158 Chapter 3 Amalfi, similarly, to flee for incursions. At the end of his life he started a last long journey, as he was summoned by the Emperor Leo VI to Constantinople. He never reached the capital, however, as he died in Thessaloniki. The many destinations throughout the Mediterranean reached – and some not reached – by Elias are provided with an equally diverse range of travel motivations in his Life.539 The combination of the number of journeys, the great distance covered, and the crossing of the borders of the Empire (albeit not always voluntary) in the span of one lifetime was probably exceptional both in contemporary hagiographical narratives and in reality. However, the various types of travel motivations presented in this Life would have been relatable to various movers in the Mediterranean. The representation of mobility in this Life reflects the multifariousness of medieval mobility par excellence, but condensed in one lifespan.540 Certain travel motivations instead represent the monk as a special mover, rather than a recognisable one. The author has intertwined these motivations with Elias’ close connection to the divine. That is, several journeys, as presented in the narrative, are motivated by divine revelations and by Elias’ prophetic abilities. Moreover, the author draws specific attention to journeys inspired by a divine revelation through a technique of ‘narrative framing’. We will now turn to those in more detail, to discuss how these particular motivations are represented, how they are emphasised and to what end. The choice to intertwine travel motivations with human-divine interactions and to emphasise these travel motivations in the narrative, shows that the hagiographer used these representations for discursive ends: that is, to construct the monk’s sainthood. Divine revelation as travel motivation The hagiographer chose to precede several of Elias’ long journeys with a divine revelation in the narrative. Already at the start of the narrative the author includes a divine revelation: as a child Elias would have received a divine vision during his sleep, telling him that he must reach Africa as a slave and convert the people there.541 Throughout the narrative Elias receives more of these divine revelations, either in the form of a divine voice or a vision. They communicate various aspects of Elias’ sainthood.542 The frequency of the divine revelations indicate the close ties between Elias and God. By including multiple and similar divine revelations to Elias in the narrative the hagiographer shows that divine powers (God, but also the apostles Peter and Paul) had taken a special interest in him, 539 E.g., involuntary mobility (journeys 1, 2, 13, 24, 27, 28 and 31), pilgrimage (journeys 3 to 8, 10, 16, 20, and 30), seeking solitude (journeys 26 and 33) visiting family (journeys 1 and 11) (or funeral of disciple’s family member, journey 21), founding a monastery (journeys 11 and 16), visiting sick people (journey 34), diplomacy (journey 35), and an imperial invitation to the capital (journey 36). See appendix 8. 540 Cf. section 3.2. 541 Life of Elias the Younger 4. 542 The possibility for humans to directly perceive God or divine beings was not universally accepted in the ninth and tenth centuries, as Dirk Krausmüller has pointed out, and they were thus also not universally accepted signs of sainthood (although a common one in middle-Byzantine hagiographies). See Krausmüller (2020), pp. 381–382.
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