77 Mobility, immobility and sainthood ἀτρεμία· ἡσυχία.256 ἠρέμα· ἀτρέμα, πράως, ἡσυχῇ· ἡ γὰρ ἠρεμία ἡσυχία.257 πραϋπάθειαν· πραΰτητα, ἡσυχίαν.258 The terms ἀγλωττία and ἀτρεμία, negations of glossia and tremia, might suggest that hesychia is partially understood in terms of what it is not.259 In these cases, an absence of sound/silence (cf. ἀγλωττία and σιωπή) and an absence of physical movement (ἀτρεμία). Hesychia as the second meaning of the lemma ἀκή also refers to silence, while ἠρεμία means physical rest (as an opposite to κίνησις: motion).260 If applied to persons, these meanings may relate to keeping check of the body: letting no sound come out and refrain from moving. Additionally, absence of sound and movement may refer to other entities or external conditions (e.g., silence in a room or a non-moving object).261 If we take the core meaning of hesychia as rest, the lemmata indicate that the semantic network of hesychia includes meanings of a kind of bodily and/or external rest and absence of sound. The associations with bodily rest aside, we also see that hesychia is associated with a personal disposition or character (πραϋπάθεια: gentleness of temper; πραότης: gentleness, mildness; πράως: mildly, gently) and a state of mind (ἠρεμία: quietude of the mind). In other words, in addition to keeping the body still, hesychia may refer to an interior rest, keeping both mind and feeling in check. Although we need to recognise that language users only really understand the meanings of words through usage (and knowledge of the contexts in which it is used) and meaning may differ for different groups and in specific contexts,262 this understanding of hesychia as a state referring to persons – of the mind or of the body – or of the surroundings, may serve as a starting point for an analysis of hesychia in middle-Byzantine saints’ Lives. The dual-meaning of exterior and personal characteristics correlates to the associations found in late-antique monastic literature, as discussed above. 256 Photius, Lexicon (Α—Δ) 3116. Identical in the Suda. Suda alpha: 4384. 257 Photius, Lexicon (Ε – Μ) 235. Edition: Theodoridis (1998). 258 Photius, Lexicon (Ν - Φ) 1145. Edition: Theodoridis (2013). 259 ἀγλωττία and ἀτρεμία are derived from γλῶσσα/γλῶττα (tongue, language) and τρέμω (tremble, quake, quiver). 260 See LSJ; not to be confused with the symbolically charged ἐρημία, meaning desert, wilderness or solitude. 261 Of course, only when encountering hesychia ‘in the wild’, i.e. in language use, we can find out to what kind of silence or non-movement hesychia might refer to: bodily and/or external conditions. 262 Cf. premises discourse analysis and the maximalist view of semantics, see footnote 228 above, and see Peels (2015), p. 16. 2
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