A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  By contrast, whereas Origen is rooted in the age of the martyrs, which Eusebius draws in epic proportions throughout the HE, the VC uses the person of the emperor to define a uniquely Christian imperial ideology that harmonizes with Eusebius’s reading and writing of history. Just as Constantine’s reign represents the culmination of history for Eusebius (see HE 10), his biographical delineation in the VC grandly combines the language and themes of Christian panegyric with Eusebius’s particular historiographical method and elements of ethical biography in a way that allows Eusebius to work out a Christian political theology through the person of the ideal emperor (see also Schott 2008). Both texts thus actively define Christian community at various levels: at that of the individual, of the “school” or intellectual circle, and finally, within the context of the empire at large, of the grand sweep of teleological history.

  These texts additionally represent the ethical aim of late ancient biography to produce ideal conduct in its readers. A consistent theme in Lives both in the classical and late ancient Mediterranean is indeed that the text itself should be endlessly productive. The image created by the author should shape the behavior and actions of its audience. As such, the categories of “fact” and “fiction” – or, in late antique terms, of “truth” and “falsehood” – are delineated in a manner at odds both with modern tastes and definitions and with the perceived aims of historiography. Patricia Cox (1983), for example, illustrates how Eusebius’s account of Origen is flexible rather than rigid in its definition of “truth.” The opening sections of the VC likewise illustrate this flexibility. In VC 1.11, Eusebius announces that he will omit the stuff of history in his account of Constantine in order to record an image of the “life beloved of God” – an unexpected goal in imperial biography (VC 1.11.1). And yet this allows Eusebius the space to interpret liberally the life of Constantine. It does not provide a factual record of an historical figure but rather edifies and shapes the lives of his readers, while creating a standard to be applied to future emperors. This emphasis on ethics, self‐definition, and innovation of biographical discourse through engagement with a variety of literary forms characterizes the spirit of late antique biography.

  23.4 Hagiography

  As mentioned above, hagiography as a form is actually “multiform” – i.e. the term applies to texts in a variety of literary forms in both prose and verse (encomia; Lives; miracle collections; martyr passions; apophthegmata, or “sayings” collections; hymns; and so forth; see Hinterberger 2014). In this section we will focus on lives and martyr passions in the Syriac tradition in order to illustrate the functions and forms of hagiographical writing in late antiquity beyond the Greek‐ and Latin‐speaking Mediterranean (Fiey 2004; Binggeli 2012).

  In 360, Athanasius of Alexandria composed the first extended hagiographic narrative, The Life of Antony of Egypt (βíος και` πολιτεα; PG 26: 835–936; Athanasius/Gregg 1980). This text became a “best‐seller” in the late antique world, and its form was canonized as the literary exemplar for describing the life of a saint. It was translated into several ancient languages, including Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Athanasius describes Antony as an illiterate yet economically privileged Egyptian youth who heard the call to radical Christian discipleship. Following the instructions of Jesus (Luke 18:22), Antony sells all his possessions and flees his life of comfort to live in the desert in order to embrace a life of ascetic devotion: constant prayer, renunciation of food and sex, poverty, and solitude. He isolates himself in a cave, where demons assault him. Yet he emerges radiant and transformed, the intersection of the human and divine. Subsequent late antique hagiographers imitated Athanasius’s narrative structure that depicted (1) the saint’s childhood; (2) conversion; (3) asceticism; (4) miracles; (5) extraordinary death; and (6) communal commemoration. Hagiographers projected their own agenda onto the lives of the saints whom they described, telling us as much about themselves as they did about the saint whom they memorialized. Hagiographic prologues, for example, are often spaces for encounters between the hagiographer, the saint commemorated, the reader, and the divine. The hagiographer guides his audience in the interpretation of the story he has written and asks for their prayers in exchange for the gift of his story.

  The stories of the penitent harlots (Ward 1986) comprise another hagiographic narrative type. These tales feature women of “loose” sexual mores who undergo radical changes of heart to follow Christ. In the story of Pelagia of Antioch (AMS VI, 616–649; Brock and Harvey 1998, pp. 40–62), for instance, we meet a prostitute who adorns herself in jewels, provocative clothing, and perfumes, as she parades the streets of Antioch with her entourage of fellow performers. She is struck with a desire to cast off her way of life, however, and converts to Christianity. She becomes a transvestite monk: “Pelagion.” She gains many disciples, and only at her death do people realize her sex. These narratives idealized the possibility of sanctification for any person with a changed heart. Both Antony and Pelagia enjoyed widespread popularity throughout the late antique world and were received in many cultural and linguistic traditions.

  23.5 Monastic Tales

  Hagiography magnified both individual ascetic superstars and monastic communities. The Greek‐speaking world learned of the feats of the Syrian monks through Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s History of the Monks of Syria (Theodoret/Price 1998). He likens the theatrical and even extreme Syrian monastic practices to disciplined athletic training camps for wrestlers, and he portrays Syrian monks according to the patterns of Greek hagiography. One of the monks whom Theodoret describes was Simeon the Stylite (d. 451), and stories about Simeon circulated in Greek and Syriac (AMS 4:507–644; Doran 1992). Simeon stands on a pillar with arms outstretched as a sign of his devotion to God. He mediates in both heavenly and temporal affairs, an embodiment of the joining of heaven and earth (Brown 1971). In Syriac imagination, the ideal bishop was also formed by the disciplines of monasticism. We see this in the hagiography of Rabbula, a fifth‐century bishop of Edessa (AMS 4:396–450). He combined monastic training with pastoral tenderness and concern for the poor and sick of his city (Doran 2006).

  Syrian monks also wrote hagiography to affiliate their monasteries with others in both the Syriac‐speaking world and Egypt. Hagiographic traditions attribute the founding of many monasteries in Mesopotamia to disciples of the legendary ascetic, Mar Awgin. (AMS III: 476–480), a pearl diver from Clysma (in Egypt) who became a monk at the monastery of Pachomius. According to tradition, Awgin and some disciples left Egypt and built monasteries throughout Mesopotamia. This imagined link between the monks of Egypt and Mesopotamia was mythologized in hagiographies describing founders who traced their roots to Awgin (Fiey 2004).

  In the sixth century, with the gradual separation of the Miaphysite church from the Chalcedonian Church, the Syriac‐speaking Miaphysites composed hagiography describing the deeds of those who became pillars of the nascent Syrian Orthodox church. One of the most important collections of Syriac hagiographic texts is John of Ephesus’s Lives of the Eastern Saints (PO 17:1–304; PO 18: 513–698; PO 19:153–282; Harvey 1990; Saint‐Laurent 2015). His stories commemorate ascetics who lived in northern Mesopotamia in monasteries near the city of Amida. The Empress Theodora championed the cause of the Miaphysites, and Syrian Orthodox hagiographic traditions remember her as a saint and daughter of a Syrian Orthodox priest (Harvey 2001).

  Syriac Christians of the area of Tur Abdin (modern‐day southeast Turkey) produced many hagiographies honoring the monastic heroes of the area, including the Trilogy of Lives (Sts. Samuel, Simeon, and Gabriel) connected to the monastery of Qartmin, or Mor Gabriel (Palmer 1990; Tannous 2012). Tur Abdin became the cradle of Syrian Orthodox monasticism, and devotion to local saints was a vital part of Christian life in this region. After the coming of Islam in the seventh century, Syriac hagiographies like the Life of Simeon of the Olives provide important insights to early interactions between Christians and Muslims (Tannous 2012).

  23.6 Martyr Texts


  Syriac martyr Passions shared a number of features with their Greek and Latin counterparts. These include an account of virtues of the saints, their arrest, dialogues with a judge, tortures, deaths, and burials, as well as the distribution or enshrining of their relics after death. The passion of the Edessan martyrs Shmona, Guria, and Habib, two laymen and a deacon, circulated shortly after their death (during the Diocletianic persecution) when their shrine became a center of pilgrimage. The Acts of Sharbel, Babai, and Barsamya describes the martyrdom of a former pagan priest, his sister, and an early bishop of Edessa. This fictionalized story set in the reign of Trajan belongs to a fifth‐century collection of texts designed to add eminence to Edessa’s Christian lineage (Burkitt [1913] 2007).

  The Vita of Febronia of Nisibis (AMS V, 573–615; Brock and Harvey 1998, pp. 152–76) is a romance that idealizes the life of a virtuous monastic scholar, Febronia, who lived in a convent in Nisibis in the fourth century during the persecution of the emperor Diocletian (the Vita dates to the sixth century, however). Febronia’s beauty attracts the attention of the Romans, who attack Nisibis and arrest Christians there. Febronia is ultimately martyred for her refusal to marry a pagan. Her torturers humiliate her with sexualized brutality. When Febronia dies, her martyrdom is identified as a betrothal to Christ. The Life of Febronia is unique among hagiographies because it was purported to have been written by a woman, a sister from Febronia’s convent. The story takes a special interest in showing the spiritual friendships and sisterhood present in Febronia’s community (Harvey 1996). Her story circulated in Greek and Latin translation; her cult spread to Constantinople and as far as southern Italy and Sicily (Saint‐Laurent 2012).

  The Acts of the Persian martyrs comprise a large body of texts whose literary accounts are similar to counterparts in the Greek‐ and Latin‐speaking world (Brock 2009; Smith 2014). The heroes are idealized as virtuous, courageous, eloquent imitators of Christ, and they withstand brutal torture at the hands of their Sasanian Zoroastrian accusers. These texts show knowledge of Zoroastrian religious practices and were a genre for monks and Christian elites in Sasanian Persia to craft a prestigious Christian lineage for themselves vis‐à‐vis the Christians in the Byzantine Empire (Payne 2015; Walker 2006).

  23.7 Conclusion

  We have attempted to present an overview of the development of biographical, autobiographical, and hagiographical texts in the late antique period and to show their significance within the canon of late antique literature. The application of critical methodologies to the study of these texts has generated fresh insights and an increased appreciation for their literary complexity as well as for their historical importance in attesting to the symbols and values that were meaningful for those who wrote and promoted them.

  Writing portraits of the self or other persons was an enterprise that developed with a particular vitality in the late antique period, and this process, often presented as an act of spiritual devotion, produced a variegated corpus of autobiographical, biographical, and hagiographical texts. In these we observe how authors demonstrated continuity with the biblical and classical past through literary allusion, typology, and mimesis of rhetorical formulae and narrative conventions. Yet they also broke from these forms in moments of pronounced discontinuity. The malleable nature of these evolving genres gave authors room for experimentation as they crafted, idealized, and mythologized memories of themselves or holy persons. These texts circulated among the literate, who then proclaimed them orally in the context of feast days and the liturgy, thus preserving and protecting their subjects from oblivion.

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