Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

808 26. holy men
The great Lives of the holy men leave us in no doubt as to that basic
Christian oikotype. It did not coincide with other notions of the sacred that
were widespread at the time. Some time after the middle of the fifth
century, Athens was afflicted by a drought. Rising to the occasion, the great
non-Christian philosopher Proclus brought down the rain. The mysterious
drone of the sacred bull-roarer, swung above the city by the wise man,
restored the burning elements to their harmonious pitch. Himself already
something of a lesser god, Proclus’ soul was co-opted, through these rites,
into the quiet and immemorial routine of government, by which the presiding
spirits of a small part of the cosmos nurtured the sweet air of his
beloved Attica (Marinus, Vita Procli 28). For a moment, Proclus joined
himself to the loving care of the gods; he did not bow, as a courtier and a
sinner, before the sole emperor of heaven.
A few decades earlier, drought had fallen also on the region of
Jerusalem. The processions of Christian villagers, bearing crosses and
chanting Kyrie eleison, that converged on the monastery of the great
Euthymius were treated to a very different view of the universe.
‘God, Who fashioned us, is good and benevolent, and His pity extends over all His
works. But [Euthymius added] our sins stand between us and Him . . . This is why in His
anger He has brought this correction upon us, so that, disciplined by it, and bettered
by repentance, we may approach Him in fear and He accordingly may hear
us.’ On hearing this, they all cried out in unison. ‘You yourself, venerable father,
must entreat God for us.’ [Euthymius then] went into his oratory without making
any promises. Casting himself on his face, he begged God with tears to have mercy
on His creation . . . As he was praying, there suddenly blew up a south wind, the
sky was filled with clouds, heavy rain descended and there was a great storm.
(Cyr. Scyth. V. Euthymii 25, tr. Price (1991) 34–5)
Dramatic though such scenes of intercession might be, they did not
exhaust expectations of the Christian holy man. Behind the standard, workaday
Christian version of a universe made intelligible in terms of sin,
affliction and repentance, there always shimmered the majesty of paradise
regained – that is, an image not only of a God placated by bursts of human
prayer and contrition, offered to him on behalf of others by his favoured
servants, but of an entire world rejoicing in the recovery of its lost order.
In large areas of eastern Christianity (and, if in a more diffident and spasmodic
manner, also in the west) the holy man brought back to the settled
world, from his long sojourn in the wilderness, a touch of the haunting
completeness of Adam. 46 Nature, characterized by great antithetical categories,
fell into place around him. On his pillar at Telnesin, Symeon radiated
an order that seeped from his person, standing in prayer before the
court of God, into the column itself and the sacred space around it.
46 Flusin (1983) 126–8.
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