St Antony's, 11 December
The Guest Master has installed me in an ageless egg-domed mud-brick cell. Although it is only 9 p.m., the monastery generator has just been turned off for the night, and I am writing this on a rickety table by the flickering light of a paraffin lamp.
I spent the day reading a book lent to me by Fr. Dioscuros: The
Life of St Antony by Athanasius, the early-fourth-century Bishop of Alexandria. Athanasius's Life is probably the most influential work of Christian hagiography ever written, and it was the ultimate model for a thousand subsequent saints' Lives written across the Christian world in the centuries which followed: the Venerable Bede, for example, drew heavily on Athanasius's exemplar when writing his Life of St Cuthbert. Nevertheless, to the modern reader it is a grim, humourless and rather offputting text, too much concerned with ascetic self-torture and the saint's alarming victories over the demon hordes. At one point Athanasius has Antony's cell overwhelmed by an invasion of devils in animal form, so that it sounds rather like feeding time at London Zoo: 'The demons breaking through the building's four walls were changed into the form of beasts so that the place was filled with the appearance of lions, bears, leopards, bulls and serpents, asps, scorpions and wolves ... and the brothers [who came once a month with provisions for him] heard tumults, and many voices and crashing noises like the sound of weapons; and at night they saw the mountain filled with beasts.'
Although this sort of thing clearly appealed to Athanasius's contemporaries, I found that St Antony's charm and power is communicated far more effectively in the simple aphorisms attributed to him in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Here he emanates wisdom and good rustic common sense, encouraging his followers to live simply, not to fuss unnecessarily and to ignore the opinions of the world. There are two I particularly like:
'Abba Pambo asked Abba Antony: "What ought I to do?" and the old man said to him: "Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach."'
And again:
'When Abba Antony thought about the depth of the judgements of God, he asked, "Lord, how is it that some die when they are young, while others drag on to extreme old age? Why are there those who are poor and those who are rich? Why do wicked men prosper and why are the just in need?" He heard a voice answering him, "Antony, keep your attention on yourself; these things are according to the judgements of God, and it is not to your advantage to know anything about them.'"
The Coptic monks who live in St Antony's today manage successfully to combine the severity of their founder's way of life with the calm wisdom that emanates from his Sayings. Those I have talked to are kind, gentle men, much more modest and reasonable than the bristling Greek brigands of Mar Saba or their sometimes fanatical brethren on Mount Athos. This evening I had a long conversation with Fr. Dioscuros in the refectory of the guest quarters. As the last light was fading gradually from the sky outside, I asked him about his motives for becoming a monk and why he had left the comforts of Alexandria for the harsh climate of the desert.
'Many people think we come to the desert to punish ourselves, because it is hot and dry and difficult to live in,' said Fr. Dioscuros. 'But it's not true. We come because we love it here.'
'What is there to love about the desert?'
'We love the peace, the silence. When you really want to talk to someone you want to sit together in a quiet place and talk, not to be in the midst of a crowd of other people. How can you talk properly in a crowd? So it is with us. We come here because we want to be alone with our God. As St Antony once said: "Let your heart be silent, then God will speak."'
'But you do seem to want to punish yourselves deliberately: the hot, coarse robes you wear, the long Lenten fasts you all undertake...'
'Ah,' said Fr. Dioscuros, 'but you see fasting is not punishment. It is a tool, not an end in itself. It is not easy to communicate with God on a full stomach. When you have had a big meal you cannot concentrate your mind. You want to go to sleep, not to sit in church praying. To pray successfully it is better to be a little hungry.'
'But doing without possessions: isn't that a punishment?'
'No, it's a choice. For myself I have begun to get rid of many of the things which clutter up my cell. Last week I threw out my chair. I don't need it. Now I sit on the floor. Why should I bother with extra food, with spare clothes, with unnecessary furniture?
All you need is a piece of bread and enough covering for the body. The less you have, the less you have to distract you from God. Do you understand?' I smiled, uncertainly.
'Well, just look around this room. When I am in here I think that the chair is in the wrong place, I must move it. Or maybe that the lamp is out of oil, I must fill it. Or ... or that that shutter is broken and I must get it mended. But in the desert there is just sand. You don't think of anything else; there is nothing to disturb you. It should be the same in a monk's cell. The less there is, the easier it is to talk to God.'
'Do you find it easy?'
'It is never easy, but with practice I find it less difficult,' said Dioscuros. 'The spiritual life is like a ladder. Every day if you are disciplined and make the effort you find you will rise up, understand a little better, find it a little easier to concentrate, find that your mind is wandering less and less. When you pray alone in your cell without distraction you feel as if you are in front of God, as if nothing is coming to you except from God. When you succeed - if you do manage to banish distractions and communicate directly with God - then the compensation outweighs any sufferings or hardships. You feel as if something which was dim is suddenly lighted for you. You feel full of light and pleasure: it is like a blinding charge of electricity.'
'But you don't have to come to the middle of the desert to find an empty room free of distractions. You can find that anywhere: in Cairo, or Alex, or London ...'
'What you say is true,' said Fr. Dioscuros with a smile. 'You can pray anywhere. After all, God is everywhere, so you can find him everywhere.' He gestured to the darkening sand dunes outside: 'But in the desert, in the pure clean atmosphere, in the silence -there you can find yourself. And unless you begin to know yourself, how can you even begin to search for God?'
St Antony's, 13 December
Unlike the other monasteries I have visited on this journey, St Antony's is bursting with young monks, and there are no worries about its imminent extinction; indeed, it is many centuries since it has been so full and so active. The same is true of many of the Egyptian desert monasteries: since the current Coptic Pope, Shenoudah III, assumed office in 1971, there has been a massive revival of monasticism in Egypt, and many ancient monastery ruins, abandoned for hundreds of years, are being brought back into use. Nevertheless, for all this activity, there are some very dark clouds on the horizon, and after I had spent a few days at St Antony's the monks began, very hesitantly, to talk about their worries for the future.
The Copts have suffered petty discrimination for centuries, but the recent revival of Islamist insurgency in Upper Egypt has made their position more dangerous, and their prospects more uncertain, than they have been for years. In April 1992 fourteen Copts in Asyut province were gunned down by the Islamist guerrillas of the Gema'a al-Islamiyya for refusing to pay protection money. There followed a series of crude bombs outside Coptic churches in Alexandria and Cairo. Finally in March 1994 armed militants attacked the ancient Coptic monastery of Deir ul-Muharraq near Asyut; two monks and two lay people were shot dead at the monastery's front gate. After centuries of deliberate isolation the world is suddenly pressing in on the Coptic monks in the most alarming fashion.
Like the Suriani in Turkey, the Copts are very reluctant to talk about their worries; hundreds of years of living as a minority under Muslim rule has taught them to keep their heads down. 'We have some small problems,' was all Abouna Dioscuros would say when I referred to the attack on Deir ul-Muharraq soon after my arrival. Slowly, however, the monks have begun to be a little more
forthcoming. This morning I tackled one of the older fathers on the subject. To begin with he just looked down at his shoes.
Then, plucking up his courage, his fears came pouring out.
'Deir ul-Muharraq is only the latest massacre,' he said. 'In the last few years many churches were burned, many of our priests and laymen were killed. Every day there are death threats. Around Asyut the Irhebin [terrorists] walk into the houses of the Copts. They take money and belongings and if the Copts resist they shoot them dead. The Government does nothing. The police arrest no one, though they know very well who does this. When the Gema'a murdered fourteen Copts in one hour in 1992, the government just said: "This is Upper Egypt. Probably it is only a feud. Probably it is two families squabbling: nothing more." Only now, in the last few months, when the Gema'a has begun attacking tourists and government ministers, are they taking this threat seriously. Maybe they have left it too late. If they had tackled the problem when it began, all would have been well. But because it was just the Copts who were suffering they did nothing. Now it is out of hand. The Irhebin are everywhere.'
Other monks I talked to muttered about the oppressive Hamayonic Laws, the old Ottoman legislation, still extant in Egyptian law, which requires a special decree from the President himself if a Christian wishes to build or even repair a church: technically, the monks should seek a special decree from President Mubarak himself if they wish to repair even a broken lavatory.
'The government does nothing for us,' said one monk, who begged me not to mention his name. 'In Egypt the authorities are very bad to the Copts. No senior policemen are Copts. No judges are Copts. There is no justice for our people. The Irhebin know they can attack the Copts and nothing will happen to them. That is why our people are very frightened. That is why we are all afraid.'
Historically, of course, the monks of Egypt have often had to face violence. In Robert Curzon's classic nineteenth-century travel book Visits to Monasteries in the Levant, he remarks that 'all [Egyptian monasteries] are surrounded by a high strong wall, built as a fortification to protect the brethren within, and not without reason, even in the present day . . . [Many times] I have been quietly dining in a monastery when shouts have been heard, and shots have been fired against the stout bulwarks of the outer walls, which, thanks to their protection, had but little effect in altering the monotonous cadence in which one of the brotherhood read a homily of St Chrysostom from the pulpit provided for that purpose in the refectory.'
Only on one occasion did the strong walls of St Antony fail to protect the brethren within. Sometime in the first decade of the sixteenth century a tribe of Bedouin besieged, attacked and eventually took the monastery, killing most of the monks, camping in its buildings and turning the fourth-century Church of St Antony into their kitchen. There they lit their fires with ancient scrolls and documents from the monastic library; the smokestains still remain amid the ancient frescoes of the church's roof, a daily reminder of the dangers that lurk outside the monastery walls.
In John Moschos's day St Antony's was also threatened by nomadic raiders. Remote as it was from the protection of Egypt's Byzantine garrison, it presented an inviting target to tribesmen in search of plunder. In The Spiritual Meadow Moschos retells a story told to him by a 'pagan Saracen' who was hunting in the vicinity of the monastery when he saw a monk on the mountain above St Antony's holding a book and reading. I went up to him intending to rob him; perhaps to slay him also. As I approached him, he stretched out his right hand towards me saying: 'Stay!' And for two days and two nights I was unable to move from that spot. Then I said to him: 'For the love of the God whom you worship, let me go!' He said, 'Go in peace,' and it was only thus, with his blessing, that I was able to leave the spot to which his powers had rooted me.
Other monks were less lucky. Between Moschos's first visit to Egypt in the 580s and his return nearly thirty years later, the entire fabric of the eastern Byzantine Empire had begun to crumble. The four monasteries of the Wadi Natrun had been burned and ravaged by the pagan Mazices and the 3,500 monks who lived there had been scattered around the Levant; Moschos was to meet refugees from the monasteries in both Gaza and Alexandria, and according to another source, the Ethiopian Synaxarium, many other homeless Wadi Natrun exiles took refuge behind the ramparts of St Antony's.
The Egyptian section of The Spiritual Meadow grimly reflects the anarchy of the period and is full of tales of'barbarians' burning monasteries and leading great caravans of monks stumbling off to the slave markets of the Hejaz. In one story Moschos tells of a Patriarch of Alexandria whose secretary stole some gold from him; in his flight he was captured by 'barbarians' who carried him off into slavery - until the saintly Patriarch forgave him and agreed to ransom him from captivity. Another tale tells of a friend of Moschos who was taken captive but somehow managed to escape and make his way to the lavra of Monidia, where Moschos found him full of wise spiritual advice. A third tale tells of a monk who meets three Saracens travelling with a Byzantine prisoner:
[The prisoner] was an exceptionally handsome young man, about twenty years old. When he saw me, he began crying to me to take him away from them. So I started begging the Saracens to let him go. One of the Saracens answered me in Greek: 'We are not letting him go.' So I said: 'Take me and let him go, for he cannot endure servitude.' The same Saracen replied, 'We are not letting him go.' Then I said to them for the third time, 'Will you let him go for a ransom? Hand him over to me and I will bring whatever you demand.' The Saracen replied: 'We cannot give him to you because we promised our priest that if we took a good-looking prisoner, we would bring him to the priest to be offered as a sacrifice. Now be off with you, or we will cause your head to roll on the ground.'
Then I prostrated myself before God and said: 'O Lord God, our Saviour, save your servant.' The three Saracens immediately became possessed of demons. They drew their swords and cut each other to pieces. I took the young man to my cave and he no longer wished to leave me. He renounced the world - and after completing seven years in the monastic life, went to his rest.
Yet then as now, the monks seemed to believe that their sufferings were permitted by God for a reason, and that good would come out of disaster.
'God is most easily discernible in times of trouble,' explained Fr. Dioscuros. 'When your troubles cease, then you leave God. But in difficult times men go to God for help.'
'So are you saying that God allows suffering to remind us that He is still there?'
'No,' replied Fr Dioscuros, 'that is not what I meant. But thanks to God good can come out of evil. Christianity in Egypt - our Coptic Church - grew out of the terrible persecutions of Diocletian. The blood of martyrs nourishes the seed of belief.'
Fr. Dioscuros held up the wickerwork Coptic pectoral crucifix that was suspended by a leather thong around his neck. 'What is Christianity,' he said, 'without the Cross?'
That evening, at Fr. Dioscuros's invitation, I attended vespers with the monks.
Walking into the great abbey church was like entering a tunnel. Outside the monastery compound was all bright glare; inside, past the long lines of monastic sandals left mosque-like at the porch, it was so dark that the sanctuary candles and oil lamps blazed like fireflies in the soupy stygian gloom. The darkness drained the church of colour, the shadows of its rigorously simple lines appearing stern and impressive in the glimmering half-light.
As my eyes adjusted, I took in the number of monks drawn up in ranks at the front of the nave. So far in my stay I could not have seen more than a dozen of the brethren. Although I knew the monastery to be bursting with new recruits, the echoing monastic quiet conspired to make St Antony's feel strangely deserted: after the bustle and noise of Alexandria and Cairo, here one could hear every shutter creak as it was blown in the wind, every snatch of whispered monastic dialogue echoing around the ancient mud walls.
Now, as if from nowhere, at least sixty monks had materialised in the nave and all were chanting loudly in a deep, rumbling bass plainchant quit
e different from the elusive, bittersweet melodies of Gregorian Chant or the angular, quickfire vespers of the Greeks. Individually the gentlest of men, the Copts at prayer made a massive, dense, booming sound, each stanza sung by the monastic cantor echoed by a thundering barrage of massed male voices. The wall of sound reverberated around the church, bouncing off the squinches of the dome, crashing onto the mud-brick roof then down again like a lead weight into the nave. Yet despite its heaviness, there was nothing harsh or brutal about the Coptic chant, the swelling notes of the refrain resolving to give the whole threnody a tragic, desolate air, as if all the distilled deprivations of generations of monks were being enunciated and offered up, at once an agonised atonement for the sins of mankind and an exorcism forestalling the terrors of the night to come.
The service - like all the liturgies of desert Egypt - was conducted in Coptic, a direct descendant of the ancient tongue of the Pharaohs. The same tongue that had sung the praise of the Christian God in this church for more than one and a half thousand years had been used in the great Pharaonic temples of Thebes to praise Isis and Horus for the three thousand years preceding that: of the sacred tongues of the world, only Sanskrit has a comparable antiquity. It is a strange and exotic language whose elliptical conflation of syllables sounded as though they had been specially designed for the uttering of incantations: 'In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever, Amen,' became 'Khenevran emeviot nem ipshiri nembi ebnevma esoweb enowti enowti ami...'
There was a moment of silence as the monks marched from the middle of the nave, through the swirling incense, to a long lectern near the sanctuary where a line of ancient bound vellum lectionaries lay open. There the brethren split into groups. Quietly at first, those on the north began singing a verse of the psalm of the day, those to the south answering them, the volume gradually rising, the stiff, illuminated pages of the service books all turning together as the chant thundered on into the late evening, accompanied now by an occasional clash of cymbals or an ecstatic ringing of triangles. As the service progressed and the tempo of the singing rose, novices swung their thuribles and the great cumulus clouds of frankincense coagulated into a thick white fog in the body of the nave.
From The Holy Mountain Page 45
