70 Chapter 2 This polysemy could complicate making conclusions on the relation between ὁδός and mobility and immobility in the narrative. Moreover, in these non-metaphorical meanings ὁδός functions as a descriptive word and does not have an ideological importance in monasticism. In the Christian tradition ὁδός is ideologically charged in its metaphorical usages. One of the most well-known examples is a saying accredited to Jesus in John 14:6, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life’: Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή.221 Referring to Christ as ἡ ὁδός finds resonance throughout Byzantine culture. For example, one of the most popular iconographic types of the Virgin Mary holding Christ in visual representations is known as the ὁδηγήτρια: ‘she who shows the way’, the ‘way’ (ἡ ὁδός) being Christ. The metaphorical usages of ὁδός thus stand in a long Christian tradition, but is not specific to a monastic context. Moreover, the metaphorical usage of ὁδός does not stand on its own, but is only one expression among many travel-related metaphors that are reflective of broader patterns in metaphorical thinking. The metaphorical usage of ὁδός should therefore be studied in relation to these other metaphorical expressions. The polysemy of ὁδός, the partial insignificance of the term in a monastic context (either because of its descriptive nature, or because it is not specific to a monastic context), and the need to study ὁδός in relation to a wide range of other metaphorical expressions, make the term less suitable for a term-centred analysis to uncover monastic perceptions of mobility and immobility. However, studying what travel metaphors, including those using ὁδός can and cannot reveal about views on mobility will be discussed in detail in chapter 4. Lacking a suitable term for mobility, one might turn to other terms that appear frequently in mobility episodes and fulfil the criteria outlined above. From the analysis in the previous chapter, we learned that by focussing on immobility we can also learn about ideas of mobility. We can therefore also search for terms that mean the opposite of mobility or motion. Candidates would be ἀκινησία (absence of motion), στάσις (standing still, rest) and ἡσυχία (rest). The first does not appear in the three Lives to be discussed at all, the second only infrequently (5 instances). The term ἡσυχία (from here on transliterated as hesychia), however, does occur relatively frequently (25 instances) and meets all the requirements.222 This term is therefore chosen as the focus of this chapter. It should be noted that, although hesychia seems the most promising emic term for this study, studying other terms, such as those mentioned above or yet others that occur in mobility stories, may also have yielded meaningful results.223 221 John 14:6 (NIV), edition of the Greek New Testament: Aland et al. (1968). 222 See appendix 2 for the occurance of hesychia and its cognates in the three saints’ Lives. 223 Another potentially relevant term to study is ξενιτεία (living or travelling abroad). Like hesychia scholarly literature attributes spiritual significance to this term in the context of Byzantine monasticism. This term, however, appears hardly in the texts be studied (no occurrences in the Life of Gregory, nor in that of Euthymius, twice in the Life of Elias). Also a search in the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database (search term: ‘xenitei’) yields only 7 results, compared to 191 results for the search term ‘hesychi’. It may be speculated that the ideological meaning attributed to xeniteia is more part of a modern scholarly discourse, than reflected in the usage of the term itself in Byzantine hagiographical texts (which of course does not exclude the possibility for a significant usage of the term in other genres of middle-Byzantine literature). On xeniteia, see e.g., Bitton-Ashkelony (2005), pp. 148–149; McGuckin (2000).
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