Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

780 25. monasticism
man himself to make his work a fitting conclusion to our whole investigation.
For the chief impression given by ascetics in that age is of vigorous
independence. In the end, it is not the eccentricities of the hermit or the
discipline of the coenobite that captures chief attention. In particular, the
history of asceticism in the fifth and sixth century does not revolve around
the relative merits and victories of the eremitic and the coenobitic life.
True, much of ascetic literature adopts a position on one side or the other
in that debate; but that may have been a feature more of texts and their
authors than of less self-conscious devotees. Deeper than those social
configurations, there lay a firm belief in discipleship.
The practical implications of such belief were varied. Most obviously,
imitation and respect, perhaps even obedience, and certainly trust were
central to a disciple’s life. The ascetic was also, along with the master, heir
to a tradition, partly oral, partly written, perceived in either case as orthodox,
guaranteed to reflect and fulfil the will of God, encouraging ‘a virtue
and morality that was worthy of the faith’. 138 Discipleship involved also
continuous application, a life of concentrated labour. Regardless of social
complexities, that labour was universally perceived as a mixture of prayer,
fasting and manual work. The quality above all that set that heritage in
motion was authority: an authority recognized in the master, and acquired
in turn by the disciple.
All else we have observed remained subordinate to those concerns. Even
in the most ordered and crowded community, the individual ascetic had
models to admire and personal goals to achieve; and both admiration and
achievement were often dependent on quite intimate relations. There was,
in the end, a hidden stillness to asceticism that community life, paradoxically,
could only make more intense. Any doubts we may retain about the
reasonableness or honesty of late Roman asceticism rests precisely on the
ultimate inaccessibility of the individual spirit.
What we can discern, however, is the immense variety of behaviour that
resulted. Wherever we capture a close picture of the formed ascetic in
action, we observe an individual, a man or woman recognizably inspired by
widely accepted practices, but bringing to the tasks of self-improvement an
attitude and a taste entirely their own. ‘Holiness’, as understood at the time,
was not a matter of conformity to anything so transient as a regular regime,
but was based on the closest possible engagement with the invisible God.
Among those who might claim to have come nearest success, that inner
victory displayed itself upon the surface of each one’s personality in ways
that no one else could lay claim to. If there was anything, nevertheless, that
they truly shared, it sprang only, in their eyes, from their being disciples of
a common Lord.
138 Zach. HE ii.5.
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