118 Chapter 3 their lives for certain reasons, but not for others.368 The type of motivation aside, distance also plays a role in the degree to which the monks are represented as ‘ordinary’ or ‘special’. Long-distance travel was more risky and required more money and time (and thus the traveller would be away longer from daily tasks that were necessary to make a living). The many long-distance travels of the saints also make the saints rather special compared to many other travellers. Considering the various travel motivations represented in the saints’ Lives as discussed above and taking the considerations about scale into account, we may preliminary conclude that hagiographers represent the monks simultaneously as rooted in historical reality, to a certain degree sharing experiences with other people living and moving in the Mediterranean, but in some respects also as more special. In the next sections I will explore in more detail representations of travel motivation in each of the three Lives. Since the previous chapter suggested that discourses on monastic mobility are context-specific, I will start each analysis with an exposition of what we know about the creation of each Life. 3.3 Representations of travel motivation in the Life of Gregory of Decapolis 3.3.1 The creation of the Life Based on the Life of Gregory of Decapolis we can establish when Gregory must have lived. He was born at the end of the eight century in Eirenopolis in Isauria and he seems to have died on November 20th in 842 or possibly one or two years before.369 His Life is transmitted in twenty-four manuscripts, all of which provide (roughly) the same text.370 The author of his Life is generally accepted to be Ignatius the Deacon, based on attributions to Ignatius in three manuscripts and on stylistic similarities with his other 368 How special or common travelling for (how) many reasons actually was is hard to establish as our (literary) sources, with all its difficulties for teasing out realia, is hardly representative of the entire population. Consequently, there is not (yet) a scholarly consensus on the prevalence of mobility (especially for ‘ordinary’ people) in the medieval Mediterranean, let alone a clear idea how much one type of mobility occurred compared to another. This observation is therefore speculative. For two ends of the spectrum in the debate of the prevalence of mobility in the medieval Mediterranean, see e.g., Lilie (2009), for the position that there was little, and e.g., Oldfield (2016), for the position that all was mobility. 369 The time of birth is not specified in the Life, but F. Dvornik reconstructed a date of birth between 780 and 790 (unfortunately I have not had access to Dvornik’s edition, but reference to his position is found in Mango (1985)), while Cyril Mango proposes 797 as the latest date. Gregory died on November 20, according to the narrative. The year of death is thought to be 842 or earlier, but probably not later than 842 (as the ‘triumph of Orthodoxy’, in March 843, is not mentioned in the Life). 842 with a range of uncertainty of one or two years before is now usually accepted. See Mango (1985), pp. 636; 643–644; See also Prieto Domínguez (2021), pp. 169–170; Dvornik (1926). 370 As always with manuscript transmission there are minor variations between the manuscripts, but none of the manuscripts presents a completely different version of the Life. For the manuscript transmission, see Makris (1997), pp. 36–52.
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