The Age of Monks and Empires · c. 450-614 · Palestine, Sinai
Chalcedonian Monasticism - Judean Desert & Gaza
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About This Movement
In the ravines between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, and in the villages around Gaza, monastic settlement multiplied in the century after Chalcedon into something like a second population — laurae where hermits lived apart through the week and gathered on Sundays, and communal houses holding hundreds. What makes this world unusually visible is that its own paperwork survives: Cyril of Scythopolis's carefully dated lives of Euthymius, Sabas and their successors, and roughly 850 letters from two recluses near Gaza, Barsanuphius and John, answering monks, married couples, sick people and local officials one question at a time. These were firm supporters of Chalcedon, and they were pulled hard into the empire's doctrinal fights, including the purge of Origenist teaching in the 550s that split their own houses. The Persian army's sack of Jerusalem in 614 tore through the desert monasteries, and the survivors wrote down what had been lost.
Sources
- Cyril of Scythopolis, Lives of the Monks of Palestine (trans. R. M. Price, intro. J. Binns, 1991) (primary) — Dated, sober lives of Euthymius, Sabas and the Judean Desert founders; Cistercian Studies 114, in print.
- Barsanuphius and John, Letters (trans. John Chryssavgis, FOTC 113-114, 2006-07) (primary) — The ~850 letters of spiritual direction to monks and ordinary laypeople in Gaza; first complete English translation (CUA Press), in print.
- John Moschus, The Spiritual Meadow (trans. John Wortley, 1992) (primary) — Anecdotes gathered across Palestinian and Sinai monasticism right at the era's end (c.600); Cistercian Studies 139, in print; the anecdotal genre calls for caution as historical evidence.
- Yizhar Hirschfeld, The Judean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period (1992) (secondary) — Archaeological synthesis of the actual monasteries - diet, water, cells; complements the texts materially; Yale UP.
- Jennifer Hevelone-Harper, Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, and Spiritual Authority in Sixth-Century Gaza (2005) (secondary) — Modern study built directly on the Barsanuphius correspondence - spiritual direction of ordinary people; Johns Hopkins UP.
- Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 2, ch. 27, 'Asceticism and monasticism, I: Eastern' (Samuel Rubenson) (reference) — Reference-tradition chapter for eastern monasticism to c.600.