90 Chapter 2 [Euthymius] ordered me [Basil] to live outside [the monastery] for a short time in his anchoritic cells: for an ardent love of hesychia held me fast during that time (even though later on, defeated by vainglory, I would have preferred the clamour and distractions in a city) […].294 These two examples both suggest that the city is experienced as a place full of distractions, which is not compatible with hesychia. In chapter 23 of Euthymius’ Life, the saint goes outside the city (but staying near it), and opts for sitting on a column, hoping to find hesychia there. Eventually, there too, he is distracted by the ‘crowd’s devotion’, so he leaves the column to go again to Athos. In this instance, two stages of leaving the city in search for hesychia are presented. In chapter 34, Basil, the hagiographer, contrasts the anchoritic cells where he expected to find hesychia with the distractions of the city. This representation of monks retreating from the city stands in a long literary tradition. The same trope is already found in the Bible, which is picked up in early monastic literature. The same theme is also present in the writings of classically educated late-antique Christians, such as Basil of Caesarea.295 In ninth- and tenth-century hagiographies a continuation of this tradition is attested, presenting the choice of monks to go to places such as caves, mountains and islands, and attaching a spiritual and narrative significance to these spaces. To a certain degree exterior spaces are represented as wilderness (ἐρημία) and as spaces that are not the city. This observation requires nuance. The monastic tradition of rejecting the city has surely influenced both the monastic practice in the middle-Byzantine period itself, as well as its literary representation. However, the opposition between wilderness as a specific set of places (caves, mountains and islands) where one might find hesychia and the city where there are distractions is not one that is consequently brought forward throughout the narrative: for one thing because hesychia is also connected to spaces within cities – enclosed interior spaces, but still in a city; for another because the boundaries between ‘wilderness’ and ‘the city’ are represented as permeable, as will become clear below. Another example from the Life of Euthymius illustrates the complex relation of the middle-Byzantine narratives to the literary tradition of a wilderness-city opposition. This example shows, on the one hand, that the monastic tradition of rejecting the city is to be found in the middle-Byzantine narratives as well, and that hesychia is understood to be incompatible to city life. On the other hand, it also illustrates that the boundaries between ‘the city’ and ‘wilderness’ – or other spaces associated with isolation - are not so clear cut. That is, earlier in the narrative Mount Athos was presented as a place appropriate for hesychia and was represented as wilderness,296 but in the following passage the reflection 294 Translation slightly altered compared to Talbot’s in Alexakis (2016), see footnote 286. 295 On this tradition, see e.g., Rapp (2006); O’Connell (2019); Whalin (2021). 296 Life of Euthymius 14.
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