151 Representations of travel motivation asceticism is thus framed specifically as a process consisting of various stages.511 After their grazing experiment, Euthymius and his companion continued to a higher ‘rung’ of asceticism, increasing the difficulty and length of their next exercise: they set out to stay in a cave for three years without ever leaving it. Like the successive stages of ascetical exercise at Mount Athos, the hagiographer employs the technique of representing these stages as part of a spiritual development also in his representations of journeys motivated by spiritual advancement. The journeys 9, 10, 11 and 19, 20, 21 represent a similar motive of progressive isolation. First Euthymius moves to sit on top of column outside of Thessaloniki in order to escape a crowd and attain hesychia. The first time Euthymius is narrated as doing this, the hagiographer notes that Euthymius wanted to be able to give advice to others.512 However, these things – giving advice whilst also avoiding people to seek hesychia – do not go hand in hand, as is evident from the course of the narrative. Particularly if one sits on top of a column near an urban centre, imitating the famous and popular stylite saints of late antiquity, one might expect to attract crowds. This is what happened, according to the narrative, so in order to escape the crowd in both journeys 10 and 20, Euthymius is narrated to move to Mount Athos, in hope of finding hesychia there. However, after a while, the narrative describes that Mount Athos has almost become like a city. The other monks at the mountain are distracting Euthymius and prevent him from reaching hesychia. Therefore, Euthymius moves away again to an island. For journey 11 the island (called ‘Neoi’) is described to be empty of people: here finally, Euthymius is said to be able to enjoy hesychia.513 Also for journey 21 Euthymius travels to an island (called ‘Hiera’) because the monks at Mount Athos are distracting him.514 Moreover, as he feels his death is approaching, he wants to experience this ‘without distraction of the mind and without human disturbance’.515 By repeating the exact same succession of 511 Life of Euthymius 18; translated by Talbot in Alexakis (2016). These metaphors of spiritual ascension on a ladder reminds the audience of the ideas of John Climacus (before 579 to c. 650, author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent), whom the hagiographer also refers to as inspiring Euthymius’ teaching in chapter 33. Life of Euthymius 33. 512 And to ‘be seen as being elevated closer to God’, like the famous stylite saint Symeon, illustrating that a degree of self-fashioning was also not alien to Euthymius (as the narrative implies). See a discussion of this passage in the previous chapter, pp. 89-90. 513 In this passage Euthymius is thus represented as having finally reached the perfect conditions to focus on an inner spiritual state of being. According to the narrative, Euthymius finally leaves the island involuntarily, as he is being captured by pirates (and released again by a miracle), and then decides he should move towards safer regions. By representing the subsequent journeys as involuntary mobility – whether reflecting reality or not – the hagiographer leaves Euthymius’ determinate strive for isolation and inner spiritual development intact: it is not of Euthymius’ own accord that he moves back to places filled with other people again (where he can fulfil other tasks as a holy man, but is disturbed in his hesychia). 514 Like the island Neoi, it is not known which island in the Aegean Sea Hiera refers to. The name of the island might also by chosen for its fitting meaning, interpreting the island as a liminal space: Euthymius, having progressed as close as possible to the divine while being human, spends his last moments on earth at a ‘holy island’ before completing his transition to the realm of the divine by his death. Life of Euthymius the Younger 37.3: ‘The reward Euthymius received for his long hard labor and many years of asceticism was to depart and to be with Christ, to whom, while he was alive and conducting his life, he showed himself dead to life, having killed every desire and urge of the flesh that militated against the spirit’. Translation by Talbot in Alexakis (2016). 515 ἐν ἀταραξίᾳ νοὸς ὡς δὲ καὶ ἀνθρώπων παρενοχλήσεως ἄνευθε; Life of Euthymius the Younger 37.3. 3
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