108 Chapter 2 the pilgrimages of Elias provides a parallel in which the hagiographer anticipates negative attitudes towards mobility. In the Lives of Gregory and Euthymius, on the other hand, there is no indication that the hagiographers anticipated scepticism from their audience. There the representation of mobility inspired by hesychia is purely positive, and there is no defensive tone. The comparison between the Lives of Gregory and Euthymius on the one hand and the Life of Elias on the other, shows that there are diverse understandings of hesychia and a plurality in the representation of mobility. It also shows that some hagiographers anticipated negative perceptions of monastic mobility by their audiences, while others did not have these concerns. This may be dependent on the geographic and specific cultural setting in which the hagiographer was writing and on which audience they had in mind. As we have established this variety, the next chapter will study the hagiographical texts separately, and attempt to establish which contexts and motivations of hagiographers influence the representation of mobility in the respective hagiographies. The investigation into the relation between hesychia, mobility and immobility has thus revealed insights into the understanding of hesychia and into the representation of mobility in middle-Byzantine hagiography. Indirectly it has also pointed towards attitudes of the hagiographer and potential attitudes of expected audiences. It has shown that in continuation of late antiquity, hesychia continued to be constructed as a monastic ideal in the middle-Byzantine period. It showed that mobility inspired by hesychia is represented as positive and functional in the Lives of Gregory and Euthymius, but also that there is a variety in the understanding of the connection between hesychia and mobility. It has suggested that the hagiographer of the Life of Elias expected an audience that was potentially negatively disposed towards monastic mobility, and that such expectations were absent in the Lives of Gregory and Euthymius. Moreover, this chapter has laid bare tensions in the narratives between mobility and immobility of monks in middle-Byzantine hagiographies. These are contingent on the difficulty of finding hesychia, on the one hand, and tensions between aspects of the representation of sainthood on the other. The various connections between mobility and sainthood in the three case studies will be explored further in the next chapters.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw