187 Conceptual metaphors of travel and stability from contemporary discourses on ascetics, who were frequently compared to angels.634 The logic propounded in this ascetic strand of monastic literature is that by restricting bodily needs such as food and sleep to a bare minimum, one becomes less human, and by extension, more divine. Running up to a height of this lifestyle is conceptualised as a movement towards this spiritual aim: reaching heaven by striving to transform from human towards divine through an ascetic lifestyle. ‘Running up’ in the metaphor thus expresses progressing spiritually through an ascetic lifestyle.635 In other words, the image of running up to a height is mapped onto the target domain of spiritual progress. The other two instances of the conceptual metaphor work in much the same way. The ‘height’ in chapter 66 is equally associated with virtue, as the hagiographer explains: ‘And why should we endeavour to linger […], but not be driven to tell quickly of which kind his virtue was and to how great a height he ran up to?’ The paragraphs that follow indeed each focus on one specific virtue of the saint. The ‘things longed for’ (τῶν ὀρεκτῶν) in the last expression ‘he ran up to that summit of the things longed for’,636 likely refers back to Gregory’s desire to serve God through an ascetic lifestyle. The only other instance of ὀρεκτός in the narrative is in chapter 3, in which the saint makes known his desire to retreat from the world and to subject himself to Christ by means of ‘angelical conduct’. In order to achieve this he is sent to some monks, who will provide guidance for him to ‘grasp the desired’.637 Moreover, the metaphorical expressions ‘the path of ascesis’ and ‘the road which leads to virtue’ are used in the next lines, thereby strengthening the idea that the summit is equated to the spiritual purpose of virtue and particularly to achieve an ascetic lifestyle. The metaphorical language that conceptualises spiritual progress as climbing up also reflects the idea that achieving a virtuous politeia is difficult: not only is cultivating the ideal politeia a journey with obstacles, i.e. a process/development with impediments that may prevent the saint from reaching his goal, it is also not an easy flat road. Rather, the development towards virtuous conduct involves walking up, i.e. a route that requires more strength and resistance than walking on a plain. The metaphor spiritual progress of running up to a height thus represents the achievement of the saint as a difficult one, and 634 See e.g., Muehlberger (2008); Zecher (2013). Also in Life of Euthymius about Euthymius’ monastic community at Brastamon, the hagiographer remarks: ‘You might say that a visitor to that holy place would have seen angels endowed with flesh or mortals dematerialized into angels, so celestial and virtuous was their conduct and to such an extent did men of flesh practice the regimen of those without flesh’. And another ascetic would be ‘living like an angel and conducting his life within the body as if he were incorporeal’. Life of Euthymius the Younger 27.1; translation by Talbot in Alexakis (2016). There were also alternative cenobitic monastic discourses that did not glorify rigid asceticism so much, but rather focussed on moderation and community (extreme asceticism in this discourse was seen as leading to undesirable competition between monks outdoing each other in their asceticism, which was framed as an expression of the vices of vainglory and pride). See Krausmüller (2017). 635 Cf. chapters 2 and 3, in which I observed that spiritual perfection was often represented as a process, rather than reaching it in one go. 636 The full sentence is Ὅλον γὰρ ἑαυτὸν οἶκον πνευματικὸν δομησάμενος καὶ πολλῶν πλήρη τοῦτον ἀγαθῶν διαδείξας εἰς ἐκείνην ἀνέδραμε τὴν τῶν ὀρεκτῶν κορυφήν, εἰς ἣν πᾶσα ἔφεσις ἵσταται. (While he built himself entirely as a spiritual house and while showing clearly that he was full of many good things, he ran up to that summit of the things longed for, on which all yearning is brought to a standstill.) Life of Gregory 67, lines 1-3. 637 τοῦ ὀρεκτοῦ περιδράξαιτο, Life of Gregory 3, line 20. 4
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