Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

monasticism 755
reveals, in a pattern now familiar, the development from a holy man’s solitary
cell, through the attraction of disciples, to the establishment of a clear
coenobitic regime. 26 Yet – and here is a Syrian feature that will recur – small
groups that were gathered around a master continued to subdivide the
larger communities. 27
Ascetics also maintained a close relationship with society at large.
Theodoret was anxious to emphasize that proximity to village life was no
impediment to ascetic virtue. 28 Archaeological and epigraphic evidence
corroborates the impression that monastic communities, like ecclesiastical
sites in general, gradually acquired in Syria a central place in the rural
economy, in both alluvial and mountainous country, either by association
with a village or villages or by inclusion within an extensive estate. In the
sixth century, under the influence of growing Monophysite confidence,
churches and hostels of increasing size and grandeur catered for popular
devotion, while extensive farm buildings, often some distance from the
monastery itself, reached out into cultivated land. Cereal crops provided for
monastic and local needs; but the extensive cultivation of olives points to
sale and trade on a considerable scale. 29 There is no reason to suppose that
the process was not under way in Theodoret’s time, although many of the
earliest monastic communities in Syria failed to maintain themselves in the
century that followed – reflecting in part the contemporary shifts in theological
loyalty but also, perhaps, the growing need to develop sites more
conducive to agricultural exploitation and pastoral accessibility. Theodoret
himself welcomed, certainly, a degree of social and even pastoral concern
among monks, 30 and reported without surprise that it was from ascetic
society that bishops were often drawn. 31
He was ready on several occasions to interfere directly in the lives of
monks, precisely in order to preserve communal discipline and to criticize
idiosyncrasy or self-will. His approach was not always welcomed, and he
could find himself puzzled by some of the practices he discovered. 32 His
treatment of Symeon was particularly charged with hesitation, tempered
only partly by the popularity of the man, which he clearly found hard to
explain or accept. Symeon, after all, had first practised asceticism in a coenobitic
setting, had proved constantly disobedient and disruptive, and
26 Theod. HR ii.3, iii.4, v.3, vi.13, x.3. A static distinction between two states is very rare: xxvii.1.
Compare V. Sab. 35. 27 Theod. HR ii.6, iv.5. 28 Theod. HR iv.1, xiv.2, 5, xxv.1.
29 See expecially Tchalenko, Villages i (in which specifically monastic references are interwoven with
other material), and the Appendix by André Caquot, an invaluable gazetteer with bibliography (Villages
iii.63–106).
30 Theod. HR i.7, xxii.7; and iv.4, 8f. xvii.3 is rare in its ‘mediating’ or ‘patronal’ authority. This is
the context of Peter Brown’s famous analysis, ‘The rise and function of the Holy Man’ (1971), which
is taken by Palmer ((1990) 107f.) to apply also in the Tur ‘Abdin. Clearly, there are anecdotes which
support the view; but a coenobitic and, indeed, pastoral context is almost always implied: see Rousseau
(1995). 31 Theod. HR ii.9, iii.5, v.8, x.9, xvii.1, 8. 32 Theod. HR xxi.10f., 33, xxii.6.
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