198 Chapter 4 The fact that virtue is conceptualised as both development, through politeia is a journey, and as an unchangeable quality, through immobility is inner stability, suggests contradictory thought patterns. This contraction may be explained by a metaphor identified in CMT research as a ‘primary metaphor’, namely change is motion.674 Primary metaphors are directly rooted in an embodied perception of the world and give rise to more specific conceptual metaphors (for a visualisation of this hierarchical relation, see figure 2). Change is motion accounts both for the conceptual metaphor temptation is movement and for politeia is a journey. As we saw in the examples, linguistic expressions of temptation is movement are used in combination with the metaphorical opposite, immobility is inner stability. In these metaphors, forceful movement/temptations are presented as attempting to throw off balance the immobility/inner stability of the saint. The metaphorical expression recalls earlier episodes in the narrative in which demons attacked Gregory and tried to lure him away from his virtuous conduct. change is motion thus enables two contradictory conceptions of virtue, as development (politeia is a journey) and as a stable quality (immobility is inner stability, interacting with the opposite metaphor temptation is movement). The contraction lies in the nature of the change in each metaphor. In the conceptual metaphor politeia is a journey, motion expresses a good change: an increasingly virtuous way of life. In movement is temptation, on the other hand, motion conveys a bad change: the potential disruption of the inner stability or perseverance of the monk.675 These opposite conceptions of virtue correlate to diverse conceptions of sainthood. One position is that individuals develop in their lifetime as saints, through their virtuous way of life. The other position is that individuals do not become saints, but they are born as saints: God already decided that they would be saints before they were born, and everything they do, and all the saintly qualities they possess, are just outward manifestations of their holy status. In other words, on the one end of the scale, sainthood is conceptualised as development, on the other hand, sainthood is conceptualised as innate. It is tempting to think that the parallel in metaphorical thinking and conceptions of sainthood reflects a causal relationship, although the nature of this relationship cannot be proven by this analysis. Possibly, the embodied origin of conceptual metaphors in addition to the continuous literary tradition of metaphorical language use reflecting life/ politeia is a journey and immobility is inner stability somehow contributed to ideas of sainthood. Moreover, since metaphors highlight but also hide aspects of reality to the 674 See e.g., Gibbs (2017a), p. 325. 675 To these conclusions, reached through an embodied understanding of metaphor, may also be added the general observation that contradictions are common to cultures. Discussing contradictory views on sins and the soul’s fate in the afterlife, Rico Franses, based on ideas of Bourdieu, expressed the idea that the persistence of contradictions means that both positions are considered essential and that a society can ‘hold two contradictory principles simultaneously, but also to keep them apart in separate, different conceptual blocs that are never allowed to interrelate, so that no contradiction appears to the agents themselves’. In other words, applied to our type of analysis, language users most likely would not have been conscious of their contradictory thinking, but still firmly believing in both positions. Franses (2018), p. 125.
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