88 Chapter 2 2.3.2.2 Exterior spaces: wilderness versus the city The two narratives show that the spaces with which hesychia is connected fall into two categories: interior (semi-)enclosed spaces and exterior spaces.287 This second category applies to two main types of geographical spaces: mountains and (uninhabited) islands. Also an instance of a column is included. These different types of spaces have a few conditions in common. For interior, enclosed spaces, it has already been observed that they imply a degree of physical separation from the outside/exterior world, and they (ideally) can facilitate a degree of solitude. As for heights and islands, these criteria also apply, but in a slightly different way. In these cases, the narratives do not focus on the type of dwelling, so apparently a physical separation between inside and outside is not considered relevant (at least not enough to be mentioned in the stories).288 Rather, these types of spaces refer to the geographic environment. In their specific geographical setting, mountains and islands are distinct landscape-units which are distinguishable from other areas. So there is a degree of geographical separation within the landscape. Of course, the boundaries between mountain and valley or plain and between island and mainland are permeable – but so are the walls of a monastic cell. Such exterior spaces still provide a degree of visible separation from other parts of the landscape. This geographical distinctness aside, the physical separation – though not perfect – also implies a degree of social isolation. The island, for example, is described as an uninhabited island, implying the monks would be there in solitude.289 Mountains as well are away from urban centres or towns and generally less populated, so they might also conjure up an image of (geographical and social) isolation. The geographical and social isolation that mountains and the uninhabited island offer might also reflect an effort to represent the appropriate space for hesychia to be in ‘wilderness’ as opposed to ‘civilisation’, especially as opposed to city life. In a few instances mountains and the (uninhabited) island are indeed referred to as ἐρημία or ἐρῆμος (wilderness, desert or solitude).290 In the Life of Euthymius the Younger two passages illustrate the effort to represent monks to consciously reject ‘the city’ in their search for hesychia. 287 A new research project is going to explore the usage of exactly these spaces, spaces of confinement and isolation, in connection to holiness and asceticism in early and middle-Byzantine hagiography further: ‘Spaces that matter: Enclosed and secluded places in early and middle-Byzantine hagiography’ by Carolina Cupane and Christodoulos Papavarnavas at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, running from March 2022 until February 2026. See their project website: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/imafo/research/byzantine-research/language-text-andscript/language-use-and-literature/spaces-that-matter. 288 With regard to the exterior spaces the authors do not intend to convey that the monk lived outside without shelter, but they just omit reference to the interior spaces in which they may have lived. In some parts of the narrative the hagiographer does stress that monks live without shelter, for instance, when the hagiographer writes that Euthymius and a fellow-monk go and live outside without shelter like cattle (‘crawling on the ground for forty days like grazing animals’ […] ‘but their bodies were so tormented by exposure to the cold that the ascetics preserved until their last breath the marks of their first ascetic competition’). Life of Euthymius 17; translation by Talbot in Alexakis (2016), p. 51-53. 289 Life of Euthymius 24. 290 The idea of the monks retreating in the actual desert was first connected to early monasticism in the Egyptian desert, but afterwards and elsewhere predominantly became a literary trope, rather than reflecting dominant practice. Goehring (1993); Rapp (2006).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw