The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY: BOOK IV 237
like a pollution; 102 they lay in wait for travellers, committing robberies
and murders so that everywhere was ¢lled with untimely deaths and
plundering and other crimes. But there were times when he changed to
the opposite and dealt with them, handing over to the laws those whom
he had permitted to commit outrages like those of barbarians in the
cities. 103 To speak in great detail about these matters will take too much
space and time; but these are su⁄cient as testimony for the remainder
as well.
33 At that moment of time there were divinely inspired men and workers
of great signs in many parts of the earth, though their fame has shone
forth everywhere. Barsanuphius, who was an Egyptian by race, so
pursued the £eshless life in the £esh at a certain monastery near the
town of Gaza that he has worked miracles which surpass recollection. 104
He is even believed still to be alive, con¢ned in a little room, even
though for 50 years and more he has neither been seen by anyone nor
partaken of anything of this world. Eustochius, the prelate of Jerusalem,
did not believe this, but when he decided to dig through into the little
room where the man of God was con¢ned, ¢re blazed forth and almost
consumed all who were there. 105
102 This overstates the isolation of the Greens, since they still had their own patrons,
such as John the Cappadocian (John Lydus, De Mag. iii.62). The Greens, however, were
victims of discrimination, and Malalas records the harsh punishments in£icted by the
prefect Julian in 565 because of their murders, highway robberies, brigandage and piracy
(Malalas, Exc. de Insid. fr. 51, pp. 175:29^176:17).
103 There are various references to occasions when members of both factions were punished
(e.g. Malalas 491:15^17), and after a race meeting attended by Persian ambassadors
was disrupted by hostile chanting, Justinian had the Blues singled out for punishment
(Malalas 488:6^14).
104 The monk Barsanuphius is known as the author of a work against the Origenist
views which gained ground in Palestine in the 530s and 540s, and was the source, with his
monastic companion John, for a collection of Questions and Answers which provided advice
on a wide range of subjects to other monks and laymen.
105 Barsanuphius gave advice about the plague of 542 (Correspondance 569; cf. n. 115
below), but fell silent after the death of his companion John; if John died in 542/3, there is
just room for a half century of immurement before the date of Evagrius’ composition. There
is a di¡erent version of this story in the Questions and Answers of Barsanuphius (Correspondance
125): monks in the monastery where Barsanuphius resided believed that Abbot
Seridus had invented the holy man as a means of validating his rules, at which the old man
emerged from his cell for the only time in his life and silently washed the monks’ feet.
Eustochius was patriarch of Jerusalem from 552 to 563/4. For analogous incredulity, cf.