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III Amida: The Measure of Madness
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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.


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