Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

804 26. holy men
(Shenoute, Contra Origenistas 259, ed. T. Orlandi (Rome 1985) 19; cf. Kropp
(1930) 120).
Though presented as a defence of the faith against ‘heathen’ customs,
and couched in terms of exhortations directed principally at a Christian
laity deemed to be more mired in non-Christian habits than were their
leaders, the long war on sorcery within the Christian community often took
the form of an internecine feud between rival experts on the sacred among
the monks and clergy themselves. It was a Great Old Man, and not a pagan
sorcerer, not even a Christian layman, who shocked Shenoute of Atripe by
recommending a jackal’s claw tied to his right toe as the correct remedy for
his client, a Christian governor (Shenoute, Contra Origenistas 821, Orlandi
62). The middle age of Theodore of Sykeon was troubled by an influential
priest, a great sorcerer and philanderer, known as ‘the Billy Goat of
Bithynia’ (V. Theod. Syk. 159, Festugière (1970) 134).
Deadly conflict between members of the clerical élites on theological
issues caused the overlapping systems of explanation to explode. Sorcery
alone could explain the miracles of theological opponents. In the stormy
ecclesiastical history of the fifth and sixth century, we rarely find a holy
man of an opposing party who is not dismissed at one time or another by
his rivals as a mere sorcerer. 43 Occasionally we come upon a precious
moment when a community, as a whole, was forced to make up its mind
as to the meaning of an untoward event. Only then do we realize the
freedom of manoeuvre enjoyed by late Roman persons within the interstices
of the explanatory systems that jostled at the back of their minds.
When, in 420, the monk Fronto challenged local noble families and clergy
at Tarragona on an inconclusive charge of sorcery, a servant of count
Asterius burst into the crowded basilica with an armed retinue. Pointing at
Fronto, he roared:
Give me that dog. I will stop his barking . . .
That evening, the servant died of a stroke.
When this happened, all the faithful, frightened by the obvious power of this sign,
ceased to attack me for a little while. But my enemies and the count’s whole household
. . . demanded that I be punished as a murderer, since I had killed a man with
death-dealing spells. There were even a few of those, totally lacking in faith, who
said that it had all happened by coincidence. (Aug. Ep. 11*.13)
Such uncertainty was not surprising. For many late antique Christians,
the sacred was profoundly faceless and ill-defined. Illusion was always possible.
The Great Old Men of the desert had fostered a view of the untrans-
43 Barsauma denounced by the emperor Marcian: Nau (1913) 130; Zu’ura denounced by pope
Agapetus: John Eph. Lives of the Eastern Saints 2, PO xvii.27. The Nestorians were convinced that the
Monophysites had replaced the relics of Mar Mattai by a sorcery-idol: The History of Rabban Hormizd
xvi, tr. E. A. W. Budge (London 1902) 120.
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