Mission: Individual Responsibility and Collective Authority

Expansion is not the act of a demoralized church. But the Lives of the Eastern Saints record Monophysite missions undertaken both inside and outside Roman borders and, eventually, in direct opposition to the imperially proclaimed "orthodoxy." By the end of the sixth century, Monophysite missions were to produce a substantial church body, whose confines bore little relation to the empire's physical boundaries and

whose members would feel little loyalty to an emperor upholding a faith opposed to their own.^[1] If this situation did not directly facilitate the Persian and Arab conquests of the Byzantine East in the seventh and eighth centuries, it certainly undermined basic political assumptions in the East regarding the significance of Byzantium's theocratic imperial authority.

John's Lives indicate that missionary activity might come about simply as a result of circumstance. In this context, missionary work is part and parcel of the ascetic vision John offers. Such was the case presented in his "Life of Simeon the Mountaineer."^[2]

Simeon was a hermit who wandered the territories along the upper Euphrates; he "used to go about the mountains like the wild beasts, and . . . had no intercourse except with God."^[3] Conditions in these regions were such that the ascetic could live in this manner only eight months of the year: the snowy season drove him annually to lower areas. One year, Simeon chanced upon a settled people of the remote mountain summits, whose villages—with their inhabitants loosely scattered over wide distances—were unlike those of the other communities he knew. Surprised at finding domesticated life in such rugged countryside, the hermit inquired about their general livelihood and customs. To his dismay, he discovered that these people were apparently "godless," having no religious practices and acquainted with Christianity only by name. As the situation was made known to him, Simeon's "bones shook from his fright and his tears gushed out."^[4] The hermit was beside himself:

Perhaps it was indeed for this reason that God's grace led me to the mountains here, in order that there may be salvation for these souls that are in the darkness of error. . . . What pagan is there, or what other worshippers of creation, who for so long a period of time would neglect to pay honour to the object of his worship, and would not always worship that which is reckoned by him as God? These men neither worship God like Christians, nor honour something else like pagans and they are apostates against the one and against the other.^[5]

Simeon set to work. A little church was found in the district, unused in living memory. Helped by the local inhabitants, Simeon cleaned the chapel, summoned the people of the area, and began to preach. It was as if he spoke to "irrational animals," for the people "looked at him in astonishment, and they had nothing to say." Undaunted, the holy man went on to lay down strict injunctions for their religious conduct, so that they might offer penance for their years of neglect and render fitting worship to God. For Simeon discovered matters to be worse than he had thought. Asking why none of the children had been dedicated to the

religious life of the Sons and Daughters of the Covenant, he was told, "Sir, they have not time to leave the goats and learn anything," upon which "the blessed man marvelled at the people's simpleness and carelessness."^[6]

Nor did Simeon's intervention stop there. He imposed further injunctions on the chastened populace against blasphemy, fornication, and murder. Those transgressing his orders Simeon promptly punished; few seemed to question his right to authority. On the contrary, "then [the people] began to feel a little fear, both of God and of the blessed man himself, while he continued sending and fetching all who were on the mountains to the house, and converting them afresh, as if from paganism."^[7]

But greater plans were afoot. Simeon gathered the children of the district together and shut them in the church, explaining to their parents that he had a gift for them. Then he separated one-third of the ninety children—eighteen boys and twelve girls—closed the remainder in another room, and with his helper quickly tonsured the chosen thirty, "soothing them with blandishments; and of them some wept, and some were silent." Thus were set apart the foundations of a monastic community and school. An outcry followed, but Simeon persuaded the parents of the virtue of his act, except for two families who refused to part with their children. Within three days the two youngsters had died. "Then the terror of the blessed man fell upon everyone, when the power of his word and of his prayer upon those men was seen; and they also repented."^[8] Simeon's will was never tested again.

The holy man continued his own ascetic practices and, once order had been established, again returned to solitude during the summer season. After twenty-six years of such labor, Simeon grew feeble; and thereafter he stayed in the village, in his cell, and practiced with an equal severity.

And accordingly the blessed man's name had gone out over all that country, and he was a law and a judge of the country; and every matter that was in need of reform was referred to him.^[9]

An anchorite in the oldest tradition of the Syrian Orient, Simeon had offered the whole of his existence to God in worship. Having sought the divine in the purity of natural creation, he found it where he least expected it: in the imperfection of human society. John pays tribute to Simeon as one who reveals the unsought possibilities of life dedicated to holy pursuit. For here was a region too remote to be reached by matters afflicting the greater part of the East; indeed, Simeon's story contains

none of the calamities so visible in John's other accounts.^[10] Simeon is not drawn or forced out of seclusion by the urgency of crisis. Rather, he is confronted by a "godless" existence, and his reaction is as spontaneous as it is thorough. Set on saving the mountain people, this holy man was not satisfied with offering a church tradition of ritual and preaching; he imposed upon this isolated society the fruits of his ascetic discipline. He was law, judge, and spiritual father to them, far more than priest or abbot.

Simeon had in fact fulfilled an aspect of Syrian ascetic tradition that many had followed before him. Spontaneous missionary activity had long been part of the ascetic's responsibilities in the Syrian Orient, both in Roman and in Persian territory.^[11] But Simeon was not consciously taking up this role and was thus all the more in accordance with his own heritage: precisely because the Syrian ascetic had of necessity to stay within reach of society, conditions ripe for evangelization arose. As in Simeon's experience, it was more often than not a case of responding by instinct to religious need. But Simeon when instituting his rules of conduct for the villagers did show an intentional awareness of his role; for example, by the early fifth century, it was canonically ruled by the Syrian Church that chorepiscopi should set apart certain sons and daughters of each family, in each village, for the Sons and Daughters of the Covenant.^[12]

The story of Simeon the Mountaineer underscores the tie between John's subjects and those ascetics who preceded them. Responsiveness was inherent to the tradition of the Syrian ascetic's vocation. But Simeon's case is one among several John presents that is concerned with mission, and each adds a different dimension to his portrayal of activity in this sphere as a collective act of grace. Comparison highlights the contrasting nuances involved; the case of Simeon the Debater, who became bishop of Beth Arsham in Persia, is one example.^[13]

John refers to Simeon the Debater as "the brave warrior on behalf of the true faith." Indeed, this Simeon did more warring than episcopal administering. Something of a legend in his own time, Simeon's story lent itself to melodrama; John played on this with narrative styled as romance. Thus in John's telling of the story, Persia is a land steeped in the hated traditions of Marcion, Bardaisan, and Mani as much as in those of the Nestorians resettled from Roman territory, who were then the majority of the Christian populace.^[14] Further, when Simeon debated with the Nestorians on doctrine, the Magi invariably awarded the victory to Simeon and sometimes even converted.^[15] As a debater Simeon "put everyone to shame," and was even more skilled "than the ancients."^[16]

Nestorians trembled at his name. As spokesman for the "orthodox" minority, Simeon traveled with the help of an underground network over vast distances at tremendous speed. Wherever a dialogue on faith was taking place Simeon appeared:

As if God had made him ready and as if the earth had vomited him up, Simeon would suddenly spring up and be present there, since from the greatness of his zeal and fervour of his will he did not rest and sit still in one district.^[17]

But John's story of Simeon also contains the historical reasons behind his daring and intrigue. By Simeon's time, it was the Nestorians, based at Nisibis in particular, who held sway among the Persian Christians; against these "the blessed Simeon was always strongly armed and ceaselessly contending"^[18] in the regions beyond the eastern Roman frontiers, in Persia, and among the Arab tribes. Although John paints Simeon as so impressive that almost everyone who heard him converted, Simeon himself seems to have seen his main task as one within the church body. This was a different matter from that of Simeon the Mountaineer's confrontation with heathenism, or of John of Ephesus' own battle against paganism. "Deeply versed in scripture," Simeon "debated" misguided doctrinal positions, a method of discipline by persuasion.

Simeon's reputation was not unfounded. The Monophysite minority in Persia was periodically harassed by the Magian imperial cult, John claims at the promptings of the Nestorians. On different occasions in the course of his career, Simeon called upon the respective authorities of the emperor Anastasius, the Aethiopian king, and the empress Theodora, each of whom successfully interceded with the Persian king on behalf of that minority.^[19] Eventually, Simeon was consecrated against his will and by force to the metropolitan see of Beth Arsham. This added responsibility apparently did not hinder Simeon: "And so he would go about in the interior countries beyond the Persians and make disciples, and convert men from paganism and Magism, and return again to the same country, and strenuously meet those who held the impious doctrine of Nestorius in the same contests."^[20] Thus Simeon passed his life until he died of old age while on a visit to Constantinople, where he was staying with John of Ephesus.

If the story of Simeon the Mountaineer illustrates the range of responsibilities for the ascetic, that of Simeon the Persian Debater indicates the scope of care needed within the church's own confines. Both accounts are focused on activity outside the mainstream social and political sphere that provides the major context for most of John's Lives . But

the particular emphases found in these two narratives illuminate John's other, and considerably briefer, accounts of missionary activity. John was too self-conscious to speak at length of his own role in the missions to the pagans, but his Lives offer tribute to the deacons, presbyters, and bishops who aided this undertaking.^[21] Of the campaign itself, John here tells us only that

eighty thousand were converted and rescued from paganism, and ninety-eight churches and twelve monasteries, and seven other churches transformed from Jewish synagogues were founded in these four provinces, Asia, Caria, Phrygia, and Lydia.^[22]

Elsewhere, in his Ecclesiastical History, John writes of these missions performed under imperial aegis and carried out not only in the provinces but in the capital city itself. Pagans were turned from their ways or, failing this, tragically put to death. So too were many heretics: Manichees, Montanists, and others.^[23] If Justinian's patronage of the campaign prompted confused speculation about its purpose, John's Lives dispelled doubts about the theological tenor of the undertaking.

The ascetics who accompanied John were "strenuous workers."^[24] These holy men "gained a blessed end" not, John assures us, for any reason other than their own witness in mission.

Each one of them . . . was strengthened to abolish paganism, and overthrow idolatry, and uproot altars and destroy shrines and cut down trees in ardent religious zeal; and . . . all of them also toiled and laboured with us with joy and great earnestness.^[25]

In his Lives John names some of his coworkers; but he tells us they were part of an entourage altogether deserving of the same homage. That he should include his helpers in his collection of holy men and women is sufficient statement of their spiritual integrity, whatever the political impetus of the missions themselves; he does not discuss the doctrinal positions of these coworkers, leaving us without knowledge of the group's makeup in this respect. Again, the complexity of Justinian's religious policy comes to view.

To a large extent, the value of John's Lives lies in their orientation toward the events and crises of their times, a vantage point often lacking in hagiographical works. It is in his accounts of mission that John merges critical situations in time into the timeless realm of divine activity worked through human agency. The service missions in various cities of Paul of Antioch,^[26] or the salvific campaigns led by John himself, express an urgency offset by the measure of the two Simeons. For through his tales of the Mountaineer and the Debater, John declares that mission is a labor

intrinsic to asceticism, that times of crisis are inherently those in which the ascetic moves, and that political boundaries offer no barriers to ascetic endeavors.

John portrays mission as an extension of the ascetic vocation and its responsibilities. But such individual autonomy carried inadvertent consequences: it contributed to the development of the Monophysite body into a separate church.