear to have exerted little influence on his Lives except, perhaps, by suggestion of genre. In contrast, Thomas of Marga in the mid-ninth century made his imitation of Palladius both explicit, by frequent references to him, and implicit, through an intentional parallelism in his stories with those by the earlier Greek writer.[38] No such modeling is evident in John's Lives . The astringent didacticism of Palladius' vignettes and the classicism of Theodoret's accounts offer no parallel for John's rambling nar-
ratives. Similarly, their contents, both in emphases and in ascetic vision, differ distinctly from John's. The presence of a similar literary format does not seem to indicate a decision by John to follow precise models but rather to choose the hagiographical mode most comfortable for him.
John's literary choices, then, tell us certain things about him. His purpose here is found in story more than in history; his interest lies in what people experienced in the context of the events they lived through. So in this instance he writes hagiography and not a historical chronicle (as in his Ecclesiastical History ), anecdotal portraits and not biography. Moreover, John's concern as hagiographer is not with the specific impact of a key individual on the world (e.g., the Lives of Severus of Antioch and John of Tella), but with the shared witness and experience of a given community, the Amidan ascetics, and with the meaning of that community's presence in the world of its time.