168 Chapter 3 prominence to one motivation by omitting the motivation of many other journeys: one single divine revelation motivates many journeys to come in the narrative. The remaining journeys that are preceded by a travel motivation are mostly motivated by a desire for spiritual progress. In the Life of Euthymius the number and distribution in the narrative of mobility motivated by the desire for spiritual progress emphasises this motivation over others. The hagiographer of Elias instead uses a strategy of narrative framing to draw attention to journeys motivated by divine revelations. This variety of narrative strategies – omission, distribution and framing – shows that representing travel motivation was not just a matter of following standard narrative models and topoi.566 Instead these representations are attempts to interpret the monks’ mobility in particular ways for their audiences. Moreover, hagiographers used these representations for discursive aims. All three authors use the prominent travel motivations to display aspects of the monks’ sainthood. By stressing divine revelations, the authors emphasise the monks’ close connection to God – an essential aspect of their sainthood. Moreover, they model the saints onto biblical and early monastic examples in the representation of these revelations and in the monks’ search for spiritual development. While biblical models are presented to be followed by the saints, the saints themselves are in turn presented as exemplars for others, e.g., for people they met during their lives and as inspirations for people after their deaths, including the audiences of the Lives. The hagiographers stress the exemplar-function of saints both in their representation of divine revelations and in the monks’ search for spiritual development. The second question, if we can deduce normative ideas of monastic mobility from the way in which travel motivations are represented, was more difficult to answer. There appears to be no singular normative idea that authors clearly communicate in the narratives. In contrast, we find many different types of travel motivation represented. This multivalence is not surprising, because the representation of travel motivation is the result of a complex interplay between many factors. These include, but are not limited to, the literary traditions that these texts tie into and the diverse narrative and discursive aims that hagiographers wished to achieve with their texts.567 The ideas of the hagiographers themselves and the anticipated views of the audiences are therefore difficult to disentangle from these representations. The analysis demonstrated that mobility is never presented as disadvantageous for the monks themselves, nor for the world around them, which is not surprising concerning the type of texts we are dealing with. Certain types of mobility are specifically presented as positive for the monks themselves and/or for society at large, such as mobility for spiritual development, mobility to re-enter in the ‘world’ and to function as an exemplar for others, and mobility to obey to God’s will and follow God’s plan. We may speculate 566 Although the hagiographers certainly made use of topoi as building blocks of the narrative. 567 Cf. introduction, pp. 26-28, e.g., a degree of historical accuracy for the sake of remembrance and authenticity, persuasion, entertainment, etc.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw