165 Representations of travel motivation ἔγνω κατ’ ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν καὶ τὴν ὥραν κεκοιμῆσθαι τὸν ἑαυτοῦ πατέρα, ἐν ᾗ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ἐν Ῥώμῃ ὁ μέγας Ἠλίας, ὅτι ἄρτι τετελεύτηκεν ὁ πατήρ σου. Καὶ ἔστιν ἀληθῶς θαυμάσαι τὸ καθαρὸν τῆς ψυχῆς Ἠλίου πῶς τὸ ἀπὸ διαστήματος τοσούτου γενόμενον παρ’ αὐτὰ μεμάθηκε καὶ τῷ μαθητῇ διηγήσατο.563 […] the divine Elias said to his disciple at one day: ‘Daniel child, at this moment Jonas, your father, is removed from human matters […]’. And the distance from Taormina until Rome, where Elias was, is 20 days. Daniel took note of the hour and day, on which divine Elias made known the dormition of his father, and after they returned from Rome to Calabria, he [Daniel] learned that his own father died on that day and hour, on which the great Elias said to him in Rome ‘just now your father has died’. And the purity of Elias’ soul is truly to marvel at, how he perceived an event immediately from such a distance and [how] he explained [it] to his disciple. In this passage Elias’ extraordinary ability to perceive things elsewhere is stressed by emphasis on the exactness of the time of Elias’ knowledge and by emphasis on the distance between Elias and the event of which he has knowledge. This special ability is presented as the motivation for Elias and Daniel to leave Rome, while the hagiographer underscores again how one should marvel at Elias’ extraordinary abilities. 3.5.3 Conclusions The many journeys of Elias illustrate the diversity of mobility in the Mediterranean: the Life narrates journeys to many destinations, local, regional and long-distance travel, and the narrative includes voluntary mobility, such as pilgrimage, mobility to found a monastery, to visit family, to help others as well as involuntary mobility. It is however difficult to classify each journey as a single type of mobility in this Life, as the motivations are often multi-layered. Particularly, the analysis above revealed that the hagiographer used travel motivations to emphasise aspects of Elias’ sainthood, by connecting the saint’s motives to divine revelations and prophecies. These all showcase Elias’ close connection to God and his extraordinary powers endowed by God. The hagiographer used a technique of ‘narrative framing’ to emphasise these motivations. He therefore used this narrative building block for discursive ends: to craft Elias’ identity as a saint. We do not know whether devotion to the saint was already flourishing at the time the Life was written, but as the hagiographer addressed people from outside the monastic community at Salinas and people who would not have known the saint personally, the audience might have consisted of close followers who were already promoting the cult of Elias as well as those who were not yet as invested. In any case, by hearing about his extraordinary powers, the monastic and non-monastic audience could hear about the 563 Life of Elias the Younger 36, lines 731-745. 3
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