Mar Jacob of Serugh on Monks and Monasticism: Readings in his Metrical Homilies ‘On the Singles’ 9781463234300

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Mar Jacob Of Serugh On Monks And Monasticism: Readings In His Metrical Homilies ‘On The Singles’

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Mar Jacob of Serugh on Monks and Monasticism

Analecta Gorgiana

1045 Series Editor George Anton Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and short monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utilized by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

Mar Jacob of Serugh on Monks and Monasticism

Readings in his Metrical Homilies 'On the Singles'

Sydney H. Griffith

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34 2011

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2011 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in 2010 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2011

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9

ISBN 978-1-4632-0093-0

ISSN 1935-6854

Reprinted from the 2010 Piscataway edition.

Printed in the United States of America

MAR JACOB OF SERUGH ON MONKS AND MONASTICISM: READINGS IN HIS METRICAL HOMILIES ‘ON THE SINGLES’ SIDNEY H. GRIFFITH I. MAR JACOB THE TEACHER Mar Jacob of Serugh (c. 451–521) lived in theologically exciting times. Just at the beginning of his life, the fateful Council of Chalcedon had met and approved a Christological formula, articulated in Greek philosophical terms, that was destined to become one of the most church-dividing decisions ever to be taken by an ecclesiastical assembly in Late Antique times. Mar Jacob died some seventy years after the council, just at the beginning of the era when the Roman imperial government in Constantinople was prepared to enforce the adoption of the Christology of Chalcedon empire-wide, adopting a policy that required all bishops to accept its orthodoxy. 1 Meanwhile, in Edessa, where Mar Jacob had himself been a student, Syriac-speaking theologians during his lifetime were engaged in controversies with one another, engendered by their espousal of rival theologies based on texts newly translated into Syriac from their original Greek. The parties were divided by their theological allegiances and perhaps also by their political loyalties. On the one hand there were the partisans of See now Menze, Volker R. Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, Oxford Early Christian Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 1

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the theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444), and on the other hand there were the devotees of the works and teachings of Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350–428). Differing political sympathies seem also to have been in play in Edessa in those years, with some Edessans being called ‘Persians’, presumably because of their political preference for Persia, or simply because they came originally from those parts of the Syriac-speaking milieu under Persian government; others remained reconciled to Roman suzerainty. In due course, theological discord in Edessa came to the point that in the year 489 the so-called ‘School of the Persians’ in the city was closed on imperial orders and its scholars fled to Nisibis in Persian territory, where under the sponsorship Bishop Bar Sawmâ of Nisibis (c. 420 – c. 490, bp. 457) 2 the devotees of the scriptural exegesis and the teachings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, led by the well-known, Syriac teacher and writer, Mar Narsai (c. 399–503), founded the institution that in due course would become the famed School of Nisibis. 3 Against the background of these developments, during the years between 470, when he was still in Edessa, and the year 502/3, when he was appointed Kôrepîskûpô in Ḥawrā, and the year 519 when he was named bishop of Baṭnan, Mar Jacob of Serugh seems to have spent some thirty years as a scholarly cleric in Ḥawrā, writing the hundreds of mêmrê (said by Jacob of Edessa to have been as many as 763) and the letters that have made him one of the best known and most prolific of the early Syriac writers. His style, his themes and his religious discourse, albeit in a simpler register, easily evoke the memory of the works of St. Ephraem the Syrian. The commemorative mêmrê written about Mar Jacob by later Syriac writers stress his role as a teacher (mallpōnô) and as a man filled with the Holy Spirit, indeed as the very ‘flute of the Holy

See Gero, Stephen. Barsauma of Nisibis and Persian Christianity in the Fifth Century, CSCO, 426, Louvain: Peeters, 1981. 3 See now Becker, Adam H. Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 2

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Spirit’. 4 These qualities again evoke the memory of St. Ephraem. And Mar Jacob himself celebrated the memory of his ancestor in faith and culture, the ‘Harp of the Holy Spirit’, in his well known mêmrâ, ‘On Mar Ephraem, the Teacher’. 5 And just as it is easy to suppose that Mar Ephraem was in his lifetime an îḥîdōyô, and a socalled ‘son of the covenant’, 6 so those who have written of Mar Jacob have not hesitated to speak of him as “having lived as a monk, in an ascetic life-style characteristic of Syriac monasticism,” as Wolfgang Hage has put it. 7 Patriarch Ignatius Aphram I Barsoum even said of Mar Jacob, “He became a monk and an ascetic. ... He was well received, loved and trusted by hundreds, nay, thousands of monks for his piety, honesty and knowledge.” 8 So far, not even half of the more than seven hundred mêmrê attributed to Mar Jacob of Serugh have been published, 9 and most of them are on biblical and liturgical themes. 10 On the basis of the See the mêmrê published by Krüger, Paul. “Ein bislang unbekannter sermo über Leben und Werk des Jakob von Serugh,” & “Ein zweiter anonymer memra über Jakob von Serugh,” Oriens Christianus 56 (1972): 80–111 & 112–49. 5 See Amar, Joseph P., ed. & trans. A Metrical Holily on Holy Mar Ephrem by Jacob of Serugh: Critical Edition of the Syriac Text, Translation and Introduction, Patrologia Orientalis, 47.1.209, Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1995. 6 See Griffith, Sidney H. “Images of Ephraem: The Syrian Holy Man and his Church,” Traditio 45 (1989–90): 7–33. 7 Hage, Wolfgang. “Jakob von Serugh,” In Balz, Horst Robert, et al., eds. Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. XVI, 471. Berlin: DeGruyter, 1977–. 8 Barsoum, Patriarch Ignatius Aphram I. Berûlê Bdîrê: The History of Syriac Literature and Sciences, 86–7, trans. Matti Moosa. Pueblo, CO: Passeggiata Press, 2000. 9 See Alwan, P. Khalil. “Bibliographie général raisonnée de Jacques de Saroug (+521),” Parole de l’Orient 13 (1986) : 313–84. The largest published collection of the mêmrê is Bedjan, Paul. Homilie Selectae Mar-Jacobi Serughensis, 5 vols., Paris/Leipzig: Via Dicta & Otto Harrassowitz, 1905– 1910. 10 See especially the studies of Kollamparampil, Thomas. Jacob of Serugh: Select Festal Homilies, Rome/Bangalore: Centre for Indian and Inter4

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available mêmrê and Mar Jacob’s published letters, 11 scholars have studied his theology very carefully, 12 especially his Christology, 13 in an effort to determine more exactly his position on the controversial topics that during and soon after his time would become seriously church-dividing issues. Nevertheless, although in both his mêmrê and in his letters, Mar Jacob showed a great sensitivity to contemplative themes and to the exigencies of monastic life, hardly any scholarly attention has been paid to his two mêmrê, ‘On the Singles’, or to the advice he offers monks in his letters. It is the purpose of the present essay to discuss the structure and themes of the two mêmrê ‘On the Singles’ and then briefly to assess the significance of his thought in the light of the evolving history of monastic theory and practice in the Syriacspeaking milieu at the turn of the sixth century.

II. MAR JACOB AND THE ‘SINGLES’ IN GOD’S SERVICE Mar Jacob’s two mêmrê “On the Singles” (‘al îḥîdōyê) have long been published, one after the other in Bedjan’s edition of selected mêmrê attributed to the famous author. 14 Like the others in the collection, these two are presented in Mar Jacob’s signature meter of twelve syllables per half-line of verse. The verses follow one another sequentially, with no further textual division in evidence, save the editor’s paragraph indentations. It seems evident in the forms of religious Studies & Dharmaram Publications, 1997; idem, Salvation in Christ according to Jacob of Serugh: An Exegetico-Theological Study on the Homilies of Jacob of Serugh (451–521 AD) on the Feast of Our Lord, Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2001. 11 Olinder, G., ed. Iacobi Serughensis Epistulae Quotquot Supersunt, CSCO, 110, Paris: E Typographeo Reipublicae, 1932. 12 See especially Bou Mansour, Tanios. La théologie de Jacques de Saroug, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de l’Université Saint-Esprit, 16 & 40, Kaslik, Lebanon: L’Université Saint-Esprit, 1993 & 2000. 13 See Bou Mansour, Tanios. “Die Christologie des Jakob von Serugh,” In Grillmeier, Alois. Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche, vol. 2/3, Die Kirchen fon Jerusalem und Antiochien nach 451 bis 600, 449–99, ed. Theresia Hainthaler, Freiburg: Herder, 2002. 14 Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 818–71, nos. 137 & 138.

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address he employs, that Mar Jacob’s audience was a congregation of îḥîdōyê; he addresses them in the second persons, both singular and plural, and in the imperative, sometimes adding an epithet such as ‘O mortals’, ‘O disciples’, ‘Brothers’ or ‘O discerning one’. Otherwise, there are no more definite indications of who the îḥîdōyê might have been. In all likelihood, they, like Mar Jacob himself, lived in the environs of Ḥawrā, and perhaps they were monks of the monastery of Mar Bassus, to whom Mar Jacob addressed several of his important letters; perhaps they were îḥîdōyê living independently or in small groups throughout the community. Mar Jacob also wrote letters to a number of monks and solitaries, as we shall see whose whereabouts are now unknown, so nothing very definite can be said about the addressees of the mêmrê; perhaps Mar Jacob presented them on a number of occasions. We may the most usefully study them one by one. But first a reflection on the meaning of the term îḥîdōyô is in order. It is the only one of the Syriac ‘monastic’ terms that Mar Jacob uses in the two mêmrê under discussion, no where in them do we find other terms like bar qyōmô, dayrōyô or abîlô. For Mar Jacob, îḥîdōyô means ‘single one’ or ‘solitary’. In mêmrô 138 he reflects on the term at some length; he says: See that the one who is îḥîdōyô is alone; he manages himself as he wills, in whatever he wills. For he has no one to subjugate and manage him; whatever he wills, he does without hindrance. Whoever is in ‘ûmrô, is under subjugation and coercion; he does not do what he wills among many [other people]. The work of one who subjects himself to his brothers is one thing; another is that of one who manages himself in everything he wills. It befits the one who is îḥîdōyô, O prudent man (pōrûshô), to look to see how many vexations of the world he is far from. Let him consider the circumstances he is in, like a wise man, and let him take heart and rejoice in the labor of his own way. Instead of the pain and the sorrow of heart that would afflict him,

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SIDNEY H. GRIFFITH it behooves him to rejoice and to come to the end of his way in perfection (bagmîrûtô). Let him put the Lord ever before him as a mirror, and he will not tremble, either from pain or sorrow. 15

Here we see that Mar Jacob is speaking of îḥîdōyô as one who is not only ‘single’, in the sense that he is not married, but he is also ‘solitary’, in that he does not live in a communal dwelling (‘ûmrô), nor is he subject to many ‘brothers’. He keeps his Lord before him as a mirror, the îḥîdōyô of the Father, as the traditional language of Syrian ascetical life has it. 16 His use of the term îḥîdōyô, as we find it in the two mêmrê ‘On the Singles’, does not on the face of it, as we shall see, necessarily exclude any reference to a community of îḥîdōyê, but it does seem that he is not addressing a community of cenobites, as later monastic terminology would describe a group of brothers living in common. Rather, the îḥîdōyê to whom Mar Jacob addressed his two mêmrê seem literally to have lived by themselves as ‘singles’ in God’s service; they were hermits. A—Mêmrô 137: ‘On the Singles’— Two themes dominate Mar Jacob’s first mêmrô: a prolonged reflection on the deleterious role of ‘anxiousness’ or ‘anxiety’ (septô) about the things of this world in the lives of the îḥîdōyê, and an exhortation to the ‘solitaries’ to take a lesson from the fate of Lot’s wife, who, as she was leaving Sodom on the brink of destruction, according to the scripture narrative, she could not keep herself from turning back for a last look at her vanishing world (Genesis 19:26). On the face of it, the mêmrô exhorts the îḥîdōyê to avoid undue attachment to this world and to its wealth. From the insistent tone of the language and the constant admonition to resist being anxious about it, the reader gets the distinct impression that anxiety about the goods of this world was a major obstacle to Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 861–2, ll. 255–72. See in this connection Griffith, Sidney H. “Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism,” in Wimbush, V., and R. Valantasis, eds. Asceticism, 220–45, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 15 16

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spiritual growth and development among the îḥîdōyê of Mar Jacob’s time. He develops his extended admonition in two very effective ways: Mar Jacob very adroitly applies the lesson to be learned from his selected passages from the Holy Gospel to the concrete situation of the lives of the îḥîdōyê; and he encourages them in a literary style that is concrete, uplifting and striking in its beauty of expression. Due to the limitations of time and space we may here give just one example of this literary grace, at the same time concrete and beautifully expressed. Having made the point that for the îḥîdōyô, life, and he means eternal life as well as life here on earth, is hidden in God, Mar Jacob compares the situation to that of the fish in the sea. In a beautifully crafted passage he writes: For you, life is hidden and preserved in God; enter in to bring forth for yourself from Him life without end. A breath of water keeps the fish alive, but if he comes out, onto the dry land, he crosses the boundary of what gives him life. The life-giving spirit is to be found in the Son of God; he suffices for the human race, for whomever issues from it. Swim in him spiritually, as in the great sea; if you pass beyond him, there is woeful death. Breathe him in and live; only in him will you come alive. let him be your water and in him you be the fish that takes in life. The spirit of this world exhales death into one who breathes it in, for it rouses the desire that pants bodily. 17

In addition to the extended metaphor, one notices the focus on the Son of God, the single one, who suffices for the human race, the very one whose title the îḥîdōyô bears. And as Mar Jacob develops his homily, it is this same Lord, Mar Jacob points out, who gave his disciples the commandment, “Do not be anxious.” (Matthew 6:25):

17

Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 819–20, ll. 15–21.

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SIDNEY H. GRIFFITH Our Lord trod the Way beyond death for his apostles, and this is what he says, “Do not be anxious,” lest you drown. 18

From this point in his mêmrô, Mar Jacob carries on for almost fifty verses with a meditative reading of the whole passage in Matthew 6: 25–34, weaving into his verses the very words in which our Lord speaks of the lilies of the field, how they neither toil nor spin, yet not even Solomon in all his glory, nor any other earthly king, is arrayed like one of these. Then he states very clearly the main point of his homily to the îḥîdōyê: Poverty is the whole beauty of the îḥîdōyô, if he gets rich, he is diminished and his beauty is no more. 19

For Mar Jacob, an ‘empty purse’, as he puts it, is the sign of the one with whom the Messiah lodges. He states his advice bluntly to the îḥîdōyê who are anxious for tomorrow, what they will eat, what they will wear: He buys or he sells; with a cord whip our Lord will drive him out of the number of the îḥîdōyê. 20

The love of this world and its goods and beauties is the root of the problem, Mar Jacob says: The love of this world blinds men and they cannot see those hidden beauties that are in the new world. 21

The ‘hidden beauty’ as Mar Jacob conceives of it is the very ‘being’ (îtûtô), the ‘to be’, the to einai of God. He says: If the soul is buffeted by anxiety, its understanding is darkened; so it grows dim and it does not see the light that is above. The soul looks up; it is opened wide to receive great wealth from the being that is never disturbed. Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 821, l. 30. Ibid., 825, l. 75. 20 Ibid., l. 79. 21 Ibid., 827, l. 95. 18 19

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It lifts up its gaze from this world; the waves briskly snatch at it. It takes in the shining splendor of the Father in all His spiritual beauty. As the mind is not gazing on this world and what belongs to it, it takes its rest up above, where the Trinity abides. ... When the soul is gazing on God, it is full of light; if turns to look back on this world, darkness encompasses it. 22

Taking his cue from the possibility that the soul would give in to the temptation to turn back to the world, in the last part of his first mêmrô to the îḥîdōyê Mar Jacob presents a long meditation on our Lord’s admonition to his disciples regarding the end of the age, to “Remember Lot’s wife.” (Lk 17:32) As Mar Jacob puts it, When she left, her heart remained with her home in Sodom; On that account she too stayed there to become a parable. 23 ... She became a parable for the îḥîdōyê, the sons of the kingdom, so that they might be mindful of her and not be caught up in created things. 24

According to the biblical story, when he fled from Sodom, Lot asked God if he might not escape to the nearby small town of Zo’ar and God granted him his request. (Genesis 19:20–3) Mar Jacob makes use of this part of the story too, and he says to the îḥîdōyê: May Zo’ar be a quiet abode for you; flee to it as from a fire, from the evils of an evil world. Sodom was great, and Zo’ar was very small, but life was to be found in Zo’ar, the righteous. The world is large and the abode (‛ûmrô) of the îḥîdōyê is small, but life for the soul is to be found in it for the one who loves it. 25 Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 827 & 829, ll. 92–100, 113. Ibid., 829, l. 118. 24 Ibid., 831, l. 138. 22 23

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Against the background of this biblical typology, Mar Jacob goes on to say to the ‘singles,’ You, O disciple, who have gone out after new life, choose a place for yourself, and live spiritually like Lot. If it becomes a place that is beautiful and full of death, abandon it like Lot did Sodom when he fled. If a hollow cave becomes available to you, and it can sustain you alive, flee to it; you will come to love its silent abode. 26

As for what the îḥîdōyê would be doing all day in their ‘silent abode’, Mar Jacob gives the following description: The prophets, who spoke about hidden things are the subjects of your study, The apostles, who proclaimed the revelation, are your common companions. All day you are delighted with the Psalms of the Spirit, with David’s sweet lyre, which will give you increase. Your life is woven onto the divine doctrines, and your soul will browse in the spiritual paradise of life. 27

The two most prominent themes in this first mêmrô ‘On the Singles’, Mar Jacob’s encouragement to the solitary to avoid anxiety about money and his warning about the dangers of looking back to the world from which the solitary had fled, suggest that during the last years of the fifth century and the first decades of the sixth, the ascetic lifestyle had become so common a feature of church life in Syria that the temptations of worldly ambition could readily affect those pursuing it. As we shall see below, it was indeed a time when the interests of both the church and the empire had become much intertwined and monks and monasteries would play a major role in the tumultuous controversies that already in Mar Jacob’s lifetime were beginning to produce permanent divisions in the SyriacBedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 832, ll. 145–7. Ibid., 833, ll. 156–8. 27 Ibid., 834, ll. 165–7; ‘spiritual paradise’ < pardîsô mlîlô, more literally, a paradise of well and truly spoken mysteries, i.e., the true doctrines. 25 26

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speaking churches. It was also a cosmopolitan time, when, as we shall discuss further below, Syriac translations were being made of Palestinian and Egyptian monastic texts that were originally written in Greek. Their influence is readily evident in the long, second mêmrô that Mar Jacob wrote ‘On the Singles’. B—Mêmrô 138 ‘On the Singles’— Mar Jacob’s second mêmrô, complete in three hundred and eighty one lines of homiletic verse, is just over twice as long as the first mêmrô. And while it retains the hortatory tones of the homily, it is in fact virtually a manual of ascetical and mystical theology for the îḥîdōyê, written in what is unmistakably an Evagrian tenor, with multiple echoes of the teaching in Evagrius of Pontus’ (346–399) popular treatise, De Oratione. Mar Jacob begins by evoking the scenario of the constant battle that Satan wages with the îḥîdōyê in their quiet, desert solitude (shelyô wṣedyô) and he says of the Evil One, At all hours he rouses all kinds of thoughts (ḥushōbê) in the îḥīdōyô; he does battle with him within his heart and cuts him apart. 28

Mar Jacob says that the Evil One constantly bedevils the îḥîdōyô with “visions of images (ḥezwōnê ddemwōn demwōn).” Mar Jacob cites in particular ‘lassitude’ (ma’înûô) and ‘depression’ (karyût lebbô) as the besetting ‘passions’ (ḥashshê) with which Satan encumbers the îḥîdōyê. He says, The Evil One perpetually casts lassitude upon the îḥîdōyê and they are weakened by it in their struggles. And when depression enters into the mind, it begins to suffer without knowing why it suffers. 29

In addition to the ‘lassitude’ and ‘depression’ with which Satan troubles the ‘singles’, and to which Mar Jacob gives a lot of attention, he also mentions the carnal passions (rgîgōtô kyōnōtô) that 28 29

Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 836, l. 3. Ibid., 837, ll. 11–2.

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afflict them. The bulk of the mêmrô is devoted to reflections on the pervasive struggle with these passions and the recommendation of effective methods to counter them. We may best get a sense of how Mar Jacob deals with these matters by pausing at several of the more powerful passages in which he addresses them. They are on the order of set-pieces within the long accompanying text that provides their immediate frame of reference. Mar Jacob proposes that thinking about one’s own death might serve as an effective weapon against depression and lassitude. He says: Look always to the day of your demise, and you will be delivered from the thought of depression and lassitude. Always mark out before you your own death and you will overcome pain, grief, listlessness and depression. O prudent man, with these weapons and struggles fight lassitude and you will overcome. For there is nothing that brings this passion to nought, like always thinking of your own death in every season.30

Always adept at finding scriptural images to inspire the advice he gives to monks and solitaries, particularly from the Psalms, uniquely the monk’s prayer book, Mar Jacob likens the tempting ‘thoughts’ of the passions to the daughter of Babylon’s ‘babies’, who, according to Psalm 137:8–9, were to be bashed against a rock. Mar Jacob wrote: All thoughts will stir in your heart at all seasons; dash everyone of them instantly against the rock, so there will come true for you, “Blessed is he who would lay hold of your infants and dash them against the rock.” (Ps. 137:9) For the infants are the thoughts that are within your heart, and what will dash them is human freedom; it will trample them. 30

Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 842–3, ll. 66–9.

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At the beginning of its way the infant is small and its strength is small; so too the thought, at its beginning it is weak and easily crushed. Even a thorn, at the start of its growth is easy to root out, but if it grows up, it will hurt everyone who comes near. So too thoughts, when they are first aroused; they are easily trampled, but if they continue, they gain power. 31

Echoing an old monastic theme, Mar Jacob likened the life of the solitary in the Christian church to that of the angels, a way of life that in the human estate required steadfast renunciation (sûrōqô) to maintain, an exercise that Mar Jacob encouraged, recalling his constant admonition to the monk to abandon the world. He wrote: The solitary (îḥîdōyô) is like an angel, albeit he is bodily; his company is with God day and night. By means of renunciation his spiritual practice is united with that of the spiritual beings, if the fact is that he is not possessed of anything of the world, to which he would be bound. 32

The advice that Mar Jacob gives the solitary for the extirpation of vices echoes that of the ancient fathers of the Egyptian desert. For example, Evagrius Ponticus, seemingly borrowing the image from Aristotle, offered the homely advice that one might use a nail to remove a nail, meaning that one might use one vice to remove another vice. Evagrius gives the example of cultivating the demon of vain glory as a means of opposing the demon of fornication on the grounds that the two are incompatible with one another. 33 Mar Jacob replaced the nail with the thorn and puts his advice this way: Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 845, ll. 90–4. Ibid., 849–50, ll. 138–9. 33 See Guillaumont, Antoine, and Claire Guillaumont, eds. and trans. Évagre le Pontique: traité pratique ou le moine, 2 vols., Sources Chrétiennes, 170 & 171, Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1971, no. 171, vol. II, 637–9, no. 58. 31 32

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SIDNEY H. GRIFFITH With a thorn, one draws out a thorn from his body; so too O prudent man overcome one passion with its counterpart. 34

By its counterpart, Mar Jacob means that one extirpates one vice by the dangerous practice of cultivating another one, antithetical to it, just as Evagrius had proposed. In one example among the several options he provides, Mar Jacob says, When the passions of depression are roused in you, to sully you, think of how your stature is high above many and take heart. 35

Throughout this long mêmrô, Mar Jacob speaks constantly of the ‘thoughts’ (ḥushōbê), the passions of anxiety (ṣeptô), depression (‘ōqtô), sadness (karyût lebbô), and listlessness (ma’înûtô) as besetting vices for the solitaries, once again evoking the memory of Evagrius of Pontus’ concerns about the demon of sadness, and especially the demon of listlessness (akēdia). 36 Here is what Mar Jacob says about how such listlessness affects the solitary’s reading; he may even have the scriptures in mind. He says, When the solitary takes up a book (ktōbô) to read, he brings on listlessness and sleep and brings it to nought. The minute depression comes over his mind, he stops reading and begins to count all the pages. He sees the many pages that are in the book and he is irked; he begins to count, to see when he will finish with them. Straight away he begins to yawn because of his depression; it brings sleep upon him, coming at its command. The Evil One brings on dreamy sleep, suspended just above the eyes; they grow heavy with it and bring heavy sleep down on him. Listlessness binds a man in chains; he removes them with the labor of righteousness. 37

Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 853, l. 170. Ibid., l. 173. 36 See Guillaumont, Évagre le Pontique: traité pratique, vol. II, 520–7. 37 Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 854–5, ll. 187–92. 34 35

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Passing on from this masterful portrayal of the Evagrian logismos of akêdia, ma’înûtô, ‘listlessness’, Mar Jacob points out that the solitary must wrestle with all the passions constantly, as they really are. And he advises him to set before his mind’s eye the image of those who had achieved perfection before him “in the work of the solitaries,” the biblical figures, Elijah and John the Baptist in particular. It is almost as if Mar Jacob had a physical icon of these saints in mind. Echoing a favorite image of his spiritual forefather Saint Ephraem, 38 Jacob calls up the image of the imagemaker. He says, The painter always sets up a fair likeness before him; he paints from it and with its colors makes a likeness of his own. He never brings a defective image to set up before him; he would look at and make a likeness of a fair one, not a poor one. You too, O prudent man, look to and consider those higher than you, and strive to emulate them as much as you can. Take as a likeness, my brothers, the prophets inscribed in the Apostle, their endurance of adversity; emulate them. Do not look at those who have fallen and are sunk in this evil world, but those who have overcome by means of their exercises. 39

Mar Jacob commends the standard spiritual exercises to the solitaries; he speaks of fasting, of the importance of seeking a ‘word’ from one’s spiritual father, especially from Jesus himself in the Gospel, and most especially the admonition, “Do not be anxious ...” (Mt. 6:25–31). The solitary is called to carry on his See Griffith, Sidney H. “The Image of the Image Maker in the Poetry of St. Ephraem the Syrian,” Studia Patristica 25 (1993): 258–69. For the Evagrian connection, see Darling Young, Robin. “Evagrius the Iconographer: Monastic Pedagogy in the Gnostikos,” The Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001): 53–71. 39 Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 855–6, ll. 200–4. 38

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exercises in quiet tranquility, to “rejoice happily within your own mind,” 40 “in tranquility of soul and converse with God.” 41 The goal of the solitary’s life is to hear the word of his Lord, “Well done, good and faithful servant; ... enter into the joy of your master.” (Mt. 25:21) Mar Jacob puts it this way: Look forward to hearing this phrase from the King’s son, “Enter and rejoice, good servant, into the bridal chamber of light.” 42

Here and in the other places toward the end of the mêmrô, where he speaks of the ‘bridal chamber of life’, as in the phrases, “The just will enter in to rejoice in the bridal chamber of life,” 43 and “Your heritage is the kingdom on high, the bridal chamber of life,” 44 Mar Jacob is once again echoing the thought of his spiritual ancestor, Saint Ephraem, who, especially in his madrōshê ‘On Paradise’, 45 had depicted the consummate happiness of the just in the garden of Paradise in the symbol of marital bliss in the ‘bridal chamber’, a theme that subsequently came to permeate the Syriac liturgical tradition as the best metaphor for the Kingdom of Heaven. 46 At several points in the course of the mêmrô, again echoing a concern of St. Ephraem, Mar Jacob had emphasized the point that the spiritual exercises of the solitary are actions of his free will: “The will is the one that overcomes or goes down in defeat.” 47 At the end, he warns the solitary,

Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 864, l. 298. Ibid., 865, l. 309. 42 Ibid., 868, l. 341. 43 Ibid., 867, l. 326. 44 Ibid., 869, l. 347. 45 See esp. Beck, Edmund. Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Paradiso und contra Julianum, CSCO, 174 & 175, Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO, 1957, VII:15 & 24; XIII:10. 46 See Brock, Sebastian. “The Bridal Chamber of Light: A Distinctive Feature of the Syriac Liturgical Tradition,” The Harp 18 (2005): 179–91. 47 Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 856, l. 209. 40 41

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Do not ever let yourself be moved by visions of fantasy; for the power of the Evil One is naught before freedom. He cannot force or drive it by constraint, But only by adulation does he do battle, and flattery. 48

III. MAR JACOB AND SYRIAN MONASTICISM Jacob of Serugh lived at a time when members of the burgeoning, Syriac-speaking monastic movement were importing the classics of Egyptian monasticism and the ideas and works of other influential spiritual writers in Greek, such as Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330 – c. 395), into their own traditional discourse concerning those who occupied a special station in the ascetical and mystical life of the church, the so-called ‘sons’ or ‘daughters of the covenant’, the ‘single ones’ in God’s service, the monks (dayrōroyê). 49 A number of Syriac texts from the period stretching between the late fourth century and the beginning of the seventh century reflect the efflorescence of a distinctively Syrian style of monastic life. 50 Many of the texts interweave the traditional vocabulary of the ‘Sons of the Covenant’ with the anachoretic experience of those who followed the way of Abraham Qîdûnōyô or of Julian Saba and their disciples. 51 These are texts variously attributed in the manuscripts Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, vol. IV, 869, ll. 351–2. See Griffith, Sidney H. “Monks, ‘Singles’, and the ‘Sons of the Covenant’: Reflections on Syriac Ascetic Terminology,” in Carr, E., et al., eds. Eulogēma: Studies in Honor of RobertTaft, S.J., 141–60, Studia Anselmiana, 110, Roma: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 1993. 50 See Escolan, Philippe. Monachisme et église: Le monachisme syrien du Ive au VIIe siècle; un ministère charismatique, Théologie Historique, 109, Paris: Beauchesne, 1999. 51 See Griffith, Sidney H. “Julian Saba, ‘Father of the Monks’ of Syria,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 185–216; idem, “Abraham Qîdûnāyâ, St. Ephraem the Syrian and Early Monasticism in the SyriacSpeaking World,” in Bielawski, Maciej, and Daniel Hombergen, eds. Il Monachesimo tra Eredità e Aperture: Atti del Simposio “Testi e Temi nella Tradizione del Monachesimo Cristiano” per il 50. Anniversario dell’Istituto Monastico di Sant Anselmo, Roma, 28 maggio – 1 giugno 2002, 239–64, Studia Anselmiana, 140, Roma: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 2004. 48 49

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to St. Ephraem and to Isaac of Antioch (d.c. 460). They go under such evocative titles as “Letter to the Mountaineers,” “Mêmrê on anchorites, mourners, and hermits,” or simply “On the îḥîdāyê.” 52 By the early sixth century, a number of significant texts from the Egyptian monastic experience were circulating in Syriac translation, including the Vita Antonii, 53 St. Antony’s first letter, 54 and a body of other material containing works of Evagrius of Pontus, the letters of Antony’s disciple Ammonas, and texts attributed to Macarius the Great, as well as Syriac translations of Palladius’ Lausiac History.. This is the very era in which Philoxenus of Mabbug (c. 440–523) and other Syrian Orthodox scholars were actively engaged in the effort to infuse the classical Greek monastic texts into the Syrian experience. 55 Perhaps the high-water mark of this monastic translation movement in Syriac was achieved in the seventh century, with the publication of the Paradise of the Fathers, a compilation of the classics of Egyptian desert spirituality in Syriac translation by the Church of the East monk, ‘Enānîshô‛ (fl.c. 630– 670) of the monastery of Mount Izla, near Nisibis.. It included, among others, translations of the Vita Antonii, Palladius’ Lausiac History, the rule of Pachomius, i.e., the Asketikon, Jerome’s Historia

These texts were much discussed and wrongly attributed to Saint Ephraem by Vööbus, Arthur. History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, CSCO, 184, Louvain: Peeters, 1958. See now Mathews, E. “‘On Solitaries’: Ephraem or Isaac?” Le Muséon 103 (1990): 91–110. See also idem, “A Bibliographical Clavis to the Corpus of Works attributed to Isaac of Antioch,” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 5, no. 1, (January, 2002). 53 See Draguet, R. La vie primitive de s. Antoine conserve en syriaque, CSCO, 417 & 418, Louvain: Peeters, 1980. 54 See Rubenson, Samuel. The Letters of St. Antony: Origenist Theology, Monastic Tradition and the Making of a Saint, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1995. 55 See Darling Young, Robin. “The Influence of Evagrius of Pontus on the Monastic Writings of Philoxenos of Mabbug,” in Young, R.D., and M.J. Blanchard, eds. To Train His Spirit with Books”: Studies in Syrian Asceticism, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, to appear. 52

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Monachorum, and the Apopthegmata Patrum. 56 Meanwhile, under the impetus of these translated texts, a long and wondrous tradition of east Syrian ascetical and mystical writing got underway. 57 Our brief reading of Mar Jacob of Serugh’s mêmrê ‘On the Singles’, assuming their authenticity, with their marked Evagrian thought and language, reveals his familiarity with themes dear to his contemporary, Philoxenus of Mabbug (c. 440–523), another Syrian Orthodox writer whose monastic texts are suffused with Evagrius’ thought. Indeed, Philoxenus had a major role to play in the initial transmission of Evagrius’ works in Syriac translation. 58 Perhaps then we may see in Mar Jacob’s mêmrê not only the echo of earlier Syriac monastic lore, as has previously been assumed, 59 but an expression, in the ordinary monastic milieu in Syria, of the early enthusiasm for the mystical thought that would come to full flower not long after his time in the classic texts of Syrian asceticism and mysticism.

The work has long circulated in the English translation of Wallis Budge, E.A. The Paradise, or Garden of the Holy Fathers, 2 vols., London: Chatto & Windus, 1907. 57 See esp. Beulay, Robert. La lumière sans forme: Introduction a l’étude de la mystique chrétienne syro-orientale, Chevtogne, Belgium: Éditions de Chevetogne, 1987. 58 See Guillaumont, Antoine. Les ‘Kephalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’origénisme chez les grecs et chez les syriens, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962; Guillaumont, Antoine & Claire. “Evagre,” in Viller, M., et al, eds. Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, 20 vols., Paris: Beauchesne, 1937–95, vol. IV, cols. 1731–44; Watt, J.W. “Philoxenus and Evagrius,” Oriens Christianus 64 (1980): 65–81. 59 E.g., in Griffith, “Asceticism in the Church of Syria,” 238. 56