131 Representations of travel motivation Another time he perceived a voice from heaven, which also the most pious Abram had been listening to, calling and saying: ‘Gregory, if you desire to see yourself reaching perfection, go away from your land and away from your (family) kinship and go to a land, in which you will be rightly pleasing to God’. For God judged that it is not right that the lamp be hidden under the modius,429 but that it be placed on the worldly lampstand enlightening befittingly the dwelling of the souls. So getting up from the cave he travelled to Asia. The motivation for Gregory to leave the cave and set on a journey is presented by a divine message followed by an explanatory comment by the narrator.430 We could distinguish here between motivations on different levels: the representation of God’s reasons for sending Gregory on a journey; the hagiographer’s explanation of God’s intentions sending this message; and finally the representation of Gregory’s own motivation to set forth on a journey. Strictly speaking, this passage does not give direct insight into Gregory’s own motivation, but only represents the former two levels. However, immediately after these two sentences Gregory is in fact described as leaving his cave and setting on a journey, thus following the instructions. Gregory is therefore presented as taking the divine revelation seriously. The hagiographer and the audience might therefore have interpreted the motivation by Gregory to align with the divine revelation. This passage focusses on the reasons why he should leave his current location, and less on the particularities of the destination. This contributes to the impression that the following journeys may all be interpreted as inspired by this divine revelation. In the following I will differentiate various aspects of the divine revelation and the explanation of the hagiographer, which allows us to see that the represented motivation for Gregory to travel consists of multiple layers. The travel motivation that is presented in the divine revelation, which also reflects on Gregory’s intentions through his actions, is to reach (spiritual) perfection (πρὸς τελειότητα). In order to be able to achieve that, the divine voice urges Gregory to move away from his current surroundings, from the land that is familiar to him (τῆς γῆς σου, ‘your land’) and away from the people he knows and feels connected to (τῆς συγγενείας σου, his family). We already observed in the previous chapter that to be separated from other (worldly) people was considered necessary for reaching hesychia and thus for spiritual development. Especially in the formative stage of becoming a monk, separation from society and from one’s family in particular was considered essential.431 However, Gregory initially did not completely break with family connections, according to the narrative. Namely, soon after 429 Roman unit for measurement, e.g., of grain, or in this case referring to the physical object with which to measure the amount of a modius (different modioi with varying volumes were in use in Byzantium). Schilbach and Kazhdan (1991). For the metaphorical meaning of the expression, see the discussion at pp. 132-133. 430 As we will see, divine revelations motivating travel are also a recurrent theme in the Life of Elias. 431 Cf. pp. 127-128 above (and see pp. 22-23 of the Introduction). 3
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