Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

CHAPTER 26
HOLY MEN
peter brown
Some time in the 520s, the Great Old Man Barsanuphius, an Egyptian
recluse, wrote from his cell in the vicinity of Gaza, in order to comfort a
sick and dispirited monk:
I speak in the presence of Christ, and I do not lie, that I know a servant of God,
in our generation, in the present time and in this blessed place, who can also raise
the dead in the name of Jesus our Lord, who can drive out demons, cure the
incurable sick, and perform other miracles no less than did the apostles . . . for
the Lord has in all places his true servants, whom he calls no more slaves but sons
(Galatians 4.7) . . . If someone wishes to say that I am talking nonsense, as I
said, let him say so. But if someone should wish to strive to arrive at that high
state, let him not hesitate.
(Barsanuphius, Correspondance 91, trans. Regnault (1971) 84)
Throughout the Christian world of the fifth and sixth century, the
average Christian believer (like the sick monk, Andrew) was encouraged to
draw comfort from the expectation that, somewhere, in his own times,
even, maybe, in his own region, and so directly accessible to his own distress,
a chosen few of his fellows had achieved, usually through prolonged
ascetic labour, an exceptional degree of closeness to God. God loved them
as his favoured children. He would answer their prayers on behalf of the
majority of believers, whose own sins kept them at a distance from him.
Thus, when the bubonic plague struck the eastern Mediterranean in 542/3,
the Great Old Man wrote at once to reassure his monks on the state of the
world:
There are many who are imploring the mercy of God, and certainly no one is more
a lover of mankind than he, but he does not wish to show mercy, for the mass of
sins committed in the world stands in his way. There are, however, three men who
are perfect before God, who have transcended the measure of human beings and
who have received the power to bind and to loose, to remit our faults or to retain
them. They stand upright in the breach (Psalms 105.23) to ensure that the world is not
wiped out at one blow, and, thanks to their prayers, God will chastise with mercy
...They are John, at Rome, Elias, at Corinth, and another in the province of
Jerusalem. And I am confident that they shall obtain that mercy.
(Barsanuphius, Correspondance 569, Regnault (1971) 369)
781
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