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III Amida: The Measure of Madness
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III
Amida: The Measure of Madness

John of Ephesus presents to his readers the ascetic model (and its variations) by which he himself was trained. Although the Lives of the Eastern Saints succeed in placing this model in a larger context, Amida's history gave a specific shape to the asceticism that developed in its regions; more pointedly, Amida's experiences during the sixth century provide us with a measure for the urgency and compassion underlying John's Lives .

Ascetic Roots

From its inception, asceticism in Amida and its territory was enmeshed in the volatile existence of the city itself. A metropolitan city in the late Roman province of north Mesopotamia, Amida lay strategically on the Tigris River, at the eastern frontiers of the empire, near to the Persian borders.[1] Constantius embellished the city in the mid-fourth century amidst frequent disruptions by the Sasanid monarchy. Soon after, in 359/60, the Persians arrived, devastating Amida and its environs; insecurity was a given factor in the area. The desire for an ascetic presence shared with the wider Christian realm by Amida was thus tinged by concern for Amida's own fate.[2]

The growth of asceticism in Amida's territory concurred with that of the Syrian Orient as a whole. By the early years of the fourth century


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Amida's regions harbored individuals of noteworthy ascetic practice who pursued an anchoretic life in loosely gathered groups.[3] It was not long before the city itself could boast a growing monastic presence, and before the end of the century it was clear that asceticism and society had settled down to a coexistence. The monastery of Mar John Urtaya, to which John of Ephesus belonged, was founded during this period; John of Ephesus preserves the oral tradition of its community.[4] Mar John, called Urtaya because of his missionary work in Anzetene, chose to make a cell for ascetic seclusion outside Amida but near the city walls, around the year 389. He settled near a tiny site already known as a place of ascetic practice: a few huts belonging to a distinguished solitary named Mar 'fwrsm. John's spiritual labors soon won him a following and his first two disciples came from the monastery of the Edessenes, by this time relocated at Amida. When Mar John died, his community had "attained to a large increase in buildings and belongings and increase of brotherhood up to the number of fifty men."[5]

The early choice of an urban rather than a rural setting for the Amidan ascetics differs from that of their counterparts Jacob of Nisibis and Julian Saba, who chose to stay within reach of settled communities while dwelling apart in the wilderness. But Amida's practical problems were considerable. The threat of invasion was constant; an isolated recluse was not exempt from danger unless utterly remote, and proximity to the shelter of fortified walls and communal protection was a simpler alternative.

By the fifth century Amida's citizens and ascetics seem to have settled into a profitable coexistence. The tradition that John of Ephesus relates for Mar John Urtaya again presents the picture.[6] After the death of its founder, there followed a steady stream of leaders for the monastery right through the fifth century, all of whom are credited with expanding the community's size in numbers and in buildings. During the second half of the century, however, a dispute broke out among the brethren with regard to their abbot Abraham, himself a native of the city. After governing the monastery well for some time, "unfounded ill-feeling" arose, and Abraham was charged with embezzling the monastery's funds for the sake of his family.[7]

The ensuing clash led to Abraham's angry resignation, but he did not abandon his ascetic career; rather, he practiced it in seclusion at his home in the city, in accordance with the Syrian tradition of individual vocation. Apparently, urban connections with the monasteries had reached the stage where monks were prone to petty intrigues concerning the city's inhabitants—problems indicative of growing wealth and property for ascetic communities, and of growing integration with the social structure of the city.


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Abraham's successor was another Abraham, under whom the monastery rose to its greatest fame and reached the size of four hundred monks. This Abraham, "being also formidable and severe and stern toward all the chief men and magnates of the city,"[8] became known even to the emperor Zeno, who summoned him to Constantinople. Received with honor at the imperial court, he was granted substantial gifts, including a village in Amida's neighboring district of Ingilene. Eventually, he was consecrated to a bishopric in Anzetene.

Although the monastery of Mar John Urtaya was perhaps the most acclaimed of Amida's ascetic communities, it by no means eclipsed all the others in reputation. With the advent of the sixth century, the city of Amida was known for the number of famous monastic communities it sheltered in and around its walls.[9] It was at this point that Amida's inhabitants were caught up in an acute crisis of circumstance, affecting local ascetic practice and its place in local urban society.

The Sixth Century: The Setting

To read the Syrian chroniclers on the beginning of the sixth century is to see that they expected the worst: the turn of the century had hardly been auspicious. From 499 to 502, calamity repeatedly struck the Syrian Orient. Locusts came in masses, bringing famine and disease; earthquakes struck town and country; rivers overflowed their banks; city walls burst; twice, the sun was eclipsed; and burning signs appeared in the skies,[10] For Amida, disaster was imminent.

In the autumn of 502, the Persian army under the command of its ruler Kawad laid siege to Amida.[11] The siege lasted three months, with both sides suffering from the preexisting famine and the Persians suffering in particular from the onset of winter. Various devices were employed to no avail against Amida's impregnable walls, while those inside battled valiantly in return. Gradually the attackers grew disheartened, and the besieged overconfident. The Persians were on the brink of departing when Kawad gained new determination—attributed to a divine vision from Christ or to a premonition of the Persian Magi—indicating that success would soon follow. Indeed, a single lapse in Amida's night watch allowed the Persians sudden entry in January 503. Sources claim that eighty thousand people were slaughtered as the Persians sacked the city.[12]

Amida's fall was of serious consequence.[13] Claims were made that the defeat was an act of divine retribution for Amida's impiety. The accusation was raised, and became set in later tradition, that monks from


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the monastery of Mar John Urtaya betrayed the city: drinking too much wine one night, they fell asleep and failed to raise the alarm when the Persians scaled the walls.[14] However, the charges seem unlikely.

In the end, the monks of Mar John suffered a particularly gruesome fate.[15] Years later John of Ephesus met an old monk in Palestine, who wept when he heard that John was from Amida. He had been a brother in the community of Mar John Urtaya when the Persians took the city. He recalled for John how the brethren had sought refuge inside the city walls when the Persian army arrived; and how the conquerors upon entering the city had butchered the monks, killing ninety in succession before pausing for captives and booty—the point at which he had escaped, vowing never to return to Amida.[16] Nonetheless, the slanderous story of the monks serves to signify how visible they were in the city: it may well have been an attempt to explain why their holy presence had not protected Amida from the catastrophe.

The suggestion has been made that these accounts may indicate a changing political situation, that by the early sixth century anti-Chalcedonian dissidents of the east were prepared to turn anti-Roman in times of war.[17] But we have no contemporary evidence of disloyalty. On the contrary, the more trustworthy sources do not specify who was on guard duty that night. The account of "Joshua the Stylite" is sober but fair-minded: one cold January night, those on guard duty drank too much wine. Some fell asleep, and others went home because of the rain.

Whether then through this remissness, as we think, or by an act of treachery, as people said, or as a chastisement from God, the Persians got possession of the walls of Amid by means of a ladder, without the gates being opened or the walls breached.[18]

The Roman army responded immediately; it was said that the emperor Anastasius was sick with grief when he learned of Amida's plight. By the summer of 503 the Romans were encamped against the city, but faced with its unbreachable walls, as well as their own internal problems, they shortly abandoned it. In 504 they returned, prepared for a drawn-out effort at recovery. The effects of this second siege on those inside the city walls, Persian or citizen, were merciless. Famine prevailed; charges of cannibalism and other desperate acts grew daily. The Amidan women suffered further: as food supplies decreased, the Persians imprisoned the city's men in order to keep available food for themselves; they left the women loose, however, to use as slaves and bed partners. Thus raped and abused—but not fed—the women especially were charged with cannibalism. As it is clear that men, too, were reduced to the same efforts for survival, the women's situation can only


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have differed in this matter because of their relative freedom of movement in the city.

The Roman siege camp was also suffering, from weather as well as from lack of supplies. At last, with both attackers and attacked in serious straits, an agreement was reached in the winter of 505. Amida was returned to Roman hands, a shell of its former self.[19]

At this point, Procopius' narrative implies that the surviving Amidans forgot their misfortunes, a misleading impression, even on the basis of his own account.[20] Before a generation had passed, war was renewed under Kawad's successor Khosroes, against Justin I and then against Justinian; a final treaty was not to be signed until 562. Although Amida was not again a specified battle site, it was garrisoned by the Romans; and with Mesopotamia repeatedly invaded in the course of these campaigns, the area remained unsafe.[21]

Moreover, the Persian invasions brought an attendant and more diffused problem: in their wake followed the Hunnic tribes of Hephthalitae, who appear to have made continual, if sporadic, incursions into the eastern Roman provinces during these years.[22] Whether for their own purposes or in pursuit of the Persians, John of Ephesus depicts repeated raids by the Hephthalitae.[23] Some stories surely were derived from the Persian use of Hunnic mercenaries in their own armies; in this capacity the Hephthalitae seem to have proved unruly and prone to unauthorized plundering.[24] And they carried out their own independent incursions, notably in 515 and 531/2, which wrought serious damage in Roman territory and substantiated the common fear of invasion.[25]

While war against outsiders persisted, internal relations were rapidly breaking down. Religious persecution against the Monophysites commenced with the accession of Justin I—"Justin the Terrible," as one Monophysite source called him[26] —in 519. Justin shifted the imperial religious policy to impose the Chalcedonian faith by force;[27] this policy continued thereafter under his successors, despite occasional mitigation. Amida in this instance, too, became the scene of particular suffering.

The persecutions themselves were uneven, in both place and duration, and depended largely on the patriarch or bishop at hand. Some were perhaps more efficient than the emperor had envisioned.[28] But an area so entrenched in Monophysite faith as Mesopotamia would provide the most threatening resistance to the government's aims. The situation might well seem to call for severe measures.

When the patriarch Severus of Antioch was deposed and banished in 518, he was soon succeeded by Paul "the Jew," a staunch Chalcedonian.[29] In the course of the persecutions that Paul set in motion between


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519 and 521, Abraham bar Kaili—the archvillain of Syrian tradition—attained the metropolitan seat at Amida, which he then held for thirty years.[30] Paul's excessive cruelty seems to have led to his replacement in 521 by Euphrasius, a Chalcedonian perhaps by fashion. Euphrasius may have alleviated the persecutions somewhat, but his death during Antioch's earthquake of 526 was seen by Monophysites as a fitting end.[31] He was succeeded immediately by Ephrem, a native of Amida and a government official of some power. It was the combination of Ephrem and Abraham bar Kaili that unleashed suffering once more upon Amida.

The accession of Ephrem to the patriarchal seat of Antioch was greeted by a menacing omen: the sun was obscured for eighteen months. Reports indicate that it was not eclipsed, nor did it disappear; it simply diminished in warmth for an unbroken year and a half.[32] Ephrem was indeed a daunting figure. Although Syrian, he had received a Greek education and gradually rose through the civil ranks to become comes orientis around the year 522. While in this capacity, he was chosen to be patriarch; as civil administrator he had proved himself competent and efficient, and even his religious enemies would later attest his skills as an official.[33] His consecration was thus significant on two accounts: first, as an indication of the close interaction and shared responsibility between high civil and ecclesiastical posts at this time;[34] and second, because his secular offices enabled Ephrem to bring a military escort to his throne. During his eighteen years as patriarch, Ephrem would use his forces freely.

Ephrem promoted the Chalcedonian cause with such severity that our sources are polarized on his behalf. He was influential within Chalcedonian ranks and could, when alarmed, carry out consultation with Pope Agapetus of Rome.[35] Although trained in civil administration, he was a respectable theologian.[36] Chalcedonian sources depict him as a wise fatherly figure who sought to convert Monophysites by gentle persuasion.[37] Moreover, as patriarch he continued to embellish the city of Antioch, looking after its affairs much as he had earlier.[38] But Monophysite sources viewed Ephrem in a different light, as one who encouraged a thorough persecution throughout the East. These writers saw his support of the Chalcedonian faith as opportunism and were outraged by his employment of civil troop.[39]

Ephrem's prime henchmen was Abraham bar Kaili, a figure rarely treated by scholars but whose role in the Monophysite persecutions was felt all too keenly by his contemporaries. Although he held the bishopric of Amida for thirty years,[40] Syrian tradition has woven his activity to-


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gether with that of Ephrem. Abraham obviously conducted a harsher campaign than his superior, and while he acted at the patriarch's behest, he appears to have been more of an extremist. He may have been doing Ephrem's dirty work for him. Unfortunately, surviving evidence on Abraham is based almost entirely on John of Ephesus' Ecclesiastical History . One might wish for Chalcedonian accounts to balance the picture.[41] Their silence may be instructive, however, indicating a lack of information or interest. It is also evidence that the Chalcedonian presence in Mesopotamia was confined both to the upper echelons of the imperially sponsored civil and ecclesiastical administration and to the army, a case much like Egypt's. On the other hand, both Ephrem and Abraham were natives of Amida; further, if Abraham served as bishop for so many years, there must have been a sizeable Chalcedonian presence in Amida itself.

Abraham is charged with more than exiling the faithful and compelling Chalcedonian communion. Monophysite sources, based on John of Ephesus, report that he kept a census count on his citizens to ensure that not even a miscarried fetus or a stillborn child escaped Chalcedonian baptism; and that he invaded holy sanctuaries, tortured religious prisoners, crucified and burned dissidents, and was disrespectful of their corpses. The most sinister charge was that he employed a band of lepers; these he sent to pollute Monophysite property with their disease or to be prison companions for those disagreeing with him. Nonetheless, it was in concerted effort with Ephrem that Abraham's most brutal steps were taken, following Justinian's final banishment of Severus of Antioch in 536. Ephrem's "descent to the east" during 536–537 was considered the height of the persecutions in the Syrian Orient, but its worst crimes have been attributed to Abraham. As a parting shot, Michael the Syrian claims that Abraham was a gluttonous lover of wine, foppishly vain in dress, who conducted religious ceremonies with ostentatious pomp.[42]

The Persian campaigns compounded the persecutions and brought the return of famine as a chronic situation in Amida's territory. Local plagues broke out and were finally subsumed into the Great Bubonic Plague that struck in 542. Conditions were ripe for disease to flourish, and the Great Plague at its peak is reported by John of Ephesus to have killed thirty thousand people from Amida and its lands in the span of three months.[43] As elsewhere in the Byzantine East, famine followed the epidemic for those who survived, and outbreaks of the disease continued to recur for the remainder of the century. Our sources record an


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unbroken succession of natural and human calamities for Amida's regions as the wars and religious coercion continued also. Finally, in the year 560, the city of Amida went mad.

The accounts of the "plague of madness" are no less chilling for their confusion.[44] The sickness was called "dreadful, abominable, and hideous," and "maniacal and diabolical." Without exception, the madness was seen as an act of divine vengeance for the sins of the city. Later tradition also sought a divine cure for the "plague" and added the figure of Jacob Burd'aya to the event. Legend claimed that he predicted the suffering in advance, attributing it to those who had submitted to the pressures of persecution and joined the Chalcedonian ranks, and that the saint finally returned to exorcise the city.[45] But the primary version, on which the chronicles draw, is from John of Ephesus' Ecclesiastical History . John was a contemporary and, although not present in Amida at the time, well informed on events there.

John's account and those based on it show considerable insight when describing the context of the outbreak. They begin by summarizing the preceding forty years of war, persecution, plague, and famine, and the resulting persistent level of anxiety in the city. At last, on this occasion, a false report that the Persians were again attacking Amida and pillaging the countryside proved a sudden cause for panic.

It was then that the madness descended. People dashed around barking like dogs, bleating like sheep, clucking like hens; children ran crazed through the graveyards, throwing each other about, shouting obscenely, biting each other, hanging upside down, crying with trumpetlike wails; no one recognized his own home. Taken to the churches by the few who remained sane, the crowds foamed at the mouth and claimed with rage that only the intervention of the apostles and martyrs prevented them from massacring and plundering the entire city. The madness lasted some months, perhaps as long as a year. It struck elsewhere in the Orient, in Tella, Edessa, Charrhae, and Maipherqat; but no other place was reputed to have suffered like Amida.[46]

Despite its arresting scope in numbers and duration, the Amidan plague of madness is not without parallel. Other periods of history have witnessed similar outbreaks of protracted mass hysteria; significantly, these have occurred under similarly compounded conditions of famine, general want, disease, religious unrest, and natural calamity.[47] In Amida's case, the symptoms displayed all match the views of insanity prevalent during antiquity, both for the Oriental and Greco-Roman worlds.[48] Moreover, the other cities that suffered the same plague—Constantina/Tella, Edessa, Charrhae, and Martyropolis/Maipherqat—all experienced a suc-


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cession of natural and political disasters nearly as unbroken as Amida's.[49] The account of Amida's plague of madness, then, stands as testimony to the fact that society, like the individual, does have a breaking point: the course of events that the sixth century brought to Amida could well have broached such a limit.[50]

The particular tragedy of Amida, and the horrors leading up to it, epitomized that of the Monophysite Syrian Orient as a whole during the sixth century. In Syrian tradition, the memory of those years did not lose the sense of trauma.[51] One would expect such times to raise the potency of the ascetic presence; but just as the lay populace would turn to the power of sanctity with particular urgency, so too would the ascetics be compelled to respond from their own suffering and involvement in the plight of the world. City and wilderness, the poles of ascetic experience, in these circumstances lost their distinctive boundaries and came to inhabit a realm of mutual crisis. It was this mutual realm that John of Ephesus elucidated in his accounts of the holy men and women of Amida.

Amida: The Devil Without and the Devil Within

The hermit of late antiquity had sought the holy by inhabiting a physical space—in desert or wilderness—as separate from the space of civilized society as the spiritual realm was from the physical. Even when society extended itself to include the holy, by incorporating the functional employment of the holy man or woman into its workings,[52] the space of the ascetic presence remained separate from the urban space of village or city, whether it was contained within a separate monastic complex or, more frequently, outside the city walls.[53] The populace came out to the holy presence, as they had to Simeon the Stylite.[54] Only the purest could achieve the estrangement from the world evidenced by the holy fool, living immersed in, yet untouched by, the debauchery of civilization.[55]

But the territory of Amida precluded the privacy of an external setting for ascetic practice, and even the inner space of the ascetic's spiritual life could not offer refuge for any length of time. The Persian invasions provide a concrete example. Procopius relates that in 503 during their command over Amida, they laid waste with fire the sanctuary of a holy man called Simeon, near to the city.[56]

The intermittent incursions by Huns as well as by Persians were as disturbing for the ascetics, even those living in seclusion, as they were for the village or town communities. Maro the Stylite had stood on his


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pillar near Amida for twenty years when he saw a vision foretelling the arrival of a raiding party of Huns. His horror, mirroring the reaction soon to be heard among the villagers, frightened the brethren of his community. Most of them fled with the townspeople to a nearby fortress—again, the proximity is instructive—while three loyal brothers stayed behind with Maro. Fortunately, they escaped the band's notice unharmed.[57]

However, such raids left behind a more insidious threat. In constant fear, the populace sought comfort in stories of divine protection. Thus Procopius tells of the anchorite Jacob, dwelling a day's journey from Amida, who was discovered by a group of marauding Hephthalitae but succeeded in rendering them motionless when they tried to attack him. They remained paralyzed until the Persian king himself came to beg their release, which Jacob worked with a prayer. Faced with such power, Kawad then offered the hermit any favor he wished, presuming money would be the request. But Jacob asked that he be allowed to shelter all who came to him as fugitives from war. We are told that the pledge was kept, and many sought refuge there as word went out of what had taken place.[58] Similarly, John of Ephesus tells how the young monk Z'ura (before his stylite days) had taken refuge in a fortress from an invading host of Huns. Sent out later to see if his monastery was still intact, he encountered the raiding band, and one of its members rushed upon him. Z'ura, too, rendered him motionless until his comrades had departed and then allowed him to go free without harm.[59]

Anxiety produced a fear both articulated and internalized. When Simeon the Mountaineer cursed the inhabitants of a remote village for willfully hindering his efforts on their behalf, they shouted at him, "If you think that your curses are so well heard, go and curse these Huns who are coming and making havoc of creation, and let them die."[60] More pointedly, ascetics now waged battle with demons appearing in the guise of marauders. Paul the Anchorite set out to exorcise a cave notorious for its demonic possession, located on a lonely stretch of the Tigris and needed as shelter for traders and travelers. For many days he stayed enclosed in the cave, waging battle against fiends of every shape and kind. At last, in an effort to drive the holy man out, the demons assailed him in the likeness of villagers fleeing in panic from approaching invaders; when Paul remained unmoved they put on their most fearful aspect, guised as the Huns themselves. It was the mark of Paul's sanctity that he was able to banish even these powerful forces.[61]

The sixth century, then, presented the Amidan ascetics with no separate "space," external or internal, and no escape or retreat. Their tradi-


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tion had incorporated the physical dangers of Amida's territory into their ascetic practice by the custom of living cenobitically within close reach of local towns and villages.[62] But when wars and raiders drove the ascetics inside the city walls, they confronted a new danger. No privileged place awaited them as monastics, except the compounding of physical danger and an equally severe moral peril. For while the ascetics might suffer along with citizens the hardships of invasions, famine, and plague, it was the religious element, monks, nuns and clergy, who bore the brunt of the persecutions against the Monophysites.

The Amidan monasteries, fierce in their opposition to Chalcedonian persuasion and influential with the public, presented the most accessible targets for their Chalcedonian persecutors. Not surprisingly, the first step in any persecution campaign was directed at them and marked by the monks' banishment. The rhetoric their plight evoked was the language of martyrdom: John of Ephesus described them, "having all, small as well as great, been fired by zeal for the faith, and having been duly girded with the armour of truth, they also entered valiantly and heroically and courageously into the struggle against the defenders of the corrupt synod of Chalcedon."[63] And the experience of exile proved to be horrendous for the Amidan monastic community. They were "driven from place to place and from region to region,"[64] under circumstances that left no illusions as to the life suffered by refugees.

The first expulsion came soon after the accession of Justin I, around the year 520.[65] After much discouraging travel and effort, the exiled Amidan community finally halted in a remote area at a monastery called Mar Mama.[66] Despite unpleasant conditions, they stayed there five years before deciding to return to a district bordering on Amida in order to be near their former home. They passed several years in this new place at the monastery of the Poplars, under crowded and makeshift arrangements. Owing to Justinian's succession to the throne and to Theodora's subsequent efforts,[67] they were allowed to return, after nine and a half years, to their home city. "And they found their convents destroyed and demolished and knocked to pieces, and turned to earth." At once they set about rebuilding their former dwellings and reorganizing the religious assemblies of the Amidan populace, "so that few [of those who had gone over to the Chalcedonians] remained with the Synodites."[68]

Such behavior was obviously upsetting to the authorities; the monastic group was not long back before a new expulsion order was again issued against them.[69] They left, but the effort was wearing and their size had diminished.[70] Stopping first at the monastery of the Sycamores, they were pursued by Roman soldiers who tormented the surrounding vil-


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lagers until they pleaded with the ascetics to leave their district so as to alleviate their suffering. Reestablishing themselves at the monastery of the Poplars, they were soon sought out by the vigilant Ephrem and his troops. This time their dispersion was frightening. For according to John of Ephesus, Ephrem "sent armed and armoured hosts of fighting men against them as if to fight against barbarians, and they expelled and ejected and scattered and dispersed them over the lands."[71] Moreover, it was winter; many were ill or old, and travel was dangerous. The Amidan community splintered over the East.

After some twenty years or more, the survivors gradually reassembled in Amida, once again finding their former homes razed. They were not long in the occupation of rebuilding before a third expulsion order drove them out again. When John of Ephesus completed his history of the Amidan monasteries at the death of Justinian, they had been living under the shadow of persecution for more than forty years.[72] Under these conditions, ascetic practice was not only compelled to bend to the circumstances—many a stylite was forced down from his pillar—but also to fulfill perceived obligations to the lay populace while under duress. Those obligations were only partially manifest in the social occupations of the ascetic as patron and healer; their greater import lay in ensuring that the Monophysite stance of the people did not lapse. The commitment to such a responsibility was clearly shown in the continuous efforts of the Amidan ascetics to return to the city, or to remain in close contact with it even when in exile. In the course of the crisis, the Amidan ascetics responded in two ways, retaining their practices as a body in exile while maintaining an "underground" presence in the city itself. But in either place, the space occupied by the holy had lost its separateness.

The Ascetic Response

The influence of the eastern monks on the attitudes and beliefs of common people is well attested by the sources for late antiquity.[73] Their constancy and zeal contributed to the Monophysite dispute an ingredient of popular faith, and not simply of theological debate.[74] For the Amidan ascetics, however, the immediacy of the religious crisis was matched by the cumulative impact of local natural disasters and political events. The ascetic ideal and motivation were thus profoundly affected by the state of the temporal world in a time of great need: the potency of ascetic actions rose.[75]


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The desert had ceased to be a place of solitude. Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor describes the communities that grew up in the wilderness during the persecutions:

And so the desert was at peace, and was abundantly supplied with a population of believers who lived in it, and fresh ones who were every day added to them and aided in swelling the numbers of their brethren, some from a desire to visit their brethren out of Christian love, and others again because they were being driven from country to country by the bishops in the cities. And there grew up, as it were, a commonwealth of illustrious and believing priests, and a tranquil brotherhood with them; and they were united in love and abounded in mutual affection, and they were beloved and acceptable in the sight of everyone; and nothing was lacking, for the honoured heads of the corporation, which is composed of all the members of the body, accompanied them.[76]

Hence it was with pride that John of Ephesus stressed the continuity of tradition in ascetic practice for the Amidan monasteries, even while they lived in a present state of dispersal. The various communities continued, seemingly without interruption by their circumstances, the customary practices of fasting, vigils, genuflexions, weeping, and the use of standing poles and other aids. Further, they continued their role in society at large: admonishing and advising the local populace wherever they settled, healing the sick, and exorcising demons.[77] But they acted now, as pseudo-Zachariah indicates, in concert with the community that the wilderness fostered, bonded together by their common plight. Thus John of Ephesus praised the united body of Amidans, "the separate character of each convent being preserved in this only, the fact that its own brotherhood was separate, and its belongings and archimandrite and its priests, while all the affairs of them all were administered in common, together with all the spiritual labours of brotherly concord."[78]

The Amidan monasteries had for generations upheld a high-standing reputation for practice as well as for learning; their fame would spread on both accounts during their ordeal. In his history of the monastery of Mar John Urtaya, John of Ephesus records a faultless succession of abbots in the course of the persecutions.[79] Moreover, he reaffirms the monastery's ties to the city of Amida itself. Not only were the remains of the leaders who died in exile returned, when it became possible, to the monastery's own burial grounds; but further, the abbot appointed during the final period of persecution in which John wrote was born of a distinguished family of the city and had been in the monastery since he was a child.[80] Similarly, John saw fit, despite the disruptions of the times, to elaborate on the lengthy traditional method of gaining entry and serving


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as novice in another Amidan monastery, emphasizing the commitment to correct training.[81] Nor was the image of the Amidan monasteries enhanced by John alone. John of Tella had immediately welcomed the Amidan exiles he encountered, knowing their place of origin and its high standards in ascetic practices and religious education.[82] Above all, wandering ascetics continued, with confidence, to join Amida's communities in exile, just as they had previously, so constant was the reputation they upheld.[83]

In the Lives of the Eastern Saints , the few accounts John offers of ascetics devoted purely to the pursuit of private worship are presented in this context. They are people who came to the Amidan communities before and during the periods of persecution: Abbi, who wore rags and passed his days reading the Gospels in ecstasy, speaking and eating rarely and always with tears; a poor stranger who would not reveal his name or anything of his travels, who meditated with mournful humility throughout the nights and allowed no morsel of food or drop of water to pass his lips without a prayer of thanksgiving, thus taking one hundred sips to drink a cup; and Zacharias, who shunned all contact with others, secretly carrying a pebble in his mouth to impede speech and mortifying his flesh with knots of rope to prevent unworthy thoughts from finding their way into his mind.[84]

These accounts stand in seeming contrast to John's emphasis on asceticism practiced within an urban setting or in close contact with village populations, for his usual ideal is that of an asceticism ministering to a crisis-ridden society. But the contrast becomes less when one realizes where he makes room for the virtuosi of private ascetic practice. For the exiled communities, these holy individuals ensured the validity of their tradition and of their spiritual authority, as much in time of peace as in trial, under the strongly politicizing pressures that beset the Monophysite population.

It is with this intent that John relates the story of a monk who joined the Amidan monasteries while they were settled at Mar Mama.[85] Since it was uncanonical for a monk to leave his monastery to enter another without an official release, the Amidan archimandrite carefully examined this monk as to his previous training and present status. In fact he had not been released and had lied in order to join their community. Then a local plague broke out, and in the cramped living quarters of the exiles it raged freely, killing eighty-four of the Amidan brethren as well as some of their guests. The newly received monk, too, fell ill and was divinely punished for his perjury by hovering paralysed just outside death. The brethren finally guessed his situation and stood themselves


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surety to gain his release, sending a deacon to petition his former archimandrite. As soon as this was done, the man died. Such an account underscored the Amidans' authoritative status, illustrating their care with canons was no less than that with faith.[86]

In the same way, John stresses an unbroken pattern in the Amidan ascetics' social involvement, despite their flight to unfamiliar territory. The personal trial of exile, with its hazards and discomforts, was not considered a release from an ascetic's obligation to others. Hala, a monk at the monastery of the Edessenes in Amida, had devoted himself for some years to caring for the destitute and strangers in the city.[87] When the monastery was expelled and its property confiscated or hidden, Hala was beside himself, having nothing with which to comfort those in need. At once he set about finding new ways of continuing his ministry, paying no heed to the affliction of his own monastic community or to their mockery of his efforts. Rather, he collected old coats and rags from dung heaps and then cleaned and sewed them together into cushions and rugs for the poor visitors who came. "And so he found this method of carrying out his own employment, not giving up this strenuous pursuit in peace or in persecution, in the city or in exile."[88]

In fact, the Amidan communities could in many respects conduct their life in exile just as they had previously, if they could find a safe place to stay. Their ministry during times of famine was both moving and familiar; they had dealt with such circumstances before.[89] However, exile was at times relentless. When they sought refuge in the monastery of the Sycamores, Abraham bar Kaili sent Roman soldiers under his command to expel them again. Upon their arrival the soldiers were stunned at the sight of hundreds of ascetics engaged in worship, standing row upon row without fear. Unnerved, the troops turned upon the nearby villagers, plundering their land, killing their animals, eating their food, and taking over their houses; the soldiers told the inhabitants that they would leave only if the monks were persuaded to depart as well. Oppressed beyond their means, the villagers collectively begged the monks to relieve them of their burden. The ascetics saw their grief, and wishing to cause ordinary people no harm they left at once.[90] The Amidan community and the laity they met seem to have aided each other wherever possible.[91]

But in such a context, the wilderness and its solitude bore fruit very much intended for the temporal world; it did not serve as a place of retreat for its own sake, or of refuge from the plight of the eastern cities. In their continuity of practice, of spiritual tradition and of social involvement, the Amidan ascetics in exile acquired an ever-increasing prestige.


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And the potency of that authority was fully concentrated on the persons and events of their own time.

The expulsion of the Amidan monasteries carried further implications. Their absence left a burden on those who remained in Amida and its territory, that their services for the populace be continued. Thus a local recluse, who had chosen a separate life outside the city and its monastic complexes, found himself forced to leave his retreat and return. Simeon the Solitary had once been renowned for his labors in an Amidan monastery, both in private ascetic practice and in his ministry to the poor and strangers in the city.[92] When he chose to take up life as a hermit in the mountains nearby, he was "supplied by many persons with all that he needed" and served residents and travelers from his huts, while his fame spread throughout the region. Finally, however, the situation in Amida—the loss of its spiritual community—called him back:

But afterwards the storm of persecution was stirred up against [Simeon] together with all the rest of the church; and he bravely and heroically contended in the conflicts. . . . But he himself held firm; and thus he persevered and maintained a heroic contest, and he used to go around in the city itself at the very height of the persecution, and give absolution and baptise by night and by day.[93]

The persecuting Chalcedonians, on the other hand, had not allowed the city walls to restrict their efforts. Under Abraham bar Kaili, the local anchoretic sanctuaries were violated now for a different kind of booty. Local celebrities such as Maro the Stylite were coaxed for an unwitting slip of the tongue so that Chalcedonians could claim, "Behold, even Maro on his pillar agrees with us!"[94] The authorities were well aware of the ascetics' influence and knew that even apparent verbal capitulation on the part of such figures could draw many people to their communion.[95]

These solitaries and their disciples, no longer left to their business of serving community needs from their retreats, were forced into the social arena. Not only were their sanctuaries invaded but the strength of their religious commitment would not allow them to continue a life apart from the events around them. When the hermit Sergius was dragged from his hut, beaten by physical and by verbal blows, he could not continue his anchoretic existence.[96] His reentry into the city of Amida demonstrated in no uncertain terms the solitary's response to Amida's situation:

But the blessed Sergius went out, and arrived at the city on the holy day of Sunday, at dawn. He then went straight to the church, and as the whole city was sitting there after the morning hymns . . . suddenly at the door of the church there appeared a strange and shocking sight, and all were stunned, seeing an appearance not their own: a hermit was


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entering, wearing rags patched together from sackcloth and carrying his cross on his shoulder. And he went right in, going straight to the middle of the church without a question, neither speaking nor turning to either side; and as the preacher was standing and speaking, he stopped, while astonishment fell upon the crowd, and they looked to see what was the matter. But the holy man, as soon as he reached the chancel, struck his cross upon the steps and began to mount. And when he had climbed one or two steps in silence, everyone thought that he was getting ready either to say something or to make a petition to the city or to the bishop [Abraham bar Kaili]. But when he reached the third step where the preacher stood, he flung out his hand, grabbed him by the neck, held him fast, and said to him, "Wicked evil man, our Lord commands, 'Do not give what is holy to dogs nor pearls before swine'; why do you speak the words of God before those who deny Him?" And he swung his hand round, punched him, twisted his mouth awry, seized him and threw him down.[97]

Sergius succeeded in rousing the congregation into full riot before he himself was beaten unconscious and carried off to an Armenian prison camp reserved for Monophysites. He was not long held, however, and soon escaped back to his own cell.[98]

Thus the city of Amida became a battleground against the forces of evil that had once been sought in the harshness of the wilderness. For there were those ascetics who chose to remain in Amida rather than go into exile with the majority of the monks, and these intensified their ascetic practice by the danger of their situation. Abraham was both cruel and thorough in the campaign he waged through the city.

Nonetheless, city life afforded some protection through the possibility of anonymity, and John of Ephesus speaks with admiration of the "underground" communities, the secret groups of ascetics exiled from their own monasteries or convents who remained in the city, residing in housing ostensibly rented for tenancy by others. Many of the exiled, as well as their various communications and business matters, passed through such groups, aided by sympathetic townspeople. For in order to ensure a presence eluding the authorities but efficacious for the populace, it was imperative that the Monophysite leaders inside the city depend upon the efforts of individuals and avoid the visibility of actions as a body.[99]

Such a person was the holy Euphemia, who had for many years lived an ascetic career in Amida with her daughter Maria.[100] She followed a private rule of austerity in her own life (John of Ephesus and others would beg her to show herself some of the kindness she so liberally bestowed on others) and, at the same time, with Maria's aid devoted herself day and night to ministering to the city's poor, sick, homeless, and


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afflicted. There seemed no corner of the city or its environs unknown to her, and no one person, rich or destitute, citizen or stranger, whose life had not been touched by her grace and charity.

When the persecutions struck, a steady stream of exiled monks, singly or in company, began to appear at Euphemia's door for refuge. In no time she had organized accommodations for both housing and worship, setting up a substantial network through which they could stay in the city pursuing their habitual monastic practices or, if traveling, could have the assurance of lodging and hospitable company (no small gift when suffering flight). But it was not long, only a few years, before the Chalcedonian authorities became suspicious of the doctrinal leanings of the holy woman and her daughter and imprisoned them with the intent of forcing their submission to Chalcedonian communion. However, the officials had not reckoned on the support of Euphemia's followers, and the entire city, small and great alike, demanded the release of the two women. Faced with a public uprising, the authorities quietly banished Euphemia and Maria from the city.

Euphemia's life is a particularly instructive one, for her personal career well reflects the fortune of Amida in the sixth century. Thirty years of her life were passed in service to those in the city who suffered famine, invasion, and plague. The appearance of the persecutions at first seemed yet one more trial with which to contend. But her story reveals the cost that Amida's calamities were to exact from its citizens and ascetics, and if her end was less histrionic than the memory of a city driven mad with suffering, it was no less indicative of the times.

After their banishment from the city, Euphemia and her daughter went to Jerusalem, passing some time in pilgrimage. John of Ephesus then tells us,

imagining that perhaps the anger against them had abated, they returned to Amida and entered it secretly; and they stayed at the house of a certain nobleman. But when it began to be noticed, and their opponents began to speak about them, the people with whom they were staying became anxious, begging them to depart lest their house be plundered. But the blessed Euphemia was weary, and she wept aloud to God, saying, "My Lord, your mercy knows that I have grown weak, and I have no more strength. It is enough for me." And on that very night, the request of her prayer was answered.[101]

Within a week Euphemia had died of illness, having attained, John assures us, the crown of martyrdom. But hers was a death not caused by suffering under persecution so much as by the gradually wearing effects of the calamity that buffeted her time and place.


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In this way Euphemia's story typifies the ascetic's experience in sixth-century Amida. The commitment of the ascetic to the temporal world was as pressing as that to the eternal; the space of the holy was not inviolable for either secular or religious forces, nor could it remain aloof from the events surrounding or involving it. The space of the holy was found nowhere separate for the Amidan ascetics or populace. On the contrary, it was everywhere present.


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