115 Representations of travel motivation The model by Stouraitis is not solely based on hagiography, but based on journeys found in other Byzantine sources as well.354 Because many of the journeys found in the three saints’ Lives that are discussed in this chapter fit into the categories, we may conclude that the representations of motives for mobility overlap with motivations found in other Byzantine texts. Furthermore, they most likely correspond to a reality of different types of mobility within and beyond the Eastern Roman Empire. In this respect the saints are represented as travellers who would have shared in the experience of other travellers at the time.355 In this way, the representation of the saints’ mobility situates them within the historical context, which contributes to the authenticity of the narratives. In this chapter I will focus primarily on voluntary mobility, because these journeys offer an opportunity to explore how the authors interpreted the motives of the saints themselves to travel in situations when there was no urgent need to travel for safety reasons. That does not mean that involuntary mobility is not represented in the narratives. For instance, we find examples of movement caused by war in the Lives of Elias and Euthymius. An example of flight in the Life of Elias is when the hagiographer narrates how Elias and his family fled from Enna to a castle during an Aghlabid attack.356 Later in the narrative Elias was captured, enslaved and brought to North Africa.357 These movements correspond to the flight and deportation of groups of people caused by the attacks and the eventual conquest of Sicily by Arab forces from 827 onwards, up to the conquest of Enna in 859.358 The Life of Euthymius likewise features journeys impelled by fleeing danger (by Arab raids in the Aegean sea) and an episode of captivity by these raiders.359 The involuntary mobility that affected many contemporary people in the Mediterranean is thus reflected in the saints’ Lives.360 However, the majority of the journeys represented in the saints’ Lives are voluntary mobility. Three categories of voluntary mobility according to Stouraitis’ model are reflected in the narratives. Journeys motivated by receiving monastic training could be classified as educational mobility, whereas journeys related to being a monastic leader as professional 354 However, see footnote 351 on Stouraitis’ source base. 355 The application of the model does not show us how these types of mobility are exactly represented in the narrative, which sometimes still represents the monk as extraordinary, even though the type of push factor is shared by many other travellers. As we will see in the following analyses, the saints are represented both as travellers that share experience with other travellers – which we could observe by differentiating between general types of travel motivation categories – as well as unique ‘saintly’ travellers. 356 Life of Elias the Younger 3. 357 The first time Elias was sold as a slave he was saved by a Byzantine ship during the sea voyage and brought back to Sicily. Life of Elias 6-9. 358 See Rossi Taibbi’s commentary in Rossi Taibbi (1962), pp. 131–132. 359 Life of Euthymius 25-26. 360 We can also find an instance of a natural catastrophe that impacted a journey in the Life of Gregory, although this was not the represented motivation per se for Gregory to move: during one of his journeys Gregory and another monk would have been caught in a storm at sea which led them to be shipwrecked. They washed at a (unspecified) shore, but then continued their travel. Moreover, Gregory had a hostile encounter with the local population in Otranto (who took him for an enemy, probably for an Arab), although the hostility is not directly represented in the narrative as a motivation for Gregory to move away again. Life of Gregory 24 and 33-34. 3
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