Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education 2022930979, 0198869266, 9780198869269

Table of contents :
Cover
Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education
Copyright
Preface
Contents
List of Abbreviations
1: Education and Asceticism in Late-Antique Gaza
Thinking about Education
Dorotheus of Gaza
Dorotheus on Ascetic Paideia
2: Rhetoric, Philosophy, Medicine: Internalizing Foreign Teaching
Introduction
Rhetoric
Ekphrasis
Ethos and Ethopoeia
Rhetoric and Ascetic Paideia
Philosophy
Philosophy and Exegesis: Transformation and Textual Community
Concepts, Categories, and Methods
The Skopos of the Text
Metaphors to Live By
Philosophy and Ascetic Paideia
Medicine
Soul and Body
Habituation: Education as Regimen and Psychic Therapy
Medicine and Ascetic Paideia
Conclusions: Ascetic Paideia and Transformation
3: Education and Epistemology
Introduction: Ways of Knowing and Ordering Knowledge
Philosophical Prolegomena
Godlikeness and Knowledge in the Prolegomena to the Isagoge
Godlikeness and Ideal Students and Teachers in the Prolegomena to Aristotle’s Categories
Practice of Death and Philosophical Epistemology
Hierarchies of Knowing
The Epistemology of Dorotheus’ Pedagogy: Humility, Godlikeness, and Knowledge
The Practice of Death and Ascetic Epistemology
Humility as an Epistemic Virtue
Humility and Epistemological Authority
Letters to and from the Old Men
Letters to His Monks
Reading and Meditation
Conclusions: The Goals of Ascetic Education and Epistemology
4: Education, Emotion, and Virtue
Introduction
Theorizing Emotions in Ascetic Education
Emotional Norms in Dorotheus’ Classroom
Fear and Education
Emotions in Dorotheus’ Psychology
Dorotheus’ Psychology
Passion and Desire and their Absence (τὸ πάθος, ἡ ἐπιθυμία, and ἡ ἀπάθεια)
Affective Thoughts: Emotion and Cognition (ὁ λογισμὸς ἐμπαθής)
Virtue and Affective Cognition: Attentive Pilgrimage and Vigilance in Excising the Passions
Affective Virtues for Monastic Community
Humility and the Organization of Affects and Virtues
Conclusions: Ethical and Emotional Transformation
5: Education, Habituation, and Moral Development
Introduction
Habituation and Learning Virtue
Moral Development as a Craft: ‘On Building up and Fine-tuning the Virtues of the Soul’
Popular Ethics and Habit Formation in Community
Dramatizing Exemplarity: Habituating Mind and Will
Work
Prayer
Conclusions: Imitation, Temporality, and Moral Development
6: Conclusion: Education and Transformation
Bibliography
Ancient Texts and Translations
Modern Scholarship
Index Locorum
General Index

Citation preview

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OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES General Editors

GILLIAN CLARK

A N D R E W LO U T H

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THE OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES Series includes scholarly volumes on the thought and history of the early Christian centuries. Covering a wide range of Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, the books are of interest to theologians, ancient historians, and specialists in the classical and Jewish worlds.     : The Minor Prophets as Christian Scripture in the Commentaries of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria Hauna T. Ondrey (2018) Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East A Study of Jacob of Serugh Philip Michael Forness (2018) God and Christ in Irenaeus Anthony Briggman (2018) Augustine’s Early Thought on the Redemptive Function of Divine Judgement Bart van Egmond (2018) The Idea of Nicaea in the Early Church Councils,  431–451 Mark S. Smith (2018) The Many Deaths of Peter and Paul David L. Eastman (2019) Visions and Faces of the Tragic The Mimesis of Tragedy and the Folly of Salvation in Early Christian Literature Paul M. Blowers (2020) Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors Morwenna Ludlow (2020) Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature: A Cosmopolitan Anthropology from Roman Syria David Lloyd Dusenbury (2021)

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Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education MICHAEL W. CHAMPION

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Michael W. Champion 2022 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2022 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022930979 ISBN 978–0–19–886926–9 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198869269.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Preface This book had a long gestation period, conceptualized at the University of Western Australia, including on sabbatical at the University of Cambridge, and written in the Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry. UWA sabbatical funding also took me to Lund University, where I enjoyed the hospitality of Samuel Rubenson’s Monasticism and Classical Paideia research team at an engaging workshop. Discussions with colleagues at UWA about exemplarity, ancient education, emotions history, and late-antique and Byzantine history helped ideas to crystallize. I recall with gratitude stimulating conversations with friends and colleagues including Yasmin Haskell, John Melville-Jones, Lara O’Sullivan, Neil O’Sullivan, Kirk Essary, Andrew Lynch, Pip Maddern, and Anne Scott. Susan Broomhall invited me to present related research for UWA’s Institute of Advanced Study and the Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group, an organization which models scholarly community. The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions funded a project on Dorotheus’ humanist reception and provided a vibrant research context. The ACU/Durham/Notre Dame ‘Modes of Knowing’ team discussed many themes and read substantial drafts. I thank Lewis Ayres, Matt Crawford, Sarah GadorWhyte, Michael Hanaghan, Jane Heath, Dawn LaValle Norman, Andrew RaddeGallwitz, and Jonathan Zecher. I am especially indebted to Jonathan, whose knowledge of ascetica is exceptional. He read the whole and made numerous insightful suggestions. Jon Simons offered valuable research assistance while completing his PhD. I’m fortunate to work with supportive colleagues in ACU’s Biblical and Early Christian Studies team. I worked closely with David Runia in leading the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, and I record my gratitude for David’s advice and friendship. Kylie Crabbe’s encouragement and advice has also been influential. I have benefited from feedback arising from presentations of early drafts around the world, and I warmly thank participants in these conferences and seminars. My PhD supervisor Judith Herrin asked whether Dorotheus was interested in education or in training, a question that kept worrying me as I thought about the contours of monastic pedagogy. A recurring topic of conversation at home as I was growing up was how best to educate people. Education was placed at the heart of a range of cultural problems. My social worker mother and physics teacher father introduced me to theorists of culture and education like Jerome Bruner and Lev Vygotsky, whose ideas turned out to be fruitful in this project. They helped draw out how education can reinforce power structures and, if done well, strengthen social justice. Ideas like

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vi



these are at the heart of thinking about how to conceptualize late-antique education, relate it to earlier educational practices from the classical world, and integrate it in narratives of late-antique cultural change. Family debates about education (and much else) continue, enriched too by the perspectives of my sister, a high school teacher, and my brother, a medievalist. I thank Gaye, Neil, Matthew, and Benita for their intellectual contributions and loving friendship. Other friends have offered ideas and encouragement at various stages. I thank especially Miranda, Callum, Martin, and Hilary. Samuel and Hugh have generously allowed me to hide away in the study with Dorotheus and they coped with lockdown home-schooling with independence, fortitude, and good humour. Sarah, my wife, has been a constant support and critic. She has debated, commented on, and improved the whole, and, in the difficult circumstances of the past two years, has enabled me to find the time to complete the project. I dedicate the book to her. Melbourne October 2021

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Contents List of Abbreviations

ix

1. Education and Asceticism in Late-Antique Gaza Thinking about Education Dorotheus of Gaza Dorotheus on Ascetic Paideia

1 1 11 13

2. Rhetoric, Philosophy, Medicine: Internalizing Foreign Teaching Introduction Rhetoric Philosophy Medicine Conclusions: Ascetic Paideia and Transformation

20 20 21 35 48 62

3. Education and Epistemology Introduction: Ways of Knowing and Ordering Knowledge Philosophical Prolegomena Hierarchies of Knowing The Epistemology of Dorotheus’ Pedagogy: Humility, Godlikeness, and Knowledge The Practice of Death and Ascetic Epistemology Humility as an Epistemic Virtue Humility and Epistemological Authority Conclusions: The Goals of Ascetic Education and Epistemology

65 65 67 79 81 85 92 101 117

4. Education, Emotion, and Virtue Introduction Theorizing Emotions in Ascetic Education Emotional Norms in Dorotheus’ Classroom Emotions in Dorotheus’ Psychology Virtue and Affective Cognition: Attentive Pilgrimage and Vigilance in Excising the Passions Affective Virtues for Monastic Community Conclusions: Ethical and Emotional Transformation

120 120 121 124 136

5. Education, Habituation, and Moral Development Introduction Habituation and Learning Virtue Moral Development as a Craft: ‘On Building up and Fine-tuning the Virtues of the Soul’ Popular Ethics and Habit Formation in Community

173 173 175

153 161 169

181 190

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viii

 Dramatizing Exemplarity: Habituating Mind and Will Work Prayer Conclusions: Imitation, Temporality, and Moral Development

192 203 209 212

6. Conclusion: Education and Transformation

216

Bibliography Index Locorum General Index

223 251 257

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List of Abbreviations Titles of ancient philosophical texts are abbreviated in accordance with the series The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, edited by Richard Sorabji, for which see The Philosophy of the Commentators 200–600 AD. Volume 1: Psychology (with Ethics and Religion). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005, 415–16. Titles of classical historical and literary texts are abbreviated in accordance with the Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth. 4th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Titles of patristic and biblical texts are abbreviated in accordance with A Patristic Greek Lexicon, edited by G. W. H. Lampe. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961, xi–xlvi. Journal titles are abbreviated in accordance with l’année philologique. CAG CCSG CFHB CMG CML CSCO CSEL GCS GNO LCL OCA PG PL PO SC SVF

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. Edited under the direction of the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. 23 vols. Berlin, 1882–1909. Corpus Christianorum series Graeca. Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae. Series Berolinensis. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum. Corpus Medicorum Latinorum. Corpus scriptorum Christianorum orientalium. Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller. Gregorii Nysseni opera. Loeb Classical Library. Orientalia Christiana Analecta. Patrologiae cursus completus (series Graeca). Paris: Migne, 1857–1866. Patrologioae cursus completes (series Latina). Paris: Migne, 1844–1855. Patrologia Orientalis. Sources chretiénnes. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, edited by Hans von Armin. 4 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1903–1905, 1924.

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1 Education and Asceticism in Late-Antique Gaza Education is a complex pursuit of fitting a culture to the needs of its members and their ways of knowing [and feeling and acting] to the needs of the culture. Bruner, The Culture of Education, 43

Thinking about Education This book is an attempt to grapple with fundamental questions about how education should be conceptualized in late antiquity through a detailed study of the thought of Dorotheus of Gaza, a sixth-century Palestinian monk. How did Dorotheus shape his Instructions in light of earlier traditions of education? To what extent should ascetic education be likened to classical Greek and Roman education? Was monastic education an innovative transformation or should the accent be placed on how asceticism preserved and transmitted models of education and their characteristic intellectual commitments and thought forms to a new Christian audience? How should education itself be theorized such that the relationship between ascetic and classical education may be more clearly understood? Dorotheus of Gaza provides a fascinating window into education in monasteries near Gaza in the sixth century. His Instructions, Letters, and Sayings have been viewed largely as a distillation of earlier ascetic literature and thought.¹ Despite his influence on ascetic educational cultures and practice down the centuries he has been somewhat overshadowed by scholarly interest in his teachers, the two Old Men of Gaza, Barsanuphius and John.² So I explore Dorotheus’ thought to bring out both its central concerns and its distinctive contributions. His notion of education is shaped by the assumption that education is transformative over the course of a lifetime rather than merely informative and limited to a short period. ¹ For Dorotheus’ Instructions, Letters, and Sayings and the near-contemporary Life of his disciple Dositheus, see Dorotheus 2001 (SC 92, 2nd edn). Throughout, I cite Dorotheus’ Instructions by Instruction number and chapter, and, when necessary for clarity, line number in the SC text. ² On Dorotheus’ influence, see Regnault and de Préville 2001, 84–95 and Pauli 2000, 44–9. For the Old Men, see Barsanuphius and John 1997–1998, 2000–2001 (SC 426, CE 427, 450–1).

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education. Michael W. Champion, Oxford University Press. © Michael W. Champion 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198869269.003.0001

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2       Since he views affectivity as crucial for shaping thought and action at each stage of ascetic development, emotions play a key role in the transformation of subjectivity and communal life through education. For Dorotheus, education aims to relate his students to each other, to the wider culture, and to God such that monks come to be more like God and their community life imitates the peaceful tranquillity and order of paradise. Development of humility becomes a defining characteristic of education because it is understood as necessary for accurate knowledge, emotional regulation, virtuous action, and healthy relationships. Dorotheus emerges as a teacher deeply indebted to earlier forms of ascetic education as well as to classical discourses from rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine. He offers distinctive accounts, at the individual and communal scale, of ways of knowing and ordering knowledge, moral psychology and emotional norms, and education through habituation. My study thus views asceticism in the form Dorotheus presents it as offering education that intersects with and draws on classical traditions while creating different social roles and opportunities for teachers and students, establishing distinctive epistemic authorities, and instituting emotional and ethical norms capable of performing significant cultural work. Dorotheus’ ascetic education aims to develop the minds and souls of students in all their emotional, volitional, and rational complexity through a range of cognitive-affective teachings that are indebted and familiar to other traditions of education and which enable change both within educational norms and practices and within the wider cultures of late antiquity. Some have emphasized rupture between classical education and asceticism; others more recently have charted in detail ways in which monastic education overlapped with the spiritual exercises of philosophy and deployed the tools and methods of grammar and rhetoric.³ This suggests that we need a way of viewing education in general, and ascetic education in particular, as deliberately engaged in cultural reproduction as much as in innovation and reconfiguration. My close reading of Dorotheus’ programme of ascetic education draws on a cultural model of education that acknowledges significant continuity and similarity between different educational traditions while also exploring mechanisms by which ascetic education changed educational and social structures and norms. Recent studies have advanced our understanding of how to think about ascetic education considerably. We can no longer imagine early asceticism as antithetical to other forms of education, nor can we think of ascetic writers as predominantly cut off from other late-antique intellectuals, whether in their social networks and class, their intellectual formation, or their engagement with the political and

³ Marrou 1956, Larsen and Rubenson 2018, and Hadot 2004 are paradigmatic. See further on relevant historiography below.

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intellectual life of cities.⁴ Lillian Larsen and Samuel Rubenson’s Monastic Education in Late Antiquity crowns a generation of scholarship which has reframed how we should think about early monasticism in general and monastic education in particular. They begin by arguing that monasticism is a transformation of classical culture that redefined norms and offered new tools and institutional forms for education.⁵ They immediately go on to emphasize not transformation but preservation, as ascetic education’s capacity to transmit Greek and Roman pedagogy comes to the fore.⁶ There is a ‘reformation’ not a ‘revolution’ which is nevertheless a ‘transformation’ of the wider culture.⁷ Yet Larsen and Rubenson insist that Christian and classical cultures are not inherently different or antithetical to one another; rivalry rather than rejection is the key to understanding the relationship between these cultures, in their view.⁸ In these claims we see the urgency of the perennial problem of the relationship between Christianity and the wider cultures it inhabits in a particularly clear form, with competing models of cultural interactions (transformation, reformation, revolution, transmission, preservation, redefinition, development, competition, conflict) jostling with each other for explanatory power. This points to the complexity of the problem. Education is a particularly fertile site for exploring the dynamics of cultural change, reproduction, and integration.⁹ One means of exploring these dynamics is to look for similarities and differences between classical and ascetic education. Such an investigation may then go on to find different degrees of cultural continuity. Rubenson identifies promising suggestions and offers his own illuminating account.¹⁰ Thinking of education (on the philosophical model elucidated by Pierre Hadot) as training in a way of life draws attention to educational practices (especially those designed to exercise the mind and train the memory), the social contours of schools, particularly their structure as a relatively closed but simple and informal social network, and the ways education sustained wider imperial institutions and power dynamics.¹¹ John Dillon’s characterization of education (again in the philosophical context) also draws attention to these social realities. Teachers and students in Greco-Roman philosophical education lived together in communities that also included visitors from time to time, there was an emphasis on reflecting on the writings of canonical figures, the schools were sustained by benefactors, and, importantly, one should always ‘think small’.¹² Very few students joined a philosophical school at any one time. Larsen and others have focused not so much on philosophical as ⁴ For the negative assessment, see Marrou 1956, 330–4. Major revisions have been offered by scholars such as Larsen 2006a, 2008, 2013, 2016, 2017a; Rubenson 1995, 2012, 2013; and Rydell Johnsén 2018 all working on the substantial Lund MOPAI (Monasticism and Classical Paideia) project. Stenger 2022 promises a significant contribution but was published too late to be consulted. ⁵ Larsen and Rubenson 2018, 1. ⁶ Larsen and Rubenson 2018, 1. ⁷ Larsen and Rubenson 2018, 3–4. ⁸ Larsen and Rubenson 2018, 3–4. ⁹ For an account emphasizing education as cultural reproduction, see Bourdieu and Passeron 1990. ¹⁰ Rubenson 2018. ¹¹ Hadot 1995a, 2004. ¹² Dillon 2005, 1.

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4       rhetorical and grammatical education, seeing in monastic settings the deployment of the same kind of tools and resources as are found in classical education going back to the Hellenistic period (including, e.g., syllabaries, abecedaries, and short rhetorical exercises).¹³ They also emphasize similar habits of mind and training in civic virtue through rhetorical and ascetic education.¹⁴ Rubenson’s model synthesizes scholarship along these lines.¹⁵ For Rubenson, schools are characterized by the four aspects of leisure, tradition, exercises, and organization: time for reflection instead of ordinary activities of production; the transmission of skills, ideas, and educational technologies; forms of training of the mind; and supportive if informal institutional structures.¹⁶ Leisure and organization are primarily qualities required to make education possible, although both are sustained through ideologies promulgated in the social practices and intellectual activities of the classroom.¹⁷ The handing down of tradition may be understood as an important function of education, although in emphasizing tradition, there is a danger that the model of ascetic education bakes in a tendency to discover continuity between earlier and later educational settings and also to overplay the continuity between different periods of monasticism. It is important to distinguish between education as traditional because it transmits earlier forms of educational resources, methods, and practices and as traditional because it aims to sustain the norms and power structures of the wider culture. These two sites of traditionality are related but not identical. If education is to be partly defined by its traditionality, traditions should be understood as changeable and constructed, rather than merely sustained and handed on largely unchanged, and the same educational methods may serve different cultural ends. Finally, one may think of the practice of exercises as the means of achieving education’s goals by shaping the minds and characters of students and situating them in a new symbolic universe. This suggests that education is understood as a kind of Bildung, a means of formation of late-antique selves by setting them in a new relationship to the world.¹⁸ Such a process of construction should be understood as contested: monks competed with other teachers within and outside the monasteries to produce the best sort of students. The model draws attention to education as a competitive space. It also views it as an individually transformative enterprise—a keynote of Dorotheus’ Instructions—even as the traditional element suggests education predominantly supports stability at the social scale. When education is defined through these four categories, Rubenson can conclude that monasteries are a ‘kind of school’ and monasticism is an ‘educational movement’ designed to meet a community searching for appropriate ‘models of education’.¹⁹

¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁷ ¹⁸

See, e.g., Larsen 2006b, 2013, 2016; Cribiore 2005; Morgan 1998. See, e.g., Larsen 2006a, 2008. ¹⁵ Rubenson 2018, 16–32. ¹⁶ Rubenson 2018, 16. See, e.g., discussions of otium in different ascetic contexts by Chin 2008 and Krawiec 2012. On this notion of Bildung in modernity, see Bauer 2003, 212. ¹⁹ Rubenson 2018, 14, 32.

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Already, in arguments like these, the type of school or kind of education in mind may be definitive for arguments about how similar or different ascetic and classical education were. Education in antiquity was not homogeneous. There were different levels of literate education from grammar to more advanced rhetoric and the other ‘liberal arts’, while students could go on to further study in medicine, law, engineering, or philosophy beyond the initial enkyklios paideia. While these levels of education were not as rigidly defined as some schematic accounts suggest, they nevertheless attracted students of different ages and abilities.²⁰ Philosophical and grammatical education, for example, had very different ideals and norms, as well as different clientele. The comparative contours of education look different depending on the type of classical education against which we choose to compare ascetic education. Then there is the level of analysis taken as relevant for the comparison. For example, Hadot pointed to a ‘way of life’ and set of philosophico-spiritual exercises that, on his account, transcended substantive philosophical differences between different ‘schools’ of philosophy.²¹ If we grant this assumption, ascetic education may be taken as similar to its classical precursor to the extent that such exercises remained central to the ascetic educational project. But one might wonder whether the content of instruction can be eliminated from the conceptualization of a school without obscuring essential elements of an explanation of the role of education in cultural change or reproduction. Defining education at a more general level (as in Hadot’s spiritual exercises or Rubenson’s four-fold taxonomy of leisure, tradition, exercise, and organization) successfully identifies asceticism as a school in a relevant ancient sense but also tends towards prioritizing similarity and cultural overlap over substantial change. This is problematic for two reasons. First, it does not provide tools to explore the mechanics of cultural change and reproduction in ascetic education, since its level of generality and focus on form and practice subsumes ascetic education within the characterization of its classical sibling. Second, it downplays crucial differences between classical and ascetic education which remain striking, even if older models of asceticism as sui generis or deliberately uncultured and ignorant can no longer stand. Monastic teachers normatively also held other roles within the monastic community, whereas classical teachers were more clearly identified solely by their pedagogical role. For Dorotheus, this meant integrating work in the infirmary, or offering spiritual direction, or entertaining and accommodating visitors to the monastery with his own teaching; this would have coloured how his students received his teaching about the value of work in the monastic context, for example. The social background of members of monasteries was also more heterogeneous than in classical schools, weakening the traditional connection

²⁰ Cribiore 2005, 2–3 discusses different levels of education.

²¹ E.g., Hadot 2004, 275–8.

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6       between virtue and intellectual expertise and social class. This meant that monastic education was crafted to serve the interests of a wider social group. Importantly, monastic education could include children but also extended to the life-long education of adults throughout their ascetic careers. Dorotheus’ Instructions should be read as offering this more advanced level of continuing and life-long education. He draws on educational discourses developed in earlier stages of education and assumed and elaborated in rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine.²² The notion that education should continue beyond the elementary classroom and be a feature of the well-formed ascetic’s life is one driver of Dorotheus’ greater focus on habituation as an element of formal education rather than as a preliminary to it.²³ It opens up a range of new questions within the monastic educational context, and it makes monasteries places which standardly offer to a wider audience education in topics traditionally reserved for a small group of those who had completed earlier stages of education. Hence monastic institutions extended education, over a longer time period, to a much larger group of people than would attend other late-antique schools.²⁴ They created new social roles for teachers and students and offered different perspectives on the relationship between social class and educational attainment. This was partly driven by, and partly shaped, differences of intellectual content and different perspectives on traditional educational ideologies, methods, and resources. That is, the culture of education in (some) ascetic settings diverged from educational cultures in other areas of late-antique society. We need to explain difference as much as repetition when characterizing ascetic education. Attention to difference is even more necessary when we acknowledge the localized diversity of forms of monasticism, including varying degrees of involvement in education.²⁵ A rich understanding of education itself is required to chart these dynamics of cultural change, reproduction, and difference. Jerome Bruner’s The Culture of Education offers a useful framework.²⁶ For Bruner, education is a ‘major embodiment of a culture’s way of life’ which stands at the intersection of theories of mind and culture.²⁷ He thus offers a cultural-psychological view of education, the contours of which can help to pose illuminating questions about Dorotheus’ pedagogy and the role of ascetic educational projects like his in broader phenomena of cultural reconfiguration. His model is both more general than those often applied to late-antique education (ascetic or classical) and more fine-grained. It therefore enables a capacious understanding of educational phenomena in the

²² See below, Chapter 2. ²³ See below, Chapter 5. ²⁴ Stenger 2019 makes a similar case reviewing Larsen and Rubenson 2018. ²⁵ Diem and Rapp 2020, 26 persuasively argue for ‘almost unlimited diversity’: some monasteries could be ‘places of education and learning’; others ‘kept a deliberate distance from learning and scholarship’. ²⁶ Bruner 1996. ²⁷ Bruner 1996, 13.

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period and directs attention to mechanisms by which education can be involved in cultural transformation, reconfiguration, or reproduction. Bruner identifies nine interrelated elements of a cultural-psychological account of education.²⁸ His account of education is perspectival and constructivist, takes seriously constraints on perspectives, draws attention to questions of interaction, externalization, instrumentalism, institutionalism, and identity and self-esteem, and highlights the centrality of narrative. I provide a short account of these nine tenets and how they relate to each other to bring out the utility of Bruner’s conceptualization for thinking through Dorotheus’ educational project and the larger questions of the relationship between different sites of education and between education and wider cultural change. For Bruner, cultures and minds are perspectival, bound up in the creation of meaning. Making up one’s mind and grasping the norms, symbols, and practices that define cultures means being able to account for the plausibility of different perspectives, to place constraints on them, and to construct and decode meaning through the use of symbol systems.²⁹ Education, then, cultivates the thoughts, feelings, and practices that enable students to come to prefer particular perspectives over others. It also gives them the tools required to make meanings of their own, again within the limits established by cultural norms. That is, education provides a toolkit to create and limit perspectives; this shapes minds understood as meaning- and feeling-making organisms. A key resource is provided by symbol systems that enable students to demonstrate expertise in culturally valued ways. A conceit of education is that it can help students develop better ways of understanding their own experience and that of others. Much hangs on what is taken to determine a ‘better’ perspective. For those who consider established cultural norms and privileged perspectives unproblematic, education can happily reproduce the status quo. For those who think that education is about successful navigation of culture as it currently stands, education will be instrumentalized (and useful resources will be provided to some but not others) to sustain established cultural norms. For the more revolutionary students and teachers, education may be taken to provide the means to reflect on current circumstances and intervene in culture using its own privileged resources to change it. Herein lies the power, danger, and excitement of education. Such danger and excitement are magnified when one considers education’s institutional contours.³⁰ Institutions define roles, social functions, and systems of exchange, and in doing so they establish structures and construct normative distinctions in ways that distribute power to some and disenfranchise others. Education thus enables students to succeed in the institutions and value systems that sustain their cultures and

²⁸ Bruner 1996, 13–42. ²⁹ For this paragraph and the next, see Bruner 1996, 13–20, 25–9. ³⁰ On institutions, see Bruner 1996, 29–35.

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8       provides tools for the reconfiguration of society by establishing new roles, systems of exchange, and social distinctions. The perspectival nature of mind and culture draws attention to the key role of intersubjectivity in both, and, therefore, in education.³¹ Minds and cultures are both formed through processes of interaction with others. Intersubjectivity is critical for education understood as a process of identity-formation, as students grow in self-awareness through becoming aware of other minds, by imitating others, collaborating with them, following the arguments of authorized experts, or forging out on their own paths of discovery.³² The interactions between students and teachers also depend on intersubjectivity, as they must each learn to decode linguistic and non-linguistic acts of communication. Bruner argues that much education in the classical tradition has tended to work with models of education where the student can only be lifted out of their ignorance by the teacher, and that this obscures the manifold ways in which education could be structured the better to enable human capacity for learning through intersubjectivity. This is, for Bruner, a key problem, because ‘learners help each other learn’.³³ Intersubjectivity is also crucial for developing effective agency and the evaluation of capabilities conferred on students through processes of education, since agency is increased as students navigate the desires and perspectives of others and assess their progress in comparison with their peers and acknowledged experts. Intersubjectivity enables education to proceed by cooperation and rivalry in which the minds of some learners help to shape those of others. This ability of minds to become embedded in other minds also extends to their capacity to shape and be shaped by things. Bruner identifies this element of education as ‘externalization’.³⁴ His notion is that cultural productions themselves make cultures and minds by establishing ways of acting, thinking, and feeling. In making things together, students construct their own minds and cultures. The cultural production (sculpture, story, geometric model, or, fundamentally, technologies of literacy) can be thought of as part of the minds that produced it.³⁵ Once the work is produced, it stands on its own, becomes traditional, and the students’ minds can now assume the production; brain power is released to pay attention to new challenges and new productions. For Bruner, narrative draws these different threads of mind, culture, and education together.³⁶ Stories are a mechanism by which people situate themselves in culture and develop their own minds within them. In this framing, agency is crucial, although narratives also emplot people and shape their minds in ways that can reduce agency. Narratives are cultural products which embody diverse ³¹ ³² ³³ ³⁵ ³⁶

See Bruner 1996, 20–2, 35–9. See Bruner 1996, 50 for these different ‘folk-pedagogy’ models of education. Bruner 1996, 21. ³⁴ Bruner 1996, 23–4. This aligns with an ‘extended mind’ model: see Clark and Chalmers 1998; Menary 2010. Bruner 1996, 39–42. See also Bruner 1987 and Bruner 2002, 89–107.

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perspectives within one (often conflicting) story. They construct meaning partly by establishing traditions of greater or lesser coherence, partly by distributing power (unequally) to different characters. By being situated in narratives, individuals can try out their own perspectives and test their agency, coming up against other minds, plausibility structures, and systems of exchange. This makes narrative fundamental to processes of education and its effects. Education, on Bruner’s positive account, enables students to carve out a place for themselves in culture and establish their own identities within it, and it is also a site of disempowerment and the erasure of identity. Bruner consistently emphasizes ‘consciousness, reflection, breadth of dialogue, and negotiation’.³⁷ This is of a piece with his pioneering work in cognitive psychology, which privileges categories of meaning, linguistic symbols, rational processes of understanding, and meta-cognition. But as he notes, such an emphasis on cognition should not be taken to exclude emotion.³⁸ His scheme is compatible, I think, with the frameworks of those who would emphasize the significance of emotion or affect in theories of mind, culture, and education.³⁹ Perspectives are as important for feeling as for meaning, and meaning may be theorized as affectively shaped; intersubjectivity includes recognition of other people’s emotions and the ability to navigate them successfully, while emotions may be thought of as foundational for subjectivity; institutions may be understood as formed by emotion as much as by rationally regulated distinctions; feeling is as easy to externalize in cultural productions as thought is (think of the Laocoön Group); narratives may be conceptualized as generated by feeling as much as by reason. I emphasize this point because a continuing question about Dorotheus’ thought is the extent to which his theory of mind is cognitive or affective. I will suggest that there is good evidence for the latter view, and that his affectivism shapes significant elements of his educational practice and theory.⁴⁰ Bruner’s cultural-psychological model of education is useful in this context because it brings out key elements of the significance of Dorotheus’ educational endeavours. Dorotheus’ Instructions have multiple strategies for establishing meta-cognitive-affective habits, encouraging monks to think about thinking and feel about feeling. This foregrounds the importance of the navigation of perspectives, the construction of reality and meaning, and intersubjectivity. Particular perspectives are privileged, and constraints are placed on legitimate perspectives through a range of educational practices, including exemplarity and mimesis, the use of rhetorical figures such as ethopoeia and ekphrasis, and setting ascetic life within the contours of the divine plan of salvation. Strategies to develop intersubjectivity include self-examination, disciplining of thoughts and emotions, confession, prayer, and meditation. These practices place the student’s mind—their ³⁷ Bruner 1996, 42. ³⁸ Bruner 1996, 12–13. ³⁹ See, e.g., the overview in Dukes et al. 2021.

⁴⁰ See below, especially Chapters 4 and 5.

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thoughts, emotions, and desires—open to others’ scrutiny, and, ultimately to God. They also establish distinctions of authority and expertise in the monastic institution. Crucially, intersubjectivity is promoted by encouraging students to depend on each other as they strive for perfection and directing them towards epistemic guides and ethical models. Dorotheus’ context of life-long learning may help to foreground cooperative learning between adults as opposed to the smaller role given to interdependence between younger students in the case of grammatical education. Students are provided with new symbol systems that enable them to understand ascetic life in authorized ways and to reconfigure their naïve understanding of the world outside the monastery. This enables them to exercise agency in new ways and develop a distinctive self-identity. They learn to operate within the systems of exchange and distinctions of the institution of monastic education (teachers, confessors, holy men, abbas, saints, prayers and liturgical observances, submitting to each other, obedience, monastic service), and this fits them also to interact with and shape other late-antique institutions. Ascetic cultures are created through the production of things like prayers, liturgical objects, clothing, and written collections of sayings. Students become experts in narratives that make sense of Christian history in general and ascetic practice in particular, enabling monks to find their own place within the new civic community of the monastery and to re-evaluate other civic claims. The following chapters will seek to make the case that Dorotheus’ thought is educational in the cultural sense surveyed here by investigating his views on epistemology, ethics, moral psychology, emotion, and education through habituation. This model also suggests a way of framing the larger questions about the relationship between ascetic education and cultural transformation or reproduction, because it directs attention to sites of creative tension and cultural and cognitive-affective levers which may be activated to strengthen or undermine established power structures and cultural norms. Across the different facets of the cultural account, ascetic education may be seen as a ‘laboratory’ of ways of feeling, knowing, and acting with the potential to reconfigure practices and norms in society at large.⁴¹ This may happen through direct interaction between monks and members of the wider society as they came into contact with one another, through institutionalized communication between monasteries and other ecclesial and civic structures and entities, and more indirectly through the diffusion of texts and teachings over time in different areas of late-antique society. I return to these larger questions in the conclusion.

⁴¹ For monasteries as ‘laboratories’, see Diem and Rapp 2020, especially 32–3. I thank Ioannis Papadogiannakis for drawing my attention to this notion.

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Dorotheus of Gaza My extended analyses of Dorotheus’ thought are partly directed towards teasing out these wider questions about education and culture-formation. The local context for his thought is crucial, and Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Aryeh Kofsky have profoundly advanced our understanding of monasteries in the Gaza region. Their Monastic School of Gaza influentially conceptualized Gazan monasticism as an educational space and delineated key elements of Gazan asceticism, especially through detailed study of the thought-world of the letters of Barsanuphius and John.⁴² Their edited volume, Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity, demonstrated creative interactions between Christian and classical culture in Gaza and charted distinctive aspects of monastic life and its intersection with urban centres.⁴³ Building on their studies, this book aims to offer an account of Dorotheus’ contribution to monastic education in Gaza through a detailed analysis of his thought. For Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky, Dorotheus is intentionally unoriginal: he aims to preserve and systematize earlier ascetic teachings while also showing greater openness to philosophical traditions than some other ascetic thinkers associated with the region.⁴⁴ This characterization of Dorotheus’ thought may be modified: I will argue that he adapts earlier ascetic and classical discourses to his own situation, resulting in distinctive emphases. But his concern to systematize remains. It makes his thought, for all the importance of local factors, a useful lens for viewing how ascetic education interacted with other systems of thought and ways of life more generally in late antiquity. Dorotheus was born in the early sixth century. We meet him first as a monk in the monastery of Abba Seridos. This was an extensive monastic foundation, covering 14,000 m² of land near Thawatha in a fertile agricultural region.⁴⁵ The complex included a monumental church, a hostel and baths, a well and water courses, refectory and kitchens, granaries, a latrine complex, monastic cells, and other outhouses. The monastery thus displays relative wealth and is evidence for services provided by monks to pilgrims and visitors to the region.⁴⁶ The shrine of Hilarion, the traditional founder of Gazan monasticism, was an attraction well into the sixth century and beyond. The average distance between monasteries was around three kilometres, and Thawatha was relatively close to Gaza-Maiouma. This facilitated interactions between monasteries and between monasteries and the town and is one mechanism for the circulation of Dorotheus’ writings. Traces

⁴² Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006. On Barsanuphius and John and their influence in shaping monastic culture in Gaza, see also Hevelone-Harper 2005, especially chapter 3, on Dorotheus’ relationship with the Old Men. ⁴³ Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2004. ⁴⁴ Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 22, 43–4, 100, 142. ⁴⁵ For archaeology, see Patrich 2019; Di Segni 2004; Hirschfeld 2004; Neyt 2004. ⁴⁶ Patrich 2019, 94.

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     

of biographical information may be gleaned from his extensive correspondence with Barsanuphius and John (the two Old Men who provided advice to monks and laity in the Gaza region), the near contemporary Life of his disciple Dositheus, and his own writings. He came from a wealthy family. His brother was a benefactor of Seridos’ monastery and he retained ownership of some land. He was educated in rhetoric and medicine and brought medical books with him to the monastery.⁴⁷ After he entered the monastery, alongside his teaching and spiritual direction of other monks at the insistence of Seridos and the Old Men, Dorotheus was placed in charge of an infirmary, was a servant of and intermediary for John, and was responsible for accommodating guests to the monastery. After the deaths of Barsanuphius, John, and Seridos, Dorotheus probably established his own monastery in the same region, although the thought-world of his Instructions remains yoked to Seridos’ monastery, with multiple stories from his time there.⁴⁸ His association with that substantial monastic complex will have assisted in the wider dissemination of his works. Dorotheus’ debt to earlier ascetic writers and his rhetorical concern to construct a stable line of ascetic authority through presenting his own thought as traditional is clear on every page.⁴⁹ He cites a wide range of Christian authors and there are clear debts to others he does not name. Basil is an important influence, as are Barsanuphius and John (the latter cited explicitly), Gregory Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Mark the Monk, Abba Isaiah, and Abba Zosimas. The Instructions are closely woven with references to the sayings of the desert fathers (Apophthegmata). We will see continuities with thinkers like Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus. Dorotheus’ deployment of Evagrius of Pontus is an intriguing case, because of the contemporary reception of Evagrius in the context of the second Origenist controversy.⁵⁰ He is more confident than his teachers John and Barsanuphius in citing Evagrius explicitly (e.g. 8.89, 12.126). Furthermore, he does not restrict his use of Evagrius to the more practical works; for example, he quotes from the Kephalaia Gnostica (e.g. 4.76, 12.126).⁵¹ I will argue that his use of Evagrius at times results in a deliberate version of Evagrian theology, one in which, for example, the body plays a more prominently positive role in ethical perfection.⁵² Judith Pauli points out that Dorotheus’ use of Evagrius aligns with an interest in more speculative writings, including, for example, Isaiah’s notion of

⁴⁷ On Dorotheus’ biography and contribution to the monastery, see Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 42–6; Pauli 2000, 8–9; Regnault and de Préville 2001, 12–14. Jonathan Zecher points out that Dorotheus and his brother were probably sent to the Old Man’s service by a certain Abramius and suggests that Abramius was either bishop of Kratea (Cyril of Scythopolis, V. Abr. 39.2), or a monastic leader in Jerusalem (John Moschus, prat. 97, 187, PG 87.3, 2957A, 3064D). ⁴⁸ This seems to be implied by John Moschus, prat. 166, PG 87.3, 3033A. ⁴⁹ On patristic sources, see Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 43–4; Pauli 2000, 35–43; Regnault and de Préville 2001, 42–3. ⁵⁰ See Clark 1992; Hombergen 2001, 2004. ⁵¹ Cf. Barsanuphius and John, resp. 600–3. ⁵² See below, Chapter 3, in relation to 12.126.

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action ‘with knowledge (ἐν γνώσει)’; we will see that this concept plays a key role in his epistemology and ethics and is connected to Aristotelian themes.⁵³ While he does not cite classical authors by name, we will repeatedly see his understanding and careful deployment of rhetorical forms, philosophical arguments, and medical theories and practices. While some of this knowledge is no doubt mediated through earlier Christian authors, it remains possible that Dorotheus had access to classical works, and his rhetorical and medical training will have involved direct study of some authors.⁵⁴ For all Dorotheus’ own knowledge of a range of classical and Christian thinkers, Jan Stenger rightly argues that understanding ascetic education is not the same as identifying educated ascetics.⁵⁵ Extraordinary figures are not evidence for the characteristic modes of education in late-antique monasteries. So, when Dorotheus deploys a nicely crafted ekphrasis, I do not claim that his students thereby became (or, indeed, were intended to become) adept at using this rhetorical figure, although some of his students will have studied rhetoric outside the monasteries and others will have been introduced to literate education within the monasteries using techniques like those recorded in classical rhetorical Progymnasmata. Rather, I claim that the education Dorotheus offered to the monks in his community used the resources of classical rhetoric partly to make education pleasurable and partly to achieve changes of mind and heart in his monks that were intended to make them see the world in a new way and position themselves within it. His own education enabled him to intervene in and influence the trajectory of his students’ natural development.⁵⁶ How he does this is partly a function of what he thought was important for students to learn, and so a focus of this book is close analysis of Dorotheus’ thought. This casts light on the intellectual culture of Palestinian monasticism in the period as well as on Dorotheus’ own contributions. But I also have in view a larger aim: to see how the teachings that Dorotheus offers point to his wider vision of education understood as a means of developing the souls of his students, fitting them for ascetic cultures, and thereby offering a distinctive way of living the Christian life in the context of the wider culture.

Dorotheus on Ascetic Paideia Elements of Dorotheus’ rhetorical style have caused some to set his Instructions outside the project of ancient education and there are no extended philosophical ⁵³ See Pauli 2000, 38–9; Isaiah, Logos 13.12. See further Chapters 3 and 4. Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 215–17, 220–2 postulated a ‘crypto-Monophysitism’ in Dorotheus’ thought. This remains possible but I have found no evidence for it. ⁵⁴ Pauli 2000, 40 and Regnault and de Préville 2001, 43–4 (indirect access to classical writers). ⁵⁵ See Stenger 2019. ⁵⁶ Cf. Vygotsky’s definition of formal education (1997/1926, 58).

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arguments or citations of philosophical, rhetorical, or medical theorists in his works.⁵⁷ Yet his engagement with rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine is significant and generative for his wider thought and conceptualization of education, as I discuss in detail in Chapter 2.⁵⁸ It is a key element of the characterization of monasticism around Gaza as a ‘school’.⁵⁹ This element of his teaching was recognized by his early readers. The letter which prefaces Dorotheus’ Instructions praises him for his use of philosophical maxims from Platonism and Stoicism, reporting that he ‘philosophized’ by utilizing whatever was beneficial from foreign teaching.⁶⁰ It characterizes him as a teacher who had great rhetorical skill, even if, like Paul—the paradigmatic example of a Christian teacher for much of the history of the early Church—he adapted his style to make it appropriate for the humble.⁶¹ This assessment of Dorotheus’ rhetoric as prosaic and unadorned may seem to separate him from the flashy displays of contemporary orators. But it is also Plutarch’s similarly approving evaluation of the rhetoric of the accomplished Athenian orator Andocides, so this reading can be pressed too far.⁶² Further, it also places him in a tradition of philosophical thought which claimed to aim for the simple, direct, and unadorned presentation of truth (for all the rhetorical flourishes we are used to in writers from Plato onwards).⁶³ Describing Dorotheus’ qualities as a teacher, the Epistula ad Fratres claims that the reader of Dorotheus’ Instructions will learn that: He is worthy of teaching truly and illuminating souls. He is mighty in knowledge and mightier in condescension; great in wisdom and greater in piety; he is lofty in contemplation and more lofty in humility, rich in God and ‘poor in spirit’; he is sweet in reason and even sweeter in conversation. He is a doctor who knows any illness and cure you like. ὁ τοῦ διδάσκειν ὄντως καὶ φωτίζειν ψυχὰς ἄξιος, ὁ πολὺς ἐν συνέσει καὶ πλείων ἐν συγκαταβάσει, ὁ μέγας ἐν σοφίᾳ καὶ μείζων ἐν εὐλαβείᾳ, ὁ ὑψηλὸς ἐν θεωρίᾳ καὶ

⁵⁷ Pauli 2000, 32–4 emphasizes the incomplete nature of his oeuvre; Regnault and de Préville 2001, 34–6 note that his direct style does not distinguish Dorotheus from, e.g., Epictetus (39). ⁵⁸ For classical sources, see Pauli 2000, 41–2; Regnault and de Préville 2001, 43–5. See also Stenger 2017. ⁵⁹ The school metaphor carries significant weight for Perrone 2004, 148 and Parrinello 2008. Stenger 2017 has given greater shape to Dorotheus’ paideia. ⁶⁰ Ep. ad Fratres 4.2–9. Pauli 2000, 26–31 suggests that sections 5–7 are a middle Byzantine addition, while 1–4 are closer to the sixth century. See also Regnault and de Préville 2001, 33–5. If the letter should be divided in this way, the educational ideals of the later author are close to those of late antiquity. ⁶¹ Ep. ad Fratres 7.5; cf. Rom. 12.16. On Paul as a teacher up to John Chrysostom, see Edsall 2019. ⁶² Ep. ad Fratres 7.5–8: τὸ πεζὸν τῆς λέξεως καὶ τὸ τῆς φωνῆς ἀκατάσκευον. Cf. Ps.-Plutarch, X orat. 835b, 10–11. ⁶³ Stenger 2017, 60 argues that there was mileage to be gained from separating the simplicity of asceticism from the rhetorical power of pagan philosophical education. This contrast is important, yet the rhetoric of ‘plain speech’ is well attested in philosophical sources. On this dynamic, see Rydell Johnsén 2018.

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ὑψηλότερος ἐν ταπεινώσει, ὁ πλούσιος ἐν θεῷ καὶ πτωχὸς ἐν πνεύματι, ὁ ἡδὺς τῷ λόγῳ καὶ ἡδύτερος τῇ ἀπαντήσει, ὁ ἐπιστήμων ἰατρὸς ἣν βούλει νόσον καὶ ἰατρείαν. (Ep. ad Fratres 6.9–14)

In each of these rhetorically crafted symmetrical phrases, virtues associated with classical education are placed in apposition with more obviously Christian virtues. Like a secular philosopher, he teaches reality, displays theoretical and scientific knowledge, and reasons with skill. He heals like a doctor with his piety and reason, displaying expert knowledge in the therapy of souls. And he displays ascetic virtues too of condescension, reverence, humility, and the poverty of spirit blessed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:3). Dorotheus’ ascetic education is cast as congruent with forms of late-antique education that explicitly claimed the heritage of classical rhetorical, philosophical, and medical paideia. Later readers in Humanist Europe would also identify these elements of Dorotheus’ writings as constituting an important part of his legacy.⁶⁴ They suggest that he viewed ascetic education as capable of embracing different bodies of knowledge since these discourses could be put to good use in forming the minds of his students and situating them in the culture he seeks to construct through his classroom. This evaluation is also consistent with Dorotheus’ self-presentation of his educational project. Jan Stenger has identified Dorotheus’ use of terms such as διδάσκω, μανθάνω, παιδεύω, and μαθητής, in addition to several passages which draw explicit attention to the ‘classroom’ setting, which all serve to construct his monastic discourses as a species of education.⁶⁵ Dorotheus deliberately casts asceticism as a form of paideia not unlike that which was thriving in the secular schools in the city, close to his monastery (10.105).⁶⁶ Certainly, Dorotheus describes what he learned in his rhetorical education as ‘foreign speech (τοῦ ἔξω λόγου)’ or ‘foreign education (τὴν ἔξω παιδείαν)’ (10.105). ‘Foreign education’ and ‘foreign speech’ signify the educational activities Dorotheus competes with and also seeks to internalize by constructing his own programme of instruction focused on the cultivation of virtue (ἡ ἀρετή). The exertion, training, and attention to detail required by his rhetorical education is heightened in the monastery: they are claimed to be of the same kind, and the goal of seeking virtue is attained through similar practices (10.105). His monastery saw creative social and intellectual contact and conversation with the city and surrounds of Gaza, and as we have seen, that meant interacting productively with a vibrant and diverse society.⁶⁷ He refers to visits to the monastery and questions by local sophists, sophists who have interests in both theological and philosophical questions (e.g. 2.36), and with ⁶⁴ See Champion 2017a. ⁶⁵ See Stenger 2017, 67, 70. See 1.3, 15; 2.35, 2.37; 4.50, 4.52; 5.61; 6.73–5; 7.69; 10.105, 10.108; 11.114; 12.126; 14.149, 14.155. ⁶⁶ Cf. Watts 2006a. ⁶⁷ For the social contours of education, see Champion 2014; Seitz 1892; Szbat 2007; Watts 2006a.

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whom Dorotheus felt confident to debate. Ultimately, Dorotheus believed that school and monastery could be compared because they were of the same kind. Dorotheus presents himself as living in a space created by mutual interaction between classical and monastic education. This space is primarily rhetorical and philosophical, although Dorotheus also makes direct references to medical knowledge, his own medical education, and the value of medical practices within the monastery.⁶⁸ Given that the intellectual boundaries between these ‘disciplines’ were never clearly demarcated, this intermingling of pedagogical discourses is not surprising.⁶⁹ In Gaza within a generation of Dorotheus, the rhetorical teacher and public orator Procopius (465–528 ) compiled exegetical material into biblical ‘commentaries’, his teacher and fellow sophist, Aeneas of Gaza (d. 518 ), wrote a dialogue on the pre-existence of the soul, and Zacharias (c. 465–post 536 )—who went on to be a bishop after training in law—wrote a dialogue indebted to Aeneas’ on the creation and eternity of the world.⁷⁰ Aeneas, Zacharias, and Procopius moved in the same circle as Gessius the iatrosophist (doctor) (fl. late fifth century).⁷¹ Letters to Gessius by both Aeneas and Procopius are intricately laced with classical rhetorical allusions, and, in Procopius’ case, allusions to classical philosophers in particular; while Aeneas refers to Gessius’ medicine as ‘the other philosophy (τῆς ἄλλης φιλοσοφίας)’.⁷² Sophists, doctors, and philosophers could all be called upon to engage in political activity, through public oratory, negotiations, and diplomacy.⁷³ Dorotheus’ attempt to bring philosophy, rhetoric, and medicine into the ascetic fold and use it for his own cultural purposes thus sits in a wider milieu in which these discourses were thoroughly intricated. His form of ascetic education is decisively shaped by his local context, particularly proximity to the schools of rhetoric in Gaza, which were themselves connected through the social networks of their teachers to rhetorical, medical, and philosophical education in Alexandria, rhetoric in Caesarea, and law in Berytus.⁷⁴ This deliberate construction of asceticism as part of the same enterprise as the interconnected discourses of rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine is evident in Dorotheus’ story about a debate between the abbot of his monastery and ‘a certain sophist (τίς . . . σοφιστὴς)’ (2.36.2). When the abbot begins to falter, Dorotheus takes up the argument, asking

⁶⁸ E.g., Barsanuphius and John, resp. 327; V. Dos. 1. ⁶⁹ See, e.g., Lim 1995; Stanton 1973. ⁷⁰ For Aeneas, Zacharias, and Procopius, see Aeneas of Gaza 1958, 1962; Procopius of Gaza 1963. See also Aly 1957; Amato 2010a (including texts and translations); Champion 2014; Gallicet 1978; Sorabji 2012 (including translations); ter Haar Romeny 2007; Wacht 1969; Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1926. On Procopius’ ‘Commentary’, see Metzler 2015 and 2016. The fragment of a Refutatio Procli attributed to Procopius should be attributed to Nicolaus of Methone, pace Amato and Ventrella 2009. See Gioffreda and Trizio 2020. ⁷¹ E.g. Aeneas, Epp. 19–20; Procopius of Gaza, Epp. 16, 102, 122, 125, 164. See further Watts 2009. ⁷² Aeneas, Ep. 20. ⁷³ See Blockley 1980; cf. Fowden 1982. ⁷⁴ See Champion 2014, 29–41; Pauli 2000, 12.

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‘Is this [the practice of the monastic virtue of humility] not rather like rhetoric or medicine? Whenever a man is studying it well and is practising it, little by little, by practising it a certain disposition arises in the doctor or the sophist, and he is unable to explain or declare how he came into the disposition: little by little, as I said, by practising the skill the soul imperceptibly progresses. So it is also found in the case of humility’ . . . When the sophist heard this, he was healed and he accepted this explanation. Ἆρα μὴ τοῦτό ἐστιν ὥσπερ ἡ σοφιστικὴ καὶ ἰατρική; ὅταν καλῶς μανθάνει αὐτήν τις καὶ πράττει αὐτήν, κατὰ μικρὸν ἐκ τοῦ ἐνεργεῖν αὐτὴν γίνεταί τις ἕξις τῷ ἰατρῷ ἢ τῷ σοφιστῇ· καὶ οὐ δύναται εἰπεῖν οὐδὲ οἶδε φράσαι πῶς ἐγένετο ἐν ἕξει τοῦ πράγματος· κατὰ μικρόν, ὡς εἶπον, ἀνεπαισθήτως προσελάβετο αὐτὴν ἡ ψυχὴ ἐκ τοῦ ἐνεργεῖν τὴν τέχνην. Οὕτως ἔστιν εὑρεῖν καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς ταπεινώσεως . . . Ἐθεραπεύθη δὲ καὶ ὁ σοφιστὴς ἀκούσας, καὶ ἀπεδέξατο καὶ αὐτὸς τὸν λόγον. (2.36.14–26)

In this episode, ascetic ideas and practices are likened to the learning involved in rhetoric and medicine with an argument that relies on the Aristotelian category of a fixed character ‘disposition’ (ἕξις) to solve a problem about a central ascetic virtue.⁷⁵ As Dorotheus presents it, there is interaction between sophists and monks, and mutual understanding between these groups is possible, grounded in shared rhetorical, philosophical, and medical ideas and practices. The sophist follows the logic of the case, accepts it, and is healed: ascetic teaching, like medicine and philosophy, is therapeutic. Therefore Dorotheus situates ascetic education in the same cultural space as philosophy, medicine, and rhetoric. Dorotheus would accept Gregory of Nyssa’s claim that ‘those who follow the leader to virtue must not lack the wealth of Egypt nor be deprived of the treasures of the foreigners’.⁷⁶ He affirms that education like that he received outside the walls of the monastery trains the student in habits of mind and speech that build up personal and civic virtue. Monastic education aims towards the cultivation of virtue and healthy communal living in the monasteries, and thus has affinities with contemporary philosophical, rhetorical, and medical education. A cantus firmus of Dorotheus’ notion of education is that education is transformative rather than merely informative or merely transactional. This has both individual and social implications and draws on a range of different models and metaphors. Dorotheus’ account of the divine plan of salvation (set out most clearly in Instruction 1) shapes his models for transformation through education.⁷⁷ Within this narrative arc—from creation, through fall, to redemption—education can transform by purifying souls, restoring to his students their originally created ⁷⁵ On habit, see further Chapter 5 below. ⁷⁶ V. Mos. 112; see also §§115–16. ⁷⁷ See further Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 142–3, 147.

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perfection, and unifying them with God. Transformation is regularly described as purification through therapy and the elimination of negative desires. In this mode, it is a positive change from distorted impassioned thoughts to divinely ordered virtue. Such transformative purification aligns the learner’s mind and will to God’s and thus eliminates idiosyncratic and impiously self-governing human will. It is connected to the philosophical notion of the practice of death, understood, in Dorotheus’ account, in Christological terms as being crucified to the world through the constant remembrance of death and potential future judgement. This model of transformation is thus closely connected to the concepts of correction and restoration to originally created human perfection. Such correction involves the alignment of the mind and of desire to God’s commandments, and thus gives authoritative scriptural witnesses, exegesis, and meditative reading influential roles in Dorotheus’ pedagogy. Education may also transform students by making them more godlike, a key connection between ascetic education and the Platonic claim that the goal of philosophy is becoming like a god to the extent that that is possible for humans. This is set within the narrative of the divine plan of salvation through highlighting God’s creation of humans in his image. Reunification with God is, for Dorotheus, the goal of ascetic education. This is identified with the process of coming closer to other monks in loving relationships of healthy interdependence, highlighting the communal and interactional quality of ascetic education (Instruction 6). For Dorotheus, the transformation of minds, souls, and bodies depends on, and helps to achieve the wider perfection of the community reconciled with one another and with God. Education that aims towards the communal transformations of knowledge, emotion and desire, and ethics is a characteristic feature of Dorotheus’ thought. Across these models of transformative education, Dorotheus argues that education alters the monk’s cognitive and affective capacity so that the world more consistently and completely discloses God. This embraces theoretical and practical knowledge and means that Dorotheus’ account of education includes the discipline and formation of cognitive-affective dispositions that ground virtuous action. Epistemology, emotions, and ethics are intimately connected and directed towards the development of accurate understanding and virtue. Later chapters trace epistemology, emotions and ethics, and habituation separately. But each of these areas of Dorotheus’ pedagogy contributes to the others. After Chapter 2’s analysis of Dorotheus’ appropriation of pedagogical discourses from rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine, Chapter 3 addresses how Dorotheus orders knowledge and promotes particular ways of knowing, especially against the background of the epistemological norms of late-antique Platonism. Chapter 4 explores the moral psychology which grounds Dorotheus’ educational project and traces its emotional and ethical contours. Chapter 5 explores the role of education understood as habituation in forming character dispositions. Dorotheus aims towards the transformation and perfection of mind, emotion, and virtuous behaviour at the

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personal and collective scales. At each point, affect shapes cognition and action, and his educational practice is consistent with viewing humans, and therefore human societies, as fundamentally emotional. Epistemology and ethics are intimately connected in Dorotheus’ thought partly through his close attention to emotion. Emotion is central to education and the perfection of ascetic selves and communities because it motivates students to learn and organizes desires and cognitions. When properly educated, ascetic emotion therefore enables monks to press on to the promised goal of unification with God and fellow humans.

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2 Rhetoric, Philosophy, Medicine Internalizing Foreign Teaching

Introduction This chapter explores Dorotheus’ interaction with rhetorical, philosophical, and medical discourses in order to situate his teaching in the context of Greco-Roman intellectual traditions of education and to illumine ways in which his theological commitments and ascetic experiences shape his engagement with them. Through this engagement, Dorotheus constructs a distinctive ascetic paideia and contributes to rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine. He shapes his monastic community by adapting Greco-Roman intellectual traditions for his programme of ascetic education. In rhetoric, his deployment of ekphrasis opens up questions of memory and emotion. Embedded dialogue and ethopoeia imply claims about participatory theology, mimesis, and the centrality of craft for his account of virtue. His exegesis connects rhetoric to philosophy and helps to make a case for identifying a unitary skopos for the biblical text. Similarly, in philosophy, the Platonic claim that the goal of philosophy is becoming like God so far as that is possible (e.g., Theaet. 176b) grounds Dorotheus’ view that ascetic instruction is transformative rather than merely informative and helps him to order monastic knowledge to achieve such transformation in his community. Finally, contemporary medical thought, for example about the efficacy of regimen, provides both intellectual content for his ascetic teaching and practical examples of how to live well in the monasteries. His appropriation of rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine sits within a larger project which views ascetic paideia as fundamentally transformative for students and their communities. In analysing Dorotheus’ appropriation of educational discourses from rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine, the chapter seeks to chart his contributions to these disciplines and distinctive elements of his thought. For the internal Christian audience of the Instructions, the discourses of rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine were elaborated by writings like Dorotheus’. For such an audience, as for Dorotheus’ later readers, classical rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine take on subtly different forms because of engagements with them like Dorotheus’ Instructions. A key feature of Dorotheus’ reframing of rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine is his commitment to the claim that the goal of the ascetic life is likeness to God. This theme was highly influential across different philosophical schools

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education. Michael W. Champion, Oxford University Press. © Michael W. Champion 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198869269.003.0002

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and in early Christian thought, reaching a zenith in the philosophy of Neoplatonism.¹ Hence Dorotheus’ originality in the sphere of education is itself firmly anchored in the Platonic tradition he augments and transcends.² These three aims—to establish how Dorotheus engaged with rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine, to identify distinctive intellectual emphases that emerge from this engagement, and to map how those discourses are developed in the course of Dorotheus’ interaction with them—all lead to a more general argument, namely that Dorotheus aims to build a distinctively ascetic programme of education that can be read as a microcosm of the wider culture he would like to construct in part through his adaptation of these classical discourses.³ The chapter seeks to identify ways in which his notion of ascetic education helps to create a textual community ordered by particular ways of reading and praying texts which are understood to enable monks to grow in ever greater spiritual perfection through habituation to virtue.

Rhetoric I begin by exploring how Dorotheus deploys rhetorical figures. This survey (as in the following cases of his use of philosophy and medicine) cannot hope to be exhaustive. Rather, it aims to develop the case that Dorotheus was expert in traditions of rhetoric developed outside the monasteries, that this mode of discourse was valued in his ascetic context, and that he uses it to construct a community formed by ascetic education. I have chosen to explore his use of ekphrasis and ethos and ethopoeia, because these figures and rhetorical practices are ubiquitous in the Instructions and they allow for exploration of a range of other figures (e.g., narrative, embedded dialogue, personification). They exemplify how rhetoric performs the goals of ascetic education.⁴ Morwenna Ludlow has argued that ekphrasis and prosopopoeia are key rhetorical figures partly because ¹ On the godlikeness theme and its influence within philosophy, see Annas 1999, 52–71; Baltzly 2004; Runia 2013; Russell 2004; Sedley 1999; van den Berg 2003. Champion 2017b explores intersections between humility and godlikeness in Dorotheus’ thought. ² For ‘anchoring, see Tversky and Kahneman 1974. ³ On Christianity and Classical paideia, see Jaeger 1985; Schwartz 2013. On relationships between ascetic and classical education, see discussion in Chapter 1 above. See further Larsen and Rubenson 2018; and Rubenson and Vinzent 2013, including Rubenson 2013; Larsen 2013; Rydell Johnsén 2013. See also Rubenson 2012. ⁴ Dorotheus’ exegesis relates his thought to contemporary Platonism, so is treated as a case of his engagement with philosophical discourses. His use of exempla, maxims, and sayings is pervasive, but is treated in Chapter 5 below, since it shapes his ethics and account of habituation to virtue. Similarly, much could be said about his understanding of narrative (although analysing ekphrasis, understood as particularly vivid narrative, casts light on this figure). His rhetorical treatment of biblical narrative is explored in Chapter 3 below, in the context of his account of reading. The section on ‘Ethos and Ethopoeia’ below includes an analysis of embedded dialogue, focusing on how persuasive accounts of character are constructed.

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     

they perform Christian claims about divine creativity and craftsmanship.⁵ Particularly, these figures foreground the mimetic character of language, and fit well within Christian ethics and soteriology, whereby Christians are to imitate Christ to attain to their intended and originally created perfection.⁶ Imitative rhetoric draws on the claim that the divine Word is creative; Dorotheus’ programme of ascetic education aims to participate in the creativity of the divine Word and thus his use of rhetorical forms is intended to function performatively to perfect his students and construct ideal communities.⁷

Ekphrasis Classicists have significantly expanded understanding of the classical figure of vivid description or ekphrasis (ἔκφρασις).⁸ Importantly, Ruth Webb has shown that ekphrasis should (in late-antique terms) be understood as closely connected to narration (διήγησις), rather than as a rhetorical form defined by its subject matter, and most commonly limited to descriptions of works of art. As Webb theorizes ekphrasis, it is applicable to a wide range of subject matter and may come in a variety of lengths. As the rhetorical theorist Theon has it, Ekphrasis is a descriptive speech which vividly brings the subject shown before the eyes. An ekphrasis may be of persons, and events, and places and times . . . . There are also ekphraseis of the manner [of an event] . . . The virtues of ekphrasis are the following: above all clarity and the vividness which makes one almost see what is being spoken about . . . . Ἔκφρασίς ἐστι λόγος περιηγηματικὸς ἐναργῶς ὑπ’ ὄψιν ἄγων τὸ δηλούμενον. Γίνεται δὲ ἔκφρασις προσώπων τε καὶ πραγμάτων καὶ τόπων καὶ χρόνων . . . . Ἁι δὲ καὶ τρόπων εἰσιν ἐκφράσεις . . . Ἀρεταὶ δὲ ἐκφράσεως αἵδε· σαφήνεια μὲν μάλιστα καὶ ἐνάργεια τοῦ σχεδὸν ὁρᾶσθαι τὰ ἀπαγγελλόμενα . . . . (Prog. 118.7 ff.)⁹

Thus as late-antique rhetorical theorists understood ekphrasis, it is not mere decoration. Rather, it treats all the elements of narration.¹⁰ Ekphrasis is narration presented with detail, energy, vibrancy, or vividness (ἐνάργεια).¹¹ It reaches

⁵ Ludlow 2020. ⁶ Ludlow 2020, 6–10. ⁷ Ludlow 2020, 10–13. ⁸ Webb 2009. See also Webb and James 1991; Bartsch and Elsner 2007. ⁹ On Theon, see Stegemann 1934, 2037–9; Heath 2002/3. ¹⁰ Webb 2009, 62–3, with Nikolaus, Prog. 67–8. See also Aphthonius, Prog. 37; Ps.-Hermogenes, Prog. 22; Theon, Prog. 118. Schouler 2005 points to the increased focus on pleasing, rather than persuading, an audience in late-antique ekphraseis. Dorotheus’ focus is persuasion rather than aesthetics. ¹¹ Webb 2009, 71. Nicolaus, Prog. 68 notes that vividness and level of specific detail separate ekphrasis from narration. Webb 2009, 195 cites Goldhill 2007, 5–6, who argues that in its detail,

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beyond mere narration, as Quintilian put it, by displaying the ‘living truth’ of the facts being narrated ‘to the eyes of the mind’ (Inst. 8.3.62). Such elaboration of narrative is designed to activate the senses and emotions to make the absent subject of the vivid description present to the imaginative, somatic, and intellectual experience of the audience.¹² The key thing is that the ekphrasis brings the subject into the ‘mind’s eye’ of the audience,¹³ and is thus connected to imagination, memory, and the activation of the emotions and senses, especially but not only the sense of sight.¹⁴ This ‘making present’ has several levels. The past event first takes shape in the imagination of the speaker or writer, and is then communicated to the audience members, whose minds and bodies are changed by participating intellectually and somatically in the event which is vividly described.¹⁵ Ekphrasis is therefore a rhetorical means of involving audience members or readers in the subject matter in order to effect their transformation, as their minds and bodies—their imagination, senses, emotions, ideas—are changed by coming into contact with the event the description vivifies. Ekphrasis is a means, then, of transforming ascetic selves through educating monks in different perspectives, intersubjectivity, and the construction of meaningful worlds. Dorotheus exploits the transformative potential of ekphrasis throughout his Instructions, deploying ekphrasis to change how members of his community evaluate sense perceptions, act with spiritual discernment, habituate themselves to virtue, feel emotions, and use their intellects. His use of ekphrasis thus illumines his complex account of anthropology. It also provides evidence for ways in which his commitment to the goal of the ascetic life as transformation towards greater likeness to God governs his appropriation of classical rhetoric. Much of Dorotheus’ writing could be considered ekphrastic in the late-antique sense.¹⁶ Take, for example, the description of a disciple of a holy man from Ascalon who visited the monastery of Abba Seridos and had been ordered by the holy man to return on the same day (1.22).¹⁷ He does so in a demonstration of his faithful obedience, despite a raging storm. In an excess of pleonasm equal to the extent of the flood, Dorotheus describes the violence of the storm (χειμὼν

ancient readers would experience Thucydides’ narrative as ekphrastic, and thus view it not as coldly detached and objective, but rather as a lively and vibrantly emotional account of events with present force. On enargeia, see e.g., Zanker 1981; Webb 1997b. In the same volume, see also Dubel 1997. ¹² Webb 2009, 71, 85, 87. ¹³ Webb 2009, 2, citing Philostratus, Imag. Proem, 2. See also Theon, Prog. 118.6.1–2; Aphthonius, Prog. 36; Ps.-Hermogenes, Prog. 22: ‘ekphrasis is a descriptive speech . . . which is vivid and brings the subject shown before the eyes’. ¹⁴ Webb 2009, 5. For ekphrasis and memory, see Webb 1999, 73. For ekphrasis and sensual and emotional engagement, see Webb and James 1991, 9–11, Webb 1997a. See also James 2004. ¹⁵ Webb 2009, 94–6, with Ps-Longinus, Subl. 15.1. ¹⁶ Key examples of extended ekphrasis (as opposed to shorter detailed, vivid and elaborate narrative passages which are common throughout the Instructions) include 1.22; 4.57; 5.67–68; 6.73; 9.99; 11.118; 17.175–176. ¹⁷ See below, Chapter 5, for a discussion of this passage in the context of mimetic habituation.

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σφοδρότατος), the heavy rain and thunder (ὄμβροι καὶ βρονταί), the raging torrent overflowing its banks (ὁ παραπλήσιον χείμαρρος εἰς ὅλην τὴν πλημμύραν), and the terrifying current (τὸ φοβερὸν ῥεῦμα). The narrative is strongly focalized so that we see the scene through the eyes of the fearful onlookers. The monk, however, has no fear, protected by the scapular he puts on before entering the floodwaters. This scapular has just been described as part of the armour which the monk wears as a symbol of spiritual struggle, particularly the total mortification of the self, realized through faith in Christ which removes obstacles to spiritual work (1.15–17). Thus τὸ φοβερόν identifies the fear of the onlookers, whom Dorotheus goes on to describe as enacting a sort of teichoskopia, as they stand like spectators looking down from the battlements onto the spiritual contest below, terrified and trembling lest the monk be drowned in the flood (Ἡμεῖς δὲ ἱστάμεθα ἐκπληττόμενοι καὶ τρέμοντες μήπως ἀποθάνῃ). Having involved his audience in the situation through the vivid description, Dorotheus now describes the transformation from fearfulness to holy awe which takes place in himself and the original spectators: surprised by the power of virtue, the fearful spectators now stand in wonder because of the monk’s obedience which saves him from the flood (ἡμεῖς δὲ ἐμείναμεν θαυμάζοντες καὶ ἐκπληττόμενοι τὴν δύναμιν τῆς ἀρετῆς, ὅτι ἡμεῖς μετὰ φόβου προσείχομεν, ἐκεῖνος δὲ ἀκινδύνως διῆλθε διὰ τὴν ὑπακοὴν αὐτοῦ). Terror remains, but the fearful trembling has been replaced by grateful amazement. Focalization enables shifts in perspective. Again, Bruner’s notions of the centrality within education of evaluating diverse perspectives, inhabiting other people’s minds and feelings, and reflecting on one’s emotional thought processes, are central to Dorotheus’ educational method.¹⁸ The whole vivid scene is designed to demonstrate how ‘obedience and not having one’s own will rescues a person from death (μάθητε ὅτι καὶ ἀπὸ θανάτου ῥύεται ἄνθρωπον ἡ ὑπακοὴ καὶ τὸ μὴ ἔχειν ἴδιον θέλημα)’. A transformation from death to life is effected, Dorotheus argues, through obedience and surrendering one’s will, and this transformation is effected in the audience as they become part of the scene, placed among the insufficiently faithful and obedient spectators, but coming, like them, to deeper faith as they share in the recognition of faithfulness which turns abject terror into holy wonder. The key elements of ekphrasis are all on display here—movement, detailed and vivid visual narrative, emotional engagement of the senses, memory, and intellect of the author and audience—and they all aim to effect the transformation of the community towards the desired goal of inculcation of the monastic virtues of obedience and conforming one’s will to Christ’s. This reconfigures power relations by granting ascetic experts social authority. This ekphrasis aims towards more faithful spiritual perception and thus a more strongly habituated spiritual discernment which in turn flow out into distinctive forms of sociality.

¹⁸ See Bruner 1996, 13–20 and Chapter 1 above.

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Other ekphraseis explicitly identify different transformations on the way to spiritual perfection. Dorotheus’ ‘Interpretation of Certain Sayings of St. Gregory Sung in the Hymn for the Holy Martyrs’ (Instruction 17) opens with the claim that singing illumines the soul precisely by activating the power of memory to align the mind more perfectly to the ‘power of the words of the saints’.¹⁹ This is an emotional and intellectual activity, as the heart sings along with the mouth (17.174). As Dorotheus has it, closely echoing the process of ekphrasis, words activate memories which illumine and purify, and by fixing the mind on the words, the whole emotional and reasoning person is formed by the holy words they sing. Commenting on the first two lines from Gregory (‘Living sacrificial victims | Reasoning whole burnt offerings’),²⁰ Dorotheus soon launches into a short ekphrasis of the suffering of martyrs (17.175). The martyrs were ‘cut down while they lived’, ‘torn to pieces’, ‘tortured’. Not content to report that their limbs were cut off, Dorotheus elaborates with piteous and horrifying detail: their hands, feet, and tongues are severed, and their eyes gouged out. ‘Their ribs were slashed so that their innards could be seen’, he goes on, explicitly calling attention to the sense of sight and thereby engaging his audience in the gruesome and vivid spectacle. Asterius of Amasea had spoken of the emotional power of ekphraseis of the suffering of martyrs. This passage thus stands in a tradition of Christian rhetoric which aims to engage the audience in the martyrs’ sacrifice as a means of effecting their own spiritual transformation.²¹ But this ekphrasis is framed by two explicit statements specifically directed at the transformation or perfection of the mind through making students expert in the distinctive symbol system of asceticism (17.174, 176). Immediately before the ekphrasis, the audience members are encouraged to dedicate their minds to the force of the words or arguments of the saints (17.174.9–10). Immediately after it, they are told that the sacrifice of the martyrs is like that of sacrificial victims, which should be understood as symbols (τὰ σύμβολα), and when such symbols are explained, thoughts are elevated and the soul is enriched (ἀνάγητε . . . τὰ νοήματα, . . . πιαίνηται ἡ ψυχὴ). Dorotheus then outlines an ascetic psychology indebted to Gregory Nazianzus and Evagrius, culminating, after working through a number of biblical passages, with Basil’s account of ‘what is up to us’.²² We will investigate these aspects of Dorotheus’ thought in Chapter 4 below. At present, note that the ekphrasis prepares the audience members for the higher-order intellectual ¹⁹ τιθέναι τὸν νοῦν ἡμῶν εἰς τὴν δύναμιν τῶν λόγων τῶν ἁγίων (17.174.9–10). ²⁰ Ἱερεῖα ἔμψυχα|ὁλοκαυτώματα λογικά. Cf. Gregory Nazianzus, Contra Arianos, or. 33,15 (PG 36, 232). Dorotheus treats this as a hymn, evidence for ways in which dogmatic theology was repurposed for liturgical settings. ²¹ Asterius of Amasea, Descriptio picturae sanctae Euphemiae (hom. 11), 4.2 ff. ²² Gregory Nazianzus, De vita sua PG 37, 1382; Evagrius, Prak. PG 40, 1233D–1236A. Chapter 4 analyses Dorotheus’ psychology. Osborn 1976, 104 argues that Basil’s views are informed by direct engagement with philosophical schools: his arguments for free will in the Hexameron draw on Carneades (hex. 6,7; cf. Sext. Emp. Math. 5). See further Amand 1945, 383 ff.

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     

discussion which follows by performing in them the intellectual transformation required to set one’s mind on the elevated and enlarging thoughts of holy men. Ekphrasis also enables Dorotheus to characterize ascetic progress as emotional transformation as a corollary of his generally affective theory of mind I explore in Chapter 4. For example, in a doubly ekphrastic passage which is presented as deeply personal, Dorotheus explains his current state of absence of grief. It was not always so, he tells us, and there follows an extended, elaborate, and vivid description of his diabolical suffering, pain, distress, and grief when he was in the coenobium, followed by a second ekphrasis of a vision he saw which healed him when he was in the depths of despair (5.67). He describes his emotional trial in terms familiar to modern accounts of depression (5.67). His grief is ‘very severe’, ‘very hard, dark, and without consolation’, and he is oppressed by ‘distress and suffocation’ which ‘come from all sides’. He then describes a vision that came to him in this state. He writes (in the vivid present): Suddenly I notice something in the church, and I see someone in the form of a bishop, dressed in grey, going into the sanctuary, . . . something drew me there and I enter behind him. He remains standing for some time with his hands stretched up towards heaven. I was standing behind him, praying in great fear. There came upon me a fearful reverence from the vision of him: . . . he approached me, and just as much as he approached me, I sensed that my grief and fear were retreating. αἰφνίδιον προσέχω ἔσω εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν καὶ βλέπω τινὰ ἐν σχήματι ἐπισκόπου φοροῦντα ὡς μυίνον, εἰσερχόμενον εἰς τὸ ἱερατεῖον . . . τί ποτε ἔσυρέ με τότε, καὶ εἰσέρχομαι ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ· καὶ μένει ἱστάμενος ἐπὶ ἱκανόν, ἔχων τὰς χεῖρας αὐτοῦ ἐκτεταμένας εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν κἀγὼ ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ ἱστάμην μετὰ πολλοῦ φόβου εὐχόμενος· ἐγένετο γάρ μοι δειλία πολλὴ ἐκ τῆς θέας αὐτοῦ . . . ἔρχεται πρός με, καὶ καθόσον ἤγγιζέ μοι, ᾐσθανόμην ὡς ὑποχωρούσης καὶ τῆς λύπης καὶ τῆς δειλίας. (5.67.18 ff.)²³

The bishop then taps Dorotheus on the chest and repeats verses from Ps. 40.1–3 three times: ‘I waited patiently for the lord . . . and he heard my cry. He brought me out of the horrible pit . . . he has put a new song in my mouth, praise to our God’. He then leaves the sanctuary and the church. Immediately, Dorotheus describes his transformation: ‘And suddenly there came into my heart light, joy, consolation and sweetness, and I find myself altered’.²⁴ The transformation of the self is effected in the vision by redemptive intersubjectivity. By the merciful protection ²³ μυίνον may refer to colour (LSJ gives ‘mouse-coloured’; Photios equates it with ‘grey’ (φαιόν)). Lampe instead suggests entering the sanctuary ‘as quietly as a mouse’. ²⁴ Καὶ γίνεται εὐθέως εἰς τὴν καρδίαν μου φῶς, χαρά, παράκλησις, γλυκύτης, καὶ εὑρίσκομαι ἄλλος ἐξ ἄλλου.

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of God and the prayers of holy men, Dorotheus has not experienced grief or cowardice since this vision, he informs us, and his true, free, and humble self is revealed to him by the grace of God in the vision (5.68). The ekphraseis activate memory and involve the audience in the scenes he describes partly by the detailed depiction of his emotions before, during, and after his transformation. His own transformation is the transformation intended for the audience: the explicit purpose of the ekphrasis is to ‘show the great comfort and freedom from anxiety a person may have’ with properly faithful obedience (5.68). The scene, as often in the Instructions, constructs Dorotheus as an exemplum, a narrative device that foregrounds intersubjectivity.²⁵ The repeated and explicit references to sight draw attention to this ekphrasis, which is deployed as in earlier examples to activate memory, engage intersubjective evaluation of different perspectives by stimulating emotional responses, and to describe and perform transformation towards greater ascetic perfection. This perfection is a matter, as we have seen, of virtue, spiritual perception, intellectual elevation, and emotional transformation. In this process of the transformation of individual monks and monastic communities, ekphrasis may be deployed to discipline and direct monastic vision, since it functions by directing the sight of the speaker and audience.²⁶ It is a means of educating students in evaluating viewpoints and adopting culturally valued perspectives. This theme has been implicit in the previous examples. In the case of the monks watching in fear as the disciple obediently and faithfully crosses the raging torrent, monks are encouraged to see not with faithless fear, but with the humble eyes of faith. They come to see natural phenomena as a cosmic spiritual battle, in which victory is achieved, and the world becomes intelligible, by the exercise of humble obedience. In the case of the martyrs, these themes continue, and the audience members also come to see rituals of sacrifice as symbols for ascetic psychology. In the case of Dorotheus’ present disposition of gratitude and freedom from anxiety, his audience is to see a divinely given persona, rather than an identity achieved merely by human effort, though his monks are also to recognize the endurance, prayer, and committed dependence on God which leads to this humble and joyfully obedient state. That is, by painting a picture, Dorotheus’ ekphraseis direct vision and aim to give his ascetic pupils models through which to understand the world and their own experiences. Visions can be coded as deceptive, false, or unintelligible, and one function of ekphrasis in Dorotheus’ Instructions is to enable his audience to see truthfully (from Dorotheus’ perspective) in ways made intelligible by his wider ascetic teachings. The dangers of false vision, and the use of ekphrasis to direct and control ascetic seeing are evident in Dorotheus’ description of a brother in thrall to the passion of ‘suspicion’ (ἡ ὑπόνοια) (9.99). Dorotheus signals the ekphrasis with deliberate ²⁵ See further below, Chapter 5. ²⁶ Dilley 2017, 97–220 explores this aspect of monastic education in an illuminating fashion.

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     

references to memory, vision, and detailed attentiveness.²⁷ We are then given a detailed account of the brother going into the monastery’s garden to spy on a fellow monk. The suspicious monk seems to see (ἔδοξε βλέπειν) a brother stealing and eating figs and persuades himself that ‘what he saw was a reality’.²⁸ Seeing can be seeming, and wilfully relying on one’s own sense perceptions can lead to error. Here Dorotheus’ educational concern is about how reality should be constructed to harmonize with and strengthen ascetic cultural values. The audience of the ekphrasis is directed by Dorotheus’ account not to see the alleged stealing. The narrative focuses instead on the false vision of the suspicious monk. Then, when the fig-eating monk comes to take the Eucharist, the suspicious brother accuses him before the Abbot. It turns out that the fig-eater had been on a pious errand all day and could not have been in the garden. The suspicious monk is shamed in front of his brothers by the tearful abbot, and the moral is drawn that one’s suspicions must be disciplined. In directing the attention of monks to specific scenes and educating them in how to see them, Dorotheus’ ekphrasis both makes the ascetic world intelligible to his monks and aims to control and discipline how they perceive and act within it. It is worth pausing here to emphasize the distinctive nature of Dorotheus’ thought on this point. In wider ascetic literature, failure of vision, and the consequent need to discipline sight is ubiquitous. But such failure of vision is generally attributed to external assault on one’s senses by demons. Seeing imperfectly is accounted for as an instance of demonic deception. A monk’s failure of attentiveness may be responsible for allowing the demons to take over his senses, but the cause of the failure of perception is external. For Dorotheus, while demons can interfere with perception, this episode follows his more common practice of coding erroneous perception as an internal failure which signifies that the monk has allowed his own opinion (ὑπόνοια) to dominate. That is, it is precisely a psychological failure of the cognitive and emotional senses activated by ekphrasis— the eyes of the mind—which is at stake.²⁹ This cognitive-affective failure of judgement leads to a failure of obedience. It therefore displaces the authority of divine commandments and the sayings of the fathers. Dorotheus’ distinctive account of the necessity of continual self-examination is consistent with this account of the internal failure of cognition, emotion, and obedience to authoritative ascetic literature which this ekphrasis foregrounds. Dorotheus’ use of ekphrasis, then, shows him drawing on and expert in the use of well-established rhetorical conventions. The case studies of particularly elaborate, vivid, and extended descriptive passages demonstrate how ekphrasis was

²⁷ λέγω ὑμῖν πρᾶγμα θαυμαστὸν περὶ τούτου ᾧ τινι ἐγὼ παρηκολούθησα ἔτι ὢν ἐν τῷ κοινοβίῳ (9.99.1–2). ²⁸ ἔπεισεν ἑαυτὸν ὡς ὅτι ἰδικῶς μετὰ ἀληθείας εἶδε τὸ πρᾶγμα (9.99.12–13). ²⁹ For Dorotheus’ account of affective cognition, see Chapters 3 and 4.

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used to activate memory and sense perception, especially sight, in his ascetic pupils, heighten their emotional responses, and place them in the scenes being depicted. Dorotheus capitalizes on the potential of ekphrasis to involve audience members in the scene, affect their perceptions, and thus effect mental, emotional, and physical changes. Ekphrasis is education in the perspectival construction of meaning, in intersubjectivity, and in the creation of identity. In Dorotheus’ hands, ekphrasis becomes a way of transforming individual monks and ascetic communities by enlarging, directing, and disciplining their vision, and, through vision, their capacity for affective cognition. That is to say, his rhetoric is governed by the larger theological purpose of ascetic instruction: to enable monks and their communities to be transformed to perfection. Understood in this way, Dorotheus’ use of ekphrasis connects him to contemporary discourses of rhetoric, but the rhetoric is internalized by being made to serve a Christian purpose—performing and stimulating ascetic transformation—albeit one which has deep philosophical roots. While the details of the qualities needed to effect this transformation make ascetic paideia very different from contemporary philosophical schools, the fundamental conviction that philosophy (or theology) is inherently transformative is shared between the two enterprises. The Christianization of rhetoric in Dorotheus’ Instructions is achieved in large measure by also appropriating a generative assumption of the Platonic tradition.

Ethos and Ethopoeia Ethopoeia (ἠθοποιΐα) is ubiquitous in Dorotheus’ writings, hardly surprising for a rhetorical figure labelled by the later ninth-century commentator John of Sardis as ‘most useful everywhere . . . [contributing] to all species of rhetoric’.³⁰ John’s account of ethopoeia is instructive, because it diverges from the late-antique handbook tradition in a similar (though not identical) direction to Dorotheus. It moves from mere stylistic imitation (the feature of ethopoeia emphasized by other late-antique rhetorical handbooks) to an emotional connection between speaker and audience that makes the character depicted or personified present as a living figure to the audience. Dorotheus agrees, and goes further in utilizing ethopoeia as a persuasive proof of the idea or way of life he seeks to promote through the rhetorical figure. Late-antique rhetorical theorists from Theon to Nicolaus emphasize that ethopoeia is a plausible imitation of a character. So Theon writes of the figure of

³⁰ On John of Sardis, see Alpers 2009. See also Kennedy 1994, 66–7, 205–6. For the contemporary practice of ethopoeia in the rhetorical school of Gaza, see Ventrella 2010.

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     

personification (προσωποποιΐα), which, unlike later theorists, he does not distinguish from ethopoeia, that: Personification is the introduction of a person to whom words are attributed that are suitable to the speaker and have an indisputable application to the subject discussed . . . . First of all, then, one should have in mind what the personality of the speaker is like, and to whom the speech is addressed: the speaker’s age, the occasion, the place, the social status of the speaker; also the general subject which the projected speeches are going to discuss. Then one is ready to try to say appropriate words. Προσωποποιΐα ἐστὶ προσώπου παρεισαγωγὴ διατιθεμένου λόγους οἰκείους ἑαυτῷ τε καὶ τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις πράγμασιν ἀναμφισβητήτως πρῶτον μὲν τοίνυν ἁπάντων ἐνθυμηθῆναι δεῖ τό τε τοῦ λέγοντος πρόσωπον ὁποῖόν ἐστι, καὶ τὸ πρὸς ὃν ὁ λόγος, τήν τε παροῦσαν ἡλικίαν, καὶ τὸν καιρόν, καὶ τὸν τόπον, καὶ τὴν τύχην, καὶ τὴν ὑποκειμένην ὕλην, περὶ ἧς οἱ μέλλοντες λόγοι ῥηθήσονται· ἔπειτα δὲ ἤδη πειρᾶσθαι λόγους ἁρμόττοντας εἰπεῖν. (Theon, Prog. 115,12–14, 22–28)³¹

Likewise for Hermogenes and Aphthonius, ‘Ethopoeia is an imitation of the character of a person supposed to be speaking’; and the rhetor must ‘preserve what is distinctive and appropriate to the persons imagined as speaking and to the occasions’.³² Nicolaus’ discussion also identifies the role of sympathetic imagination in ethopoeia. He notes that letter writers must deploy the figure in order to forge a relationship with their correspondents and emphasizes ethopoeia as imitation of a character by stylistic appropriateness.³³ John of Sardis’ definition strikes out in a somewhat new direction, when he focuses on how ethopoeia moves the audience of the speech: Ethopoeia . . . makes the language alive and moves the hearer to share the emotion of the speaker by presenting his character. Ἡ ἠθοποιία . . . ἔμψυχον γὰρ τὸν λόγον ποιεῖ καὶ κινεῖ πρὸς συμπάθειαν τὸν ἀκροώμενον, τὸ ἦθος τοῦ λέγοντος παριστῶσα. (John of Sardis, Comm. in Aphth. Prog. 194,2–5)

This makes ethopoeia (as in the related figure of prosopopoeia) close to ekphrasis by emphasizing the vividness of the figure and the emotional connection between speaker and audience it creates.³⁴ It goes beyond ekphrasis, however, through the presentation of ‘character’ (ἠθός). Further, in the reference to ensouled speech ³¹ Spengel 1854: Rhetores Graeci II. ³² Aphthonius’ definition is identical to Hermogenes’: ‘ethopoeia is imitation of the character of a proposed speaker’. ³³ Nicolaus, Prog. 10. ³⁴ For prosopopoeia, see further below, Chapter 5.

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(ἔμψυχον . . . λόγον), it claims that language can present the heart of the character to the audience. The persuasive character of ethopoeia is also implied in this description, since ethos is a necessary component of any act of persuasion. This connects John’s definition to an Aristotelian tradition not represented in other handbooks.³⁵ Aristotle makes characterization a component of moral persuasion specifically through the portrayal of a compelling moral character.³⁶ For Aristotle, ethos exists ‘whenever the speech is spoken in such a way as to make the speaker worthy of credence (ἀξιόπιστον)’ (Aristotle, Rhet. 2.1.4). In his account, being trustworthy is in part a matter of accurate imitation but is more importantly a matter of presenting a moral case through the depiction of a moral character the audience will recognize as valuable and ethically authoritative. Dorotheus’ use of ethopoeia follows this line of thought. The rhetorical figure is used not merely to create a plausible stylistic imitation of holy men but rather as a means of persuasive moral proof. The moral claims of scripture are repeatedly expounded and demonstrated through the use of ethopoeia. The theme of transformation we have seen operating in the case of ekphrasis is also present with respect to ethopoeia. Like John of Sardis, Dorotheus views ethopoeia as a vivid and emotional figure which connects the souls of his audience to the lives of the holy men he personifies, and through this connection, his monks become more perfectly holy. Alternatively, the connection may be negative: monks are warned of the dangers of particular character traits which should be avoided on the way to ascetic perfection. The goal of likeness to God through moral progress shapes Dorotheus’ deployment of ethopoeia and provides a set of criteria to determine positive and negative exempla. His use of ethopoeia is aligned with its Christian development in homiletics and hymnography, both of which deploy ethopoeia to augment biblical narratives and transform believers by making them participate in events of salvation history, thereby seeking to transform their audiences to greater perfection.³⁷ The use of ethopoeia as moral proof within exegesis is an important element of Dorotheus’ first use of the figure, in On Renunciation (1.8–9).³⁸ In this passage, Dorotheus employs ethopoeia by creating mini fictionalized exchanges first between God and a generic creature, and then between God and Adam and Eve. The exchanges characterize God as acting mercifully and Adam and Eve as acting shamefully. But their main focus is a moral proof about the importance of humility and obedience built upon biblical passages (Mt 11:28–9; Gen 3:9–12). ³⁵ For John’s knowledge of Aristotelianism, see MacDougall 2017. ³⁶ Cf. Bruss 2013 on Dion. Hal. ³⁷ For analysis of ethopoeia within participatory theologies in Greek and Syriac homiletics and in Romanos’ sixth-century kontakia, see Gador-Whyte 2017, 170–9. Gador-Whyte emphasizes aspects of self-characterization, which are also evident in Dorotheus’ use of the figure. ³⁸ See also, e.g., ethopoeia at 3.42.

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     

In the Matthean passage the biblical speeches ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest . . . Learn from me, that I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls’ are augmented by an imagined speech placed in God’s mouth: Behold, you were labouring; behold, you were miserable; behold, you were suffering from the vice of your insubordination. Come then, turn around; come, recognize your incapacity and your shame, so that you may attain your rest and glory. Come, live through humility rather than being one who was condemned to death through pride. Ἰδοὺ ἐκοπιάσατε, ἰδοὺ ἐταλαιπωρήσατε, ἰδοὺ ἐπειράσθητε τοῦ κακοῦ τῆς ἀνυποταξίας ὑμῶν· δεῦτε λοιπὸν ἐπιστρέψατε, δεῦτε ἐπίγνωτε τὴν ἀδυναμίαν καὶ τὴν ἀτιμίαν ὑμῶν, ἵνα ἔλθητε εἰς τὴν ἀνάπαυσιν καὶ τὴν δόξαν ὑμῶν. Δεῦτε ζήσατε διὰ τῆς ταπεινοφροσύνης, ἀνθ’ ὧν ἐθανατώθητε διὰ τῆς ὑψηλοφροσύνης.

The formal and elevated rhetorical structure of this passage, with its anaphora, ascending tricolon, antithesis and symmetrical balance of clauses, may well be judged appropriate for a divine speaker. But the point of the speech is to establish a moral claim as authoritative through the personification: humility means life and glorification, pride means death and mortal suffering, and the claim is worthy of credence because of the supreme mercy and ‘goodness of God . . . [which] has not overlooked his own creation’, the claim which immediately precedes the fictionalized divine speech. A similar concern for moral proof through ethopoeia is apparent in the exegetical augmentation of the account of the fall in Genesis 3. The section begins with the urgent rhetorical question ‘Oh my brothers, what does pride create?’ (Βαβαί, ἀδελφοί μου, τί ποιεῖ ἡ ὑπερηφανία;) (1.9). The point to be proved is that ‘if from the beginning [man] had humbled himself, obeyed God, and kept the commandment, he could not have fallen’.³⁹ The proof is achieved through an augmented dialogue, where Adam and Eve’s responses to merciful and gracious questions from God are taken to show clearly that they are dead in their sins to the extent that they blame God for their pride and disobedience. Adam’s biblical deferral of responsibility to Eve becomes ‘This catastrophe has come upon me because of You’ by emphasizing Adam’s biblical comment that God gave Eve to Adam. Eve’s biblical blaming of the serpent is further characterized as a failure to seek forgiveness and to recognize personal responsibility, ‘as if she wanted to say “If [the serpent] sinned, what have I done” ’. By contrast, God is characterized as the one who repeatedly comes to his creatures with mercy and forgiveness. God’s biblical question ‘Adam, where are you’ is explained as deliberately avoiding the ³⁹ Ἐξ ἀρχῆς γὰρ εἰ ἐταπεινώθη καὶ ὑπήκουσε τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ἐφύλαξε τὴν ἐντολήν, οὐκ εἶχεν ἐκπεσεῖν (1.9.4–5).

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judgemental question he might well have asked ‘What glory have you left and what shame have you come to?’ The reference to glory and shame recalls the earlier section of fictionalized speech, demonstrating the moral authority of God’s gift of rest. God’s question to Eve about keeping the commandment is extended into a desire to elicit forgiveness: ‘as though he were specially saying “at least you, say forgive me, so as your soul may be humbled and receive mercy” ’.⁴⁰ In their arrogant responses, Dorotheus argues, ‘there was no humility; there was no repentance (Οὐδαμοῦ ταπείνωσις, οὐδαμοῦ μετάνοια)’. Adam and Eve thereby become negative exempla for the monastic life of obedience, humility, and repentance. The cumulative picture is of a God who is trustworthy because consistently merciful. Dorotheus also uses ethopoeia as a means of self-characterization, with the aim of modelling for his students a life of ascetic virtue. He repeatedly dramatizes his internal dialogues with his thoughts, in order to prove that trusting in one’s own will is a sure path to sin, to promote examination of conscience, or to extol other monastic virtues such as excising the passions (e.g., 3.42, 4.56–57, 5.66, 11.117). Again, the purpose of the ethopoeia is to demonstrate moral claims about ascetic virtue. Alternatively, he offers cameos from the life of virtuous and sinful monks, aiming to establish positive and negative examples for monastic living. In one paradigmatic passage, Dorotheus sets out the questions the good monk must continue to ask himself, establishing the character of the ideal ascetic, and explicitly calling on his community members to emulate this ideal (cf. 6.69, 75; 7.80): Each one of us must say to himself, ‘Can it be that I have spoken and wounded my brother? Have I seen him doing something, and judged him, humiliated him or condemned him? Have I asked the cellarer for something and when he didn’t give it to me, grumbled about him? Have I abused the cook and hurt him when the food was not well prepared or have I just been disgusted in my heart, and grumbled to myself?’ καὶ λέγειν ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ἐν ἑαυτῷ· Ἆρα μή τι ἐλάλησα πλήσσων τὸν ἀδελφόν μου; ἆρα μὴ εἶδον αὐτὸν ποιοῦντα πράγμα καὶ κατέκρινα αὐτὸν ἢ ἐξουδένωσα αὐτὸν ἢ κατελάλησα αὐτοῦ; ἆρα ᾔτησα τὸν κελλαρίτην πρᾶγμα, καὶ οὐκ ἔδωκέ μοι, καὶ ἐγόγγυσα κατ’ αὐτοῦ; μὴ τὸ ἑψητὸν οὐκ ἐγένετο καλῶς, καὶ εἶπον ῥῆμα καὶ κατῄσχυνα τὸν μάγειρον καὶ ἔθλιψα αὐτόν, ἢ ἐγὼ ἀηδισθεὶς ἐγόγγυσα κατ’ ἐμαυτόν; (11.117.13–20)

The detailed insight into the frustrations of communal life in the monasteries is typical of Dorotheus’ realism and serves to make the fictionalized speech ⁴⁰ ὡς τί ποτε ἰδικῶς λέγων· Εἰπὲ κἂν σύ· Συγχώρησον, ἵνα ταπεινωθῇ ἡ ψυχή σου καὶ ἐλεηθῇς (1.9.18–20).

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     

appropriate for the situation and character of the monk who is being depicted as well as to forge emotional connections between the speaker and the ascetic audience. While the passage thereby fulfils the rhetorical expectations of ethopoeia, its main purpose is to demonstrate the truth of the claim of the elders and of the Bible that those who quickly cut off their passions are happy and blessed.⁴¹ In the other direction, Dorotheus uses ethopoeia to bring negative exempla before his audience, warning them of the evils which could beset them and interfere with their ascetic ascent to God. For example, in his discussion of the damaging effects of lying, Dorotheus imagines a monk who becomes a liar in order to avoid having to be humble and attend liturgies (9.101). Instead of saying ‘Forgive me because I was too lazy to get up’, he says ‘I had a fever; I was faint and I couldn’t get up. I didn’t have the strength’: whatever vice besets him is excused by ‘I suffer this’ or ‘I need this’, or ‘they told me to do that’. Dorotheus then immediately draws the moral: the excuses arise from an immoral and spiritually immature desire to satisfy his own will. The fictionalized speech makes an immediate emotional connection to Dorotheus’ audience, who all too readily recognize the words of the lying monk from their own experiences, and the point of the negative characterization is again the demonstration of a moral claim about ascetic virtue. Therefore in Dorotheus’ hands, ethopoeia does appropriately characterize the speakers—Dorotheus himself, good and bad monks, and biblical characters, including God. But the rhetorical theorist’s emphasis on appropriate and fitting characterization is subordinated to an ethical programme more in line with Aristotelian accounts of ethos, whereby characterization serves to demonstrate moral claims. This in turn is linked to an assumption that the emotional force of ethopoeia connects the audience strongly to the fictional speaker, enabling the speaker to function as a powerful negative or positive exemplum for monks whose goal is to attain to greater moral virtue as they are assimilated to God.

Rhetoric and Ascetic Paideia The cases of ekphrasis and ethos through ethopoeia illumine Dorotheus’ vivid narrative and his use of rhetoric to construct ideal characters with whom his audience can sympathize and whom they may be expected to imitate. In Dorotheus’ monastic community, rhetorical presentation of education was valued and could be expected to be effective. People flocked to Gaza in the fifth and sixth centuries for the enjoyment of rhetorical spectacles, for example during the Festival of the Rose.⁴² This festival was associated with Aphrodite, but by ⁴¹ Ἰδοὺ πῶς καὶ οἱ γέροντες καὶ ἡ ἁγία Γραφὴ πάντες συμφωνοῦσι καὶ μακαρίζουσι τοὺς ἀγωνιζομένους ἐκκόψαι, ὡς ἔστι νεαρά, τὰ πάθη (11.117.1–3). ⁴² For the Festival, and its Christian transformation, symbolism, and significance, see Amato 2010b.

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Dorotheus’ time the Greek mythology retained its entertainment value while being transformed in its presentation to support Christian narratives, ritual practices, and moral expectations. The rhetorical dexterity of the Instructions suggest that the social value of rhetoric continued to be significant in the monasteries. As in the case of the orators at the festival, we may imagine that Dorotheus’ status in the monastery was partly built upon his expert rhetorical skill. Beyond this key social function of the deployment of rhetoric in the ascetic classroom, in Dorotheus’ hands, classical rhetoric is appropriated in ways that further the goals of ascetic education. It thus becomes an integral part of Dorotheus’ educational project. In his use of ekphrasis and rhetorical techniques associated with the formation of character, Dorotheus deploys rhetoric to transform audiences to ever greater ascetic perfection. Ekphrasis is not merely used in order to enliven the narrative, vivify the audience’s imagination to aesthetic ends, and display and reinforce the skill and status of the author, although it continues to have those effects in his community. Rather, its key function is to enlarge and discipline monastic vision and engage the senses of the monastic pupils in order to transform them. Ethos and ethopoeia are not understood, as they were by some rhetorical theorists, merely as decorative attempts to convey essential characteristics of a persona, although they no doubt conveyed such information. Rather, they are integrated into a wider programme of establishing examples for monastic living and prioritizing ascetic virtues in ways that enable monks to embody ascetic virtues and participate in authoritative narratives. As monks mimetically explore characterizations, they are encouraged to take on and perform roles in ways that craft their character—the disposition of their soul—and transform it towards greater ascetic perfection. Ekphrasis works in a similar way by stimulating mimesis. Rhetoric’s ethical potential—understood broadly to include its ability to shape character—is prioritized over its aesthetic value and is harnessed to the over-arching philosophical and theological claim that the goal of education is transformation towards ever greater spiritual perfection. Rhetoric understood in these terms becomes all the more acceptable in the ascetic context where agonistic self-creation through public display rather than the obedient conforming of the will to God, is viewed with deep suspicion. Dorotheus’ Instructions are thus evidence for the internalization of rhetoric within ascetic paideia.

Philosophy My focus in this section is on the methods and approaches Dorotheus employs which align closely with the practices of late-antique philosophical education. Dorotheus never cites a philosopher explicitly; much of his deployment of ideas with philosophical pedigree is mediated through earlier Christian thinkers. There are allusions to Aristotle, Plato, and Epictetus, explications of broadly Platonic

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psychology, and both Aristotelian and Stoic claims about the emotions and virtues.⁴³ While these authors are not used as authorities in his educational project, Dorotheus shares discourses and social practices with philosophers. This makes his version of ascetic education recognizable to his contemporaries as closely analogous to specifically philosophical paideia. Important doctrinal differences remain, but philosophical practices, interpretive methods, and goals are shared. The crucial factor is the appropriation and adaptation of the Platonic claim that the goal of philosophy is godlikeness. The strongest shared commitment between Dorotheus’ pedagogy and philosophical education is the idea that education is transformative. To the extent that it is transformative, it cannot be properly characterized as simply the transfer of information or skills. That thinkers trained in ‘Christian thought’ share philosophical commitments and practices with Neoplatonists is good reason to speak of ‘late-antique philosophy’, supporting the broader project of seeking out connections between the intellectual activities of Christians and Neoplatonists.⁴⁴

Philosophy and Exegesis: Transformation and Textual Community Dorotheus’ exegetical practices connect him to the discursive intellectual world of late-antique philosophy.⁴⁵ Exegesis, of course, was not the sole preserve of philosophically inclined intellectuals in late antiquity. But exegesis was the lifeblood of late-antique philosophy, at least to the extent that exegesis overlaps with commentary. Similarities between Neoplatonic exegesis of Plato and Aristotle and Dorotheus’ exegesis of his Christian sources constitute the closest parallel between Neoplatonism and contemporary monasticism. Recent scholarship on the practice of Neoplatonic philosophy as commentary helps to illumine and delineate the contours of this relationship between ⁴³ See further Chapters 3–5. Hadot 1995a, 135–6 identifies self-mastery in Dorotheus as a connection with the Stoicism of Epictetus, and draws attention to spiritual exercises in general as a connection between asceticism and ancient philosophy (126–44). Aristotelian virtue ethics is also in play, e.g., Instructions 10 and 14, and cf. EN 2.2 1104a; 2.6.7, 1107a–b. ⁴⁴ Adamson 2015, 218–19 has identified the ‘incorporation of Christian philosophy [into] the study of ancient philosophy’ as the ‘most significant challenge’ for the field. Gerson 2010 includes Christian thought, but counts it as reception of ancient philosophy rather than an active contributor to it. ⁴⁵ Given the connections noted above between philosophy and rhetoric, this will also cast further light on Dorotheus’ debt to rhetoric. Stenger 2017, 64–5 also identifies exegesis as crucial, but casts exegesis as informative, aiming towards a theoretical understanding of Platonism, rather than as a practice which is itself transformative. A key feature of both Platonic discourse and Dorotheus’ teaching is that the practice of exegesis and coming to understand texts transforms the exegete. Nor is the picture completed by adding the element of social formation, a significant and illuminating contribution of Stenger’s argument (66). It remains essential to recognize an irreducibly intellectual element to transformation which goes beyond characterizations of ancient philosophy and asceticism as therapeutic.

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Dorotheus’ ascetic exegesis and Neoplatonism.⁴⁶ It is well known that Neoplatonists viewed Plato and Aristotle as authoritative, and that much philosophical originality was generated by the notion that they should be interpreted in ways that harmonized their thought.⁴⁷ This account of the source of Neoplatonism’s originality takes as axiomatic the view that the basis for Plato and Aristotle’s authority is the alleged truth of their arguments.⁴⁸ While not discounting this aspect of the authority conferred upon Plato and Aristotle by Neoplatonists, others have pointed to deeper foundations for the power they hold within the tradition.⁴⁹ Most promisingly, Dirk Baltzly has argued that the authority given to Plato within Neoplatonism can best be understood by treating Neoplatonism as a ‘textual community’.⁵⁰ Such communities define themselves against a cultural and intellectual other, take their identity from communally constructed notions about privileged leaders, understand their identity and place in the world through concepts provided by privileged texts, and believe that personal and communal transformation or salvation is achievable through the reading and interpretation of privileged texts.⁵¹ Baltzly argues that textual communities understood in this fashion are formed by ‘privileged texts, subjected to a repertoire of reading strategies, and interpreted in front of an audience of people for the purpose of transforming their souls’.⁵² He concludes that the ‘dominant social form of late-antique Platonism is the textual community’.⁵³ This characterization of Neoplatonic textual communities also closely describes the situation in Dorotheus’ community, where worldly concerns are set on a lower spiritual plane to monastic virtue, where biblical characters and authors, as well as particular holy men, provide privileged access to truthful interpretations, where identity and experience are constructed and rendered understandable by privileged narratives, and where texts and their correct interpretation are understood as salvific. This understanding of the ascetic classroom in the monasteries as a transformative textual community shapes practices of exegesis in ascetic education.⁵⁴ In this cultural and intellectual context, the interpretation of certain privileged texts is a means of moving the interpreter and his audience ⁴⁶ For the following, see Baltzly 2014. ⁴⁷ This is a major contribution of Richard Sorabji’s revival of specifically philosophical interest in late-antique commentaries on Aristotle. ⁴⁸ See Boys-Stones 2001, 102–4. ⁴⁹ Sedley 1997 insightfully grounds Plato and Aristotle’s authority in the Roman concept of auctoritas. ⁵⁰ Baltzly 2014. For a ‘textual community’, see Stock 1983. ⁵¹ For these four characteristics of a textual community, see Baltzly 2014, 799–800. Johnson 2010 applies this model to the early empire. ⁵² Baltzly 2014, 797. Much late-antique philosophy arises in a classroom context; the implied performance context for Dorotheus’ Instructions is a monastic classroom. On the former case, see Richard 1950. ⁵³ Baltzly 2014, 801. ⁵⁴ See further below, Chapter 3, especially on the question of what constitutes truthful interpretation.

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     

towards greater perfection.⁵⁵ We have already seen that this move characterizes Dorotheus’ use of rhetoric. It is also fundamental to his exegesis. In fact, there is a case that it is precisely because philosophical paideia presupposes that texts can be transformative that Dorotheus recasts classical education—rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine—in the way he does.

Concepts, Categories, and Methods There are clear correspondences at the level of method and exegetical approach between Dorotheus’ thought and contemporary Neoplatonism. For example, in accordance with Aristotelian scientific method widely deployed in Neoplatonism, Dorotheus repeatedly begins his exegesis by first defining terms by seeking their essence (e.g., 4.47: ‘What sort of thing does he mean by “love” and “fear”? (ποίαν ἄρα λέγει ἀγάπην καὶ ποῖον φόβον;)’.⁵⁶ After the ‘what kind?’ question comes, as for example in the near contemporary philosopher Proclus, detailed reading of terms and phrases, first by drawing on different opinions and schemes of different interpreters (Basil, Anthony, Paul, Abba Agathon) and working them into the wider argument. Then he explains the main philosophical themes or problems thrown up by the text, also recognizable from the philosophical genre of problemata (‘how can we please God?’, ‘can one fear God and love him?’, ‘what sort of spiritual boldness is allowed?’). These problems are generated within Christianity, but the method or approach would have been thoroughly familiar to those educated in the Neoplatonic curriculum of Dorotheus’ day. As in contemporary Neoplatonic commentaries, interpretive difficulties or differences are noted, although often, and also in line with contemporary philosophical commentary, their harmonization displays the commentator’s ingenuity while reinforcing the epistemic authority of the privileged texts. Praise for the biblical text is as common as Neoplatonic praise for Plato. While biblical texts are the primary interpreters of other biblical texts, Dorotheus also uses sayings of the desert fathers and earlier theologians to interpret scripture, just as contemporary philosophers used Plato to interpret Plato, together with the teachings of Aristotle, Pythagoras, Homer, other poets, and theologians. Partly, this places Dorotheus within a long line of privileged ascetic teachers, just as Proclus’ citation of the opinions of earlier philosophers in his commentaries constructs his own persona within a privileged chain of philosophical interpreters. Each of these moves has been identified as central to Proclus’ exegetical method, which may be taken as broadly representative of

⁵⁵ Baltzly 2014, 805–6. The transformation involved is an intellectual one, but works at the level of the whole person, so goes beyond merely improving one’s mind by adding a greater quantity of true information. ⁵⁶ Cf. Aristotle, An. Post. 2.1 89b34, 2.3 90b4.

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approaches towards the texts of Plato and Aristotle among later Neoplatonism.⁵⁷ Together, they build an image of Dorotheus as a philosophical exegete. The alignment of Dorotheus’ exegetical work and the methods of contemporary Neoplatonism may be pressed more closely when we consider specific interpretive categories. At the level of exegetical principles, for example, Dorotheus argues for the truth of the text partly on the basis that it has a fitting directness, using the technical stylistic term σύντομος. He argues that the scripture reveals the ‘root and cause of all evil (τὴν ῥίζαν καὶ αἰτίαν πάντων τῶν κακῶν)’, and the epistemic authority of scripture is underlined in that it can reveal such important truths with great concision (ἐν συντόμῳ δι’ ἑνὸς λόγου) (1.7.20–21). Claims like these parallel those of Proclus, who, drawing on Hermogenes and the rhetorical criticism of his teacher Syrianus, also took the category of σύντομος as important for good style, and connected it to claims of epistemic authority, using the concept to help ground the authoritative nature of Platonic philosophy.⁵⁸ In this tradition, the truth of a text is partly determined by its rhetorical appropriateness.⁵⁹ The interpretive procedures Dorotheus employs also mirror those of contemporary Neoplatonists. Proclus, for example, proceeds by explaining individual words and then considering themes. He notes: ‘As for us, we should first examine the wording (λέξις) of the text on its own and then proceed to examine the whole theme (πρὸς τὴν ὅλην θεωρίαν)’.⁶⁰ He argues that competing interpretations cannot be resolved without examining ‘each of the lexeis involved one by one’ to determine how each ‘has force (δύναμιν ἔχει)’.⁶¹ Dorotheus strikingly mirrors this injunction when he directs interpreters to ‘pay attention to every word . . . how each word has force’.⁶² One example of this method can be seen in Instruction 4 (4.47–51). Dorotheus has identified a problem with the ordering of scripture: it does not appear to be coherent, because 1 John 4:15 claims that ‘perfect love casts out fear’, but Psalm 34 claims that the saints should fear God. Dorotheus’ exegetical method in dealing with the apparent incoherence is similar to Proclus’. He provides a word-by-word analysis of 1 John on fear of God. Sections 48–49 then test the meanings of fear in the light of other passages from scripture (Ps. 111, Prov. 1, 9, 16, 22, Rom. 8:7). His attention turns at section 50 to the Psalm 34 passage in its larger context. He interprets the Psalm, taking verses 11–14 in order, and applies the principle of interpreting Plato from Plato in his explanation of the meaning of verse 9. The exegesis then proceeds by word or short phrase (Come, ‘little children’, ‘listen’, ‘I will teach you the fear of the lord’) (section 50) before sections 51–52 again move out more generally into a broader discussion of the theory and ethical implications of fearing God.

⁵⁷ ⁵⁹ ⁶¹ ⁶²

See Runia 2008, 4–9. ⁵⁸ Proclus, In Tim. 3.200.2, commenting on Plato, Rep. 545d–e. For σύντομος, see Aristotle, Rhet. 1414a25. ⁶⁰ In Tim. 299.19–21. In Tim. 227.9–13. See also 243.26, 299.20, 387.6, 390.27, 420.20. See also Runia 2008, 4–5. Θέτε τὸν νοῦν ὑμῶν εἰς ἕκαστον ῥῆμα . . . πῶς ἑκάστη λέξις . . . ἔχει δύναμιν (4.50.4).

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     

Thus like Neoplatonists, Dorotheus proceeds by word-by-word analysis, then contextualizes the passage in terms of other privileged texts, identifies earlier interpretations, and concludes by branching out into broader theoretical implications. Crucially, while the truth of the passages is essential, and the exegesis functions to confirm the epistemic reliability of the Bible as a privileged text for Dorotheus’ textual community, the interpretation of the passages is not merely concerned with the truth of their claims. Rather, the process of exegesis internalizes their message, as fear is replaced by love in the exegete and his audience. As in the case of privileged Neoplatonic texts, the biblical passages are valued and authoritative both because they are true and because their interpretation is part of the salvific process of the transformation of the community towards ever greater ascetic perfection. The intimate connection between exegesis and self-formation and transformation is clear also in Dorotheus’ deployment of the category of ἀκρίβεια, another key category for philosophical exegesis. This evaluative term is used widely across the Instructions and stands in a long philosophical tradition.⁶³ Neoplatonists and Christians united Platonic and Aristotelian ἀκρίβεια (Philebus 55e–59d; NE 2.6, 1106b14–15). The term became an epistemic and ethical standard which distinguishes skills (τέχναι) grounded in true knowledge (ἐπιστημή) from irrational actions (ἄλογα πράγματα). It holds together ethical and ritual rectitude by uniting the precision of intellectual and practical reasoning.⁶⁴ Hence once a text was given a privileged position within a textual community, the category of akribeia could be used to ground the claim that the text had moral and soteriological, just as much as epistemic, authority. Dorotheus certainly uses the term in this way, deploying it to unite the epistemic, moral, and soteriological authority of the texts he interprets, and the best interpretations of them. The practice of word-by-word and phrase-by-phrase exegesis is justified, Dorotheus argues, because of scripture’s ἀκρίβεια. Dorotheus exhorts his students to ‘see the akribeia of the holy [author] (βλέπετε ἀκρίβειαν τοῦ ἁγίου)’ of the psalm as they learn the best interpretations of the text (4.51.2). Akribeia denotes the sort of knowledge required by scholars expert in the ‘foreign teaching’, like the sophist who comes asking about the ascetic life (2.36.3). Akribeia, then, denotes the sort of epistemic precision required for the successful navigation of systems of knowledge inside and outside the monastery. Students gain epistemic agency by understanding it as a standard for truthful interpretation.⁶⁵ Its precision and semantic richness grounds the interpretive claim that we have seen Dorotheus shares with Proclus, that one should pay attention to every word because each word is powerful. Such an interpretation is also the most beneficial (ὠφελιμότερον), since it is both truthful and salvific: it ⁶³ 2.36.3; 4.51.2, 4.54.25; 5.61.27; 6.71.4; 6.73.39; 12.124.22; 14.150.2; 15.159.28. ⁶⁴ E.g., 4.50–51. For this account of ἀκρίβεια, see Averintsev 2006, 217. ⁶⁵ E.g., 5.61.27; 12.124.22; 14.150.2.

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transforms the passionate confusion of those who do not understand the text into the peacefulness given to those who are taught and accept the best interpretation (12.124.22). The movement from correct interpretation of precise and ethically beneficial texts to the formation of ascetic subjectivity is nowhere clearer than in a startling story of slavery and the ill effects of chance, a key factor which Dorotheus explains can affect one’s moral progress and the charitable evaluation of it (6.73). As Dorotheus tells the story, there was a holy woman who desired to buy a young girl from a slave trader and bring her up in purity. Another girl is sold to a prostitute. Their lives and characters diverge markedly: the one is godly; the other diabolical. Dorotheus assures his community that God does not judge the two girls according to the same standards. The lucky slave girl is educated and nurtured ‘into the fear of God’ so that she may ‘not know the evil of this world’. She is ‘impressed with every good work’, and ‘taught the monastic state in its entirety’. The holy woman teaches her ‘the whole sweetness of the commands of God’. The slave girl ‘lives with the words of God day and night’. The opposite outcome befalls the student of the prostitute, who is exposed to everything foreign to the ascetic life and becomes an ‘instrument of the devil’. This is a paradigmatic example of how education presents diverse perspectives and offers ways of evaluating them. In arguing that God judges righteously with equity, Dorotheus rhetorically asks ‘how is it possible to demand the same akribeia of both girls?’⁶⁶ Thus the godly life, lived entirely within the ascetic textual community, free from defilement by the external world, leads to an accurate understanding which is transferred from the words of scripture to students of it, who can then be described as displaying precision or purity (ἀκρίβεια) in their moral judgements and resulting character. This sense of akribeia picks up the accurate self-awareness of the disciplined, truthful, and virtuous interpreter of scripture. Only those who examine their consciences and correctly identify their thoughts and emotions by piercing through the obscuring and distorting bodily senses, passions, and vices, can judge accurately (ἀκριβῶς) (4.54.25, 6.71.4). We will see further in Chapter 3 that this is a key epistemological assumption shared by Dorotheus and contemporary Neoplatonists. Both epistemic communities posit a mutuality between practical and theoretical knowledge, and each claim that knowledge is impossible without ethical and spiritual purification. Acting virtuously and perceiving truthfully (that is, acting with akribeia) is made possible through the accurate interpretation of texts (interpreting with akribeia) deemed to display epistemic, moral, and salvific precision (texts which are themselves examples of akribeia). As in the case of Neoplatonism, the reading of texts is essential to the formation of individuals in Dorotheus’ community, understood as a textual community built

⁶⁶ πῶς ἐγχωρεῖ ἀπαιτηθῆναι ἀμφοτέρας τὴν αὐτὴν ἀκρίβειαν; (6.73.38–39).

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around texts deemed authoritative because they reveal truths and transform their readers into ever greater perfection.

The Skopos of the Text The precision denoted by akribeia is central for determining the ‘goal’ of the text (σκοπός).⁶⁷ Like all Neoplatonists, Dorotheus thinks it is crucial to demonstrate the single goal, aim, or intention (skopos) of the target text, since he is committed to the claim that his target text forms a unity.⁶⁸ In accordance with this principle, Dorotheus affirms that it is necessary ‘always to turn one’s mind to the skopos and to act in knowledge of it’.⁶⁹ Such an emphasis on the skopos is generated by education’s perspectivalism, and it enables Dorotheus to mount an implicit argument for Christian grounds on which to choose one viewpoint over another. Fundamentally, he ties this hermeneutical principle to God’s unity and the unity of God’s purpose for creation, since the one creator God generates, and is perceived and approached ever more closely in, the unified text (just as, in the Neoplatonic case, the unity of reality guaranteed by the One generates the assumption of textual unity). In Dorotheus’ hands, this interpretive principle then provides grounds for harmonizing Old Testament and New Testament passages. Of course, to claim that a text has a single intention, purpose, or meaning is highly controversial and stands in tension with the notion that a text displays akribeia, at least in as much as that is a category understood to denote such precision that reveals a multiplicity of rich meaning. Whether Dorotheus is successful in promoting the argument that the Bible has a single skopos is open to question (as it is in the parallel case of Platonism). His strategy, however, is fourfold. First, he claims that the unified intention of the text is displayed in the coherent narrative of the divine plan of salvation. Second, he relates that claim to an ascetic way of life which is understood to display an analogous unity. Third, he employs diaeresis (a form of argument beloved of contemporary philosophical exegetes) to distinguish the individual meanings of the unified skopos, reinserting a multiplicity of meaning within the single category of the text’s intention.⁷⁰ ⁶⁷ Neoplatonic interpreters also employ the term ‘πρόθεσις’ to denote the goal of the text, but Dorotheus uses σκοπός exclusively. For the skopos claim in Proclus, see e.g., In Tim. Book 2, 278.24: ‘Plato’s goal is to show that the cosmos is generated simply’ (Σκοπὸς μὲν οὖν αὐτῷ δεῖξαι γενητὸν ἁπλῶς τὸν κόσμον); cf. e.g., Dorotheus: Σκοπός ἐστιν ἁπλῶς ἄρτι τῷ Δεσπότῃ ἡμῶν Χριστῷ διδάξαι . . . (1.7.1). The final goal of the good Christian life is referred to as a σκοπός by Dorotheus, who only once uses the term τέλος in this sense (ep. 12, 197.11). ⁶⁸ On this general point and its relationship to thinking of the goal of philosophy as transformation within a textual community, see Baltzly 2017. John Dillon notes that while Iamblichus popularized this interpretive move, it probably goes back at least to Alexander of Aphrodisias’ teacher Herminus. See Dillon 1997. ⁶⁹ τῷ σκοπῷ προσέχειν ἀεὶ καὶ ἐν γνώσει ποιεῖν (14.156.13–14). ⁷⁰ E.g., see 4.48, 51; 10.108, 14.157.

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The single skopos is therefore understood as a complex unity (like a spider’s web) rather than a simple unity (like a Euclidean point). The fourth aspect of this interpretive strategy is necessarily implicit rather than implicit: where he makes claims about the skopos of the text that appear to introduce competing skopoi, we are to understand that the skopoi may be harmonized, especially through seeing one skopos as the subset of another. For example, the goal of ‘teaching mercy’ may be harmonized with the claim that the skopos of the text is the inculcation of virtue. To illustrate this strategy, we may turn first to On Renunciation. In his exposition of salvation history in this Instruction, Dorotheus notes that the ‘purpose of the Law was to teach us not to do those things which we do not want to suffer ourselves’.⁷¹ He goes on to contrast this with the Christian purpose, which is to expel all passions, knowing that Christ’s purpose is to teach us how we came into sin, how we may freely act well, and how we may escape the passions, so that we may obey and be saved (1.7.1–16).⁷² The following sections of the Instruction illustrate this principle through the lives and actions of holy men (1.8–14), who all in diverse ways keep the commandments, extirpate the passions, act with virtue, humility, and obedience, and are designated as having left the world for a greater perfection. Similarly, his exegesis of the injunction to ‘be merciful as your heavenly father is merciful’ (Luke 6:36) in On the Building Up and Construction of the Virtues of the Soul (Instruction 14), identifies the skopos of the text as the teaching of mercy. This is grounded in divine mercy demonstrated by God’s providential and saving care for humanity. The goal is again expounded through intricate examples from ascetic lives which consistently display ascetic virtues. His exegesis demonstrates how interpretive ingenuity can combine the principle of a single skopos with readings that draw out a multiplicity of meaning. The skopos is divided through diaeresis into several different sorts of merciful action (exemplified by ascetic lives of varying degrees of perfection), and then brought back together by the single category of the properly virtuous monastic life towards the single purpose of the text.⁷³ The contours of this exegesis suggest that the skopos principle is intimately related, for Dorotheus, to the notion that holy texts are transformative. There is repeated movement between the skopos of the text and the skopos of human action. The text’s skopos is accordingly always ethical or soteriological—with both understood as transformative categories. Dorotheus argues that we must

⁷¹ ὁ σκοπὸς ἦν τοῦ νόμου διδάξαι ἡμᾶς μὴ ποιεῖν ἃ μὴ θέλωμεν παθεῖν (1.6.18–19). ⁷² Ἄρτι τὸ ζητούμενόν ἐστιν, ὡς εἶπον, ἐκβαλεῖν αὐτὸ τὸ μῖσος, αὐτὴν τὴν φιληδονίαν, αὐτὴν τὴν φιλοδοξίαν, καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ πάθη (1.6.20–22). ⁷³ 14.156–157; compare also love in Ep. 1.181. Such diaeresis is frequent; see also, e.g., Instruction 4, On the Fear of God. For this theme, see Clement, str. 4.22–23 and Cassian, Coll. 3.

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     

fix attention on the virtue that characterizes God, and links attention to the goal to the imitation of God: Be merciful, just as your heavenly father is merciful. For this virtue properly imitates God, since it characterizes him. Therefore it is necessary, as we said, always to fix one’s mind on that goal. Γίνεσθε οἰκτίρμονες, καθὼς καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος οἰκτίρμων ἐστίν. Ἰδικῶς γὰρ ἡ ἀρετὴ αὕτη μιμεῖται Θεόν· χαρακτηρίζει αὐτόν. Χρεία οὖν ἐστιν, ὡς εἴπομεν, τούτῳ τῷ σκοπῷ προσέχειν ἀεὶ. (14.156.10–14)

Unlike the single goal of the text and the being of the God who generates it, ‘there is great diversity even with respect to the goal of mercy’.⁷⁴ He then goes through the familiar process of dividing up the different kinds of mercy on the basis of different intentions which attend to merciful action (14.156–157). A monk may act mercifully because he wants a blessing, because he wants his goods or children to be preserved, or because he wants glory. These are all actions aiming towards external goods. God will grant these things, but the recipients of these divine gifts do not thereby gain the proper goal. To elucidate what the proper goal may be, Dorotheus then divides up acts of mercy which are performed for the good of the merciful agent’s soul (διὰ τὴν ὠφέλειλαν τῆς ψυχῆς) (14.156.27). Someone may act mercifully through fear of punishment, or because he wishes to please God. The latter is better than the first (the monk has moved from a state of slavery to that of a hired servant), but the action is not yet properly directed. Properly to align oneself with the skopos is to act for the good itself. The end of mercy is attained through mercy.⁷⁵ Just so, we ‘come into the state of the son (ἐν τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ διαθέσει)’ (14.157.19). The ultimate perspective of salvation history provides a set of constraints on good action and its evaluation. Humility is the key characteristic attributed to Jesus, whose skopos is to teach us how we came into sin, namely, by failing to exercise humility (1.7). Dorotheus’ account here is explicitly Christological, and education in humility is made part of his account of salvation. Humility thus gives specifically ascetic content to monastic philosophy understood as the inculcation of virtue to enable monks to become godlike. The skopos moves, as so often in contemporary Neoplatonism, from the text to the interpreter. The fundamentally Platonic logic of this passage had been thoroughly integrated into Christian theology by Dorotheus’ day and continues to provide a point of contact with contemporary Neoplatonism, even as the content of the divine goal diverges from Neoplatonism. In Platonic ethics, doing good is to participate in the Good. That is, the end of the action is achieved through enacting

⁷⁴ Πολλὴ γάρ ἐστιν ἡ διαφορὰ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ σκοποῦ τῆς ἐλεημοσύνης (14.156.14–15). ⁷⁵ Basil, reg. fus. PG 31, 896B is explicitly cited to support this three-fold scheme.

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the virtue specified by its goal.⁷⁶ Acting well thus becomes an essential element of assimilation to God.⁷⁷ In the example we have traced from Dorotheus, properly understanding the goal of the text results in acts of mercy which aim towards mercy, since they aim towards the Father who is merciful. Such properly directed action results in assimilation to the Son. This logic recurs throughout the Instructions, but Dorotheus also devotes an entire Instruction to it.⁷⁸ The ‘way of God’ is the ‘royal road’ walked by the saints, who do good things with the right goal in mind, and so come ever closer to God. The Aristotelian resonances of this claim (resonances which extend across several of the Instructions) will be explored in Chapter 4 below.⁷⁹ At present, I foreground the function of this metaphor within claims about the skopos of ascetic lives. The skopos of the monastic life, Dorotheus claims, is to go to the holy city (understood as attaining the virtues). All monks (like the texts they read) have a skopos, here as often understood as extirpating the passions, a stage beyond those who merely ‘philosophize’ against them (10.108.4–6).⁸⁰ Those who philosophize against the passions, Dorotheus argues, are one step beyond those who give the passions free rein but fail to contest them and act against them effectively enough. In the latter contrast, ascetic metaphors of competition and contest, topoi of depictions of holy men and martyrs, are in play. In this claim that ascetic lives go beyond philosophical ones, Dorotheus likens ascetic paideia to philosophy and argues that ascetic paideia is more rigorous and powerful than philosophy. But merely philosophizing about the passions is only one way in which the goal of ascetic paideia can be missed. This makes Dorotheus’ project of life-long learning particularly urgent, since the dangers that beset his monks at each point on their spiritual journey are crippling and remain tempting, even as the monks get closer to virtue. The royal road takes monks away from the world, but some tarry along the way, and so remain outside the city. Others bring the dust of the road with them from their travels, and never succeed in putting off the things of this world, despite appearing to be inside the city. Each of these groups of people has a goal (ἔχοντες σκοπὸν), but it requires intentional habits of virtue to stick to it, and each stage of the way, right up to the walls of the promised city, provides opportunities for ascetics to fall or fail to hit upon their goal.⁸¹ Nevertheless, the ⁷⁶ See further Rist 2001. ⁷⁷ For this logic in Clement of Alexandria, a key source for Basil (whom Dorotheus cites at this point) and for Dorotheus himself in several places, see Osborn 2005, 230–2, and Osborn 1957, 84–7. ⁷⁸ Instruction 10. On νῆψις as a monastic virtue, see John Chrysostom, de sacerdotio 6.8.13. ⁷⁹ Compare Aristotle, EN 2.2 1104a; 2.6.7, 1107a–b. Stenger 2017, 72, also discusses this passage. ⁸⁰ ὁ δὲ ἱστῶν τὸ πάθος ἐστὶν ὁ μήτε ἐνεργῶν μήτε ἐκκόπτων αὐτό, ἀλλὰ φιλοσοφῶν μὲν καὶ παρερχόμενος, ἔχων δὲ τὸ πάθος ἐν ἑαυτῷ (‘The one who checks passion is the one who neither activates it nor cuts it off, but rather, though he philosophizes and outwits it, has passion in himself ’) (10.107–108). See further Chapter 4. On ‘having a goal’ (ἔχοντες σκοπὸν), see e.g., 10.107.5, 17 cf. 10.107.27, 29; 9.101.22; 9.103, 13; 14.153.7, 10. ⁸¹ 10.107.27–29: καὶ ὅμως οὐδὲ αὐτοὶ ἔτυχον τοῦ σκοποῦ αὐτῶν· κἂν γὰρ ἔφθασαν τὴν πύλην τῆς πόλεως, ἀλλὰ ἔξωθεν ἔμειναν, ὥστε καὶ αὐτοὶ ἐξέπεσον τοῦ ἰδίου σκοποῦ.

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     

monks are to remain hopeful that God will protect them, and bring them to the promised destination (10.112.19–21). Much more can be said about the detail of these arguments; at this point, however, the relevant consideration is that Dorotheus’ account of the two-fold goal, where one reaches the goal by enacting its character (one reaches the passionless God by extirpating the passions), is deeply indebted to Platonic traditions of thought and provides a point of contact between Dorotheus’ classroom and contemporary Neoplatonism.⁸² A key shared assumption which unites philosophical and ascetic education is that texts can be transformative, and the activity of their proper interpretation is itself one aspect of assimilation to the divine.

Metaphors to Live By In a closely related way, Dorotheus uses metaphor to make otherwise ordinary experiences come to explain for insiders in his monastic community the deep structure of reality. It is an instance of education making students expert in a valued symbol system in ways that give them agency to act within their community and shape the wider culture. Others have identified the philosophical importance of metaphors in Neoplatonism, emphasizing that they serve to promote selftransformation through philosophy both as spiritual exercises and as motivating and explaining such practices, thereby connecting philosophical tenets to the philosophical life.⁸³ In Dorotheus’ case, figuring reading as rumination is one element of this metaphorical construction of reality, because thinking of reading as rumination ties reading to meditation.⁸⁴ Texts thus become not simply informative but objects which through their internalization may be transformative and salvific. Reading becomes a spiritual practice. The text repeatedly takes apparently normal experiences, events, or objects, and imbues them with a set of meanings that enables monks to come to know more completely (what they take to be) truths about the nature of God and God’s creatures. For example, in an extended reflection on the symbolism of the monastic habit, Dorotheus, like Evagrius before him, takes an apparently ordinary piece of clothing and uses it to reveal truths to his community (1.15–19; cf. Evagrius Prak. Prologue). Dorotheus’ description of tunic, belt, scapular, and cowl, emphasizes the Christological foundations of monastic humility, imbuing monastic dress with rich symbolic meaning, and emphasizing ways in which monks are to ‘put on’ Christ through disciplining their desires, purifying their senses, enduring suffering, and practising obedience. With this description, we have a clear example of ‘metaphors to live by’, though ⁸² See below, Chapter 4, for a close reading of Instruction 10. ⁸³ See Baltzly 2014; Clark 2016. ⁸⁴ See further below, Chapter 3. This phenomenon is brilliantly analysed by Hadot 1995a; Carruthers 2000, 90; Carruthers 2008, 206.

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the metaphors are contingent and culturally specific rather than perduring structures outside of culture.⁸⁵ To outsiders, the monastic habit is distinctly odd: in elite texts written in Atticizing Greek in which monachos is unheard of, monks are referred to by periphrases identifying their dress. But to Dorotheus’ monastic readers, the habit is written into discourses of humility which both demand ways of living and denote claims about God and the sort of participation in divinity that is taken to be possible, paradigmatically participation in the life of God incarnate through humility. While Dorotheus’ ‘philosophy’ has different conceptual content, in his approach to texts and his view of the goal of Christian contemplation, he is close to his contemporaries in the philosophical schools.

Philosophy and Ascetic Paideia Significant features of Dorotheus’ method are thus shared with philosophy. Shared tools for thinking include frequent application of logical diaeresis, investigating problematic passages or concepts by applying Aristotelian scientific method, and harmonizing passages which, prima facie, evidence inconsistencies between privileged texts. Understanding the privileged texts as displaying maximal akribeia both allows the texts to be interpreted for a multiplicity of meanings and perspectives and constructs their epistemic and ethical authority. The texts provide access to truth and handbooks for transforming and transformative ethical action. An important element in viewing texts as transformative is to emphasize the skopos of the text in ways familiar from contemporary Neoplatonism. As with the category of akribeia, the focus on the single skopos of the text elides the distinction between the goal of the text and the goal of the ideal readers, in Dorotheus’ case godlike monks. This is a feature of textual communities: members of a textual community become their privileged texts, and so interpretive categories apply to texts and community members. Understanding the biblical text as itself transformative and salvific means that the skopos of the text can equally and simultaneously be constructed as the skopos of the Christian reader, who attains the goal of divine perfection by becoming like the text through virtuous action and the ruminative digestion of scripture. Dorotheus then performs in his text the meditative practices he thinks will help to transform his readers, as they digest the text and thereby become physically formed by it. We will see how this aspect of philosophical practice as ruminative reading is strengthened by drawing on medical arguments that bodies can affect souls. His elaborate explanations of apparently ordinary things (like the monk’s habit) are also intended to transform

⁸⁵ Lakoff and Johnson 2003. On the symbolism of monastic attire and Christological exemplarity, see below, Chapter 5.

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     

members of the monasteries, as they come through their meditative reading to gain agency in the ascetic world. Ascetic knowledge and reading practices are ordered to help monks acquire ascetic virtues in lives directed towards godlikeness. That transformation is crucial in connecting Dorotheus to contemporary philosophical discourses further underscores the emphasis on transformation in his use of discourses from rhetoric we surveyed above. In creating a rhetorical paideia fit for the monasteries, Dorotheus leveraged an important philosophical discourse. His version of ascetic paideia is distinctively philosophical to the extent that it forms a textual community which believes that assimilation to God is possible through the interpretation of privileged texts, and this emerges in his appropriation and adaptation of rhetorical discourses as well. Hence while Dorotheus himself does not use the term ‘philosophy’ to describe asceticism, his Instructions are evidence for ways in which that description of monasticism could intelligibly apply to early Christian ascetics. Rhetoric could be valued, but philosophical discourses and practices play a greater role in Dorotheus’ account of ascetic paideia, since his educational project is distinctively shaped, especially methodologically and in terms of the intended goal of ascetic paideia, by the discourses of late-antique philosophy. We have already seen, however, that his theological commitments and the distinctive elements of monastic communal living transform key philosophical claims. Most obviously, the emphasis on transformation through specifically ethical ascent and bodily labour lead to significant divergences from philosophy. Further, his identification of humility as a divine characteristic leads to a distinctive account of the virtues which cannot be paralleled in contemporary Platonism. These elements of Dorotheus’ thought will be explored below. But they are worth noting here in order to clarify the argument about his connection to late-antique education. Throughout antiquity, different schools taught different ‘truths’ and established different intellectual schema. Dorotheus is no different: he has his own intellectual emphases which are deeply indebted to earlier traditions of Christian thought. But as in the case of the various schools of ancient philosophy, the doctrinal differences should not obscure the shared methods, practices, and intellectual habits which unite them. Dorotheus’ project of ascetic education draws on a shared philosophical heritage even as it advances its own distinctive epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics in the service of a wider vision of how individual and society should operate.

Medicine Dorotheus was educated in medicine, brought medical books with him to his monastery, and took charge of its infirmary, so we may be confident that he was

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steeped in contemporary medical discourse and practice. He repeatedly figures learning as healing.⁸⁶ Ascetic advice is given by those who are characterized as doctors, truthful ascetic teaching provides a cure for the sickness of the soul, and Christus medicus comes to save sick humanity (10.113; cf. 1.4–5).⁸⁷ Hence a key intersection between Dorotheus’ thought and medical discourse, as between medicine and philosophy more generally, is the idea of instruction as therapy, which is one element of the broader theme of transformative education.⁸⁸ Medical learning flourished in Alexandria in late antiquity, and we are fortunate to have an outline of the sixth-century curriculum, at least as preserved in Arabic sources from the ninth and eleventh centuries.⁸⁹ The writings of Galen provided the most important source of medical knowledge. The curriculum again underscores the connections between the three branches of learning we have been exploring. Aristotle’s Organon is prescribed for trainee doctors, evidence for the continuing connection between philosophy and medicine.⁹⁰ This overlap between medicine and philosophy makes it difficult to disentangle discursive influences from these fields. In what follows I identify aspects of Dorotheus’ educational project which draw explicitly on medical metaphors and practices, while acknowledging that his use of these metaphors also helps to figure him as a philosophical educator.⁹¹ For Dorotheus, the virtues of an ascetic intellectual are congruent with the virtues prioritized for doctors in the Arabic sources. The qualities of a good doctor, in this tradition, include intelligence, understanding, humility, chastity, and patience; ‘without such virtues there is no hope of any [medical] achievement’.⁹² The emphasis on the virtues of the doctor and the specific virtues identified as significant align closely with Dorotheus’ self-presentation. It is likely that the Arabic sources identify these medical virtues partly as they had been constructed by generations of Christian physicians. Certainly, they go beyond Galen’s own extensive recommendations about the virtuous behaviour of doctors with respect ⁸⁶ For his medical books, see John and Barsanuphius, resp. 327; V. Dos. 1. For his medical expertise, see also Dorotheus, ep. 1.182; 2.187. For discussion, see Stenger 2017, 82. Stenger helpfully identifies the therapeutic nature of Dorotheus’ teaching as a very significant element of his project. ⁸⁷ On this metaphor, see Dörnemann 2013; Vannier 2005. ⁸⁸ On philosophical therapy and its relation to aspects of assimilation to God, see Nussbaum 1994; Gill 2013; van der Eijk 2008, 8–14. ⁸⁹ For general studies, see Westerink 1964; Crislip 2005. Miller 1997 suggests different origins, and the question remains open. See Ferngren 2009 for an insightful adjudication of the options. See also Nutton 2016; Temkin 1991. Dorotheus diverges from many ascetic thinkers Temkin discusses by his specialist medical training and attention to physical regimen (δίαιτα). On the reconstruction of the curriculum, with translations of relevant sources, see Iskandar 1976. For methodological and theoretical advances in the field, especially for our purposes identifying the performative function of medical metaphors in Christian texts, see Mayer 2018. ⁹⁰ Iskandar 1976, 248–52. Roueché 1999 tests the boundaries of overlap. ⁹¹ For further discussion of this relationship between medicine and practical philosophy, see e.g., Crislip 2013. ⁹² ʿAli Ibn Ridwān, Useful Book on the Quality of Medical Education [Kitāb al-Nāfiʿ fī kayfiyyat taʿilm : şināʿat al-t:ibb] 6: Cairo, Dār al-Kutub al-Mişriyya, ms. Tibb 483, pp. 34,1–36,5 and Dublin, Chester
Beatty ms. 4026, ff. 4r–5r. See Iskandar 1976, 244.

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to their patients, where trust is built through Aristotelian moderation, and humility is repeatedly understood in the standard classical fashion as a vice at the other end of the spectrum from excessive pride.⁹³ To explore the connections between Dorotheus’ construction of ascetic paideia and late-antique medical theory and practice in more detail, I consider two key areas: how to relate the health of the body to the health of the soul;⁹⁴ and the notion of transformative regimen. In these areas, Dorotheus provides his students with access to an important symbol system within late-antique society and thereby equips them to participate in and act upon their wider culture.

Soul and Body Believing that knowledge is transformative in the sense that it alters the core of one’s being gives immediate prominence to claims about how the soul may be capable of being transformed. One way of making sense of this claim is to argue that corporeal actions can affect the soul.⁹⁵ This was a subject of significant controversy in late-antique philosophy.⁹⁶ One position, which Galen sets out in Quod animi mores, conceptualized capacities of the mortal soul as a function of bodily chemical blends, especially as these mixtures appear in particular bodily organs (Quod animi mores 44, 6–8).⁹⁷ In this model, the mixture of substances of which the soul consists determines psychological capacities for both the irrational and the rational soul. This is not to say that cognitive therapies could not work; on the contrary, Galen retains a place for philosophy in working on the rational part of the soul. But unlike others who limited the efficacy of physical therapy to the irrational soul and thought of philosophy as uniquely beneficial for the rational soul, Galen insisted that the rational soul could be affected by the body’s physical blends. Hence bodily practices, including consumption of food and wine, gymnastics, music, geometry, and arithmetic, may produce psychic virtues or vices (Quod animi mores 71, 11–73, 20; cf. Plato Tim. 87b). Ethics, intelligence, and memory can all, in Galen’s view, be positively and negatively affected intrinsically by physical factors such as diet or climate; good diet will result in a blend in the body with beneficial effects for the soul, as, he says, was seen in the case of the

⁹³ See e.g., Galen, On Hippocrates’ Epidemics 6, 4.10, 203,1–207,21 CMG V 10,2,2. ⁹⁴ On the relationship between spiritual, psychological, and physical healing in ancient medicine generally, and early Christian asceticism in particular, see Moberg 2018, 574–9. ⁹⁵ For discussion and relevant texts, see Sorabji 2000, 253–72. See also Sorabji 2005, 182–204. ⁹⁶ Galen, Quod animi mores 32, 1–13. See also Temkin 1991, 134–8, 149–80. ⁹⁷ Galen elsewhere denies that the soul is the ‘pneuma’ (PHP, VII). This modification is overlooked by his ancient interpreters, among them Nemesius, who reads Galen as allowing for only a mortal or material soul. Singer 1997, 542 notes complexity, pointing out that Galen’s biological world may be explained through physical phenomena, but that his account of the ways in which humors or elements can explain psychic action is not easy to harmonize.

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Platonic or Pythagorean way of life (Quod animi mores 3, 32, 1–13; cf. Plato Phaedo 86c). Other philosophers worried that such a view made the soul much too dependent on bodily states. Alexander of Aphrodisias admits that emotions (πάθη) are diet dependent but argues that the capacities of the soul supervene on the bodily mix, rather than there being a direct, unmediated causal relationship between bodily mixtures and psychic capacities.⁹⁸ Others in the Platonic tradition sought to place greater limits on how the soul is related to bodily mixtures. Proclus acknowledged that the body impedes the soul but denies that bodily mixtures can produce reason. On the contrary, the production of reason is achieved through philosophical education of the rational soul (Proclus in Tim. Vol. 3, 330.9–331.1).⁹⁹ Dorotheus’ contemporary in Alexandria, the Christian Neoplatonist John Philoponus (490–570 ), argued still more strongly that while bodily blends may (in part but never fully) be responsible for physiognomic features such as skin colour, mental states cannot follow from bodily blends. Philoponus’ worry is that if bodily blends can determine action, then philosophical instruction is pointless. His argument is based on what he sees as compelling counter-evidence: a philosophical regimen (ἁι κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν διατριβαί) can be effective in transforming behaviour and belief, so the soul must be more than its physical blends (Philoponus in DA. 51, 31–32). For our purposes, two things stand out: first, all participants in this debate acknowledge the Galenic claim that bodily blends are important for how the soul acts, even if some deny that bodily states can produce psychic capacities; second, the medical discourse of Galen is more confident than contemporary Neoplatonic philosophers in ascribing psychic capacities to bodily states. A division between Peripatetics and Platonists, on the one hand, and Galenic medicine on the other is visible, with Galen giving a more prominent place to physical factors such as diet, even as he attributes such features to philosophical ways of life among Platonists and Pythagoreans. In this regard, we should note that philosophers from the Presocratics onwards had argued for the importance of a range of non-cognitive therapies.¹⁰⁰ Such arguments are not limited to medical writers and provide yet more evidence for the mutual interaction between medicine and philosophy in late antiquity. Yet focus on such factors is a recurring feature of late-antique

⁹⁸ For an important analysis of why Peripatetics would be attracted to a version of the view that the soul is a blend of the body, despite Aristotle’s objection that such a view would make it impossible for the soul to move the body (Aristotle, DA 1. 4, 407b34 ff.), see Caston 1997 and Sorabji 2000, 254. Ancient medicine may be a pathway for Peripatetic ideas about the relationship between soul and body to filter into Dorotheus’ monastery. ⁹⁹ See Sorabji 2000, 266. ¹⁰⁰ Sorabji 2000, 270–1 identifies diet, exercise, sleep, music, painting, weaving, embroidering, architecture, furniture, vegetarianism, breathing exercises, gestural changes, and posture as important non-cognitive therapies in ancient philosophy.

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     

medicine, also coloured by a distinction between curative and preventative medicine.¹⁰¹ For example, Dorotheus’ rough contemporary Alexander of Tralles (c. 525–605) seems to have preferred diet, exercise, and baths to prescribing drugs (Therapeutica 1.601.10–11; 2.439.3 ff., 457.14 ff.). Dorotheus’ interest in regimen (δίαιτα)—a term which may also be translated ‘way of life’—fits this tradition of thought. Can we pinpoint where Dorotheus sits in the long-running debate about how the soul might be related to, or consist in, bodily blends? One will look in vain for a detailed medical or philosophical argument on this question. But there are important indications. Take the near contemporary evidence from the Life of Dositheus, Dorotheus’ student and assistant in the monastery’s infirmary. Early in the Life, Dositheus visits Gethsemane, where he finds a terrifying artistic description of hell (ἱστορία τῆς κολάσεως). Dositheus is transfixed by the image. As he is examining it in amazement, quite literally transfixed by a sublime vision (ἐκπληττόμενος), a woman dressed in deep red stands next to him, points out each of the damned who are represented in the image, and advises him about spiritual matters. Ekphrasis again functions to involve spectators in narratives and change their intellectual and affective states. This was, apparently, the first time Dositheus had been subjected to Christianity, and instead of being repulsed, the young man is terrified and asks how he may avoid punishment. In parentheses, we may note how this fear performs the first kind of fear Christians are supposed to feel, and the Life will take us through the successive stages of Dositheus’ transformation, so that he ends up with the fear of a son, pure love of God.¹⁰² The Life of Dositheus is a performance of the sort of transformation Dorotheus thinks is achieved through ascetic education. But in the medical context, the woman in red informs Dositheus that he can avoid punishment if he fasts, becomes vegetarian, and prays continually. Psychic transformation is partly to be achieved by diet.¹⁰³ Such a way of life—fasting and not eating meat—is taken by Dositheus’ friends in the army as indicating highly troubling behaviours, behaviours out of place in the world, and only to be found in the monasteries: When the soldiers who were with him saw his behaviour, they said, ‘Son, you are not behaving like someone who wants to exist in the world. If you want to be like that, withdraw into a monastery and save your soul’. Οἱ δὲ μετ’ αὐτοῦ στρατιῶται βλέποντες αὐτὸν ἐν τοιαυτῇ διαγωγῇ λέγουσιν αὐτῷ· Τέκνον, ταῦτα ἃ ποιεῖς οὐκ εἰσίν τινος θέλοντος εἶναι εἰς τὸν κόσμον· εἰ δὲ οὕτως θέλεις, ὕπαγε εἰς μοναστήριον καὶ σώζεις τὴν ψυχήν σου. (V. Dos. 3.30–34)

¹⁰¹ See e.g., Celsus, Med. Proem 3. I thank Jonathan Zecher for this point. ¹⁰² See further below, Chapter 4. ¹⁰³ Cf. Shaw 1998, 79–127 on diet affecting soul and body, and the medical literature which grounds ascetic advice about diet.

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Dieting goes together with spiritual transformation. But the question from the medico-philosophical tradition remains open: does vegetarianism work only on the irrational part of the soul, and prayer on the rational part, or are the two bound up with each other? The ensuing narrative suggests that dieting works on the whole soul. When Dositheus comes to Dorotheus, Dorotheus first gives him six pounds of bread to eat, and the ration is successively reduced, until he reaches a plateau of eight ounces, for, as Dorotheus teaches, ‘there is also habituation by eating’.¹⁰⁴ Habituation works on both the rational and irrational soul, guiding both emotional moderation and intellectual development. Dositheus’ habituation to obedience and denial of his own will—behaviours which result in his speedy transformation to divine glory (V. Dos. 13)—is partly performed through his stringent dieting. Dorotheus’ own writings present a similar view that physical bodily mixtures affect the rational and irrational soul. For example, Dorotheus notes that it is well known that healthy souls are differently ordered from the souls of sick people, while the soul of a hungry person is also differently disposed in comparison with a well-nourished person (2.39). In such passages, the efficacy of physical treatments for healing the soul is explicitly accepted, implying that ascetic education will be concerned with such physical therapies as well as cognitive and spiritual practices. Ascetic regard for the importance of bodily states is further reinforced when Dorotheus seeks to explain the saying that ‘humility is hard bodily labour with knowledge’.¹⁰⁵ Such a formulation could well have been explained by suggesting that somatic work affects the irrational soul, but humility requires also the perfection of the rational soul through the exercise of reasoning. Instead, Dorotheus focuses on how work can change the soul, asking ‘What does hard bodily labour have to do with the disposition of the soul?’¹⁰⁶ The answer Dorotheus gives makes the soul dependent on bodily states: Since the soul has fallen from the keeping of God’s commandment, into transgression, the wretched thing was given up, as St Gregory says, to the seeking of pleasure, to independence that leads to error, and to the love of things of the body. In a certain sense, it was found to be at one with the body and it became ‘flesh’, as it says, ‘My spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for he is indeed flesh’ (Gen. 6.3). Ἐπειδὴ ἐκπεσοῦσα ἡ ψυχὴ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐντολῆς εἰς τὴν παράβασιν, παρεδόθη ἡ ἀθλία, ὡς λέγει ὁ ἅγιος Γρηγόριος, τῇ φιληδονίᾳ καὶ τῇ αὐτονομίᾳ τῆς πλάνης, καὶ

¹⁰⁴ καὶ γὰρ συνήθειά ἐστιν καὶ ἐν τῷ φαγεῖν (V. Dos. 5). ¹⁰⁵ ἡ δὲ ὁδὸς τῆς ταπεινώσεώς ἐστιν οἱ κόποι οἱ σωματικοὶ ἐν γνώσει (2.37.16–17). See further Chapter 5. ¹⁰⁶ Τί ἔχει ὁ σωματικὸς κόπος εἰς διάθεσιν ψυχῆς; (2.39.2–3).

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      ἠγάπησε τὰ σωματικά, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ ὡς ἕν τι εὑρέθη μετὰ τοῦ σώματος καὶ ἐγένετο ὅλη σάρξ, καθὼς λέγει· Οὐ μὴ καταμείνῃ τὸ πνεῦμά μου ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τούτοις, διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτοὺς σάρκας. (2.39.3–9)

Dorotheus’ psychology explains the intrication of soul and body as the result of the fall. The soul can be said to be fleshy, inasmuch as it is fallen. The sinful state of humanity then becomes a reason for the efficacy of physical therapies in the process of transforming the soul and bringing it back to its original state. Following the fall, the soul has been suffering together with the body and it is disposed in accordance with all things done by the body. καὶ οἷον συμπάσχει καὶ συνδιατίθεται ἡ ἀθλία ψυχὴ αὕτη τοῖς γινομένοις ὑπὸ τοῦ σώματος. (2.39.9–11).¹⁰⁷

Elsewhere, Dorotheus draws on medical imagery from Isaiah to describe the state of the fallen soul: ‘[the soul displays] wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores, which have not been closed or bound up, or soothed with ointment’ (Is. 1.6). We could say that evil is not a part, nor is it in one place, but in the whole body; it presses upon the whole soul, it constrains all its capacities. Οὔτε τραῦμα οὔτε μώλωψ οὔτε πληγὴ φλεγμαίνουσα· οὐκ ἔστι μάλαγμα ἐπιθεῖναι οὔτε ἔλαιον οὔτε καταδέσμους· οἷον εἰπεῖν, οὐκ ἔστι μερικὴ ἡ κακία, οὐδὲ ἐν ἑνὶ τόπῳ, ἀλλ’ ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ σώματι, ὅλην περιέχει τὴν ψυχήν, ὅλας τὰς δυνάμεις αὐτῆς συνέχει. (1.3.4–9)

This resonates with forms of Stoic thought that distinguished between occasional disturbances of the mind and diseases of the mind which affect whole dispositions.¹⁰⁸ Cicero identifies how judgements and opinions can be at variance with each other and affect the health of the soul, such that it is defective and open to further distortion.¹⁰⁹ A disease of the mind which affects its whole disposition cannot be practically distinguished from physical sickness. For Dorotheus, the fallen soul is inextricably bound up with the body; the whole body–soul composite is dyed with evil. In this composite, bodily practices shape the soul. The soul is

¹⁰⁷ Vocabulary of συνδιατίθημι and συμπάσχω and cognates is found in earlier medical literature as well as related arguments about how souls and bodies may be affected, e.g., Aristotle, De An. 414a11, and commentators; Aetius Med., Iatricorum liber vi 10.98; Stephanus, in Hippocratis aphorismos commentaria III–IV, 3.6.17; Plotinus, Enn. 6.1.22; Cassius, Questiones et problemata 41.1. ¹⁰⁸ I thank Jonathan Zecher for this suggestion. ¹⁰⁹ See Cicero, Tusc. 4.13. Cf. Stobaeus 2.7.10e; Diog. Laert. 7.115.

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imprinted indelibly by the things done by the body, to the extent that it remembers the virtues and vices to which it has been habituated through bodily action after death (12.128–129). This seems to go beyond Galen, who had argued specifically that the mortal soul was a blend of physical capacities. In Dorotheus’ view, however, it seems that the immortal soul retains at least the effects of the blends of the soul. It seems that he is working with a different psychology. Yet in line with Galen and other late-antique doctors, these passages imply that since the soul is arranged by the body, one can expect physical, non-cognitive therapies to be effective in properly ordering the soul. When Dorotheus refers to Christ as a doctor and likens spiritual progress to medical treatment (e.g., 1.4–5, 10.113), he is building on this claim that psychic states are bound up with bodily states. Certainly, there is none of the philosophical detail we find in the late-antique debates, none of Philoponus’ careful distinction between what it would be for the capacities of the soul to follow, or supervene upon, or be distinct from, bodily mixtures, nor the medical tradition’s focus on the effects of mixtures in specific organs. Those are not Dorotheus’ central concern. His account of soul and body, and their mutually reinforcing interactions, is built on an account of the effects of the fall. But his insistence that souls are shaped by bodies (and vice versa) enables him to draw on a range of medical practices and prescriptions in his account of ascetic education. Ascetic education is figured as therapy, and importantly for Dorotheus, such therapeutic strategies are both cognitive (achieved through prayer, scriptural meditation, and repetition of the sayings of the fathers) and non-cognitive (through fasting, dieting, physical work, participation in the monastic liturgies, and bodily postures and gestures of prayer or obedient deference). Such therapies are present in earlier philosophical and medical theory and practice, as well as in more popular works of practical ethics. Dorotheus harnesses them to a programme of ascetic transformation of the fallen soul from unruly human disorder to godlike virtue.¹¹⁰ In this move, Dorotheus does not merely use medical imagery as a means to bolster his (independent) argument. Instead, he positions asceticism as a form of medico-philosophical practice, concerned with the healing and transformation of the whole person, soul and body.

Habituation: Education as Regimen and Psychic Therapy Given the theories about connections between soul and body, and the strongly physicalist tendencies displayed by Galen, much late-antique medicine is concerned with the formation of habits. Galen is clear that habits form character.

¹¹⁰ See Gill 2010; Morgan 2007. See also the general introduction to Galen 2013.

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     

He writes that ‘habit of mind is impaired by faulty customs in food, drink, and exercise, and sights, sounds, and music’.¹¹¹ He devotes a full treatise to habits in which he sets out the manifold ways that physical and emotional practices can affect the soul. Rage has physical consequences—it changes body temperature, physiognomic features, and breathing—and continual rage therefore affects physical health. In the other direction, attention to ordered physical activity through exercise, breathing techniques, and appropriate postures can improve psychic health, as he argues repeatedly.¹¹² In this treatise, self-awareness is crucial, since accurate knowledge of one’s character enables patients to modify customary behaviours and thereby form healthier habits. Habit formation is similarly central to Dorotheus’ programme of ascetic education.¹¹³ At this stage, I draw attention to the similarities between Dorotheus’ educational programme and habit formation in the medical schools. For Dorotheus, habits are formed through successive physical and mental actions over a lifetime, so the monks must learn to guard their inner thoughts and moderate their physical work, postures and gestures, and their diets and sleep patterns in order to become spiritually healthy. Along these lines, he notes that a sickly body transforms normally beneficial food into a toxin, whereas a robust body transforms naturally harmful food into good nourishment (ep. 1.182). So too, he claims, a spiritually healthy person is protected from spiritual harm, whereas a spiritually sick person may not be able to respond adequately to spiritual goods (ep. 1.182). Yet the potential to weaken the spiritual body is ever present. Small failures are understood as ‘ulcers’ which result in ‘bad habits’ (νομή ἐστι, κακὴ συνήθειά ἐστι) (3.42.17). Conscience, which Dorotheus understands as the rational capacity of the mind to exercise moral judgement,¹¹⁴ is affected by food, sleeping, and careful, thrifty, stewardship of material things (3.40, 45). Virtue and health are associated through reference to humoral theory, where excess explains both sickness and sin (e.g., 10.106). Eating cabbage and lentils can produce excessive bile which leads to fever; so too excess leads to sinful behaviour (11.122.29–38). In the other direction: As much as we do good things, we come into the state of virtue, that is we restore our proper state, and we return to our proper health. ὅσον ἐνεργοῦμεν τὰ καλά, ἐν ἕξει τῆς ἀρετῆς γινόμεθα, τοῦτ’ ἔστι τὴν ἰδίαν ἕξιν ἀναλαμβάνομεν, εἰς τὴν ἰδίαν ὑγείαν ἐπανερχόμεθα. (11.122.19–21)

¹¹¹ Galen, San. tu. 1.7.14 (CMG 5.4.2: 19, 24–6). ¹¹² See e.g., Galen, Aff. Dig. and Galen, Pecc. Dig. ¹¹³ See below, Chapter 5. ¹¹⁴ ‘a certain kind of reason . . . illuminating the reasoning mind and showing to [the monk] the difference between good and evil (ὥσπερ λογισμόν τινα . . . φωτίζοντα τὸν νοῦν καὶ δεικνύοντα αὐτῷ τὸ καλὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ κακοῦ)’ (3.40.1–3).

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Dorotheus thus makes a close connection between virtue and health, drawing on well-established metaphors which helped to give shape to early Christian ethics.¹¹⁵ Language here of restoration and return is also well known in earlier Christian texts, while the verb for ‘return’ can also indicate ascent from imperfection, underscoring the relationship between education as transformation and medical discourse. The medical metaphors deployed here help to perform the transformation Dorotheus hopes ascetic education will effect in his monastic community. When we investigate Dorotheus’ ethics below, we will return to his terminology of habit formation. At this point, it is worth noting that he capitalizes on the semantic range of ἕξις (acquired habit, condition, state) to argue for the efficacy of physical action in embedding the virtues and thereby transforming the soul. Habit is both a practice and the new state resulting from repeated practice, which makes it a valuable category within Dorotheus’ ethics as well as his programme of transformative ascetic education.¹¹⁶ Dorotheus discusses the efficacy of fasting in this context of appropriating medical discourse to make a case for transformative habit formation within ascetic education. We have already seen that Dorotheus was depicted, in the Life of Dositheus, as using forced dieting through the strict apportioning of rations to achieve spiritual transformation in his disciple. In his own reflection on fasting, Dorotheus makes careful distinctions which are also found in related medical literature. There are different kinds of failure to fast (12.126). There is the sort of affectation which might look like fasting, but which is really the behaviour of the fastidious gourmand, eating very little but savouring every morsel; Dorotheus terms this laimargia. Such behaviour is contrasted with that of the over-eating glutton (gastrimargia). But both behaviours are taken to exhibit an excessive, insane degree of concern for physical sustenance (mania). In contrast, regular fasting is recommended because it enables the formation of praiseworthy habits. Habit formation extends, in Dorotheus’ scheme, to the cultivation of mental strategies of self-examination. Clearly, the practice of self-examination had been central to philosophical exercises from the beginnings of Greek philosophy, as the Delphic oracle’s ‘know thyself ’ and its uptake in different philosophical schools amply demonstrates.¹¹⁷ Dorotheus gives substantial detail about practices of mental training required in ascetic education. Monks are to pay attention to small things, since they may quickly develop into larger problems (3.42, 6.69, 8.94, 10.113 et passim). They should submit to the authority of the abbot and to ¹¹⁵ Note that the metaphors are not merely decorative: the medical imagery of ethical writers generally, and early Christian thinkers in particular, function as means of ‘discovery and justification’, as Martha Nussbaum has argued (Nussbaum 1994, 14). See also Mayer 2018. ¹¹⁶ For further discussion of habituation in the context of Dorotheus’ theory of virtue and emotion, including analysis of key concepts such as ἕξις, διάθεσις, κατάστασις, and συνήθηεια, see below Chapter 5. ¹¹⁷ We may also think of the famous Socratic dictum that the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’ (Plato, Apology 38a). On the Delphic Oracle in later philosophical schools, see Wilkins 1929, 49–73.

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     

more experienced monastic teachers (5.65 et passim). In these instructions, Dorotheus follows standard prescriptions of popular Greek ethics, also taken up by medical experts (e.g., Galen Aff. pec. dig. 4–10). But he also goes beyond them with an onerous programme of confession.¹¹⁸ Monks are educated to develop the habit of narrating their inner thoughts, bringing them into the realm of conscious reflection so that they may be evaluated, confessed, and transformed or eradicated, freeing monks from the power of the devil and expanding their agency (5.65). Monks should examine their conscience every day, morning and night, and every week, and every month, carefully disciplining their thoughts through practices of confession both over the short and the longer term to chart changes, reflect on failures, and seek continual psychic improvement. Dorotheus casts confession as a form of narrative therapy. He tells the story of a fallen monk known to St Macarius, who ‘found that [the monk] was unwilling to confess, he found that he did not have the habit of narrating or confessing; therefore, the enemy could corrupt or dislocate him in whatever way he wanted (εὗρεν αὐτὸν μὴ θέλοντα ὁμολογῆσαι, εὗρεν αὐτὸν μὴ ἔχοντα συνήθειαν τοῦ ἐξαγγέλλειν· διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ ἔστρεφεν αὐτὸν ὅπου ἤθελεν ὁ ἐχθρός)’ (5.65.18–19). Dorotheus recognizes that monks need to learn to tell stories in order to be properly situated in the world, make sense of their experience, and act effectively. Without learning narrative, monks literally inhabit a demonic and dislocating space: their world cannot make sense. Dorotheus’ insistence on the need to make inner thoughts public through disclosing them to conscious reflection and confession under the authority of a monastic superior sets him firmly within a long ascetic tradition (particularly indebted to Basil).¹¹⁹ His use of medical discourses in this context also enables him, like earlier ascetic thinkers, to emphasize the communal nature of ascetic education. This is a prominent theme to which we will return, pausing now only to note how medical thought helps to structure Dorotheus’ communal pedagogy. For Dorotheus’ account of ascetic education as medical practice moves beyond the individual relationship between doctor and patient to include the whole community, and in drawing the whole community into the process of spiritual healing, Dorotheus ties practices associated with medical education to his wider project of transformative education. For example, ascetic education is (repeatedly) described through medical metaphors (e.g., 6.77, 8.94).¹²⁰ Doctors dress wounds and apply plasters, but scars remain, meaning that as the wound is healing, it may be easily

¹¹⁸ Zecher 2020 has argued (extensively also in a forthcoming monograph) for intersections between medical learning and models of confession and spiritual direction. ¹¹⁹ For recent discussion of these themes in related ascetic literature, see Moberg 2018. ¹²⁰ These metaphors are not merely decorative. A fundamental feature of metaphor is its ability to transform and create new realities. On medical metaphors, see Mayer 2018 who nevertheless places too much weight on Cognitive Metaphor Theory. See also the framing of this special issue by Upson-Saia 2018. For rich theories of metaphor, see Hesse 1988; Sacks 1979; Soskice 1985.

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damaged, and time and care are needed for the scar to heal and health to be achieved (8.94). Similarly, in the ascetic life, damage may be healed through repentance, but spiritual damage takes time to heal, and spiritually inappropriate and damaging responses may be easily generated when the wound is fresh (8.94). Continual spiritual struggle is required, and importantly, final healing comes through prayer, both prayer for the person who originally caused the spiritual wound and reciprocal prayers from that brother (8.94). In this example, prayers for other members of the community are called for as part of the healing of the whole community: the sickness of one monk infects the whole, and thus prayer and healing operates at the level of the community rather than merely the individual. Elsewhere, Dorotheus makes the same point with explicit quotation of Pauline metaphors: ‘we are individually members of one another’, and ‘if one member suffers all members suffer along with it’ (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:26) (6.77). In this Instruction, Dorotheus sets out in detail common features of physical wound treatment. Without treatment, wounds can smell and turn septic, but should be bathed, cleaned, and dressed before amputation is considered (6.77). These standard medical interventions, paralleled in medical handbooks on wound treatment, are augmented in Dorotheus’ text by instructing monks to follow Zosimas’ injunction to ‘make the sign of the cross over it, bless it with holy water, pray, and ask the saints to pray for us’.¹²¹ This passage inserts Christian ritual practices (and Christian authority figures such as Zosimas) into standard medical interventions.¹²² It can be viewed as a Christian innovation within late-antique medicine, even as askesis is anchored within traditional medical practices. A key component of the innovation is the extension of healing beyond the authority of the doctor to the community at large, a view which is explained with reference to traditional models of the civic community—in this case the community of monks—as a body in which the health of the parts contributes to the health of the whole. In part, this is achieved through a positive evaluation of the body, which is depicted, as we have seen, as essential for the soul’s health. Dorotheus argues that: Through the body the soul is distracted from its passions and is comforted, eats, drinks, sleeps, lives with others, and is with friends.¹²³

¹²¹ παρέχει ἁγίασμα, εὔχεται, παρακαλεῖ τοὺς ἁγίους εὔξασθαι ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ (6.77.8–9). ¹²² Two caveats: first, medicine is, of course, a Christian practice; and second, non-medical interventions are a standard feature of both monastic theory about illness and earlier non-Christian approaches to healing. What I am emphasizing here is the deliberate characterization of prayer and other Christian rituals as specifically medically efficacious. For Dorotheus, Christian medicine should include such practices. ¹²³ We will return to this highly positive account of the body, which signals a clear departure from Platonism while situating Dorotheus within an Evagrian ascetic tradition below. In 12.126, 1–7, Dorotheus quotes Evagrius explicitly from two closely related passages. The first (about breaking up

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      Διὰ γὰρ τοῦ σώματος τούτου περισπᾶται ἡ ψυχὴ ἀπὸ τῶν παθῶν αὐτῆς καὶ παρακαλεῖται· τρώγει, πίνει, κοιμᾶται, συντυγχάνει, ἀπάγεται μετὰ ἀγαπητῶν. (12.126.4–7)

Isolation in one’s cell leads to all manner of problems for individual monks, who become prey to misery and the other passions through being cut off from the rest of the body (12.126). A further innovation is in view here, since as the monks make the community healthier as they come closer to each other through prayer, they simultaneously, Dorotheus informs us, come closer to God: The more we approach God through love for him, the more we are united to our neighbour through love, and as much as we are united to our neighbour, we are united to God. ὅσον ἐγγίζομεν τῷ Θεῷ διὰ τῆς εἰς αὐτὸν ἀγάπης, τοσοῦτον ἑνούμεθα τῇ ἀγάπῃ τοῦ πλησίον, καὶ ὅσον ἑνούμεθα τῷ πλησίον, τοσοῦτον ἑνούμεθα τῷ Θεῷ. (6.78.23–25)

In this affirmation, the perfecting of individual monks and the monastic community is achieved through physical and psychic therapies. Practices coded as medical are promoted in Dorotheus’ programme of ascetic education in order to work towards the pedagogical goal of ethical and spiritual transformation. As in the case of practices of self-examination, Dorotheus’ educational project here is partly the identification of internal states in order to bring them out into a wider, public context. Perception of self is possible, for Dorotheus, only through correct perception of others, and, ultimately, of God. This is a distinctive feature of his thought to which we will return. Its significance for his educational theory and practice is that it is evidence that he thinks of education as improving both individual learners and their wider community, rather than as merely being concerned with the transformation of the individual. In such innovations, we also see elements of the medical paradigm which Dorotheus sees as in need of augmentation, supplementation, or re-evaluation in the light of principles of Christian education. While dieting, as we have seen, is crucial for physical and spiritual development, God, rather than the sustenance itself, causes the food’s health-giving properties. God could transform even linseed into honey if required (7.84). Christ ‘himself takes the place of that object or food’ for the monk (7.84.6–8).¹²⁴ Israel was sustained on manna for forty years, and God a sick-bed) is Keph. Gnost. 4.76, in a form corresponding to S₂ (Guillaumont 169). The second runs ‘for through this body our soul is distracted from its passions (πάθη), and comforted’ and comes from Keph. Gnost. 4.82 (Guillaumont 172). In the latter passage, Keph. Gnost. has ‘demons’ instead of ‘passions’, which signals a clear Dorothean tendency to reduce identification of ‘thoughts’ with ‘demons’ and make vices internal states rather than external demonic assaults, a key element of his moral psychology discussed in Chapter 4. I thank Jonathan Zecher for these references and clarifying discussion. ¹²⁴ Ὁ Χριστὸς . . . γίνεταί μοι ἀντὶ τοῦδε τοῦ πράγματος ἢ ἀντὶ τοῦδε τοῦ βρώματος.

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made sure that it was received in the most physically beneficial ways (7.84). Similarly, while gesture habituates the body to virtues of humility and obedience, for example, it cannot directly reveal states of the soul, unlike physiognomic methods of diagnosis in the medical tradition (9.98). Dorotheus stages a conflict between himself and John of Gaza on this point. Dorotheus claims to be able to decipher psychic states from external gestures, in a manner akin to contemporary physicalist doctors (and holy men in contemporary hagiography).¹²⁵ John, however, is scandalized by this claim, and ultimately convinces Dorotheus that natural defects may be overcome by inner struggle. That is, against a strict physicalist medical paradigm, Dorotheus’ ascetic education is grounded on the principle that mental therapies of introspection can trump bodily blends in producing beneficial changes in the soul. In this instance, the ascetic practices of self-examination, prayer, and confession move Dorotheus away from medical discourse and closer to the discourses and practices of contemporary philosophical schools. Similarly, while fasting is entirely appropriate and can be expected to achieve spiritual transformation, it is insufficient, in Dorotheus’ view. At least, viewing fasting as merely a physical discipline is to devalue it.¹²⁶ Fasting extends metaphorically from food to the eradication of slander and falsehood, gossip and anger through the ‘fasting of the tongue’; similarly, monks should practise fasting of the eyes, hands, and feet, and thus habituate each of their senses in an effort to eradicate passions and attain true perception (15.164).

Medicine and Ascetic Paideia Dorotheus draws on late-antique medical discourses in diverse ways to construct ascetic paideia. By displaying his medical knowledge of, for example, fevers, wounds, and physical and cognitive regimens, he takes on the authority of a doctor and helps to legitimate his educational project while also giving his students access to a powerful late-antique symbolic system. Dorotheus, like contemporary Christian and non-Christian Neoplatonic philosophers such as Proclus and Philoponus, is no materialist. But he does recommend physical, bodily practices for his students, including dieting and fasting, regulated sleep, humble and obedient gestures and bodily postures, and physical exercise and work, which harmonize well with contemporary non-cognitive therapies recommended by late-antique physicians. This makes his asceticism recognizable as a form of medical practice. Such therapies, like the cognitive disciplines of

¹²⁵ On the holy men, see Frank 2000. See also Callon 2019. ¹²⁶ Cf. John Chrysostom, Ad pop. Ant. Homily 3, PG 49, 53A; Basil, On Fasting PG 31, 196D. For John, fasting is not merely to be limited to food, while for Basil, fasting is to be encouraged, but only as the first stage of a wider eradication of dependence on material things.

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self-examination also congruent with late-antique medicine, are designed to transform pupils and unite them with God. The concept of habituation—physical, somatic, emotional, moral, and rational—is central to Dorotheus’ appropriation of late-antique medical thought. As in the exercises recommended by late-antique physicians and related practical ethics literature, monks are to examine their thoughts, control their actions, and care for their bodies through repeated cognitive and non-cognitive therapies. This extends to practices of confession, which are cast in part as a form of medical therapy. Such habituation is a key mechanism by which Dorotheus aim to transform the souls of his ascetic students. When Dorotheus figures ascetic education as a form of therapy, he is concerned for the health of both the individual and the community. This extends the domain of medical practice beyond the doctor–patient relation. All members of the monastic community are educated so that they have the capacity to become doctors concerned with the health of each other’s souls. This is not to say that such expertise was attained or practised by all members of the community. But the educational project opens this possibility for Dorotheus’ students. The communal focus of Dorotheus’ educational project comes to the fore in this expansion of medical expertise. Dorotheus figures unification to God as the transformation of the health of the individual and of the monastic community as a whole. This joins his appropriation of medical knowledge to his wider goal of transformative ascetic education. He also modifies or augments late-antique medical practice in other ways, similarly motivated by broader theological commitments. Objects sacred to Christians are taken to have apotropaic properties, prayer (one’s own for oneself and others, as well as that of others for oneself) is medically efficacious, and Christ is the healing power even in physical therapies. In this last move, the distinction between physical and non-physical therapy begins to break down, as Christ can transform the physical blends of a certain food, for example, into that of another to be most beneficial for the patient. Dorotheus also problematizes distinctions between inner thoughts and outer behaviours, virtues, or physical characteristics when he casts doubt on physiognomy or when he figures self-examination as the making public in confession of interior states. Dorotheus recommends the disclosure of the self to public view by bringing interior states into the purview of the individual’s rational and evaluative conscience as well as by bringing those states into the public arena of the wider monastic community, where fellow monks are educated to support and sustain each other as they ascend to God.

Conclusions: Ascetic Paideia and Transformation Dorotheus’ teachings draw on multiple traditions within and beyond Christianity, imply serious and sustained practices of attention, and (as will become more

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apparent in subsequent chapters) require engagement with important doctrinal questions. Dorotheus was educated in rhetoric and medicine, and used this learning to effect in his Instructions, harnessing the discourses of rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine to build a distinctive programme of ascetic education. The classical tradition continued to be culturally and intellectual valuable in the monasteries at Gaza. It could help to structure how monks wrote, thought, and practised asceticism, and it could help to legitimate pedagogical and spiritual authority within the monasteries. This education opened up a range of symbol systems for his students, trained them in privileged perspectives, gave them tools for the construction of meaning, and aimed towards the transformation of their subjectivity and their communities by placing them within a generative soteriological narrative. This chapter suggests that while many of the intellectual claims of classical discourses are erased in Dorotheus’ appropriation of them, his thought remains bound up with classical ways of educating, and thus with long-established schemes of knowledge in the fields of rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine. A key shared assumption across different schools in late antiquity was the claim that education is transformative rather than merely informative. With that end of education (in rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine) in mind, Dorotheus deployed rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine in distinctive ways which changed the intellectual traditions from which he drew. But Dorotheus is clearly not interested primarily in teaching his students to produce good ekphraseis, construct cutting edge Neoplatonic arguments, or advance Galenic medicine. For all the continuity this chapter has traced, the difference between Greco-Roman education and Dorotheus’ ascetic instruction remains and requires explanation. Dorotheus fashioned earlier traditions for a new community in the monastery and opened up possibilities for pedagogy in that context. Rhetoric conditioned monks to obscure rather than promote their own individual identities, since ascetic learners were encouraged to excise rather than glory in the power of their wills. Similarly, the craft of rhetoric became a means of self- and communal-examination, as rhetorical learning was utilized to probe deeply into the learners’ internal cognitive and emotional lives, and to discipline, mould, and transform learners and their communities. In the case of philosophy, Dorotheus appropriated well-established cultural practices and intellectual methods to help construct expert ascetic readers, who were formed in part by principles and practices of exegesis of texts taken to be sacred precisely because their interpretation was considered essential for the transformation of the interpreters to ever greater perfection. Yet Dorotheus’ canon differed so markedly from that of the Neoplatonists that ascetic intellectual claims, valued virtues, and licit emotional expressions would, at times, have been unrecognizable to contemporary late-antique philosophers, even as they could have acknowledged similarities between their own communities and monastic education. Finally, late-antique heirs to Galen could have recognized Dorotheus’ account of medical asceticism as

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part of their own tradition, even as they promoted a different set of canonical texts. Particularly, Dorotheus’ emphasis on regimen, habituation, and selfexamination cast ascetic education as a form of therapy. But in this case, Dorotheus problematized the physical nature of the efficacy of regimen, extended medical expertise across the community, and offered a psychology in which the fall plays a significant part, and which insisted on a continuity between mortal and immortal souls. Here Dorotheus’ Christian motivations bring him closer to contemporary philosophers than contemporary doctors. Nevertheless, we have seen that much of his programme of ascetic education was built around medical metaphors, and his Instructions draw on medical knowledge to foreground the importance of cognitive and non-cognitive therapy in the process of attaining progressively greater ascetic perfection. Hence in his engagement with each of these three discourses of ancient education—rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine— Dorotheus appropriated and altered the educational projects in which he anchored his own ascetic pedagogy in order to figure ascetic paideia as transformative. There is still a tedious tendency among much scholarship on late antiquity and early Christianity to seek to identify the factors which separated the ‘Classical’ from the ‘Christian’, and award prizes to one side or the other, depending on one’s prejudices. Of course, much hangs on the first part of this activity, since Christianity undoubtedly effected significant intellectual and cultural changes, and identifying change (if not acting as cheer-leader) is one job of the historian. Yet it is also significant to highlight the entanglements between Christianity and Classical culture, making a case for ways in which these categories intersect, interpenetrate, and mutually sustain each other. This chapter is a case study in how different traditions anchor their main claims in the norms, assumptions, and thought forms of other significant groups. It is an argument for a less antagonistic model for cultural and intellectual appropriation, where mutuality and interchange are more important concepts than stark opposition. Dorotheus constructed an innovative and traditional programme of ascetic education from diverse materials. Sayings of the desert fathers, biblical interpretations, practices and postures of prayer and humble self-effacement, dieting, affective and cognitive discipline, and physical labour were all significant elements, and his account of transformation introduces a range of Christian models of godlikeness unknown to non-Christian communities. Yet these elements were all simultaneously situated within established Christian traditions and the discourses and practices of ancient rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine. In Dorotheus’ writings, old and new worlds converged and diverged like shifting components in a kaleidoscope, as new patterns were formed from well-established traditions in an educational project aimed towards the transformation of individuals and communities in progressively greater likeness to God.

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3 Education and Epistemology Introduction: Ways of Knowing and Ordering Knowledge Epistemological assumptions, as well as explicit epistemological prescriptions, are a crucial component of any educational endeavour. Education produces structures and hierarchies of knowledge, and it habituates students and teachers to privileged ways of knowing.¹ As a cultural view of education identifies, it does this through exploring perspectives and promoting some over others and by institutionalizing knowledge. It thus enables students to become expert in meaning-making and culturally valued symbol systems and social structures. Together, this builds capacity for meta-cognition and intersubjective understanding. Such epistemological concerns are central to understanding Dorotheus’ ascetic pedagogy. So the central questions of this chapter are ‘how did Dorotheus think knowledge should be ordered?’ and ‘what ways of knowing did Dorotheus seek to promote?’ Such questions immediately prompt further concerns about the construction of power relations through education. In Bruner’s terms, education is instrumental and institutional, ideally enabling students to negotiate social power structures and potentially reconfigure them.² No hierarchy of knowledge is innocent; after Foucault, scholars have been sensitive to ways in which knowledge schemes build on and help to consolidate social power, disempowering some and enfranchising others.³ In the case of Gazan monasticism, significant studies have demonstrated that there is much to be learned from this approach. The correspondence of Barsanuphius and John has been mined to show how spiritual authority could be wielded by acknowledged holy men to form and control social networks reaching across different levels of society.⁴ This included the policing of knowledge.⁵ Ascetic knowledge was ordered partly through the maintenance of close personal connections with and between authoritative teachers.⁶ Dorotheus also creates an authoritative persona as a spiritual guide, and knowledge is ordered on the basis of his spiritual authority. Teaching, hierarchies of knowledge, and social

¹ Bruner 1996, 3; Bernstein 1971; Vygotsky 1978. ² Bruner 1996, 25–35. ³ See e.g., Foucault 1966 (English translation 2001). Cameron 1994 significantly advanced lateantique and early Christian studies by adopting and refining this framework. ⁴ Hevelone-Harper 2005. ⁵ E.g., traditional medical expertise is first included in asceticism and then subordinated to ascetic authority. See Hevelone-Harper 2005, 64–6; Zecher 2020, 613–21. ⁶ Hevelone-Harper 2005 develops this claim in detail. See also Hombergen 2001.

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education. Michael W. Champion, Oxford University Press. © Michael W. Champion 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198869269.003.0003

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authority are intimately connected. For example, confession, self-doubt, excision of will, and continual prayer are read as cognitive disciplines which sustain the authority of the teacher, abbas, holy men, and the abbot, while also inculcating appropriate monastic virtues.⁷ In such an epistemic hierarchy, monks know appropriately in as much as they are in line with their authoritative guide, and epistemic practices all work towards securing the relationship between the spiritual authority and the lowly monk which in turn establishes the institutional power of the monasteries and inscribes the institution’s distinctions in the minds of the students. This gives them agency in navigating the institution of the monastery and expertise in negotiating institutional life more generally. Beyond the question of knowledge hierarchies, reconstructing the epistemological world of Dorotheus’ monastery also includes consideration of how education privileges particular ways of knowing. This entails uncovering assumptions about how thinking should function to support particular theological and ascetic teachings. It focuses on how different assumptions about godlikeness and philosophy understood as the practice of death shape their respective epistemologies. Practices of reading, meditation and prayer, including memorizing biblical passages or Apophthegmata, are all grounded in key epistemological claims about how ascetic Christians should go about knowing and help students to take on and negotiate different perspectives, developing expertise in intersubjectivity and selfreflective learning. This chapter thus seeks to identify the epistemological grounds for such significant practices associated with ascetic education. Where there is overlap between Dorotheus’ epistemology and philosophical ideals and commitments, one may speak of a shared approach to ordering and attaining knowledge; where Christian traditions do not align with wider traditions, other factors become relevant for assessing epistemological change and priorities within late-antique ascetic education. This chapter therefore moves in two directions. First, it identifies ways in which Dorotheus’ teaching resonates with wider patterns in philosophical epistemology, especially by comparing his theory of knowledge to the epistemological commitments that can be gleaned from late-antique Prolegomena to Philosophy. Second, it isolates elements of Dorotheus’ pedagogy which present a distinctively Christian-ascetic epistemology. It thus highlights Dorotheus’ connection to wider epistemological commitments and assumptions while also delineating ways in which his asceticism encourages his students to learn to inhabit a different epistemological framework. The comparison between Dorotheus and earlier educational discourses distils important differences in how the claim that the goal of education is more perfect godlikeness and the practice of death influenced how knowledge was conceptualized. Most importantly, in the asceticism Dorotheus represents, humility is the key

⁷ Dilley 2017 productively applies such analysis of cognitive disciplines in a different context.

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epistemic virtue which generated distinctive attitudes towards knowledge, since the god with whom monks should be united differs markedly from the Neoplatonic notion of divinity. Similarly, the death that ascetic philosophers should practise is modelled on the death of the God who humbles himself rather than the Neoplatonists’ death to all but pure intellection. This then provides an explanation for Dorotheus’ re-evaluation of the centrality of the autonomous exercise of reason and his prioritization of the epistemic role of cognitive disciplines and dependence on spiritual authorities. Comparing the epistemic communities of the philosophical schools and the monasteries enables points of overlap and difference to be identified, thus filling out a picture of Dorotheus’ Christianascetic contributions to epistemology within late-antique education. This chapter unfolds by first presenting how Neoplatonic philosophers introduced students to epistemological questions and foundations in the Prolegomena to their commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and Porphyry’s Isagoge. Dorotheus’ epistemology is then compared with these texts to show where there are significant overlaps and divergences in ways of knowing and ordering knowledge. Points of contact include insistence that practical and theoretical reasoning together enable philosophers and monks to become godlike and that practising death implies a distinctive epistemic stance. It also foregrounds similar understandings of conscience as a divine faculty of reason that connects monks and ascetics to God, and an insistence on the mutual intrication of goodness and truth. Yet Dorotheus is less confident than the later Neoplatonists that reason is autonomous and necessarily godly, and his hesitation about the human capacity to know makes him develop an account of humility as a key epistemic virtue, while also placing great weight on the role of trustworthy and authoritative epistemic guides and ways in which communities can provide criteria for truth. Humility therefore generates significant epistemic practices—examination of conscience, prayer, reading and meditation, and dependence on epistemic guides—within Dorotheus’ ascetic pedagogy. The final characteristic of knowledge acquisition through intellectual dependence raises the broader question of the construction of epistemic authority. The chapter therefore considers two key mechanisms for the creation of such authority: production and circulation of letters and meditative practices. These aspects of Dorotheus’ epistemic world, like the insistence that humility is an epistemic virtue, highlight the significance of community for evaluating truth claims and generating truthful knowledge, especially in the context of life-long learning.

Philosophical Prolegomena Contemporary comparanda from the Neoplatonic schools of Alexandria can assist in constructing a field of epistemological potential relevant to understanding

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Dorotheus’ project. Late-antique Prolegomena to Philosophy set out what philosophy is, how it should be ordered, how teachers should teach, and how students should learn.⁸ These pedagogical introductions to philosophy which preface lateantique commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories⁹ and Porphyry’s Isagoge¹⁰ provide a fascinating window into how philosophy was defined, categorized, and conceptualized in late antiquity.¹¹ They record influential ways in which knowledge was supposed to be organized and attained through philosophical education in the period, and provide insight into the sorts of intellectual habits which philosophers attempted to promote.¹² Through John Damascene (675–749 ), they influenced epistemological schemes into Byzantium, while they helped to shape education in the west through the influence of Cassiodorus (487–585 ) and Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636 ). They therefore represent a stable consensus about introductory epistemology and how to approach philosophical knowledge which influenced generations of educators. The introductions to the Categories treat: (1) origins of names of philosophical schools; (2) classification of Aristotle’s writings; (3) priority of logic and ethics (what is the best starting point for Aristotelian philosophy?); (4) the final goal of philosophy understood as knowledge of the first cause (god); (5) attaining this goal through ethics, physics, mathematics, and theology (what path should the philosopher take through Aristotelian philosophy?); (6) the characteristics of a good student; (7) the characteristics of a good exegete or commentator; (8) Aristotle’s style; (9) the purpose of his obscurity; (10) preliminaries for each work. They each argue that knowledge of God is the goal of Aristotle’s philosophy, and that the student of philosophy should aim towards the assimilation of his soul to the universe.¹³ Alongside extended analysis of the nature and meaning of logical divisions, the introductions to the Categories provide reflection on the qualities of a good student and teacher which provide significant comparanda for Dorotheus’

⁸ To these texts, see Roueché 1980, Roueché 1990, and Wildberg 1990. See further Blank 2010 (Ammonius); Wildberg 2018 (David); Wildberg 2016 (Elias); Geertz 2018a and Geertz 2018b (Elias, David, and Olympiodorus). While some authors of Prolegomena were Christian, little if any trace of Christian commitments is to be found. On the author’s religious affiliations, see Wildberg 1990; cf. Roueché 1990 and Westerink 1990. ⁹ Prolegomena to Aristotle’s Categories: CAG 4.4 (Ammonius), 12.1 (Olympiodorus), 13.1 (Philoponus), 18.1 (Elias). ¹⁰ Prolegomena to Porphyry’s Isagoge: CAG 4.3 (Ammonius), 17.1 (Elias), 18.2 (David), and for Ps.-Elias (Ps.-David) see Westerink 1967. ¹¹ See Westerink 1990. Champion 2022 also compares Prolegomena to Dorotheus’ epistemic world, treating godlikeness in the Isagoge tradition. For a magisterial account of divisions of knowledge in ancient philosophy up to late antiquity, see Hadot 1979. ¹² John Damascene, dialect. 3 and 66; Cassiodorus, Inst. 2.3.9; Isidore of Seville, Etym. 2.24.1–2, 9. For Nachleben, see Duffy 2002; Louth 2004, 32–3, 38–53; Roueché 1974, 61–76. On Cassiodorus, see Vessey 2004. ¹³ This is congruent with Proclus’ scheme of assimilation at the level of Soul: see e.g., Olympiodorus, in Cat. 9,28 ff.; 10,4 ff.

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approach, and analysis will be restricted to these aspects of the Categories’ introductions. The introductions to Porphyry’s Isagoge discuss definitions of philosophy and its division into theoretical and practical elements. They begin from Aristotle’s guiding questions about the principles of demonstrative knowledge (An. Post. 2.1) by asking (i) does philosophy exist? (ii) what is it? (iii) what is its nature? (iv) what is its purpose? They then consider six definitions, namely that philosophy is (1) knowledge of real beings qua real beings; (2) knowledge of divine and human things; (3) preparation for death; (4) godlikeness, inasmuch as that is possible; (5) the art of arts and science of sciences; (6) love of wisdom. I focus on the third and fourth definitions of philosophy from the Isagoge introductions: that philosophy is the intellectual activity by which a thinker becomes like a god, and the claim that philosophy is the practice of death. The first definition is also important for the writers of the introductions to Aristotle’s Categories while both sets of introductions also give great weight to the claim that philosophy is the knowledge of divine and human things qua being. This claim, together with the argument that philosophy is the supreme art and science are also significant for Dorotheus’ epistemology, and for wider currents in late-antique ascetic education to which Dorotheus is indebted. These texts provide evidence over a century-long period for a very stable and well-resourced intellectual tradition: whole sections of works by different authors overlap closely. This tradition orders knowledge and specifies how knowledge is to be attained in ways that are unconnected with epistemological changes associated with Christianity.

Godlikeness and Knowledge in the Prolegomena to the Isagoge Throughout the Prolegomena, we find strong affirmation of human rational capacity as the fundamental quality which makes a philosopher able to become godlike.¹⁴ For the authors of the Prolegomena, philosophy provides complete knowledge of what exists (e.g., David 17,15 ff.). As Elias argues, ‘the purpose or goal of philosophy is to demonstrate that humans are gods on earth by their knowledge of all beings’.¹⁵ On this view, knowledge of beings is what makes a philosopher godlike. To what extent can a philosopher be like a god through the exercise of knowledge? We may answer this question by following David’s strongly positive account of knowledge.

¹⁴ On religious practice associated with groups of Neoplatonists, see Harl 1990; Dodds 1947. ¹⁵ τέλος δὲ τῆς φιλοσοφίας τὸ διὰ τῆς γνώσεως πάντων τῶν ὄντων θεὸν ἐπὶ γῆς δεῖξαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον (Elias 6,32–33; 12,14).

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In David’s account, the perfect philosopher knows everything. He is like a king since he governs his action with reason (also Elias 18,35; Olympiodorus, 10,44 ff.). There is a hierarchy of knowledge and philosophy stands at its apex, since it deals with real being and the fundamental nature of things. Knowledge is ordered, with philosophical understanding—apprehension of the fundamental nature of things—being most valuable since it is most like divine knowledge. It is the kind of knowledge that makes the philosopher godlike. Philosophical knowledge like this provides the reasons and principles from which all the arts and sciences derive their power to investigate and change the physical world. Thus philosophy is understood as the epistemic foundation of all practical and theoretical study. Because philosophers have knowledge of the nature of all real beings, they know the principles of all the human arts and sciences, and they can so order their souls that knowledge is unimpeded by bodily desires and so that society comes to approximate divine order. Despite this confidence in human rationality, difference between a god and the ideal philosopher remains. Philosophers can hope for discursive rather than simultaneous knowledge, but that knowledge is otherwise all encompassing. David offers an extended discussion of how one thing can be like another (David 34,30–35,29) which helps to delimit how perfect divine and human knowledge relate to each other.¹⁶ Members of a species can be alike (all swans are white); a quality (e.g., hotness) may be greater or lesser in different species (white and black pepper); there may be various qualities in different species (pigeons and doves may be alike in different colours); and there can be likeness between an original and its image. This last kind of similarity is the relevant sense in which philosophers may be like the divine intellect and providential designer. Such a likeness preserves the unique substance of the philosopher and the deity. But while each remains unique in substance, the lesser can be similar to the greater because it can share characteristics with it. So god is consubstantial with goodness and thus is incapable of evil, unlike philosophers, who may nevertheless attain goodness; god’s knowledge is simultaneous and always actual rather than potential, whereas the knowledge of philosophers is at best discursive, and includes the possibility of forgetting and initial ignorance; finally god’s power alone is convertible with divine will. Therefore the philosopher is like a god because he has divine characteristics of goodness, knowledge, and power to the appropriate degree and in the appropriate manner (David 17,1 ff.). The philosopher cares for the soul and society regally by bringing them to knowledge and by ordering them appropriately through the exercise of his will, which is understood to be perfectly aligned with his reason. The capacity to order the soul and society at large is akin to god’s providential

¹⁶ See also Ammonius; Elias 16,35–17,36; Ps.-Elias (Ps.-David) 14.

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activity, and it imitates the divine alignment of truth, goodness, reason, and will. The philosopher knows everything, and he desires everything within his power (David 17,16–22). David’s account of godlikeness depends on Plato’s view that humans become godlike through the exercise of justice, piety, and wisdom. Godlikeness, then, is achieved through intellectual, ethical, and spiritual perfection. For David, justice and piety include all the virtues ordered under practical philosophy, since they are the most excellent of such virtues. They signal that godlikeness includes the perfection of practical philosophy. Since they are the virtues proper to providential activity, they emphasize likeness to god through the providential ordering of creation. This has epistemic force: philosophers have expertise in ordering knowledge such that it aligns with the divinely established order of reality. The third way to godlikeness—wisdom—signals, for David, that the godlike philosopher seeks to eliminate the passions or affections (πάθη). It thus has ethical and emotional power and is consistent with the epistemic view that truthful apprehension of reality means the purification of the emotions. It also denotes the centrality of theoretical philosophy (which is taken to provide theoretical knowledge necessary for practical wisdom). Philosophical knowledge is therefore theoretical and practical and enables the philosopher to become like god both through knowledge of being and through godlike ordering of being, both at the level of the individual philosopher’s soul and more generally in society. Only virtues performed ‘with wisdom’—that is, with an understanding of the necessary connection between virtues—are truly virtuous and thus truly godlike. Furthermore, only virtues performed with wisdom are defined as characteristically human: irrational brutes can act courageously, but humans are capable of rational courage. On David’s view, virtuous and godlike action requires understanding the intrinsic connections between virtues and the reason which makes displaying this virtue rather than that one appropriate. Elias agrees, citing Plotinus: the exercise of virtue through internalized reasoning moves the knower towards godlikeness since such action means that the virtues imply one another and are not in conflict in any way, thus mirroring divine perfection.¹⁷ Philosophical godlikeness, then, also mirrors the divine unification of knowledge and action. Philosophers cannot achieve divine simplicity, but they seek integrated, self-consistent, rational, and virtuous thought and action. Elias’ discussion of Plato’s definition of godlikeness includes one important and revealing addition to the tradition which resonates in the context of ascetic epistemology:

¹⁷ Cf. Plotinus, Enn. 1.3.6, 15.22–24; Plato, Phaedo 69B; and Geertz 2018a, 110.

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Since Plato was not content with saying that philosophy is becoming like god as far as is possible for man, but also added the way of attaining likeness by saying ‘one becomes like god by being pious and just with wisdom and by knowing this’, let us examine the following three questions: 1. Why did he add ‘justice’ to ‘piety’? 2. Why did he only mention two virtues, justice and wisdom, when there are four? 3. Why did he say ‘and by knowing this’?¹⁸ Ἐπειδὴ μὴ ἠρκέσθη ὁ Πλάτων εἰπεῖν τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ὁμοίωσιν θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν τρόπον τῆς ὁμοιώσεως προσέθηκεν εἰπὼν ‘ὁμοίωσις δέ ἐστι δίκαιον καὶ ὅσιον γενέσθαι μετὰ φρονήσεως καὶ ταῦτα γινώσκειν’, φέρε τρία τινὰ ζητήσωμεν· πρῶτον μὲν διὰ τί προσέθηκε τῷ δικαίῳ τὸ ὅσιον, δεύτερον διὰ τί τεσσάρων οὐσῶν ἀρετῶν δύο μόνων ἐμνήσθη, δικαιοσύνης καὶ φρονήσεως, τρίτον διὰ τί εἶπε ‘καὶ ταῦτα γινώσκειν’. (Elias 18,1–8) Elias adds the phrase ‘and by knowing this’ to Plato’s text, allegedly because, he thinks, Plato is aiming to draw attention to virtues that are internalized ‘by education and work (μετὰ παιδείας καὶ πόνου)’.¹⁹ In Elias’ hands, this misquotation enables him to emphasize that gaining this rational understanding requires ‘work’: knowledge is effortful not merely theoretical on this account. Hence what separates ethical virtues from philosophical virtue is knowledge characterized as work. Attaining virtues of this rational kind makes the learner godlike through constant engagement with others, making it sit uncomfortably with the claim that knowledge is a flight from reality. For Elias, one becomes like God in different spheres of activity and therefore at different levels of virtue. Ethical, political, and spiritual virtues should each be perfected as the philosopher progresses towards greater godlikeness. These different modes of moving towards God are united, for Elias, by his account of how justice orders all the practical and theoretical virtues. Justice makes people act well with respect to other humans, and ‘someone who does not perform his duties towards men cannot perform those towards the divine’.²⁰ Godlikeness therefore requires pious philosophers to exercise practical wisdom in the domain of interhuman interactions. This unification of theoretical and practical knowledge through the godlikeness principle pervades each of the extant Prolegomena. For Ammonius (4,8–14), just as God has two powers, theoretical and practical (δυνάμεις, αἵ τε γνωστικαὶ καὶ αἱ ¹⁸ Translation Geertz 2018a. ¹⁹ Elias, 18,9. Elias did not use Plato’s ‘μετὰ φρονήσεως’ to do this work for him (as David comes close to doing). For discussion, see Geertz 2018a, 110. On this passage in the context of habituation, see Chapter 5. ²⁰ 18,23–25: οὐδὲ γὰρ δυνατὸν εἶναί τινα ὅσιον μὴ γενόμενον δίκαιον, ὥσπερ οὐ δυνατὸν τὸν πρὸς ἀνθρώπους τὰ καθήκοντα μὴ πράττοντα πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ταῦτα ἐπιτηδεύειν.

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πρακτικαί), so too our souls are two-fold. As such, the godlike philosopher desires to order both parts of the soul in an imitation of God (τῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν μιμήσει). He therefore investigates the real nature of all beings and cares for his own soul and those of others by ordering them (κοσμεῖν) appropriately. This, says Ammonius, is why Plato defined philosophy as godlikeness. He argues that Since, as I said, God’s powers are two-fold, both the intellectual and the practical, and also our soul’s powers are two-fold, the theoretical and the practical, and the philosopher wants to order each of the parts of the soul by imitating God, on the one hand investigating how the nature of each being subsists, and on the other hand ordering the affective powers of [their own] soul and taking care of others, naturally Plato determined that philosophy is becoming like God inasmuch as that is possible for a man. ἐπειδὴ γάρ, ὡς εἶπον, διτταί εἰσιν αἱ τοῦ θεοῦ δυνάμεις, αἵ τε γνωστικαὶ καὶ αἱ πρακτικαί, διτταὶ δὲ καὶ αἱ τῆς ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς, αἵ τε θεωρητικαὶ καὶ πρακτικαί, ὁ δὲ φιλόσοφος ἑκάτερον τῶν μερῶν τῆς ψυχῆς κοσμεῖν βούλεται τῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν μιμήσει, τὸ μὲν τὴν τῶν ὄντων φύσιν ὅπως ἔχει ἐπισκεπτόμενος, τὸ δὲ τὰς παθητικὰς τῆς ψυχῆς κοσμῶν δυνάμεις καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιμελούμενος, εἰκότως ὁ Πλάτων ὁμοίωσιν εἶναι θεῷ τὴν φιλοσοφίαν κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ ὡρίσατο. (4,7–14)²¹

As Japp Mansfeld has argued, ‘it is the assimilation unto God that enables and perhaps even constrains the philosopher to join theory and praxis together’.²² The philosopher is godlike in that he knows everything by knowing all being in an exercise of theoretical philosophy. But the philosopher is also godlike, as for example David argues, by creating (David 55,35–56,16). This builds on Ammonius’ claim that the philosopher is godlike by ordering (κοσμεῖν) souls and aligns with Proclus’ claim that godlikeness means participation in the providential and immediate ordering of the cosmos by the demiurge.²³ Godlikeness achieved through creativity ties divine providence to divine wisdom and makes godlikeness as central to practical philosophy as it is to theoretical philosophy. Godlikeness in the domain of knowledge requires theoretical understanding of fundamental principles, practical thought about correct action, and habituated action, akin to the creativity of a craftsman. As David put it, ‘the perfect philosopher is decorated not only with theoretical knowledge but is also glorified by practice’ (71,3–4).²⁴

²¹ See also e.g., David 44, 17–22. ²² Mansfeld 2020, 102. ²³ E.g., Proclus in Tim. ii.305.7–15. ²⁴ δεῖ γὰρ τὸν τέλειον φιλόσοφον μὴ μόνον τῇ θεωρίᾳ κοσμεῖσθαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῇ πράξει ἐγκαλλωπίζεσθαι.

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Since truth includes goodness, but goodness need not include truth, as Plato’s famous argument about the goodness of lying to a murderer proves, the good is greater than truth.²⁵ Practical philosophy is the eradication of affections and the ordering both of the individual soul, and the wider society, and is therefore equated with striving towards the good. The soul is taken to have cognitive powers (perception, imagination, opinion, discursive thought, and immediate apprehension) and vital powers (will, choice, spirit, and appetite), and where theoretical philosophy organizes the cognitive powers and thus enables the philosopher to attain godlike knowledge and truth, practical philosophy organizes the vital powers and thus promotes godlike goodness. The two are not entirely separate domains: character is shaped through theory and reason (including through the intellectual effort required of the higher practical virtues) and theoretical knowledge is only possible for a philosopher who has purified his soul and thereby removed its conceptual blinkers through the exercise of practical knowledge and the development of virtuous habits (David 74,1–6). Through the dual and interrelated work of theoretical and practical philosophy, the philosopher is lifted ‘from murky and muddy life to things divine and immaterial’.²⁶ This is understood as a fulfilment of divinely sustained human nature: everyone loves knowing, and everyone is always active in desire for the god who knows everything and is always actively caring for what it knows by enlightening them (David 55,20 ff.). The mutuality between theoretical and practical philosophy is underscored when David responds to the objection that god should be easy to see, since the divine is naturally manifest in that it autonomously preserves and communicates the light of its nature (David 46,15–26). The problem, David insists, is that like bats who cannot see the sun, our senses are unsuited to seeing the purity of the divine. The ‘mist of the body’ and our desire for ‘pleasurable indulgences’ makes it impossible for our senses correctly to perceive divine reality (David 46,24–25). We must therefore purify our soul if we are to come to know the divine. But such purification is both a theoretical and a practical problem, as we train our intellect to move from perceptions to immediate truths and order our souls both cognitively and emotionally. To know is to see clearly by removing the impediments of embodiment and by regulating the desires of the soul. Thus if philosophy’s goal is to enable the philosopher to become as much like god as possible, godlikeness has irreducibly theoretical and practical components. Knowledge is the practical action of the soul and reason shapes character. Godlikeness is thus political and providential: godlike philosophers act providentially by ordering individual souls and ordering society to enable individuals and communities to attain truth and goodness, and they simultaneously become more

²⁵ See Plato, Rep. 331c–d. ²⁶ ἡ φιλοσοφία διὰ τὸ κοσμεῖν τὰς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ψυχὰς καὶ διὰ τὸ ἐκ τοῦ ἀχλυώδους καὶ ὑλώδους τούτου βίου μεταφέρειν τὴν ψυχὴν ἐπὶ τὰ θεῖα καὶ ἄυλα (79,2–4).

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and more godlike through ever greater and more immediate knowledge of real beings, with such divine knowledge made possible through the ordering of the soul and the exercise of reason.

Godlikeness and Ideal Students and Teachers in the Prolegomena to Aristotle’s Categories According to Olympiodorus: because [philosophers] wish to enjoy the fount of goodness, there is an eagerness among us to cleave to Aristotle’s philosophy, which supplies life with the source of goodness and above all also leads the enlightened mind into accurate understanding of the things being investigated. Ἐπειδὴ πηγῆς ἐθέλομεν ἀπολαύειν ἀγαθῶν, σπουδὴ παρὰ ἡμῖν τῆς Ἀριστοτέλους φιλοσοφίας ἀντέχεσθαι, τῇ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀρχῇ χορηγούσης τὸ ζῆν, οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ καὶ φωτεινὴν διάνοιαν ποδηγούσης εἰς τὴν τῶν ζητουμένων ἀκρίβειαν. (Prol. 1,3–6)²⁷

Thus Olympiodorus identifies philosophy as the discipline which enables humans to approach the source of all good things through accurate understanding.²⁸ Later in the Prolegomena, Olympiodorus refers back to an earlier proof that the goal of philosophy is becoming like god; while this claim is not explicitly argued for in this work, it is consistent with this opening statement about the point of studying Aristotle.²⁹ For Olympiodorus, the goal of Aristotle’s philosophy is ‘knowledge of the principle of all things’ (in Cat. 9,14 ff.). Philosophy is seen to be useful inasmuch as it demonstrates that there is a single good principle which confers the quality of goodness on all existing things and which arranges the cosmos into a good and intelligible order (in Cat. 9,15–30). Olympiodorus’ contemporary John Philoponus wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Categories dated to his days as a student of Ammonius in Alexandria which closely aligns with Olympiodorus’. Like other authors in this intellectual tradition, he too defines philosophy as ‘knowledge of the principle of everything’. Philoponus understands this universal principle to be the ‘creative cause of all things’ (in Cat. 5,34–6.16). Coming to knowledge of this principle, for Philoponus, means progressively advancing in reasoning through knowledge of things that exist in time, mathematical objects, the ever self-same incorporeal substances, and

²⁷ Translations adapted from Geertz 2018a. Olympiodorus was a near contemporary of Dorotheus. ²⁸ See Chapter 2 for analysis of ἀκρίβεια in ascetic and philosophical education. ²⁹ Olympiodorus probably discussed philosophy as godlikeness is his lost Prolegomena to Porphyry’s Isagoge, as Geertz 2018a, 406 suggests.

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on finally up to the first cause of all things (in Cat. 6,2–7). Philoponus and Olympiodorus quote Plotinus’ view that such a curriculum attunes young learners on their intellectual ascent to incorporeality: ‘we should hand down mathematics to the young to accustom them to the incorporeal nature’.³⁰ Thus the nature of philosophy requires philosophers to consider all orders of reality as they progress to more pure, immaterial, and therefore godlike intellection. As in the Prolegomena to Porphyry’s Isagoge, this identification of philosophy with intellectual ascent towards a perfect metaphysical principle provides a way to order philosophical knowledge. As in Philoponus’ account, Olympiodorus argues that study of Aristotle’s philosophy moves through successively greater degrees of immateriality. Philosophical study thus follows the order of logic, ethics, natural science, mathematics, and theology.³¹ While this does not mean that the student of philosophy is to leave knowledge of physical things behind, it certainly figures progression towards greater godlikeness as the movement from physicality to immateriality, and sets contemplative, theoretical reasoning in pride of place as that which is closest to divinity and being. The notion of godlikeness helps to control what sort of qualities the ideal student should display. For Philoponus, the ideal student is ‘just, well-disposed to thinking, serious about arguments, moderate in character, and ordered in every respect’.³² The student must therefore have a naturally good nature which has been well formed in theoretical and practical wisdom. Olympiodorus recommends that students should be ‘purified’ in their souls, since ‘it is not right for the impure to touch the pure’.³³ Hippocrates agrees, notes Olympiodorus: ‘the more you feed impure bodies the more you harm them’.³⁴ Such purification requires moral reasoning, hence logic—rules and practices of rational argument—is required to enable ethical progress (in Cat. 9,5–13). As in the Isagoge introductions, the purification of the soul is figured as a process of ordering it so that it aligns with the cosmos as a whole. Thus Olympiodorus argues that the ideal student should ‘even assimilate (ἐξομοιοῦν) the parts of his soul to those of the great cosmos’ (in Cat. 10,12–13). Progression in knowledge means that the cosmos becomes ordered more naturally, as it is intended to be by the source of all order, rather than as it is perverted by unruly, affectionate, passionate souls. This argument depends on the notion that philosophy is godlike in the sense that it is creative and establishes order in a demiurgic fashion. It works at the individual and the political level: the individual soul becomes more ordered, and so the cosmos is less disorderly. But it ³⁰ παραδοτέον τοῖς νέοις τὰ μαθήματα πρὸς συνεθισμὸν τῆς ἀσωμάτου φύσεως (in Cat. 6,15–16). See also Plotinus, Enn. 1.3.3, 5–7. Cf. Olympiodorus, in Cat. 9,36–10,2. ³¹ While this ordering is consistent with his wider thought, it seems that ‘theology’ may be a later addition. See Geertz 2018a, 401–2. Compare Philoponus, in Cat. 4,36–5,33. ³² δίκαιος, εὐφυὴς τὴν διάνοιαν, σπουδαῖος περὶ τοὺς λόγους, τὸ ἦθος μέτριος, ἐν πᾶσι κεκοσμημένος (Philop. in Cat. 6,29–30). ³³ Olympiodorus, in Cat. 10,4–6; Plato, Phaedo 67b. ³⁴ Olympiodorus, in Cat. 10,7–8; Hippocrates, Aphorisms 2.10.

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is also in line with the long-running Platonic conviction that individual, social and political, and cosmic order are aligned, such that individual and political order extend the natural harmony of the cosmos to human societies.³⁵ In addition to such qualities, for Olympiodorus teachers are set apart by additional characteristics (in Cat. 10,25–35). A teacher must be a good exegete (ἐξηγηματικός) in order to explain the truth clearly (in Cat. 10,25–26). Teachers must also possess intelligence (ἐπιστημονικός), recalling the ‘enlightened understanding’ which Olympiodorus claimed as the primary benefit of philosophical study. This enables them to distinguish truth from error (in Cat. 10,26–27). Truth, rather than adherence to any single school or master, is the goal. This should not lead to mindless eclecticism (in Cat. 10,27–33): patterns and standards of truth are required. Philoponus has a similar claim. The good exegete should not be a partisan for a particular thinker, nor should they seek to harmonize previous philosophical claims from different schools in an unwarranted attempt to find coherence (in Cat. 6,31–35).³⁶ This stipulation builds on the claim that the universe is given an intelligible order by the first principle of goodness and existence, and accurate understanding means alignment of the soul with this intelligible order. Since the cosmos is so ordered, good teachers will teach truthfully when they discern innate patterns and canons of truth. The qualities of the good teacher set out by Philoponus and Olympiodorus match closely the desired character of a good student. The students’ seriousness about argument and concern for upright character is picked up in the teachers’ need to present arguments carefully and without partisanship and their need to order their teaching in line with the first principle of goodness, truth, and being. This means that the teacher is a model student, and therefore a subject worthy of imitation. The guiding assumption of philosophical education, as in other areas of late-antique education, is that students learn in part by the imitation of their teachers. Dorotheus’ monastic education shares this assumption about the need for teachers to be examples for their students, and this exemplarity is a key quality of his Instructions.³⁷

Practice of Death and Philosophical Epistemology The second definition of philosophy derived from its goal in the Introductions to the Isagoge is the claim, famously set out in the Phaedo, that philosophy is the

³⁵ See, e.g., Plato, Rep. 10 and Cicero, De Rep. 6 (Somnium Scipionis). ³⁶ Since Olympiodorus offers similar advice, this should not be interpreted as evidence for Philoponus’ Christianity or desire to undermine Neoplatonic hermeneutics. ³⁷ On the exemplarity of teachers, see Marrou 1956, 95–101; Watts 2006b, 1–21 (with a focus on Alexandria). On exemplarity in Dorotheus, see further below on epistemic guides and Chapter 5.

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practice of death. This claim is crucial too in the case of asceticism. At first glance, this claim is no less embarrassing than the apparently escapist claim that philosophy is a flight from the world in a futile attempt to become like God. The commentators are all at pains to point out that philosophical practice of death is not to be equated with mad suicide. Cleombrotus’ untimely end becomes a cautionary tale against too hasty an interpretation of this philosophical goal.³⁸ Cleombrotus had thrown himself from a wall to his death after reading the Phaedo. This is wrong because philosophers must always act in accordance with divinely created and providential order. Suicide displays, on this account, an inappropriate understanding of divine purpose and the coordinate ordering of the cosmos and individual souls within it. True knowledge is in line with divine creation and providence. Again, the order of the philosopher’s mind is to be aligned with the order of created reality, which reveals objective standards of truth. One element of this alignment, for Ammonius and others in this tradition, is recognizing the relative priority of soul over body.³⁹ The soul animates the body naturally, but may, through the improper exercise of desire, be bound to the body. By coming to know reality properly, the soul ceases to be bound by bodily needs. Therefore the practice of death should be understood as the willed separation of soul from body by the philosophical training and discipline of desire. This voluntary separation of the soul from the body while the philosopher is alive prepares the philosopher for the post-mortem natural separation of soul from body, enabling the soul to achieve perfect contemplation and rationality apart from the body. Other writers of Prolegomena build on and extend Ammonius’ distinction between the natural and voluntary separation of the soul from the body. Voluntary death is understood as the separation of the soul from the body by the purification of desire. This sort of separation makes the soul present to the body as it was providentially intended to be by the demiurge. The soul of the philosopher who practises death acts as the body’s guardian and providential carer. Such a soul, voluntarily separated from the body during life, will be ready for the immateriality of post-mortem existence. Yet the soul that comes to love the things of the body during the philosopher’s life may never be separated from the body, even after death. Body-loving souls can cultivate love of materiality forever. Such body-loving souls ‘hover around tombs after their natural death and produce shadowy phantasms . . . “bewailing their fate, leaving behind manliness and youth” ’.⁴⁰ The philosopher who practises death, by contrast, achieves well-being by ordering his body, mind, desires, and emotions in accordance with the epistemic and metaphysical structure of the cosmos, enabling the perfect operation of his mind and soul, free from the limitations of the body. ³⁸ E.g., Ammonius, in Isag. 4,18–5,4. ³⁹ Ammonius, in Isag. 4,16–5,27. ⁴⁰ Elias 13,28–31 (Geertz translation). Cf. Plato, Phaedo 81d; Homer, Il. 16.857.

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Philosophy understood as the practice of death, therefore, puts the emphasis on practical reasoning (Amm. in Isag. 6,1–24). Philosophy’s end or goal is knowledge of beings. But knowledge of beings requires concern for the discipline of the will. In this sense, understanding philosophy as the practice of death provides a necessary condition for philosophical knowledge. Ammonius argues that understanding philosophy as knowledge of beings qua being highlights the cognitive or theoretical quality of philosophy, practice of death emphasizes its practical ends, and godlikeness draws together the cognitive and the practical: Philosophy, which on the one hand has some theoretical part and on the other hand some practical part, also has a dual goal. For whenever we say that philosophy is practice of death, we define it from its practical goal, but whenever we say that it is the knowledge of beings qua beings we define it from its theoretical goal, and whenever we say that it is becoming like God insofar as is possible for mankind, we define it from both goals. ἡ μὲν φιλοσοφία τὸ μέν τι ἔχουσα μέρος θεωρητικὸν τὸ δὲ πρακτικὸν διττὸν ἔχει καὶ τὸ τέλος· ὅταν γὰρ λέγωμεν εἶναι θανάτου μελέτην τὴν φιλοσοφίαν, ἐκ τοῦ πρακτικοῦ τέλους αὐτὴν ὁριζόμεθα, ὅταν δὲ γνῶσιν τῶν ὄντων ᾗ ὄντα ἐστίν, ἐκ τοῦ γνωστικοῦ, ὅταν δὲ ὁμοίωσιν θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ, ἐξ ἀμφοῖν. (Amm. in Isag. 6,6–10)

Philosophy, Ammonius claims, has a purely theoretical form (unlike medicine, which is always mixed) (Amm. in Isag. 6,10–11). But since knowledge is always knowledge of something, any definition of philosophy needs to consider both the subject matter and the goal of philosophy. Both assimilation to God and training for death do not explicitly identify the contexts of the assimilation or the training (Amm. in Isag. 6,20–24). But both are concerned with knowledge of being qua being—the former through progressing and being drawn on to ever more perfect reasoning and apprehension of intellectual reality, the latter through purifying the soul of bodily concerns to enable it to gain clearer vision of immateriality.

Hierarchies of Knowing Understanding philosophy as assimilation to God and the practice of death entails a clear hierarchy of knowledge. The movement towards godlikeness means transferring attention from temporal and material entities towards purely conceptual immaterial being. Training for death means a living separation of the mind from materiality through the disciplining of the will. The Prolegomena are just that— introductory texts—and so do not explore this hierarchy of knowledge to its highest point. The later-Neoplatonic curriculum was ordered (in ways with a

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long history and distinctively shaped by Iamblichus) so that metaphysics and theology stood at the apex of the curriculum.⁴¹ Students were led through the study of Aristotelian and Platonic works in a set order. The Prolegomena provide evidence for this curriculum, and for its self-conscious rejection of previous Platonic attempts to order the curriculum.⁴² For later Neoplatonists, there was broad agreement that knowledge progressed through logical study, ethics (ascending through different kinds of virtue) and on to metaphysics and theology. Ten dialogues mapped out this part (Alcibiades I, Gorgias, Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Stateman, Phaedrus, Symposium, and Philebus). The curriculum was then capped off with study of the Timaeus and Parmenides, understood as the best sources for the study of natural science and theology. Within this scheme, Platonists viewed some dialogues as physical and others as theological. The curriculum was intended to move students through a hierarchy of virtues (natural, ethical, political, cathartic, and theoretical) and to lead their minds towards the highest intellectual reality. The curriculum also embodied the claim that each lower layer of virtue and intellection participates in the immediately higher level, such that there is a necessary progression through the hierarchy. This is the distinguishing feature of Neoplatonic metaphysics, which also shapes Neoplatonic ethics and epistemology: that everything participates in everything else to the appropriate degree and in the appropriate manner. This graded hierarchy in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics has direct parallels in the social and political world of late antiquity. By the sixth century, the Church had developed a graduated ecclesial hierarchy matched in complexity only by developments in imperial bureaucracy.⁴³ In each case, institutional forms are taken to reflect real ontological hierarchies in the cosmos. Breaking such hierarchy, then, is not merely to make a social faux pas. Rather, it signals a failure to understand how the world is and renders the actor powerless. The epistemic, ethical, and metaphysical hierarchy of the Neoplatonists fits students to navigate such structures.⁴⁴ There are two central claims about knowledge established by this system. First, philosophy is understood as the form of knowledge which provides sole access to the highest or most pure truths. It thus establishes philosophy’s power in relationship to other disciplines in the marketplace of education. It thereby also marks out space for philosophical expertise in the realm of politics, since the philosopher

⁴¹ For the later Neoplatonic curriculum, see Festugière 1969; Tarrant 2014; Koch 2013. ⁴² E.g., Olympiodorus, Anon. Prol. 24; Tarrant 2014, 17. ⁴³ Church: Pseudo-Dionysius, e.h. Bureaucracy: John Lydus, Mag. Other catalogues and performances of such hierarchies include the monastic Regulae and the Notitia Dignitatum. See also the Book of Ceremonies, which preserves earlier material. ⁴⁴ Ahbel-Rappe 2022 forthcoming analyses relationships between later Neoplatonic knowledge and social, ecclesial, and political hierarchies.

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is said to understand the deepest foundations of political action and has a unique ability to align political action with truth and goodness. Similarly, the Neoplatonic hierarchy of knowledge demotes knowledge of physical things and grants philosophers special authority over them. The claim that philosophical knowledge is knowledge of being qua being relativizes knowledge of materiality and temporal constructs, including historical claims. The philosopher attends to such things only to the extent that they can be understood to provide access to divinely ordered principles and natures. But in their understanding of the natures of spatio-temporal things and the principles by which they relate to each other, philosophers have a unique ability to manipulate and discipline action in space and time. Philosophers have a unique epistemic access to the providential ordering of nature and society and its associated relationships and institutions. This gives knowledge an irreducibly ethical and political character. Knowledge, in this ordered hierarchy, is impossible without the ordering of the senses, the will, and the intellect so that they perfectly align with the more general cosmic order. The Prolegomena do not set out this cosmic order and its theological foundations, because they stand at the beginning of the students’ philosophical education, before they are able to understand the deepest principles of the discipline. But the Prolegomena are nevertheless entirely consistent with advanced Neoplatonism’s larger epistemic, ethical, and metaphysical hierarchies, and their political consequences.⁴⁵ The divine perspective the sage seeks to attain enables him to order himself, others, and the wider society in ways taken to be more reasonable because they are understood as more like the divinity which guarantees the order, structure, intelligibility, and goodness of the cosmos.

The Epistemology of Dorotheus’ Pedagogy: Humility, Godlikeness, and Knowledge Having surveyed how knowledge was ordered and which ways of knowing were privileged in the philosophical classrooms active while Dorotheus was establishing his ascetic pedagogy, we are in a position to compare these different educational contexts. Most generally, there are three key epistemological intersections between Dorotheus’ classroom and the philosophical schools. First, Dorotheus joins with the philosophical tradition in a commitment to seeing theoretical and practical knowledge as mutually constitutive.⁴⁶ Intellectual effort and purification of the senses yield theoretical and practical knowledge. In this he sits in an Evagrian ⁴⁵ Baltzly 2004 explores the more complex scheme in the case of ethics. ⁴⁶ Cf. Basil, ep. 295. Basil joins the practical and theoretical by reminding monks that ‘faith’ (correct belief) and ‘works’ (ethical probity and good action) are required for the ‘perfect’ (ἄρτιος) man of God.

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tradition of monasticism which distinguishes between practical and theoretical or contemplative progress but sees both an intimately connected with each other.⁴⁷ Knowing more leads to greater virtue and greater virtue implies greater knowledge. This comes across too in his project to discipline and educate ascetic emotions: his asceticism is training for death in ways that align with the wider philosophical tradition. Second, Dorotheus shares with his philosophical contemporaries the claim that when matter, human action, and social structure are known correctly, they disclose the divine. The physical is never merely physical, and the material cosmos is divinely ordered. Third, Dorotheus agrees that greater knowledge of the created cosmos makes the knower more godlike, since the knower becomes more reasonable. Dorotheus’ epistemological hierarchies and the distinctions of Dorotheus’ monastery do not exactly match Neoplatonic ones, but the monastery is similarly concerned with order and its social consequences and gives ascetic experts new social power through its ordering of knowledge. Yet despite these substantial similarities, the differences are also striking. We find radical changes in the epistemic virtues and practices associated with attaining genuine knowledge.⁴⁸ A key motivator of these changes is Dorotheus’ debt to the long-standing Christian claim that divine transcendence implies absolute presence, rather than mere distance between materiality and the divine, as in the Neoplatonic metaphysical hierarchy. Similarly, godlikeness is reframed because monks are to imitate Christ who humbled himself rather than the Demiurgic Intellect. This means, crucially, that humility is highly valued as an epistemic virtue which unifies Dorotheus’ epistemology.⁴⁹ Humility was not a classical virtue. In Aristotelian terms it approaches the ‘small-souled’ person who contrasts with the virtuous μεγαλόψυχος (Arist. EN 1123a34–1135a39). In one passage in the Laws, Plato praises ‘lowliness and orderly behaviour (ταπεινὸς καὶ κεκοσμημένος)’ (Pl. Laws 716a). Christian authors point to this passage to find common ground (e.g., Clement of Alexandria, str. 2.22.132–3). But there is nothing in the philosophical tradition that approaches the Christian emphasis on humility. In the area of epistemology, this positive evaluation of humility results in a greater emphasis on the importance of epistemic authorities. It motivates monks to depend on others for knowledge, foregrounding the interactional element of ascetic education. The claim that God is beyond human knowledge results in the claim that knowledge of physical things will include an irreducible sense of mystery which calls for divine grace (including through sacraments) in the process Regnault and de Préville 2001, 21 see this unification as an element of the ‘middle way’ John recommends when Dorotheus writes that he wishes to become a hermit (Barsanuphius and John, resp. 314, 343–345). ⁴⁷ For Evagrius, see Harmless 2004, 347–50. ⁴⁸ Ayres 2015 identifies a similar scheme in Augustine’s case. ⁴⁹ Compare Brown 1992 on the new civic virtue of humility.

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of attaining knowledge. It means that an active dependence on God is a cornerstone of Dorotheus’ epistemology. Humility thus transforms the epistemic contours of Dorotheus’ classroom. It relativizes the activity of the individual intellect and prioritizes both communal dimensions of knowing and divine agency in every act of knowing. Dorotheus has a rich and traditional account of God’s providential plan for creation that moves from initial perfection and the fall that takes away the perfect human nature God created, through history—from prophets, incarnation, Christ’s commandments, the Church’s sacramental action—to the unification of humans with God in the restoration of human nature. Becoming like God in this narrative means being restored to creaturely perfection, because this restored human nature is able to exercise reason and act in accordance with rational conscience, which Dorotheus calls a divine spark in every person (3.40). For Dorotheus, godlikeness is also, therefore, a claim about human imitation of God. He understands humans as naturally godlike because they were created in God’s image as free, virtuous, rational, and (potentially) immortal. They actualize that image through the exercise of reason, goodness, and properly directed and moderated desire. Finally, this perfect imitation of God unites Christians to the God in whose image they were created. These three accounts of becoming like God, through restoration to original perfection, imitation of God by the exercise of perfect human nature in the image of God, and unification with God, recur throughout Dorotheus’ thought. His opening Instruction outlines the theological narrative that frames the largely ascetic-ethical teachings which follow. Created humans are endowed with secure perception and every virtue by nature, so that they could enjoy paradise in prayer and contemplation with honour and glory (1.1).⁵⁰ Since they were created in the image of God, they are by nature free, good, reasonable, and immortal. By exercising reason, humans become godlike in the imitation of divine rationality. This account of assimilation through imitation extends beyond rationality to include exercise of freedom and goodness. It includes an understanding that humans are also godlike to the extent that they can be made immortal. Human reasoning and ethical action can make monks godlike, and contemplation and good works affect the monk’s soul in ways that, we will see, extend beyond death. Yet humans are marked by the fall. They now live contrary to nature and subject to passion. This makes them unfree, lacking in godlikeness, and set in a world of pervasive error (1.1). Their created godlike image is obscured. Only a few had the true knowledge associated with their first, God-given nature, and then they attained it only externally, from the law they read from nature. The common lot of postlapsarian humanity was epistemological failure leading to the false ⁵⁰ Καὶ ἦν ἐν τρυφῇ τοῦ παραδείσου, ἐν εὐχῇ, ἐν θεωρίᾳ, ἐν πάσῃ δόξῃ καὶ τιμῇ, ἔχων σώας τὰς αἰσθήσεις καὶ ὢν ἐν τῷ κατὰ φύσιν καθὼς καὶ ἐκτίσθη (1.1.4–7).

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knowledge of idolatry, magic, and polytheism (1.1–3). Dorotheus is much less confident in human rationality than his Neoplatonic contemporaries. God is the agent of epistemic transformation at each step. He provides written law to ‘turn people’s minds’ from false knowledge, correct them, and return them to their original nature (1.2–3). The incarnation is presented as an intensification of this providential action. It restores human nature and perfects the senses (1.4).⁵¹ Restoration to human perfection in Christ is explicitly figured as epistemic renewal. Humanity is purified through baptism (1.5). This purification is spiritual and moral, and it is also epistemic. By participating in Christ-like humility in their new baptismal identity, monks overcome the perversion of their understanding (διάνοια) (1.5). The epistemic products of godlike humility are self-critique and mistrust of one’s wisdom and will, which counteracts this perversion of mind and imagination in the wake of the fall. All ‘the saints thus try to unite themselves to God through humility’.⁵² This unification is cast as the purification of the soul and the mind made possible after incorporation into Christ through baptism (1.11). This unification of the saint with God is enacted within the Christian community, paradigmatically through putting on Christ in baptism. Thus his programmatic account of the divine plan of salvation both clarifies Dorotheus’ thinking about how monks are to become godlike and ties this account of godlikeness to his ascetic epistemology. The plan of salvation means that history and the physical cosmos can reveal divine truth, and that coming to greater knowledge of such truth is an element of godlikeness. Theoretical and practical knowledge sustain and bolster each other. Knowledge of God and ultimate reunification with him through the restoration of human nature is impossible without spiritual and affective purification, as in the Neoplatonic case. Purification of will and intellect is coded as unification with God, since unification with God is restoration of the good human nature God created. The progressive purification of will and intellect results in the restoration of the true nature of humanity, the image and likeness of God. Such overlaps with the epistemic scheme set out in the Prolegomena can be multiplied. Humanity in its true nature is equipped with conscience, which Dorotheus defines as reason which illuminates the mind and enables the ethical judgement, again joining theoretical and practical understanding (3.40). An optimism about the capacity for human knowledge is justified, since nobody is without conscience (3.40). Failing to act in accordance with this reason is living the ‘muddy life’ to which the Prolegomena also refer (3.40). Errors (epistemic and ethical) quickly multiply, so one is required to pay close attention to truth, reason, and goodness in practices of self-examination (3.42). Quoting Evagrius and ⁵¹ ἀνανεοῖ γὰρ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ σώας πάλιν ποιεῖ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ὡς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐγένοντο (1.4.17–18). ⁵² οἱ ἅγιοι πάντες ἐπιστάμενοι, ἔσπευδον διὰ πάσης ταπεινῆς ἀγωγῆς ἑνῶσαι ἑαυτοὺς τῷ Θεῷ (1.11.1–2).

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building on a Platonic three-fold division of the soul, Dorotheus can argue that the soul is purified and returns to its original nature when desire is directed to virtue through well-ordered affections and the soul applies its reasoning powers to understanding created beings (17.176).⁵³ Ordering and directing the desires and affections of the soul and paying appropriate attention with the mind to the physical world is required for the restoration of human nature. This form of true human knowledge of created things is contrasted with God’s knowledge of ‘deep and hidden things, even of non-being’.⁵⁴ As in the Prolegomena, humans can know what exists whereas God’s knowledge extends beyond natural being. Hence for Dorotheus, restoration of human nature is understood as a return to created and godlike intelligence, and goodness in this scheme means greater intellectual and ethical attention, including to embodied knowledge and practice of virtue, rather than flight from the world. Considering Dorotheus’ epistemology in the framework of the divine plan of salvation identifies the key ways in which he orders knowledge and establishes epistemological hierarchies. Ascetic knowledge is divided into contemplative and practical elements which mutually inform each other. Since the physical can reveal the immaterial, Dorotheus reinforces both the difference between created reality and the creator and insists that knowledge of the former brings knowers to greater understanding of the latter. Knowledge is ordered to prioritize divine things without eliminating knowledge of real created being. Nevertheless, knowledge derived from nature is augmented first by prophetic teachings and then in a perfected and complete way by the incarnation. This means that natural knowledge is subordinated to biblical witness and divine commandments in the epistemic hierarchy.

The Practice of Death and Ascetic Epistemology Just as less hasty philosophers cautioned against following the unfortunate Cleombrotus to an untimely death, monastic authors had to make sense of asceticism as the practice of death in ways that did not equate it with a death wish. Dorotheus stands within this tradition, citing Evagrius’ Kephalaia gnostika: Evagrius also said that someone who is impassioned and is praying to God for a sooner death is like the man who, when he is sick, calls upon the carpenter quickly to shatter his bed.

⁵³ τὸ μὲν ἐπιθυμητικὸν μέρος αὐτῆς τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐφίεται, τὸ δὲ θυμικὸν ὑπὲρ ταύτης ἀγωνίζεται, τὸ δὲ λογιστικὸν ἐπιβάλλει τῇ θεωρίᾳ τῶν γεγονότων (17.176.43–46). ⁵⁴ ὁ Θεὸς τὰ πάντα γινώσκει καὶ τὰ κρυπτὰ καὶ τὰ βαθέα καὶ τὰ μὴ ὄντα (17.178.13–14).

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      Ἔλεγε καὶ Εὐάγριος ὅτι ἐμπαθής τις ὢν καὶ προσευχόμενος ταχυτέραν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τὴν ἔξοδον, ἔοικεν ἀνθρώπῳ παρακαλοῦντι τὸν τέκτονα ταχέως συντρίψαι τὴν κλίνην τοῦ ἀσθενοῦντος. (12.126.1–4)⁵⁵

But in addition to cautioning monks against seeking an untimely death, this argument also sets out a key difference between Dorotheus’ account and his Neoplatonic contemporaries. For the Neoplatonists, philosophy as the practice of death meant the voluntary separation of the soul from the body to make the soul ready for its post-mortem freedom. By contrast, Dorotheus, standing on the shoulders of Evagrius but interpreting him distinctively, argues that the body is not merely an impediment to understanding and ethical action. Rather, it is a crucial support for the soul. Evaluating embodiment more positively than other Evagrian interpreters, Dorotheus claims that the body enables the soul to escape from passion and find peace: through this body the soul is stripped of its passions and is comforted;⁵⁶ it eats, drinks, sleeps, meets with and is led away among friends. But whenever it escapes from the body, the soul and its passions are isolated and finally it is always punished by them. Διὰ γὰρ τοῦ σώματος τούτου περισπᾶται ἡ ψυχὴ ἀπὸ τῶν παθῶν αὐτῆς καὶ παρακαλεῖται· τρώγει, πίνει, κοιμᾶται, συντυγχάνει, ἀπάγεται μετὰ ἀγαπητῶν. Ἐπὰν δὲ ἐξέλθῃ ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος, μονοῦται αὕτη καὶ τὰ πάθη αὐτῆς, καὶ λοιπὸν κολάζεται πάντοτε ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. (12.126.4–9)

Dorotheus’ example is solitary confinement (12.126.15–22). He asks his students to imagine what it would be like to be locked up in a darkened cell for three days, unable to satisfy bodily needs, relate to others, or sing, pray, or remember God. In such a state, the soul would be left alone with the passions and be terribly tormented by them. The monk in solitary confinement would be like the soul without a body, and such an experience would be dangerous and terrifying. The Neoplatonic philosopher cut off from others still has his intellect, which ideally functions autonomously and independently of the body and external circumstances, although Platonists do acknowledge that bodily needs like eating, drinking, and sleeping are required for a healthy mind and soul. For Dorotheus, however, the functioning soul is also harmed by the deprivation of human contact and liturgical observance. It is darkened rather than illuminated by separation from the ascetic community. Dorotheus’ account of good embodiment means that the body contributes positively to true knowledge and virtuous action as in the Neoplatonic case.

⁵⁵ Cf. Evagrius, Keph. gnost. 4,76 (PO 28: 169).

⁵⁶ Cf. Keph. gnost. 4,82 (PO 28: 173).

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This is not to say that the body cannot improperly affect the soul and pervert the understanding or distract a monk from the life of virtue. This more common intuition that embodiment is potentially epistemically and ethically harmful is a persistent theme for Dorotheus. In his extended reflections on the Pauline claim that ‘the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Gal. 6:14) (1.13–14), Dorotheus covers much of the ground surveyed by Neoplatonic accounts of philosophy as the practice of death. The fathers, Dorotheus explains, crucified the world by accepting ascetic life and leaving behind parents, possessions, and the other competitive power exchanges that characterize social life outside the monastery. They crucify themselves to the world by struggling against all external things. The monk fights against the pleasures themselves, against desires for things, and against his own will; and he mortifies his passions and then he is crucified to the world and is deemed worthy to say with the Apostle: ‘The world is crucified to me, and I to the world’. ἀγωνίζηται καὶ πρὸς αὐτὰς τὰς ἡδονάς, πρὸς αὐτὰς τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ πρὸς τὰ θελήματα αὐτοῦ, καὶ νεκρώσῃ τὰ πάθη αὐτοῦ, τότε καὶ αὐτὸς σταυροῦται τῷ κόσμῳ, καὶ ἀξιοῦται κατὰ τὸν Ἀπόστολον εἰπεῖν· Ἐμοὶ κόσμος ἐσταύρωται, κἀγὼ τῷ κόσμῳ. (1.13.14–18)

The metaphor of crucifixion, of course, means that this form of practice of death means imitating Christ. This imitation of Christ through entering the life of the monastery, mortifying the passions, and renouncing material possessions means putting on the mind of Christ in such a way that the monk’s will is entirely aligned with Christ’s. This is the most significant force of Dorotheus’ repeated injunctions to his monks to cut off their own wills.⁵⁷ Freedom from desire is achieved by cutting off one’s own will (1.20), and this makes the monk ‘come with God into perfect freedom from passion (εἰς τελείαν ἀπάθειαν)’ (1.20.13).⁵⁸ A failure to excise one’s will is not merely an ethical problem; it also has epistemic consequences. Dorotheus illustrates this point through an exegesis of a passage from the prophet Hosea. When Ephraim completely prevailed against his adversary and went after material things and worldly power (Hos. 5:11), ‘he also trampled on his accuser, that is, his own conscience’.⁵⁹ Dorotheus then allegorizes Ephraim searching for Egypt and being captured by the Assyrians against his will. Egypt stands for the desire of the flesh which inclines the mind unreasonably to pleasure, while the Assyrians are

⁵⁷ τὸ κόπτειν τὸ ἴδιον θέλημα (1.20.5). On this motif, see Perrone 2004 and Perrone 2008. ⁵⁸ On Dorotheus’ theory of desire, see Chapter 4. ⁵⁹ τοῦ καταδυναστεύσαντος τὸν ἀντίδικον αὐτοῦ, τοῦτό ἐστι τὴν ἰδίαν συνείδησιν (13.142.3).

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      the passionate thoughts which obscure and confound the mind, and fill it with impure images, and carry it by force and against its will into sinful activity. τοὺς ἐμπαθεῖς λογισμούς, τοὺς θολοῦντας καὶ συγχέοντας τὸν νοῦν καὶ πληροῦντας αὐτὸν εἰδώλων ἀκαθάρτων καὶ φέροντας αὐτὸν βίᾳ καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον εἰς τὴν κατ’ ἐνέργειαν ἁμαρτίαν. (13.142.7–10)

That is, failure to eliminate the passions and excise one’s own will by aligning it to Christ’s means that the mind is unable to come to true knowledge. For Dorotheus as for the Neoplatonic philosophers, practice of death is required in order to come to a true understanding of the cosmos which enables effective action within it, and enacting passions clouds the mind and hinders action. Dorotheus returns to this theme and extends it by applying the frame of godlikeness in a reflection on Paul’s exhortation for Christians to ‘present [their] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [their] spiritual worship’ (Rom. 12:1) (16.167–171). In overflowing images, Dorotheus defines offering one’s body as a sacrifice as ‘walking in the spirit without fulfilling the desire of the flesh’, ‘mortifying bodies on earth’, being ‘killed all the day long, reckoned as sheep for the slaughter’, ‘not loving the world’, abandoning ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’, taking up one’s cross and following Christ, crucifying oneself to the world and the world to oneself, and crucifying ‘the flesh with its passions and desires’ (Eph. 2:3; Col. 3:5; Ps. 44:22; 1 John 2:15–16; Matt. 16:24; Gal. 5:24, 6:14) (16.168). This rich layering of biblical metaphors supports a complex ascetic concept of the practice of death. In common with the philosophical tradition, practice of death means the eradication of bodily desires, pleasures, riches, and ambitions that obscure knowledge and render virtuous action impossible (16.168–169). But the concept differs epistemically in its emphasis on ways in which reason itself is bound up in the seduction of desire. Dorotheus warns of the ‘selfish desires of the flesh and of our thoughts’ (τὰ θελήματα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν ἡμῶν) and contrasts these desires or the self-directed will with the perfect monk who walks in the spirit (πνεύματι περιπατεῖν) (16.168.3; cf. Gal. 5:16). In this scheme, true knowledge is not guaranteed by the free exercise of reason by the philosopher who has practised the voluntary separation of the soul from the body. Instead of standing at the pinnacle of philosophical knowledge, reasoning itself is revealed as one means by which the truth can be obscured. It stands below divinely given spiritual understanding. Monks are directed towards a life lived in the spirit, that is, a life conformed to the will of Christ. Crucially, the sacrifice the monk offers is conceptualized as Not living for their desires but according to the commandments of God, submitting and abandoning their wills to the command both for the love of God and

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the neighbour . . . [such that they can say] ‘It is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me.’ Μὴ ζήσαντες ἑαυτοῖς, ἀλλὰ ταῖς ἐντολαῖς τοῦ Θεοῦ ἑαυτοὺς καταδουλώσαντες καὶ ἀφέντες τὰ θελήματα αὐτῶν τῇ ἐντολῇ καὶ τῇ ἀγάπῃ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ πλησίου . . . οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός. (Gal. 2:20) (16.169.1–4, 12–13)

Just as in the case of the Neoplatonic system, understanding the goal of asceticism as the practice of death ends up aligning with the goal of assimilation to God, in this case through the monk coming to live in Christ. Again, this has implications for both theoretical and practical knowledge. The mind of a monk who becomes like God through practising death is aligned to divine spiritual understanding, while the monk also exercises practical understanding by submitting to the commandments and acting with love towards God and his fellow human beings. Dorotheus emphasizes that God created humans to be most familiar (οἰκειότατος) to God.⁶⁰ Humans are most like God because they were created in God’s image. Moreover, humans are supremely suitable for assimilation to God because, in response to the fall, Even our Lord himself dwelt with us, and took the form of a human, the flesh of a human and the mind of a human. To put it simply, he became a human in every way except sin, having made himself like humans through this. That is to say, he made humans particularly his own. Καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν ἐπιδημήσας πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἀνθρώπου μορφὴν ἀνέλαβε, σάρκα ἀνθρώπου καὶ νοῦν ἀνθρώπου, καὶ ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν, πάντα γίνεται πλὴν τῆς ἁμαρτίας ἄνθρωπος, προσοικειωσάμενος διὰ τούτου τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οἷον εἰπεῖν ἰδιοποιησάμενος. (16.170.22–26)

Dorotheus sees godlikeness as being possible and as entailing a restoration of the originally created human nature and unification with Christ, because God took on human nature and assimilated it to God, making it divine. Ascetics must strive, then, to strip away the imperfections of their characters which are a consequence of the fall, and live into the life of Christ, by taking on the divine mind and the divine spirit so that they can act with clear understanding and godlike virtue. The converse of becoming godlike through these ascetic disciplines is living a perpetual death even in one’s post-mortem existence. Dorotheus affirms that ‘you are able to understand the future affliction by how we live in this life’.⁶¹ A soul subject to passions becomes sick and weak in its nature, and thus:

⁶⁰ 16.170. Cf. Greg. Nys. hom. opif. 136A. ⁶¹ δύνασθε ἀπὸ τῶν ὧδε κατανοῆσαί πως καὶ τὴν θλίψιν ἐκείνην (12.127.2–3).

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      the impassioned soul . . . always retains the bitter memory and the painful babbling of the passions ever burning and inflaming it. ἡ ἐμπαθὴς ψυχή . . . ἔχουσα ἀεὶ τὴν πικρὰν μνήμην καὶ τὴν ἐπώδυνον ἀδολεσχίαν τῶν παθῶν καιόντων ἀεὶ καὶ καταφλεγόντων αὐτήν· (12.127.7, 8–10)

The ‘impassioned soul’ is made up of ‘impassioned thoughts’.⁶² These include memories of evil actions of a person’s soul in life. They are, Dorotheus argues, to be identified with the terrible places and punishments of hell. The saints receive illumination and joy, while sinners are doomed to ‘dark and unenlightened places, full of fear and alienation’ (12.127.21–22).⁶³ This is possible because human actions are taken to be able to cause defects in the conscience and such defects remain a troubling and painful memory after death (12.128.11–28). Dorotheus affirms that Souls remember what happens here, just as the fathers say—words, deeds, and ideas—and none of them can ever be forgotten . . . [the soul], as I said, loses none of the things which it did in this world, but keeps everything in its memory after it departs from the body. And moreover, it remembers them still more clearly and still more distinctly when it has been released from this earthly body. Πάντων γὰρ μέμνηνται αἱ ψυχαὶ τῶν ἐνταῦθα, καθὼς λέγουσιν οἱ Πατέρες, καὶ λόγων καὶ ἔργων καὶ ἐνθυμήσεων, καὶ οὐδενὸς τούτων δύνανται ἐπιλαθέσθαι τότε . . . . καὶ οὐδέν, καθὼς εἶπον, ἀπόλλει ἡ ψυχὴ ὧν ἔπραξεν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ τούτῳ, ἀλλὰ πάντων μέμνηται μετὰ τὸ ἐξελθεῖν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔτι τρανοτέρως, ἔτι φανερωτέρως, ὡς ἀπαλλαγεῖσα τοῦ γηΐνου τούτου σώματος. (12.128.11–13, 25–28)

Dorotheus explains that while the soul will forget transient and material things (e.g., houses and fields, parents and children), it always remembers its virtues and passions. Precisely what is remembered after death was controversial in the monasteries. One of the two Old Men argued that each individual passion and sin is remembered after death (12.129.1–5). Dorotheus had a somewhat more lenient interpretation, arguing that perhaps the post-mortem soul remembers only the habit (ἡ ἕξις) formed by such sinful action (12.129.5–7).⁶⁴ Thus it would not remember rare slips, but only those sinful actions which were strong or persistent enough to form a person’s character. The Old Man was not persuaded by Dorotheus’ account, even after long argument, insisting that the soul

⁶² On this central category for Dorotheus’ moral psychology, see Chapter 4. ⁶³ οἱ ἁμαρτωλοὶ λαμβάνουσι τόπους σκοτεινοὺς καὶ ζοφώδεις, γέμοντας φρίκης καὶ ἐκστάσεως. On ‘impassioned thoughts’, see Chapter 4. ⁶⁴ Cf. Origen, princ. 2.10.4; Pauli 2000, 79. On habituation, see further Chapter 5.

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‘even remembers the kind of sin, and the place and the person who sinned alongside it’.⁶⁵ Such an account places a set of strong epistemic demands on the life of the monk advancing to perfection. Dorotheus therefore prays for divine mercy (12.129.11–18) and recommends stringent and dedicated examination of one’s conscience. His students must examine themselves morning and night: how did they spend the day, and how did they spend the night? (4.52). Spiritual progress is to be considered daily, weekly, and monthly (10.111). There is a constant need to remember one’s passions and reflect on one’s progress towards ascetic perfection (10.111). Examination of conscience is demanded on epistemic grounds. The aim of examination of conscience is a humble mind (ἡ ταπεινοφροσύνη) (1.8.2). Through purging the passions and examining one’s conscience, ‘the mind is purified and by keeping the commandments it can recover its sight and arrive at its [proper] nature’.⁶⁶ It thus enables progress to higher spiritual levels through ethical and intellectual purification (1.11, 1.21). Dorotheus’ account of conscience is traditionally epistemic in that it defines conscience as an organ of theoretical and practical reason: When God made humans, at that time he planted something divine in them, so to speak a certain reasoning power, more intense and clear-sighted, and also sustaining the principle of the spark of life, illuminating the mind and distinguishing for them good from evil. This is called conscience, which is the natural law. Ὅτε ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἐνέσπειρεν αὐτῷ τί ποτε θεῖον, ὥσπερ λογισμόν τινα θερμότερον καὶ φωτεινὸν σπινθῆρος λόγον ἐπέχοντα, φωτίζοντα τὸν νοῦν καὶ δεικνύοντα αὐτῷ τὸ καλὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ κακοῦ. Τοῦτο καλεῖται συνείδησις, ὅς ἐστιν ὁ φυσικὸς νόμος. (3.40.1–5)

This divine spark of reason may be obscured, weakened, or made sick but it can never be lost or entirely eradicated, since it is divine (3.40, 3.42). This is both promise and warning, given Dorotheus’ account of post-mortem memory and the potential for sinful action to cause a defective conscience. The purpose of continual examination of conscience, including through continual attention to potential post-mortem punishment, is to ensure that the monk is properly informed by his conscience in life and is able to attain to a blessed and joyful post-mortem existence. Through this practice of self-examination, the monk enables the conscience to exercise its rational judgement and act as ⁶⁵ καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ εἴδους τῆς ἁμαρτίας μέμνηται, καὶ τοῦ τόπου καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ προσώπου τοῦ συναμαρτήσαντος (12.129.9–11). ⁶⁶ καθαίρεται ὁ νοῦς καὶ ἀναβλέπει καὶ ἔρχεται εἰς τὸ κατὰ φύσιν (1.11.10–11; cf. 6.72).

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epistemic and ethical guide. In a manner which aligns closely with Evagrian thought, examination of conscience, as in the case of continual prayer, is one mechanism from moving from practical to theoretical knowledge.⁶⁷ Through such practices, the monks’ practical knowledge becomes increasingly theoretical and contemplative. Transformation to greater godlikeness is a matter of performing acts of love towards others. But in the epistemic frame it is also a matter of the acquisition of true knowledge through contemplation. Examination of conscience, then, is a central aspect of the practice of death in the ascetic context because it enables monks to mortify the passions, discipline the sinful exercise of the will, and perform actions with humility, propelling them to higher-order contemplative understanding.⁶⁸ Through such actions, the monk’s conscience is kept strong and the soul’s memory is filled only with virtuous and truthful images, in turn enabling a greater degree of acquisition of theoretical knowledge. Since these aspects of the soul remain after death, the monk in this state has perfectly practised a good death in this life.

Humility as an Epistemic Virtue We have seen that Dorotheus is deeply influenced by accounts of the divine plan of salvation which orders claims about God and humans by prioritizing elements of the biblical narrative, from creation and fall, instructions through the prophets, recapitulation of perfect humanity in the person of Jesus, the giving of the Spirit to the Church, on to the final renewal, consummation, and perfection of all things. This narrative of the divine plan affects all of Dorotheus’ epistemological commitments. Human knowledge of truth is possible because humans are understood as having been created as rational creatures capable of grasping truth. The fall, however, means that human intellect cannot now be expected to have access to the truth on its own account, at least, not without significant moral and intellectual work to remove the sinful accretions that obscure the mind’s access to knowledge. In this process of regaining the created divine seed of reason, the ascetic knower can be certain of standards of truth, because select figures and texts are given special authoritative status within the narrative. Education into narrativity is crucial for Dorotheus, as in Bruner’s cultural account of education.⁶⁹ The narrative invests epistemic authority in divine commandments and instructions from the prophets, Jesus’ teachings, canonical writings, lives of saints understood as

⁶⁷ Evagrius, Prak. 47. Regnault and de Préville 2001, 75–7 analyse Dorotheus’ deployment of Evagrian language about contemplation and his insistence on union with God through contemplation. ⁶⁸ Cf. Stoic, Pythagorean, and later-Platonic spiritual-philosophical techniques. See Hadot 1995a, 81–144. ⁶⁹ See Bruner 1996, 39–42 and Chapter 1 above.

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instances of human alignment with God’s will and purpose for creation, and ecclesial authorities and church rituals like baptism and Eucharist. Since human society, the church, and the created world are narrative as providentially given as a means for the restoration of humans to their originally created perfect nature, there is a place for both natural knowledge and epistemic assistance and guidance from members of the community. Experience derived from created reality enables access to true knowledge, including knowledge of God. Yet within the divine plan of salvation, natural knowledge is understood as insufficient for true knowledge, since what can be understood by reason applied to experience of the natural world needs to be invested with meaning by prophetic teaching and the life of the spirit in the Church. Finally, since ultimate perfection is always dependent on God’s gracious intention, coming to genuine knowledge requires the alignment of one’s will to that of God. This narrative of the divine plan of salvation means that the intellect is understood as fallen, radically dependent on God, in need of help from others, and only capable of attaining to truth by divine assistance. This makes humility an epistemic virtue in that it shapes all ascetic acts of knowing. Since humility is the way to salvation (5.68), it is the epistemic virtue Dorotheus seeks to instil in his ascetic classroom. Humility is the sine qua non of knowledge because without it, the knower is not in the appropriate state to know anything. Given the fallen nature of humanity, the right way to perform every action is with humility (14.152–153). Humility is both the beginning and the end of knowledge: ‘humility is the perfection of each virtue and also the saints, progressing by it, come into humility’.⁷⁰ Where philosophers glory in the natural possibilities of the human intellect, Dorotheus denies that true belief can be attained through the independent exercise of human reason, and instead is concerned with educational practices that instil theoretical and practical understanding of humility. A key claim, which again prioritizes epistemic humility, is that there is always more to be disclosed to the knower, who can ultimately only come to knowledge through divine gift, as God reveals understanding to monks who are open to it. This divergence generates significant differences in educational approach, for all the shared commitments of monastery and philosophical classroom. Such a view of humility as an epistemic virtue connects Dorotheus’ thought to philosophical ideas of godlikeness and the practice of death. As an element of philosophical godlikeness, humility is the virtue that unites monks to God. Humility generates mercy, and since mercy characterizes God, humility propels monks towards godlikeness (1.11, 11.123, 14.156). Dorotheus understands Christ,

⁷⁰ ἡ τελείωσις τῆς ἀρετῆς χρῄζει τῆς ταπεινώσεως, ᾗ καὶ ὅτι φυσικῶς προκόπτοντες οἱ ἅγιοι, εἰς ταπείνωσιν ἔρχονται (14.151.45–47).

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as his teacher Barsanuphius did, as a type of humility;⁷¹ monks put on the humility of Christ on the way to godlikeness. The more one imitates the God who humbled himself, the more one is conformed to Christ. The knowledge of godlike monks participates in divine knowledge and as such displays mercy and pity arising from the knower’s humble disposition. As humans approach God more closely, they gain a greater understanding of their own imperfections, foregrounding the role of intersubjectivity in ascetic education. Thus humility is both a necessary starting point for knowledge on the way to greater godlikeness and the result of the greater degree of understanding attained as the monk becomes progressively more godlike. As monks come to know the grandeur of God ever more deeply, an ever more humble disposition is generated in their souls. Such ‘humility is Godlike and incomprehensible (θεϊή ἐστι καὶ ἀκατάληπτος)’ (2.37.19–20). Similarly, epistemic humility is required for the excision of will and passions on the way to apprehension of the truth, and since such denial of self and disciplining of emotional vices is understood as the practice of death, humility plays an epistemic role in monks engaging in the philosophical pursuit of knowledge. But if humility is unknowable, it seems that it is a problematic candidate for an epistemic virtue. Dorotheus claims that nobody can express by reason what this humility is and how it grows in the soul, unless he learns from experience; by reason nobody is able to learn it. Ταύτην τὴν ταπείνωσιν οὐδεὶς δύναται λόγῳ φράσαι πῶς ἐστιν ἢ πῶς ἐγγίνεται τῇ ψυχῇ, ἐὰν μὴ ἀπὸ πείρας μάθῃ αὐτὴν ἄνθρωπος· λόγῳ δὲ οὐδεὶς δύναται μαθεῖν αὐτήν. (2.35.19–22)

This makes it difficult to see how humility can be placed at the centre of a programme of education in how to come to knowledge. Dorotheus acknowledges the problem and attempts to provide a solution by characterizing humility as being gained through the exercise of practical reasoning. He deploys key Aristotelian terms to make the argument that moral knowledge is a matter of experience, craft, activity, and habit (ἐνεργεῖν, τέχνη, ἕξις) rather than theoretical knowledge (οἶδα, λόγος) (cf. Arist. EN 1095a3, b5). In this frame, humility can be learned initially practically if not theoretically. This argument is designed to convince members of the classical schools that learning humility is education in the same sense that doctors and sophists are educated. Monks learn humility tacitly, in the same way that doctors and sophists learn their technical skills.⁷² Just as students in these domains acquire expertise which they cannot rationally

⁷¹ For Barsanuphius, Christ ‘gave himself to us as a model of humility’ (τύπον ἡμῶν δόντος ταπεινώσεως) (resp. 455). ⁷² For ‘tacit knowledge’, see Polyani 1962, 69 ff.

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specify through performing the characteristic activities of doctors and sophists, so too monks tacitly learn humility by habituation.⁷³ Dorotheus underscores this point by arguing that nothing can be understood without practice, action, and work: For really, unless you work you cannot undertake these things by reason. What sort of man, when desiring to learn an art, undertakes it by reason alone? Certainly, at first he will keep doing and making mistakes and doing it again and rubbing it out, and so, little by little, he learns the art by hard work and persistence, with God seeing his disposition and labour and helping him. How then can we suppose to learn the art of arts without applying one’s mind to it by work? Ὄντως γὰρ ἐὰν μὴ ἐργάσησθε, λόγῳ οὐ δύνασθε ταῦτα παραλαβεῖν. Ποῖος ἄνθρωπος θέλων μαθεῖν τέχνην, λόγῳ μόνῳ παραλαμβάνει αὐτήν; Πάντως πρῶτον παραμένει ποιῶν καὶ ἀσυστροφῶν καὶ πάλιν ποιῶν καὶ ἀφανίζων, καὶ οὕτως κατὰ μικρὸν κοπιῶν καὶ ὑπομένων μανθάνει τὴν τέχνην, τοῦ Θεοῦ βλέποντος τὴν προαίρεσιν καὶ τὸν κόπον αὐτοῦ, καὶ συνεργοῦντος αὐτῷ. Ἡμεῖς δὲ τὴν τέχνην τῶν τεχνῶν λόγῳ θέλομεν παραλαβεῖν, μὴ ἐπιβαλλόμενοι ἔργῳ; (8.95.2–9)

Dorotheus insists on the necessity of practical action for gaining appropriate knowledge. His reference to the ‘art of arts’ recalls the Neoplatonic definition of philosophy as ‘the art of arts and the science of sciences’. Gregory Nazianzus had utilized this phrase in full, describing the work of guiding others in faith as a priest to the art of a physician for the body and the science of caring for souls, both in its rational choices and free motions of the will (or. 2.16–17).⁷⁴ Science is required, therefore in the priest’s primary duty, to ‘proclaim the word’, to reflect on God and teach true doctrine, and exercise judgement about true opinions (or. 2.25–48). This includes speaking of subjects such as ‘the world or worlds, matter, soul, mind, intelligent natures, the better or the worse, providence which holds together and guides the universe’ and the principle that governs it (or. 2.35 ff.). Dorotheus’ concerns are very different. He is not educating priests, proclaiming the divine word, teaching doctrine, or entering into metaphysical speculation. Rather, in omitting the reference to ‘science of sciences’ he emphasizes the importance in his educational programme of practice over against more purely rational cognition for developing ascetic perfection. As we will see in Chapter 5, ⁷³ On habituation and education, see further Chapter 5. ⁷⁴ Gregory argues that the proper activity of the priest is to ‘give the soul wings, to rescue it from the world and give it to God . . . in sum, to make a God, even of the most blessed above, a god of the heavenly order (τὸ προκείμενον πτερῶσαι ψυχὴν, ἁρπάσαι κόσμου, καὶ δοῦναι Θεῷ . . . καὶ τὸ κεφάλαιον, Θεὸν ποιῆσαι, καὶ τῆς ἄνω μακαριότητος, τὸν τῆς ἄνω συντάξεως)’ (or. 2.22). His view of the art of art and science of sciences thus also aligns with the philosophical project of achieving godlikeness.

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however, characterizing humility as being learned through habituation, like an art or craft (τέχνη), does not rule out the possibility of coming to a theoretical understanding of it, since there is a continuum between craft-knowledge and the virtues. But in his silence about the ‘science of sciences’, we should also hear a persistent and characteristic doubt about the primacy of human reasoning in the process of gaining genuine knowledge.⁷⁵ Where the classical philosophical tradition had emphasized the autonomy of reason, Dorotheus instead claims that epistemic autonomy and intellectual independence is a dangerous fiction. The humble excision of one’s own will, rather than the exercise of natural reason, brings about accurate self-knowledge and understanding of the rational and providential principles of the natural world. Knowledge is gained not independently, but as a gift of God to those who have so changed their fallen will that it can be aligned to God’s (e.g., 5.68). This alignment of the will is itself a divine gift dependent on the knowledge that one is always under divine judgement and in need of epistemic and moral support from others. In such arguments, Dorotheus’ understanding of the ongoing effects of the fall shapes the key conceptual difference between his ascetic epistemology and that of his non-Christian contemporaries. Given the fallen nature of the intellect and the will, independent thought will lead to error (2.39). The knowledge of fallen creatures is necessarily tentative, subject to revision, and prey to systems of oppression and deception. There is therefore an imperative to understand knowledge claims humbly as provisional and open to correction by epistemic guides within the community. This is the force of arguments that monks should always doubt their own judgements and rely on epistemic guides. Monks should consider others wiser than themselves (2.33). Doubt therefore plays a strong role in Dorotheus’ epistemology. Humility, in this scheme, is an intellectual habit, a correct intention, and mental or spiritual disposition towards the world, which should be present in all good action, including all good intellection. Prayer, repentance, confession, or examination of conscience must all be performed with humility. Without humility and appropriate self-doubt, ignorance and epistemically devastating self-deception hinder access to truth. This primacy of doubt and anxiety about ignorance, self-deception, and error pervade Dorotheus’ writings, often in the context of ways in which monks can fail ⁷⁵ Later ascetics, especially Hesychasts, construct prayer as the ‘science of sciences’. See Theodore the Studite, catech. parv. 95, 40–44; Niketas Stithatos, V. Sim. Nov. Theol. 35; Neophytos the Anchorite, hom. 10.65.5–10; Eustathios of Thessaloniki, De emendanda vita monachica 142,1–6; John IV Oxeites, Oratio de monasteriis 14,493–496 (defining the μοναχικὴ φιλοσοφία); Nikephoras Chomnos, ep. 83,67–71. Nicholaus of Methone, or. 4, 279,14–280,6 applies ‘science of sciences’ to the hierarchy rather than philosophy. Cf. Hesychius of Sinai, De temperantia et virtute, 19,17–24 (recognizing demonic activity); Joseph Bryennios, or. 3,59–63 (defining theology). I thank Jonathan Zecher for these references. See also Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1979, 13, 15, with reference to Hesychasm and the Jesus prayer.

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to act well. Yet Dorotheus’ concern is not merely ethical; it is also crucially epistemic. He consistently probes how intellectual and affective deficiencies can impair judgement. He insists that one’s ‘settled disposition’ (ἡ κατάστασις) is responsible for ethical and epistemological errors (ep. 1.182). Deficiencies of character lead necessarily to mistakes of perception, feeling, and understanding: three people can perceive a fourth as a potential adulterer, a robber, or as someone about to go to church; the different interpretations or perceptions arise, Dorotheus argues, from erroneous preconceptions determined by different character flaws. He explains this by analogy with physical health. Just as good food can be detrimental when ingested by a sick person and bad food need not harm a healthy person (or, indeed, in Dorotheus’ example, a healthy pig, whose body is so robust that it can benefit even from eating mud), so too a sick soul can render normally trustworthy sense perceptions and reasonable judgements doubtful and profit even from normally spiritually harmful situations (ep. 1.182). These analogies from medicine and agriculture point to a related significant difference with contemporary philosophical schools on the question of the epistemic value of agreement. Within Neoplatonism, reason is its own standard: the philosopher can be confident that the exercise of reason is easily recognizable as such. One strand of this argument is the claim that common agreement about a phenomenon is evidence for knowledge about it. This argument is explored, for example, in Plato’s Alcibiades Major (Alc. 1, 111a–d). On this account, where there is disagreement among teachers, knowledge cannot be said to be present. Where there is agreement among teachers with appropriate expertise, it is reasonable to think that knowledge has been attained. Late-antique Neoplatonists worried about this claim. Olympiodorus considered the possibility that common agreement may instead only signify mass ignorance and adopted a concept of conscience which could stand against the ignorance of the crowd:⁷⁶ [Socrates’] guiding daimon is conscience, which is the fairest peak of the soul, both blameless within us and an unwavering judge and witness of what has happened here below before Minos and Rhadamanthys. This is also the cause of salvation for us. δαίμονα τὸ συνειδὸς ὑπάρχειν, ὅπερ ἄκρον ἄωτόν ἐστι τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ ἀναμάρτητον ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ ἀκλινὴς δικαστὴς καὶ μάρτυς τῶν ἐνταῦθα γινομένων τῷ Μίνωϊ καὶ τῷ Ῥαδαμάνθυϊ. τοῦτο δὲ καὶ σωτηρίας ἡμῖν αἴτιον γίνεται. (Olympiodorus in Alc. 23,2–5)

Olympiodorus translates the Platonic ‘guiding spirit’ or ‘daimonion’ which famously informed Socrates as ‘conscience’ (τὸ συνειδὸς) and argues that this divinely ⁷⁶ See Westerink 1962, XVIII–XIX.

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planted seed of reason, the most pure part of the soul, is incapable of deviating from the truth. It is this faculty which grounds a philosopher’s knowledge. Dorotheus’ account of this faculty of reason (to which he refers using the terms ἡ συνείδησις or ἡ σύνεσις), closely parallels Olympiodorus’. For Dorotheus, conscience is a divine rational seed which makes knowledge possible and can provide a trustworthy account of a person’s actions even after death. His account therefore matches Olympiodorus’, while Olympiodorus’ use of language of salvation, together with his greater concern with the possibility of deception and ignorance even in the case of common agreement of specialists, may also suggest that the Neoplatonic account is being shaped, by the sixth century, by epistemic concerns within Christian communities. Yet Dorotheus’ doubt is more thoroughgoing. He rejects the identification of a spiritual guide like that to which Socrates laid claim as a trustworthy ground for knowledge. In his account, while the reasoning power of conscience can seem to monks as though it is exercising epistemic virtues like discretion, prudence, wisdom, and knowledge, this appearance of sound reasoning may be deceptive. Trusting one’s own thoughts gives an opportunity for the devil to introduce error (5.66). The intellectually humble monk should, with Dorotheus, say to their reasoning power (ὁ λογισμός): Let them be anathema, your judgement, your conscience, your understanding, and your knowledge, because whatever you know, you know from the demons. Ἀνάθεμά σοι καὶ τῇ διακρίσει σου καὶ τῇ συνέσει σου καὶ τῇ φρονήσει σου καὶ τῇ εἰδήσει σου, ὅτι ὃ οἶδας, ἀπὸ δαιμόνων οἶδας. (5.66.16–18)

Humility thus acts epistemically to make monks aware that error may seem reasonable. Knowing accurately thus demands that monks constantly doubt their own intellectual capacity, being thrown continually back to the humble recognition of their imperfection. This does, however, put Dorotheus in a bind. He does not subscribe to scepticism: monks are able to recognize and gain access to truth, partly because their souls have reason planted within them, partly because God reveals the truth to those who are obedient, and partly because the community is given trustworthy epistemic guides. He cannot, with Olympiodorus, rely on a faculty of conscience against the ignorance of the many, because this reasoning power could itself be perverted.⁷⁷ He seems instead to fall back on the agreement of spiritual experts. He will not, he says, follow his own reasoning power without a process of seeking ⁷⁷ John of Gaza sometimes gives conscience a stronger role. He advises Dorotheus that all nondemonic judgements and actions must align with conscience (resp. 275). Nevertheless, both Barsanuphius and John generally share Dorotheus’ scepticism about the autonomous exercise of reason.

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advice (ἄνευ ἐπερωτήσεως), including consultation with an elder within the monastery (5.66.12–30). Monks, in Dorotheus’ account, must rely on acknowledged experts within the monastic community as guides for and a check on their own attempts to gain knowledge and act well. The nature of expertise required, however, is distinctive. Some within the community are acknowledged as experts because they have demonstrated not advanced reasoning capacity but because they are recognized as having successfully excised their own will and demonstrated obedience to divine commands.⁷⁸ Their authority in the domain of reason is, therefore, based upon their exemplary epistemic humility. Like the notable provincial who feels out of place in larger towns or the imperial court, approaching God generates humility (2.34). Hence the primary Neoplatonic philosophical metaphor of ascent to royal glory through the exercise of sovereign reason is modified in Dorotheus’ epistemic account by a corresponding movement to humble dependence on epistemic authorities who are acknowledged as such because they most clearly display the epistemic virtue of humility. This move governs ascetic epistemic education. The fact that reasoning is to be constantly open to judgement and subject to suspicion, and the primacy of practical understanding in ascetic knowledge, leave room for deep intellectual understanding, even as they emphasize that such intellectual knowledge is very difficult to come by. Take, for example, Dorotheus’ account of the education of his famous student Dositheus. Dositheus exemplifies humble obedience. This humble obedience purifies his mind and soul and transforms him so that he becomes fit for paradise. Crucially, it enables him to understand the spiritual meaning of scripture.⁷⁹ Yet, we are told, Dorotheus judges that Dositheus has not yet acquired sufficient humility to come to a more perfect understanding: ‘he did not want [Dositheus] to apply his mind to these things yet, but rather to be guarded more by humility’.⁸⁰ Further practice in humility is required before Dositheus’ mind will be ready for genuine knowledge. Dorotheus’ judgement is confirmed, because Dositheus does not know why Dorotheus will not teach him the spiritual meaning of scripture and he cannot exercise proper judgement.⁸¹ The implication is that only someone without sufficient humility would fail to understand that they are not ready for deeper instruction. In this example we see both the centrality of humility for knowledge in Dorotheus’ scheme, opening up new social roles for people with expertise which would not have been recognized as such in other forms of late-antique education,

⁷⁸ This possibility is partly open because Dorotheus thinks of monastic skill as a craft. See further Chapter 5. ⁷⁹ ἤρξατο γὰρ ἀπὸ καθαρότητος νοεῖν τινα τῆς Γραφῆς (V. Dos. 12.2–3). ⁸⁰ Ὁ δὲ οὐκ ἤθελεν αὐτὸν τέως εἰς ταῦτα ἐπιβάλλειν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον διὰ τῆς ταπεινώσεως φυλαχθῆναι (V. Dos. 12.3–4). Compare Palladius’ report that he learned from Evagrius both spiritual interpretation of the Bible and to be continually wary that apparent knowledge may be deceptive: hist. Laus. 105.4–7. ⁸¹ μηδὲν νοήσας . . . μηδὲν διακρίνας (V. Dos. 12.6,8).

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and ways in which prioritizing epistemic humility could reinforce power differentials within the monastery and be used as a disciplinary mechanism. Dositheus will soon discover how epistemic humility and discipline go together in monastic education, as Dorotheus sends him to the abbot, where he gains greater humility through rough treatment (V. Dos. 12.14). Corporal punishment was a feature of Dorotheus’ monastery, even if it did not reach the level recorded elsewhere, but that punishment was limited to the Abbot, a clear way of establishing power relations within the monastery in general, and its educative functions in particular.⁸² In Dositheus’ case, the punishment works pedagogically both through generating greater understanding and by inscribing power relations within the monastery. Dositheus realizes the need for greater humility on the way to greater illumination. This recognition makes Dositheus worthy of his place among the saints, where the reader sees him, through the eyes of a noted holy man, by the end of the narrative. Epistemic humility is also the generating virtue for the demanding examination of conscience which Dorotheus repeatedly teaches is required because monks must not trust themselves (4.54, 5.66). Confession enables accurate knowledge of God’s word (5.65). Salvation is made possible through much ‘counsel’ (5.61), and after God and the Bible, monks should seek out guides to help them understand the world and act rightly in it (5.61). In all these cases, the epistemic aim is to make sure that monks exercise epistemic humility so that they do not seek to justify their own knowledge and thereby deceive themselves that they have things properly worked out (5.62). It also points to the importance of the monastic community in providing epistemic guidance. Dependence on others is required since it acts as a check on sinful autonomy. Dorotheus harnesses the image of the Church as a body to argue for the co-dependence of its members, since, as Paul put it, ‘we are individually members of one another’ (Rom. 12:5) (6.77.15). At its base, of course, this is a Christological metaphor. That is, the unity of the body of Christ in the world implies that the body is conformed to divine goodness and truth. As Dorotheus puts it: Consider for me that this circumference is the world and that God is the centre of this same circle. Let us further suppose that the straight radius lines from the circumference to the middle are human civic lives. As far as the saints, desiring to approach God, move inward in proportion of the path, they become near God and each other. To the extent that they draw near to God they draw near to each other, and to the extent that they draw near to each other, they draw near to God . . . . and insofar as we are united to our neighbour, we are united to God.

⁸² See further Flusin 2006, 400–1. See Chapter 4, on punishment and fear in educational contexts.

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Τοῦτον τὸν κύκλον νομίσατέ μοι εἶναι τὸν κόσμον, αὐτὸ δὲ τὸ μέσον τοῦ κύκλου τὸν Θεόν, τὰς δὲ εὐθείας τὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ κύκλου ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον τὰς ὁδοὺς ἤτοι τὰς πολιτείας τῶν ἀνθρώπων. Ἐφ’ ὅσον οὖν εἰσέρχονται οἱ ἅγιοι ἐπὶ τὰ ἔσω ἐπιποθοῦντες ἐγγίσαι τῷ Θεῷ κατὰ ἀναλογίαν τῆς εἰσόδου, πλησίον γίνονται τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ἀλλήλων· καὶ ὅσον πλησιάζουσι τῷ Θεῷ, πλησιάζουσιν ἀλλήλοις, καὶ ὅσον πλησιάζουσιν ἀλλήλοις, πλησιάζουσι τῷ Θεῷ . . . . καὶ ὅσον ἑνούμεθα τῷ πλησίον, τοσοῦτον ἑνούμεθα τῷ Θεῷ. (6.78.6–14,24–25)

This image of humans coming closer to God by coming closer to each other emphasizes human mutual dependence. Such a view again reinforces the epistemic role that humility plays in this process, since greater knowledge is associated not with autonomous exercise of reason but with epistemic interdependence. As the first saying attributed to Dorotheus states, ‘it is impossible for someone holding to his own intelligence or his own reason to be obedient or attend to the good of his neighbour’.⁸³ Conversely, deeper knowledge of God means coming to know and serve one’s neighbour more perfectly. This also helps to explain Dorotheus’ insistence that the soul made in the image of God seeks to know created beings (17.176). The epistemic role for the community in Dorotheus’ account is distinctive. It makes knowledge a shared intersubjective activity, generated through the exercise of humility, dependent on communal practices and interactions, secured through institutionalized structures of epistemic authority in the monasteries, and attained in shared desire for God.

Humility and Epistemological Authority Humility, understood as a coordinating epistemic virtue, therefore draws attention to distinctive practices that shape the learning experience of monks in Dorotheus’ monastery. The epistemic virtue of humility generates several interrelated ways of going about attaining knowledge and establishes disciplinary practices within the monastery. I now offer two case studies to explore these intersecting ideas and practices, focusing on the construction of epistemological authority. First, I explore epistolary practices in the monastery to elucidate mechanisms of epistemic authority and dependence and the shaping of subjectivity through ascetic education. Second, I investigate how the epistemic virtue of humility shapes the educative role of reading and meditation practices in Dorotheus’ monastery.

⁸³ ἀδύνατόν ἐστι τὸν ἔχοντα ἰδίαν σύνεσιν ἢ ἴδιον λογισμὸν ὑποταγῆναι ἢ ἀκολουθῆσαι τῷ καλῷ τοῦ πλήσιον (Sententiae 1).

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Letters to and from the Old Men The substantial collection of letters of the two holy men associated with the monastery at Thawatha provides a fascinating glimpse of life within the monastery and across a range of social groups in Gaza and its surrounds and offers evidence for the creation and maintenance of epistemic authority through processes of education in the monasteries. Letters from Barsanuphius or John respond to a question or questions from the monastic or lay interlocutor. These questions are included in the collection, with some degree of abridgement, immediately before the relevant response from either Barsanuphius or John. The collection thus approaches question-and-answer literature, another literary form which was commonly used in late-antique education in ways that established epistemic canons, chains of authority, and boundaries of disciplines across a range of specialisms.⁸⁴ The letters are themselves evidence for the flowering of epistolography across different settings in late antiquity that built on established conventions of Greek and Roman letters and was put to service within new Christian institutional forms.⁸⁵ It is most productive to focus on the function of letters rather than seeking to determine generic characteristics, especially given the versatility of ancient letters. Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil have identified key epistolographic functions in late-antique Christian communities.⁸⁶ In their scheme, Christian letters may provide spiritual, pastoral, and mystical advice, they may serve administrative functions for popes, bishops, and in the context of conciliar activities, and they can be used for dogmatic or polemic purposes.⁸⁷ Allen and Neil treat the letters of Barsanuphius and John under the first category of spiritual advice, further categorizing the letters as standing within a tradition of monastic letter writing, where there are significant examples, for example, from Evagrius, Jerome, Basil, Gregory the Great, Nilus of Ancyra, Antony of Egypt, Isidore of Pelusium, and John Rufus.⁸⁸ Such advice literature stands also in a well-developed philosophical tradition, where letters were chosen as the medium for working through philosophical problems and teaching philosophical dogmas, for example in the Platonic letters or those of Epicurus or Seneca. While the letters of Barsanuphius and John rarely touch on advanced topics, they do have a strongly pedagogical function which aligns them with this broader tradition. ⁸⁴ Papadogiannakis 2006. ⁸⁵ See Allen and Neil 2015; Allen and Neil 2020; Sogno, Storin, and Watts 2017; Zelzer 1994; Zelzer 1997. On classical letters, see Trapp 2003; Gibson 2012. ⁸⁶ Allen and Neil 2020. ⁸⁷ Allen and Neil 2020, 12–23. ⁸⁸ Allen and Neil 2020, 85–9. Lorenzo Perrone has perceptively drawn on the letters of Barsanuphius and John to argue that ascetic Christianity permeated ‘every realm of existence’ in society in Gaza. See Perrone 2012. Hevelone-Harper 2017 provides a rich overview of the collection. On the central requirement for advice in Gazan monasticism as exemplified in the correspondence, see Perrone 2004. For guidance by authoritative spiritual experts, see Perrone 2006. For other monastic letter writers, see Isidore de Péluse (ed. Évieux and Vinel 1995) and Larsen 2017b (Isidore of Peleusium); Rubenson 1995 (St Antony); Darling Young 2015 (Evagrius).

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Around 10 per cent of Barsanuphius and John’s letter collection preserves exchanges between the two Old Men and Dorotheus (resp. 252–338).⁸⁹ The series of letters records aspects of Dorotheus’ own monastic education and development in leadership, although a feature of the series is that while there are glimpses of spiritual development, there is no consistent sense that the letters demonstrate increasing spiritual perfection on Dorotheus’ part. The final letters touch on the problem of attachment to material things, which is close to the problem of how and what to donate of one’s possessions on entering the monastery with which the series starts (resp. 252, 335–338). That is to say, the series cannot be read as an exemplum of spiritual development. Rather, it is a sustained case study of spiritual struggle, covering a range of topics that may have been (or may have been intended as) useful for other monks in their own self-examination or for other spiritual directors or ascetic educators in constructing their own advice. Several characteristics of late-antique letters help them to establish epistemic, ethical, and spiritual authority. Most importantly, letters were understood as performative. Performance is a common trope of classical epistolography. In the Gazan rhetorical schools, for example, Aeneas of Gaza explicitly played on the performative potential of epistolography, describing one letter as a theatre (θέατρον) which arouses applause (Aeneas, ep. 16), while Procopius regularly refers to his flashy performances of rhetoric in the style of the second sophistic which arouse applause, even as he seeks to shift the persona of the orator from showman to patron and skilled healer, advocate, or comforter, offering assistance ‘with the medicine of philosophy (τοῖς φιλοσοφίας φαρμάκοις)’.⁹⁰ In Barsanuphius and John’s letters, the traditional rhetorical display shifts still further away from virtuoso and self-promoting performance, replaced instead with a rhetoric of humility, moderation, and restraint which also presents, as in the case of Procopius, as a means of healing, consolation, correction, and wise advice. Nevertheless, an element of performance remains, as the letters become a stage on which the spiritual struggles of monks and laypeople can be made immediate and subjected to scrutiny. The letters may be read as a cultural product that externalizes correspondents’ internal spiritual contests and can then be used as exemplary and to sustain traditions within monastic education. The letters are also performative in that they bind the spiritual guide to his disciples. When the Old Men write about these bonds, they strengthen them and underline the institutionalized hierarchies of the monastic community. They therefore establish a sense of community and social order within the monastery.⁹¹

⁸⁹ Neyt 1969. Hevelone-Harper speculated that Dorotheus collated the letters. ⁹⁰ E.g., Procopius, epp. 18, 125. See also Westberg 2017, 404–5. ⁹¹ On the performativity of late-antique Christian letters, see Allen and Neil 2020, 71. Conybeare 2000, 12, explores how letters create ecclesial community.

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This common community is created in part through biblical interpretation, which had long been a central aspect of ascetic intellectual culture, for example through commentaries or scholia on biblical passages.⁹² As in any ‘textual community’, authoritative interpreters help to shape the community through their exegesis and teaching.⁹³ Evagrius had earlier defined the ascetic teacher’s primary function as the interpreter par excellence of scripture. Teachers must ‘know the ways of divine scripture and establish them, as far as possible, with examples’ (Gnost. 10). The advice Dorotheus receives is often given in the voice of a biblical passage, consisting of a statement of a key text together with an ascetic interpretation of it. Barsanuphius and John, like Dorotheus in his own educational writings, range widely across the Old and New Testaments, with a preference for New Testament interpretation.⁹⁴ Dorotheus is urged to act as the apostles did with respect to his possessions (resp. 252); denial of self and excision of the will is ‘taking up the cross’ and following Jesus (resp. 257). Through such advice, the everyday life of the monastery is written into biblical narratives: the biblical past becomes the ascetic present, and the experience of the monks is made sense of and becomes meaningful through biblical stories.⁹⁵ Barsanuphius motivates Dorotheus to endure spiritual testing and struggle by reminding him of phrases that he can assume Dorotheus meditates upon from the Psalms and Wisdom literature, and he reassures him that such testing will not be beyond his strength with reference to Pauline texts (resp. 258).⁹⁶ Meditation on the Psalms stands in a long tradition of ascetic reflection on biblical texts which were explicitly understood as prefiguring and modelling the incarnate Christ’s politeia.⁹⁷ Monks could inscribe the narrative of the Psalms on their own souls through the embodied sensory experience of chanting and thus come to imitate Christ’s way of life and correct thoughts, dispositions, and behaviours which are inconsistent with the divine model presented by the text.⁹⁸ We may also see the injunctions to recite the Psalms as connected with the Palestinian development of Catena on the Psalms, just as meditation on sayings literature helped influence the development of written collections of Apophthegmata.⁹⁹ There is a close connection between the orality of instruction in the monasteries, itself supported by monks educated in Greek literature, and the production of literary texts of Palestinian monasticism which would go on to have a long afterlife in ascetic education in other contexts. ⁹² See Burton-Christie 1993; Perrone 2008; Stewart 2003, 263–8; Torrance 2016. For Evagrius’ scholia, see Géhin 1987. ⁹³ Stock 1983 and see Chapter 2. ⁹⁴ In resp. 252–338, there are 74 direct references to the New Testament, distributed across 18 books; and 28 references spread across 10 books of the Old Testament. The New Testament references are weighted towards the Synoptics, which account for about half of the citations. ⁹⁵ See further Perrone 2008 and Chapter 5 on the temporality of exemplarity. ⁹⁶ The letter encloses assurances from 2 Tim. 2:5 and 1 Cor. 10:13 with phrases Barsanuphius knows Dorotheus recites from Ps. 25:2, Ps. 26:3, Ps. 22:4, Eccl. 10:4. ⁹⁷ See Athanasius, ep. Marcell. 10, 14. See further Stewart 2011b, 191–2. ⁹⁸ Athanasius, ep. Marcell. 12 with Stewart 2011b, 192. ⁹⁹ See Catena on the Psalms 1972.

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Barsanuphius and John are regarded as authoritative guides in part because of their expertise in biblical interpretation. Biblical meditation upon texts is central in the formation of monastic community and individual monks.¹⁰⁰ This mirrors Dorotheus’ own weaving of biblical texts through his own ascetic educational programme. Holiness is associated with sound biblical interpretation. The letters, like Dorotheus’ Instructions, are authoritative in part through their performance of exegetical expertise. Barsanuphius elsewhere goes so far as to claim that his advice to his interlocutors contains the wisdom of ‘all the books of the Bible’ (resp. 32). The series of letters between Dorotheus and Barsanuphius and John also perform spiritual advice from authoritative monastic teachers and saints. The letters quote from Apophthegmata liberally and record advice from influential local holy men (Isaiah of Scetis and Zosimas) and Basil’s Asceticon, which may also be conceived as question-and-answer literature.¹⁰¹ The letters do not merely describe the advice of earlier teachers. Rather, sayings from acknowledged experts of monasticism are put in their mouths and become their own advice to their new interlocutors.¹⁰² Dorotheus’ concerns about how much money he should donate are staged as stories about Abba Isaiah (resp. 252). The letters commonly perform the sayings of ‘the fathers’ and interpret them authoritatively.¹⁰³ On some occasions, the correspondence literally unites the voice of Barsanuphius and John to earlier holy men by ventriloquizing—echoing without explicit reference—from Apophthegmata (e.g., resp. 256). In this key, performance of the sayings thus casts Barsanuphius and John as earlier desert holy men. The sayings are not used, in this key, merely to remember the wisdom of earlier ascetics, or to connect Palestinian monks to their Egyptian forebears. Rather, the ‘ancient’ wisdom is transposed into a new context and adapted to the contemporary needs of the Palestinian monasteries. The epistolary performance of prayer is a central mechanism for this mediation of tradition. Prayer applies the advice of the earlier tradition of holy men to the immediate spiritual experience of the correspondents so that it functions to affect their thoughts and actions. It thus renders the tradition efficacious in the present. John affirms that ‘much power arises from this place through the prayers of the genuine servants of God for us all’ and then immediately turns to prayer for Dorotheus, exhorting him ‘to fasten his boat to the ship of [his] fathers’

¹⁰⁰ See further below, on ‘Reading and Meditation’. See also Perrone 2008, 404–9. ¹⁰¹ In the series of letters to Dorotheus, sayings from nine desert holy men are recorded (Antony (1), Sisoes (1), Arsenius (1), Agraphon (1), Poemen (7), Euprepios (1), Nau (2), Nisteros (2), John the Dwarf (1)). Abba Isaiah is cited three thrice, Basil twice, and Zosimus once. See Chryssavgis 2003. ¹⁰² Harmless 2000, 512–18 has characterized this as a ‘spirituality of memory’, tracing it to representatives of fourth-century ascetic spirituality such as Antony and Evagrius. ¹⁰³ See, e.g., resp. 287, cf. Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Poemen 147; resp. 316, cf. Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Poemen 123.

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(resp. 261).¹⁰⁴ The efficacy of the prayers of John and Barsanuphius are assured since they are figured as the prayers of the saint, while it also establishes a close connection between the holy men and the God whose mercy their prayer invokes.¹⁰⁵ Across this literary and oral interpretation of scripture, the key exegetical movement is anagogical, with the biblical texts ideally serving to elevate the monk to ever greater spiritual perfection on the way to godlikeness.¹⁰⁶ One way in which this is achieved is through applying typological readings of biblical passages to the lives of holy men, partly by interweaving passages from the Bible with sayings literature.¹⁰⁷ In this way, the sayings of the fathers, biblical passages, and the letters themselves effect ascetic transformation and perfection. Barsanuphius makes this claim explicitly: I have written to you from the alpha to the omega, from the initial education of your character to its completion, from the start of the road to its end, from the ‘stripping off the old self with its desires’ to the putting on the new man ‘created according to God’, from becoming alien to the perceptible to becoming a heavenly citizen and heir of the promises of the intelligible world. Ruminate upon my letters, and you will be saved, for in these letters you have, if you understand, the Old and New Testaments. And in being mindful of these, you have no need of any other book. ἐγράφη σοι γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἄλφα ἕως τοῦ ὠμέγα, ἀπὸ ἀρχαρίου καταστάσεως μέχρι τοῦ τελείου, ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς τῆς ὁδοῦ μέχρι τοῦ τέλους αὐτῆς, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐκδύσασθαι τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον σὺν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις αὐτοῦ μέχρι τοῦ ἐνδύσασθαι τὸν νέον, «τὸν κατὰ Θεὸν κτισθέντα», ἀπὸ τοῦ γενέσθαι τῆς γῆς ἀλλότριον τῆς αἰσθητῆς, γενέσθαι δὲ οὐρανοπολίτην καὶ κληρονόμον τῆς νοητῆς γῆς τῶν ἐπαγγελιῶν. Μαρύκησον εἰς τὰς ἐπιστολὰς καὶ σῴζῃ, ἔχεις γὰρ ἐν αὐταῖς, ἐὰν συνιῇς, τὴν Παλαιὰν καὶ τὴν Καινήν. Καὶ νοῶν αὐτάς, οὐ χρείαν ἔχεις ἄλλου βιβλίου. (resp. 49)¹⁰⁸

As Alexis Torrance has argued, this does not replace the Bible with Barsanuphius’ letters, though it does lend Barsanuphius significant epistemic and spiritual authority. Rather, it is evidence for a view of scripture as essential for progress in the life of faith, so that other texts which perform the same function (a function Barsanuphius claims for his letters) can themselves come to be understood as scriptural, in that they perform a similarly anagogical function in bringing their

¹⁰⁴ Πολλὴ δύναμις ἀνέρχεται ἐκ τοῦ τόπου τούτου, ἀπὸ τῶν εὐχῶν τῶν γνησίων δούλων τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑπὲρ πάντων ἡμῶν . . . δῆσόν σου τὴν ὁλκάδα τῷ πλοίῳ τῶν Πατέρων σου. ¹⁰⁵ Compare exchanges in resp. 257, 259, 265, 276, 305. A similar textuality characterizes Dorotheus’ own Instructions. ¹⁰⁶ See further Torrance 2016, 69–70. ¹⁰⁷ See further Torrance 2016, 70, 78–9. ¹⁰⁸ See further Torrance 2016, 74–6; Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 124–5.

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addressee to ever greater perfection.¹⁰⁹ The letters are like biblical texts which can transform the lives of monks towards greater godlikeness. The performance of biblical exempla, prayer, and the Apophthegmata by Barsanuphius and John thus forms and transforms ascetic subjectivity, both of the two Old Men and their interlocutors. In bringing God close to the monks, the letters transform the correspondents by writing them into biblical and ascetic narratives of perfection. Barsanuphius and John play the part of holy ascetics, expert exegetes, and mediators of the divine word through prayer and interpretation and thereby become themselves spiritual authorities for their community. The performance of the authoritative biblical and ascetic sayings makes present the holiness of monastic authorities and creates new authoritative voices within the ascetic (and lay) community of Gaza and its surrounding region. This function of letters to make present, bridge distance, and transform personae gives them a sacramental character, since they make God present to the interlocutor through the gift of the letter.¹¹⁰ This element of epistolography in the monastic context strongly associates Barsanuphius and John themselves with divine presence and is a key element of the construction of their authority within their community. The series of letters responding to Dorotheus forges clear connections between letters and divine presence, underscoring this sacramental quality. Barsanuphius and John are authoritative guides because they are understood as means of access to God. Repeatedly, Dorotheus asks the Old Men, for example, for ‘strength from God’, and receives it in the form of the return letter (e.g., resp. 268). Barsanuphius’ protection of Dorotheus for the salvation of his soul remains forever, even after death, just like Christ’s for the disciples (resp. 274). Barsanuphius and John each assure Dorotheus that God will support him in his monastic training, sometimes through remembering the name of the holy man (e.g., resp. 263). For example, Barsanuphius affirms that ‘our hand and our heart are with you; indeed, the hand of God is with you, for through our prayer we beg God for the salvation of your soul’ (resp. 330).¹¹¹ The prayer of the holy man in the letter is figured as making God present to Dorotheus. Each holy man reinforces the authoritative access to divine truth of the other: Barsanuphius claims that John only speaks what God tells him to (resp. 265), and John similarly affirms Barsanuphius’ spiritual authority (e.g., resp. 263). The unity of members of the monastic body of which we have seen Dorotheus write, intensified as monks advance closer to God, is also ¹⁰⁹ Torrance 2016, 75–6. ¹¹⁰ Conybeare 2000, 41–59 has argued cogently for the sacramental character of the letters of Paulinus of Nola. See also Allen and Neil 2020, 38, who cite Ebbler 2009, 273, arguing that the letter can embody the presence of the absent God. Ebbler 2012 foregrounds Augustine’s strategy of using letters for something akin to ascetic penitential discipline and correction. Dorotheus, Barsanuphius, and John also use letters in this way to create and maintain mechanisms of authority. Altman 1982 explores how letters bridge distance while offering a masked presence. ¹¹¹ ἡ χεὶρ ἡμῶν καὶ ἡ καρδία μετὰ σοῦ ἐστι, μᾶλλον δὲ ἡ χεὶρ τοῦ Θεοῦ, τοῦ παρακαλουμένου παρ’ ἡμῶν διὰ τῆς εὐχῆς ὑπὲρ τῆς σωτηρίας τῆς ψυχῆς σου.

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figured in the correspondence. Alluding to St John’s gospel (John 17:21), John writes that If all of us are one, as I may dare to say, both the Old Man in God [Barsanuphius] and I with him, then if he gave you his word, I too, give you mine through him. I know that I am weak and of the least account, but nevertheless I am not able to separate from the Old Man. For he is merciful toward me so that the two of us are one. Εἰ ἕν ἐσμεν οἱ πάντες, τολμῶ λέγειν, ὁ Γέρων ἐν τῷ Θεῷ, κἀγὼ σὺν αὐτῷ, εἰ αὐτὸς ἔδωκέ σοι λόγον, κἀγὼ δι’ αὐτοῦ. Οἶδα ὅτι ἐγὼ ἀσθενής εἰμι καὶ ἐλάχιστος, ἀλλ’ ἀποστῆναι τοῦ Γέροντος οὐ δύναμαι. Ἔλεος γὰρ ποιεῖ μετ’ ἐμοῦ, τοῦ εἶναι τοὺς δύο ἕν. (resp. 305)

This unity between the Old Men of Gaza is one foundation of their epistemic, moral, and spiritual authority, and it extends to their strong affirmation of the abbot’s authority.¹¹² The institutionalization of authoritative guides within the monastery is cemented by this performance of unity. The rhetoric of humility establishes the authority of the two old men. It confers authority upon them both because in displaying humility themselves they demonstrate the probity of their advice and because their interlocutors must themselves submit to the advice given that humility is prioritized in the process of ascetic education. Dorotheus himself, John will later advise, should not educate others with the independence and autonomy of a teacher, but as one who humbly transmits knowledge from authority figures such as the abbot or the fathers (resp. 290). Thus humility functions to set limits on perspectives and maintain chains of authority in ascetic teaching. Like Dorotheus, Barsanuphius and John therefore emphasize the importance of humility in gaining knowledge. Humility, in its affective and cognitive contours of mourning, excision of the will, uprooting of the passions, discipline of the mind and the physical senses, and endurance of temptation, is the tool ‘crafted by the great God’ that bestows grace (resp. 256).¹¹³ If monasticism is the art of arts, then the supreme and divinely constructed art is humility. This art, Barsanuphius goes on to say in the same letter, enables ‘progress through Christ’s grace’. Thus it is wrong, at least within the explicit logic of asceticism, to think of humility as servile

¹¹² See, e.g., Epp. 252, 288, 293, 308, 309, 333. ¹¹³ Τὸ δὲ ἐργαλεῖόν ἐστιν ἡ ταπείνωσις, ἡ ἐργασθεῖσα ὑπὸ τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ. Letter 256 refers to the ‘restraint of the horse of passion’ (cf. Plato, Phaedrus) and exegetes 2 Kgs. 24–25, relating the Chaldeans, Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar with the passions. This broadly aligns with Dorotheus’ Instruction 13. The letter thereby provides evidence for the transmission, elaboration, and development of teachings within the monastic community.

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abjection: ‘humility does not fall, it merely raises those who possess it from their fall’ and allows monks to ‘progress according to God’.¹¹⁴ In Barsanuphius’ account, if monks are guided by humility, their intellects operate properly. This is because the epistemic virtue of humility ensures that the monk will only make intellectual judgements after turning his intellect to God (resp. 264). Remembering the ultimate reality of divine judgement, the monk will always keep God humbly in his mind (resp. 271), willingly admitting ignorance because without it, it is impossible to know God’s will autonomously (resp. 292). If the monk acts in this way, then God will enable truthful judgements (resp. 264). An intellect which acts autonomously, we infer, cannot be expected to have the same access to divine truth, and hence humility is required for truthful judgements. Epistemic humility requires constant awareness of the possibility of error. Thus monks should guard their mind with intelligence through close attention (resp. 269). This enables the monk to act in accordance with conscience, which is a guarantor of real action, rather than demonic illusions (resp. 275). The intellect is clouded, Barsanuphius argues, when monks attend to ‘deeds committed in the past’ (resp. 256). Thus disciplining of the memory is a key element of ascetic education. Without such discipline, the intellect is unable to exercise judgement reasonably, beginning to operate, instead, without knowledge or unconsciously.¹¹⁵ By prompting monks to attend to potential future punishments, humility promotes the remembrance of death, as in Dorotheus’ scheme, and helps to ensure that mental impressions do not lead the monk towards inappropriate or unthinking judgements or actions (resp. 256). Humility enables monks to ‘reach the point of labouring to death’ by renouncing their own wills and following God absolutely; such perfection, Barsanuphius assures Dorotheus, brings ‘ineffable joy’ (resp. 254). As monks practise death in this way, through discipline of the mind and passions, they move towards the goal of ascetic education by attaining to the heavenly kingdom (resp. 254, 256). But as in Dorotheus’ case, there is no sense that an individual monk will autonomously be able to determine when he is acting in accordance with his conscience. The whole exchange between Dorotheus and the two Old Men is predicated on the notion that the individual monk cannot understand his thoughts on his own. The letter exchange is a means of externalizing Dorotheus’ thoughts and desires, opening them to scrutiny, and therapeutically reordering them. Reasoning is impossible without this externalization of thought and the guidance of experts within the community. ‘Anyone who keeps silence in the case of expressing his thoughts remains unhealed’, John argues, going on to say that ¹¹⁴ See resp. 256.51–62: χάριν παρέχουσα τοῖς ἐν αὐτῇ πολιτευομένοις. Οὐ πίπτει ταπείνωσις, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ πτώσεως ἐγείρει τοὺς ἔχοντας αὐτήν . . . . καὶ προκόπτεις χάριτι Χριστοῦ. The explicit logic, of course, may occlude the use of humility for social control. ¹¹⁵ resp. 256.12–13: Καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν τυφλούμενος ὁ νοῦς ἄρχεται ἐν ἀγνωσίᾳ προσέχειν ἢ λαλεῖν πρὸς ὃν ἔχει τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν.

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consultation with a spiritual father is central to licit ascetic communication (resp. 320).¹¹⁶ The correspondence lays bare Dorotheus’ thoughts and desires. It models and performs the discipline of reasoning, emotions, and body that ascetic education demands of the humble monk. Dorotheus prays for vigilance (along the lines of his Instruction 10) so that he may understand his thoughts and deal with them appropriately (resp. 267).¹¹⁷ His own advice to his monks aligns with that of the John, quoting Abba Nisteros, to him: ‘The Fathers arranged fitting times to pay attention to thoughts, for example in saying to themselves at dawn “Give account to yourself of how you spent the night, and at night of how you spent the day”. And in between, whenever your thoughts feel heavy, be attentive’ (resp. 291).¹¹⁸ The two Old Men recommend a range of cognitive-affective therapies to help Dorotheus advance in ascetic perfection: he must discipline his memory, deny his desires, show humility before others, mourn, pay no attention to his physical senses, and maintain constant attention to his thoughts. Prayer, thanksgiving, recitation of biblical verses, meditation on the words of the fathers, and submission to the advice of holy men and the abbot are also required. In all these embodied cognitive-affective therapies, there is to be continual vigilant attention to one’s thoughts and desires. This vigilance is to be Dorotheus’ own, but it is also, fundamentally, a constant requirement to externalize his inner thoughts and humbly open himself to advice and judgement from authoritative figures in the monastery. In this register, humility as an epistemic virtue generates practices and structures of cognitive and affective discipline in the ascetic community.

Letters to His Monks Dorotheus’ own letters to his monks perform many of the same functions as his correspondence with Barsanuphius and John. They provide therapeutic spiritual and pastoral advice which performs and strengthens the relationships between community members and thus forges a common ascetic culture. The letters are quasi-sacramental in that they are physical artefacts that give Dorotheus’ addressees access to the divine through his prayers and assurances. They also similarly reveal personal spiritual struggles, staging these struggles so that common monastic fears and temptations are externalized, and the requirement for dependence on

¹¹⁶ Ὁ γὰρ σιωπῶν τοῦ εἰπεῖν αὑτοῦ τοὺς λογισμούς, μένει ἀθεράπευτος. ¹¹⁷ We may note the irony, if contemporary research is well founded, that conscious effort to monitor forbidden thoughts and desires in fact yields ‘heightened accessibility’ of the forbidden mental object. Attempting to overcome addiction by thinking about not drinking or smoking in fact increases desire for the drug. See Wegner and Gold 1995, 783; Wegner and Erber 1992. ¹¹⁸ Ἔταξαν οἱ Πατέρες καιροὺς προσέχειν τοῖς λογισμοῖς, ἐν τῷ λέγειν ἑαυτοὺς κατὰ πρωΐ·Ποίησον λόγον πρὸς ἑαυτὸν πῶς παρῆλθες τῇ νυκτί, καὶ κατὰ ὀψὲ πῶς παρῆλθες τῇ ἡμέρᾳ. Καὶ ἐν τῷ μεταξὺ δέ, ὅτε ὁ λογισμὸς βαρεῖται, πρόσχες. Cf. Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Nisteros 5.

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epistemic, spiritual, and moral guides is reinforced through offering an effective mechanism for cognitive, affective, and moral discipline. In providing their authoritative advice, the letters interweave biblical exegesis and interpretation of the sayings of holy men. For example, the first letter opens with an inclusio on a saying by Abba Poemen (ep. 1, 180) and moves on to a further meditation on another saying by Mark the Monk and story about Antony (ep. 1, 181). The Letter to Superiors, which is addressed to those with teaching authority within the monasteries, begins with an injunction for those in charge of other monks to teach especially through their deeds, since deeds are more effective than words. This is a traditional contrast in Greek rhetoric but it will also have been known to monks through other ascetic literature and their memorization of sayings of the fathers, for example Evagrius’ distinction between the ‘philosophy of words’ and the ‘philosophy of deeds’ and Poemen’s notion that ‘when a man is teaching, unless he does what he teaches, he is like a spring which cleanses and gives everyone water to drink, but cannot purify itself ’ (ep. 2, 184).¹¹⁹ The content of deeds which teachers in the monastery must perform is then filled out with a tapestry of biblical quotations (ep. 2, 184–185). In the other direction, the biblical injunctions to overcome evil with good and not return evil with evil are interpreted through a saying of the fathers against the passion of anger (ep. 2, 185).¹²⁰ Or again, in the response to a question about a saying of Abba Poemen, Dorotheus interprets Poemen’s discussion of foundations of spiritual life through references to the Psalms, Proverbs, and Paul’s letters (ep. 6, 191). Like Barsanuphius and John, Dorotheus weaves together biblical and sayings literature to form a cohesive textual community and to perform his own authority within it as a trusted interpreter of privileged texts. A keystone of Dorotheus’ authority, as constructed by the letters, is his claim to be able to provide expert epistemic guidance. In the Letter to Superiors, Dorotheus sets out key elements of his epistemology. As in his wider teachings, he is highly sceptical of the possibility of the sound exercise of reason. Teachers should never trust themselves, follow their own judgement, or think that they can ever have a sound belief which arises from the autonomous exercise of reason. This means that they must excise their own will and discipline their desires: Dorotheus seeks to train the teachers’ emotions and eliminate their passions.¹²¹ But he focuses first on the cultivation of the reasonable judgement (ep. 2, 187.1–7). Judgement is always to be doubted and one’s own view of what is reasonable is always to be subjugated to the beliefs of one’s spiritual adviser, provided this does not lead to the transgression of divine commandments. This means that judgement (ἡ κρίσις)

¹¹⁹ Evagrius of Pontus, Hist. eccl. 4.23.24; Poemen 25: Ἄνθρωπος διδάσκων, μὴ ποιῶν δὲ ἃ διδάσκει, ὅμοιός ἐστι κρήνῃ· ὅτι πάντας ποτίζει καὶ πλύνει, ἑαυτὴν δὲ οὐ δύναται καθαρίσαι. ¹²⁰ See Apophthegmata (ser. alpha.) Macarius 17. ¹²¹ On educating virtues and emotions, see Chapters 4 and 5.

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must be made only after a process of questioning (ἡ ἐρώτησις) and testing of opinion (ἡ γνώμη). Reasoning and thinking (λογίζεσθαι, νομίζειν) should come under the scrutiny of superiors. That is, specifically intellectual humility is required, given the dubious status of judgement, reason, and belief, and the difficulty of establishing sound or trustworthy epistemic foundations. This scepticism (and the consequent strength of the demand to cultivate intellectual humility through prayer, excision of the will, and subordination to the advice of guides) goes all the way down to doubt about the claims of conscience (ἡ συνείδησις): Above all, let us all guard our conscience in all things, those concerning God, our neighbour, and the material world. Before saying or doing anything, let us examine if it is the will of God. And after offering prayer, let us say or do it in this way, and let us cast our weakness before God, and his goodness will be united to us in all things. Πρὸ δὲ πάντων φυλάξωμεν πάντες τὴν συνείδησιν ἡμῶν ἐν πᾶσι, τοῖς τε πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν καὶ τὸν πλησίον καὶ ἐν ταῖς ὕλαις· καὶ πρὶν εἰπεῖν ἢ ποιῆσαί τι, ἐξετάσωμεν εἰ κατὰ θέλημά ἐστι τοῦ Θεοῦ· καὶ οὕτως εὐξάμενοι εἴπωμεν ἢ ποιήσωμεν, καὶ παραρρίψωμεν τὴν ἀδυναμίαν ἡμῶν ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ· καὶ ἡ ἀγαθότης αὐτοῦ συνέρχεται ἡμῖν ἐν πᾶσιν. (ep. 2, 187.31–37)

Dorotheus writes that, in their cultivation of intellectual humility, teachers in the monasteries should engage in continual meditation and prayer (ep. 4, 189.4–6, 11–18). Monks often think that they have done things through the conscious exercise of reason, but they must understand that they can only come to knowledge through a communal process of discernment. Monks should always doubt actions performed on the basis of their understanding of the demands of their own conscience (ἡ συνείδησις). Only through submitting to advice and correction from others can they follow the ‘truthful way (τὴν ἀληθινὴν ὁδὸν)’ (ep. 4, 189.13–16). Since the grounds for true belief are taken to be always difficult to discern and open to doubt, humility is the epistemic virtue through which monks may access truth: ‘it is by the judgement of those more intelligent than you that whatever that is wanting will be corrected and whatever is done well becomes more securely grounded’ (ep. 4, 189.16–18).¹²² God has a providential plan for humanity which, as we have seen, structures much of Dorotheus’ teaching. But humans do not have access to knowledge about how exactly God will act providentially in creation in any specific case, so they must give themselves over to God (ep. 8, 193.1–3). Exercising judgement based on human thought and reasoning and acting autonomously instead of casting one’s ¹²² Τῇ γὰρ κρίσει τῶν συνετωτέρων σου πάντως ἢ τὸ ἀπολειπόμενον διορθοῦται ἢ τὸ καλῶς γινόμενον ἀσφαλέστερον γίνεται.

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cares upon God is a recipe for exhaustion (ep. 8, 193.3–6). Such human thought is bound to fail, especially in the face of demonic attack on human reason (ep. 8, 193.12–13). Since human thought is subject to error and perversion including by demonic powers, intellectual humility which propels monks towards dependence on their superiors and ultimately on the mind of God is the sine qua non for acquiring genuine knowledge. In this mode, humility elevates monks to the divine mind. Monks who exercise epistemic humility are always in danger of falling but are nevertheless progressing along an ascending path towards God who is ‘the real truth (ἡ ὄντως ἀλήθεια)’ (ep. 12, 197.1–3, 15). Once more, cultivating epistemic humility and advancing in greater godlikeness are interrelated elements of Dorotheus’ thought. To gain a properly objective stance towards the world on the way to divine truth, such that passions cannot lead to sinfulness, weakness in love towards others, or lack of wisdom, Dorotheus recommends the continuous reading of the scriptures combined with meditation on the sayings of the fathers which generate compunction (ep. 7, 192). This is the governing thought that generates the literary form of all Dorotheus’ writings. The writings perform the intellectual and spiritual work required to generate an appropriate disposition so that the readers can fix their minds on God and enact proper love for God and their neighbours. In addition to continuous meditation on scripture and the sayings of the fathers, monks are to ‘remember’ divine judgement and particularly their own future presence before the divine judge, where they will have to account to Christ for their actions, words, and thoughts (ep. 7, 192.3–11). Through such cognitive discipline, monks can generate an awareness in their own soul of their weakness and eradicate their selfish will so that the soul and its desires are purified. In this cognitive discipline, we see again a set of practices that align with philosophical practice of death through the disciplining of desire. The exchange of letters between Dorotheus and his monks performs his authority in the monastic community partly by causing the addressees to make themselves vulnerable by opening up their thoughts, desires, and actions to scrutiny. The performances of the monks in the letters are evaluated not by an audience in a theatre or by commissioned judges, as in a play, but by the spiritual sage the monks address. While masked actors on a stage perform a persona which will be judged by the audience, the literary conceit of the letters is that the monks remove their masks and allow their true nature to be judged by their spiritual superiors. Thus holy men are given tremendous authority to discipline the minds, wills, and bodies of monks within their charge. The imbalance of authority in the epistolary relationship is underlined by the question-and-answer nature of the letter collections, which performs the more perfect understanding of the monastic superior. It is possible for correspondents to answer back to the holy men, and we see some examples in Dorotheus’ letters to Barsanuphius and John where Dorotheus probes elements of the advice he has been given. But the dominant

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force of the letters is to confer significant epistemic authority on the holy men across the whole spectrum of a monk’s mental and physical existence. A constant concern of Dorotheus’ epistemology, a concern which generates the primacy of the epistemic virtue of humility, is how to guarantee that one’s mental judgements are real and truthful. The letters reveal the manifold ways in which human thinking can be corrupted, by desire, self-delusion, ignorance, arrogance, or dependence on inadequate sources of truth. Given the strong scepticism of Dorotheus’ account, and the serious concern for ways in which sinfulness can distort reasoning and judgement, it may be unclear why he thinks that monks should depend on others in the monastery who may, after all, be similarly misguided. The letters suggest three answers. First, order is maintained in the monasteries through a clearly established hierarchy of roles and associated practices of discipline; his epistemology helps to sustain this hierarchy (which itself demands the cultivation of humility) and the letters perform it. Second, monks are assumed to be on an ascending path towards greater godlikeness; the letters function to elevate monks along this path and perform the different levels of spiritual progress which can be expected in any such community. In this scheme, humility is appropriate because the monk is always on the way to perfection but is never able to claim it. Third, the letters reinforce asceticism understood as practice of death through performing therapies prescribed by the superior. The letters seek the purification of the soul in meditation and rumination on scripture and sayings and the consequent therapy of desire and disciplining of thoughts and memories. Such discipline requires a trusted physician and authoritative interpreter to ensure that meditation on key texts leads to truthful understanding.

Reading and Meditation Lorenzo Perrone has written with typical insight about the role of meditation on scripture across the long history of Palestinian monasticism. As he argues, scriptural education and memorization was ‘a lifelong task, engaged in both by literate and non-literate monks, that gradually turned the scriptural text into a sort of permanent possession and made it a continuous presence for the monks’.¹²³ As we have seen, memorizing biblical passages was a key element of monastic education.¹²⁴ Scripture could be memorized in the monk’s native language, should they not understand Greek.¹²⁵ Such memorization of scripture and the sayings of ¹²³ Perrone 2008, 404. ¹²⁴ This is clear from the V. Dos., the letters of John and Barsanuphius (e.g., resp. 215, 228), and the sayings of holy men associated with Palestinian monasticism (e.g., Epiphanius 3 and 7). See further Perrone 2008, 402–3. ¹²⁵ See the evidence collected in Perrone 2008, 402, including one monk in Seridos’ monastery known from the letters of Barsanuphius and John (resp. 228).

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holy men could be achieved orally or through copying out texts. Perrone emphasizes evidence for written texts in Palestinian monasticism, including copying manuscripts and the formation of monastic libraries.¹²⁶ He also notes that memorization of biblical passages was augmented by memorizing sayings of holy men, and that such memorization constructed a canon of authoritative voices intended to shape monastic praxis.¹²⁷ Whether scripture and the sayings of holy men were memorized orally (as e.g., in readings in the refectory or in the constant cycle of the liturgy) or through literate practices like reading and copying, such learning aimed to form ascetic virtues.¹²⁸ Epistemic humility played a key role in shaping reading practices. Monastic learners required guides for their reading, since in humility they came to understand that they had insufficient understanding to grasp texts on their own account. Reading must also be repetitive, since texts will disclose ever more to monks as they grow in understanding through their meditative reading. The claim that theoretical understanding is impossible without practical knowledge, itself a necessary axiom of epistemic humility, also meant that repetitive reading was taken to be necessary to allow texts to transform the lowly mind, disclose reality more clearly, and ultimately strengthen the soul’s humble disposition. Reading in humility enabled monks to move from mere ‘word and appearance (ἐν λόγῳ μόνον ἢ σχήματι)’ to a transformed heart and mind and ultimately gain ‘a properly humble disposition cultivated in the heart itself and in the mind itself ’.¹²⁹ Dorotheus’ Instructions provided authoritative material from scripture and the epistemically normative sayings of the desert fathers for ascetic meditation, ordering these sources to enlighten the understanding of the readers and thus help monks become more godlike. Such ruminative or repetitive reading is crucial to practices of memorization across ancient education. As Pierre Hadot has shown, students of philosophy from different schools were expected to memorize authoritative texts and reflect on them in a concentrated, disciplined, and structured set of spiritual and intellectual exercises.¹³⁰ A key set of overlapping practices arises from meditative rumination on texts, brilliantly explored in the western case by Mary Carruthers.¹³¹ Such meditative reading of authoritative texts constitutes the ethical or soteriological process of being transformed by the text (rather than merely making it one’s own).¹³² In the Greek ascetic tradition, the key verb, μελετάω, is used to describe an intensive, repetitive, and concentrated way of being formed by, or interiorizing a text, concept, or image on the way to ¹²⁶ Perrone 2008, 406–8. ¹²⁷ Perrone 2008, 410–17. ¹²⁸ See Zosimas, alloquia 13, with Perrone 2008, 408. ¹²⁹ διάθεσιν ἰδικῶς ταπεινὴν γενομένην ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ καρδίᾳ, ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ φρονήματι (1.7.28–31). ¹³⁰ See Hadot 1995a. ¹³¹ Augustine understands rumination as the regurgitation of what one has learned to digest it properly; Cassian recommends incessabilis ruminatio (Coll. 14.12). See Carruthers 2000, 90; Carruthers 2008, 206. ¹³² Cf. Carruthers 2000, 165.

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assimilation to God.¹³³ Metaphors of digestion are common. For example, Barsanuphius identifies meditation with rumination (resp. 49, 53). This practice of ruminative reading is also shared by Dorotheus’ students and is perhaps the closest connection between asceticism and ancient philosophical practices, even if both monastic life and the ascetic canon of authoritative texts would have seemed foreign in many ways to contemporary Neoplatonists. Like others in this philosophico-ascetic tradition, Dorotheus thinks of memorizing texts by heart as meditation (μελέτη). When Dorotheus began his classical education, he tells us that his reading replaced food, as he intensively digested texts and gave no thought to his meals (10.105). The account plays on this cultural plot of reading as transformation by ingestion. He continually deploys scriptural texts in his writings in this way, to the extent that his writings could be seen as a performance in textual form of meditative rumination.¹³⁴ His exegesis of Matthew 11:29 (‘Learn of me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls’) in On Renunciation is paradigmatic. He first introduces the full phrase, then breaks it down into parts, before repeating the full phrases, with each repetition of the phrase or a part of it extended textually through reflective exegetical practice.¹³⁵ His extensive quotations thus form an inclusio, with the repeated full quotation enclosing further restatements of the first and second half, and individual words are mulled over in between the quotations. This textual rumination is shortly followed by a similar repetitive meditation on Gal. 6:14 (crucifixion to the world); Gal. 6:2 (bear one another’s burdens); Matt. 5:25–6 (examining one’s conscience); Ps. 137:8–9 (don’t let evil thoughts take root); Gen. 1:26 (natural virtues), Luke 6:36 (be merciful). Furthermore, several apophthegmata—sayings of the desert fathers—are similarly deployed ruminatively across the instructions.¹³⁶ Dorotheus’ Instructions as a whole thus serve to define a set of epistemically authoritative literature predominantly from biblical texts and sayings of the desert fathers on which monks should reflect in order to purify their souls and gain greater knowledge. The metaphor of rumination casts reading as meditation and means that texts are taken to disclose reality more richly and effect a change in the hearts and minds of the students so that they can perceive reality more truly. His textually performed recursive meditation is generated by epistemic humility; it simultaneously functions to instil this virtue ever more deeply. In each case, rhetorical repetition performs in the text meditative chewing of the cud (repeating the text and returning to it in slightly different contexts), digesting it (breaking it into bits), and making it one’s own through placing it in one’s ascetic context.

¹³³ See further Rönnegård 2013. ¹³⁴ See further Chapter 5. ¹³⁵ 1.7.19– (full citation), 1.7.31– (partial citation); 1.8.1 (partial citation), 1.8.33– (full citation). ¹³⁶ E.g., 1.7–8, 13–14; 3.41–42; 4.56–57; 11.115–117; 12.134; 14.156–158.

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These reading practices figure reading as a work of humility which is meditative and just so ultimately epistemically transformative.

Conclusions: The Goals of Ascetic Education and Epistemology Dorotheus’ educational project is grounded in epistemological norms oriented towards a perfect divine goal for knowledge. These epistemic norms and ends order knowledge and promote privileged ways of knowing in the monasteries. They generate distinctive practices and injunctions about how monks should act. By studying and reflecting upon his Instructions and the advice in his Letters, students may come to understand both what they should do to develop monastic expertise and what principles govern and emerge from their ascetic practices. His teaching is education in the sense that it offers diverse perspectives, encourages intersubjectivity, and provides means to develop the capacity for meta-cognition. Not all monks may acquire expert knowledge of these practices, and their devotion to ascetic practices can still bring them closer to God. But Dorotheus provides for his students the possibility of coming to a more developed understanding of the principles and goals of ascetic knowledge. In thinking about how knowledge should be ordered, Dorotheus provides insight into mechanisms of order, structures of knowledge, and goals of knowledge and provides opportunities for his students to learn how to navigate institutions. We have evidence of a range of mechanisms used to order knowledge in the monastic environment. Oral group instruction in the monasteries remains a primary mechanism for establishing and transmitting knowledge and for arranging it in authoritative categories. Monks can also be directed to authoritative texts and encouraged to memorize them and ruminate upon them either in Greek or in their own language. They have access to written texts of different sorts—scriptural texts from the Old and New Testaments, Apophthegmata, letters, advice literature, and monastic rules and related texts—that can be studied both individually and communally. Advice directed to individuals can be socialized in externalized cultural products, for example if a response from a holy man directed to an individual monk is then read out to or discussed with others. The hierarchy of the monastery sustains disciplinary practices, where monks must subordinate their own knowledge claims to those of their superiors. Through this hierarchy, physical discipline (as in the case of Dositheus) is joined to mental surveillance within a project of shaping monastic thought and emotion. The repeated and near continual examination of conscience which Dorotheus recommends is part of this wider disciplining of the mind. Letters also function to perform and sustain epistemic hierarchy, especially to the extent that the genre tends towards question-and-answer literature. Exacting mental and spiritual vigilance and laying bare one’s spiritual struggles to a guide are constant features of Dorotheus’

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account of going about knowing truthfully. Knowledge is also ordered through the maintenance of epistemic structures. In this area, there is strong overlap between epistemological divisions in contemporary philosophical classrooms. Like Neoplatonic philosophers, Dorotheus divides knowledge into theoretical and practical domains and traces the interconnections between them. Theoretical and practical knowledge are then oriented towards goals which also align with those set out in Prolegomena to Philosophy, with asceticism understood as preparation for death and as an activity that leads to monks becoming like God. Dorotheus’ works also set out privileged ways of knowing. He is consistently sceptical about the capacity of individual human reason. This scepticism is a consequence of his wider anthropology, itself derived from his account of the divine plan of salvation. Given the ever-present danger of delusion, including through demons who continually set traps for ascetics, the autonomous exercise of reason is doomed to failure.¹³⁷ Dorotheus’ monks can be confident that the exercise of reason is possible and can be made more secure by processes of education and mental discipline, since reason is divinely implanted in their souls. But, in a sharp departure from late-antique Platonism, they cannot be confident that reason can be exercised independently or that its veracity will be transparent: reasoning becomes a communal task which demands trust in epistemic authorities. Monks are therefore encouraged to see the process of knowledge acquisition as interactional and dependent on guidance from epistemic experts who are determined to be further along the path to godlike ascetic perfection than they are. The interactional and interdependent quality of Dorotheus’ epistemology may partly be a function of his educational context, where life-long learning among adults, rather than time-limited learning is in view. The restoration of the divinely given capacity for reasoning also depends on the purification of the mind, soul, and body. Meditation, rumination, memorization, prayer, examination of conscience, and the renunciation of one’s own will through various forms of obedience and submission to others are all techniques the monk should employ to strip off worldly accretions that make it difficult to discern the truth. In his strategies to order knowledge and promote distinctive ways of knowing, Dorotheus’ epistemology intersects in some crucial ways with that of contemporary Neoplatonists, especially those governed by a shared view that the goal of education is godlikeness and the practice of death.¹³⁸ There is a hierarchy of knowledge that moves from physical things to the more perfect realm of immateriality as individuals move towards greater godlikeness. Nevertheless, since

¹³⁷ On demons and monastic self-formation, including interaction between thoughts and affects, see further below and Brakke 2006. ¹³⁸ Cf. Stefaniw 2018 on the possibility of a ‘late-antique episteme’. A better model is the performance of overlapping discourses in often highly distinctive ways.

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practical and theoretical knowledge are mutually reinforcing, there is room for the physical world and for political and social structures to act upon the intellect and to be understood as revelatory in the process of ascent. Understanding Neoplatonism and asceticism as preparation for death means that both Dorotheus and Neoplatonists think that bodily desires, passions, and uncontrolled movements of the will can obscure real knowledge, and thus that any act of thinking is dependent upon moral and affective purification. The most significant feature of Dorotheus’ epistemology is his notion that humility should be the governing epistemic virtue. Despite the divine spark of reason placed within them, even as they become more like God through the restoration of their divinely given rational nature, monks remain aware of an epistemic gap which creatures cannot bridge. In this insistence that true knowledge comes with an ever-greater understanding of the distance between the creator and his creatures, Dorotheus stands in a long line of ascetic epistemological reflection, perhaps most concisely enunciated in Evagrius’ claim that ‘one type [of ignorance] will end, but another type will not’ as monks advance in more perfect knowledge of God and the world.¹³⁹ True knowledge includes knowledge of a necessary epistemic gap. It can only ever be gained as a gift from God, who is the first principle and foundation of truth and the end to which all true knowledge is directed. Therefore humility is an irreducible element of accurate knowing. It replaces autonomous reason as a ground for true knowledge. Dorotheus’ sceptical epistemology, however, remains characterized by hope. He repeatedly urges his monks to remain steadfast in the hope that God will reveal more to them. At the heart of this hope is the claim that God, and therefore his creatures, always have more to disclose. Genuinely humble knowledge thus includes a motivation to keep on seeking greater understanding. This means, too, that more perfect knowing on the way to godlikeness demands a set of affective virtues and practices consistent with humility. We turn now to explore Dorotheus’ account of virtue and emotion within his wider educational project.

¹³⁹ Evagrius, Prak. 87; cf. Keph. Gnost. 3,63.

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4 Education, Emotion, and Virtue Introduction This chapter explores the affective world of Dorotheus’ educational activity, building on increasing awareness that affective processes are crucial for understanding human behaviour and social formations in general, and that studying affect provides important insights into aspects of cognition and behaviour.¹ For Dorotheus, emotion goes all the way down, shaping perception, behaviour, and thought. Given the significance of emotions in his account, Dorotheus pays close attention to ways in which the emotional life can be perverted, confounding spiritual progress and undermining communal relationships. Positively, emotions direct attention, motivate monks to action, and achieve the transformation of perception, thought, and being which is the goal of ascetic education. Emotions also provide the foundations for communal life in the monasteries by relating monks to one another. They are therefore central to education’s role in shaping identity and developing a sense of intersubjectivity and shared culture. Studying emotion in the context of the history of education highlights questions about how emotions connected Dorotheus’ pedagogical theory and practice to wider traditions of classical education and about the role of ascetic education in late-antique cultural change. Teachers and theorists of education had long been interested in promoting learning and shaping character through establishing canonical emotional norms in their classrooms. Dorotheus made his pedagogical project recognizable to other late-antique educators partly by anchoring its emotional features in the emotional norms of other classrooms while simultaneously rhetorically creating and policing emotions to advance his educational goals. Dorotheus’ pedagogy is concerned with character formation, the fragmentation and reconstruction of subjectivity, the transformation of monks through the transformation of their minds, souls, and bodies, and the activation and purification of conscience and moral awareness across different domains of their spiritual life.² Each of these features of Dorotheus’ ascetic instruction is partly constituted by the emotional norms and practices he sought to establish. His legitimation and proscription of emotion in the monasteries aimed towards the greater flourishing ¹ Dukes, Abrams, Adolphs, et al. 2021. ² Clements 2020, ch. 5 discusses these elements in Cassian’s case and offers a detailed theoretical account of affect and emotion.

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education. Michael W. Champion, Oxford University Press. © Michael W. Champion 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198869269.003.0004

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of his students, understood as a process of progressive spiritual perfection and the transformation of subjectivity. In Dorotheus’ hands, emotions were directed towards eliciting, maintaining, and promoting ascetic virtues, knowledge systems, and associated everyday practices in order to purify souls and lead monks progressively to greater godlikeness. Such a project could then be a ‘laboratory’ for wider social changes built on the practices of the monasteries.³ This chapter first examines how Dorotheus deployed emotion to connect his project to wider educational norms, especially through leveraging tropes of fear, thereby also building on the notion of ascetic education as training for death. I then explore the foundations of Dorotheus’ education of emotion in his moral psychology. His education of desire, emotion, and ethics was grounded in and responded to a set of commitments about how the soul is structured and how it is fundamentally shaped by passions and thoughts, such that cognition and behaviour cannot be explained without reference to affectivity. As Jerome Bruner has argued, education stands at the intersection of theories of mind and theories of culture.⁴ Dorotheus’ affective moral psychology explains why emotion is a key aspect of his pedagogy, and why he thinks that changing emotions results in social changes. I then turn to how emotion generates the key virtues which Dorotheus’ monastic education aimed to elicit. Dorotheus promotes emotions like endurance, joy, hope, gratitude, and humility, relating them to the transformative goals of his pedagogy. We have seen that purification of the soul and disciplining of emotion are required for accurate knowledge. This chapter focuses on the relation between emotion and virtue, moving from the epistemological to the ethical. As we have seen in other areas of his thought, Dorotheus’ transformative notion of education means that his ethics and associated affective practices and theorization are not limited to the perfection of individual monks but extend out to the whole community. The transformation narrated by the divine plan of salvation is cosmic: it plays out in the microcosm of the individual monk and the community whose order should reflect the promised peaceful relationships of mutuality and shared dependence of humans together glorifying God in the macrocosm of the heavenly kingdom.

Theorizing Emotions in Ascetic Education ‘Emotion’ is a term which came late to English, and which is bound up in moves away from earlier moral and psychological theories, where concepts such as

³ For monasticism as a ‘laboratory’, see Diem and Rapp 2020, 32–3 and Chapter 1. ⁴ Bruner 1996, 13, 43.

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‘passion’, ‘sentiment’, ‘feeling’, or ‘affect’ played prominent roles.⁵ This has led some to argue that the term should not be used in the analysis of pre-modern societies.⁶ Yet there are advantages in speaking more loosely of ‘emotion’ to include a wide variety of concepts which are differently configured in different texts, times, languages, and cultures. I will therefore use it to refer to a range of affective strategies, practices, and concepts while carefully interrogating how Dorotheus deploys different affective terminology and how significant terms in his moral psychology relate to each other in the context of late-antique education and asceticism. Like other domains of human experience, emotions are open to historical investigation and significant for historical explanation. Emotions had long been neglected as an object of study since they were conceptualized as private or subjective, not subject to empirical observation or measurement, and, in any case, insignificant within standard explanatory frameworks. Despite important frameworks developed by scholars especially from the Annales and histoire des mentalités schools, historians worried, too, that if emotion was to be understood as a natural, autonomic, or pre-cultural phenomenon, it was difficult to see how it could be historicized.⁷ Across a range of disciplines, these concerns have been put aside by increasing recognition of the priority of affective phenomena for shaping and relating human motivation, attention, thought, and action.⁸ Crucially, for all their significant and deep evolutionary history, emotions are also always embodied and habituated cultural practices or performances, and so do political, ethical, and cultural work on and between subjects and institutional structures, which may be made visible (if never fully captured) through historical reconstruction.⁹ In this way, they are analogous to categories such as gender, race, or class. Like the process of education generally, emotions are bound up in reconstructions of intersubjectivity, perspectives, agency, character formation, institutional norms and practices, and the material and discursive features of human embodiment. Emotions are therefore key players in the construction of educational and ethical expectations in Dorotheus’ ascetic community. While emotional norms may be established in groups—and thus the facilitation and constraint of emotional lives are important matters for investigation—we should expect significant variation and contingency within groups, across times, and in response to different circumstances. Within any single social group there will be a range of social relations, roles, and capabilities which generate different

⁵ Champion, Garrod, Haskell, and Ruys 2016; Dixon 2003; Essary 2017; Ruys, Champion, and Essary 2019. ⁶ E.g., Lasater 2017. Cf. Dixon 2003. ⁷ E.g., Febvre 1941. ⁸ See Dukes, Abrams, Adolphs, et al. 2021. ⁹ For history of emotions theorization, see Crocker 2017; Gammerl 2012; Nussbaum 2001; Plamper 2010; Reddy 2001; Rorty 2004; Rosenwein 2006; Rosenwein 2015; Schaefer 2019; Scheer 2012; Solomon 2004.

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power structures, experiences, and associated affective behaviour.¹⁰ Such attention to changeable and context-specific ‘emotional styles’, performed and habituated in particular situations, helps to move beyond early theorizations of overly homogeneous ‘emotional communities’ or ‘regimes’.¹¹ Dorotheus attempts to teach his community to adopt valued emotional norms; we should be aware of the gap between discursive expectation and practice. But he is also alert to the ways individuals take up and perform or are affected by emotion differently, so his Instructions provide traces of emotional diversity while fundamentally aiming towards a unity of feeling in the monastic community. Emotion may be communicated consciously or unconsciously. It is partly strategically performed and partly tacitly understood between different participants in the act of communication. Embodiment is crucial. The movement of the eyes of parents which directs the attention of infants, or the tone of voice used in instruction may convey emotional information and develop emotional capacity and intelligence.¹² The daily life of the monasteries provides multiple sites for the individual and communal practice and evaluation of emotion. Examination of conscience involved self-reflection on emotional states and strategies to discipline and control them. Confession opened the monk’s emotional life to scrutiny by the confessor. Monastic services and work brought monks into communal contexts where they were expected to moderate their emotional responses to demands placed on them by others. Habituated practices of bowing before fellow monks and superiors or keeping silent in company involved both emotional regulation and performance. Dorotheus’ discursive reflection on emotion and construction of emotional norms should be read against the backdrop of these embodied sites of emotional development and moderation in everyday monastic life. Crucially, a monk’s life was regulated by prayer and forms of liturgical devotion, both individual and communal. Late-antique writers draw attention to emotion travelling between people in communal liturgy and thereby forming emotional norms.¹³ The communal prayer of the monastery is a key site for the generation and maintenance of licit affectivity. Dorotheus does not focus on the emotional dynamics of communal worship, although he does provide evidence for the emotionally transformative power of worship in stories about revelatory experience in the liturgical context. John Chrysostom famously apostrophized those who would leave worship to pray at home, reminding them of the ways in which the emotional contagion of prayer en masse builds the unity of the Christian community. In such worship, which is capable of producing the most profoundly ¹⁰ See Barbalet 2002, 4–6. ¹¹ Gammerl 2012, Scheer 2012 (‘styles’ and ‘practice’); Reddy 2001 (‘regimes’); Rosenwein 2006, 2015 (‘emotional communities’). See also Kaster 2005 on ‘emotion scripts’. ¹² Bruner 1997, 283 offers the examples of eye movement and instruction. See Chapter 5 for practices involved in ethical and emotional development. ¹³ E.g., Leyerle 2020.

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devotional fear of God (φρικωδεστάτη) the congregants cry ‘to God as from one heart (ὁμοθυμαδόν)’ and in this emotional unity also find a harmonious unity of mind and love (ἡ ὁμόνοια καὶ ἡ συμφωνία καὶ τῆς ἀγάπης), which extends through the celestial hierarchy from the laity, the priests, and on to the cherubim John takes as participating in the liturgy.¹⁴ Dorotheus emphasizes emotional development through individual prayer and reading of the biblical texts.¹⁵ But he also recognized the power of communal worship for shaping affective cognition: in singing the psalms, he teaches, ‘the heart sings along with the mouth (ἡ καρδία ἡμῶν μετὰ τοῦ στόματος ψάλλῃ)’ (17.177.11–12). In monastic liturgies, monks sang psalms and recited prayers together: emotions were communicated in these settings through shared bodily postures and gestures, facial expressions, tones of voice, and musical sounds. The sensory impressions of worship—its lighting, the smell of incense, and images and architectural space of the church—also contribute to the emotional experience of worship. This liturgical context colours every citation of, and textualized meditation on, scripture in Dorotheus’ teaching. The liturgical experience of texts like the Psalms helps to generate the citation culture and determine which texts are used for rumination and meditation. Crucially, the emotional experience of singing and reciting texts in the liturgy shaped how Dorotheus’ texts could then communicate, generate, and constrain emotion. In the regularly shared experience of worship and prayer, monks could model and assimilate or adapt their own emotional responses to those of their fellow monks in these communal liturgical settings. This experience informed how they responded to Dorotheus’ textuality.

Emotional Norms in Dorotheus’ Classroom Dorotheus codes ascetic education as anchored in the emotions that were conventionally expected in rhetorical classrooms, while also pointing to the danger of promoting emotional education in the monasteries.¹⁶ His vivid description of his time as a student of rhetoric leverages the similar emotions and passions associated with learning in monastic and classical education to relate the two domains. For Dorotheus, education is all-encompassing and causes him to lose control of physical and emotional appetites and drives. Lost in his books, he forgets eating, drinking, sleeping, and the pleasurable company of friends.¹⁷ We might be reminded of Libanius’ description of the hard-working student who cannot stop his study even at night-time:

¹⁴ John Chrysostom, incomprehens. 3,338–390. ¹⁵ See Chapter 5. ¹⁶ On anchoring, see Tversky and Kahneman 1974. Also Arana and León 2008; Höijer 2010, building on theories of social representation in Moscovici 1984. ¹⁷ For text and Gibson’s translation, see Libanius 2008, 64–77.

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When evening falls, which releases others from labours and craft but extends them for others, night, given of course as a time for rest, becomes for young men a time for work and for greatest complaints, unless they can shake off sleep before taking their fill. And so there is no leisure nor rest, no going out nor remaining at home, neither from their teachers nor from their parents, neither at night, nor at day, but the toil of suffering continues through everything. And some, in fact, cannot even enjoy peaceful dreams but rather these often have a prophecy of impending pains. ἑσπέρας δὲ ἐπελθούσης, ἣ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις λύει, τοῖς δὲ ἐπιτείνει τοὺς πόνους καὶ τὴν τέχνην, νὺξ δὲ δὴ καιρὸς ἀναπαύλης δοθεὶς ἔργου τοῖς νέοις γίνεται καὶ μεγίστων ἐγκλημάτων, εἰ μὴ πρὸ τοῦ κόρου τὸν ὕπνον ἀποσείσαιντο. οὔτ’ οὖν προϊοῦσιν οὔτ’ οἴκοι διατρίβουσιν, οὐ παρὰ τοῖς παιδευταῖς, οὐ παρὰ τοῖς γονεῦσιν, οὐ νυκτός, οὐχ ἡμέρας ἐστὶν ἀναπαύλης σχολή, ἀλλὰ διὰ πάντων τῶν πόνων χωρεῖ. τοῖς δέ γε οὐδὲ ὀνειράτων ἔνεστιν εἰρηνικῶν ἀπολαῦσαι, ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖνα τῶν μελλόντων ἀλγεινῶν ἔχει τὴν μαντείαν πολλάκις.¹⁸

Dorotheus’ account of his own education aligns with this rhetorical portrait of the fearful student, constantly oppressed by his teacher, the expectations of his parents, or the painful anxieties of his dreams.¹⁹ Like Libanius’ student, Dorotheus reads into the evening, bringing a light back with him to his room after lamp lighting and continuing to devour his books up to midnight. Where Libanius’ student is weighed down by others’ expectations, Dorotheus figures his own education more as a self-imposed burden. He ‘took no notice of, or pleasure in, anything except what [he] was reading’ (10.105.23–24). Education takes on the shape of an overwhelming affective experience. It is pleasurable and exhausting, demanding attention and overpowering other impulses, governing activities, desires, and judgements. Yet despite its passionate character, Dorotheus thinks that classical education, especially its affective contours, prepared devoted ascetics for their still more rigorous studies: When, therefore, I came into the monastery, I kept saying to myself: ‘If in the case of outside speech there is such great desire and heat from devoting oneself to something in one’s reading and developing its habitual disposition, how much more in the case of virtue?’ Ὅτε οὖν ἦλθον εἰς τὸ μοναστήριον, ἔλεγον ἐμαυτῷ· Εἰ ἐπὶ τοῦ ἔξω λόγου ἐγένετο τοιοῦτος πόθος καὶ τοιαύτη θέρμη ἐκ τοῦ σχολάσαι τινὰ τῇ ἀναγνώσει καὶ γενέσθαι ἐν ἕξει αὐτῆς, πόσῳ μᾶλλον ἐπὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς; (10.105.25–27)

¹⁸ Libanius, Prog. Chreia 3.3, 10–11.

¹⁹ Libanius, Prog. Chreia 3.3, 7–11.

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This depiction of his experience of rhetorical education is satirical—and all the more connected to wider visions of education for that reason. Dorotheus’ selfsatire is recognizable from classical caricatures like Libanius’ of students and teachers who upset their emotional and physical balance through excessive study. But the passage also joins ascetic education and rhetorical instruction through shared affectivity. Both forms of education generate desire and heat (πόθος, θέρμη) which enable devotion to one’s studies and both assume that such affectivity motivates students to acquire virtue through their pedagogical immersion. Desire aims towards virtue (ἐπὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς) in both, though such desire remains dangerous because it could activate non-virtuous desires and derail moral progress. Education is education of desire in two senses: it requires desire and affective intensity to direct attention, and it also trains and directs those desires to instil valued moral and affective behaviour in ideal students. Beyond rhetorical education, Lives of philosophers all draw attention to this dual aspect of desire in the case of philosophical study, again connecting Dorotheus’ education to wider pedagogical currents. Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Life emphasizes passionate thirst for knowledge and the desirability of seeking ethical and metaphysical perfection and godlikeness through the education of ‘lovers of learning’.²⁰ Marinus’ Life of Proclus records its subject’s ‘passionate love’ for philosophy and its associated virtue of gentle justice and how he directed his desires upwards towards the ‘primary beings’.²¹ This properly directed desire enabled him, on Marinus’ account, to experience ultimate reality directly in a way that went beyond rational intellection. His well-ordered and directed desire enabled him to gain the highest degree of virtue.²² Proclus models himself on exceptional students partly through aligning his desires to theirs (highlighting the interactional nature of advanced education).²³ While affectivity is dangerous and should be disciplined and carefully directed to enable philosophical otherworldliness, desire remains a key element of Proclus’ education to the extent that it propels him towards greater understanding and moral purity.²⁴ Dorotheus’ approach aligns with Marinus’ account of Proclus’ education in that it too emphasizes the need to form affective bonds with exceptional teachers, to align one’s affectivity with virtue, to be propelled by appropriately directed desire to greater understanding and virtue, all the while being aware of the dangers of embodied emotional experience for one’s moral and spiritual development on the way to godlikeness. His approach also stands in a long tradition of ascetic thought. Earlier ascetics had insisted that monastic education should be concerned with the proper ordering of God-given desire that aligns the monk with God and spurs him on to ever deeper relationship with God. For example, Evagrius argued that anger ²⁰ Iamblichus, VP 13, 31–33. Cf. Miles 2018. ²¹ Marinus, V. Procl. 4, 22. ²² Marinus, V. Procl. 22. ²³ Marinus, V. Procl. 17. ²⁴ Marinus, V. Procl. 18.

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could be beneficial against demons (e.g., Prak. 24; mal. cog. 10, 14–15).²⁵ In the fifth century, Abba Isaiah of Scetis (who moved to Gaza in the 430s) distinguished between natural and unnatural passions (Logos 2.5–10)²⁶ and argued that love, ambition, anger, hatred, and pride may all be natural and good passions (πάθη) that—for all their common perversions—ground desire for God, lead to progress towards him, and enable monks to become pure and recognize virtue and vice (Logos 2.1–2).²⁷ A little later, Zosimas argued that human free will is not sufficiently passionate (ὁρμή), and that the monk must be inflamed with desire for God (alloquia 10, cf. 13–14).²⁸ Dorotheus stands in this tradition when he asks why a naturally passionate human should be disturbed by the passions (πάθη) (13.141.9–10). Dorotheus’ larger point is that ascetic education is partly about the ordering of desire towards objects of knowledge or contemplation of God, a feature of his epistemology we have surveyed which is also central to his ethics. Learning needs to be passionate to be virtuous, since passionate effort (ἐγένετο τοιοῦτος πόθος) is required to produce characteristic dispositions towards action (γενέσθαι ἐν ἕξει αὐτῆς). Hence emotions and ethics are intertwined in the ascetic classroom, and different emotions or affective states will be promoted, controlled, disciplined, or eliminated on the way to greater virtue.

Fear and Education While desire was coded as essential for learning, particular emotions were taken to be characteristic of education in late antiquity and were also crafted by Dorotheus in his ascetic pedagogy. Dorotheus recalls that as he began his own ascetic education, he felt like he was ‘someone going up to stroke a wild animal’.²⁹ Coding classroom experiences in this way triggers recollections of the terrors of the classroom. For Dorotheus, the classroom is a fearful place, with every potential misstep understood as permanently endangering one’s soul. Fear was a particularly important pedagogical emotion, featuring in accounts of education from classical Greece through to Dorotheus’ day.³⁰ The proverbial claim that the ‘root of education is bitter, but its fruits are sweet’, attributed in late antiquity to Demosthenes and Isocrates, acknowledged fears experienced by students in

²⁵ Yet anger remains problematic as one of his eight ‘thoughts’ (Prak. 6–14). At 8.89, Dorotheus quotes Evagrius arguing against anger. See mal. cog. 13. ²⁶ On Abba Isaiah, see Chitty 1971. Translations are from Isaiah of Scetis (2002) which is based on several Greek manuscripts not collated by Augoustinos. ²⁷ See further Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 132. Isaiah argues that positive passions may be perverted by the devil: Logos 2.6, 2.10. ²⁸ For John Chryssavgis’s translation, see Zosimas 2004 and Zosimas 2008. The text is Zosimas 1911. ²⁹ ὥς τί ποτε ὑπάγων ἅψασθαι θηρίου (10.105.3). ³⁰ See Chin 2008, 110–17.

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their education.³¹ Fourth- and fifth-century orators and rhetorical theorists, whose works were well known to the Gazan sophists of the sixth century, use this anecdote and thereby provide a window into emotional norms in late-antique classrooms.³² In explaining the bitterness of education, Libanius emphasizes the harsh emotional environment of the classroom. Students flee education out of fear for the hard work imposed by their teachers.³³ Libanius’ school master is ferocious and angry, terrifying his students with piercing glances from under his bushy eyebrows, and executing fateful judgement as in a high-stakes court case.³⁴ The teacher inspires fear (φοβερός) and manifests wrath (θυμὸν ἐμφανίζων). Classrooms (and homes and dreams) are places of fear rather than peace (οὐδὲν εἰρηναῖον προδεικνύς) for hard-pressed students. As the pedagogue brandishes his whip or rod (βακτηρίαν ἢ σκύτος), the fearful young men tremble and abase themselves before him (τρέμοντα καὶ συνεσταλμένον).³⁵ Poor work elicits beatings, threats, abuse, and wrath (ἀγανακτήσεις, λοιδορίαι, πληγαί, περὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἀπειλαί); good effort merely means that the student is ready for harder, more terrifying tasks.³⁶ This casts the classroom as a regime of fear that makes classroom experience difficult, anxiety-inducing, fearful, and melancholy (χαλεπόν, φοβερός, γέμον φροντίδος, σκυθρωπὸν).³⁷ In this tradition across a diverse range of classical and Christian authors, narrative plots of emotions associated with education begin with fear and generate a constellation of related negative affective experiences.³⁸ In the accounts of educational theorists and teachers of rhetoric, fear looms large as a constant in the classroom, even if theorists like Quintilian and Plutarch argue that teachers should avoid promoting it in the classroom.³⁹ In this register, fear makes students unable to learn because of their consequent emotional state of depression, shame, and distraction. Yet the theorists are acutely aware that fear is the reality of most classrooms. In student memories of their classroom experiences—explicitly fictionalized as in Libanius or apparently autobiographical if no less constructed as for example in Augustine—fear is pervasive, and leads to anxiety, avoidance ³¹ τὴν μὲν ῥίζαν ἔφη πικράν, τοὺς δὲ καρποὺς γλυκεῖς. See Demosthenes, Or. 13, Fr. 28; Libanius, Prog. Chreia 3; Aphthonius, Prog. 4,17–18; Stobaeus, Flor. 2.31.29; Nicolaus, Prog. 20.12; John of Sardis, In Aphth. prog. 50,20–2. A medieval collection of gnomic sayings attributes it to Aristotle: Melissa PG 136, 936A. Cribiore 2005, 68–70 offers an illuminating account of Libanius and fear and boredom in the classical tradition of education. ³² Prog. Chreia 3. Sections of the text which has come down to us as Libanius’ Progymnasmata show knowledge of works by Choricius of Gaza and may have been written in the Gazan rhetorical schools. See Foerster and Münscher 1894–1980, 2520–2. For Gazan sophists, see Fowler 2014; Amato, Corcella, and Lauritzen 2017. ³³ Chreia 3.3, 5: ἀποδιδράσκοντας τῷ φόβῳ τῶν πόνων. ³⁴ ὥσπερ οἱ δικασταί, φοβερός, συνάγων τὰς ὀφρῦς, θυμὸν ἐμφανίζων, οὐδὲν εἰρηναῖον προδεικνύς. ³⁵ Chreia 3.3, 7–8. ³⁶ Chreia 3.3, 7–8. ³⁷ Chreia 3.3, 7, 12, 20 (Foerster). These are all emotions which recur in the ascetic pedagogical context. ³⁸ For this dynamic in other authors, see further Chin 2008, 110–11, 118–19; Cribiore 2005, 69. ³⁹ Quintilian, Inst. 1.3.14–17; see also Ps-Plutarch, de lib. ed. 8F, 12. See also Bloomer 2015, 196.

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behaviours, and misery. But the narratives are told from the perspective of those who have succeeded, and hence, as in Libanius’ rhetorical exercise, the fruits of a successfully navigated fearful education mean that the classroom experience is coded as valuable, for all its terrors. In these retrospective accounts, fear is taken to be an ultimately necessary and beneficial motivator, even as it is remembered as debilitating in the moment. It is a shared experience that binds the educated elite together through the shared experience of emotional hardship. Hence when Dorotheus writes on fear in context of ascetic education, his teaching may be read in part as intersecting with a long-running tradition of conceptualizing and remembering fear in educational settings. His account of fear connects ascetic education to this longer affective history of classical education. Dorotheus’ regime of fear in the ascetic classroom also stands within an established ascetic tradition.⁴⁰ David Brakke has written of the fear of God as an emotion which functions within monasticism to clarify and settle the mind, enabling monks to pay appropriate intellectual attention to God and act well towards others, without being overcome by negative passions.⁴¹ Brakke’s model is Pachomian monasticism, where, we are told, monks progress like elementary students of grammar through learning to fear God appropriately (Pachomius, Instr. 1:55).⁴² Fear of God is thus required for making initial progress in ascetic education as also in other pedagogical domains. But for Pachomius it remains crucial at all levels of progress, shaping the imagination and minds of monks.⁴³ Crucially for situating discussions of fear of God in the context of late-antique education, the Pachomian tradition claims that fear of God enables the effective practice of philosophy, here understood not merely as ‘monasticism’ in general but as the intellectual and affective contours required of educated monks. Fear of God, in this tradition, partly generates knowledge and partly enables theoretical knowledge to be appropriately joined to practical knowledge and action (Paralip. 12). It purifies the soul, clarifies vision, and inculcates constant spiritual and affective vigilance.⁴⁴ Monks are to philosophize about ethical matters such as self-control, humility, or forgiveness in the face of rage. A judicious and appropriate fear of God enables monks to put their theoretical knowledge about these affectively shaped ethical claims into effective practice. The fear of God, which must be practised ‘every day and every hour’ is oil for the contemplative soul, activates good practical action, enlightens the contemplative intellect, and steadies the mind. Since fear of God makes ‘our mind unshakeable’, by educating the soul not to exercise passions such as wrath or anger, the theoretical intellect is

⁴⁰ Regnault and de Préville 2001, 65–7 trace this theme in relevant biblical passages, the Cappadocians, the Apophthegmata, and Barsanuphius and John. ⁴¹ Brakke 2006, 92. ⁴² CSCO 159: 22. See further Dilley 2017, 151. ⁴³ Dilley 2017, 184–5. ⁴⁴ For further discussion, see Rousseau 1999, 91.

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able to fix its attention on the ‘land of incorporeals’ and thus effectively fend off the attacks of the devil.⁴⁵ This emphasis on fear as a continuing feature of ascetic education at all levels of moral and spiritual development makes a break with Greek philosophical traditions. Aristotle, for example, had identified fear as a primary motivation of coming to practise virtue at the lowest level of moral development.⁴⁶ Aristotle notes that while fear is insufficient for moral education (EN 10.9, 1179b4–31), it is nevertheless an important stimulus for good action before someone has glimpsed the possibility of truly virtuous action, that is, acting well on the basis of one’s established virtuous character, for the right reasons, in the right way, at the right time, and motivated by virtue itself. For Aristotle, shame plays a key role in helping people on the path towards greater virtue because it directs their attention to what makes a particular action noble.⁴⁷ Shame, for Aristotle, is a recognition of a lack of one’s own nobility in the performance of an action, even if the action performed is good. This makes the actor aware of questions a virtuous person considers in the performance of a virtuous action, especially agent-centred concerns about one’s motivations and character. Fear, on the other hand, does not generate these questions about virtuous character and intention. The best fear can do is to motivate people to perform a good action. But if a good action is generated by fear, it in fact works against the acquisition of virtue, because it habituates the actor to acting for the sake of external factors rather than out of a settled virtuous character disposition and for the sake of virtue itself.⁴⁸ In Dorotheus’ case, fear is central to his programme of ascetic education at each successive stage of spiritual development. But he needs to meet this challenge about how fear may lead to virtue rather than merely habituate people to perform good actions for extrinsic reasons. His account involves mapping relationships between fear and love, thereby expanding how fear could be conceptualized and distinguishing between different kinds of fear which are appropriate at different stages of moral development.⁴⁹ He also removes from his account much of the physical violence of fear found in other monastic writers, perhaps most clearly in the White Monastery of Shenoute, though the beating of Dositheus by Abbot Seridos indicates that physical violence remained a feature of monastic education

⁴⁵ For this passage, see Paralip. 12, and Dilley 2017, 184–5. ⁴⁶ See further Chapter 5. See also Burnyeat 1980, 75. ⁴⁷ See Jimenez 2020. On the moral value of shame, see e.g., Arist. EN 1107a–1108a, 1128b10–35; Rhet. 1383b13. On shame more generally, see Cairns 1993, especially ch. 6 on the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle. ⁴⁸ Aristotle can define shame as a kind of fear, so the break between fear as an emotion that directs attention only to external motivations and shame which directs attention to virtue is not absolute. See e.g., Arist. EN 1128b12. ⁴⁹ Cf. Clement of Alexandria, str. 7.16.102.1–2 (although Dorotheus does not distinguish between theoretical knowledge built on scripture and practical knowledge built on fear and faith: for him, perfect fear shapes practical and theoretical knowledge). See also Diadochus of Photice, gnost. 16–17.

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at Thawatha.⁵⁰ Dorotheus’ ascetic classroom is full of fear, both as a matter of fact about the experiences of his students and, pace earlier theorists of education, for positive normative reasons. In an extended reflection on the Johannine claim that ‘perfect love casts out fear’ (1 John 4:15), Dorotheus distinguishes between two sorts of fear (Instruction 4: On Fear). The first is ‘elementary’ (ἐισαγωγικός), the sort of fear which is appropriate for a student starting school (ὁ ἀρχάριος) to experience (4.47.14), again constructing ascetic emotional experience in the light of established norms of pedagogical affectivity. Such fear should, Dorotheus thinks, be overcome and replaced with positive emotions of peacefulness, tranquillity, and love as monks progress, but it is not intrinsically negative. That is, Dorotheus explicitly recognizes a positive protreptic role for fear in monastic education. This stands within the wider discourses of unpleasant but ultimately beneficial pedagogical fear and also within schemes of moral development like Aristotle’s which consider fear to be a useful way to begin to habituate students to virtue. Like students in other classrooms, novices experiencing elementary fear are anxious about future punishments (ὁ φόβος τῶν κολάσεων) and beatings (ὁ φόβος τῶν πληγῶν) (4.47.14–16). The monastic context, however, also gives this fear crucially different referents. The horizon is both ultimate—with future punishments signifying judgement after death—and immediate, with the fearful blows reminding monks of beatings in the classrooms of their youth and of the assaults they can expect upon them from demons, external circumstance, and the interior temptations in the ascetic life. Such fear is ‘elementary’ in the sense that it is preliminary and because it is necessary for progression to more advanced study and spiritual development. Dorotheus aims for his students to move beyond it in gaining perfect fear (τέλειος φόβος) which he thinks characterizes the saints who have ‘come into a portion of holy love’ (4.47.10–12). But he explicitly claims that perfect fear is impossible to attain without first enduring elementary fear. In this transformation of fear, Dorotheus builds on traditions of ascetic and general Christian education and constructs his argument around biblical sayings from wisdom literature commonly ruminated upon in earlier accounts.⁵¹ In his On Vainglory and the Raising of Children, the fifth-century patriarch and preacher John Chrysostom (to whom Dorotheus was indebted) argued for the need for

⁵⁰ Life of Dositheus 12. On the violence of Shenoute’s monastery in the context of thinking about fear of God, see Dilley 2017 178–81, and especially Shenoute, De iudicio dei 4–6, with introduction and translation by David Brakke and Andrew Crislip in Shenoute 2015, 212–65. Krawiec 2002, 13–30 outlines the emotional contours of the White Monastery and the role of emotion in monastic education under Shenoute, with a caveat about evaluating the degree of violence in the monastery as opposed to the wider Pachomian tradition given our sources (28). ⁵¹ ‘Fear the Lord, you his saints’ (Ps. 34:9); ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Ps. 111:10); ‘Fear is the beginning and the end’ (Prov. 1:7, 9:10, 22:4); ‘By the fear of the Lord one departs from evil’ (Prov. 16:6); ‘Come, you children, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord’ (Ps. 34:11) (4.47, 49–50).

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strict teachers and educational rules which inspire fear (16, 26), and he recommended instilling fear of God in children through stories (40).⁵² Such fear sits as the first stage in a ladder of fear recommended by Basil and meditated upon by Dorotheus, who provides a commentary on Basil’s three-fold account.⁵³ For Basil as for Dorotheus, fear comes in three states: when one acts out of fear of punishment, one is a slave. Since this is a natural condition for all humans, who are understood paradigmatically but not negatively as slaves of God, such a state does not come with the same debilitating, shameful emotional weight of practices of fear through which the bodies of elite Roman learners were enslaved in grammatical education.⁵⁴ This first, elementary fear is not, then, associated with the same emotional experiences of depression, melancholy, and listlessness familiar from discourses of classical education in Dorotheus’ account. Basil’s second stage is that of the monk who acts in fear of losing a reward: the monk no longer acts like a slave but rather is stuck at the level of a wage labourer, still performing what good he achieves for extrinsic rather than intrinsic reasons. This does not go far enough. For Basil, the monk must in the final stage move beyond fear to acting because of a desire for the Good; only then does the monk become a son of God. Dorotheus identifies this sort of action as the ‘perfect love which casts out (elementary) fear’. In this stage, it seems that love replaces fear: certainly, that is the interpretation of the Epistle of John which other ascetic thinkers adopted: Basil’s three-fold scheme ends in love, and St Antony, quoted by Dorotheus in this context, boldly claims that ‘I do not fear God, but I love him’ (4.48.16–17).⁵⁵ Dorotheus, however, retains his two-fold taxonomy of elementary and perfect fear, parsing Antony’s statement as the elimination of elementary fear. Perfect fear remains, and it is not to be merely identified with love. For Dorotheus, in the security of loving God, the monk continues to experience fear—now perfect fear experienced as acting in love towards God—by always recognizing that his action could remove him from the divine love he experiences and desires. He thereby establishes a continuity between different stages of fear that makes fear important for acquiring virtue. Fear in its most perfect form continually directs attention towards virtue and goodness itself rather than merely motivating action on the basis of external compulsion. The fear the monk now feels is a fully internalized emotion, where action arising from it is motivated by a settled character which has come to love goodness and virtue and fears losing it. This is a long way from the novice’s initial fear of punishment, where good action was externally compelled by ⁵² See Leyerle 2020, 112–49 for John Chrysostom on fear. Chrysostom’s thought resonates with much of Dorotheus’ account. Leyerle provides an illuminating analysis of the role of fear in behaviour control, ethical formation, and generating pro-social behaviour. She identifies the continuing significance of fear throughout a Christian’s life for Chrysostom: adults should be ‘schooled in fear’, and fear is taken as important for mastery of technical crafts (115, 117). See also Henning 2014, 218–20. ⁵³ Basil, Asceticon PG 31, 896B; cf. 4.48 ff. ⁵⁴ On Christian attitudes to slavery see de Wet 2018. ⁵⁵ Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Antony 32, PG 65, 85C.

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fear of a more powerful external authority figure. Nevertheless, there is continuity between these emotional states, since both are generated by the recognition of the gap between the monk and the Good. This recognition is initially generated by recognition of the gap between student and teacher or between the novice and more virtuous students. But it moves on, at the most fundamental level, to constant attention to the gulf between monks and the God whose perfections they imitate. Further, in both cases, there is an elimination of one’s own will. For the novice student, elementary fear suppresses the student’s desires in fearful performance of what the teacher demands. For the monk nearing perfection, fear as perfect love has eliminated any possibility of competition between the monk’s will and God’s purpose. Therefore fear remains even for the monk who loves God, since action which might separate the monk from God is always close at hand. At the ultimate stage of moral and spiritual development, love of God generates perfect fear. But Dorotheus also identifies two further ways in which perfect fear of God may be generated in the soul of the monastic student on the way to this perfection: fear of God arises from attachment to a spiritual guide and from constant remembrance of death and future punishment. In the first area, guidance from superiors is required to inculcate virtues, just as we have seen in the case of conforming monks to epistemological standards. Perfect fear may become a disposition of the soul through monks attaching themselves to a spiritual guide. Dorotheus interprets the Apophthegmata Patrum to insist on the need for obedient submission to spiritual authorities in order to develop appropriate fear of God: It is said that a brother asked an elder, ‘What shall I do, father, that I may fear God?’ The elder said to him, ‘Go and devote yourself to a man who fears God and because he fears God, he will teach you also to fear him’. Λέγει γὰρ ὅτι ἠρώτησεν ἀδελφός τινα τῶν γερόντων· Τί ποιήσω, Πάτερ, ἵνα φοβοῦμαι τὸν Θεόν; Καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ γέρων· Ὕπαγε κολλήθητι ἀνθρώπῳ φοβουμένῳ τὸν Θεόν, καὶ ἐκ τοῦ φοβεῖσθαι αὐτὸν τὸν Θεόν, διδάσκει καὶ σὲ φοβεῖσθαι αὐτόν. (4.52.7–11)

The language of cleaving to and becoming united with a holy man (κολλάω) indicates the strength of the relationship of dependence Dorotheus advises and it points to the strongly communal and interactional nature of ethical formation in Dorotheus’ view of education. Students cannot hope to achieve virtue or emotional regulation on their own, just as they required dependence on epistemic guides in order to grasp the truth. At the base of this claim, as in the case of epistemology, is a deep concern about the corrosive power of individual desire. The advice of a spiritual guide is required because the opposite of perfect fear is acting out of wilfulness, as Barsanuphius had earlier taught (resp. 401.13–14). This explains Dorotheus’ emphasis on excision of the will in the development of virtue

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and explains why the classical virtue of ‘audacious disrespect’ (παρρησία) is so dangerous, according to Dorotheus.⁵⁶ Παρρησία involves audacious and disrespectful speaking, touching, and seeing (4.53), and so goes beyond the classical definition of the term, which relates primarily to audaciously free political speech. The concept has moved from a healthy political disregard for the powerful and for dominant if largely unexamined norms, to actions which interfere with authority or fellow citizens through imposing one’s will on them, and are thereby coded as arrogant, wilful, and disrespectful. It is the worst (that is, the clearest) way in which one can lose fear of God.⁵⁷ Dorotheus quotes Abba Agathon, who defines speaking freely as a ‘burning heat’ which destroys productive fruits with the power of passion and claims that ‘there is no more grievous passion than [παρρησία]. It is the mother of all passions’.⁵⁸ Dorotheus concurs: It was very well said with great understanding that boldness is the mother of all passions, since it expels fear of God from the soul . . . . If everyone turns away from evil by the fear of the Lord, certainly where there is no fear of God, there is each passion. God delivers our souls from the destructive passion of audacious disrespect. Πάνυ καλῶς εἶπεν καὶ μετὰ συνέσεως πολλῆς τὸ γεννήτριά ἐστι πάντων τῶν παθῶν, ἐπειδὴ αὕτη ἐκδιώκει τὸν φόβον τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς . . . . Εἰ γὰρ τῷ φόβῳ Κυρίου ἐκκλίνει πᾶς ἀπὸ κακοῦ, πάντως ὅπου οὐκ ἔστι φόβος Θεοῦ, ἐκεῖ ἕκαστον πάθος. Ὁ Θεὸς ῥύσεται τὰς ψυχὰς ἡμῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὀλεθρίου πάθους τῆς παρρησίας. (4.52.26–31)

If παρρησία is the ‘mother of passions’, we see that perfect fear of God is the ‘mother of virtues’ as the earlier Gazan ascetic teacher, Isaiah, put it.⁵⁹ For Isaiah, such fear produces humility, and is said to eliminate passions.⁶⁰ In Dorotheus, perfect fear is developed in concert with practising obedience to an ethical guide. There is thus a parallel between the perfect fear required before God and appropriate submission to authority figures within the monastery. The emotional regime of fear functions to enforce and strengthen power relations within the monastery. Education as a means of control is clear in Dorotheus’ account of fear as in other areas of thought where he emphasizes the importance of dependence on powerful authorities.

⁵⁶ Konstan 2012 argues that while παρρησία is generally positive, it can be coded as shamelessness. Dorotheus treats παρρησία instead as arrogance and unjustified autonomy. ⁵⁷ Cf. Binns 1996, 239–44. Binns notes that Dorotheus stands within an Alexandrian rather than the more positive tradition of understanding parresia, which could code parresia as free intimacy before God, a state known in paradise, proper to confident gospel proclamation and the witness of martyrs, conferred in baptism, developed through ascetic living, and attained in death. ⁵⁸ Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Agathon 1, PG 65, 109A. ⁵⁹ Logos 21.1. ⁶⁰ Logos 16.8.

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Fear of God can also be developed in ascetic education through inculcating in the students the continual remembrance of death and future punishments.⁶¹ This makes self-examination a primary criterion of successful education. Fear motivates remembrance of death and the associated practices of continual interior selfexamination. Such self-examination includes monitoring of thoughts and affective experience. Lorenzo Perrone has argued that in the case of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, the anxiety experienced by the monk who seeks to act out of love for God partly motivates practices of continual self-examination and attentive disciplining of the soul and its passions, affects, and desires throughout monastic education.⁶² Dorotheus would agree, seeing fear as pedagogically and spiritually beneficial. He goes on to emphasize that practices of self-examination themselves create perfect fear in the advanced students of asceticism. These practices enable monks to interrogate their thoughts, align their reason and desire, and excise selfish wilfulness. They therefore ensure that action aligned with desire for the good rather than motivated by fear of punishment or external reward is more likely. This in turn generates the creation of dispositions and habits of perfect fear. The initial affective state of elementary fear is transformed, through mental discipline and habituation, to self-examination, and thereby into the more perfect fear which, while never comfortable, is identified with peaceable loving of God. Emotion functions in Dorotheus’ text to create relationships, conventions, beliefs, and a set of authorized practices which distinguish his classroom clearly from the (also varied classrooms) of contemporary grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, or medicine. Yet his discourse of fear in the context of education simultaneously reaches out to these other contexts and provides a way to relate the different enterprises and anchor ascetic education in other forms of late-antique education. Citizens with educational experience beyond the monasteries could recognize many shared emotional norms in Dorotheus’ classroom and could also recognize ways in which emotions, especially emotions associated with fear, could direct attention and motivate learning. A significant difference is in the locus of fear. In the classical case, the teacher is the feared subject, the powerful critic, and harsh and threatening judge, capable of severe punishment. In Dorotheus’ case, the possibility of such violence is present, both in his sometimes stringent prescriptions and in the person of the abbot, to whom Dorotheus can send badly behaving monks for punishment. But behind the teacher and abbot stands the figure of the divine judge, who sees into the monks’ minds and hearts and remembers their offences. This both accentuates the anxiety and fear which can be generated in the ascetic classroom and provides the mechanism for it to be transmuted into a form of love which always recognizes the unbridgeable distinction between creator and creature. This continual fear and anxiety, as well as the

⁶¹ ἡ μνήμη τοῦ θανάτου καὶ ἡ μνήμη τῶν κολάσεων (4.52.2–3).

⁶² See Perrone 2013.

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perfect state of love which continues to desire ethical, epistemological, and affective improvement, provides a significant motivation for ascetic students to advance in their ascetic education. Dorotheus’ narrative of the divine plan of salvation supports his reconfiguration of fear in the ascetic classroom. The arc of that narrative, from original perfection to fall, and from fall to restoration and transformation towards godlikeness grounds the view that fear can be transformed from elementary to perfect fear and into love of God. It therefore makes perfect fear a continuing motivator in the monks’ task of becoming godlike. It makes it reasonable for monks to fear their fallen state and yet to move from shame to hope, instead of experiencing fear predominantly as an enervating and disempowering emotion. It connects traditional discourses of fear to narratives of future cosmic punishment and therefore makes fear a central emotion in the conceptualization of ascetic education as the preparation for death. Dorotheus’ account of fear therefore anchors his ascetic classroom in well-established norms and practices of late-antique education while also enabling him to strike out in different directions.

Emotions in Dorotheus’ Psychology In tracing fear as one dominant pedagogical emotion, it should be clear that for Dorotheus, affectivity colours cognition, behaviour, perception, and ethics. It is therefore crucial to clarify Dorotheus’ understanding of how emotions operate in the soul. His moral and affective psychology offers a framework to explain how the fall affected perception, emotions, attention, and moral sensitivity. I begin by analysing his moral psychology before honing in on key concepts within it, including τὸ πάθος, ἡ ἐπιθυμία, ἡ ἀπάθεια, and ὁ λογισμὸς (ἐμπαθής).⁶³

Dorotheus’ Psychology Dorotheus most clearly sets out his psychological theory in his Commentary on Gregory Nazianzus’ Hymn for the Holy Martyrs (Instruction 17). After considering the literal meaning of Gregory’s reference to ‘living sacrificial victims’ and ‘rational whole burnt offerings’ (victims with rational souls wholly given to God), Dorotheus offers an extended symbolic interpretation, where these sacrifices are understood as ‘symbols of souls’. The hands are ‘symbols of practical philosophy (εἰς τὴν πρακτικὴν)’, pointing to ‘the practice of good deeds (τὴν τῶν ⁶³ How these terms relate Dorotheus’ account of habituation to his wider theory of moral psychology is treated in Chapter 5. On these themes, see Kofsky 2006; Parrinello 2002; Parrinello 2010; Perrone 2004.

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ἀγαθῶν ἔργων πρᾶξιν)’. Other prime offerings symbolize the different parts of the soul. This element of his interpretation thus offers insight into the psychology which supports his ethics and within which his account of emotions operates. Dorotheus builds from the Platonic tripartite soul, which posits rational, irascible, and desiring parts of the soul (λογιστικόν, θυμικόν/θυμός, ἐπιθυμητικόν/ ἐπιθυμία) (17.176).⁶⁴ He attributes this division to Gregory Nazianzus, but his account is drawn together with a concluding quote from Evagrius, who made much of this scheme across his works and was almost certainly Dorotheus’ source.⁶⁵ In the broadly Platonic account, the three parts of the soul perform different functions.⁶⁶ The rational part of the soul is responsible for reflective cognition, understanding, and purposive action; it is meant to guide the other parts of the soul. The irascible part of the soul enables courageous action, is associated with anger, and feels pleasure and pain. The appetitive part explains desire (and so is also involved in assessments and feelings of pleasure and pain), while it is also the ground of natural drives like eating and sex. In the Platonic view, while the appetitive and irascible parts of the soul can be directed to good ends, they are entangled in the body at least to a much greater extent than the rational part of the soul is, explaining the Platonic tendency to prioritize disembodied intellection over varieties of embodied sensation. In Dorotheus’ account, each of the parts of the soul can be properly ordered such that they contribute to the spiritual, rational, and ethical perfection of humans whose souls were created as naturally good. The desiring, appetitive part of the soul properly orders desires; when this part of the soul is functioning properly, humans ‘love nothing above God and nor do they take heed of any of the things being desired more than the desires for God’.⁶⁷ The desiring part of the soul enables humans to desire and love God and is ordered correctly such that humans correctly prioritize desire. In this scheme, desire is ordered and disciplined rather than eliminated. Dorotheus then discusses, rather briefly, the irascible part of the soul. He claims to cite Basil’s account of anger, but the definition of anger as a boiling around the heart is a standard Aristotelian and Galenic example which recurs in the philosophical tradition and is also found in Evagrius.⁶⁸ Dorotheus places himself within this tradition by deploying this example while the reference to Basil (like those to Gregory and other unnamed ‘fathers’) in this passage is a ⁶⁴ E.g., Plato, Rep. 435e–442a. Cf. Aristotle, DA 432a1–432b7. ⁶⁵ See Evagrius, Prak. 40 and 89. For Evagrius’ dubious attribution of this scheme to Gregory, see Bunge 1983. Evagrius’ source is most probably a Handbook such as On the Virtues and the Vices 1–2. See Sinkewicz 2011, 260. See also Stewart 2011a, 268–9. ⁶⁶ Diog. Laert. 3.90 offers an influential summary, shaped by Aristotle’s De anima. ⁶⁷ τὸ μηδὲν πρὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀγαπᾷν, μηδὲν ἐκ πάντων τῶν ἐπιθυμητικῶν προτιμᾷν τῆς εἰς τὸν Θεὸν ἐπιθυμίας (17.176.25–27). ⁶⁸ Jonathan Zecher identified the addition of ‘movement’ to ‘boiling’ in this passage, which suggests a Galenic providence. See e.g., De Causis morborum 7.5.11–14; Nemesius, nat. hom. 81; Basil, Ennaratio in prophetam Isaiam 5.181.13–14.

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deliberate rhetorical move to Christianize the tradition for his ascetic audience.⁶⁹ Since Dorotheus elsewhere rules out anger as a means of working towards the good, this does not illumine how he thinks the irascible part of the soul could assist in perfecting the monk. However, he soon quotes Evagrius approvingly, arguing that this part of the soul enables the monk to endure struggles with courage (17.176.44–45). Dorotheus then turns to the rational part of the soul. Again, the broadly philosophical scheme is written into Christian narratives, as Dorotheus uses the example of Moses dressing Aaron with an ‘oracle of judgement’, a metal device worn on the chest of the High Priest which doubles as an image of rationality through its Greek name (τὸ λόγιον). Through this imagery, the rational part of the soul is directly related to making judgements about God’s will. This aligns with the epistemology discussed in the last chapter, where correct intellection was determined by its alignment with divine providence and commands. The cosmos is understood to be providentially arranged such that true rational understanding is defined by a person’s ability to understand the divinely given principles of its arrangement. If these three parts of the soul operate correctly, then the soul can ‘purify itself with God’s help by practical activity and thus be returned return to its natural state’.⁷⁰ Dorotheus concludes his account of the tripartite soul by quoting Evagrius (Prak. 40): The rational soul acts according to nature whenever its desiring part aims at virtue, the irascible struggles for it, and the rational part gives its attention to theoretical reasoning about what has come to be. κατὰ φύσιν ἐνεργεῖ ψυχὴ λογική, ὅταν τὸ μὲν ἐπιθυμητικὸν μέρος αὐτῆς τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐφίεται, τὸ δὲ θυμικὸν ὑπὲρ ταύτης ἀγωνίζεται, τὸ δὲ λογιστικὸν ἐπιβάλλει τῇ θεωρίᾳ τῶν γεγονότων. (17.176.43–46)

The tripartite division of the soul could rule out understanding Dorotheus’ psychology as compatible with affectivism. As we have seen, influential elements of the wider Platonic tradition aim for the reasoning part of the soul to take over and not to be improperly affected by the other two parts of the soul.⁷¹ On these accounts, reasoning is what makes humans properly human and the philosopher should aim to strengthen the reasoning power to such an extent that he is guided by it alone. The perfect philosopher is the person whose reasoning power dominates and who becomes godlike by becoming aligned with Intellect. But ⁶⁹ See e.g., Galen, De differentiis febrium 283,7–9; Ammonius, in Porph. Isag 57.19–20; Philoponus in DA. 15.231.8–27; Olympiodorus, in Phaed. 16.329.25–26; Evagrius, Prak. 11; cap. 33, 3, PG 40, 1265A; mal. cog. 34,4–13. ⁷⁰ διὰ τῆς πρακτικῆς σὺν Θεῷ καθαιρούσης ἑαυτὴν καὶ ἐπὶ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν ἐπανερχομένης (17.176.41–42). ⁷¹ See further Chapter 3.

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Dorotheus works out his version of the tripartite soul so that the continuing operation of the irascible and desiring parts of the soul remain significant in the monk’s transformation to greater perfection. This keeps the framework of affectivism open for understanding his psychology. Particularly, all three parts of the soul are required for moral understanding and action. The perfectly desiring soul motivates the monk to pursue the path of virtue, the healthy irascible part is the organ of courage and endurance that enables the monk to overcome obstacles, contend with demons, and endure through the pain of internal and external temptations, while the rational part of the soul enables correct judgement about how to align one’s understanding to God’s, thereby providing access to divinely given ethical parameters. Such rational understanding is itself driven by both passionate motivating impulse and courage and endurance to persist in the correct course of action. This account is strengthened by considering how Dorotheus treats the concept of ἀπάθεια.⁷² One effect of Dorotheus’ framing of his quotation from Evagrius on the three parts of the soul with his foregoing exegesis of Gregory’s hymn is to rule out ἀπάθεια as a goal of ascetic perfection, at least if ἀπάθεια is defined as the elimination of desire.⁷³ That is, for Dorotheus, all cognition is affectively shaped. Dorotheus opens his account of the ἐπιθυμητικόν by noting that this part of the soul is the source of love of God and the appropriate ordering of desires, rather than their elimination, so that when he cites Evagrius at the conclusion of his discussion of the tripartite soul, his students already know that the ἐπιθυμητικόν has a foundational role to play in the ascetic life. Similarly, his repeated encouragement to his monks to endure and struggle under temptation demonstrates the centrality of the θυμικόν to appropriate judgements about action and persisting faithfully in accordance with such judgements. Not for Dorotheus the goal of progressive elimination of the desiring and irascible functions of the soul in pure contemplation of God. This is also underscored by his choice of quotation from Evagrius: he cites the Praktikos, rather than texts from Evagrius’ oeuvre aimed at more advanced ascetic perfection, which emphasize the importance of pure theoretical intellection and contemplation of God. Where theoretical speculation is included, at this stage of Evagrius’ project, it relates to knowledge of what has come into being (τῇ θεωρίᾳ τῶν γεγονότων) rather than divine immateriality. Dorotheus’ educational programme is grounded on higher order speculative claims—about the nature of God, the plan of salvation, and, here, on the nature of the soul—but his instruction of his monks is focused on the daily temptations and struggles of monastic living in community. Unlike Evagrius, from whom we

⁷² See Sorabji 2000, 360–2. ⁷³ Evagrius, like the Stoics, did not see apatheia as ruling out all emotion; the eupathai remain. On this modification of a common reading of Stoicism, see especially Graver 2007. Dorotheus goes beyond Evagrius in the role he thinks a wider range of emotions may play in a life of perfection.

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have both practically oriented and more speculative or theoretical writings, we must derive Dorotheus’ more speculative commitments from his more comprehensively practical instruction.

Passion and Desire and their Absence (τὸ πάθος, ἡ ἐπιθυμία, and ἡ ἀπάθεια) Within Dorotheus’ moral psychology, cognates for passion (πάθος), desire (ἐπιθυμία), and freedom from passion (ἀπάθεια) play key roles. We have seen that ἐπιθυμία is the function of the desiring part of the soul; Dorotheus can also use the term πάθη to refer to morally positive and negative desires and impulses.⁷⁴ Two conceptual difficulties with these terms colour his accounts of emotion and the virtues within his educational project. The first problem has just been noted: if emotion is a constitutive element of the soul created by God as good, how does Dorotheus understand ἀπάθεια, or ‘absence of passion’? Second, granted that Dorotheus thinks that all cognition and moral behaviour is shaped by desire and affectivity, how precisely does he understand these emotional phenomena to function within the soul? I have already argued that Dorotheus’ framing of his account of the tripartite soul downplays the concept of ‘absence of passion’. But while he only uses the term ἀπάθεια and closely related cognates in his first Instruction, the fact that the concept can be thought of as something a monk should aim at does raise questions about the strength of his affectivism. Does he think that emotions go ‘all the way down’ or does he think that perfected humanity will not be shaped by affectivity? The first Instruction provides some support for the latter possibility. In that context, ἀπάθεια signifies impassibility born of freedom from attachments, and is a state that Dorotheus acknowledges is only reached by ‘the saints’, spiritual heroes of special perfection (1.11). They have gone beyond merely eliminating the effects of the passions and have advanced to eliminate the passions themselves: Further, understanding this [that practising the virtues leads to greater perfection], all the saints hasten by a completely humble way of life, to unite themselves to God; for they became lovers of God who after holy baptism not only cut off the activity of the passions, but also willed to conquer the passions themselves and became impassible. Τοῦτο καὶ οἱ ἅγιοι πάντες ἐπιστάμενοι, ἔσπευδον διὰ πάσης ταπεινῆς ἀγωγῆς ἑνῶσαι ἑαυτοὺς τῷ Θεῷ· ἐγένοντο γάρ τινες φιλόθεοι οἵτινες μετὰ τὸ ἅγιον

⁷⁴ Dorotheus rarely employs other terms with similar valence (e.g., πόθος, ὁρμή) (6.76.20; 10.105.25). See further Regnault and de Préville 2001, 48–52.

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βάπτισμα οὐ μόνον τὰς ἐνεργείας τῶν παθῶν περιέκοψαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὰ τὰ πάθη νικῆσαι ἠβουλήθησαν καὶ γενέσθαι ἀπαθεῖς. (1.11.1–5)

This state of perfect dispassion is achieved through the purification of the soul and the mind, such that the soul can ‘see and reach its natural state’ since the soul is now aligned to divine commandments which ‘enlighten the eyes’ (Ps. 19:8) (1.11.10–12). This way of life is open to all who give the ‘gifts’ of virginity and poverty to God (1.12–13). Thinking of ἀπάθεια as reached only by spiritual experts may partly explain Dorotheus’ relative reticence in the use of the term ἀπάθεια. Dorotheus’ educational programme is aimed at all monks, rather than the small spiritual elite who may reach ἀπάθεια this side of the eschaton. It may be that his account is best understood as a species of affectivism for all humans up to the point at which they become perfect. But that would raise problems about accounting for his insistence that emotion should be trained in particular directions, and that many emotions should be maximized rather than eliminated. A better view, then, is to understand ἀπάθεια as the elimination of harmful passions and inappropriate attachments, especially through cutting off autonomous desires. Within this reading, ἀπάθεια can play a key role while still viewing emotion as continuing to generate subjectivity at all stages of human perfection.⁷⁵ On the side of eliminating harmful passions, a state of freedom from negative emotion or desire is achieved through talking back to one’s mistaken or evil thoughts, or, better still, refusing even to respond to them, thus cutting off one’s own will and accepting one’s situation in life (1.20.14–31). He repeatedly claims that impassibility results from the excision of the will: Therefore if we wish to be perfectly delivered and set free, we should learn to cut off our will and in this way, slowly but surely progressing with God, we reach freedom from inclination towards passion.⁷⁶ Ἐὰν οὖν θέλωμεν τελείως ἀπαλλαγῆναι καὶ ἐλευθερωθῆναι, μάθωμεν κόπτειν τὰ θελήματα ἡμῶν, καὶ οὕτως κατὰ μικρὸν μικρὸν σὺν Θεῷ προκόπτοντες ἐρχόμεθα εἰς τὴν ἀπροσπάθειαν. (1.20.1–3; cf. 1.20.12–13)

It is not clear whether τὰ θελήματα in this case should be understood as a capacity of the soul or simply as ‘things that are desired’. I have chosen to translate the term as ‘will’, since Dorotheus has a consistent account that monks should align their ⁷⁵ ἀπάθεια and the related term ἀπροσπάθεια are only found in the programmatic first Instruction (1.11, 1.20). Cf. Graver 2007 for a similar reading of the Stoics. This discourse is the most reflective and explicitly theoretical of the Instructions, and the ‘technical’ terminology is, perhaps, most appropriate in that context. On cutting off the will, see Kofsky 2006 and Perrone 2004, 135–7. ⁷⁶ Diadochus of Photice, gnost. 4 defines this as ‘likeness to God’. For the theme of freedom as servitude to God in Irenaeus and Clement, see Osborn 1993, 217–19.

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desires to those of monastic exemplars and, ultimately, to whatever God desires for them. But it is worth flagging that Dorotheus does not have a developed account of the will as such.⁷⁷ He does, however, seem to understand τὰ θελήματα in a more strongly developed manner than mere ‘objects of choice’ or ‘things that are desired’. At least, what one chooses and desires shapes the soul and its future capacities, so cutting off what one desires in a particular instance also has the effect of remoulding the soul itself. In cutting off desires in this way, the monk moves from inclination towards passion or passionate attachment (προσπάθεια), to a lack of such passionate inclination and attachment (ἀπροσπάθεια). Eliminating even the inclination towards passionate attachment enables the monk to attain to perfect impassibility (ἀπάθεια).⁷⁸ The goal of such lack of attachment to desire is, for Dorotheus, consistent with love of neighbour rather than complete detachment from society, since it removes selfish obstacles to perfect love.⁷⁹ Dorotheus elsewhere defines good πάθη as the emotions involved in suffering with others (14.153.1–21), a distinctively Christian move.⁸⁰ Sympathetic solidarity with others removes all inappropriate ἐπιθυμία. That is, desire is immoral only to the extent that it gets in the way of beneficial social relations and acts of other-regarding charity and sympathy. Inappropriate attachments arise from vicious and unnatural πάθη (passions). For Dorotheus, such πάθη are unnatural, a product of the fall, which introduces ‘ambition, love of pleasure, and all the other passions’ (1.1, 11.122). Such individual and differentiated passions arise from inner deficiencies of the fallen human soul, meaning that practices of self-examination, confession, and constant vigilance are required to ensure that the passions are not activated after taking root in the soul (7.82, 11.117, 120). Christ the doctor comes to heal the passions, countering vanity, love of pleasure, greed, and ambition with humility, continence, and charity (11.113). Following the commandments and acting virtuously enables the soul to recover its natural state, so that its created good human nature is restored and liberated from slavery to passion (1.6, 11.222, 16.171). There is an illuminating instability in Dorotheus’ account of passion. So far, the πάθη have been understood as emotionally charged phenomena that motivate action. They are mostly understood as morally bad. As such, they align with individual vices to the extent that they may be identified with them. In this sense, Dorotheus distinguishes between ‘passion’ and ‘sin’, in line with an Evagrian ⁷⁷ See also Regnault and de Préville 2001, 51. ⁷⁸ ‘And so he is found, as we said, not having passionate attachment, and from this freedom from attachment, as I said, he arrives at impassibility’ (Καὶ οὕτως εὑρίσκεται, ὡς εἴπομεν, μὴ ἔχων προσπάθειαν, καὶ ἐκ τῆς ἀπροσπαθείας, ὡς εἶπον, ἔρχεται εἰς τὴν ἀπάθειαν) (1.20.31–33). Cf. John Climacus, scal. 26, PG 1024,11–16. ⁷⁹ Cf. Evagrius, Prak. 81, 84. See Linge 2000, 564–5. ⁸⁰ On sympathy, love, mercy, and compassion as emotional states that remain in the perfect monk, see further below. On this Christian virtue, see Konstan 2001, 118–19 and especially Wessel 2016.

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distinction. Individual passions in this sense can be enumerated (e.g., as ‘anger, vainglory, hate, love of pleasure, hatred, evil desire and so many other such things’ without any sense of systematization as in the ‘eight thoughts’), while sin is distinguished from passion in that everyone may be expected to have passions, but it is sinful to enact them (1.5.18–24). Good passion is possible and may generate virtuous sociality but the negative sense of passion predominates across Dorotheus’ writings. Yet passion may also denote the failure of perception which leads to immoral action. Distinguishing between these two senses of πάθη is important for understanding the moral psychology which supports Dorotheus’ programme of education as it relates to emotion and virtue because it shifts attention from episodic moral failures to deeply rooted structural problems in human psychology. For all his careful investigation of the differences between different individual passions and ways they might infect individual monks and the monastic community, the second definition, passion as an unnatural postlapsarian inner deficiency, is conceptually primary for Dorotheus. Passion, on this account, is understood as distortion in the soul. The sense of passion as vice or sin arises from the sense of passion as deficient ability to perceive the cosmos as it ought to be perceived. Passions in this primary sense create an evil disposition in the soul (1.5–6). Dorotheus’ account of the fall means that such an evil disposition is the normal state of humanity, which must return from postlapsarian disorder to the settled tranquillity originally intended for humans. Dorotheus argues that flawed processes of human understanding (διάνοια) shape humans from their youth. Humanity can be expected to be marred by passion, understood as an inner, disordered disposition that affects structures of thought and perception. This distinguishes his account of emotion from the Stoic tradition, which has been seen as highly influential within Christianity, especially through Origen and Evagrius.⁸¹ For the Stoic thinker Chrysippus, emotion is a set of two cognitive judgements about whether a situation is good or bad and about whether a given reaction to this situation is appropriate.⁸² This rejected the earlier view that emotion is a physical reaction.⁸³ Nevertheless, later Stoics reflected upon the common experience of physical reactions when people are making judgements about situations. Seneca introduced the idea of ‘first movements’, which were not emotions, but were instead physical motions of the soul like trembling or the swelling of the chest.⁸⁴ In the Christian tradition more proximate to Dorotheus,

⁸¹ See Sorabji 2000. Regnault and de Préville 2001, 55–8 prefer a Stoic reading. ⁸² See Seneca, De ira 2.26.3, 2.28; Cicero, Tusc. 3.61, 68, 3.76–78. See further Sorabji 2000, 2–3, 29–41. ⁸³ For Zeno, see Diog. Laert. 7.110; Stobaeus 2.88, 2.39 (SVF 1.205–206). ⁸⁴ Seneca, De ira 2.2.1–2.4.2. See the discussion at Sorabji 2000, 66–71. Sorabji also discusses physiological movements in Aristotle, Posidonius, and Galen (71–75).

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these first movements became the ‘thoughts’ that afflict Christians.⁸⁵ This ignores the distinction between physical movements and rational judgements that had been important in the Stoic distinction. For Christians, these thoughts may be internal or prompted by demons. On this account, we cannot stop such thoughts afflicting us, but through cognitive therapies we can stop them stirring up the passions, persisting within our souls, and affecting how we make judgements.⁸⁶ Sin comes from assenting to the thoughts.⁸⁷ For Evagrius, humans afflicted by thoughts can defeat them by playing one thought off against another.⁸⁸ Dorotheus shares elements of this account but also diverges in key ways. Humans must seek to order their souls so that their actions are not generated by their disordered perceptual apparatus: passion is expected; sin (its actualization) is not. But I argue that his account of passion and ‘impassioned thoughts’ (see further below) diverges from this broadly Stoic narrative, partly because of his tripartite psychology. Dorotheus has no account of προπάθεια, the Stoic first movements of the passions which are themselves morally neutral but become fully fledged passions once a person assents to them.⁸⁹ He does argue that being subject to temptation is not sinful, whereas engaging in non-virtuous action is, but the grounds for this claim are quite different. Indeed, in the discourse devoted to ‘cutting off passions’ before they become fixed in the soul, there is no reference to ‘first movements of the passions’ as one might expect in a similarly titled Stoic treatise. Rather, the idea is that it is important to pay constant attention to the smallest distortions of desire in one’s soul, so that they do not become habitual or a part of one’s settled disposition.⁹⁰ The metaphor does not refer to eliminating first movements that might become passions. Rather, the distorted impression in the soul marked out by passion needs to be excised. This is an urgent task, since without such surgery on the soul, the soul will become so distorted that the passion cannot be eliminated. Once passion has become so ingrained that it is a habit and a fixed disposition (ἡ ἕξις, ἡ διάθεσις), then a monk must be guided by it. Dorotheus explains that addiction to sinfulness follows, for example in the case of the monk who has become so thoroughly habituated to his passion for stealing that he steals without knowing why he does so (11.121.34). The soul subject to passion is thus blighted by a deficiency of feeling (ἀναισθησία) to such an extent that it fails to realize that it is able to be saved (11.114.18–20; ep. 7, 192). Again, this is to say that for Dorotheus, appropriate feeling generates subjectivity, and as such remains in perfected humanity. Because of their insensibility and lack of proper attention, even monks who are taught the ⁸⁵ See Origen, Princ. 3.2.2, 3.2.4; Evagrius, Prak 6. See further Sorabji 2000, 346–7, 358–60, to whom I am indebted for relevant texts. ⁸⁶ Evagrius, Prak. 6, 37. ⁸⁷ Evagrius, Prak. 74–75. ⁸⁸ Evagrius, Prak. 30–1, 57–58. Evagrius admits that it is better to fight passions with humility or chastity (Prak. 58). ⁸⁹ The term does not appear in his writings. ⁹⁰ See further Chapter 5.

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word of God ‘disregard it and are not aroused to desire it (καταφρονοῦμεν καὶ οὐ διεγειρόμεθα)’ (11.114.17–21). Other metaphors are common: passions are ‘filth’, they are ‘foreign’ impurities that ‘obscure’ the soul or mind and distort the image of God in humans.⁹¹ All these images work together to underscore the primary claim that passion makes the soul unable to perceive reality correctly and so distorts moral judgements, misdirects desire and affectivity, and generates sinful action. A key metaphor is drawn from medicine. Dorotheus likens the effect of the performance of an individual passion to a wound (τραῦμα) (8.94.12–29).⁹² When a person is wounded, an ointment or plaster (ἔμπλαστρος) can bring temporary healing, but a scar remains. The sight of the wound, marked by the scar, remains sensitive, and if it is hit—in Dorotheus’ dramatic example when someone throws a stone at it—the wound will be injured more readily than other parts of the body and will immediately start to bleed. Repeated wounds will cause deeper scars that can be reopened even with minor blows. What is required is long-term healing, so that the evidence of the original wound disappears. So too, Dorotheus argues, in the case of passion. The soul is scarred even by apparently minor passionate actions. Once a monk has enacted an individual passion, he is scarred by the bitter memory of his action. He must, therefore, work ‘to conquer any bad memory in his heart through serious attention’.⁹³ Passionate action damages the soul by perverting the memory. Repeated bad actions strengthen such memories and make it more likely that monks will act badly in the future. Performance of individual passions quickly leads to an established pattern of behaviour because the soul has been damaged in ways that negatively affect its capacity to make good judgements. The medical metaphor brings home the general point that this distortion affects bodies and minds: what humans will in the flesh and in mental images or opinions should be cut off to escape the distortions of desire.⁹⁴ Desire of the flesh or of the eyes is equally problematic, leading to distorted evaluation of worldly goods and the individual passions of love of pleasure, money or vainglory (16.168.17–26). Within Dorotheus’ moral psychology, then, the fallen soul is marred by evil acts and conceptions:⁹⁵ the wretched [impassioned soul] (ἡ ἐμπαθὴς ψυχή) is always harmed by its own evil disposition, eternally holding its bitter memory and painful discourse of the passions burning eternally and inflaming it. ⁹¹ E.g., 7.82, 11.122, 12.127, 16.171. ⁹² See also Diadocus of Photice, gnost. 17 (linking the idea to fear of God); John Climacus, scal. 5.30, PG 88, 777D, offers a similar argument about treating the wound/passion early. ⁹³ διὰ τοῦ σπουδάσαι μηδεμίαν κακὴν μνήμην κρατῆσαι ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ (8.94.21–22). ⁹⁴ θελήματα . . . τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν. Cf. John 1:13 (16.168.1–4). ⁹⁵ τὴν κακὴν πρᾶξιν τῶν ψυχῶν καὶ τὰς κακὰς αὐτῶν ἐνθυμήσεις (12.127.17–18).

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πάντοτε κολάζεται ἡ ἀθλία ὑπὸ τῆς ἰδίας κακοεξίας, ἔχουσα ἀεὶ τὴν πικρὰν μνήμην καὶ τὴν ἐπώδυνον ἀδολεσχίαν τῶν παθῶν καιόντων ἀεὶ καὶ καταφλεγόντων αὐτήν. (12.127.7–10)

This makes clear the depth of the problem Dorotheus thinks his students face in re-ordering their souls through education. Passion, after the fall, has so perverted the soul that it tends to perceive reality in a disordered way. Monks desire pleasure, greed, or ambition, from which come all sins (9.101). Their misshapen memories lead them to evaluate new experiences incorrectly and such memories lead to bad action (2.27). They even desire death (12.125.11), acting in direct opposition to the ‘great philanthropy of God’ which enables them to live in the world for their perfection and salvation (12.125.6–7).⁹⁶ Not wanting to live and considering death to be pleasant, argues Dorotheus, is evidence also that the monk has both misdirected desires and a distorted understanding of God’s will for his creatures, since it demonstrates insufficient hope in God’s promises for future blessedness and disregard for the punishments due to the sinful (12.125.1–23). In general, senses fail because the soul evaluates them through its distorted affectivecognitive schemas—its bitter memory, painful meditations, evil conceptions, misplaced optimism, and perverted hopes and projections. These distorted schemas mean that desire, will, and reason are all disordered, and, should monks allow the schemas to become fixed in their souls, they will not even realize that they are assenting to evil when they enact individual passions. In this context of all-pervasive distortions of structures of perception, cognition, and emotion, ascetic education aims to bring monks instead to a settled disposition in which monks have so ordered their souls that they cannot be disturbed by their experiences and interactions in the world. Humility protects against confusion and disorder, where the monk ‘comes into the settled character of a demon, disturbing and being disturbed’.⁹⁷ On the contrary, monks are to develop a secure disposition which enables them to keep their established and settled disposition, moderate mood, and sense of peacefulness in the midst of their day-to-day life (5.58–59). This may remind us of Evagrius’ account of the wise monk’s κατάστασις, in which the soul can be undisturbed even ‘in the presence of images it has during sleep and when it maintains its calm as it beholds the affairs of life’ (Prak. 64). For Evagrius, while memories and dreams can disturb, the perfect monk controls them so that they do not trouble his tranquillity (Prak. 56, 67).⁹⁸

⁹⁶ This passage is picked up by the thirteenth-century miscellanist and theologian Theognostus. See Theognostus, Thesaurus 17.A43 (in the larger that also draws on Dorotheus passage A41–A43). ⁹⁷ ἔρχεται εἰς κατάστασιν δαίμονος, ταράσσων καὶ ταρασσόμενος (2.29.15–17). ⁹⁸ Linge 2000, 557.

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Dorotheus’ account, then, is broadly congruent with what Kathleen Gibbons has described as the ‘perspectival nature of passions’ in the case of Evagrius.⁹⁹ Dorotheus’ writings do not provide sufficient detail securely to ground conclusions about the degree to which passions are conceptualized as either distorting images or perverse discursively shaped structures in the soul.¹⁰⁰ But there is a strong case that Dorotheus believes monks are subject to passion because of the fall such that souls are shaped by distorting schemas. They are subject to multiple experiences which make them habitually evaluate the world in distorted ways. This reinforces and strengthens passion in their souls by more clearly imprinting disordered images or conceptions. When individual passions are enacted in the monk’s experience, perverted memories are formed and mistaken concepts are embedded in their soul, such that similar desires are likely to be aroused and similarly mistaken judgements are likely to be made when the monk finds himself in comparable situations.¹⁰¹ This creates a literally vicious circle, so that passion— distorted structuring of the soul—quickly becomes habitual, shaping the monk’s memory, desire, will, and reason. Much of Dorotheus’ educational programme in moral psychology, ethics, and emotion is directed towards displacing such inappropriate mental images, desires, and concepts and replacing them with images and concepts which enable the soul to process physical and mental impressions in ways that enable them to progress in virtue and escape habituation to sinfulness. Dorotheus does not, however, follow Evagrius’ lead in seeking spiritual progress that moves towards ‘imageless’ prayer, leaving behind the memories and images of embodied existence that distort purely contemplative virtue.¹⁰² This is to say that Dorotheus’ scheme remains at the level of Evagrius’ Praktikos, from which he quotes repeatedly. Evagrius’ programme of ascetic education is carefully graded, in the sense that he writes a succession of works intended for monks at different levels of ascetic perfection. His Praktikos retains a place for embodied desire and irascibility, albeit properly directed towards God and governed by the λογιστικόν. It is less clear where the desiring and irascible functions of the soul fit in his account of ἀπάθεια when the more advanced monks reach a state of perfect, imageless prayer, since it is the function of these two parts of the soul to provide embodied images to aid intellection.¹⁰³ Dorotheus’ educational programme, by contrast, suggests that he believes that monks should aim towards perfectly affective knowledge of God, in the sense that the whole human soul, in its desiring

⁹⁹ Gibbons 2015. See also Corrigan 2009, 54–7. ¹⁰⁰ Note, however, that his primary metaphor is linguistic (λογισμοί), in the tradition of Origen. He never uses φαντασία; νόημα is only deployed once. On Origen’s Stoic account of the ‘thoughts’, see Sorabji 2000, 343–56. ¹⁰¹ See Gibbons 2015, 326–7, for similar analysis of Evagrius. ¹⁰² Cf. Gibbons 2015, 327–9. ¹⁰³ Evagrius has been unfairly interpreted, since Jerome, as thinking that desire and irascibility could or should be completely eliminated. For a more positive evaluation, see Stewart 2011a, 270–1.

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capacity, its capacity for endurance and hope in the face of temptation, and its capacity for rational understanding, should be directed towards and participate in God. His moral psychology rejects a view of progress towards godlikeness that seeks the elimination of desire both because Dorotheus thinks that the disembodied soul retains memories (12.127), and because he has a positive evaluation of the function of the desiring and irascible parts of the soul, when, together with the rational part, they are properly ordered and freed from the distorting effects of the passions. Emotions play a positive role if they are directed towards God. This means that his educational programme in the context of emotions and virtues focuses not on the elimination of emotion but on its purification and re-ordering at all stages along the way to human perfection.

Affective Thoughts: Emotion and Cognition (ὁ λογισμὸς ἐμπαθής) Dorotheus’ account of impassioned thoughts (λογισμὸι ἐμπαθεῖς) confirms this picture of how passion functions within Dorotheus’ moral psychology, underscoring the importance of habituation and cognitive-affective therapies directed towards the proper ordering of desire within the soul.¹⁰⁴ The λογισμοί are understood both as internal to the monk and as externally generated by demons, although his focus is on internal thoughts rather than demonic activity.¹⁰⁵ Dorotheus’ emphasis on internalization explains his persistent attention in his educational programme on self-examination and externalization of one’s thoughts through practices of confession, guarding one’s conscience, seeking guidance from superiors, and prayer—techniques of self-scrutiny which unmask deceptive impassioned thoughts partly by drawing on the resources of the monastic community. In the other direction, Dorotheus’ treatment of thoughts as external threats also draws on a well-established ascetic and philosophical tradition. Demonic activity does, as in earlier writers, signify the cosmic nature of evil after the fall.¹⁰⁶ Demons signify the brokenness of creation and the all-pervasive potential of evil. The external reality of evil is something monks must be prepared to struggle against. But Dorotheus puts the accent on how this cosmic evil threatens to become rooted in the souls of individual monks. In this mode, impassioned thoughts stand for disordered affective cognition, a sense similar to his primary conceptual definition of the passions themselves (e.g., 3.43, 4.54). ¹⁰⁴ This tradition can be traced back to Origen. See further Stewart 2005, 8–12. On habituation, see further Chapter 5. ¹⁰⁵ On demons and thoughts, see Brakke 2006, 8–13, 52–7 and Brakke 2001. On ancient demonology, see Brenk 1986. Crucial stages in the ascetic tradition include Origen, Princ. 3.2–3; Didymus Caecus, Comm. Eccles. 294.8–20; Evagrius, Prak. 6–33, 43, 47 and, in greater detail, his mal. cog. Regnault and de Préville 2001, 48 argue that Dorotheus shifts the Egyptian ascetic emphasis on demons to a greater focus on internal states. ¹⁰⁶ Compare Stewart 2011a, 265–6.

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Dorotheus’ claim that ‘even if a passion troubles us, we should not be disturbed by it’, may appear to take us back into the realm of Stoic propatheia rather than the Platonic psychology of passions as distorted images shaping perception.¹⁰⁷ But while Dorotheus can mix originally Stoic and Platonic terminology in his psychology (a characteristic he shares with later Platonism), in this passage and others like it he speaks not of propatheia but of fully-formed pathos. As we have seen, his fundamental account of passion treats it as a disordered schema rather than a vice prompted by incipient passions or temptations which must be ignored lest they are activated through a person assenting to them. His line of thought may be clarified by analysing his interpretation of an apophthegm where he explains that passions and thoughts are ‘inside’ the monk: The instruments of the passions, as Abba Sisoes said,¹⁰⁸ are inside you. Pay them their due and they will depart. ‘The instruments’ mean ‘the causes’ [of the passions]. Therefore as far as we have loved and exercised these passions, it is impossible for us not to be captured by impassioned thoughts which force us to exercise the passions even when we do not want to, since we have willingly given ourselves into their hands. Τὰ σκεύη αὐτῶν, ὡς εἶπεν ὁ ἀββᾶς Σισώης, ἔνδοθέν σού εἰσι· δὸς αὐτοῖς τὸν ἀρραβῶνα αὐτῶν, καὶ ὑπάγουσι. Τὰ σκεύη εἶπε τὰ αἴτια. Ἐφ’ ὅσον οὖν ταῦτα ἠγαπήσαμεν καὶ ἐνηργήσαμεν, οὐ δυνατὸν μὴ αἰχμαλωτίζεσθαι ἡμᾶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμπαθῶν λογισμῶν, ἐκβιαζομένων ἡμᾶς καὶ μὴ θέλοντας ἐνεργῆσαι τὰ πάθη, ἐπειδὴ ἑκόντες ἑαυτοὺς προεδώκαμεν εἰς τὰς χεῖρας αὐτῶν. (13.141.15–21)

Dorotheus can describe these thoughts as doing battle against the monk (13.143.1–4). But the Stoic model of thoughts as pre-passions is a distraction. These thoughts do battle not as external temptations to which the monk may disastrously succumb. His account does not fit a narrative which sees ‘temptation’ as the Christian equivalent of Stoic disturbance.¹⁰⁹ Further, in describing the ‘thoughts’ as ‘impassioned’, Dorotheus has already given them an emotional character. In his account, it is not that the monk is faced with first movements (not yet emotions) to which he may or may not assent. Rather, the process is recursive. Once passions have been activated, they become part of the monk’s soul, causing him to have flawed desires, thoughts, and feelings. These impassioned thoughts then themselves force the monk to activate individual passions. Once the monk activates these passions and fails to pay them off and eradicate

¹⁰⁷ Καὶ πάθος δὲ ἐὰν ὀχλήσῃ ἡμῖν, οὐκ ὀφείλομεν οὐδὲ ἐν τούτῳ ταράσσεσθαι (13.141.2–3). ¹⁰⁸ Cf. Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Sisoes 6. ¹⁰⁹ Thus while Dorotheus stands within a tradition aligned with thinkers like Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and Evagrius and certainly aims at spiritual and intellectual tranquillity, his moral psychology is not primarily Stoicism transcribed into a Christian account of sinfulness.

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them through endurance and labour there is a destructive cycle of distorted perception, intellection, and judgement, leading to further sinful behaviour. Such sinful behaviour may be involuntary, since the distorted schema makes the monk think that he is acting well. Dorotheus’ repeated injunctions to monks not to be disturbed by passion is not directed at cutting off propatheia. Rather, it is a recognition that cognitive-affective-volitional disturbance is impossible to avoid once a passion has been exercised voluntarily and the soul distorted by it. The thing to do, then, is not to become more disturbed still. Rather, the monk must ‘calmly endure’, labour to gain the virtues, and thus rectify the distortions within their soul so that they can break free from the psychic structures which lead them astray. In an allegorical reflection on Hosea 5–7, Dorotheus elaborates these arguments (13.142–143).¹¹⁰ Ephraim, we are told, oppressed his opponent and trampled on his judgement (Hos. 5:11) because he sought out Egypt and was taken by force by the Assyrians (Hos. 7:11) (13.142.1–4). Dorotheus explains that we should understand Ephraim’s opponent as his conscience, Egypt as bodily desires, and the Assyrians as impassioned thoughts. His thus relates key elements of his account of affective cognition and ethical education, illuminating how different elements of his moral psychology interact. Again, a recursive account is provided, which connects physical perception and embodied desire, emotion, and rational judgement. The embodied will (τὸ θέλημα τὸ σαρκικόν) inclines humans to indulge in the pleasures of the body, but this does not merely affect the desiring parts of the soul. It also means that the rational mind (νοῦς) is distorted through coming to love such pleasure. Dorotheus suggests that embodiment makes bodily comfort desirable and that seeking such desire means that the mind is overpowered, taken by force, and comes to have inappropriate perceptions that makes it unable appropriately to evaluate such pleasure. The impassioned thoughts (ἐμπαθεῖς λογισμοί) are themselves caused by individual passions as in the earlier discussion. They disturb and confound the mind by filling it with ‘unclean images’ (εἴδωλα ἀκάθαρτα). This disordering of the soul means that the thoughts lead the mind ‘by force and involuntarily to exercise sin’.¹¹¹ The initial problem is not the first movements of the passions, but rather bodily desires which directly affect the soul, in Dorotheus’ account, disordering it so it cannot function rationally. This disorder of the soul leads to the recursive distortion of impassioned thoughts which implant impure images in the soul, making it impossible for the soul to make reasonable judgements and accurately perceive reality.

¹¹⁰ The allegorical interpretation aligns with Isaiah, Logos 4.8. Cf. the interpretation of this passage in Chapter 3. ¹¹¹ βίᾳ καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον εἰς τὴν κατ’ ἐνέργειαν ἁμαρτίαν (13.142.1–10).

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For Dorotheus, the disturbance and disordering of the soul caused by passions and thoughts may be turned into a beneficial experience or pedagogical moment. Spiritual struggle is positive because God is never unjust or arbitrary (τὸ ἄδικον; τὸ ἄκριτον) (13.143.19–20) and so working to eradicate spiritual disorder and enduring disturbance in one’s soul will always be beneficial (cf. 13.144.17–19). Dorotheus stands within a long tradition of popular ethics when he argues that comfort and relaxation are morally dubious because they can engender spiritual and moral laziness, whereas struggle against temptation fortifies one’s moral character (13.148.11–14). Such struggle and endurance generate divine mercy through humility, elimination of selfish desire, patience and prayer (13.144.1–17). If the impassioned thoughts flourish, then passion takes over; but behaviour generated by passion can be overcome through eradicating the thoughts (13.144.24–29). Dorotheus turns to biblical eschatological language to describe the defeat of individual passions through spiritual struggle—the passions will be destroyed to the ‘ages of ages’—again underscoring the cosmic nature of the ascetic struggle against thoughts and passions (13.144.27). Given the dangers involved in spiritual struggle, monks are reminded that God will not test them beyond their strength and the ascetic fathers provide spiritual teachings to help monks navigate their own temptations (13.146). Dorotheus reminds monks of the great sweep of salvation history, interpreting the Exodus narrative as the transformation from sinfulness to paradise through spiritual struggle (13.145–147). Like those captive to Pharaoh, the mind is weighed down and pays attention to earthly things and passions like desire for pleasure, greed, and ambition (13.145.12–18). But God brings self-awareness, frees monks from passions like he freed his people in Egypt, and mercifully grants them deliverance. The ultimate prize is a return to one’s originally created nature by the mercy of God (13.144.13; 13.148.1–19). Again, we see Dorotheus’ concern to insert his students in a privileged narrative and develop their skill in narration so that they come to act more effectively in the monastery. Impassioned thoughts are understood both as evidence for cosmic evil attacking and disturbing the monk and, most consistently and significantly, as distorted images within the soul which affect physical, intellectual, ethical, and spiritual perception. They are generated by passionate actions and then reinforce passion in the monk’s disordered soul. Cognitive-affective disturbance in the soul arises from the nature of creation after the fall. But monks should learn by rehearsing the narrative of the divine plan to reframe the disturbances within them as an opportunity to struggle and endure to obtain divine mercy and thereby be restored to their originally perfect nature. Ascetic education should enable monks to experience disturbance as spiritually beneficial and temporary rather than as fixed and unyielding. This makes affective modulation, discipline, and habituation central components of Dorotheus’ programme of ascetic education. This is to be achieved through replacing a monk’s individual and autonomous desires with the perfect intention and commands of Christ, who is understood as the perfectly

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humble human and living word of God’s commandments. In this process, Christ’s will and reason are imprinted on the soul of the monks, correcting the disturbances and disordered images which have perverted their spiritual, emotional, and ethical perception. So Dorotheus can also speak, crucially, of thoughts (no longer ‘impassioned’) as perfecting the soul of virtuous monks. This is distinctive if not unique in the context of the wider tradition. Evagrius had noted that God entrusted mental representations (νοήματα), both the good and the bad, to humans.¹¹² The irascible part of the soul is supposed to fight off negative mental representations as a good shepherd driving away the wolves from the sheep, while the concupiscible part of the soul is to care for the sheep so that they may act as a good shepherd who protects the sheep ‘lest any of the [good mental representations] be taken by a wild beast or fall prey to thieves’.¹¹³ The passions can ‘steal away’ the good mental representations needed for realistic perception, truthful judgement, appropriate affectivity, and virtuous action. In Dorotheus’ image, the thoughts are protected by the parapet of humility. If they are protected in this way, they provide the ordered schema by which monks can act virtuously from a settled disposition. Dorotheus takes his cue from Deuteronomy 22:8: ‘when you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof . . . lest your children should fall from it’: What are the children of which the law said that they should not fall from the roof? The children are the thoughts which come into being in the soul, which must be guarded by humility, lest they fall from the roof, which, as we said, is the perfection of the virtues. Τί δέ ἐστι τὰ παιδία περὶ ὧν εἶπεν ὁ νόμος ἵνα μὴ πέσωσιν ἀπὸ τοῦ δώματος; Τὰ παιδία εἰσὶν οἱ λογισμοὶ οἱ γινόμενοι ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, οὓς δεῖ φυλάττειν διὰ τῆς ταπεινώσεως, ἵνα μὴ καὶ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ δώματος ἐκπέσωσιν, ὅπερ εἴπαμεν εἶναι τὴν τελείωσιν τῶν ἀρετῶν. (14.151.49–53)

The thoughts, so long as they are guarded by humility, crown the pinnacle of the soul of the virtuous person. That is, the thoughts of the virtuous person align with a life of virtue, are supported by the harmonious construction of the virtuous soul, are protected by humility, and enable monks, therefore, to act in accordance with God’s will.¹¹⁴

¹¹² Evagrius, mal. cog. 17. I thank Jonathan Zecher for drawing my attention to this passage. ¹¹³ Evagrius, mal. cog. 17. Sinkewicz 2011 translation, 164. ¹¹⁴ For an extended interpretation of Instruction 14, see further Chapter 5.

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Virtue and Affective Cognition: Attentive Pilgrimage and Vigilance in Excising the Passions The themes of Instruction 10, ‘On travelling God’s way with purpose and attentiveness’ are picked up and extended in Instruction 11, ‘On studying quickly to cut off the evil passions before they arise by habit in the soul’. I therefore analyse these two instructions together, providing a close reading that illumines and augments the preceding account of Dorotheus’ moral psychology and the strong connection between affectivity and the life of virtue that we have seen in his thought.¹¹⁵ My reading of these Instructions is therefore intended as a pivot from Dorotheus’ moral psychology to thinking how his affective psychology shapes his account of virtues and which emotions should be cultivated in the life of virtue. Given the distorted nature of the human mind in Dorotheus’ worldview, a perpetual ethical problem for monks is their carelessness. Progress through endurance and struggle, divine assistance, and the ultimate comfort of spiritual tranquillity arise from ‘attention in the heart’ (προσοχὴν ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ) (10.104.9). Yet, Dorotheus worries, monks ‘are in such a state of indifference that [they] neither know why [they] departed nor what [they] desired’.¹¹⁶ Asceticism as flight from the world resonates with motifs of godlikeness as otherworldliness. For Dorotheus, the ascetic life which has departed from the power dynamics of the wider society enables spiritual progression and greater godlikeness. But such progress requires, in his view, a constant intellectual and emotional attentiveness to the direction of the monk’s life and desires. Dorotheus’ striking image of education as approaching a wild beast (10.105.3) casts education as something potentially dangerous and threatening, perhaps illicitly pleasurable, certainly requiring courage and acute attention.¹¹⁷ According to Dorotheus, properly ordered emotion powerfully generates and increases the capacity to learn. The attention of studious desire required for learning rhetoric is only magnified in the more important case of learning to be good within the monasteries (10.105.25–28). Without purpose, concentrated attention, vigilance, and struggle, monks fall away from the virtues (10.104.8–14). Emotion shapes cognition and practice in the exercise of the virtues. Therefore the goal of flight from the world to the ascetic life of virtue requires not the elimination of emotion but its appropriate cultivation. This aligns with his view that virtue and pleasure go together. Utilizing a Stoic distinction between natural and non-natural desires widely adopted in late-antique philosophy, Dorotheus notes that while the virtuous person eats, drinks, and sleeps

¹¹⁵ I defer to Chapter 5 discussion of habit and virtue acquisition. ¹¹⁶ ἐν τοσαύτῃ ἐσμὲν ἀμελείᾳ ὅτι οὔτε οἴδαμεν διὰ τί ἐξήλθομεν, οὐκ οἴδαμεν οὐδὲ τί ἐστιν ὃ ἠθελήσα εν (10.104.5–7). ¹¹⁷ See also Chapter 2.

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like other people, he is worthy (τίμιος) inasmuch as he enacts the virtues and gains pleasure in doing so (10.106.37–44). Dorotheus’ examples of how virtue operates combine broadly Aristotelian accounts with Christian asceticism (10.106.33–37).¹¹⁸ For Aristotle, virtue is conceptualized as a mean between an excess and a deficiency of a positive ethical characteristic, with the caveat that the mean should not be calculated mechanically, but that it specifies the appropriate action in a particular situation (EN 1106a26–b7). Dorotheus follows the broad outlines of this account, with some important differences governed by his evaluation of the spiritual danger of some emotions. For example, unlike Abba Isaiah, who would have agreed with Aristotle that even anger has a place in virtuous action so long as it does not overpower reason, Dorotheus thinks anger is always inappropriate.¹¹⁹ One must never, he thinks, fight a passion with a passion.¹²⁰ Nevertheless, Dorotheus goes to Aristotle’s example of courage as the middle way between cowardice and rashness as his first example.¹²¹ Then he turns to the ascetic tradition, placing humility between Basil’s admonitions against both too great a concern for other’s opinions and excessive arrogance.¹²² Finally, he takes an example from the wider Christian moralist tradition, defining reverence as the mean between shame and shamelessness.¹²³ Dorotheus thus moulds the wider classical ethical tradition to his ascetic context by drawing together approaches from different discourses to promote his distinctive Christian-ascetic scheme of virtues. Dorotheus’ primary metaphor for virtue as a mean is travel towards divine perfection, including pilgrimage: The virtues are the mean, the royal road of which the holy old man spoke: ‘travel by the royal road and measure the miles’. Therefore the virtues are, as I said, the mean between excess and deficiency. Αἱ γὰρ ἀρεταὶ μέσαι εἰσίν, ἡ βασιλικὴ ὁδός ἐστι, περὶ ἧς εἶπεν ὁ ἅγιος γέρων ἐκεῖνος· Ὁδῷ βασιλικῇ πορεύεσθε καὶ τὰ μίλια μετρεῖτε. Μέσαι οὖν εἰσιν, ὡς εἶπον, αἱ ἀρεταὶ ὑπερβολῶν καὶ ἐλλείψεων. (10.106.1–4)

¹¹⁸ Compare Didymus Caecus, Commentarii in Zacchariam 5.16; Evagrius Expositio in Prov. 83.1, 88.9; Evagrius, Scholia in Prov. 53.1–2. ¹¹⁹ Isaiah, Logos 2.1–2; Dorotheus, Ep. 2, 185. ¹²⁰ This distinguishes him from Evagrius, Prak. 30–1, 57–8, although as we have noted, Evagrius also warns against being conquered by demons through being angry (e.g., mal. cog. 13). ¹²¹ ἡ ἀνδρεία μέση ἐστὶ τῆς δειλίας καὶ τῆς θρασύτητος. See Aristotle, EE 1228b3. This definition became paradigmatic and had been integrated into a range of different systems. For the medical tradition, see Galen, QAM 4.789.15–16; de temp. 1.576.10–12. ¹²² ἡ ταπεινοφροσύνη μέση ἐστὶ τῆς ὑπερηφανίας καὶ τῆς ἀνθρωπαρεσκίας. Cf. Basil, reg. br. 34–5: Πῶς φύγῃ τις τὸ πάθος τῆς ἀνθρωπαρεσκείας. Πῶς γνωρίζεται ὁ ὑπερήφανος, ἢ πῶς θεραπεύεται. ¹²³ ἡ εὐλάβεια μέση ἐστὶ τῆς αἰσχύνης καὶ τῆς ἀναιδείας. Sirach 25:22; John Chrysostom, In pharisaeum et meretricem PG 61 727; Ephrem, Homilia in meretricem 91,3.

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The imagery of the ‘royal road’ became a Christian topos for acting with moderation within the ecclesial community.¹²⁴ In Dorotheus’ hands, the passage captures in nuce the various complex interactions between different systems in his thought. The Aristotelian idea is grounded in authoritative sayings from the Bible and holy fathers.¹²⁵ It is then bolstered with a quotation from Basil’s Homilies on the Psalms, before he explains the ethical theory drawing on physics and medicine, again with further citation of Basil and Gregory.¹²⁶ This is an important example of how his conception of education goes beyond mere training. He does want his monks to understand and practise moderation on the basis that virtue should be understood as a mean. But he educates them by drawing on a range of discourses that go beyond that ethical aim. The metaphor of travel, pathways, and pilgrimage does a good deal of conceptual work. Dorotheus compares the move into the monastery to a pilgrim’s journey towards Jerusalem, the ‘holy city’ (10.107.1–36). Such a pilgrim may become downhearted or distracted and not get very far on the intended journey. Some may get half-way along the path but become lost and never reach the goal. Others may reach the city gates but fail to enter the city, or else may remain only in the ‘slums’. Still others may enter the city and reach their destination. In all these examples, Dorotheus implicitly draws on cultural assumptions about pilgrimage and travel in late antiquity. The physical travel of pilgrimage is likened to the progress of the soul, a rich conceptual metaphor in early Christianity. Where some writers had contrasted physical travel with the more important journey of the soul, Dorotheus capitalizes on the similarity between physical pilgrimage and progressive ethical perfection.¹²⁷ Successful travel requires planning and is physically demanding. At a very concrete level, the analogy between the progress and perfection of the soul and successful travel enables Dorotheus to underline the constant struggle and discipline involved in the life of virtue. The analogy also foregrounds the centrality of ordered mental schemas through association with straight Roman roads and the ubiquitous regularity of mile markers along them. The architecture of pilgrimage routes is crucial in this respect too. Pilgrimage ¹²⁴ The imagery is biblical (Num. 20:17) and was widely adopted. See Gregory Nazianzus, or. 2 33–35, which applies the imagery also in the context of medical thought, a possible point of connection with Dorotheus, given his medical training. The citation from the Apophthegmata is to a saying of Abba Benjamin (coll. syst, 7.5.1–2). Eusebius speaks of the soul keeping to the royal road by acting well according to its created nature (PE 6.6.48.4). See also Epiphanius, Panarion 378,4–8; Cyril, Expositio in Psalmos PG 69, 856. Theodore Studites, ep. 315,32–35; cf. Philo of Alexandria, quod deus sit immutabilis 159–62. ¹²⁵ Num. 20:17, Prov. 4:27; Apoph. (coll. syst. 7.5). ¹²⁶ Basil, hom. in Ps. PG 29 244D (on virtue as a mean between excess and deficiency); Basil, hex. PG 29, 196B–196C (virtue is natural and a cause of the soul’s health whereas vice causes sickness); Gregory Nazianzus, or. 23, PG 35 1152B–1152C (on matter producing the cause of its destruction, just as passion gives existence to evil). In the last case, Dorotheus’ examples are rotting wood, rusting metal, and moth-ridden cloth, pointing to his craft metaphor for virtue (on which see Chapter 5). ¹²⁷ Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, ep. 2. For the practice and ideology of pilgrimage in late antiquity and relevant literature, see Frank 2009. On monastic travel, see Chryssavgis 2003, especially 98–100.

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routes and spaces were deliberately designed to assist in the orderly movement of pilgrims and to separate out different groups, for example dividing men from women at points along the journey.¹²⁸ While pilgrimage spaces were designed for such ordered movement and division of groups (men from women, higher from lower status travellers, uninitiated from the baptized, pilgrims from locals) several writers also point to the failure of such urban design and the potential for dangerous liaisons and disordered social interactions (cf. Gregory of Nyssa, ep. 2). This physical ordering of pilgrimage space and sociality maps to the ordering of the soul which Dorotheus thinks is crucial for the successfully moderate performance of virtue. Further, the potential for such ordering of space to fail also underlines the possibility of ethical failure through a disintegration of the soul’s rational and ethical schemas. More abstractly, Dorotheus can draw on ways in which pilgrimage was itself progressively disciplined to restrict freer movement to places deemed important by individuals or marginal groups and direct it to sites which aligned with more powerful theological agendas.¹²⁹ In a similar way, understanding ascetic ethical progress as pilgrimage shapes monastic virtue within the boundaries Dorotheus sets for it. Crucially, pilgrimage became a way in which the sacred past could be brought alive in the present, thus bringing pilgrims close to God.¹³⁰ Pilgrimage is travel towards a goal that unites the sacred past to the promised perfection of paradise. Similarly in Dorotheus’ account of the virtues. Travel along the royal way is the life of practical virtue which leads to progressively greater godlikeness. Dorotheus allegorizes the milestones along the way as indicators of states of ethical progress. He then identifies three different states, all capable of accounting for a diversity of motivations and virtues or vices (10.108.1–7). The first is the person who activates the passions and satisfies them through his actions. The second state is the person who aims to constrain the passions through philosophizing against them (φιλοσοφῶν), but, since he does not effectively cut them out, lives with passion inside him (τὸ πάθος ἐν ἑαυτῷ). The third, however, does uproot the passions through contest and action (ὁ ἀγωνιζόμενος καὶ ποιῶν). In working through these cases, Dorotheus displays his characteristic realism and attention to psychological detail. He takes an example about a monk being slighted by another, answering back, and then going away to stew over the affront (10.108.11–30). As the monk thinks up clever things he might have said to the person who insulted him, he becomes increasingly angry. Soon he cannot even display a desire for repentance, and, if he did, he would need the help and prayers of others, since his anger and vanity would have become habitual. We may recall the sensitivity of a wound to further injury. Allowing the passions to operate in the soul changes the soul itself and creates habits that are near impossible to break. ¹²⁸ On the spatiality of pilgrimage, see, e.g., Frankfurter 1998; Sodini 2001. ¹²⁹ Dietz 2004; Bitton-Ashkelony 2005. ¹³⁰ Frank 2000.

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Another monk insulted in the same way, Dorotheus thinks, may become disturbed but know that his disturbance is not virtuous. Such knowledge is marked, in this instance by a shift in affect, from anger to sorrow (10.109.1–22). Again, habits formed by activating passion in the soul in other cases may work against this different affective state. But his sorrow may generate repentance and a proper awareness of his own failings. That is, Dorotheus teaches that virtuous action is motivated by well-regulated affectivity. This should be distinguished, Dorotheus warns, from those who fight passions with another passion (10.109.23–28). It is possible to remove vanity with vanity, as when the monk remains silent when insulted out of a desire to demonstrate his own virtue. Similarly, it would be possible to defeat vanity through obsequiousness. But this could never be virtuous, both because it would not be the application of virtue understood as a mean and because it would not come with the correct motivations and affects. In short, as he concludes, it would arise from a ‘human thought (λογισμὸν ἀνθρώπινον)’ rather than from a properly ordered soul (10.111.9–10). Finally, there is the case of the person who uproots the passions from his soul, thereby enabling the soul to act virtuously (10.110.1–17). This person is glad to be insulted, because the insult reveals the proper grounds for his own humility: the common sinfulness of humanity. To this gladness is added, in the perfect monk, sadness for the disturbance (ταραχή) of the person who is insulting him. Thus in the case of the person who has uprooted the passions, there remains a complex affectivity of pleasure in accurate recognition of his own state and pain for the disordered psyche of others. In his prayer for strength not to activate the passions within (10.112.1–3), Dorotheus notes that it is possible to restrain the operation of passion, even if the monk cannot yet uproot it. This is crucial, because enacting passion, as we have seen, enables the passion to enter the heart ever more deeply and thereby become habitual. This is again consistent with the moral psychology explored above, where passion is most fundamentally conceptualized as a disturbed schema in the soul that affects perception, desire, and reason. The implications of this moral psychology are explored in detail in Instruction 11. Since ‘there is no hindrance to the soul’s health except its own disorder’, Dorotheus exhorts his monks to constant vigilance to maintain the proper order of their souls.¹³¹ As in the case of the monk who spends weeks recovering from a comparatively minor illness, even small disturbances can have lasting and devastating effects on the soul (11.113.1–30).¹³² An affective regime that motivates monks to be vigilant about the state of their soul is demanded. Monks must exercise care, should avoid contempt or disdain, and should be fearful about losing time for repentance or failing to pay attention to their souls. This emotional regime is intended to keep the monk constantly alert to disorder in his soul. A failure to pay proper attention ¹³¹ Οὐκοῦν τῇ ὑγείᾳ τῆς ψυχῆς οὐδέν ἐστιν τὸ ἐμποδίζον, εἰ μὴ μόνον ἡ ἀταξία αὐτῆς (11.113.32–33). ¹³² See further below on the force of medical metaphors.

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is contrasted with an appropriate state of constant arousal (καταφρονοῦμεν καὶ οὐ διεγειρόμεθα) which directs the whole perceptual and cognitive apparatus of the soul to the possibility of distorting passions (11.114.16–18). Dorotheus is deeply shocked at the ways in which monks can fail to feel: he sees this lack of feeling as a fundamental cause of sinfulness. A correctly ordered mind requires properly functioning affective capacity that motivates the monk to examine his conscience, love God’s word, and direct his action towards the good (11.114.16–25). Including himself in his own criticism, Dorotheus warns that if monks do not cultivate appropriate affectivity, we do not reflect carefully but rather we leave [the passions] to become hardened in us so we perform great vice more. As I have often said to you, it is one thing to uproot a herb, because it is easily pulled out, but it is quite another to uproot a big tree. οὐ φροντίζομεν· ἀλλὰ ἀφοῦμεν αὐτὰ σκληρυνθῆναι καθ’ ἡμῶν, ἵνα πλεῖον κάκην ἐσχάτην ποιήσωμεν. Ἄλλο γάρ ἐστιν, ὡς πολλάκις εἶπον ὑμῖν, τὸ ἐκριζῶσαι βοτάνην, ὅτι εὐθὺς ἀποσπᾶται, καὶ ἄλλο ἐστὶ τὸ ἐκριζῶσαι μέγα δένδρον. (11.114.21–25)¹³³

Lillian Larsen has drawn attention to the use of alphabetica in classical elementary education and their adaptation and alteration for a monastic context by thinkers like Evagrius.¹³⁴ In one such exercise from a student copybook of the fourth century, students learning the letter delta would write out the saying ‘an old tree is not easily replanted’ (Δένδρον παλαιὸν μεταφυτεύειν δύσκολον).¹³⁵ This piece of popular wisdom was elaborated upon within the Apophthegmata collections to become an admonition for monks to stay within their monastery in order to acquire virtue.¹³⁶ The use of alphabetica thus did not merely help students to form their letters. It also provided an initial training in conventional morality and offered material for elaboration and reflection on moral sayings, as in the reframing of the saying about the difficulty of transplanting a tree in the monastic sayings.¹³⁷ One can imagine a further stage in the elaboration of such a saying, where the moral is drawn out and framed for the ascetic context through contrast. Having learned that replanting an established tree is difficult, one may infer that uprooting it is also difficult, that once a trait has become established, it is difficult to shift, and, conversely, that the establishment of fixed characteristics is both essential for the life of virtue and dangerous, given that vices could similarly become difficult to remove once they take root.

¹³³ Cf. 8.91.23–26. ¹³⁴ Larsen 2013, 70–2. ¹³⁵ P. Bour. f. 7v–9. See Collart 1926, 17–27. ¹³⁶ See Larsen 2013, 72. ¹³⁷ See further Chapter 5.

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This is the line Dorotheus takes, turning for inspiration to a story from the ascetic tradition.¹³⁸A small cypress tree is easy for one person to uproot, two hands are required for a larger one, much effort and sweat required for a bigger one, and two people are required to pull out the largest tree. The moral is clear: Behold, the passions are like this too, brothers. While they are small, if we desire, we are able to cut them out without effort. But if we neglect them while they are small, they become hardened, and to the extent that they are hardened, they require still greater effort to cut them out. If they mature still further in us, then we are not able to cut them out from ourselves with any effort, unless we have help from certain holy men who, with God, assist us. Ἰδοὺ οὕτως εἰσὶ τὰ πάθη, ἀδελφοί· ἐφ’ ὅσον εἰσὶ μικρά, ἐὰν θέλωμεν, δυνάμεθα μετὰ ἀναπαύσεως ἐκκόψαι αὐτά. Ἐὰν δὲ ἀμελήσωμεν αὐτῶν ὡς μικρῶν, σκληρύνονται, καὶ ὅσον σκληρύνονται, τοσοῦτον πλείονος δέονται κόπου. Εἰ δὲ ἐπὶ πλεῖον ἀνδρυνθῶσι καθ’ ἡμῶν, οὐκ ἔτι οὐδὲ μετὰ κόπου δυνάμεθα ἐκκόψαι αὐτὰ ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν, ἐὰν μὴ καὶ βοήθειαν σχῶμέν τινων ἁγίων ἀντιλαμβανομένων ἡμῶν μετὰ Θεόν. (11.115.16–22)

This image of passions becoming hardened within the monk’s soul aligns with the moral psychology we have been tracing. Dorotheus follows up immediately with an interpretation of Psalm 137 (11.116.1–23). The horrific benediction of the man who dashes the children against the rocks is reframed as the blessedness of the monk who has excised evil thoughts (πονηροὶ λογισμοί) when they are young by breaking them against Christ the Rock, fleeing to Christ to maintain a life of virtue. In this exegesis we again see the identification of the thoughts with the primary sense of passion as distorted schema. The exegesis is also intended to bring out the need for well-regulated affectivity in the maintenance of a virtuously ordered soul. Those who cut off the passions have demonstrated affective dispositions of attentiveness generated by appropriate fear, care, and repentance. This generates practices of self-examination and establishes a sense of comfort and peace instead of pain, distress, and bitterness.¹³⁹ It also draws monks into closer community with each other as they come to understand the centrality of assistance from others in the life of virtue. Dorotheus stresses the need for gratitude and affection towards others, as members of the monastic community work together for the health of each other’s souls (11.119.20–22). This is education in the emotional dispositions required for intersubjectivity and learning through interactions with others. As the argument draws to a close, Dorotheus stresses the need to cultivate a set of emotional ¹³⁸ Dorotheus attributes the story to ‘a certain great old man’, suggesting a reference to Barsanuphius. ¹³⁹ 11.117.1–6; 11.120.1–14, 11.122.1–2.

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practices within the life of virtue (11.123.23–30). Prayers, tears, and contrition elicit Christ’s mercy and forgiveness. Attentiveness, struggle, and endurance stop the passions hardening into habits which change the soul itself. Throughout his account, Dorotheus seeks to inculcate a range of affective dispositions and practices that help to keep the soul healthy by keeping it well ordered and motivating the monk to be attentive to potential disturbances and distortions partly to enable effective communal education and the development of harmonious sociality. Across the two Instructions, Dorotheus’ argument draws on medical models to support his moral psychology. Instruction 10 begins with a story about humoral imbalance caused by excessive study (10.105) while Instruction 11 is framed by a story about a visit to a monk recovering from an illness, and medical notions return throughout the Instruction.¹⁴⁰ Indeed, the symptoms of physical sickness can be difficult to distinguish from failures of monastic discipline, as the story of Dorotheus’ struggle to attend vigils following illness and hard monastic labour attests (11.119). Vice is referred to as a sickness, while virtue is natural and so healthy (11.122). This general analogy is drawn more closely when virtue is defined in the same way as health, as a mean between excess and deficiency. This is partly explained by reference to humoral balance: just as excess of deficiency in the humours is problematic, so too in the case of virtue (10.106, 11.122). A seven-day illness can result in over forty days of recovery; similarly, small moral errors can have serious consequences (11.113). Christ is the ‘doctor of souls’. The common difficulties of ancient medicine—defective medication, inexperienced doctors, or ill-disciplined or unwilling patients—therefore do not apply.¹⁴¹ As an expert doctor, Christ prescribes treatments for each passion with clearly distinguished ‘medicines’, treating cause rather than symptom on the model of ancient medicine. Cognitive and affective therapies are repeatedly advised (11.117, 120). That passions cannot be ‘healed’ with passions (10.109) aligns with the medical principle that treatments should do no harm. The repeated references to ‘cutting out’ passion recalls surgical practices. Since virtue and vice are medicalized, there is need for the repeated practice of regimen, a key part of ancient medicine, in maintaining the soul’s health. The repeated spiritual practices of the monk are like a diet that can harm or heal (11.122). The need for repetition is partly grounded in the medical insight that the long-term performance of an appropriate regimen is necessary for preventing illness. In the other direction, however, medical expertise based on humoral theory also grounds Dorotheus’ argument that natural sensitivities to humoral changes can differ, and that on occasions and for some patients, small physical changes can quickly have devastating effects (11.122). The total effect across the two

¹⁴⁰ 11.113, 117, 119, 120, 122. See also 10.106 on humoral balance and virtue. ¹⁴¹ The discipline of the patient may still cause problems, hence Dorotheus’ concern to motivate his monks to constant vigilance about the state of their souls.

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Instructions is to medicalize virtue and vice, emotion and passion, and to render Dorotheus’ instructions as medical expertise, recalling his medical training. His moral psychology is partly built on this medical expertise, which helps to make sense of key ethical moves. Instructions 10 and 11 together stand close to the heart of Dorotheus’ thought about moral psychology and the relationship between emotions and the virtues. They provide the fullest account of virtue understood as a mean between excess and deficiency, and they connect affectivity to virtue both by drawing attention to ways in which specific emotions are necessary for virtue and by thinking through ways in which an inappropriate lack of emotion or perverted emotions can help to establish impassioned thoughts in the soul, resulting in distress, pain, sickness, and sin. They also provide evidence for Dorotheus’ communal focus in the area of emotion and virtue. His goal is the perfection of individual monks, but this process of moral, emotional, and spiritual development is inherently communal, since monks must learn to depend on each other to achieve progress. Across the two Instructions, Dorotheus insists that behaviour and cognition are positively and negatively shaped by emotion and its absence. His psychology foregrounds affect rather than behaviour or cognition. The absence of affect is troubling because monks who do not feel cannot recognize the spiritual danger they are in and do not show affection and gratitude towards others in the monasteries who are necessary for their salvation. Improper emotion magnifies the passions and leads to distorted schemas of perception, feeling, and reason, resulting in negative individual and communal consequences. But well cultivated emotion assists monks in re-ordering their souls once passion has begun to take root in them. It stimulates desire for God and the good, makes monks aware of the perpetual danger of acting because of impassioned thoughts, and brings monks together in well-functioning communities.

Affective Virtues for Monastic Community Close attention to gradations of affect and virtue is crucial in the context of Dorotheus’ moral psychology, since small distortions lead to failure of perception, knowledge, and desire. Dorotheus therefore elaborates a rich account of affects and virtues to be promoted through his pedagogy. We have seen different modes in which fear could operate and be transformed also into emotions of love within Dorotheus’ classroom, and the exegesis of Instructions 10 and 11 has identified the promotion of key individual and communal virtues and emotions and added the notion of moderation as a guide for how virtues should be practised. Moving now beyond these individual virtues and emotions, I now consider how Dorotheus organizes emotions and virtues. As in the case of epistemology, the Christian virtue of humility plays a key role.

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Humility and the Organization of Affects and Virtues Humility unifies and relates diverse affective and emotional experience in the monastery.¹⁴² Dorotheus’ account allows him to view humility as strengthening all other virtues and good desires, since humility defines the right way for a fallen monk to experience and perform them. Within the Christologically focused divine plan, humility is similarly and significantly related to the classical theological virtues. The humble monk displays faith through obedience and submission of the will to Christ, hope in recognition that the God who humbles himself has achieved salvation for humanity, and love in acts of sacrificial, suffering service that participates in Christ’s humility and philanthropy. Humility, for Dorotheus, organizes the virtues and gives them their distinctively Christian content. Dorotheus learned to organize teaching about emotions and virtues through understanding monastic paideia as the inculcation of humility from his teachers John and Barsanuphius. For the two Old Men, the monastery maps onto an affective and ethical ‘land of humility’.¹⁴³ For Barsanuphius, humility defines virtuous asceticism and is the grounds for all healthy interpersonal relations (resp. 503): it is what enables the monastery to flourish (resp. 489–491). Humility is seen as central to balanced affectivity and ethical behaviour. Barsanuphius and John both define humility as the excision of the will and the eradication of passion.¹⁴⁴ Humility re-orders the mind and removes the distorting effects of passions on a monk’s moral sensibility. It realigns the believer with the will of the God who humbles himself.¹⁴⁵ That is, humility defines healthy emotions and moral perfection because it imprints in the monk’s soul the will, purpose, and mind of the humble Christ. As in the case of the centurion whose humility leads to healing at the cross, humility makes the soul healthy (resp. 455).¹⁴⁶ Humility thus unites and organizes licit affective and moral behaviour. Central to this tradition is the role humility plays in the control and removal of passion. This is intended to generate healthy interpersonal relationships liberated from conflicts over status or power. It motivates forgiveness and strengthens emotions relating to the virtue of compassion. This ethical and affective account of humility is directed towards reunification with the humble God. Humility is the organizing virtue which enables desire to be properly directed and exercised in ways that bring monks closer to God and their originally created well-ordered nature rather than further distorting their soul. Humility makes the monk properly human, in ¹⁴² See further Champion 2017b; Regnault and de Préville 2001, 62–5. ¹⁴³ resp. 550.17–18. See also resp. 456: ‘first of the virtues’. ¹⁴⁴ resp. 66, 229, 243, 360, 462, 498, 505, 554, 574. See also Perrone 2004, 135–7; Hausherr 1937, 1257; Zecher 2015, 168. ¹⁴⁵ resp. 454–5. Cf. Phil 2.8. ¹⁴⁶ Cf. Matt. 8:5–13. John Chrysostom, Concerning Lowliness of Mind, 2 (PG 62: 179–80) contrasts the saving humility of the tax-collector with the spiritually destructive pride of the otherwise righteous Pharisee (Luke 18:9–14).

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the sense that the humble monk is restored to his original human nature, stripping away the evil desires, passions, and thoughts that have marred his natural state and distorted his perceptual, affective, and rational apparatus. Dorotheus draws on, extends, and systematizes these strands of thought about the affective and ethical contours of humility, and makes such humility central to his account of transformation through ascetic education. Humility, in his account, is the antidote to all passions and as such is the means of reunification with the God who, in Christ, was humble. It is not, however, merely negative: humility helps the monk learn monastic virtues and develop valued emotional characteristics. The humble monk can learn obedience and aim towards God through enacting all virtues. It produces humble tears, contrition, and the distinctive affective states of joy, glory, and tranquillity as the monk experiences the glory of divine grace.¹⁴⁷ Humility draws together positive emotions, generates repentance and contrition, and works to remove the moral and affective distortions of the passions. Ultimately, it enables transformation of the soul through the mercy of God.¹⁴⁸ Within the ethical and affective contours of this theological anthropology, humility is Christ-like and reunites the believer with God (2.33–34). Through enacting the way of life of total humility, the monk becomes like God, overcoming the separation between God and humans marked by the fall.¹⁴⁹ Humility is to be understood as the primary virtue because it is powerful against all passions. Thus humility is the key ethical and affective virtue which organizes Dorotheus’ monastic paideia, just as it was in the case of epistemology. This means that it is also the virtue which relates emotions, virtues, and knowledge. Across these domains, it validates particular emotional styles within the monastery, associates expressions of emotion with ascetic virtues, relates different virtues to each other, and perfects each of them. It ensures that the virtues and emotions learned and practised in the monastery are directed towards God and the good. Dorotheus’ systematic treatment of the divine plan of salvation, which is developed more explicitly than in other Gazan literature, perhaps explains why humility, rather than some other virtue or practice—repentance, submission, excision of will, or orientation towards death—plays a governing role in his view of monastic education. Within his wider account of the divine plan of salvation, humility preserves the goodness of God in a world in which knowledge, appropriate desiring, and ethical perfection are impossible to achieve by human effort. The

¹⁴⁷ 1.8.3, 11.117.1–2. ¹⁴⁸ See further Champion 2017b for Basil’s influence on Dorotheus’ account of humility. On Basil, see Basil, hum. (hom. 20) 20.1–7 (PG 31, 525A–540B); reg. fus. 29, 31, 41, 43, 45,1–2, 51 (PG 31, 989D– 992C, 993C–D, 1021A–D, 1032D–33A, 1040C–41A); moral. 25,1–2 (PG 31, 744B–C). Cf. Ps-Basil, renunt. 648B and Greg. Nys. de beat. 1.4 (GNO 7.2:83,12), who argues that unification with God is possible because of the human natural affinity with Christ’s humility (ἡ δὲ ταπεινότης συμφυής τις ἡμῖν). See further Amand 1948, 312–17; Osborn 1976, 103–4. ¹⁴⁹ 1.11.2: διὰ πάσης ταπεινῆς ἀγωγῆς ἑνῶσαι ἑαυτοὺς τῷ Θεῷ.

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practice of humility makes the monk more godlike while emphasizing that goodness and truth are possible only by divine grace. Dorotheus’ ascetic education is transformative in the sense that he does not merely seek to instil knowledge but to change his students through promoting particular behaviours and justifications for them. He does seek to inculcate monks into normative emotional practices. But importantly, in so doing, he seeks to transform his students towards greater godlikeness and provide grounds to enable them to understand why they should act, feel, and think in particular ways. This suggests another way in which his programme of education can be distinguished from training. Students who undergo education rather than training learn to perform processes which are grounded in a range of methods, values, and beliefs that cannot be derived from the processes in which they become skilled. A monk’s humility is grounded in divine humility, a wider story of divine providence and human anthropology from fall to perfection, and also in claims about moral and affective psychology. These grounds go beyond the significance of any specific practice of humility, however important humility is for Dorotheus. In these two ways—understanding ascetic paideia as transformative and as going beyond askesis—Dorotheus’ classroom moves from training to a deeper theoretical and practical account of affective and moral education. The affective contours of monastic life promoted and organized by the virtue of humility range widely. Emotions do work in the soul of the monk and between members of the ascetic community. Humility establishes expectations about emotional performances in this context. Anger is defused within the soul by humble debasing of oneself before others, both through submissive bodily postures—bowing and prostration—and through humble silence which refuses to respond to provocation (e.g., 10.109). Similarly, affective habituation to humility counteracts pride and eradicates passions. Dorotheus characterizes repentance as the ‘offspring’ (τέκνα) of humility, which is partly performed through ‘contrition’ (συντριβής) (1.10.5, 11).¹⁵⁰ Humility is partly performed by seeking repentance (μετάνοια) (2.27.1–3). The humble monk displays tears of compunction, bodily gestures of submission and obedience, and models a sense of tranquillity and rejoicing in the assurance of grace. Humble compunction (κατάνυξις), a complex emotional state of the humble and penitential person, purifies monks so that they can receive the Eucharist with due reverence and in a state of virtue (9.99.2).¹⁵¹ As a way of acting humbly, repentance is involved in eliminating vicious passions: monks can cut off desires by asking for forgiveness and through repentance (μετανοῇ τῷ Θεῷ) (11.117.10). Humble repentance ensures that their actions do not make the soul permanently disordered, just as humility mitigates

¹⁵⁰ On penitence, see Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 145–56; Hausherr 1955, 317. ¹⁵¹ On compunction and its role in Evagrius’ writings, which seem to have influenced Dorotheus, see Corrigan and Glazov 2014. On compunction, see further Hausherr 1955.

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the distorting effects of unintentional bad actions.¹⁵² Given the psychic disturbances and distortions of impassioned thoughts, humble repentance entails patience and endurance. Weeping signifies humble repentance, but acts of humility generate comfort in divine grace, and therefore the monk should demonstrate joy and tranquillity.¹⁵³ That is, grief and contrition—appropriate emotional responses to the accurate recognition of human sin—are generated by humility, which is the epistemic and moral virtue which draws attention to the fallen state of humanity. Conversely and simultaneously, happiness, joy, and tranquillity emerge from practices of humility since they maintain the soul’s natural order and generate recognition of the surpassing goodness of God. These affective states both generate and result from humble action: If we yield, as humans do, and slip into sin, let us hasten immediately to get up again, let us repent it, and let us weep in the sight of God’s goodness. Let us be on the watch and contend for the prize, and God, seeing our choice, humility, and our contrition, will offer his hand to us and extend his mercy to us. Εἰ δὲ καὶ ἡττηθῶμεν, ὡς ἄνθρωποι, καὶ ὀλισθήσωμεν εἰς πταῖσμα, σπουδάσωμεν εὐθέως ἀναστῆναι, μετανοήσωμεν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ, κλαύσωμεν ἐνώπιον τῆς ἀγαθότητος τοῦ Θεοῦ, γρηγορήσωμεν, ἀγωνισώμεθα· καὶ ὁ Θεὸς βλέπων τὴν προαίρεσιν ἡμῶν καὶ τὴν ταπείνωσιν καὶ τὴν συντριβὴν ἡμῶν, παρέχει ἡμῖν χεῖρα καὶ ποιεῖ μεθ’ ἡμῶν τὸ ἔλεος αὐτοῦ. (11.123.24–30)

Pity, mercy, compunction, and sympathy are distinguishing emotional features of humility. These characteristic affects again make humility a divine virtue. Mercy (οἰκτίρμων) is the defining mark of God, Dorotheus claims, in a move echoing Gregory of Nyssa’s claim that forgiving sins is the ‘particular and exceptional characteristic of God’.¹⁵⁴ For Dorotheus, mercy ‘is the virtue that most properly imitates God; it characterizes him’.¹⁵⁵ Monks imitate God’s merciful saving actions by taking on the sins of others, and by enduring sin and temptation courageously and patiently: one cannot obtain mercy except by humility.¹⁵⁶ Following the successful emotional performance of humility, the monk can expect, Dorotheus thinks, to feel released from burdens in an emotional state of peace, joy, and stability. Affectivity therefore indexes virtuous action and the progress monks have made towards their originally created good nature. Divine

¹⁵² 10.109.9–11; 10.111.4–7; 9.102.11–14. ¹⁵³ Cf. this dialectic between joy and grief through repentance in Barsanuphius and John, for which see Torrance 2012, 134–42. ¹⁵⁴ Ἡ γὰρ τῶν ὀφλημάτων ἄφεσις ἴδιόν ἐστι τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἐξαίρετον· εἴρηται γὰρ ὅτι, Οὐδεὶς δύναται ἀφιέναι ἁμαρτίας, εἰ μὴ μόνος ὁ θεός: or. dom. 5 (GNO 7.2: 59,7–9). ¹⁵⁵ Ἰδικῶς γὰρ ἡ ἀρετὴ αὕτη μιμεῖται Θεόν· χαρακτηρίζει αὐτόν (14.156.11–12). ¹⁵⁶ ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν ἄλλως ἐλεηθῆναι, εἰ μὴ διὰ τοῦ ἐναντίου, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἡ ταπεινοφροσύνη (1.7.23–25).

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mercy draws forth ‘every joy, glory, and rest’.¹⁵⁷ That is, merciful grace reestablishes the originally created emotional state of humanity, which was ‘created in every delight, every joy, every rest, and every glory’.¹⁵⁸ Divine mercy returns humans to paradise, lifting them up from the fall, which introduced distressing sorrow for the education of humanity. On Dorotheus’ account, there is a need to educate through the discomforting experience of the emotions: humans learn the value of rest and lack of care through affliction (θλίψις) and pain (ταλαιπωρία) (1.8.15–23). Humility and ‘contrition of the heart’ motivates monks to cut out their will and follow the commandments, thereby enabling the restoration of the original and perfect state of rest (ἀνάπαυσις) (1.9.1–26, 1.10.11–16). In this restored state, monks feel that their disturbance has been alleviated and they experience the blessed state of tranquillity and peacefulness (ἡ ἀμεριμνία καὶ ἡ ἀνάπαυσις) (1.25.10–12). Therefore disturbed emotional states like that of anger are alien to the monk who has been restored to his original state. Humility cuts off anger and generates perfect peace (ἀταράχως, ἀθλίπτως, μετὰ πάσης ἀναπαύσεως) (2.30.10–14).¹⁵⁹ Virtuous action enables the monk to experience a gradually increasing sense of stability, which in turn makes him aware of the grief involved in not acting virtuously and of the joy and gladness of a state of virtuous peace: Therefore in being attacked and attacking and contending with the enemy, [the monk] performs the good, but with much affliction and distress. But whenever assistance comes to him from God, and he begins finally to get into some sort of habit about the good, then he glimpses rest, then he progressively tastes peace, and finally he perceives the nature of the affliction of war and the nature of the joy and gladness of peace. Ἐν τῷ οὖν πολεμεῖσθαι καὶ πολεμεῖν καὶ πυκτεύειν μετὰ τοῦ ἐχθροῦ, ποιεῖ τὸ ἀγαθόν, ἀλλὰ μετὰ πολλῆς θλίψεως, μετὰ πολλῆς συντριβῆς. Ὅταν δὲ γένηται αὐτῷ βοήθεια παρὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ ἄρξηται λοιπὸν ἐν ἕξει τινὶ γίνεσθαι περὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν, τότε βλέπει τὴν ἀνάπαυσιν, τότε κατὰ πρόσβασιν γεύεται τῆς εἰρήνης, τότε αἰσθάνεται τί ἐστιν ἡ θλίψις τοῦ πολέμου καὶ τί ἐστιν ἡ χαρὰ καὶ ἡ εὐφροσύνη τῆς εἰρήνης. (4.51.10–15)

This movement from the distress of struggle and affliction to the joy and gladness of peace recurs across Dorotheus’ thought. This ‘emotional script’ is built on his account of the plan of salvation from creation and fall through processes of correction and ultimate restoration and the transformation of humanity so that humans regain their originally created perfection. Monks are humbly to endure ¹⁵⁷ πᾶσα ἡ χαρὰ καὶ πᾶσα ἡ δόξα καὶ πᾶσα ἡ ανάπαυσις (1.8.3; 11.117.1–2). ¹⁵⁸ κτίσθη ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐν πάσῃ τρυφῇ, ἐν πάσῃ χαρᾷ, ἐν πάσῃ ἀναπαύσει, ἐν πάσῃ δόξῃ (1.8.9–10). ¹⁵⁹ Cf. 8.89.1–2 and Evagrius, mal. cog. 13.1.

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struggle, pain, distress, and affliction and come to recognize peacefulness and joy as markers of spiritual progress. These emotional norms generated by humility help to order communal life. Dorotheus repeatedly notes the importance of sympathetic mutuality. Sympathy, love, and humility defeat the passions: ‘where there is sympathy, love, and humility, how can wrath, resentment, or any other passion prevail?’¹⁶⁰ Monks are encouraged to pray for others and also to pray for benefit from the prayers of their fellow monks (8.94.32–35). Such humble dependence on others is a key element of Dorotheus’ ethics. While he emphasizes the importance of dependence on one another, he does not leverage the concepts of homonoia (united agreement or concord of mind) or homopsychia (unity of soul) as others in Gaza had done.¹⁶¹ These concepts had been used to highlight the importance of co-dependence, to ground the concept of friendship, to underline the importance of social order and laws that emerge from common agreement, and to maintain unity of belief as a means of social cohesion. Dorotheus values each of these ideas, but comes to similar conclusions from a different direction, with a consistent focus on emotions of love, sympathy, and compassion performed with humility. Love, sympathy, and compassion are expected to enable monks to work together to direct each other away from sin (6.75.14–6.76.30). These emotions are intended to draw forth related emotional practices of consolation. In turn, such emotional work produces spiritual and emotional healing and mitigates against emotional reactions of hatred and disgust—natural reactions to sin that Dorotheus insists are nevertheless damaging. Acting with philanthropy and sympathy can motivate virtue in those to whom they are displayed.¹⁶² Such acts result in successful healing and correction of sin. Similarly, love and compassion protect against anger, condemnation, and harmful slander, destructive emotions that damage individuals and communal life. Again, Dorotheus turns to a metaphor from medicine, characteristically blending Galenic and Christian treatments (6.77.4–15). Wounds, even when they are serious, should still be treated by bathing, cleaning, applying a bandage, making a sign of the cross, blessing with holy water, praying and asking for prayers before amputation is considered.¹⁶³ Similarly, monks should not first spurn or condemn their fellow ascetics when

¹⁶⁰ Ὅπου δὲ συμπάθεια καὶ ἀγάπη καὶ ταπείνωσις, τί δύναται ἰσχύσαι θυμὸς ἢ μνησικακία ἢ ἕτερον πάθος; (8.94.35–37). ¹⁶¹ See discussion and references at Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 148–9. On homopsychia, see Barsanuphius, resp. 5, 7, 35; John Chrysostom, In Joannem PG 59, 425A–426C. On homonoia, from a wide range of examples see Aristotle EN 1167a22–1167b3 (and friendship); Philo fr. 30 (Lewy) (and centrality of good order and law for communal peace and blessedness); Gregory Nazianzus, ep. 209.2.5 (and doctrinal agreement for communal cohesion). On homonoia, see the discussion by Boyarin 2001. ¹⁶² ἐνήργησεν εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἡ φιλανθρωπία καὶ ἡ συμπάθεια: 6.76.45–46. ¹⁶³ This demonstrates Dorotheus’ understanding of the Galenic notion of hierarchy of medical interventions.

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they sin. Instead, they should suffer with them, thinking and doing everything possible to help each other. Dorotheus turns also to the love command to emphasize the importance of such mutuality. Loving one’s neighbour as oneself is difficult but essential. Monks should come to desire the good of others as much as their own. Sympathy for others is the goal of virtuous action (14.157.22–27). Mercy with knowledge is to be performed with the understanding that assistance for others does not elevate the person giving charity over the person receiving it. This is a crucial difference between Dorotheus’ ethics and Greco-Roman norms of patronage through philanthropy.¹⁶⁴ For Dorotheus, acts of charity are not virtuous if they result in unequal status or power, since all monks should humbly recognize their codependence and fallen state. This wider set of claims about human anthropology and soteriology results in a prioritization of humility and the emotions that are intended to bring monks together in a shared experience of mutual assistance. Paul’s metaphor of the unity of the body is central to this account. Paul’s claim that the suffering of one is the suffering of the many becomes normative for Dorotheus (cf. 1 Cor. 12:26; Rom. 12:5): What do they think the communal monasteries are for you? Do they not think that you have one body and are members of one another? Τί δοκοῦσιν ὑμῖν εἶναι τὰ κοινόβια; Οὐ δοκοῦσιν ὑμῖν εἶναι ἓν σῶμα καὶ μέλη ἀλλήλων; (6.77.18–19)

Dorotheus then works through an extended corporeal metaphor, identifying how different members of the community contribute their own talents for the good of the body, including through the practice of virtues like humility and obedience and the affective work of consolation. He concludes: In sum, let each of you, as I said, as much as possible pay attention to being united with one another; for as much as one is united to their neighbour, to such an extent are they united to God. Ἕκαστος ἁπλῶς, ὡς εἶπον, πρὸς τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ, σπουδάσατε ἑνωθῆναι ἀλλήλοις· ὅσον γὰρ ἑνοῦταί τις τῷ πλησίον, τοσοῦτον ἑνοῦται τῷ Θεῷ. (6.77.31–33)

This image of coming closer to God through coming closer to each other is as central to Dorotheus’ ethics and thought about emotion as we saw it was in his ¹⁶⁴ On this dynamic, see Brown 1992; Brown 2002; Rapp 2013. The ideal has rightly been called into question: the rhetorical move to detach charity from power relations continued to mask real social inequality (so Allen, Neil, and Mayer 2009). Yet the new ideal opened space for real social change, however hard that is to actualize.

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epistemology. Mutuality and unity are partly developed, maintained, and policed by emotional expectations centred on stability, love, compassion, and the sharing of distress. These norms are themselves built on the central place of humility in Dorotheus’ ethical thought, since they are generated by the humble recognition of the sinful state shared by all humanity after the fall. Such an emotional regime also comes with the promise that aligning one’s affectivity to that of the wider community leads to joy, peace, cohesive community, and, ultimately, to unification with God. Throughout this discussion of the significant affective virtues which Dorotheus teaches, virtues and emotions are thoroughly entangled. There is, of course, a clear distinction between ‘emotion’ and ‘virtue’ when the former approaches ‘passion’ (πάθος). But Dorotheus did not otherwise mark strong boundaries around ethics and emotions. Indeed, the concept of humility—which is thought of in modern discourse as ethical—unifies, organizes, and directs emotional states while itself also being partly constituted by emotions which mediate between contrition, grief, peace and joy. In the other direction, concepts commonly nowadays thought of as emotions are themselves thought of as species of virtuous action. Virtuous emotions and emotional virtues, are evaluated positively or negatively both by how they relate monks to God and by how they relate monks to each other in a relationship of sympathy, mutuality, and unity. Humility draws together a range of emotional states and virtuous action, including repentance, contrition, practice of death, renunciation of the will, and joyful rest in the assurance of divine grace. Dorotheus’ paideia thus becomes irreducibly affective and ethical as he seeks to inculcate behaviours which strengthen monastic community and model value systems for those outside the monasteries.

Conclusions: Ethical and Emotional Transformation Emotion, for Dorotheus, shapes cognition and behaviour, subjectivity and community. His educational project is thus best understood as a species of affectivism. Dorotheus thinks that beneficial emotions remain central to advanced stages along the way to human perfection. His tripartite view of the soul does not result in the view that the rational part is the only good element of the soul or the part which requires strengthening in order to transform or control the affective parts. This means that ascetic education aims to perfect a wide range of emotions, in contrast with other strands of late-antique philosophy. Paul Dilley has written in an illuminating fashion about the theory of mind developed in the White Monastery, where minds were understood to lie open to demonic assault and scrutiny by one’s fellow monks and ultimately to God.¹⁶⁵

¹⁶⁵ Dilley 2017.

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In this scheme, emotions are understood as cognitive elements, able to be corrected by a range of broadly cognitive disciplines. Dilley helpfully does not seek to draw strong boundaries around emotions and reasoning, and his concept of ‘heart work’ gets at the connection between emotion and reason in the case of Shenoute. In this chapter, I have argued that for Dorotheus, while reason and emotion may be separated for the purposes of analysis, affectivity thoroughly shapes the soul for good or ill, such that thought and emotion can be said to coinhere. For Dorotheus, it is not possible or desirable for reason to operate independently of emotion. His education of emotion and virtue is not so much cognitive as affective therapy. This makes emotional work central to education understood as the transformation of subjectivity and the reconfiguration of civic life in the monasteries. The emotional norms and practices Dorotheus promotes are directed towards the progressive development of individual perfection and the restoration of providentially ordered souls and communities. Characteristic emotions connect Dorotheus’ programme of education to the affective experiences of classical classrooms, especially through playing on resonances of the emotion of fear. Anchoring the ascetic classroom in wider practices of education through the discourse of fear makes the strange familiar. Dorotheus’ distinctive emphases result from his guiding narrative of the divine plan of salvation which helps both to produce a new conceptualization of fear and enables fear to play different roles compared to the classical tradition. Within the narrative of the divine plan, fallen humans are educated through long struggles to regain their original perfection. This account supports the gradations of fear Dorotheus expects his students to experience and cultivate at different stages of moral development. But fear is also reconfigured, resulting in new emotional scripts. Instead of rejecting fear as other educational theorists did on the basis that it produces lack of motivation by eliciting paralysing shame, boredom, and depression, Dorotheus casts fear as an active motivator to be promoted because it is grounded first in humble recognition of humanity’s fallen state. Fear is then transformed into a species of love as the monk progresses through successive stages of correction and perfection in God’s providential plan for humanity. An affectivist reading of Dorotheus’ psychology is also inconsistent with conceptualizing emotions as cognitive judgements, as, for example, Stoicism did. In thinking through Dorotheus’ account of the passions, it became clear that a Christian-Stoic reading of passion as the decision to act upon external temptations did not most effectively account for the available evidence. Dorotheus does spill much ink on individual passions understood as vices and on the temptations— demonic, interpersonal, and internal—which may cause monks to sin. But his most foundational account of passion and impassioned thoughts goes deeper, again built on a tripartite understanding of the soul where desire plays a role all the way down. In this sense, passion is a disordered schema, generated by the fall, reinscribed by repeated passionate action and reinforced by memories of such

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action. This distorted schema makes it impossible for monks to perceive or reflect rationally on the world in good and true ways. His moral psychology therefore provides reasons to prefer certain perspectives over others: only those whose souls are correctly ordered can be said to apprehend goodness and truth. Dorotheus’ affectivism is partly built on his medical education, from which he is committed to a close relation between emotions, embodiment, and the constitution of the soul. Virtue and vice are cast in medical terms and the medical metaphor supports Dorotheus’ claim that virtue is a mean between excess and deficiency by drawing on humoral theories of balance in body and soul. His account of virtue as a mean also again displays his characteristic intermingling of discourses from philosophy, medicine, asceticism, and wider early Christian moral reflection. Understanding virtue as a mean is also supported by contemporary experience of travel to holy sites, foregrounding the importance of good order, directed progress towards a promised goal, endurance along the way, and the possibility of being transformed in one’s senses, affects, and thoughts through the experience of holiness in the ‘land of humility’ of the Gazan monasteries. Conversely, his ascetic moral psychology offers a framework for pilgrims to understand their own journeys. His account of affects and virtues is brought together under his teaching about humility. As in the case of epistemology, humility plays a key role in Dorotheus’ ethics. It is the virtue which defines a person’s action in the postlapsarian world on the way to perfection and so is central to Dorotheus’ narrative of the divine plan of salvation. The divine plan foregrounds divine gratuity and human mortality, wretchedness, and glory, connecting humility to questions of justice and truth in interpersonal and communal relationships.¹⁶⁶ It makes the case that humility is a divine gift which grants access to goodness despite the fall, as monks imitate divine humility, participate in divine qualities, and thereby become progressively more godlike. The arc of the divine plan of salvation thus generates a rich emotional script organized by the virtue of humility. Grief, pain, and distress are the common lot of fallen humans, but those negative emotions should be met with endurance and hope, trusting in God’s goodness which will ultimately bring the virtuous into a state of joy, blessedness, and rest. The divine plan also enables Dorotheus to offer an account of humility which, if it does not overcome ancient and modern objections to humility, at least offers a plausible alternative.¹⁶⁷ Humility also generates other central virtues—repentance, endurance, obedience, mercy, sympathy, love, compassion, and charity. Since the transformation in store for humanity is cosmic, these virtues operate both individually and communally. ¹⁶⁶ Cf. Basil, reg. fus. 7 (PG 31: 928C–933C). ¹⁶⁷ For ancient and modern objections to humility, see Aristotle, EN 1123a34–1135a39; Plutarch, De tranq. anim. 17; Seneca, Dial. 2.10.2.2–3; Garcia 2006; Garcia 2015; Williams in Williams and Smart 1973, 117: ‘in a secular context [humility] can only represent subservience to other men and their projects’.

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For Dorotheus, sociality is a good which supports monks in their shared and interdependent ethical and emotional education. Virtuous action and appropriately performed emotion aim to bring monks together in a relationship of healthy mutuality rather than the unequal power relations of patronage or dependency. The transformative potential of humility is again on view here. Humility means that acts of love and charity cannot be counted as loving or charitable if they establish or reinscribe unequal power relations. Dorotheus’ account of humility within the narrative of the divine plan thus functions to establish a space (rarely realized and always contested) for the reconstruction of civic community along more equal lines. Such a reconstruction of individual souls and interpersonal relationships within a well-ordered community needs to be established in practice through processes of habituation, imitating ascetic exempla, and spiritual practices of work and prayer. We turn now to ways in which ascetic education seeks to embed affective and ethical norms through practices of habituation.

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5 Education, Habituation, and Moral Development Introduction This chapter probes Dorotheus’ programme of education and affective moral development, focusing on questions of habituation, performance, and embodiment. It seeks to explain the central place of habituation in Dorotheus’ educational project by elucidating the principles on which his theory of habituation stands and connecting them to other areas of his thought, especially his notion that monasticism is craft-like. It then investigates key sites of habit formation: imitation of dramatic ascetic exempla, monastic work, and prayer. This analysis reinforces that for Dorotheus, education itself is conceptualized as a cognitive, emotional, and embodied enterprise of coming to inhabit privileged perspectives and generative narratives. Education shapes beliefs and ethical behaviour by engaging the whole person of the monk. Dorotheus speaks of habits and character formation using a diverse vocabulary (τὸ ἔθος, ἡ ἕξις, ἡ συνήθεια, ἡ διάθεσις, ἡ κατάστασις). While some gradations of meaning among these terms may be discerned, they can be used relatively interchangeably. As a general rule, actions (ἐνεργεῖσθαι) generate a habit (ἔθος, ἕξις, συνήθεια) and habits establish a settled character disposition (διαθέσις, κατάστασις).¹ Habits are normally formed over time and the terminology can refer to a deep inner state arising from being accustomed to act in a certain way.² Habits can arise from passions or from acting well repeatedly.³ Habits, for Dorotheus, define ‘a person, the disposition of his soul, and in general, his whole life’.⁴ Thus habit formation is a central aspect of Dorotheus’ account of moral education: education is supposed to be able to inculcate those habits which promote a life of virtue and enable the monk to live in accordance with a settled disposition, free from the trouble, pain, and disorder that attend those who have not learned the way of virtue.⁵

¹ For Aristotle, ἕξις can be more stable than διαθέσις; Dorotheus does not maintain this distinction. ² E.g., 1.20; 2.29; 4.56; 4.48; 5.58–59; 8.81; 11.121, 123. ³ 1.6; 2.29; 11.122. ⁴ τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ, αὐτῆς τῆς διαθέσεως τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν, ὅλου τοῦ βίου αὐτοῦ (6.70.29–31). ⁵ Cf. 2.29, 5.58–59.

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education. Michael W. Champion, Oxford University Press. © Michael W. Champion 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198869269.003.0005

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Habituation is often sharply delineated from processes of education. From Aristotle onwards, habit formation has been taken to be central to moral development. But while habituation through one’s upbringing is understood as a necessary preparation for education, habitual action is not, in this tradition, a matter of virtue or of theorizing about virtue in the educational context. Habituation may be understood as a stage of moral development prior to the mature operation of reason and therefore insufficiently rational and self-reflective to qualify as educational. It may be thought to activate desires and motivations which are not properly aligned with reason, again excluding it from education understood as a process of progressive development of reason. Posidonius considered education to be the domain of the λογιστικόν and ‘irrational habituation’ to be a property of the παθητικόν.⁶ The Middle Platonist Alcinous concurs, arguing that ‘the cultivation of the reasoning part is different from that of the affective part; for the former is cultivated through teaching, the latter through the training of one’s habitual behaviour’.⁷ In the Neoplatonic hierarchy of virtues, habituation to good action was understood either to be preliminary to the acquisition of moral and civic virtues through education or, as in Alcinous, a parallel process to education.⁸ Yet for Dorotheus, habituation is required throughout each stage of a monk’s moral and spiritual education. This is partly a function of the life-long quality of ascetic education, which distinguishes it from educational contexts that are more time limited. It is also built upon a conceptualization of habit that makes it, despite doubts in the philosophical tradition, central to virtue acquisition. A preliminary objection may briefly be considered. Perhaps the emphasis Dorotheus places on habituation is evidence that his teachings are not intended to be educational in the same sense as teaching in the context of ancient philosophical schools. For later Greek philosophers, habituation was central to prepare students for formal ethical (and political) education and fitted them to attend to and take up into their own lives the knowledge about ethics or politics imparted in the philosophical classroom. But philosophers, on this account, were concerned not with habit formation but with theoretical and practical knowledge which can move students to perform good actions virtuously with reasoned understandings of why they should act in a particular way. Dorotheus, it may be argued, is concerned with training more than with education, since his emphasis on habituation suggests that he is less concerned with helping his students come to knowledge of why an action is good and why it must be performed in a particular

⁶ See Galen, PHP 5.5.29; Cooper 1998. ⁷ Did. 24.4 (Dillon translation): Ἔτι δὲ τὸ ἕτερον εἶναι τὸ λογιστικὸν τοῦ παθητικοῦ παρίσταται κἀκ τοῦ ἑτέραν μὲν ἐπιμέλειαν εἶναι τοῦ λογιστικοῦ, ἑτέραν δὲ τοῦ παθητικοῦ· τοῦ μὲν διὰ διδασκαλίας, τοῦ δὲ διὰ τῆς ἔθους ἀσκήσεως. Cf. Apuleius, De Plat. 2.9. ⁸ Cf. Plotinus, Enn. 1.3.2.10.

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manner and is instead more concerned with training them in good, if unconsidered, action. Both conclusions are unwarranted. On the one hand, understanding philosophy as a way of life demonstrates that philosophers were concerned with habit formation during and together with education about moral or political principles, despite distinctions like those of Alcinous or Posidonius. On the other hand, Dorotheus repeatedly insists that his students should come to be able to act ethically and socially ‘with knowledge’: his moral instruction includes considerable emphasis on reasoned principles, intellectual self-reflection, and well-formed cognition. His programme of education offers students a framework in which they can make sense of ascetic thoughts and actions and come to reason and reflect on their own commitments and behaviour in light of other perspectives. The common role of habit in Dorotheus and late-antique philosophy suggests that both traditions view habit in the context of education as more than mere conditioning. To the extent that habituation includes reasoned and emotional reflection, it remains a crucial component of education.

Habituation and Learning Virtue On Aristotle’s account, virtues come about through habituation (EN 1103a17–26). When a virtuous person acts well, they must ‘act with knowledge, choose the acts intentionally and for their own sakes’ and these actions should ‘proceed from an established and unchangeable character’ (EN 1105a32–35).⁹ Dorotheus closely follows this account in his claim, following Romans 12, that right action must be performed in accordance with a stable character disposition, with knowledge, in accordance with God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will, and to please God (14.155; cf. Rom. 12:2). The virtuous person, in Dorotheus’ account, performs good actions and desires the good, since this is in line with God’s will (14.155). All such good action, as in Aristotle’s account, must be performed for the right reason with the right intention, and with the correct desires. To desire correctly is to desire the loving, compassionate, and merciful in performing acts of love, compassion, and mercy, because these ends are the will of God (14.155). So Dorotheus’ account is open to similar questions that have troubled the Aristotelian tradition more widely. If this account of virtuous action is correct, then virtuous action demands the knowledge, desires, and stable character of the virtuous person. But it seems that before someone becomes virtuous, their desires and unstable character disposition mean that they are not amenable to paying attention to and internalizing knowledge about virtue. This is a strong problem for

⁹ Translations of Aristotle are adapted from Barnes 1984 and Rackham’s LCL Nicomachean Ethics.

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Dorotheus, given his moral psychology analysed in the previous chapter, whereby passions and thoughts established from one’s earliest development distort the soul’s schemas of reason, belief, will, and desire. Even if one works to correct these improper desires, virtuous action still seems to require the virtuous person’s stable character disposition. It seems that his account of virtuous action is only available to those who are already virtuous. Education cannot be effective in creating virtuous learners. In a justly classic article, Myles Burnyeat clarified Aristotle’s account of moral development.¹⁰ His account of Aristotle’s thought can also illumine Dorotheus’ commitments. Crucially, Aristotle thinks that desire is developmentally prior to reason and considered action, and that this priority also continues through a person’s moral life, so that morality should be understood as always emotional and cognitive.¹¹ As we saw in the previous chapter, there is a strong insistence in Dorotheus’ case that cognition is affectively shaped. Aristotle’s insistence on the centrality of affectivity for moral development is a crucial point of contact. Aristotle’s account of habit formation as the creation of a second nature also resonates with Dorotheus’ thought. The idea that habit reshapes one’s nature is crucial for Aristotle.¹² Habit, Aristotle thinks, may be closely likened to nature. While it is easier to change one’s habits than to change nature, habit is hard to change, because it is itself a kind of nature (EN 1152a31–32). Learners must grow into virtue over time so that, through practice, virtuous acts are assimilated to their nature (συμφυῆναι, τοῦτο δὲ χρόνου δεῖται) (EN 1147a23–24). Aristotle quotes the poet Evenus to make his point: for humans, practice over an extended period is equivalent to the perfection of their nature.¹³ Through habituation in the process of moral development, people come to love, desire, and enjoy what is good; to the extent that they could not do otherwise given their training and habituated disposition, this may be described as acting because of their nature.¹⁴ Dorotheus, drawing directly on Basil of Caesarea, explicitly picks up this idea that habit is a second nature. He argues that there is ‘nothing worse than bad habits (οὐδὲν γὰρ χεῖρον κακῆς συνηθείας)’ because changing a habit is like changing one’s nature or uprooting a grown tree (12.131.2–9). Dorotheus cites Basil’s argument, which deploys terms that echo Aristotle’s notion that habits shape one’s nature:

¹⁰ Burnyeat 1980. ¹¹ Burnyeat 1980, 70–1. ¹² Burnyeat 1980, 73–4, 77, 86–7. Mathews 2017, 408–10 analyses habit as the means of acquiring a new disposition. ¹³ φημὶ πολυχρόνιον μελέτην ἔμεναι, φίλε, καὶ δὴ/ταύτην ἀνθρώποισι τελευτῶσαν φύσιν εἶναι (EN 1152a33–34). ¹⁴ Burnyeat 1980, 87–8.

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this contest to overcome the habits (συνήθεια) themselves is not a small one. For a habit (ἔθος) which has been established for a long time takes on the strength of nature to the greatest possible extent. Οὐ μικρὸς δὲ οὗτος ἀγών, τῆς συνηθείας ἑαυτοῦ περιγενέσθαι. Ἔθος γὰρ διὰ μακροῦ χρόνου βεβαιωθέν, φύσεως ἰσχύν, ὡς τὰ πολλά, λαμβάνει. (12.131.4–6)¹⁵

Elsewhere, Dorotheus notes that ‘both virtue and vice, when frequently practised, produce a habit in the soul’.¹⁶ He exhorts God to ‘save us from bad habits’ and attributes to Abba Nisteros a warning about becoming slaves to passion through bad habits (11.122.5–8). If a person’s soul can be naturally inclined to passion, it may be that habits can be formed very quickly: a soul ‘runs the risk of coming into a habit straight away’.¹⁷ As the examples of an obsessive hoarder or the monk who feels compelled to steal suggest, Dorotheus has in mind a form of addiction.¹⁸ Monks should pay careful attention and establish the correct cognitive-affective dispositions of fear and zealous attentiveness to avoid falling into bad habits (11.123.9–10).¹⁹ The point to underline is that habits can become a settled disposition, with the same power as one’s original nature. While this normally takes time, it can happen very quickly. In Dorotheus’ account, however, speaking of habituation as the acquisition of a second nature can occlude an illuminating difference between his framework and that of the wider philosophical tradition indebted to Aristotle. Dorotheus understands habit formation, in part, as the restoration of one’s original good and rational nature. Aristotle contrasts natural with habituated virtue on the basis that habituated qualities are those that can be changed by practice, whereas natural qualities are not amenable to change in this way. Dorotheus argues that since the seeds of virtue cannot be eradicated from our soul, virtue is a natural and innate condition (11.122.18).²⁰ It has, however, been marred by the fall, which caused ongoing distorted affective-cognitive schemas. As he puts it, the fall creates ‘evil dispositions of our inner being’.²¹ This evil disposition is described as a state that replaces the natural state of humanity with a state contrary to nature.²² In the context of these distortions of the good created human nature, habituation is, for Dorotheus, a means of regaining an original virtuous and reasonable nature by removing a state which is contrary to nature, and revealing the rationality and ¹⁵ Cf. Basil, reg. fus. PG 31, 929: οὐ μικρὸς δὲ οὗτος ἀγὼν, τῆς ἑαυτοῦ συνηθείας περιγενέσθαι· ἔθος γὰρ διὰ μακροῦ χρόνου βεβαιωθὲν φύσεως ἰσχὺν λαμβάνει; Apophth. (ser. syst.) 4.67.2–3: ἔθος γὰρ διὰ μακροῦ χρόνου βεβαιωθὲν φύσεως ἰσχὺν λαμβάνει. ¹⁶ ἡ ἀρετὴ καὶ ἡ κακία ἐκ τοῦ συνεχῶς ἐνεργεῖσθαι ἕξιν τινὰ ἐμποιεῖ τῇ ψυχῇ (11.122.13–14). ¹⁷ κινδυνεύει εὐθέως εἰς ἕξιν ἐλθεῖν (11.123.3–4). Cf. the case of gall, which may be made naturally more sensitive to irritation after previous illness and naturally produce bile more quickly. ¹⁸ Cf. Mathews 2017, 398; Charland, Hope, and Stewart 2013. ¹⁹ Πολλῆς οὖν νήψεως καὶ σπουδῆς καὶ φόβου χρεία, ἵνα μὴ ἐμπέσῃ τις εἰς κακὴν ἕξιν. ²⁰ Cf. Origen, Expositio in Proverbia PG 17, 173; Evagrius, mal. cog. 31,17; schol. in Prov. 62,3. ²¹ τῶν κακῶν διαθέσεων τοῦ ἐντὸς ἀνθρώπου ἡμῶν (1.6.2–3; cf. Rom. 7:22; Eph. 3:16). ²² ἐξέπεσε γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ ἦν ἐν τῷ παρὰ φύσιν (1.1.11–12).

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virtue that cannot be entirely lost since it was created by God, rather than merely the development of a more morally perfect character. This notion had a long history in Christian thought. For example, Clement of Alexandria deploys an originally Stoic argument to make a similar point. The education of the true sage leads to the acquisition of habituated virtue: ‘Therefore to him who has acquired virtue which cannot be lost, habit has become a second nature, like weight for a stone’.²³ In this key, habituation becomes a central plank of Dorotheus’ wider programme of transformative education. How is this to be achieved, given that every monk must constantly grapple with the distorted, fallen state of their character dispositions? Again, the comparison with Aristotle may be instructive, both for similar contours and significant difference. Aristotle’s key concern is that most people have very distorted feelings that mean that they are not amenable to moral education.²⁴ Because of the strength of the pleasures and motivations people commonly experience, moral education through emphasizing rational principles and processes of reasoning mostly fails to change most people’s character. The problem is both that most students are not motivated to attend to moral instruction and that moral reasoning does not motivate them to change their actions. Therefore habituation to virtue often fails to get off the ground. This fundamental concern with the distortion and corruption of human affects, motivations, and processes of reasoning is shared by Dorotheus, integrated, as we have seen, into his wider account of human anthropology after the fall. Nevertheless, Dorotheus, like Aristotle, does allow that humans can intend good action in the right way, that is, with affective-cognitive motivations that align with those of a virtuous person. Dorotheus emphasizes that such action is difficult and perpetually at risk of failure, since one’s intentions are distorted by schemas in the soul and monks are perpetually subjected to external temptations that can lead to further or more firmly established distortions of perception, knowledge, and desire. Dorotheus’ teachings are thus focused on the many ways in which a monk’s motivations can be corrupted. But the cumulative point of his psychological realism is that through effortful attention and habituation, monks can come to have virtuous intentions, desires, and beliefs. As Marta Jimenez has argued, there can be a ‘continuity in development of motivational attitudes’ between the novice and the virtuous person that enables an action to be virtuous even if it does not satisfy Aristotle’s requirement that the action proceeds from a stable character disposition towards virtue.²⁵ For Aristotle, a learner on the way to virtue has memories, beliefs, desires, and affects ‘that are significantly related to the virtue which the learner aims to acquire’.²⁶ For Dorotheus, this continuity is grounded in

²³ Clement of Alexandria, str. 7.46.9; Chrys. Fr. mor. 438.4, and 490 (from Clement). ²⁴ Cf. Arist. EN 10.9 1179b4–31; 3.5, 1114a19–21 with Burnyeat 1980, 75, 81. ²⁵ Jimenez 2016, 21–2, 24. ²⁶ Jimenez 2016, 30.

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his claim that all people have goodness and reason implanted in them. Given the possibility of continuity between the motivations and affects of novices and experts in virtue, a key aim of his programme of ascetic education is to reorder memories, beliefs, desires, and affects such that they are significantly and consistently related to the virtues monks aim to acquire. Dorotheus has, however, a further argument about the importance of habituation for moral education both of novices and experts. He argues that virtue development is like learning a craft (τέχνη).²⁷ Virtue can be learned exactly analogously to the process of habituation to the technical skills of medicine or rhetoric: ‘little by little . . . the soul imperceptibly acquires the craft by practising it’.²⁸ This draws attention to the changes to the monk’s disposition which are achieved through habituation, just as the character of a doctor or sophist is shaped by their own craft-like behaviour. Habituation teaches the craft of monasticism (8.95.3–9), while the craft of a holy man can persuade other monks to be more virtuous (5.65.24). This emphasis on virtue as a craft differs from Aristotle’s scheme. Aristotle denied that virtue is like a craft in important respects (EN 1105a26–1105b5). Crucially, the product of a craft, on Aristotle’s account, has value even if the craftsman is deficient in knowledge, intention, or character. Virtue, on the other hand, is dependent on the correct knowledge, intention, and character of the person who performs the virtuous action. Further, even to the extent that virtue can be understood as a craft, the sorts of pleasures and motivations appropriate to practising a craft are not, on Aristotle’s account, sufficiently continuous with those needed for the development of virtue.²⁹ This is not Dorotheus’ view. In common with early Christian tradition, he understands God as the ideal craftsman.³⁰ Since the goodness of creation is understood as a function of the goodness of God, who seeks to share his goodness with others (e.g., ep. 2, 186), in Dorotheus’ paradigmatic case, the goodness of the object made by the craftsman is not independent from the goodness of the maker. We might think this is too strong a condition—that The Ring might be sublime despite its composer—but the close connection between craftsmanship and the divine demiurge helps to make it plausible for Dorotheus. Taking God as the paradigmatic craftsman confers on the category of craft the conditions of knowledge, deliberation, appropriate affect, goodness, and stability of character which are also needed for virtue. Learning virtue, he claims, is like learning the craft of a carpenter, whose work requires knowledge, close attention, intentionality and care for the perfection of the finished product (10.105.31). The development of ascetic

²⁷ ²⁸ ²⁹ ³⁰

Recall that monasticism as the ‘art of arts’ (τὴν τέχνην τῶν τεχνῶν) (8.95). See further below. κατὰ μικρόν . . . ἀνεπαισθήτως προσελάβετο αὐτὴν ἡ ψυχὴ ἐκ τοῦ ἐνεργεῖν τὴν τέχνην (2.36.10). See Jimenez 2020, especially ch. 2. See 1.1.1–15. For the Platonic craftsman analogy, see Baltes 1976, 45–63.

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perfection is in part a function of imitation of the divine craftsman. In imitating the creative Word, monks themselves become creative, crafting their own souls towards greater perfection.³¹ Like the skilled craftsman who never stops learning his craft, even monks well along the path to virtue can learn through affective processes of habituation. Therefore Dorotheus shares with Aristotle a view that those who seek to become virtuous come to the moral classroom with an unstable character disposition but with crucial previous knowledge and affective experience, including of the motivational states (reasons, emotions, and desires), required of virtuous action.³² This previous experience is sufficiently continuous with the affectivecognition of virtuous people to allow moral and spiritual development to be promoted through processes of monastic education. Dorotheus’ optimism about moral education and his continued emphasis on processes of habituation within his programme of education for both novices and those who are more expert is grounded in a view that goodness and rationality are open to all, given their originally created nature and his claim that habituation can remove the distorted schemas which negatively affect the operation of this originally created nature (1.1; 3.40). He also thinks that habituation in virtue is always precarious. For Aristotle, lapses in virtue by a virtuous person are hard to explain since virtuous habits make non-virtuous action difficult. Virtuous people can generalize from previous experience about what counts as virtuous action. They have highly developed powers of practical reasoning, perform acts of virtue in the correct affective state for the sake of virtue, and have established characters which generate their virtuous action. While Dorotheus acknowledges that habits can be difficult to shake, he is less confident that habituation to virtue makes falling away from virtue difficult. We may remember the state of fear which is never entirely erased even from the monks who have come to love God. This tension in his thought— between the view that habits form a second nature and the view that even those who have been habituated to virtue can sin—is never entirely reconciled. It may be that stories of such lapses are a pedagogical device to strengthen a commitment to habituation to virtue in his students over a lifetime. But in his emphasis on the continued importance of habituation, his thought may also be distinguished from that of Basil, who nevertheless remains influential: Therefore while the soul is still tender, easy to mould and pliable as wax, easily taking on the forms of what is impressed upon it, it should be exercised straightaway and from the beginning by every discipline in good things, with

³¹ Such a view grounds ideas of stewardship for nature (see Passmore 1974, 28–40) and a positive evaluation of creative work. ³² Jimenez 2016, 30; Burnyeat 1980, 77–80, 85.

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the result that when reason is added and habits of judgement develop, [monks ready to take their vows] will take their course from fundamental principles and the examples of piety imparted at the beginning, on the one hand reason proposing what is beneficial, and on the other hand, habit making right action easy.³³ Εὔπλαστον οὖν ἔτι οὖσαν καὶ ἁπαλὴν τὴν ψυχὴν, καὶ ὡς κηρὸν εὔεικτον, ταῖς τῶν ἐπιβαλλομένων μορφαῖς ῥᾳδίως ἐκτυπουμένην, πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀγαθῶν ἄσκησιν εὐθὺς καὶ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐνάγεσθαι χρή· ὥστε τοῦ λόγου προσγενομένου, καὶ τῆς διακριτικῆς ἕξεως προσελθούσης, δρόμον ὑπάρχειν ἐκ τῶν ἐξ ἀρχῆς στοιχείων, καὶ τῶν παραδοθέντων τῆς εὐσεβείας τύπων, τοῦ μὲν λόγου τὸ χρήσιμον ὑποβάλλοντος, τοῦ δὲ ἔθους εὐμάρειαν πρὸς τὸ κατορθοῦν ἐμποιοῦντος. (reg. fus. 15)³⁴

For Basil as for wider traditions of philosophical pedagogy, habit formation is necessary before the next stage of ascetic education begins. Dorotheus’ educational context, however, prioritizes the continuing education of monks after their earlier education. His concern with life-long learning drives his insistence that habit formation remains crucial for monks throughout their educational journey. Partly, this is a function of his anxiety about falling away even from habitual virtue. For Dorotheus, the minds of monks are pliable long after they have taken their vows, and the sort of practice involved in learning a craft and habituating oneself to virtue remains a crucial element of his ascetic education for life-long learners who are always in danger of falling into error.

Moral Development as a Craft: ‘On Building up and Fine-tuning the Virtues of the Soul’ Dorotheus’ Instruction 14 ‘On Building-up and Fine-tuning the Virtues of the Soul’ provides an extended case study of Dorotheus’ conceptualization of the craft-like character of virtue acquisition and, consequently, of the role that habituation continues to play at all educational stages. To develop virtue, Dorotheus thinks, is to act like a craftsman or a musician, each of whom must practise to develop and maintain their skills. Musicians and other craftsmen work purposefully and with knowledge of how individual components of their craft harmoniously work together to actualize a plan or composition. For Dorotheus, these elements of learning a craft are shared with virtue and the educative processes involved in its acquisition. The treatise opens by explicitly comparing the acquisition of virtue with building a house. The builder requires attention, planning, appropriate desire,

³³ Translation adapted Basil, Ascetical Works, trans. Wagner 1950.

³⁴ PG 31, 956,12–21.

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and overall understanding, while the product of the craft is made of parts that are intimately related to each other. So too in the case of virtue, since virtues are conceptualized as a harmonious unity performed by well-practised moral experts. Like the walls of a house, the virtues are attached to each other and only function properly individually when they work together (14.150.3–14). This sense of the interconnection of virtue will be developed later in the treatise and is the key element of Dorotheus’ account of the unity of the virtues. Dorotheus then elaborates on the metaphor of virtue as building (14.151). He likens constructing virtue to the work of an οἰκοδόμος or τεχνίτης.³⁵ These are terms that refer to builders and skilled construction workers, including workers with architectural skills, but exactly what craft expertise they refer to is unclear. Serafina Cuomo has pointed to the diversity and fluidity of nomenclature for different levels of expertise in building and construction.³⁶ Inscriptional evidence suggests that the same person may refer to themselves using different terms, although there were certainly gradations of expertise and the inscriptional evidence in this case might also point to progression through different levels of expertise over the course of the construction of a major project.³⁷ Dorotheus’ use of the terms οἰκοδόμος and τεχνίτης places the skilled worker in a lower social class than a μηχανικός. This title seems to be reserved for the most skilled and prestigious architects, like those who designed Hagia Sophia.³⁸ Referring to the lower status role has two consequences for Dorotheus’ context. First, it highlights that the sort of craft skill to which virtue is likened is available to people of lower social status; unlike traditional Greek and Roman conceptions of virtue, Dorotheus does not use ἀρετή as a class marker. Second, it locates the sort of craft with which virtue acquisition is compared at the technical rather than the theoretical end of expertise. As in other areas of education we have surveyed, the connection between theoretical and practical education was less of a dichotomy and more of a continuum. Architecture understood as a liberal art concerned itself with matters of beauty, disposition, order, symmetry and proportion.³⁹ All these elements recur in Dorotheus’ account of the craft expertise of the οἰκοδόμος or τεχνίτης. For example, he notes that buildings must be built harmoniously and with an eye to balance (ἴσην καὶ ἁρμοδίως ἀναφέρειν) (14.150.9). Architectural education also included rational or scientific (τὸ λογικόν, ἡ ἐπιστήμη) education in geometry, mathematics, astronomy, and statics, elements Dorotheus does not consider, again drawing attention to the practical domain through his use of the

³⁵ While the latter term can refer to someone skilled in any τέχνη, Dorotheus refers to the craft of building and uses τεχνίτης for more educated builders. ³⁶ Cuomo 2007, 134, 162–4. ³⁷ Cuomo 2007, 142–3. ³⁸ See Agathias, Hist. 5.6.3–4; Procopius, Aed. 1.1.24. Other terms predominate, including Dorotheus’ preferred terms οἰκοδόμος and τεχνίτης, in the epigraphic evidence. See Butler (with Smith) 1929, 255–7; Schibille 2009, 363. ³⁹ Schibille 2009, 364, 368–71. For these divisions, see Pappos, Coll. III, 1022,3–1024,11.

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metaphor of the builder. In this component of education in construction, students learned to work with different materials (metalworking, woodwork, painting) and were given practical experience in workshops and on construction sites. Dorotheus emphasizes the practical or manual (τὸ χειρουργικόν, ἡ τέχνη) side of the builder or architect’s education in his extended metaphor of virtue as construction.⁴⁰ Dorotheus begins his comparison of virtue with building with the claim that faith is the foundation stone of the virtues on which the other virtues should be built proportionately (κατὰ ἀναλογίαν) (14.151.1–5). The idea of proportionate construction of virtue emphasizes the need for the craftsman to exercise mathematical precision and reasoned planning in the process of construction to relate the elements of construction to each other. Vitruvius had emphasized the need for structures to obey rules guaranteeing harmonious order and proportion (Vitruvius, De arch. 1.2.1; 1.3.2); such order and proportion are also required for the soul. The stones of the walls of the house of the soul are the virtues which protect against moral threats, as walls stand against bad weather, and which are laid down as the opportunity presents itself during the monks’ daily interactions with others (14.151.5–11). Dorotheus enumerates a rich palette of virtue necessary, in his view, for the harmonious functioning of ascetic community: obedience, patient forbearance, temperance, sympathy or affinity with others, gentleness, and excision of the will. These individual virtues are held together by patience or endurance and courage (ὑπομονή, ἀνδρεία), as cornerstones secure the walls of a house (14.151.12–15). These virtues, Dorotheus teaches, provide strength for the performance of all other virtues. Without mortar, however, the stones that make up the walls of a house rub against each other and the walls are unstable. So too in the case of virtue, Dorotheus argues. Humility ensures the different virtues do not come into conflict and secures their harmonious interaction: ‘every virtue that happens without humility is not a virtue’.⁴¹ The point is reinforced with another craft metaphor drawn from the Apophthegmata, this time from boat building: ‘as it is impossible to construct a ship without nails, so it is impossible to be saved without humility’.⁴² The extended metaphor now moves to the beams that are constructed by the builder to lend the structure strength, beauty, and coherence (14.151.30–34). In the case of virtue, the role of the ‘beams’ is taken by discretion or sound judgement (διάκρισις). Finally, the house requires a roof and parapets. In the case of virtue, this is love (ἀγάπη), which is the perfection of virtue as the roof

⁴⁰ Cf. Dorotheus’ emphasis on manual skill in his comparison with virtue: 1.15.1; 14.154.36–44; 17.176.8. ⁴¹ Πᾶσα οὖν ἀρετὴ ἄνευ ταπεινώσεως γινομένη οὐκ ἔστιν ἀρετή (14.151.25–26). Dorotheus attributes this saying to the fathers. This and the following saying (this time almost identically) parallel the V. Syncl., 579–89. ⁴² Ὥσπερ ἀδύνατον ναῦν χωρὶς ἥλων κατασκευασθῆναι, οὕτως ἀμήχανον σωθῆναι χωρὶς ταπεινοφροσύνης (14.151.26–28).

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is the completion of a house.⁴³ Dorotheus returns to humility as the crowning glory of the structure, which, like parapets, hold the construction together and ensure it retains its order and proportion.⁴⁴ To this point, Dorotheus has been focusing on the product constructed by the craftsman. As the builder constructs a house, so too the monk constructs the soul through practice and careful reasoning and calculation which ensures that the product has its own beauty, coherence, harmony, and proportion. But as in Aristotle’s case, Dorotheus acknowledges that virtue is not to be identified merely with the product of a craft. The character of the craftsman is crucial, for Dorotheus, in both cases. He has already noted the importance of attention, intention, planning, and a general and integrative understanding of one’s craft, in the case of a builder and the monk practising virtue (14.150.3–8). The builder must not fixate on and feel pleasure in individual elements of the house, just as monks must not focus only on a single virtue; they must instead cultivate desire for the wholeness of the product (14.150.8–28).⁴⁵ The completion of the house is by no means the end of the matter, either for the builder or for the monk concerned with learning to be good. Crucially, the builder (οἰκοδόμος) must be a ‘skilled craftsman’ (τεχνίτης) lest the construction fall because it is distorted and overloaded (14.152.5–6).⁴⁶ Dorotheus defines the skilled craftsman as the builder who ‘acts with knowledge (ὁ ἐν γνώσει ποιῶν)’ (14.152.7). Drawing on the (albeit somewhat fluid) distinctions we have seen operating in the sphere of building occupations, Dorotheus differentiates between the οἰκοδόμος who may apply less intentional and reasoned capability and the τεχνίτης, whose capacity to produce craft objects is built on a deeper understanding of the principles of construction. The need for cultivating practical and theoretical knowledge together is a central element of Dorotheus’ ethics. Much of the remainder of the treatise is concerned with working through how ‘knowledge’ should be understood in the case of virtue acquisition. Dorotheus initially offers four examples (14.152.11–32). First, there is an example of a monk who remains silent when upset by another member of the community but then goes and tells someone else about how good he was in refraining to respond to the insult. We may infer that this is not acting with knowledge both because the monk was originally upset by the insult, and so was not sufficiently affectively tranquil in the face of external insults, and because the monk did not do the right thing with ⁴³ Ἡ δὲ στέγη ἐστὶν ἡ ἀγάπη, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἡ τελείωσις τῶν ἀρετῶν, καθάπερ ἡ στέγη τοῦ οἴκου (14.151.35–36). ⁴⁴ See Chapter 4. ⁴⁵ Aristotle repeatedly signals the importance of emotion in the development of virtue, but also commonly uses the craft metaphor to foreground intellectual skill; in this way for Aristotle, craft and virtue differ by the emphasis put on emotion in the case of virtue but not in the case of craft (cf. Arist. EN 1105b25–26). Dorotheus does not make this same contrast, and instead likens the emotions and desires of a craftsman to those important for learning to be good. ⁴⁶ The term for strain or distortion (στρεβλότης) may also, in the moral sense, connote perversion.

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the correct intention. In a second example, Dorotheus posits that the monk could keep silence because he thinks that silence is itself a virtue. But this is incorrectly to identify what makes silence virtuous—the knowledge of one’s own unworthiness rather than merely the external fact of silence. In this case, the monk acts without knowledge not because his affective reactions are improperly formed or because his intention is faulty but because he has not understood the correct reason to perform a virtuous action. In a third case, a monk may take pride in his properly virtuous action and intention. He may correctly have identified what makes an action virtuous. But in taking pride in his virtuous performance, the monk demonstrates insufficient knowledge of the source of moral value: all moral achievement depends, in Dorotheus’ view, not on the moral virtuosity of the sage, but on God who is the source of virtue. Properly virtuous action, therefore, will not include pride in such action and will include acknowledgement of the source of virtue. The final example returns to the need for a virtuous intention and makes explicit the implicit point of the first example: virtuous action must be performed for the sake of virtue. Monks who have acquired the appropriate affective capacity for sympathy and mercy continue peacefully and tranquilly to act mercifully whatever the situation because of their settled disposition (14.153.5–11). Together, these four examples and the extended metaphor of moral development as building and designing a house offer an account of moral development which is both Aristotelian in outline and deeply shaped by the demands of ascetic sociality and Dorotheus’ perceptive account of moral psychology, where habit is a crucial means by which monks learn to be good: it is necessary to perform every virtue in such a way that it is acquired and becomes a habit for us. There may be found, as we said, the noble and well-skilled builder, able to build his own house with assurance. ἑκάστην ἀρετὴν οὕτως δεῖ τινα ποιεῖν, ὥστε κτήσασθαι αὐτὴν καὶ γενέσθαι ἐν ἕξει αὐτῆς. Καὶ εὑρίσκεται, ὡς εἴπομεν, καλὸς καὶ τεχνίτης οἰκοδόμος, δυνάμενος μετὰ ἀσφαλείας οἰκοδομῆσαι τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον. (14.153.32–36)

Dorotheus thinks that virtue is sufficiently like a craft that the affects, motivations, and knowledge required of habituation to a technical skill like building or architecture are on a continuum with those required of virtue. Earlier in the ascetic tradition on which Dorotheus depends, this continuity also explains, for example, Basil’s decision to allow novice children to learn a technical craft if they show an aptitude for it.⁴⁷ Partly, of course, this is a pragmatic concern for what a child might do if they do not end up taking monastic vows. But it is also, I suggest, a reflection of thinking like Dorotheus’: an intuition that the learning involved in

⁴⁷ Basil, reg. fus. 15.

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habituation to a craft will help in the process of moral education, because the processes are understood as sufficiently similar. The pleasures experienced in learning a technical skill and the powers of practical reasoning developed in the process are, in this line of ascetic thought, very like the affective and cognitive experiences and disciplines involved in learning to be good. Cognitively and affectively shaped habituation helps to promote the sorts of emotions and reasoned judgement required for virtue acquisition.⁴⁸ Such ‘embodied work with knowledge’ creates in the virtuous monk a ‘noble state (καλὴ κατάστασις)’ (14.153.31–154.2). It is how the virtuous person gains the stable character disposition from which virtuous acts flow. God assists in the creation of this state, which leads Dorotheus to ask whether the virtuous person’s stable disposition is genuinely achievable by human effort. There are two problems: the need for divine assistance may mean that virtue is so difficult to acquire that humans could not be motivated to put in the strenuous effort required for virtuous action, or dependence on God may be understood to mean that human choice is irrelevant to the acquisition of virtue. Dorotheus rejects both lines of argument. Virtue is not impossible to achieve but can be built through a series of small increments. This depends on affective-cognitive effort and the exercise of choice: ‘virtue is up to us to the extent that we desire it’.⁴⁹ As in the case of physical fitness, virtue requires voluntary action and exercise or training (14.154.5–6). We must exercise (γυμνάζω) virtue and act with courage, enthusiasm, and endurance rather than timidity or a dispirited sense of the apparent impossibility of the task (14.154.5–15). Desires and attitudes such as these will elicit divine assistance along the path to virtue: ‘show to [God] your free choice and zeal, and you see the help which he offers to you for acting well’.⁵⁰ The process of virtue development is understood as both incremental and comprehensive. Dorotheus deploys the analogy of a ladder to argue that while one cannot expect to fly straight up to heaven, one may realistically attempt not to step down in the other direction, and may, little by little and step by step, ascend towards virtue (14.154.18–33).⁵¹ The ascent to the top of the ladder returns to Dorotheus’ ethical and epistemic theme that knowledge and love of God brings us closer to knowledge and love of neighbour. Dorotheus argues that helping one’s neighbour makes one desire their benefit. We may recall the image of approaching the centre of a circle along radius lines, where all radii approach God at the centre of the circle and just so come closer to each other (6.78). Suffering alongside others ⁴⁸ See further below on the relationship between work and virtue development. ⁴⁹ ἐν ἡμῖν ἐστι καὶ τὸ κατορθῶσαι, ἐὰν θέλωμεν (14.154.6–7). ⁵⁰ Δεῖξον αὐτῷ τὴν προαίρεσίν σου καὶ τὴν σπουδήν, καὶ βλέπεις τὴν βοήθειαν ἣν παρέχει σοι εἰς τὸ κ ατορθῶσαι (14.154.15–17). ⁵¹ Josephus Bryennius (c. 1350–1430/31), referring to Dorotheus as ‘full of divine wisdom’ (θεόσοφος), cites this passage. Bryennius provides one pathway for Dorotheus’ influence in the later tradition. See Bryennius, or. 7,459–500; cf. Dorotheus 6.78, 14.154. Bryennius’ quotations from Dorotheus align with his philosophical interests: see Rees 2000, 584.

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(συμπάσχειν) as you assist them from a position of humility brings monks closer to God (14.154.25–31). In acting virtuously, monks must, as we have noted, learn to act in accordance with God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will (Rom. 12:2). But thinking about divine will leads Dorotheus into a digression on the question of whether or not everything God wills is good. It is worth following this digression, since it draws attention to Dorotheus’ concern with the role of intention and desire in virtuous action and because it is an instance of his educational programme overflowing from the topic at hand—in this case habituation and moral development—into wider areas of metaphysics and ethics. This is characteristic of programmes of education rather than merely training: Dorotheus thinks that education in virtue can have a craft-like character, but he is not interested only in training monks in a set of skills. His educational programme remains interested in the widest possible account and in the principles that govern practices or generate ideas. Biblical passages claim that everything happens because God wills it; but since these same passages appear to involve God in willing evil, Dorotheus asks whether everything God wills is really good (14.155.1–14). The prophet Isaiah attributes creation of both light and darkness to God (Is. 45:7) while Amos claims that if disaster strikes a city, God did it (Amos 3:6). Dorotheus provides the standard line that anything bad that happens—pestilence and sickness, war, famine, and drought—happens because God allowed it for the correction of human evil. But this is not to say that God desires such evil. God does not intend us to desire or endure such disasters. God may permit destruction, but he does not want us to raze a city; he may permit sickness, but he does not desire it. Therefore we should not withhold treatment or mercy from a sick person (14.155.14–31). This clarifies what God wants the virtuous person to desire. The virtuous monk should desire what is good and well-pleasing (τὸ ἀγαθόν, τὸ κατ’ εὐδοκίαν): those things which God desires rather than merely permits (14.155.26–28). In concrete terms, this means loving one another and being compassionate and merciful to each other.⁵² Again, compassion and mercy should be performed with the right intention: virtuous monks must act ‘for the good itself, for sympathy itself ’.⁵³ The perfectly virtuous person acts mercifully with ‘all his capacity and intention (πάσῃ δυνάμει καὶ πάσῃ προαιρέσει)’ working in perfect mutuality (14.155.42–43). This fundamentally Aristotelian set of arguments also goes beyond Aristotle. Since all depend absolutely on God, giving aid to another person does not establish an unequal relationship of dependency. There is to be no difference in status between the person providing the aid and the person being helped. This is a crucial Christian ethical innovation generated by reflection on the humility of God ⁵² Τοῦτο δέ ἐστι πάντα τὰ κατ’ ἐντολὴν γινόμενα, τὸ ἀλλήλους ἀγαπᾷν, τὸ συμπάσχειν, τὸ ποιεῖν ἐλεημοσύνην, καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα. Ἰδοὺ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸ ἀγαθόν (14.155.28–31). ⁵³ δι’ αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν, δι’ αὐτὴν τὴν συμπάθειαν (14.155.39–40).

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and God’s non-competitive care for his creatures. This innovation was doubtless more honoured in the breach than in the observance, but it nevertheless set a crucial new standard for good ethical action to which Christians, in this case monks in Dorotheus’ classroom, could be motivated to aspire. In the educational context, it also functioned to sustain interactional learning between fellow students and between students and experts in virtue in the monasteries. This standard of mutual, non-competitive care means that there is a special good attached to acts of charity and grace. Monks must ‘be merciful as your heavenly father is merciful’, and as we have noted in another context, mercy is characteristic of God and so merciful action emulates God most appropriately (14.156.11–12). This is a crucial point, and Dorotheus sets out seven examples to probe different aspects of what it would be to imitate divine mercy in a virtuous fashion. The first four examples outline different external motivations for merciful action (14.156.15–30). One may provide charity to gain a better harvest, to secure protection for his boat, to safeguard his children, or for the good opinion of his community. God may well provide these rewards, should they not be detrimental to the person’s soul, but these external motivations for good action do not meet the standard of virtue because they do not stem from the correct disposition. Dorotheus then turns to three internal motivations, in a passage which reprises his thought on different kinds of fear in a different context, and which makes it clear that there is a continuity between the fear of early-stage habituation to virtue and that which remains as an analogous motivation in the case of properly virtuous action (14.157.1–27).⁵⁴ The monk in this register may act with charity in order to avoid hell. In such a case, the monk now has a better evaluation of value than those who act for external rewards, since he has his eye on the salvation of his soul rather than material gain. But since he acts from fear, he is like a slave: he does not have the correct affective disposition or stable motivation required for virtuous action. Then there is the monk who acts charitably for the benefit of his soul. But his ‘inner disposition’ is not correctly constituted, since he acts, like a wage earner who fears lost earnings, for a reward. While this reward for the soul is more important than any other external benefit, this stage of moral development is still imperfect because the person does not act for mercy itself. Finally, there is the person who acts charitably ‘for the good itself ’, acting with fear of God which is now identified with love. In this instance, acts of charity are performed with entirely non-competitive mutuality: ‘we must serve somebody as if he has served us’.⁵⁵ This, Dorotheus argues, is mercy with knowledge, enacted in the ‘settled state’ of the son. The image of acting in the state of the son brings out the Christological shape of Dorotheus’ ethics. He insists that charity is open to all, even those whose poverty precludes giving material resources (14.158). At the base ⁵⁴ See further Chapter 4. ⁵⁵ οὕτως θεραπεύοντές τινα ὡς ὅτι ἡμεῖς δι’ ἐκείνου θεραπευόμεθα (14.157.24–25).

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of charitable action is the divine activity of forgiveness (14.158.16–17). In acts of forgiveness, a power given to all people by God, monks pour out mercy on the soul of the person who is forgiven, and there is no greater mercy than that shown to the soul (14.158.16–27). In sum, for Dorotheus as for the Aristotelian tradition, virtuous action requires conscious, intentional action, the exercise of practical reasoning, the correct ordering of desire and motivational states, and the development of a stable and virtuous character. He contributes to this tradition by arguing for a continuity of different sorts of fear that connects habituation to good action from fear of punishment to properly virtuous action motivated by fear of God: the different stages of moral development form a continuity of affective practice which counters Aristotle’s claim that fear-inspired habituation is different in kind from the emotions required for habituation to virtue. Dorotheus’ further contribution to moral education is his requirement that virtuous action requires mutuality and non-competitive action, since virtuous action must have a Christological character. Virtuous action cannot establish a hierarchy of social status in the moral community, although, of course, particularly good monks become exemplars for others in the monastery.⁵⁶ Moral development to this state is a function of reasoned reflection, education in desire, and habituated practice, formed in imitation of the divine characteristics of mercy and forgiveness. Habituation continues throughout moral development because it continues to instil in monks the correct affects, intentions, and character dispositions required for skilful and effortful identification of how to act appropriately. Virtue is a craft. As Dorotheus concludes, ‘the one who acts with knowledge is an excellent skilled craftsman, who builds his own house securely’.⁵⁷ For Dorotheus, there is significant continuity between the cognitive and affective effort required of craftsmen and those who would act virtuously to make craft-like work crucial in the moral education of monks. The connection between work in the monastic context and moral development is grounded, in Dorotheus’ thought, by this imagined continuity between the motivations and reasoning into which craftsmen are habituated and those involved in learning to be good. While he does not develop an explicit theorization of work and moral development, given his general emphasis on ascetic education as a means of transformation to greater likeness to God, we are justified in grounding his positive evaluation of craft-like work in its imitative character. Performing craft-like skills imitates the divine creator, who is the demiurge who creates from nothing. We have seen how Dorotheus’ use of rhetorical forms of ekphrasis and ethopoeia function in a similarly mimetic way, imitating the creativity of the divine Word ⁵⁶ See further below on emulation and imitation. ⁵⁷ ὁ ἐν γνώσει ποιῶν, οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ δόκιμος καὶ τεχνίτης, ὁ οἰκοδομῶν μετὰ ἀσφαλείας τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον (14.158.33).

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and encouraging his students to craft their souls through inhabiting the characters and narratives constructed by these literary forms. The relationship between virtue and craft also fits this general pattern of education by mimesis. In drawing attention to the craft-like character of virtue, Dorotheus highlights the multiplicity of ways in which acting virtuously is shaped by natural affordances. This too is related to imitation, since mimesis opens up a space for seeing the material as though it represents divine perfection, while also drawing attention to the limitations of physical reality. The craftsman must learn to work with different materials in different contexts and environments while the person learning virtue must craft embodied emotions, cognitions, and desires and navigate virtuous action in relationship with others, again partly through imitation. This reinforces Dorotheus’ overall emphasis on the need to navigate bodily existence and perfect it rather than seek to escape from it. The affordances of the material are not merely impediments; they also enable good action and progressive perfection of human nature. The comparison also brings out the power of external forces in the life of virtue. Swimmers and ships are buffeted by the waves, houses are assailed by wind, rain, and earthquakes. Houses, ships, and looms require care in their construction: careful planning and preparation, attention to detail, and concern for order and mutually sustaining elements of the construction are crucial. So too in the case of virtue. Finally, since craft-based skill is open in principle to anyone who undergoes appropriate education, the connection between virtue and social power and status is undermined, and perfection in the realm of moral development is extended to the whole community.⁵⁸ Dorotheus’ mode of education does aim to produce ascetic experts, but such expertise is open to and in principle achievable by all layers of society.

Popular Ethics and Habit Formation in Community The insistence that the life of virtue is open to all social classes and the associated loosening of a connection between elite social status and arete partly explains the ubiquitous use of genres of popular morality within late-antique asceticism. Teresa Morgan has conclusively demonstrated that popular ethics in the imperial period was shaped by sayings literature: proverbs, fables, gnomai/sententia, and chreiai/exempla.⁵⁹ Sayings literature was used widely in educational contexts at the preliminary stage of education (elementary grammatical education) and was collected also in the Progymnasmata which offer sets of rhetorical exercises that bridge elementary instruction and the next stage of rhetorical education.⁶⁰ ⁵⁸ See also Cuomo 2007, 35–6, 129–30. ⁵⁹ Morgan 2007. ⁶⁰ See further Morgan 1998, 120–51; Cribiore 2005, 178–80. For Chreiai, see Hock and O’Neil 1986, 2002, 2012 (Hock only).

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Students read sayings, memorized and paraphrased them, and learned to elaborate on them in a range of rhetorical exercises.⁶¹ This extended into education in literacy in monasteries.⁶² Such literature provided scripts for communal ethical norms, emotional regulation, and social organization. Immersing students in such literature enabled them to inhabit exemplary lives or be warned away from negative behaviours. Reading of sayings literature promoted affective practices to tutor emotions, desires, thoughts, and behaviours. In focusing now on the use of sayings literature in Dorotheus’ educational project, the spotlight falls on the dramatization and performance of affects as part of the process of habituation. The sayings genre is very malleable and is characterized by an openness that generates a wide range of interpretations. This leaves room for creativity and a kind of virtuosity in its use, dramatic adaptation, and performance. As Leslie Kurke has written of Aesopic fables in the ancient world, there is a ‘permeability and openness’ in the genre which lends itself to the development of an ‘ongoing conversation’.⁶³ Sayings literature, both in its textual form and as part of a living oral tradition is, in Kurke’s terms ‘open, fluid, anybody’s property, authored by no-one and so authored by each one who writes it down’ or performs it.⁶⁴ Dorotheus’ use of Apophthegmata also performs something of this openness. His creative and virtuosic use of sayings literature generates new interpretations of sayings, in a way that parallels philosophical innovation through exegesis. It invites monks into a living conversation where they can make the sayings part of their own lives and through which the norms of communal life are created and reinforced. But this notion of creating and reinforcing norms also foregrounds limits to the generic openness of sayings literature. The fluidity and permeability of the genre which Kurke emphasizes is partly foreclosed when the sayings are used in the context of moral education. Morgan has noted that while sayings literature may prove highly debatable and adaptable and contradictions between sayings may prompt reflection and the development of an individual’s own moral sense, in the context of moral education and the creation of a cohesive moral culture sayings are used in a pointed way.⁶⁵ In the context of moral education, sayings are presented as though they have universal moral meaning in the contemporary context of the pedagogue who is using the saying to habituate students into prescribed and limited behaviours, affects, and moral reasons.⁶⁶ A key feature of Dorotheus’ thought, consistent with wider discourses of asceticism and practical ethics, is the use of maxims, sayings, chreia, and exemplary narratives with features of fables (mythoi or ainoi), anecdotes, or reminiscences to

⁶¹ ⁶² ⁶³ ⁶⁶

Larsen 2008, 27–8. Lillian Larsen’s studies have been particularly formative: Larsen 2006a, 2006b, 2008, 2013, 2017a. Kurke, 2010, 9–10. ⁶⁴ Kurke 2010, 10. ⁶⁵ Morgan 2007, 15–18, 20–2. Morgan 2007, 255–6.

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enable monks to imitate and thereby inhabit exemplary lives and thus become habituated to virtue. Apophthegmata, like sayings literature in other contexts in antiquity, became authoritative for the formation of moral authority and moral value in his monastic community. Dorotheus’ use of these forms is free. For example, he does not use fables from the wider rhetorical tradition, but does regularly make up short stories or mythoi which convey moral truths and advice.⁶⁷ Sometimes there is a clear chreia (a short useful saying or account of action attributed to a named exemplary agent); sometimes a chreia is expanded in a literary elaboration; at other times an exemplary recollection or anecdote is told in a more extended narrative form than is usual according to the prescriptions for chreia in Progymnasmata, bringing his narrative form closer to a reminiscence.⁶⁸ Dorotheus regularly attributes maxims and sayings to famous abbas or saints and encourages his students to emulate these named exemplary figures. As Lillian Larsen has argued, the sayings educated monastic ‘students to live well’ and were ‘instrumental in forming a type of citizen that this particular society [ascetic communities] needed’.⁶⁹ Part of the point of anonymizing exempla is to promote the disposition of humility in the monasteries.

Dramatizing Exemplarity: Habituating Mind and Will Ascetic exempla help to motivate monks to become amenable to moral and spiritual education within the monasteries by orienting them towards virtue.⁷⁰ This meets the objection we have traced above about how a student may begin upon a life of virtue, given that they are unlikely to have desires and motivations oriented towards this goal. Dramatizing the virtuous action of saints and holy men, alongside characters from biblical narratives, enables monks to place themselves in the dramatic roles of exemplary characters and thereby orient their rational thoughts and desires towards virtue. Sayings provide dramatic scripts of action that monks can emulate or seek to avoid. Most generally, exemplary performances cultivate a set of ethical dispositions which meet the ethical demands of monastic life.⁷¹ By inhabiting the sayings of positive ascetic exemplars and emulating them, monks take on the textualized emotions, values, and ideas,

⁶⁷ Cf. Aphthonius on fable, Prog. 1; Nicolaus, Prog. 2. ⁶⁸ See e.g., Hermogenes, Prog. 3; Aphthonius, Prog. 3. Aelius Theon, Prog. 3 distinguishes the recollection or reminiscence from the chreia in a similar way but also notes that the former ‘is remembered for its own sake’. Dorotheus’ extended chreia or recollections are closer to this distinction when the exemplary action is attributed to an unnamed agent, e.g., ‘a certain great elder’. Chreia may be expanded through the use of ἐργασία (literary elaboration). See also Larsen 2006b; Rönnegård 2010, 6–11, 173–82. ⁶⁹ Larsen 2008, 30; Webb 2001. ⁷⁰ For the exemplum/chreia into Byzantium, see Engler and Müller 1995. ⁷¹ Cf. Hollywood 2012, 67 on Benedict.

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make them their own, and then come to perform them within the monastic community.⁷² Again, mimesis is central to the practice of education understood as the formation of character. In his letter to other monastic teachers, Dorotheus advises that they should be examples and types of the sort of people they are teaching their students to be, embodying the ‘fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, and gentleness, and temperance against every passion’ (ep. 2, 184.1–9). Just as teachers should in their own behaviour provide models for their students to emulate, the sayings literature also promotes imitation of a range of emotional and ethical practices. The use of sayings thus illuminates the communal norms and practices that support Dorotheus’ account of habituation to a life of virtue. In promoting the use of sayings within ascetic education, Dorotheus aims to form the cognitive-affective community of the monasteries. Ascetic exemplarity is grounded in the exemplarity of Christ. This Christological exemplarity establishes the parameters of imitation. Christ’s example means that humans can be freed from negative passions like anger, desire for pleasure, hatred, and evil and are no longer compelled to sin (1.5.13–24). Christological exemplarity is written into the clothing monks wear (1.15–19).⁷³ Just as monks ‘put on Christ’ in their baptism, they also put on their Christological identity by wearing the habit. Monastic costume augments dramatic characterization. Dorotheus refers to the habit as including a sleeveless tunic (κολόβιον) (1.15.1–37).⁷⁴ He claims that this attire distinguishes monks from all other men, whose tunics have sleeves. This difference is then allegorized. Sleeves symbolize hands, and the sleeveless tunic means that monks do not have hands to do the devil’s work, just as Christ, the perfect man, was free from sin. The κολόβιον also has a crimson mark on it, which Dorotheus explains signifies Christ’s royal claim on the monk’s lives which separates them from the rest of the world. Wearers of the κολόβιον will only be occupied by God and form a solidarity as members of a unique community, bound together in service of the ‘king’. The crimson also signifies the sufferings of Christ which monks also promise to emulate. The scapular is similarly Christological, making the shape of a cross on the monk’s shoulders and reminding them to ‘take up [their] cross and follow me’ (1.17.1–15; Matt. 16:24). The cruciform element of their dress reminds monks to mortify every aspect of their soul which is not Christlike through faith in Christ. This means total renunciation of worldly desires. The monks’ belt is made from the skin of a dead animal; so too monks must mortify their animal-like desire for pleasure (1.16.1–11). Underscoring this restraint, the belt girds the kidneys,

⁷² Cf. Clements 2020, ch. 5. ⁷³ Cf. Evagrius, Prak. 40. ⁷⁴ See also Pauli 2000, 75–6. On the κολόβιον of the middle Byzantine period, see Ball 2005, 41. In this period, while the tunic seems to have been most commonly worn by monks, it was not limited to them, and is also found in everyday as well as imperial contexts.

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understood as the organ that generates desire (φιληδονία). The belt therefore ‘puts to death . . . fornication, uncleanness, and the rest’ of a monk’s worldly desires (1.16.9–11; cf. Col. 3:5). Finally, the cowl symbolizes both absolute childlike humility (since babies also wear bonnets) and God’s grace (1.19.1–11). Just as a bonnet keeps a child’s head warm, so God’s grace covers and protects their minds. Dorotheus depends on Evagrius’ claim that ‘the cowl is a symbol of the grace of God our Saviour which covers our governing faculty and protects our infanthood in Christ, against those who try to attack and wound it’.⁷⁵ Dorotheus concludes with an exhortation to ‘live according to our monastic habit’, mortifying irrational desires, enduring cruciform sufferings, and living with innocence and humility. This unites present-day monks to all who wore monastic dress, as contemporary monks live ‘like the fathers’. This points to a key feature of exemplarity: through imitation of Christ, directly, and through the imitation of ascetic experts, presentday monks bring the past to life in the present. Imitation does not merely remind monks of earlier examples of divine perfection. Rather, it is intended to join them to such perfection through a golden chain of imitative practices and thereby make it a present reality. This is a crucial function of exemplarity and the deployment of sayings literature in Dorotheus’ teaching. Living according to one’s habit is soon underscored in the ekphrastic exemplum about the faithful monk determined to cross a raging river we saw in a different context above (1.22.1–26).⁷⁶ Determined to return to his monastery even though a thunderstorm has broken and he needs now to cross the seething waters of a river in flood, he takes off his clothes, apart from his scapular, and braves the ‘terrible current’, symbolically secured by the cross of Christ. Amazed at the monk’s virtue, the monks of Dorotheus’ monastery repent of their own fear and are convinced of the power of faith and obedience. This exemplary narrative is characteristic of Dorotheus’ use of brief reminiscences and illustrations to educate his students about key areas of monastic life. The students, like the onlookers in the story, are to see and come to emulate such faithful obedience while eliminating emotional responses or inaccurate judgements which impede ascetic virtue. In forming their emotions and beliefs in this way, monks reflect on appropriate motivations and judgements and become habituated to virtues which are valued in the monasteries. In Chapter 3, we analysed the phenomenon of textual rumination, the process of repeatedly meditating on biblical passages and sayings of holy men and making them one’s own. Rumination is intended to make monks become like the texts they ingest. In the context of education through habituation, Dorotheus’ textualized rumination may be understood as enabling and performing the process of habit formation. A saying is quoted and repeated—the first stage of habituation as ⁷⁵ Evagrius, Prak. Prologue. ⁷⁶ For discussion of the ekphrastic nature of this episode, see Chapter 2.

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the monk takes up a piece of ascetic wisdom and commits it to memory. The saying is then made more vivid and is given affective and cognitive content through an example. It may be connected to another saying, demonstrating the need to understand ways in which virtues support each other within Dorotheus’ account of the unity of the virtues and prompting monks to make intellectual and affective connections between different areas of ascetic virtue. Another common textual pattern is that a saying or example is followed by a short passage of exegesis. Again, this has the effect of drawing out key cognitive-affective features of the example, connecting it to other areas of ascetic life and virtues, identifying aspects that are taken to be morally significant, and prompting the monks to imitate them. The theoretical openness of the sayings genre is firmly subordinated to the didactic function of sayings within the monastery. Viewed as a means of educating monks through habituation, these textual strategies and methods of organization are intended to provide students with strategies to practise emotional and ethical behaviours and to reflect on what makes action virtuous from different perspectives. Habit formation, in this frame, is not merely about repeated behaviours. It is education in processes of meaning making as monks come to understand for themselves the theoretical principles that undergird virtuous action and begin to experience what virtuous action feels like. In this process, they distinguish appropriate from inappropriate motivations and emotions as they imitate virtuous exemplars and seek to avoid negative ones. A sequence from Dorotheus’ teaching On Resentment may be taken as a paradigm for how these performative textual strategies are intended to achieve education through habituation (8.89–91). The Instruction opens with two sayings from Evagrius, namely that ‘it is foreign for monks to get angry or annoy people’ and that ‘if somebody has anger, he has the devil, and if somebody has been defeated by this passion, he has become totally alienated from the monastic life’.⁷⁷ Dorotheus immediately asks his students questions about these sayings designed to make them recognize how important they are for their moral development. Education is interactional and bound up in the interrogation of perspectives. The questions quickly identify the didactic force of the sayings: that anger and wrath are animal-like emotions that lead to resentment, that angry monks should recognize their miserable state and mourn for their sins, and that vigilance is required to expunge the ‘pernicious passion’ of anger (8.89.5–11). Dorotheus then turns to interpretation of the sayings, giving examples of emotions akin to the resentment monks ‘often’ feel in their interactions with others, distinguishing between different troubling or sinful affects (resentment, anger, wrath, and agitation) and emphasizing the means to avoid them through vigilance, repentance, and endurance (8.89.12–23). Through questions and positive interpretation,

⁷⁷ 8.89.1–5; cf. Evagrius, mal. cog. 13.1–21.

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     

Dorotheus identifies the affective shape of virtuous and vicious action and prompts his students also to reflect upon the grounds for distinctions between different types of behaviour and concrete practical situations of monks relating to each other in the monastic community. His use of sayings therefore combines theoretical and practical understanding, and just so underscores the ways in which cognition and emotion coinhere. Immediately following the initial interpretation, Dorotheus explains Evagrius’ sayings with an example (ὑπόδειγμα) of a person lighting a fire with some small pieces of kindling (8.90.1–31). Fires may be started with a small amount of tinder, but if fuel is added, smoke and flames increase, and soon even the embers can quickly be reignited and cause a large fire. The kindling represents the small offence which causes initial upset. The smoke is the agitation that signals increasing emotional intensity. And anger will soon grow into the unquenchable blaze of rage. The illustration identifies significant features of the moral psychology of resentment by foregrounding how fixating on minor hurts can quickly lead to a build-up of negative emotions (θρασύνων καὶ διεγείρων τὴν καρδίαν) and it seeks to warn monks away from such affective disturbance by cultivating ataraxia through prayer, silence, and repentance (8.90.18–20). Dorotheus draws out the moral: ‘if you keep disturbing others and being disturbed, you may become like the person who throws wood into the fireplace and kindles the fire more, and in this way that remaining wood becomes coals, that is, anger’.⁷⁸ In this conclusion, Dorotheus warns monks of the moral dangers of emotional entrainment and encourages them implicitly to habituate themselves to freedom from emotional disturbance. Dorotheus’ example of the kindling fire is then further amplified through a direct quote of a saying of Abba Zosimas, interpreted as exactly encapsulating the moral: ‘where there is no anger, the battle calms down’ and further exposition concluding with the double maxim which we have seen also in Instruction 14: ‘when the passions are young, cut them out before they take root inside you and become distressed. For it is one thing to pluck out a small plant and quite another to uproot a large tree’ (8.91.23–26). Across this extended passage and others like it, key features of Dorotheus’ textualization of moral habituation may be discerned. This use of sayings and examples connects his students to named spiritual experts and anonymous generic types, both of which are presented as suitable for emulation. In reflecting on sayings, maxims, and moral stories, Dorotheus identifies key features of emotional experience and intellectual judgements and engages his students in reflection about them. The detailed dramatization of psychological experience enables monks to recognize common features of their own experience and then try out their own performances of ascetic virtue modelled on the experience of those ⁷⁸ εἰ δὲ μείνῃς ταράσσων καὶ ταρασσόμενος, εὑρίσκῃ ὡς ὁ βαλὼν ξύλα εἰς τὴν ἱστίαν καὶ πλεῖον ἐκκαί ν τὸ πῦρ, καὶ οὕτως λοιπὸν γίνονται ἄνθρακες, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἡ ὀργή (8.90.28–31).

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Dorotheus encourages them to imitate. The movement between saying, interpretation, dramatic narration, and moral maxim performs in the text the sort of processes of habituation to performing virtuous action Dorotheus hopes his programme of education will achieve in his students. Exemplarity shapes affectivity in the monasteries. For example, in an extended passage, Dorotheus weaves together chreiai, proverbs, and apophthegms from Abba Isaiah, Paul, Psalms and Proverbs, St Antony, Abba John, Abba Zosimus, and Abba Agathon to dramatize the affective contours of humility and warn monks away from feelings that, in his view, interfere with the cultivation of humility (2.26–37). As monks emulate these figures—acting as they instruct, internalizing their teaching, inserting themselves in the narratives they recount, and performing their emotions—they become habituated to the affective and cognitive dimensions of humility. From Abba Isaiah and St Paul, monks are encouraged to cultivate fear of God and temperance and to practise charity, coming to know that each of these is only virtuous if they are performed with humility (2.26.24–27). They learn to say ‘forgive me’ to counter the actions of the devil, who otherwise vivifies bad memories and controls the mind through akedia (2.28). Negatively, they learn to eliminate anger and provocations, arriving at an undisturbed emotional state (2.29–30). They come to see that humility can be perverted by creating a disposition whereby a monk comes to despise everything and everybody, illustrated by a brief exemplary narrative, where a monk’s humility leads him to question whether a life of virtue is even possible (2.31.12–25). This fable of the brother whose improper view of humility leads him to fall from faith warns monks away from despising others, contempt, arrogance, and pride. They learn to direct blame at themselves rather than others and hope for the grace of God that will lift them from their own sinful state (2.30–31). Exegesis of these sayings then distinguishes between worldly and monastic pride and humility, encouraging monks to reflect on differences and interrelationships between emotional states and associated virtues and vices (2.32–33). All of this discussion is aimed at clarifying for monks the virtuous ‘disposition’ (διάθεσις) of humility (2.37.3). Forming such a disposition is a matter of habituation, which includes cultivating emotional states and internalizing the rational principles which motivate particular kinds of action and rule out others. Textualizing habituation means that it is not understood as mere conditioning or repetition: for Dorotheus, habit formation includes emotions, cognition, and bodily practices and just so is a key part of education as he understands it. On occasions, Dorotheus offers himself as an exemplar for his community. For example, we learn of Dorotheus’ experiences serving Abba John of Gaza, the disciple and friend of Barsanuphius (4.56–57). He recounts the four exhortations John gave him before he left him for the day. This again offers moral and spiritual advice which Dorotheus’ students can meditate upon and thereby become habituated to lives of virtue. But it also has a secondary function, in that it writes

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     

Dorotheus into the chain of ascetic heroes suitable for emulation. In the case of the discussion of humility (2.36), Dorotheus’ own advice about humility is offered when Abba Zosimus hesitates. This advice is immediately authorized by Zosimas’ happy confirmation that Dorotheus has hit upon the truth. In the case of the discussion of fear of God, Dorotheus’ story about being continually insulted, harassed, and abused by fellow monks confirms the previous exploration of the importance of being slow to anger, loving others, and never blaming them while also providing an exemplum of what it means to ‘bear one another’s burdens’ (Gal. 6:2; 4.57.1–22). Writing himself into the ‘golden chain’ of ascetic authorities lends weight to stories Dorotheus tells his students about his own life in the monastery and enables him to present himself as a model worthy of imitation. Imitation habituates monks to emotional patterns and judgements about virtues and vices while incorporating them in a long history of ascetic imitation of Christ. It also authorizes specific ascetic spiritual practices, dramatizes them in the text, and thereby encourages monks to habituate themselves to them. A significant example of this textualization of habit formation is Dorotheus’ account of confession. He begins with his version of a chreia which circulated widely in the Apophthegmata tradition attributed to Abba Macarius.⁷⁹ In this account, we learn that the devil is delighted by those who are without a moral compass (ἀκυβέρνητος) and do not commit themselves to a confessor (5.65.1–6). Someone who is unwilling to confess becomes the devil’s plaything (παίγνιον) (5.65.12–20). The main problem is that the monk who is unwilling to confess has not made a habit (συνήθεια) of revealing his innermost thoughts to a confessor (5.65.18–19). Dorotheus then uses the monk as a negative exemplum. Instead of answering the saint truthfully, the monk pretends that all is well and that his thoughts are not troubling him; it requires (Ps-)Macarius’ skill to persuade the monk to confess the true state of his soul, and thus defeat the devil. The initially ‘wretched’ (ἄθλιος) monk comes to experience security (ἀσφαλίζειν), while the devil’s initial joy (χαίρειν) is changed into shame (καταισύνειν), dramatizing the affective experience of spiritual progress.⁸⁰ The chreia can be understood as encouragement to monks to habituate themselves to accurate self-examination with a confessor. It assists them in this process by providing a narrative plot into which they can insert themselves as they progress in learning to be good. Dorotheus then underscores the argument about confession and provides further models for emulation with a story about his own ascetic experience. I quote the passage in full because it is paradigmatic of Dorotheus’ method of dramatization of the spiritual life:

⁷⁹ Compare Ps-Macarius, Apophth. Mac. PG 34, 240–1; Apophth. (ser. syst.) 18.13.16–55; Apophth. (ser. alpha.) PG 26, 261–4. ⁸⁰ Epicurus emphasized ‘security’ (ἀσφάλεια) and ‘freedom from anxiety’ (ἀταραξία) in his ethical theory (e.g., Epicurus RS 6–7; Sent. Vat. 31, 33, 80).

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When I was in the coenobium, I confessed everything to the old man, Abba John, for I never, as I have said, dared to do anything without at variance with his advice. Sometimes my thoughts said to me, ‘The old man cannot tell you this. Why do you want to trouble him?’ And I used to say to my thoughts, ‘Curse you, your judgement, intelligence, wisdom and knowledge, because whatever you know, you know from demons.’ And I used to go away to question the old man, and sometimes he answered me with that word which I had desired, and then the thought said to me ‘What is this? Behold, this is the same thing that I said: did you not bother the old man unreasonably?’ I then used to say to the thought, ‘But now it is a noble thing, now it is from the Holy Spirit. For your word is evil, from the demons, from an impassioned state.’ And in this way I never allowed myself to be persuaded by my thought without questioning. Ὅτε ἤμην εἰς τὸ κοινόβιον, πάντα ἀνετιθέμην τῷ γέροντι τῷ ἀββᾷ Ἰωάννῃ· οὐδέποτε γάρ, καθὼς εἶπον, ἠνεσχόμην ποιῆσαί τι δίχα γνώμης αὐτοῦ. Καὶ ἔστιν ὅτε ἔλεγέ μοι ὁ λογισμός· Οὐ τόδε σοι ἔχει εἰπεῖν ὁ γέρων. Τί θέλεις ὀχλῆσαι αὐτῷ; καὶ ἔλεγον τῷ λογισμῷ· Ἀνάθεμά σοι καὶ τῇ διακρίσει σου καὶ τῇ συνέσει σου καὶ τῇ φρονήσει σου καὶ τῇ εἰδήσει σου, ὅτι ὃ οἶδας, ἀπὸ δαιμόνων οἶδας. Καὶ ἀπηρχόμην καὶ ἠρώτουν τὸν γέροντα, καὶ ἐνίοτε ἀπεκρίνετό μοι τὸν λόγον ἐκεῖνον ὃν ἐνεθυμήθην, καὶ λοιπὸν ἔλεγέ μοι ὁ λογισμός· Τί ἔνι; ἰδοὺ αὐτό ἐστιν ὃ εἶπον, μὴ οὐκ ἀκαίρως ὤχλησας τῷ γέροντι; Καὶ ἔλεγον τῷ λογισμῷ· Ἀλλ’ ἄρτι καλόν ἐστιν, ἄρτι ἀπὸ Πνεύματος ἁγίου ἐστί. Τὸ σὸν γὰρ πονηρόν ἐστιν, ἀπὸ δαιμόνων ἐστίν, ἀπὸ ἐμπαθοῦς καταστάσεώς ἐστι. Καὶ οὕτως οὐδέποτε συνεχώρουν ἐμαυτῷ πεισθῆναι τῷ λογισμῷ μου ἄνευ ἐπερωτήσεως. (5.66.12–27)

The didactic conclusion identifies the moral, while monks can imagine themselves in Dorotheus’ shoes, successfully or unsuccessfully answering back to their thoughts, practising the excision of the will we have seen is so central to Dorotheus’ account of epistemology and ethics, and thereby habituating themselves to ascetic practices, in this case confession and spiritual direction within the monastery. Dorotheus then concludes the extended discussion of confession with an emphasis on emotions. Trying to act independently and not practising confession, he teaches, leads to great sorrow: it is hard, dark, and suffocating, a life characterized by distress and despair (5.67.4–14). By contrast, practising confession and dependence on spiritual guides brings the ‘new song’ (Ps. 40) of joy, consolation, and light: security and freedom from anxiety which comes from the prayers of the monastic community (5.67.14–44). As throughout his dramatic exemplarity, Dorotheus promotes emotional scripts and norms and encourages his monks to tutor their emotions in line with the characters he hopes they will emulate. In the process, the monks are supposed to form settled dispositions which enable them to act virtuously.

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     

Just as in the case of Dorotheus’ wider epistemology and ethics, exemplarity has a communal quality. Ascetic virtues and associated positive emotions are partly defined by their capacity to build up communal harmony. Dorotheus’ programme of education through habituation therefore emphasizes imitation of abbas and other leaders who enable monastic life to flourish. For example, Dorotheus recounts that St Ammonas was called by some ‘disturbed’ monks to catch another in flagrante delicto. Sitting on a barrel in which he presciently knows the monk has hidden the woman, St Ammonas asks the other monks to search the cell. When they cannot find the woman, St Ammonas rebukes and humbles them by saying, ‘Let God forgive you’. After they leave, he takes the offending monk by the hand and says, ‘Take care of yourself, my brother’. The monk is immediately ashamed and repents with contrition. The whole story is intended to demonstrate St Ammonas’ compassion which itself imitates divine philanthropy: ‘the love for humanity and the compassion of the old man immediately affected his soul’.⁸¹ The dramatic mise-en-scène draws the reader in. Dorotheus’ students can imagine themselves in the position of the righteous and disturbed monks, the offending monk, and the saint. They are encouraged to evaluate the motivations of the different characters, and then imitate actions which build up communal living. Love, we are told in a layering of New Testament texts, ‘thinks no evil, bears all things’ and ‘covers a multitude of sins’ (1 Cor. 13:5–7; 1 Pet. 4:8) (6.76.1–8). Love and sympathy should be imitated because they are necessary for well-functioning communities. Where hatred, resentment, and slander break communities, love, gentle correction, and assistance join monks together and enable them to ‘make progress in the love of Christ’ (6.76.26–30). This joining together of communal virtue and love of God recalls the geometric image of advancing towards love of God at the centre of a circle as one grows in love towards one’s neighbour. A final case study of dramatic exemplarity illumines the communal nature of virtue and reminds monks that mindless repetition of sayings of the fathers will lead to inept performances rather than a settled virtuous disposition. Two pairs of monks approach Dorotheus for mediation. Each blamed the other. One annoys the instructor who believes the brother should follow his advice with assurance. The other resents the instructor’s orders, which he thinks signify a desire for power rather than appropriate fear of God. In the second case, two monks resent each other even after prostrating themselves before each other in a gesture of repentance (βάλλοντες ἀλλήλοις μετάνοιαν) (7.85.10–12). One monk believes that the other’s failure to intend genuine repentance with this gesture is why he has not experienced the comfort of forgiveness. The other believes that the first monk’s repentance was insincere and so did not have assurance. Both believe their interpretation is in line with the sayings of the fathers. Dorotheus disabuses ⁸¹ εὐθέως ἐνήργησεν εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἡ φιλανθρωπία καὶ ἡ συμπάθεια τοῦ γέροντος (6.76.45–47). The prayers which conclude Dorotheus’ Instructions often address God as ὁ φιλάνθρωπος (e.g., 4.60.34).

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them, marvelling at the perverted thoughts which enable even the sayings of the fathers to be bent to human sinful will for the destruction of the soul. Rather than citing the fathers for their purposes, each monk should have blamed themselves and identified their own flaws: aggressive free speaking, lack of fear of God, disobedience, failure to do the right thing with the right intention. They should have learned to act out of a disposition of love, to repent completely, to command with humility and love, and to act with obedience and fear of God. The advice to ‘blame oneself ’ is then confirmed by citations from an unnamed elder, St Antony, and Abba Poemen (7.86.13–26).⁸² These paired stories again illumine Dorotheus’ textualization of the process of habituation. Common ascetic experiences are dramatized in ways that enable Dorotheus’ students to try out different parts and model their behaviour, thought, and feeling on exemplary models. Key features of Dorotheus’ ethics and epistemology are on display: his concern for correct intention in virtuous action, the importance of a settled disposition, his insistence that human reason is weak and able to be perverted to a great degree, and his view that actions which build up harmonious communal life are virtuous. Most pertinently for the view that education includes habit formation, the possibility of ruminating on sayings of the fathers without adequate reflection is identified and shown to be a serious error. One cannot form virtuous habits merely by repetition. Standards of reasoning and authorized patterns of affectivity shape virtuous habituation. These case studies demonstrate that Dorotheus’ educational project evaluates reasoning, affectivity, and embodied practices against the exemplary lives of monastic heroes. Abbas, earlier monastic teachers, and saints are themselves standards against which progress in ascetic learning should be judged. Other exemplary figures include biblical characters (including Paul), and Dorotheus himself, whose authority as a monastic teacher is reinforced by his selfcharacterization as part of the golden chain of models to be emulated. Processes of imitation and emulation construct chains of epistemic and moral authority. Dorotheus’ framing of exemplarity illuminates other epistemic and moral norms. On the epistemic side, the layering of biblical texts reinforces the view that the Bible is a unity and that texts should therefore be interpreted in light of each other. Interweaving biblical texts with ascetic anecdotes and sayings elevates ascetica to a similarly authoritative level. The exemplars with which Dorotheus constructs his text also uniformly prioritize behaviours, emotions, and cognitive habits that aim towards flourishing community life. That is, the good of the community is a norm against which the rationality and probity of monastic behaviour is judged, for ‘life or death depends on your neighbour’, as Dorotheus argues, quoting a maxim ⁸² The unnamed old man is Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria 384–412 : Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Theophilus the Archbishop, 1, PG 65, 197. For Poemen, see Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Poemen 134, PG 65, 356. For Antony, see Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Antony 4, PG 65, 77.

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attributed to St Antony (4.60.18).⁸³ Monastic education aims both at the perfection of the individual monks and the wider flourishing of the coenobium. As Dorotheus exhorts his students: You should each individually meditate on these things, brothers, so that you exercise the sayings of the holy old men, and so that you will hasten, with love and fear of God, to seek benefit for each other. In this way, you will be able to gain benefit and make progress from everything that happens, by the help of God. Ἵνα μελετᾶτε ταῦτα ἀεὶ καθ’ ἑαυτούς, ἀδελφοί, ἵνα γυμνάζητε τοὺς λόγους τῶν ἁγίων γερόντων, ἵνα σπουδάζητε μετὰ ἀγάπης καὶ φόβου Θεοῦ ζητεῖν τὴν ὠφέλειαν ἑαυτῶν καὶ ἀλλήλων. Οὕτως δύνασθε ἐκ πάντων τῶν συμβαινόντων ὠφελεῖσθαι καὶ προκόπτειν διὰ τῆς βοηθείας τοῦ Θεοῦ. (4.60.27–31)

As a form of education, Dorotheus conceptualizes habit formation through exemplarity as a different phenomenon from conditioning or learning by rote. He constructs his exemplary texts in such a way as to prompt reflection about affective and rational norms. Students can try out different roles and imagine themselves in particular situations; they are supposed to reflect on connections between texts, roles, virtues, and ideas; they perform their understanding of theoretical principles in the context of the wider community. By placing a range of different practices, virtues, vices, and emotions in relation to each other, sayings, anecdotes, maxims, chreia, and moral stories encourage monks to reflect on the principles that govern their own behaviour. Dorotheus establishes dramatic scripts for cultivating some emotions and disciplining others. Performing affects habituates his students to the desires and motivations required of virtuous action just as reflecting on moral problems enables them to internalize reasons which ground right action. This is designed to make his students come to hold sound views about emotion and ethics and evaluate perspectives in line with ascetic communal norms. In doing so, students cultivate their meta-cognitive capacity and tutor their thoughts and emotions. The textualized affective cognitions Dorotheus dramatizes are to be taken up in his students’ own performance and worked out in his community. For example, processes of habit formation through imitation establish practices like confession and shape social relations in the monastery. The exemplary lives of earlier ascetic figures—their thoughts, emotions, and practices—thereby become incorporated in the present-day monastery. In the case of the Apophthegmata Patrum, Lillian Larsen has focused attention on the civic concerns which the tradition prioritizes.⁸⁴ This emphasis is clear in Dorotheus’ use of exemplarity. Stories about ascetic experts are very often directed towards the creation of communal norms ⁸³ See Apophth. (ser. alpha.) Antony 9, PG 65, 77; Apophth. (ser. syst.) 17.2. ⁸⁴ See also Larsen 2006a, 414–15 citing Carruthers 2000, 11.

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and the maintenance of ideals which are intended to promote the flourishing of the community as a whole. Dorotheus’ earlier contemporary from the rhetorical schools, Zacharias Scholasticus, wrote a dialogue where the primary interlocutor hopes to learn how he might become an ideal citizen (πολιτικός) (Zacharias, Ammonius 17). The individual transformation of monks as they become more godlike is, for Dorotheus, the answer to this question, and unites the individual and the communal scales of his pedagogy. Dorotheus, like the Apophthegmata Patrum tradition, deploys established genres and pedagogical methods to construct civic ideals as monks progress in greater perfection.

Work Since habituation is an embodied phenomenon, work plays an important role within Dorotheus’ educational programme. We have seen that the acquisition of virtue is likened to the acquisition of a craft, and the craft-like character of virtue is a central reason for valuing work. In ‘labouring and enduring’ the monk ‘learns the craft through the help of God who sees his intention and his labour and works along with him’.⁸⁵ I now investigate in more detail the types of work Dorotheus refers to, how he evaluates work, and what role it plays in his ethics, with a focus on relationships between work and habit formation. Birgit van den Hoven reassessed the Weberian claim that work was not valued in the classical world but that this negative evaluation of labour was changed by the advent of Christianity (and intensified within Protestantism).⁸⁶ She shows convincingly that much of this narrative cannot be sustained. In terms of attitudes to work, however, elite texts rarely laud the value of manual labour. As we have seen, there is evidence for a positive evaluation of work in antiquity, but this does not strongly characterize the genres most influential for the traditions of pedagogical theory and practice that were crucial for Dorotheus’ educational thought. Philosophical traditions are often rather ambivalent.⁸⁷ Work (ponos) was valued positively by Stoics and Cynics, but the moral connotations of ponos understood as suffering or endurance rather than hard labour as such are central in these accounts. A paradigmatic case for Hellenistic philosophical moral evaluation of ‘work’, here denoted by the Greek term πόνος, is Heracles. Heracles ‘works’ in a struggle against evil.⁸⁸ He demonstrates his virtue through his labours, through

⁸⁵ 8.95.6–9. Cf. Diadochus of Photice, gnost. 20. ⁸⁶ van den Hoven 1996; cf. Weber 2002. Whitney 1990, 5–17 assesses relevant scholarship. For negative classical evaluations of work, see Finley 1999; cf. Loraux 1982. On the medieval period, see Le Goff 1980, 1987; Ovitt 1987, 137–65. ⁸⁷ Whitney 1990, 23–56. ⁸⁸ van den Hoven 1996, 32–8. Van den Hoven explores Heracles’ labours in ancient philosophical literature: Dio Chrys. Or. 1, 66 ff.; 8, 13,31–35; Cic. De Off. I,118, with Xen. Mem. II, 1, 21–34.

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strict ascetic discipline. He prioritizes painful struggle for virtue over the ethically dangerous if seductive life of pleasure. This ethical emphasis does not, van den Hoven argues, touch upon the reality of hard manual labour.⁸⁹ Similarly, agricultural labour is praised by Stoics, but philosophers tend to move quickly over the reality of farm labouring, rather in the manner of a Millet painting, in a rhapsody for self-sufficiency, freedom, and the opportunities for meditation and prayer allegedly provided to those who till the land.⁹⁰ In another direction, work can be praised for its social value, inasmuch as it enables people to fulfil their civic obligations.⁹¹ But given the Stoic emphasis on elite society, the field of technical skills referred to remains limited.⁹² This moralizing tendency in thinking about work should be seen largely as an artefact of generic expectations and philosophical concerns. It is an emphasis which also characterizes Dorotheus’ treatment of work.⁹³ Dorotheus’ preferred term for ascetic labour is κόπος, although he can use πόνος in a similar sense.⁹⁴ Fasting can be referred to as a κόπος; love, with sympathy and suffering (πόνος), enables monks to overlook others’ sins (15.159.15–16; 6.76.3).⁹⁵ The terms, then, primarily refer to suffering or pain and the moral achievements made possible by such emotional and physical distress. Monks ‘need a little work’ and are encouraged to labour in order to receive mercy (12.130.1). Uprooting the passions and ordering the soul to cultivate good habits is like tilling a field, removing the weeds from the roots, and ploughing the field so that it is able to grow good seeds (12.130–131). After the fall, humans have lost virtues and so must undergo many labours to excise passions and re-plant them in the soul (12.134.1–8). Monks must expend the same sort of physical effort as is required in agricultural labour in preparing their soul to exercise the virtues (12.135.1–15). The mercy of God is like the rain that enables the seed to grow, but no seed can grow if the field is not properly prepared. Even after the seed has germinated and begun to grow, the farmer must be careful to tend it and protect it, since locusts or hail may destroy it at any moment; the farmer must remain vigilant until he has reaped the crop and stored the grain securely in the barn (12.136.1–19). So too there is need for constant labour to do good and remain aligned with God’s good desires: ‘labour, great attentiveness, and continuous prayer to God’ are required for salvation.⁹⁶ In learning by deed as well as word, God becomes a ‘co-worker’ (συνεργοῦντος) in the monk’s salvation (8.95.1–8). In passages like these, Dorotheus draws on well-known tropes of the ancient ethical tradition, including

⁸⁹ ⁹⁰ ⁹¹ ⁹³ ⁹⁴ ⁹⁵ ⁹⁶

van den Hoven 1996, 37–8. E.g., Epict. I,16,16; Mus. Ruf. XI. See van den Hoven 1996, 38–49. van den Hoven 1996, 26, citing Colish 1985, 40–1. ⁹² van den Hoven 1996, 63. Giardina 1991 argues that Christians viewed manual labour more positively. πόνος: 12.124.5,7; 6.76.3, 6.71.20. κόπος: e.g., 2.28.4, 2.37.17, 2.38.1,2. 15.159.12–34 may be a later interpolation. See Pauli 2000, 14. Χρεία οὖν κόπου καὶ φροντίδος πολλῆς καὶ τοῦ δέεσθαι τοῦ Θεοῦ διὰ παντὸς (12.137.25–26).

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the ethical value ascribed to agricultural labour, to foreground the relationship between ethical struggle, the cultivation of a virtuous character, and divine salvation. We have seen that the Instructions have multiple references to different forms of manual work, including wool-working, building, ship-making, and farming.⁹⁷ This is entirely appropriate for an instructional text which aims to teach the ‘craft of crafts (τὴν τέχνην τῶν τεχνῶν)’ and which recognizes that words alone are insufficient for producing knowledge of the art of monasticism (8.95.3–9). Each of these domains of work are made into allegories for the life of virtue and draw attention, as we saw above, to the natural affordances which limit and generate virtuous action. Dorotheus also refers to a range of activities, including manual labour, which formed the physical work of the monasteries. Monks in their cells should pray, study, or meditate (μελετᾷ), undertake craft activities or manual labour (ποιεῖ μικρὸν ἐργόχειρον), and take charge of their thoughts as much as they can (ep. 1, 180.4–9). That is, the regular pattern of monastic practice includes a small range of activities that discipline mind, emotion, and body through prayer, intellectual and affective exercises, and handiwork. Again, Dorotheus views habituation as a mode of learning that relates cognitive, affective, and bodily practices. Spiritual endurance and suffering (ponos or kopos) are involved in prayer, meditation, and disciplining the thoughts. This means that this form of monastic labour acts to counteract the temptations of demons as well as the monks’ own tendency towards evil or untruthful action. Monks compete with the craft ability of demons, though his emphasis is more typically on bad action generated internally.⁹⁸ But Dorotheus also draws attention to the importance of manual labour. The ethical and spiritual work involved in cultivating humility is not the same as the physical effort required for work, although hard work, as we will see, is beneficial precisely because it humbles the worker (2.28.1–14). The discipline involved in a physical craft is of the same order as the cognitive-affective discipline of meditation or reflection upon one’s thoughts but it is not merely equated with them or understood as merely an aspect of other ascetic activities. To that extent, Dorotheus does open up space for considering manual work as an important component of the cultivation of virtue. Monastic life outside the cell gave many opportunities for physical labour. As we have seen, the monastery at Thawatha was extensive, including accommodation for pilgrims, a bathhouse, water supplies, an infirmary, a granary, refectory, kitchens, latrines, and several other buildings on a large site, which included gardens to grow food for the complex.⁹⁹ Maintaining such a complex institution will have required a range of craft skills and considerable physical labour. ⁹⁷ Regnault and de Préville 2001, 38–9 identify the crafts Dorotheus mentions. ⁹⁸ Cf. Evagrius’ notion that demons ‘craft’ evil: Prak 50; mal. cog. 4.26. ⁹⁹ See Chapter 1; Patrich 2019, 81.

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Dorotheus refers to several roles requiring technical expertise and physical exertion, including gardening, cooking, looking after the cellars (provisions, wine, crockery), and assisting in the infirmary (4.58.1–9).¹⁰⁰ He recalls his own exhaustion at the end of a day when he was put in charge of visitors to the monastery (guests and camel drivers) and had to look after them (as the ξενοδόκος) (11.119.1–5). Dorotheus describes such tasks as a service (συνδιακονέω, διακονία), recalling the Stoic view of work as a good because it fulfils social obligations. The work is valuable because it forms and supports healthy sociality, provides goods for the monastery, and enables monks to habituate themselves to lives of humble service. Such work presents, however, significant occasions for conflict or spiritual failing. Monks may take too much arrogant pride in their service, they may use their work as a way of claiming greater social status in the monastery, exerting their own will or sense of their own goodness (ἴδιον θέλημα ἢ δικαίωμα). They may be too focused on the task at hand (and so fail to maintain the health of their own soul) or they may be indifferent to the work and so perform it badly. Most importantly, performing such work perfectly and completely means both focusing on it with intensity and concentration (σπουδάζω) and preserving the health of their settled character disposition (κατάστασις) (4.59.1–5). This makes every occasion for performing physical work and service in the monastery an opportunity to demonstrate and become habituated to virtuous action: doing the right thing well, for the right reasons, and out of a good internal state. Again, the connection between work, habituation, and virtue comes to the fore. Dorotheus claims that ‘bodily labour is a virtue of the soul (οἱ σωματικοὶ κόποι τῆς ψυχῆς εἰσιν ἀρετή)’ (2.38.1–3). This view is based on his understanding of the changes wrought by the fall on how the soul and body interact. After the fall, he explains, the soul becomes wretched in its pursuit of physical pleasures. This means that to an important extent at least, it is possible to speak of the soul as becoming one with the body. It is certainly subject to the sufferings of the body and physical mixtures can affect the soul.¹⁰¹ Different physical states therefore affect the state of the soul as Dorotheus argues drawing on established medical theory.¹⁰² Hard physical work is, therefore, capably of forming dispositions of the soul and thereby reshaping it so that it becomes more properly ordered (e.g., 2.39.2–3). Since hard work humbles the worker, it is spiritually valuable for the creation of the chief virtue prized in ascetic education, humility itself (2.28–29). This is crucial for understanding Dorotheus’ account of physical work in comparison to the wider ethical tradition of education. Dorotheus shares with the wider tradition the claim that hard manual labour is humiliating. But just for this

¹⁰⁰ See Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 195–6 for opportunities for work in monasteries around Gaza. ¹⁰¹ See Chapters 2 and 3. ¹⁰² See Chapter 2 on the medical models in play.

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reason, he values it more highly than other parts of the tradition do. Humility is the key ascetic virtue, and any practice that builds up humility in the monk should be valued. Since hard work humbles the body, it also humbles the soul. Such work helps to habituate monks to a life of virtue. The philosophical tradition shares the notion that work can create character dispositions. It is something of a topos to describe education as work, in the sense of ‘suffering’.¹⁰³ But the Prolegomena tradition includes a novel pairing of παιδεία and πόνος which helps to situate Dorotheus’ positive evaluation of ‘work’ in his teaching as an activity that can shape the settled disposition of the soul.¹⁰⁴ For Elias as for Dorotheus, progression towards greater godlikeness involves the reasoned, rather than the merely conditioned, exercise of virtue. He makes a Neoplatonic distinction between different types of virtue, dividing them into natural, ethical, and higher-order virtues. The natural virtues arise from physical mixtures in the body (cold mixtures result in cowardice, hot ones in courage and dissolute living). Ethical virtues arise from habituation (ἐκ συνηθείας τινὸς παραγίνονται), for example, being conditioned to follow the instructions of one’s parent or teacher without reasoning for oneself about these instructions. On Elias’ account, virtues that enable the student to achieve godlikeness are achieved through ‘education and work’ (αἱ μετὰ παιδείας καὶ πόνου). This sort of education and effort enables students to develop their own internal understanding of the virtues rather than acting well only because of external factors. They can then display virtues that harmonize with each other and where the performance of one virtue implies the attainment of others. Elias’ account stands within the wider philosophical tradition we traced above more closely than Dorotheus’ does, given his greater concern to distinguish between different levels of virtue and his standard acknowledgement (within the Platonic tradition shaped by Aristotle) that habituation is insufficient for the acquisition of virtue. But it also approaches Dorotheus’ concern to make work a crucial element of the internalization of virtue. Ponos is required to develop the internal character disposition which is essential for virtuous action. Elias’ pairing of παιδεία and πόνος is especially striking because it is motivated by explaining a statement he attributes to Plato, but which Plato never makes. Further, all his readers will have recognized the misquotation, because the passage is famous and oft-quoted: Plato’s definition of philosophy as becoming like God.¹⁰⁵ Despite his divergence from Dorotheus on the question of habituation, the pairing suggests that wider Christian-ascetic thinking about the importance of labour and effort in the acquisition of virtue influenced Elias’ account. Dorotheus’ ¹⁰³ E.g., Luc. Somn. 1.4; Lib. ep. 664.2.4; Socrates, hist. eccl. 7.21.27; cf. Elias 19,31; 20,6,14. ¹⁰⁴ For Elias’ exegesis of Plato’s definition of philosophy as godlikeness, and his unification of theoretical and practical knowledge in this passage, see Chapter 3. ¹⁰⁵ See Chapter 3. Elias quotes Plato as saying that one becomes like God ‘by being pious and just with wisdom and by knowing this’. The phrase ‘and by knowing this’ is not Plato’s.

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stronger emphasis on habituation and guidance from superiors, however, makes this sort of work a larger component of knowledge construction and ethical formation than it is in philosophical sources. Since, as Dorotheus emphasizes, habituation can affect one’s nature, even unthinking actions have effects on souls, positive and negative. Habituation (understood differently from Elias as physical, affective, and intellectual) thus becomes a necessary part of Dorotheus’ account of the internalization of divine precepts. But he is aligned with Elias’ view in claiming, for example, that the labours of asceticism develop humility in monks to the extent that they can then act consciously or ‘with knowledge’ in humility. Dorotheus sets out in considerable detail the sort of work required to habituate the soul to humility: physical services, handiwork, fasting, prostration, confession and self-examination, and constant prayer—including prayer for and from those who have upset you (e.g., 4.52, 58, 8.94–95, 15.159). Like Elias, he argues that labour internalizes precepts in the soul of the monk. Work both creates and signifies an internal state. Ascetic labour habituates humility, and thus reforms the monk’s nature. This is both threat and promise. Small errors can quickly create a second nature vying with one’s God-given nature; but in the other direction, ethical and intellectual habits in accordance with the nature God intends for humanity can help to re-establish monks in the divine image (12.131, 134). Dorotheus’ account of the place of work in ascetic education largely fits within wider traditions of ancient education. Work is moralized and allegorized to cast light on the state of the soul. Positive evaluation of work is, as in earlier philosophical and moralizing texts, often a recognition of the moral value of enduring suffering and nevertheless choosing to act well. It may also signify beneficial social service and so be valued as a communal virtue. Dorotheus can also draw on established topoi about work, for example the positive value of agricultural labour, in choosing metaphors for the cultivation of virtues in the soul. But there is also a stronger place, in Dorotheus’ thought, for manual labour and the practice of less prestigious handiwork. This aspect of his thought partly goes to the strong connection between virtue acquisition and the development of craft expertise. It is also built on the claim that for postlapsarian humanity, the soul is shaped by the actions of the body. Physical labour can therefore shape the disposition of the soul. Since ascetic education in bound up in creating virtuous dispositions, encouraging his students in physical work becomes a component of his pedagogy. The notion of humility, as so often in Dorotheus’ thought, generates new emphases. In this case, humility motivates greater attention to physical labour than is found in earlier traditions. Dorotheus accepts the traditional view (which had functioned to devalue physical labour in other schemes) that certain types of non-elite work humble the worker. But since humility is, for Dorotheus, an ascetic virtue, the humility-generating quality of physical work becomes a reason to value it within monastic education.

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Prayer A central aspect of ascetic labour is what has been called the ‘continuous conversation of the mind with God’ in prayer.¹⁰⁶ Prayer characterized and ordered the communal life of the monastery in the different services that divide up the day and night. Yet, as Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Aryeh Kofsky insightfully noted, neither Pierre Hadot nor Michel Foucault included prayer in the diversity of spiritual exercises performed by Greco-Roman philosophers or early Christian communities.¹⁰⁷ They draw attention to Clement of Alexandria and Evagrius Ponticus as key figures who characterized prayer as a disposition or state of the soul, and thus as a practice which could shape one’s character.¹⁰⁸ In their account, struggle with demons makes prayer a significant site the formation of ascetic selves, and, despite Gazan thinkers not offering a systematic theory of prayer, a key pattern is encouragement of monks to practise unceasing prayer, assisted by the provision of pithy texts which monks may memorize and use in their daily combat with demons and thoughts. As Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky point out, Dorotheus was himself instructed in this form of prayer by Barsanuphius, who recommends that Dorotheus overcome his troubles by praying, ‘Jesus come to my help’ or ‘Lord Jesus Christ, save me from all shameful passions’; Dorotheus then passes on this kind of advice to Dositheus, teaching him to pray ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’ and ‘Son of God, help me’.¹⁰⁹ Dorotheus counts prayer among the daily ascetic labours practised by monks in their cells. He distinguishes prayer from meditation without providing criteria by which prayer and meditation may be differentiated.¹¹⁰ He tells us, however, that prayer involves asking for divine assistance (ep. 6, 191), so it may be that prayer helps to make mediation effective. Prayer also helps counter the ‘insensibility of souls’, again by calling on divine aid (ep. 7, 192). Monks pray standing up through the Easter season up to Pentecost, signifying the joy of salvation gained, and pray for forgiveness while prostrating themselves and weeping. Prayer is therefore understood as capable of working on the mind and soul and as involving bodily gestures which perform emotional states. In this way, ceaseless prayer enables self-formation by habituation to embodied attitudes. The common failures of fallen humanity mean that monks must not stop praying for divine mercy (2.38.7–21). Neglecting prayer allows bad thoughts to take over (3.43.7–9) while singing the hymns of the saints illumines the soul

¹⁰⁶ Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 157–82; Regnault and de Préville 2001, 72–5. ¹⁰⁷ Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 160. ¹⁰⁸ Clement of Alexandria, str. 7.42.1; Evagrius, cap. 3 with Méhat 1995. For these texts and further discussion, see Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 160–2. ¹⁰⁹ Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 173, 178, 180–2, citing V. Dos. 10 and Barsanuphius and John, resp. 255, 268. See also Pauli 2000, 47. ¹¹⁰ ep. 1, 180. Τὴν προσευχὴν σύγκρινε τῇ μελέτῃ: ep. 4, 189.

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(17.174.1–4). If monks receive what they are given with a prayer, they will ensure that they act with the correct intention (15.162). Prayer forms habits of mind, body, and will through constant repetition. Dorotheus sees prayer as an important component of ascetic education since it is a means of modulating emotions, shaping intentions, and orienting monks to God in ways that allow them to grasp truth accurately and act virtuously. Prayer, however, is not merely a ‘technology of the self ’ performed by individuals in order to shape their souls in particular ways. In keeping with his wider thought, Dorotheus sees prayer as a communal, rather than a merely an individual activity. The heart is comforted by the prayers of the saint (ep. 15, 200). Dorotheus repeatedly points to the strength monks gain through the prayers of others—their fellow monks or their spiritual guides. For example, he speaks of the power of invoking the prayers of the fathers (1.23.1–10), accurate understanding is given through the prayers of the saints (7.88.29–30), and monks will become worthy to enter paradise ‘through the philanthropy of Christ and the prayers of the saints’ (17.179.31–33). Monks benefit their own souls by praying for the good of others and they themselves depend on others’ prayers. Dorotheus teaches Dositheus the short-form prayers that enable ‘constant remembrance of God’ (V. Dos. 10). When Dositheus becomes seriously unwell, Dorotheus reminds him to persist in such prayer. Dositheus says he will and begs also for Dorotheus’ prayers. These prayers sustain him when he becomes so unwell that he cannot pray himself. Prayer teaches appropriate interdependency which is crucial for harmonious communal life in the monastery. The total effect is to make the process of growing in spiritual perfection dependent both on an individual’s own prayers and those of other members of the monastic community. Prayer also extends the membership of this community. The community at prayer is the current living members of the monastery and the long line of holy men and women whose prayers continue to be efficacious in the present. Teaching monks to pray for themselves and for others and to depend on the prayers of the saints enables monks to grow into a new civic community with a distinctive temporality that connects present-day ascetics ultimately to the prayers of Christ on which their salvation depends. Therefore throughout Dorotheus’ teachings, prayer (one’s own and that of others) is an effective mechanism for shaping the dispositions of the soul by the discipline and direction of thoughts and emotions. Ceaseless prayer makes this shaping of internal states habitual. Short prayers like those Barsanuphius recommended to Dorotheus, are common, and it is clear how such prayers may be used in the process of forming cognitive habits. But in his letter to those who supervise others in the monasteries, Dorotheus also recommends a longer prayer for use whenever they are moved to anger by their students (ep. 2.186.1–13). This prayer uses a narrative form found, for example, in the eucharistic prayer. It recites the plan of salvation from creation to salvation. God is addressed as the lover of humanity and of souls, who freely created the world out of nothing so that

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humanity might share in the goodness of God. The damage of the fall is corrected and perfected ‘through the blood of the only begotten son and saviour’, and God’s ability to calm the disturbances of the soul and save his ‘children’ is reaffirmed, partly through the incorporation of two biblical texts about salvation and judgement (Ps. 30:9; Matt. 25:12). The complexity of this narrative form, the length of the prayer, and the concise retelling of the divine plan of salvation which Dorotheus set out in his programmatic first Instruction and which grounds his notion of education for godlikeness, suggest that this is a form of prayer suitable for more advanced members of the community. It is evidence for the training in narrativization that is a consistent element of Dorotheus’ programme of education.¹¹¹ Advanced members of the community come to learn to tell this soteriological narrative and use it to shape their own behaviour and perform their roles effectively in the monastery. Despite its more complex form, the main function of the prayer remains the same as the shorter prayers: it is intended to reshape the supervisors’ souls by calming their turbulent emotions whenever they are disturbed and enabling them to exercise their teaching and discipline ‘for the sake of love and purity of heart’ (ep. 2, 186.14–29). For advanced ascetics just as for more junior ones, prayer functions as a means of the production of valued dispositions of the soul through habituated practices. The textual form of Dorotheus’ Instructions also prompts habituation to virtue through prayer. Each Instruction generally concludes with a short prayer or prayer-like exhortation. For example, Instruction 10 ‘On Vigilance’ concludes: ‘May the Good God protect us from these passions, grant us vigilance, and guide us in his way. Amen’.¹¹² In cases like these, the concluding passage sums up the preceding teaching in prayer or prayer-like form.¹¹³ The plural form binds students to teacher in a shared enterprise. Other Instructions conclude with a prayer for illumination. In these cases, the prayer asks God for help in developing intellectual and moral capacities required to understand the teaching. The conclusion of Instruction 7 ‘On Blaming Oneself ’ may be taken as paradigmatic: ‘May God grant us understanding by the prayers of the saints. Amen’.¹¹⁴ Students digesting Dorotheus’ teachings find themselves concluding their study in prayer. The Instructions therefore perform in their audience one of the central components of the educational programme and provide short prayers which students can

¹¹¹ See Bruner 1996, 39–42 on narrative in education. See further Chapter 1. ¹¹² Ὁ Θεὸς ὁ ἀγαθὸς σκεπάσῃ ἡμᾶς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν καὶ δώσῃ ἡμῖν νῆψιν καὶ ὁδηγήσῃ ἡμᾶς εἰς τὴν ὁδὸν αὐτοῦ. Ἀμήν (10.112.19–21). The concluding ‘prayer’ may be found in the future indicative as a concluding statement and may sometimes be read as an exhortation to the group of monks (as e.g., in 9.103.40–43). Such passages may easily be turned into a prayer as monks meditate upon it. ¹¹³ Instructions which follow this pattern are 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17. Instruction 15 ends with a plain ‘Amen’, which has the effect of turning the previous indicatives into a prayer (‘ . . . but also the victory we have won through [God] by the prayers of the saints. Amen’). ¹¹⁴ Ὁ Θεὸς συνετήσῃ ἡμᾶς εὐχαῖς ἁγίων. Ἀμήν (7.88.29–30). Instructions with this pattern are 3, 6, 7, 8, 14.

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use to sum up and reflect upon the set topic. Studying Dorotheus’ teaching therefore becomes, finally, an exercise in prayer, and the shared prayers of the students learned in the common classroom help to create a sense of shared community in the monasteries.

Conclusions: Imitation, Temporality, and Moral Development Good action achieved through habit had been ranked below that learned through specialist education in the wider tradition of classical pedagogy, just as correct beliefs do not qualify as true knowledge if the principles which justify the belief are not properly grasped. We have seen how Aristotelian and Neoplatonic thinkers differentiated between good action performed by habit and truly virtuous action which went beyond habit by being internalized and arising from a settled disposition. A similar devaluing of habituation is found in the case of rhetoric, where student exercises habituate students to literary forms but where higher rhetorical education expected students to develop the capacity to improvise and thereby make the form one’s own instead of merely reproducing it mechanically and unreflectively. The case of rhetoric, with its rhetorical handbooks and extant student exercises, clearly suggests that literary habits can be built upon in more advanced education to enable students to become fully formed authors and rhetoricians. Dorotheus had learned the craft of rhetoric in this way, as is suggested by his free use and adaptation of chreiai, fables, anecdotes, and maxims (as also in his creative deployment of ekphrasis and ethopoeia analysed in Chapter 2). But at least within the broadly Aristotelian tradition, the movement between habituated goodness or literary competence and ethical or rhetorical maturity, while intuitively clear, requires a complex and careful theorization. Dorotheus’ detailed attention to habits is striking in this wider context. He theorizes habit formation in such a way that it becomes an integral part of ascetic education rather than merely a necessary preliminary to it. He then offers a range of textual strategies designed to assist monks in cultivating good habits, especially by dramatizing and ruminating upon sayings and exempla and enclosing his didactic texts with prayer. In turn, his account of habit reveals a holistic conceptualization of education which makes the cultivation of theoretical and practical understanding, appropriate affects, and the orderly performance of bodily actions and gestures all essential components of the educational enterprise. He does not distinguish between education and habituation on the basis that one is appropriate for sharpening the intellect while the other is necessary for the training of emotions (as, e.g., Posidonius or Alcinous), nor does he follow a Neoplatonic hierarchy of virtues whereby habituation is a mere preliminary to the higher-order and more rational levels of ethical perfection (as found, e.g., in the Prolegomena tradition and later Neoplatonism more generally). Since education is holistic and

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cognition is affective, habituation is an important component at each successive stage of education, and it is understood as emotional and cognitive, reflective and embodied. Habit is made essential for ascetic education by conceptualizing it as a means of reinforcing or healing the broken schemas that characterize fallen souls. Repeated exercise of individual passions creates a distorted character disposition, in Dorotheus’ view. Conversely, repeated practices designed to correct such distortions and disturbances of the soul can habituate monks to virtue, healing their soul, and returning it to its originally created good state. Habit, in this sense, is theorized as a ‘second nature’. But where the wider philosophical tradition understood this only as a means of obscuring natural rationality, Dorotheus’ larger narrative arc from creation, through fall, to redemption adds complexity. Habituated passions form a second nature that makes the recovery of the original created nature impossible. But in the other direction, character dispositions properly formed through ascetic education enable monks to recover the original goodness and rationality of human nature intended by the creator. Habit formation becomes central to ascetic education because education is conceptualized as character formation (and thus in questions of identity) and because it contributes to the goal of the ascetic educational project—the transformation of the student to ever greater perfection. Education is understood as transformative inasmuch as it heals the distortions that mar the soul after the fall. In this key, transformation is understood as the restoration of human nature to its originally created perfection. To the extent that such a restoration re-aligns monks with the perfect humanity of Christ, such a transformation may be understood as an element of ascetic education aiming towards godlikeness. Godlikeness is also, and perhaps more fundamentally, advanced by habituation understood as imitation. Mimesis was always a fundamental component of ancient education. For Dorotheus, it is central on theological grounds. Imitation forms habits and is central to his dramatization of exempla. By imitating particularly godlike figures in the ascetic tradition, monks are expected to become more godlike themselves. In imitating others, monks act as though they are themselves creators, capable of crafting their own souls and the contours of their community by shaping the souls of others, always with divine help. Imitation also, for Dorotheus, participates in divine creativity in its assumptions about the potential and limitation of matter. Mimesis treats the physical world as if it can disclose godlike perfection and it must also grapple with the affordances of matter. To be sure, to the extent that human creativity is constrained by matter, it is not that same as that of the God who, Dorotheus affirms, creates from nothing. But the model of the divine craftsman does, at the human level, foreground the role of mimesis. It stands at the heart of Dorotheus’ positive evaluation of craft skill and physical labour.

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Craftsmanship is valued because it imitates the divine demiurge and because craft expertise is taken to be like the expertise required of virtuous people in a strong sense. The craftsman, like the demiurge, must have a reasonable plan, good intentions and motivations, ordered desires directed to the good, and practical knowledge about the suitability of actions and the potential of materials. In each of these respects, learning a craft is like learning virtues, on Dorotheus’ account. Work is therefore valued to the extent that it habituates people to such craft expertise and so makes them amenable to the sorts of desires, emotions, and reflective practices associated with the acquisition and performance of virtue. Work is also valued because of its social benefits, with services in the different areas of life required to make the complex monastic foundation operate smoothly figured as valuable if dangerous, in their potential to entangle monks in social relations inappropriately marked by hierarchies of power. Crucially, physical labour is given greater prominence in Dorotheus’ scheme than in other areas of ancient education because it humbles workers, and humility is a much-prized monastic virtue. Craft and work, therefore, both build virtue, the latter directly by generating a sense of humility, the former indirectly by nurturing the intellectual and affective dispositions and capacities required of virtuous action. By making craft and physical work crucial aspects of education in virtue, Dorotheus decisively cuts the traditional link between virtue and social status (even as his view that work humiliates workers stands on this social norm). Virtue is open to all members of the community irrespective of social class. Dorotheus’ insistence that virtuous action depends on the actions and prayers of others, as in his warnings about performing services with humility, at least ideally also weakens the connection between virtuous action and the performance of status. This view of the interdependence of virtue is also strengthened by emphasizing mimesis and exemplarity. The virtue of present-day monks is achieved through imitation of earlier generations, and so in a strong sense depends on the virtue of others. Through ascetic education, monks come to view themselves as radically dependent on others as they grow in perfection, rather than as rational agents whose autonomy increases as they increase in understanding. Habituation through imitation, therefore, contributes to the anthropology we have traced in other areas of his thought, where rationality does not solely determine the essence of a person’s being, and where dependence rather than autonomy is prized, since coming closer to others brings the monk closer to God.¹¹⁵ It is not that humans are taken to be irrational or not responsible for the good health of their soul: rationality is ‘something divine’ planted by God in the human soul and a keynote of ascetic education is developing practices of spiritual, cognitive, and affective discipline to take charge of one’s own actions. But in Dorotheus’ view, rationality

¹¹⁵ Compare MacIntyre 1999.

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and goodness are communal activities, achieved by the grace of God through cultivating habits of mind and ethical behaviour which build up communal life. Imitation, therefore, establishes a distinctive anthropology where humans are understood as functioning perfectly when they properly depend on each other. This dependence is promoted between members of the monastery and also across time, as present-day monks emulate earlier ascetic experts. Therefore habituation through imitation constructs a distinctive temporality in the monasteries, where the present is bound to the past in order to propel monks to the future goal of godlikeness. History is both goal-directed and a means by which salvation is effected (as Dorotheus’ overarching account of the divine plan of salvation suggests). Gaining ascetic perfection does not mean escaping time in the perfecting of the autonomous and timeless intellect. Others have noted that exemplarity and gnomic sayings translate past times into the present to give them universal significance.¹¹⁶ Imitating recognizable character types adds to this sense of timelessness: social norms are assumed to be stable, so past practices can guide the future. The past, then, becomes a moral authority, acting as a brake on social change.¹¹⁷ In Dorotheus’ case, however, the moral authority of the past, while crucial, is destabilized by the notion of assimilation to God, understood as the redemption of the past. Imitating exemplary lives from the ascetic tradition does not, then, merely reinscribe past norms. Figures from the past are worthy of imitation precisely because they are most godlike—that is, because they are closer to the promised future than others. Exemplarity and imitation, then, reveal the future to the present. This makes education a site of social and individual development as well as a means of cultural reproduction.

¹¹⁶ E.g., Morgan 2007, 235–7.

¹¹⁷ So Morgan 2007, 252–3.

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6 Conclusion Education and Transformation

Dorotheus’ programme of ascetic education is generated by his theories of mind and culture. His theory of mind sets out how souls were intended to operate, how they work after the fall, and how they may be perfected. His theory of culture, less explicitly worked out and often conceptualized (as in the Platonic tradition) by analogy with the soul, similarly sets out both ideals for cultural life and reasons for deficient or disturbed social relations. Ascetic education operates on mind and culture in ways which recognize their current disorder, and it aims towards their transformation. Dorotheus thinks that minds are capable of reasoning and participation in the divine intellect through the operation of conscience, a divine spark of reason in the human soul. But after the fall, minds become disordered and operate in an untrustworthy way because of distorted schemas that interfere with the complex of perception, feeling, and cognition. Given God’s providential love for creation, minds may be reconfigured and reordered so that they can operate as they were originally intended to, with accurate perception, free alignment with goodness and truth, and the illuminating warmth of reason (1.1, 3.40). Dorotheus’ theory of mind recognizes the characteristic deficiency of the postlapsarian soul and is hopeful about its potential for healing and transformation. It provides reasons to think that the mind’s cognitive-affective operations are liable to failure and offers grounds to hope for the transformation of fallen minds towards godlikeness and a restoration of their originally created perfection. To the extent that education is shaped by theories of mind, Dorotheus’ ascetic education must take account of the contours of the postlapsarian soul (the locus of the mind), in all its cognitiveaffective complexity, and it is directed towards enabling the transformation of the soul, healing its distortions and enabling the affectively formed soul to operate more perfectly as monks progress through their life-long education. Dorotheus’ theory of culture may be reconstructed as being equally dependent on his narrative of the divine plan from creation, through the fall, and on through correction to the ultimate transformation of the cosmos (1.1–8). Culture, like postlapsarian souls, is understood to be decisively shaped by the fall. The perfections of paradise are no longer available, and culture, like minds, is marked by disorder, conflict, confusion, and destructive social practices. This disorder negatively affects relationships between members of society. Monastic sociality is a case

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education. Michael W. Champion, Oxford University Press. © Michael W. Champion 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198869269.003.0006

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in point: we have seen that Dorotheus explores multiple sites of social conflict resulting from the destructive exercise of social power. Culture is understood as a domain of disturbing systems of power that can damage communities and perpetually reinscribe the evil of the fall. Conflict, evil, and disorder reign. Despite this social disorder, there are grounds, again, for hope. God has provided commandments and laws which can reform and reorder society, and he promises to heal communities as well as individuals, restoring the harmonious peace of paradise. Loving God means healing social relationships, and love of God and love of neighbour are simultaneously intensified as the monk is united with God (6.78). To the extent that education is shaped by theories of culture, Dorotheus’ programme of education must account for the broken nature of human sociality after the fall, enabling students to develop peaceful relationships and sustain harmonious societies. These accounts of the nature of the human soul and culture and social relationships therefore help to explain the contours of Dorotheus ascetic education, drawing on Jerome Bruner’s insight that education is constituted at the intersection of theories of mind and culture.¹ Recall that for Bruner, the intersection of these theories generated education’s characteristic concern with perspectives, meaning-making and meta-cognition, interaction and intersubjectivity, and with building expertise in the use of tools and symbol systems so that students can more effectively exercise social agency. It foregrounded the role of the production of cultural artefacts. It implicated education in creating or fracturing identity and self-esteem. Crucially, it made expertise in narrativization a central component of education. Each of these elements of education is significant within Dorotheus’ version of ascetic education. Ekphrasis, ethopoeia and prosopopoeia, exemplarity, and mimesis all aim to develop students’ capacities in evaluating perspectives, constructing meaning, and telling meaningful stories. They provide monks with access to symbolic frameworks by which to understand, interpret, and act within their worlds. In playing the parts provided to them in sayings, anecdotes, or stories, students develop the capacity to exercise agency effectively. The structures of knowledge presented as natural, and the social hierarchies of monastic education, fit students to navigate first the institution of the monastery and then other social institutions. Habituation was directed towards ‘character formation’, Dorotheus’ translation of the modern categories of ‘identity’ and ‘self-esteem’. Letters, like collections of sayings, are instances of education through the externalization of mind in ways that build authority and traditions of knowledge within the context of ascetic education.

¹ Bruner 1996, 13–42 and see Chapter 1.

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Distinctive elements of ascetic education arise from this intersection of theories of mind and culture given the theological commitments which generate them. Education is life-long because the lifetime is the span allocated for becoming like God. This partly explains the key role of habituation as a component of, rather than merely a preliminary for, Dorotheus’ ascetic education. Given that the soul is understood as distorted after the fall, Dorotheus emphasizes the discipline and direction of emotions (as did other educational projects). Yet for Dorotheus, emotions are understood as fundamental for shaping thought, reordering the soul, and regaining the joy and tranquillity of paradise. Multiple emotions therefore have a positive role to play, for all their dangers in the perfected human soul. For Dorotheus (unlike some philosophical traditions), it is not that emotion is what disturbs the soul in an ongoing conflict with reason. Instead, emotion is understood as essential for the ordered operation of the soul and its reconfiguration. Emotions that mitigate individual and communal disturbance and work towards developing ordered, peaceful, and harmonious souls and cultures are to be inculcated through ascetic education. Dorotheus thus expends considerable time in educating the emotions to transform minds and cultures. The postlapsarian distortions of the mind mean that constant examination of conscience is demanded. Education provides multiple strategies for self-examination, some of which are familiar from the wider philosophical tradition. But this also means that dependence on epistemic guides is required, because no individual can trust in the sovereign and uncorrupted operation of reason or their autonomous ability to distinguish truth from falsity. Thus the role of autonomous reason is reduced in Dorotheus’ programme of education, while intellectual humility and interdependence are promoted. The qualification for becoming an epistemic authority shifts too, since humility and holiness, rather than specialist philosophical or theological knowledge, become defining features of those whose minds are properly ordered. In creating structures of epistemic authority, Dorotheus’ educational project also works towards maintaining valued social structures, thereby strengthening harmonious communities. Prayer, not treated as a spiritual exercise in Pierre Hadot’s account of schools of philosophy, plays a significant role in ascetic education. Individual and communal prayer for oneself and for others in the monastery becomes a means of humbly performing interdependence with others and dependence on God. It also aims to strengthen social harmony as monks pray for each other and thereby reduce social disturbance. Monastic work is also given a distinctive role within ascetic education, on Dorotheus’ account, since it humbles workers and helps to habituate them to humility. It is a site of potential social conflict, and monks need to learn not to buy into disordered sociality and destructive social hierarchies. Finally, practices of reading and meditation, as in other areas of education in late antiquity, play a key role in Dorotheus’ educational project. Reading and meditation on texts function in ways that overlap with ancient rhetorical and philosophical education: rumination on texts internalizes

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them and works on the monks to transform their souls. It also orders the textual community by establishing a canon of authoritative texts and interpreters. In addition, for Dorotheus, individual reading of scripture and sayings of holy men, for example, should be understood against the background of the communal liturgical performance of these types of texts. The emotional and sensory experience of the communal singing of texts in monastic liturgies helps to generate intersubjective norms of textual interpretation and evaluation. Reading and meditation are ‘technologies of the self ’, and they are also practices that bind the monastic community together in shared emotions and interpretations. Across these elements of ascetic education, we may see three pervasive themes, themselves generated by the narrative of the divine plan that grounds Dorotheus’ theories of mind and culture. First, humility plays a striking role across Dorotheus’ thought. Humility is appropriate since it embodies an accurate understanding of the place of humans in creation. Humans should be humble both because of the gulf between creatures and the creator and because the perfection of humanity means assimilation to Christ, who is characterized by humility. Thus humility is not humiliation. It becomes an epistemic virtue which is necessary for accurate knowing and which throws monks back onto epistemic guides rather than trusting in their own reasoning capacity. It motivates continued progress in understanding, since it reminds monks that finite creatures always have more to know. It also organizes the virtues and directs and generates a range of affective scripts and practices, in an arc from desire and motivation for learning, to grief and repentance in recognition of the gap between creator and creatures, to joy, tranquillity, and peace in the assurance that God will provide access to truth and enable virtuous action even by fallen creatures. It also enables, at least in theory, the reconfiguration of society by cutting through sinful structures of domination and enabling harmonious and non-competitive social interactions. Second, emotions do important work in every area of Dorotheus’ educational project. They connect ascetic education to emotional norms of other areas of late-antique education, enable accurate perception and reasoning, shape virtues and habitual processes of learning to be good, and generate good action, both at the individual and the communal scale. Dorotheus has a keen awareness of ways in which emotions can lead to disturbance and disorder, and he also thinks that they play a key role in the transformation of individuals and communities. Third, Dorotheus insists across all areas of his thought that education is transformative rather than merely informative. Education can transform souls by removing distortions that mar their operation and it can change societies, on Dorotheus’ account, through the ordering of the soul, the healing of social relationships, and the weakening of (some) social hierarchies. This transformation can be figured as education aiming towards godlikeness or the practice of death (likening ascetic to philosophical education) and as healing (likening it to medicine). Since monastic experts, rather than philosophers or doctors, are taken to have the required expertise, Dorotheus’

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notion of transformative education aims to re-evaluate powerful social roles and institutions. Across these different areas, monastic education can be seen as a ‘laboratory’ or crucible for wider cultural changes.² Dorotheus’ educational project is crafted for monks in the Gaza region but there is nothing in his theory of mind or culture that could not apply to ordinary lay Christian minds and the wider culture. This is because the narrative of the divine plan of salvation is all-encompassing. Dorotheus does shape his retelling of the narrative for his ascetic context, for example by recounting it partly by drawing on sayings and stories of ascetic heroes (e.g., 1.11). But ascetic souls are not in principle different from other souls, and all human culture, not merely the monastic community, is marred by the fall and open to the promise of gracious divine reconfiguration. Transformations of soul and culture to which Dorotheus aims in the monastery may also be seen as desired outside its walls. Another study would be required to chart all the mechanisms by which ascetic education like that offered by Dorotheus could work upon wider cultural structures. We have seen traces of such influence, partly through monks interacting with visitors to the monastery, partly though social networks retained with people outside its walls, and partly through advice in letters to a large non-monastic audience. Monasteries interacted with other ecclesial institutions and urban elites. The size of Seridos’ complex monastery, with its extensive grounds and involvement in the economic life of the region (through agriculture and pilgrimage, for example) will have facilitated the movement of ideas and ideals from the monastery into other areas of society. Such features of life in the monasteries in the Gaza region, together with the way in which ascetic education offers teaching applicable beyond the monasteries, make it plausible to view ascetic education as a means of wider cultural change. Dorotheus’ thought was quickly diffused through other monastic centres.³ His works were translated into Arabic and Georgian early on, they influenced Byzantine monasticism especially through Theodore Studites, and they were set down as meal-time readings for generations of monks. They find their way into catenae and florilegia dating from the tenth to the fourteenth century and beyond. They were influential in Russia through the mediation of Nil Sorskii (1433–1508).⁴ The first Latin translation of Dorotheus’ works dates to the eleventh century, and he was translated and cited in a range of monastic contexts by Benedictines, Jesuits, Carthusians, Carmelites, and Dominicans into the eighteenth century. More recently, Dorotheus’ works have been translated into a range of modern

² Diem and Rapp 2020, 32–3 on monastic ‘laboratories’. ³ For examples of his influence cited in this paragraph, see Pauli 2000, 44–9; Regnault and de Préville 2001, 84–95. See also Champion 2017a. ⁴ On Sorskii, see Goldfrank 2007.

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languages and have found their way into the thought of Thomas Merton, the Taizé community, and Pope Francis.⁵ There is much more to be done to map the reception of Dorotheus’ project of ascetic education down the centuries. I outline the main parameters of the diffusion of his works here to underscore the influence of Dorotheus’ ascetic education in a range of contexts and to highlight the multiple mechanisms by which ascetic education could influence other areas of cultural life. Education, then, can be transformative. It can also, of course, reproduce cultures and strengthen established power structures. Throughout this book, I have noted intimate connections between Dorotheus’ educational project and the conceptual apparatus, norms, and ideals of rhetorical, philosophical, and medical education. Dorotheus’ thought is decisively shaped by these educational traditions, and part of the function of his educational project is to sustain these discourses and associated norms and fit them for his ascetic context. Furthermore, his account of humility, insistence on the need for epistemic and moral guides, and deployment of exemplarity, for example, partly function to establish and stabilize ascetic power structures. Dorotheus educates by encouraging monks to evaluate diverse perspectives, but as in his use of sayings literature, the point of his instruction is not to privilege ambiguity and open-ended interpretation. Rather, ascetic education is designed to make monks adopt privileged perspectives and thereby rule out other viewpoints and moral standards. Further, where his thought opens the possibility for social change, as for example in his severing of the link between social status and virtue, or his positive evaluation of humility and manual work, we may justly question its actual social force. I have emphasized transformation by way of conclusion because it is fundamental to the view of providential history that shapes Dorotheus’ ascetic education. The divine plan governs his educational project by generating his theory of mind and the soul and of culture and social relations. Ultimately, his view that education can transform individuals and their societies is built on the certain hope that God will redeem and perfect his creation.

⁵ For modern translations, see Pauli 2000, 49–50. For Merton, see Pauli 2000, 49. For Taizé see Br. Roger of Taize 1976 and for the ongoing influence of Dorotheus Br. Alois of Taize 2007. For Pope Francis, see Bergoglio 2013.

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Index Locorum For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. biblical citations Gen. 1:26 115–16 3:9–12 31–2 6:3 53–4 Deut. 22:8 152 Ps. 19:8 141 30:9 210–11 34 39–40 40 199 40:1–3 26–7 44:22 88 111 39–40 137 159 137:8–9 115–16 Prov. 1, 9, 16, 22 39–40 Is. 45:7 187 Hos. 5:11 87, 150 5–7 150 7:11 150 Amos 3:6 187 Matt. 5:3 15 5:25–6 115–16 11:28–9 31–2 11:29 115–16 16:24 82–3, 88 25:12 210–11 John 17:21 107 Luke 6:36 43, 115–16 Romans 8:7 39–40 12:1 88 12:2 175, 187 12:5 59, 100, 168

1 Cor. 12:26 59, 168 13:5–7 200 Gal. 2:20 88–9 5:16 88 5:24 88 6:2 115–16, 197–8 6:14 87–8, 115–16 Eph. 2:3 88 Col. 3:5 88, 193–4 1 Pet. 4:8 200 1 John 2:15–16 88 4:15 39–40, 131 Aeneas of Gaza, ep. 16 103 Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica 1.601.10–11; 2.439.3 ff., 457.14 ff. 51–2 Aristotle An. Post. 2.1 69 EN 1095a3, b5 94 1103a17–26 175 1105a26–1105b5 179 1105a32–35 175 1106a26–b7 153–4 1123a34–1135a39 82 1147a23–24 176 1152a31–32 176 1179b4–31 130 Rhet. 2.1.4 31 Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, resp. 32 104–5 49 106, 115 53 115 252 103–5

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Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, resp. (cont.) 252–338 102–3 252, 335–338 102–3 254 109 256 105, 108–9 257 103–4 258 103–4 261 105 263 107 264 108–9 267 109–10 268 107 269 108–9 271 108–9 274 107 275 107–9 290 108 291 109–10 292 108–9 305 107–8 320 109–10 330 107 401.13–14 133–4 455 162 489–491 162 503 162 Basil of Caesarea, reg. fus. 15 180–1 Chrysostom, John 16, 26 131–2 40 131–2 Clement of Alexandria, str. 2.22.132–3 82 Dorotheus of Gaza, ep. 1, 180 110–11 1, 180.4–9 205 1, 181 110–11 1.182 56, 96–7 2, 184 110–11 2, 184.1–9 192–3 2, 184–185 110–11 2, 185 110–11 2, 186 179–80 2.186.1–13 210–11 2, 186.14–29 210–11 2, 187.1–7 111 2, 187.31–37 112 4, 189.4–6, 11–18 112 4, 189.13–16 112 4, 189.16–18 112 6, 191 110–11, 209 7, 192 113, 144–5, 209 7, 192.3–11 113 8, 193.1–3 112–13

8, 193.3–6 112–13 8, 193.12–13 112–13 12, 197.1–3, 15 112–13 15, 200 210 Dorotheus of Gaza, Instructions (doct.) 1.1. 83–4, 140, 142, 180, 216 1.1–3 83–4 1.1–8 216–17 1.2–3 84 1.3.4–9 54 1.4–5 48–9, 54–5 1.5 84 1.5.13–24 193–4 1.5.18–24 142–3 1.5–6 143 1.6 142 1.7 44–5 1.7.1–16 43 1.7.20–21 39 1.8.2 91 1.8.15–23 166 1.8–9 31–2 1.8–14 43 1.9 32–3 1.9.1–26 166 1.10.5, 11 164–5 1.10.11–16 166 1.11 84, 91, 93–4, 220 1.11.1–5 123–4 1.11.10–12 141 1.12–13 141 1.13.14–18 87 1.13–14 87 1.15.1–37 193–4 1.15–17 23–4 1.15–19 46–7, 193–4 1.16.1–11 193–4 1.16.9–11 193–4 1.17.1–15 193–4 1.19.1–11 193–4 1.20 87 1.20.1–3 141 1.20.12–13 141 1.20.13 87 1.20.14–31 141 1.21 91 1.22 23–4 1.22.1–26 194 1.23.1–10 210 1.25.10–12 166 2.26.24–27 197 2.26–37 197 2.27 146 2.27.1–3 164–5

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  2.28 197 2.28.1–14 205 2.28–29 206–7 2.29–30 197 2.30.10–14 166 2.30–31 197 2.31.12–25 197 2.32–33 197 2.33 69 2.33–34 163 2.34 98–9 2.35.19–22 94 2.36 15–16, 197–8 2.36.2 16 2.36.3 40–1 2.36.14–26 17 2.37.3 197 2.37.19–20 93–4 2.38.1–3 206–7 2.38.7–21 209–10 2.39 96 2.39.2–3 206–7 2.39.3–9 53–4 3.40 56, 83–5, 91, 180, 216 3.40.1–5 91 3.42 33, 57–8, 84–5, 91 3.42.17 56 3.43 148 3.43.7–9 209–10 3.45 56 4.47 38–9, 131 4.47.10–12 131 4.47.14–16 131 4.47–51 39–40 4.48.16–17 131–2 4.51.2 40–1 4.51.10–15 166 4.52 91, 207–8 4.52.7–11 133 4.52.26–31 134 4.53 133–4 4.54 100, 148 4.54.25 41–2 4.56–57 33, 197–8 4.57.1–22 197–8 4.58 207–8 4.58.1–9 205–6 4.59.1–5 206 4.60.18 201–2 4.60.27–31 202 4.76 12–13 5.58–59 146 5.61 100 5.62 100

5.65 57–8, 100 5.65.1–6 198 5.65.12–20 198 5.65.18–19 58, 198 5.65.24 179 5.66 33, 98, 100 5.66.12–27 199 5.66.12–30 98–9 5.66.16–18 98 5.67 26 5.67.4–14 199 5.67.14–44 199 5.67.18 ff. 26 5.68 27, 93, 96 6.69 33, 57–8 6.71.4 41–2 6.73 41–2 6.75 33 6.75.14–6.76.30 167 6.76.1–8 175–6 6.76.3 204–5 6.76.26–30 175–6 6.77 58–9 6.77.4–15 167 6.77.15 100 6.77.18–19 168 6.77.31–33 168 6.78 186–7, 216–17 6.78.6–14, 24–25 100–1 6.78.23–25 60 7.82 142 7.84 60–1 7.84.6–8 60–1 7.85.10–12 200–1 7.86.13–26 200–1 7.88.29–30 210 8.3.62 22–3 8.89 12–13 8.89.5–11 195–6 8.89.12–23 195–6 8.89–91 195–6 8.90.1–31 196 8.90.18–20 196 8.91.23–26 196 8.94 57–9 8.94.12–29 145 8.94.32–35 166–7 8.94–95 207–8 8.95.1–8 204–5 8.95.2–9 95 8.95.3–9 179, 205 9.98 60–1 9.99 27–8 9.99.2 164–5

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Dorotheus of Gaza, Instructions (doct.) (cont.) 9.101 34, 146 10.9 130 10.104.8–14 153 10.104.9 153 10.105 15–16, 115–16, 160 10.105.3 153 10.105.23–24 125 10.105.25–27 125 10.105.25–28 153 10.105.31 179–80 10.106 56, 160 10.106.1–4 154 10.106.33–37 153–4 10.106.37–44 153–4 10.107.1–36 155–6 10.108.1–7 156 10.108.4–6 45–6 10.108.11–30 156–7 10.109 164–5 10.109.1–22 156–7 10.109.23–28 156–7 10.110.1–17 156–7 10.111 91 10.111.9–10 156–7 10.112.1–3 157 10.112.19–21 45–6 10.113 48–9, 54–5, 57–8 11.113 142, 160 11.113.1–30 157–8 11.114.16–18 157–8 11.114.16–25 157–8 11.114.17–21 144–5 11.114.18–20 144–5 11.114.21–25 158 11.115.16–22 159 11.116.1–23 159 11.117 33, 142, 160 11.117.10 164–5 11.117.13–20 21–33 11.119 160 11.119.1–5 205–6 11.119.20–22 159 11.120 142, 160 11.121.34 144 11.122 142, 160 11.122.5–8 177 11.122.18 177–8 11.122.19–21 56 11.122.29–38 56 11.123 93–4 11.123.9–10 177 11.123.23–30 159 11.123.24–30 165

12.124.22 40–1 12.125.1–23 146 12.125.6–7 146 12.125.11 146 12.126 12–13, 57, 60 12.126.1–4 85–6 12.126.4–7 59–60 12.126.4–9 86 12.126.15–22 86 12.127 147–8 12.127.7–10 145–6 12.127.7, 8–10 89–90 12.127.21–22 90 12.128.11–13, 25–28 90 12.128.11–28 90 12.128–129 54–5 12.129.1–5 90 12.129.5–7 90 12.129.11–18 91 12.130.1 204–5 12.130–131 204–5 12.131 207–8 12.131.2–9 176 12.131.4–6 177 12.134.1–8 204–5 12.135 207–8 12.135.1–15 204–5 12.136.1–19 204–5 13.141.15–21 149 13.141.9–10 126–7 13.142.1–4 150 13.142.7–10 88 13.142–143 150 13.143.1–4 149–50 13.144.17–19 150–1 13.143.19–20 150–1 13.144.1–17 150–1 13.144.13 150–1 13.144.24–29 150–1 13.144.27 150–1 13.145.12–18 150–1 13.145–147 150–1 13.146 150–1 13.148.1–19 150–1 13.148.11–14 150–1 14.150.3–8 184 14.150.3–14 181–2 14.150.8–28 184 14.150.9 182–3 14.151 182–3 14.151.1–5 183–4 14.151.5–11 183–4 14.151.12–15 183–4 14.151.30–34 183–4

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  14.151.49–53 152 14.152.5–6 184 14.152.7 184 14.152.11–32 184–5 14.152–153 93 14.153.1–21 142 14.153.5–11 184–5 14.153.31–154.2 186 14.153.32–36 185 14.154.5–6 186 14.154.5–15 186 14.154.18–33 186–7 14.154.25–31 186–7 14.155 175 14.155.1–14 187 14.155.14–31 187 14.155.26–28 187 14.155.42–43 187 14.156 93–4 14.156.10–14 44 14.156.11–12 188–9 14.156.15–30 188–9 14.156.27 44 14.156–157 44 14.157.1–27 188–9 14.157.19 44 14.157.22–27 167–8 14.158 188–9 14.158.16–17 188–9 14.158.16–27 188–9 15.159 207–8 15.159.15–16 204–5 15.162 209–10 15.164 60–1 16.167–171 88 16.168 88 16.168.3 88 16.168.17–26 145 16.169.1–4, 12–13 88–9 16.170.22–26 89 16.171 142 17.174 25–6 17.174.1–4 209–10 17.174.9–10 25–6 17.175 25 17.176 25–6, 84–5, 101, 137 17.176.43–46 138 17.176.44–45 137–8 17.177.11–12 123–4 17.179.31–33 210 Epistula ad Fratres 6.9–14 14–15 Evagrius of Pontus Gnost. 10 103–4

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Prak. 24 126–7 40 138 56, 67 146 64 146 mal. cog. 10, 14–15 126–7 Galen Aff. pec. dig. 4–10 57–8 Quod animi mores 3, 32, 1–13 50–1 44, 6–8 50–1 71, 11–73, 20 50–1 Gregory Nazianus, or. 2.16–17 95 2.25–48 95 2.35 ff. 95 Gregory of Nyssa, ep. 2 155–6 Isaiah of Scetis, Logos 2.1–2 126–7 2.5–10 126–7 John of Sardis, Comm. in Aphth. Prog. 194,2–5 30 Libanius, Prog. Chreia 3.3, 10–11 125 NE, 2.6,1106b14–15 40–1 Pachomius, Instr. 1:55 129 Paralip., 12 129 Philebus, 55e–59d 40–1 Philoponus, in DA. 51, 31–32 51 Plato Alc. 1, 111a–d 97 Laws 716a 82 Phaedo 86c 50–1 Tim. 87b 50–1 Proclus, in Tim. Vol. 3, 330.9–331.1 51 Prolegomena Ammonius 4,7–14 73 4,8–14 72–3 in Isag. 6,1–24 79 in Isag. 6,6–10 79 in Isag. 6,10–11 79 in Isag. 6,20–24 79 David 17,1 ff. 70–1 17,15 ff. 69 17,16–22 70–1 34,30–35,29 70 46,15–26 74

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Prolegomena (cont.) 46,24–25 74 55,20 ff. 74 55,35–56,16 73 71,3–4 73 74,1–6 74 Elias 18,1–8 71–2 18,35 70 Olympiodorus in Alc. 23,2–5 97 in Cat. 5,34–6.16 75–6 in Cat. 6,31–35 77 in Cat. 9,5–13 76–7 in Cat. 9,14 ff. 75 in Cat. 9,15–30 75 in Cat. 10,12–13 76–7

in Cat. 10,25–26 77 in Cat. 10,25–35 77 in Cat. 10,26–27 77 in Cat. 10,27–33 77 in Cat. 10,44 ff. 70 Prol. 1,3–6 75 V. Dos. 3.30–34 52 10 210 12.14 99–100 13 53 Vitruvius, De arch. 1.2.1 183–4 1.3.2 183–4 Zosimus, alloquia 10, cf. 13–14 126–7

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General Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Aaron, biblical priest 137–8 Abba Seridos monastery 11–12, 23–4, 220 abecedaries 3–4 Adam and Eve, biblical figures 31–3 Aeneas of Gaza 16, 103 affectivity see cognitive-affectivity Agathon, Abba 38–9, 133–4, 197 akedia 197 akribeia 40–3, 47–8 Alcinous 174–5, 212–13 Alexander of Aphrodisias 51 Alexander of Tralles 51–2 Alexandria 16, 48–9, 67–8, 75–6 Allen, Pauline 101–2 alphabetica 158 Ammonas, saint 200 Ammonius 72–3, 75–6, 78–9 Amos, biblical prophet 187 Andocides 13–14 Antony of Egypt, saint 38–9, 101–2, 110–11, 131–2, 197, 200–2 anger see under emotions Aphthonius 30 Apophthegmata 12–13, 66, 103–7, 115–17, 133, 158, 183–4, 191–2, 198, 213 Aristotle 12–13, 17, 31, 34–6, 94, 153–5, 207 on anger 137–8 Categories 67–9, 75–7 and exegesis 36–41, 45–8 on fear 130–1 on habituation 174–80, 184–5, 187–9, 212 and humility 82 and knowledge, hierarchy of 79–80 on medicine 48–50 Organon 48–9 Ascalon 23–4 askesis 59, 163–4 Asterius of Amasea 25 ataraxia 196 Augustine of Hippo, saint 128–9 Barsanuphius, Old Man of Gaza 1–2, 11–13, 65–6, 93–4, 133–5, 197–8 on humility 162

letters of see epistolary practices, of the Old Men of Gaza on meditation 115 on prayer 209–11 Basil of Caesarea, saint 12–13, 25–6, 38–9, 153–4 on anger 137–8 Asceticon 105 on confession 58–9 on fear 131–2 on habituation 176–7, 180–1, 185–6 Homilies on the Psalms 154–5 letters of 101–2 Berytus 16 Bildung 4 Bitton-Ashkelony, Brouria 11, 209 Bruner, Jerome 1, 6–10, 23–4, 65–6, 92–3, 121, 210–11, 217 Burnyeat, Myles 176 Caesarea 16 Cassiodorus 67–8 Catena on the Psalms 103–4 Chrysippus 143–4 Chrysostom, John 12–13, 123–4 On Vainglory and the Raising of Children 131–2 Cicero 54–5 Clement of Alexandria 12–13, 82, 177–8, 209 Cleombrotus 77–8, 85 cognitive-affectivity 9–10, 52, 109–10, 173, 176, 205, 212–13 and ascetic development 1–2, 9–10, 117–18, 120–1 and humility 161–72, 197, 218–20 late-antique 120–1 and meta-cognition 9–10, 65, 116–17, 202, 217 and paideia 162–4, 169 and perception 28–9, 120 and pilgrimage, metaphorical 154–6, 171 and prayer and communal worship 123–4 and sayings literature 190–5, 202, 217 and soul, tripartite 153, 157–9 terminology 121–2

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cognitive-affectivity (cont.) and tree, metaphorical 158–9 and virtues for monastic community 161–72 and virtuous action 18–19, 120, 125–7, 129–31, 133–4, 142, 152–61, 185–6, 195–6, 201–2, 214–16 see also emotions constructivism 7 Cynics 203–4 Damascene, John 67–8 David 69–71, 73–4 Demosthenes 127–8 death, practice of see under epistemology; Neoplatonism; Platonism/Plato diaeresis 42–3, 47–8 diet 96–7 fasting 57, 60–2, 204–5, 207–8 and virtue 50–3, 55–6, 60–2, 153–4, 160 Dorotheus of Gaza (general) biography 11–12, 15–16 circulation of writings 11–12 sources used 12–13 teacher, qualities as 13–16 Dositheus 11–12, 52–3, 99–100, 117, 210 ekphrasis 9–10, 13, 20–9, 52, 189–90, 212, 217 and ascetic paideia 34–5, 63–4 Elias 69–72, 207–8 emotions 1–2, 9–10, 17–19 anger 137–8, 142–3, 156–7, 164–7, 193–8 and cognition 148–52, 218–19 and demonic activity 126–7, 131, 138–9, 143–4, 146, 148, 205, 209 diversity of 122–3 and ekphrasis 23–8, 30–1 and embodiment 122–3 and ethopoeia 30–1, 33–4 fear in education 125, 127–36, 170, 177, 189 and godlikeness 71, 74, 126 norms, construction of 123–36, 169–72, 202–3; see also habituation passion and desire 121–2, 124–9, 132–48, 160–2, 169–70, 186–7, 213 and pathos 149 propatheia 149–50 soul, fallen to passions 144–6, 149–52, 170–2, 177–8, 216, 218–19 soul, tripartite 137–40, 169–70 theorizing 121–4 and worship, communal 123–4 see also cogitive-affectivity; epistemology, and humility; paideia enkyklios paideia 5

Ephraim, biblical figure 87, 150 Epictetus 35–6 Epicurus 101–2 epistemology 10, 12–13, 18–19, 39–42, 48, 135–6, 199–202 assumptions of 65–6 and baptism 84, 92–3, 140, 193–4 in Byzantium 67–8 and conscience, examination of 9–10, 91–2, 97–100, 111–12, 117–18, 120–1 and death, practice of 66–7, 69, 77–82, 85–94, 109, 113, 117–18, 121, 134–5, 163, 219–20 and godlikeness 66–7, 69–84, 88–9, 91–4, 100–1, 106, 112–14, 117–18, 120–1, 126–7, 136, 138–9, 147–8, 163–4, 168–9, 207, 213, 215, 219–20 and humility 66–7, 82–3, 91–101, 108–9, 111–16, 119, 121, 142–3, 161, 164–5, 171–2, 218–21; see also under cognitive-affectivity and humility and epistemological authority 101–16 and knowledge, hierarchies of 65–6, 79–82, 85, 92–3 and memory of sin, post-mortem 89–91 and Prolegomena 66–79 see also epistolary practices; reading and meditation epistolary practices 67, 101–2, 217, 220 and abbot’s authority 108, 113–14 and advice, spiritual 105, 110–11, 113–14, 133–4 and biblical interpretation 103–7, 110–11 and community 103–4, 110, 113 of Dorotheus to his monks 110–14, 116–17 and humility 108–9, 111–14 of Old Men of Gaza 11, 101–11, 113–14 as performative 103, 106–7, 113 and prayer 105–7, 110–12 sacramental quality 107–8, 110 ethics 10, 12–13, 17–19, 40–4, 48, 50–1, 84–5, 96–7, 121–2, 135–7, 147, 150–1, 199–201, 204–5, 212–13 and habituation 57–8, 126–7, 174–5, 187, 190–2, 206–8, 214–15 and humility 125 and knowledge, hierarchy of 79–81 and letters 103 and pilgrimage metaphor 155–6 and popular ethics 190–2 ethopoeia 20–2, 29–35, 189–90, 212, 217 ethos 21–2, 29–35 Evagrius of Pontus (Ponticus) 12–13, 25–6, 46–7, 81–2, 84–6, 91–2, 103–4, 111, 126–7 and alphabetica 158

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  on clothing, monastic 193–4 death, practice of 85–6 on emotions 137–8, 142–4, 146–8, 152, 195–6 letters of 101–2 Praktikos 139–40, 147–8 on prayer 209 on soul 138–40 Evenus 176 exegesis 16–18, 77, 87, 110, 191 and akribeia 40–3, 47–8 anagogical 106–7 and diaeresis 42–3, 47–8 and ethopoeia 31–3 and exemplarity 194–5 and metaphors 46–7, 159 and philosophy 20, 36–42, 68–9 and skopos of text 20, 42–8 exemplarity 9–10, 26–7, 31–4, 221 of Christ 17–18, 44–7, 100, 188–9, 193–4 of clothing, monastic 193–4 Dorotheus as exemplar 197–8, 201–2 dramatizing for habituation 192–203, 212–15 in letters 102–3, 106–7 externalization 7–9, 103, 109–10, 117, 148, 217 fear see under emotions Festival of the Rose 34–5 Galen 49–50, 63–4 on anger 137–8 on body and soul 50–2, 54–8 Gessius the iatrosophist (doctor) 16 Gethsemane 52 Gibbons, Kathleen 147 godlikeness see under emotions; epistemology; epistolary practices grammar 2, 5 Gregory I the Great, pope 101–2 Gregory Nazianus 12–13, 25–6, 137–8, 154–5 Hymn for the Holy Martyrs 136–7, 139–40 Gregory of Nyssa 17, 165 habituation 1–2, 5–6, 10, 18–19, 21, 55–61, 122, 147, 217–19 and anger 55–6, 156–7 and body, action of 54–5, 123, 184–5, 197, 203–7, 212–13 and charity and mercy 42–5, 93–4, 142, 165–8, 171–2, 175, 184–5, 187–9, 197 and diet 53, 55–7 and ethics, popular 190–2

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and exemplarity 192–203, 212–15 and humility 94–6, 142, 164–5, 171–2, 183–4, 197–8, 205–8, 214, 218–20 incremental nature of 186–7 and knowledge 184–5 and medicine 53–62, 142 and passion 144, 213 and performance 173–5, 179–85, 187–97, 200–3, 214 and prayer 173, 196, 199, 203–5, 207–14, 218–19 and rumination, textual 194–5, 201, 212–13, 218–19 and sayings literature 190–7, 202, 212–13, 215, 217, 221 and self-examination and confession 57–64, 100, 123, 134–5, 142, 148, 151, 157–8, 171–2, 198–9, 207–8 terminology of 57, 173 theory of 173–5, 213 and virtue, learning of 175–81 virtue as craft 179–90, 203, 213–14 and work 203–9, 213–14 Hadot, Pierre 3–6, 115, 209, 218–19 Heracles, mythical figure 203–4 Hermogenes 30, 39 Hilarion, saint 11–12 Hippocrates 76–7 historiography on ascetic education 2–7, 11 Homer 38–9 homonoia 166–7 homopsychia 166–7 humility see under cognitive-affectivity; epistemology; ethics; habituation; paideia; Platonism/Plato Iamblichus 79–80 On the Pythagorean Life 126 identity and self-esteem 7–10, 28–9 institutionalism 7–9 instrumentalism 7–8 intersubjectivity 8–10, 22–3, 26–9, 66, 93–4, 101, 116–17, 120, 122, 159, 217 Introduction to Isagoge 77–8 Irenaeus of Smyrna 12–13 Isaiah, biblical prophet 187 Isaiah of Scetis, Abba 12–13, 105, 126–7, 134, 153–4, 197 Isidore of Pelusium 101–2 Isidore of Seville 67–8 Isocrates 127–8 Jerome, saint 101–2 Jerusalem 155–6

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Jimenez, Marta 178–9 John, Old Man of Gaza 1–2, 11–13, 60–1, 65–6, 134–5, 197–9 on humility 162 letters of see epistolary practices, the Old Men of Gaza John of Sardis 29–31 knowledge hierarchies 1–2, 15, 18–19, 65–6, 79–82, 92–3, 117–18, 184–5 and akribeia 40–1 see also epistemology Kofsky, Aryeh 11, 209 Kurke, Leslie 191 Larsen, Lillian 2–4, 158, 190–2, 202–3 Libanius 124–9 Ludlow, Morwenna 21–2 Macarius, saint 58, 198 Marinus, Life of Proclus 126 Mark the Monk 12–13, 110–11 medicine 1–2, 5–6, 12–13, 15–22, 37–8, 48–63, 79, 135–6, 221 and askesis 59 and community, monastic 58–60, 62 and habituation 53–62, 142 and labour, bodily 53, 55 metaphors of 48–9, 58–9, 63–4, 96–7, 145, 160, 167, 171, 219–20 and paideia 50, 61–2 soul and body 50–6, 160, 171 see also diet; Galen meditation see reading and meditation metaphors 17–18, 45–7, 88 of building 181–6 of craftsman or musician 179–90 of crucifixion 87–8 medical 48–9, 58–9, 63–4, 96–7, 145, 160, 167, 171, 219–20 of pilgrimage 154–6 of reading as food 115–16 of tree 158–9, 176 mimesis 20–2, 138–9, 189–90, 192–3, 213–15, 217 Morgan, Teresa 190–1 Moses, biblical patriarch 137–8 Neil, Browen 101–2 Neoplatonism 20–1, 35–6, 63–4, 95, 115, 207 Alexandria, schools of 67–8 on body and soul 51–2, 61–2, 86 and death, practice of 86–9, 118 and divinity, notion of 66–7, 81–2

and epistemology 66–8, 81–2 and exegesis 36–46 and habituation 174, 212–13 and knowledge, hierarchy of 79–81, 117–18 and metaphors 46–7 and rationality 83–4, 97, 118 and textual communities 37–8 see also Iamblichus; Plotinus; Porphyry; Proclus Nicolaus 29–30 Nilus of Ancyra 101–2 Nisteros, Abba 109–10, 177 Olympiodorus 75–7, 97–9 Origen 12–13, 143–4 Pachomius 129 paideia 5, 13–20, 35–8, 45–6, 48, 62–4 and ekphrasis 29, 34–5, 63–4 and humility 162–4, 169 and medicine 50, 61–2 Paul, saint 13–14, 38–9, 59, 88, 100, 111, 168, 197, 201–2 Peripatetics 51–2; see also Aristotle Perrone, Lorenzo 114–15, 134–5 perspectives, constraints on 7–10 perspectivalism 7–8, 42–3, 122, 147, 217 Philoponus, John 51, 55, 61–2, 75–7 philosophy 1–6, 11–22, 29, 35–6, 62–4, 135–6, 221 and exegesis 36–42, 63–4 and medicine 48–52 and metaphors 46–7, 86–7 and skopos of text 20, 42–6 and soul 50–1, 86–7 see also Aristotle; epistemology; Iamblichus; Neoplatonism; paideia; Peripatetics; Platonism/Plato; Plotinus; Porphyry; Presocrates; Proclus; Pythagoreans/ Pythagorus pilgrimage see under cognitive-affectivity; ethics; metaphors Platonism/Plato 13–14, 18–21, 29, 35–6, 118, 149, 207 Alcibiades I 79–80 Alcibiades Major 97 on body and soul 50–2, 84–6, 137–9, 216 Cratylus 79–80 and ‘daimonion’ 97 death, practice of 77–8 and exegesis 36–46, 48 on godlikeness 71–4, 207–8 Gorgias 79–80 and humility 82

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  and knowledge, hierarchy of 79–80 Laws 82 and letters 101–2 Parmenides 79–80 Phaedo 77–80 Phaedrus 79–80 Philebus 79–80 Sophist 79–80 Stateman 79–80 Symposium 79–80 Theaetetus 79–80 Timaeus 79–80 Plotinus 71, 75–6 Plutarch 13–14, 128–9 Poemen, Abba 110–11, 200–1 Porphyry, Isagoge 67–9, 76 Posidonius 174–5, 212–13 prayer see under cognitive-affectivity; epistolary practices; habituation Presocrates 51–2 Proclus 38–41, 51, 61–2, 73, 126 Procopius of Gaza 16, 103 Progymnasmata 13, 190–2 Prolegomena to Philosophy 66–81, 84–5, 117, 207, 212–13 prosopopoeia 21–2, 30–1, 217 psychology cultural 6–10, 27–8, 216–17 Dorotheus’ psychology, overview of 136–40 moral 1–2, 10, 18–19, 121–2, 136–52, 175–6, 184–5, 196 see also cogitive-affectivity; emotions Pythagoreans/Pythagorus 38–9, 50–2 Quintilian 128–9 reading and meditation 17–18, 21, 37, 41–2, 46–8, 67, 101, 110–12, 114–16, 123–4, 218–19 food, reading as metaphor for 115–16, 124–5 memorization of texts 114–18, 190–1, 194–5, 201–2 sayings literature 190–7, 202, 217–21; see also Apophthegmata scriptural 55, 66, 103–5, 110, 112–17, 201–2, 218–19 and skopos 43–4 rhetoric 1–6, 12–35, 62–4, 212, 221 and emotions 120–1, 124–9, 135–6

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fables, use of 191–2 see also ekphrasis; ethos; ethopoeia; exegesis Rubenson, Samuel 2–6 Rufus, John 101–2 Seneca 101–2, 143–4 Seridos, Abba 11–12, 130–1, 220 Shenoute, White Monastery of 130–1, 169–70 Sisoes, Abba 149 skopos of text 20, 42–8 Socrates 97–8 Sorskii, Nil 220–1 Stenger, Jan 13, 15–16, 36–7 Stoicism 13–14, 35–6, 177–8 on body and soul 54–5 on emotion 143–4, 149–50, 153–4, 170 on work 203–6 syllabaries 3–4 Syrianus 39 Thawatha 11–12, 130–1, 205–6 Theodore Studites 220–1 Theon 29–30 thoughts 59, 88, 90, 98, 109–10, 113–16, 121, 134–5, 141–4, 148–52, 159–61, 164–5, 170–1, 198–9, 205, 209–11 Torrance, Alexis 106 transformation 1–3, 17–19, 35–6, 40–1, 48, 213, 216–21 and cognitive-affectivity 120–1, 216 and communities, textual 37–8, 40 and community, monastic 62–4 and ekphrasis 22–7, 29, 35 and habituation 57–62, 177–8 and medicine 50–1, 63–4 and metaphors 46–7 and skopos of text 43–4 van den Hoven, Birgit 203–4 vision 26–9, 35 Vitruvius 183–4 Webb, Ruth 22–3 work 72, 94–5, 123, 218–19; see also under habituation, Stoicism Zacharias Scholasticus of Mytilene 16, 202–3 Zosimus, Abba 12–13, 59, 105, 126–7, 196–8