Early Christian Lives

255 Pages·2010·1.22 MB·English

by  Athanasius

EARLY CHRISTIAN LIVES
CAROLINNE WHITE read Classics and Modern Languages at St Hugh’s
College, Oxford, and then wrote a doctoral thesis on Christian ideas of
friendship in the fourth century, published in 1992. After two years
spent in South Africa, teaching Latin at UNISA in Pretoria, she returned
to Oxford, where she divides her time between research projects and
tutoring in medieval and patristic Latin literature. She has worked on the
supplement to the Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon and the Bodleian
Incunable catalogue, and she is now assistant editor on the Dictionary of
Medieval Latin from British sources. She has also published translations
of the correspondence between St Jerome and St Augustine, some of
Gregory of Nazianzus’ autobiographical poems, a selection of Early
Christian Latin poetry and excerpts from Augustine’s Confessions.
Early Christian Lives
Life of Antony by Athanasius
Life of Paul of Thebes by Jerome
Life of Hilarion by Jerome
Life of Malchus by Jerome
Life of Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus
Life of Benedict by Gregory the Great
Translated, Edited and with Introductions by
CAROLINNE WHITE
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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This translation published in Penguin Classics 1998
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Translation, notes and introduction copyright © Carolinne White, 1998
All rights reserved
The moral right of the translator has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
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prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
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EISBN: 9781101490433
CONTENTS
CHRONOLOGY
MAP OF THE WORLD OF ANTONY, PAUL, HILARION, MALCHUS,
MARTIN AND BENEDICT
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The Early Development of Monasticism
The Writing of Biography: Pagan Past and Christian Future
Principal Primary Sources relating to Early Monasticism
The Saints in Iconography
Translation Past and Present
FURTHER READING
EARLY CHRISTIAN LIVES
Life of Antony by Athanasius
Life of Paul of Thebes by Jerome
Life of Hilarion by Jerome
Life of Malchus by Jerome
Life of Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus
Life of Benedict by Gregory the Great
NOTES
Paul withdraws to
AD Egyptian desert Persecutions under

250 Decius and Valerian

Hilarion settles as
monk in
Palestine Persecutions under
Pachomius sets up Diocletian and
AD
ascetic Maximin
300
community in Egypt Constantine becomes

Malchus joins emperor

monastic

community
Basil tours eastern
AD
monasteries
350

Martin leaves army

Julian the Apostate

Martin made Bishop becomes
of Tours emperor

Augustine’s Theodosius the Great
Augustine’s Theodosius the Great
conversion becomes
emperor
Cassian moves to
AD Gaul and writes

400 Conferences and
Visigoths under Alaric
Institutes
sack Rome
AD

450
Theodoric the Ostrogoth
becomes
ruler of Italy
AD Benedict retires to
Boethius executed at
500 Subiaco
Pavia
Justinian becomes
emperor
Benedict moves to

Monte Cassino
Totila king of the
AD
Ostrogoths
550
overruns Italy
Lombards move south

into Italy

AD Gregory becomes
pope
600 pope
The World of Antony, Paul, Hilarion, Malchus, Martin and Benedict.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The Early Development of Monasticism
Martin Luther, looking back over the development of Christian
1
monasticism during the Middle Ages, praised Antony as the founder of
a monastic way of life true to the spirit of the Gospels. Benedict was the
author of a monastic Rule which became, as it were, the gold standard
against which all later forms of western monasticism measured
themselves. These two figures, Antony and Benedict, the Elijah and
Elisha of Christian monasticism, stand at the chronological boundaries of
this volume, for the eminent Christians whose lives are recorded here
span the period from the mid third century when Antony was born to
the mid sixth century when Benedict died, in other words, the period of
Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The six biographies of Antony,
Paul, Hilarion, Malchus, Martin and Benedict have been selected for
translation here primarily because of the enormous influence they were
to have on the development of western spirituality and on many forms of
literary composition throughout the Middle Ages. However, their interest
lies not only in their Nachleben. They were written at various dates
between the mid fourth century and the late sixth century, a period of
crucial importance in history, and written by contemporaries or near-
contemporaries of the people whose lives are the subject of these works:
the authors are therefore in touch with the society, the places and
concerns amidst which these lives were played out, and are in a good
position to give us valuable information about them. Indeed, in most
cases the authors were personally acquainted with the subjects of their
biographies. For example, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, is likely to
2
have met Antony, both in the Egyptian desert and at Alexandria, and it
was to Athanasius that Antony bequeathed his sheepskin tunic and
worn-out cloak; Jerome claims to have heard the story of Malchus’ life
from Malchus himself while living in Syria in the 370s; Sulpicius Severus
travelled from south-west France to visit Martin at Tours; while Pope
Gregory the Great, although he was writing almost half a century after
Benedict’s death, acquired much of his information about Benedict’s life
and miracles from people who had known Benedict personally.
All these biographies share a monastic theme, providing information
about the lives of men who were the founding fathers of monasticism in
both the eastern and western areas of the Roman Empire. Nowadays,
perhaps, the term monasticism primarily conjures up ideas of life in an
enclosed community, lived according to a rigid pattern, often in
magnificent buildings amidst beautiful countryside. However, such forms
of monasticism developed only gradually, with Benedict in the sixth
century playing an important role in the institutionalization of the
monastic life in the west. It is true that the origins of Christian
3
monasticism are obscure but it seems certain that this movement really
took off during the fourth century, developing as a result of the initial
inspiration of a few men during the third and fourth centuries, each of
whom made a decision to withdraw from the world of ordinary human
affairs in order to be able to serve God in what they regarded as a more
perfect way. Withdrawal from society with this particular aim appears to
have occurred first in the desert regions of Egypt and the Middle East:
according to Athanasius, Antony was the first to choose such a life of
radical solitude, while Jerome, writing a few years later, expresses his
4
belief that Paul of Thebes was Antony’s predecessor in the Egyptian
desert. He also claims that Hilarion was the first in Palestine to adopt
5
such a way of life. And yet even within these early accounts there is
evidence that certain people had already chosen various forms of life of
chastity and withdrawal. Antony, when he started out on the ascetic life,
is said by Athanasius to have entrusted his sister to the care of ‘respected
and trusted virgins’ and taken as a model for his own life an old man in
a neighbouring village who had from his youth practised the solitary
6
life. And Gregory of Nazianzus, in his funeral oration on his friend Basil
of Caesarea, mentions the fact that Basil’s paternal grandparents fled to
the forested mountain regions of Pontus during Maximin Daia’s terrible
persecutions in the early years of the fourth century just before
7
Constantine took over as emperor; there they spent seven years,
exposed to frost, wind and rain, avoiding all contact with the outside