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Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza

Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza Common KnoWLEDgE most assume to be traditional “Mariology,” Newman has challenged and confused the established ways of medievalists. Moreover, she has no simple presentist agenda that might lead her work to be picked up easily by contemporary feminists or antifeminists. Nonetheless, I suspect that, when we look back fifty years from now, we will see this book as one that changed the face of scholarship and maybe even our understanding of Christianity itself. — Caroline Walker Bynum doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-012 Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper, Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 224 pp. Sixth-century Gaza was a thriving commercial center, a crossroads between Palestine and Egypt. On its outskirts, in the desert, the important monastery of Tawatha also flourished, largely as a result of its unusual leadership. The correspondence of Barsanuphius (who was known as the Great Old Man), John (who became known as the Other Old Man), and Seridos the Abbot allows a glimpse into how the institution came to function so well. Barsanuphius and John were anchorites who lived in almost total seclusion. They communicated by letter with a large number of correspondents in the monastery and in the surrounding lay community as well as in the larger religious and political world. Abbot Seridos was the active head of the community and a conduit for the messages of the Old Men. The correspondence shows three wise men becoming wiser as they overcome their differences and allow a working system to develop. They carefully bring forward the clever but oversensitive young monk Dorotheos, skate around religious controversy consequent upon the Council of Chalcedon, decide which visitors come only for the food and which for spiritual guidance, welcome women visitors to public readings but are less enthusiastic about mere sightseers, and toward the end make dispositions for their own eventual succession. These patient and humane men, two of whom considered themselves to have retired from the world, held together a community that worked. Their correspondence tells us something about the world of late antiquity and something about all institutions. — Isabel Colegate doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-013 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza

Colegate, Isabel
Common Knowledge , Volume 12 (3) – Oct 1, 2006
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
© 2006 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
0961-754X
DOI
10.1215/0961754x-2006-013
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Common KnoWLEDgE most assume to be traditional “Mariology,” Newman has challenged and confused the established ways of medievalists. Moreover, she has no simple presentist agenda that might lead her work to be picked up easily by contemporary feminists or antifeminists. Nonetheless, I suspect that, when we look back fifty years from now, we will see this book as one that changed the face of scholarship and maybe even our understanding of Christianity itself. — Caroline Walker Bynum doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-012 Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper, Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 224 pp. Sixth-century Gaza was a thriving commercial center, a crossroads between Palestine and Egypt. On its outskirts, in the desert, the important monastery of Tawatha also flourished, largely as a result of its unusual leadership. The correspondence of Barsanuphius (who was known as the Great Old Man), John (who became known as the Other Old Man), and Seridos the Abbot allows a glimpse into how the institution came to function so well. Barsanuphius and John were anchorites who lived in almost total seclusion. They communicated by letter with a large number of correspondents in the monastery and in the surrounding lay community as well as in the larger religious and political world. Abbot Seridos was the active head of the community and a conduit for the messages of the Old Men. The correspondence shows three wise men becoming wiser as they overcome their differences and allow a working system to develop. They carefully bring forward the clever but oversensitive young monk Dorotheos, skate around religious controversy consequent upon the Council of Chalcedon, decide which visitors come only for the food and which for spiritual guidance, welcome women visitors to public readings but are less enthusiastic about mere sightseers, and toward the end make dispositions for their own eventual succession. These patient and humane men, two of whom considered themselves to have retired from the world, held together a community that worked. Their correspondence tells us something about the world of late antiquity and something about all institutions. — Isabel Colegate doi 10.1215/0961754x-2006-013

Journal

Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Oct 1, 2006

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