The abundant surviving evidence relating to the cult of Symeon the Younger sheds light not only on the life of the stylite himself but also on wider developments in holiness in the sixth and seventh centuries. Symeon lived through a critical period in the history of the Antiochene region. Although the source material does not allow a full reconstruction of the social and economic situation in the area, it does suggest that the city and its environs were experiencing considerable hardships and tensions, tensions which were often expressed in religious terms but may well have reflected other social and political concerns. In this environment, Symeon appears to have carved out a role for himself as a figure of religious authority, in the face of considerable opposition. The sermon collection attributed to him suggests that this authority rested in large part on his claims to be the recipient of divine visions. He used this prophetic voice to make bold social statements, capitalizing on divisions between the rich and the poor, and on fears of paganism, to draw stark lines between the wicked and the pious in Antiochene society. His focus on the end of the world, echoing wider eschatological trends in contemporary thought, lent his message greater urgency. Although the sermons themselves give no sign of the responses they evoked in their audience, their often harsh and aggressive language suggests that their speaker was a polemical figure who could have proved highly controversial.
The Life of Symeon the Younger confirms that the saint’s position was hotly contested, both from within his monastery and by various sections of society at large. The hagiographer often veils the details of this opposition but reveals enough to show that it was crystallized and exacerbated in the context of external crisis. The Life is highly apologetic and polemical, and again seems to exploit social tensions in the city of Antioch; in particular, the hagiographer makes scapegoats for disaster out of the local elite, blaming their alleged adherence to paganism for God’s implacable wrath against Antioch. In the Life, Symeon’s mother, Martha, plays only a small role, but in the years after the stylite’s death she came to be revered as a miracle-working saint in her own right. Her Life is very different in structure, tone, and content from that of the stylite; in terms of the controversies of Symeon’s career, it adopts a more irenic approach, eschewing the polemic which is so predominant in the earlier text, and instead showing Martha urging Symeon to forgive his sceptics. The hagiographer makes no extravagant claims about Martha’s miracle-working powers; unlike Symeon, she is not expected to defend Antioch from earthquake or invasion, but only to heal individual supplicants who have turned to her shrine and performed the required rites. These Lives seem to exemplify two divergent ways of reacting to the crisis in holiness engendered by natural and military disasters in this period: the one adopts a direct, confrontational approach, using socially charged polemic to exculpate the saint for his failure to prevent disaster, while the other reveals a reorientation of expectations and priorities, as well as a reinterpretation of the process of the miracle that places the responsibility for its success onto the supplicant. Parallels to both these approaches can be found in other contemporary saints’ Lives and miracle collections.
All of this material has broader implications for our understandings of late antique holy men and hagiography. First, it highlights the difficulties for a holy man in establishing his position, particularly in a period when the performance of miracles was considered to be an integral part of sanctity. In Symeon’s case, these difficulties were increased by the severe disasters that afflicted Antioch during his lifetime. Crises undoubtedly laid bare the occasional powerlessness of holy men and other intercessors, as indicated by a story in the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos:
Scythopolis was the second city of Palestine. There I met Abba Anastasios who told us about Abba George the recluse: One night I got up…and I heard an elder weeping. I went and entreated him, saying, ‘Abba, what is the matter, sir, that you weep so?’ He answered me not a word. So I asked him again, ‘Tell me the cause .’ Sighing from the depths of his heart, he said to me, ‘How should I not weep, seeing that our Lord is not willing to be placated on our account? I thought I stood before one who sat on a high throne, my child. Around him were several tens of thousands who besought and entreated him concerning a certain matter, but he would not be persuaded. Then a woman clothed in purple raiment came and fell down before him, saying, “Please, for my sake, grant this request,” but he remained equally unmoved. That is why I weep and groan, for I am afraid of what is going to happen to me.’ He said this to me at first light on the Thursday. The next day, Friday, about the ninth hour, there was a severe earthquake which overthrew the cities of the Phoenician coast.1
Abba George’s account suggests that not only holy men, but even the Virgin Mary herself (surely the woman dressed in purple), could not always dissuade God from inflicting disasters on the earth. No story could more clearly display the failure of intercession in the face of God’s implacable wrath.
But the position of the saint was not only difficult in times of exceptional crisis. Symeon’s Life also reveals the more basic problem, applicable to almost any holy man, of managing potentially high expectations. For someone who claimed to have miraculous powers—or whose supporters claimed had miraculous powers—sanctity could be a burden as much as an opportunity. Claims to have a special relationship with God needed to be constantly reaffirmed and could easily be challenged by failure. The everyday difficulties of maintaining a reputation for holiness are illustrated particularly clearly in the letters of the sixth-century Palestinian holy men Barsanouphios and John. The two monks had to reply to various correspondents seeking explanations as to why the holy men’s prophecies and prayers seemed to have failed. John, for instance, was asked:
I sometimes happen to ask the fathers about the crops in my field, whether they will be good; or I may even have an enemy, and so I happen to ask about him, whether he is able to harm me. And the fathers respond that my crops will be good and that my enemy will not harm me. Then, however, my crops fail and my enemy is about to harm me; so what should I believe? And if I find that my thought becomes slackened in its faith because it thinks things have gone differently than expected, how can I revoke it and establish it again?2
John also had to explain why his prayers to save the life of the abbot of their monastery, Seridos, had not been successful, and why the saints’ requests to God are not always granted.3
One particularly noteworthy exchange started with a question from a layman, who asked John whether his slave, who had recently been bitten by a dog, was going to die.4 John’s response seemed clear: ‘there is nothing wrong with him. Do not be afraid. Rather, try to think of what is written: “Not a sparrow falls into a trap apart from your Father who is in heaven.”’5 The layman, we are told, assumed on the basis of this response that his slave would survive, but, in fact, he died two days later. In confusion, the layman asked John whether the slave was really dead. John confirmed that he had died, which prompted the man to ask why he had said that there was nothing wrong with him. The holy man replied that he had meant that there was nothing wrong with death from God, and added that his biblical citation had been intended to suggest that the slave would die. The layman’s response, according to the surviving account, was brief: ‘then, why was your answer so unclear?’6 John replied that this should not have surprised him, ‘for one should not always speak clearly about such things, since they are harmful and of no benefit to the person speaking’; he claimed that this was how Christ taught his disciples to speak.7 The end of his response implies the condemnation of anyone who did not accept his words, suggesting that the saints benefit from the criticism of their impious sceptics: ‘now for those who are faithful, these things are for their understanding and benefit; however, for those who are not faithful, they are for our benefit through their scorn.’8 If the layman replied to this, his response is not recorded.
At the very least, this exchange of letters proves that the expectations of a holy man and his supplicant did not always correspond neatly. John had failed to provide the straightforward guidance that the layman sought. Even if it cannot be proved, it is tempting to suggest that John was forced to reinterpret his initial response after events had turned out differently from how he had expected; certainly, he seems to have used ambiguity deliberately to avoid a difficult situation. We cannot know, unfortunately, whether the layperson accepted John’s justification, or if the holy man lost a devotee through this disappointment. But the exchange certainly reveals some of the possible pitfalls in store for those who professed to possess, or were believed to possess, any kind of miraculous powers.
An episode recounted in the Acts of the Third Council of Constantinople (680–1) brings out still more clearly the potential embarrassment caused by the failure to perform miracles. During the fifteenth session of the synod, a monk, Polychronios, declared that he would resurrect a corpse to prove the validity of his monothelite beliefs. The synod produced a corpse and decided that the demonstration should take place outside, so that it could be witnessed by the crowds. Polychronios, we are told, tried for many hours to awaken the corpse, with no success; the crowd, and the synod, then anathematized him as a heretic.9 This episode is, of course, recounted in an anti-monothelite source, and the dispute revolved around Christology, rather than the perhaps simpler question of whether Polychronios was a holy man. But it nonetheless provides a striking example of the dangers of claiming the ability to perform miracles, either through one’s own powers or through Christ.
The status of the holy man was thus more precarious than it might appear in some hagiography. Even apart from the opposition which they often faced from various groups, from members of the clergy to farmers, their position as miracle-workers was inherently delicate. This may go some way towards explaining why many holy men appear to have played divisive and confrontational roles within society, insisting on strict standards of morality and often heightening pressure on traditional victims of Christian intolerance such as Jews, pagans, and ‘heretics’.10 Such actions could serve to deflect attention from their own weaknesses, to denigrate their critics (whom they could associate with these religious ‘deviants’), and to increase their own authority, as they presented themselves as the champions of strict ethical standards, who often took a harsher line against religious or moral dissidents than did members of the establishment.
The precise implications of this behaviour were very different in different local contexts; in some situations, for instance, holy men’s intolerant words and actions seem to have had the support of local bishops, while in other areas they furthered conflict between the two.11 As we have seen, verbal or physical attacks could have a strong social dimension: thus both Symeon the Younger and Shenoute of Atripe used accusations of paganism to condemn the wealthy, perhaps in an attempt to shore up popular support against their opponents. Holy men’s persecuting efforts did not always, however, meet with popular enthusiasm: John of Ephesus records that when one miaphysite holy man, Sergios, burnt a synagogue, the local church members allied with the Jewish population to protest against his behaviour.12 This highlights again that holy men’s actions were not always accepted unquestioningly; indeed, it seems highly unlikely that Sergios was viewed as a holy man at all by the local Christian community (let alone, of course, by the Jews whom he targeted). His efforts to stir up intolerance in what appears, from John’s admittedly limited and highly partial account, to have been a relatively peaceful mixed community, thus serve as a powerful reminder both of the highly divisive behaviour of some holy men, and of the difficulties which they often faced in establishing their positions as sources of authority. This is not to suggest that all holy men always acted intolerantly, and certainly not to deny the validity, in some contexts, of Peter Brown’s brilliant work on holy men as arbiters and mediators. But it is to emphasize both that their positions could be based, at least in part, on aggressive and divisive behaviour, and that few gained such authority within their local communities that they could act as unquestioned mediators in all situations.
The fragility of the position of the holy man points towards wider unresolved tensions at the heart of Christianity itself. In particular, the natural and military disasters which proved so challenging to holy men also raised serious questions about theodicy. The standard Christian explanation as to why God inflicted disasters on his people—that it was a punishment for their sins—did not prove emotionally satisfying in all situations, particularly when it was demonstrably clear that these punishments did not distinguish between the good and the impious. Thus, as we have seen, Evagrios Scholastikos admitted to having heretical thoughts after the plague killed his children but spared those of a pagan neighbour.13 So too Symeon the Younger himself is said to have accused God of killing the just with the impious in Antioch.14 These examples are perhaps particularly striking because both are reported by unquestionably devout and orthodox Christians with close links to the Church. But other contemporaries, too, noticed flaws in this interpretation of catastrophe. The historian and lawyer Agathias, in his account of an earthquake in Constantinople in 557, records that only one noble, Anatolios, was killed. He reports that the common people claimed that this had been a fair punishment for his oppressive and wicked behaviour. Yet Agathias himself was not convinced by this argument:
Personally I should be extremely hesitant to advance any sort of explanation for such occurrences. Undoubtedly the earthquake would have been a very real boon if it had been able to distinguish the wicked from the good, causing the former to perish miserably and graciously sparing the latter. But even granted that Anatolius really was a wicked man there were countless others in the city no better or even worse than he was. Yet he was suddenly struck down whilst the others have remained unscathed. It is, therefore, no plain or easy matter, I think, to ascertain why of all men Anatolius was the only one to lose his life.15
The author goes on to discuss this theme in Platonist, rather than biblical terms, but his words show clearly that it was easy to find fault, on various grounds, with the view that disasters were punishments for the wicked. This was a theological problem with no easy solution, and one which gained far greater emotional resonance in times of crisis. Holy men were particularly vulnerable to criticism in the aftermath of disasters because of their uneasy and in many ways conceptually incoherent position as mediators between God and man, but the ideological challenge posed to Christians by catastrophe ran deeper than this.
It is generally agreed that the eastern Roman empire saw widespread ideological developments in the sixth and seventh centuries, of which the processes described in this book constitute only a small part. There is less consensus, however, on what role disasters played in causing these developments and, in particular, when the major changes in ideology took place and thus which disasters could have contributed to them. Mischa Meier has argued that the reign of Justinian already saw significant ideological developments, largely as a result of the natural and military crises of his rule, developments which included a crisis of confidence in holy men and the concomitant emergence of supplementary, and perhaps rival, sources of divine intercession such as the cult of Mary, mother of God, and icons. He is concerned to refute the idea that it was only in the later, post-Justinianic, decades of the sixth century that widespread ideological change took place.16 It is this later period on which Matthew Dal Santo focuses in his powerful study of scepticism towards saints’ cults: he argues that criticism of saints flourished from the last quarter of the sixth century onwards as a result both of the military, financial, and political tensions which developed after Justinian’s death and of the emperors’ increasing attempts to turn to the saints for legitimization.17 Others have focused on the military disasters of the seventh century as the major catalyst behind ideological crisis and reorientation.18 All of this relates to still wider debates about the state of the eastern empire in this period: those who view its economy and society as having continued to flourish until at least the seventh-century Persian conquests are less likely to accept that there was any kind of ideological crisis in the sixth century.
Two points are of particular relevance here, especially with respect to the question of hagiography and a possible crisis of confidence in holy men. The first is that crisis could strike different areas at different times; even regions in close geographical proximity could experience very different fates.19 As argued in the first chapter, Antioch and the countryside around it may well have experienced economic slowdown at a time when other regions of the empire, and indeed of Syria itself, remained prosperous. Consequently signs of tension and crisis could appear in sources from the Antiochene, like the Life of Symeon Stylites the Younger, before ideological crisis became widespread across the empire in the seventh century.
Yet the second point is perhaps more important: ideological crisis does not necessarily correlate directly to social and economic deprivation. As argued above, even if we can recognize that the long-term economic impact of plague, earthquakes, and invasions was not totally devastating, we should not neglect the testimony of the written sources as to their psychological effects on some contemporaries.20 Natural disasters could have historical impact upon ideologies and mentalities which was far greater than their economic effect, as shown by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.21 We should not discount the evidence from the Life of Nicholas of Sion that the plague caused severe hostility towards the holy man, purely because archaeological evidence suggests that Asia Minor remained generally prosperous throughout the late sixth century.22 Holy men were less responsible for the economic situation of their region than for their supplicants’ lives and health, and the plagues and earthquakes of the sixth century undoubtedly posed them significant challenges, to the extent that their hagiographers were forced to exculpate them in often confused and conflicting ways.
The polemical and apologetic nature of many saints’ Lives points, I believe, towards one way of approaching the formidable challenge of writing history from hagiography. It is unsurprising that some historians try to avoid the extensive use of hagiographical material; it certainly poses considerable difficulties and cannot answer all questions. Not all hagiographies are equally historically useful. Yet many hagiographic texts are undoubtedly anchored in some kind of social reality, even if this is not easy to uncover. The kinds of defensive tactics employed by Symeon the Younger’s hagiographer do not make sense in a vacuum; rather, they must be a response to real concerns and criticisms among wider society. It is thus possible to use hagiography for historical purposes by reading it ‘against the grain’, that is to say, by, rather than surrendering to the narrative flow of the text, seeking to understand the pressures which have caused the narrative to be structured as it is. Such a method of approaching hagiography opens a valuable window onto often-obscured religious and social trends, and into the ways in which people responded to changes and conflicts in society around them. Hagiography offers, in fact, more vivid insights than many types of sources traditionally valued by historians into contemporary debates and concerns, concerns which reached to the very heart of Christianity.
1 John Moschos, Spiritual Meadow 50 (col. 2905, trans. p. 41).
2 Barsanouphios and John, Letters 383 (II.I, p. 424, trans. II, p. 23).
3 Ibid. 599 (II.II, pp. 798–800); 778, a–d (III, pp. 224–32).
4 Ibid. 779–82 (III, pp. 232–6).
5 Ibid. 779 (ed. III, p. 232, trans. II, p. 285).
6 Ibid. (III, p. 234, trans. II, p. 286).
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid. (III, p. 236, trans. II, p. 286).
9 Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, ACO 2nd series, 2.2 (1992), Session 15, pp. 674–82.
10 See Gaddis 2005, chs 5–8.
11 For co-operation between holy men and bishops, see e.g. Syriac Life of Symeon (pp. 636–8), which reports that local bishops sought the stylite’s help in protesting against a new imperial policy of toleration towards Jews. The hagiographer could of course be exaggerating the bishops’ reliance on the stylite for panegyrical purposes. For opposition between the two, see e.g. Kallinikos, Life of Hypatios 32.12–16 (pp. 212–14); 33.4–11 (pp. 216–18), in which Hypatios’s opposition to Nestorios and to an attempt to reintroduce the Olympic Games were apparently resisted by bishop Eulalios of Chalcedon. These and comparable reports may well, of course, serve a polemical function rather than accurately reflecting reality.
12 John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints 5 (I, pp. 90–3).
13 Life of Symeon 233 (pp. 210–11); Evagrios Scholastikos, 6.23 (p. 239). See above p. 151.
14 See above p. 155.
15 Agathias, Histories 5.4.3–4 (pp. 168–9, trans. p. 139).
16 Meier 2003, passim, esp. pp. 642–3.
17 Dal Santo 2012, esp. pp. 321–35.
18 See e.g. Auzépy 1995; Haldon 1997, esp. chs 9 and 11.
19 On the diverse developments of even nearby settlements, see e.g. Horden and Purcell 2000, p. 53.
20 See above p. 32.
21 Braun and Radner 2005.
22 For a positive assessment of the economy of Asia Minor in this period (although one acknowledging that the plague may have caused a temporary ‘urban recession’), see Whittow 2001. Whittow’s positive view has been broadly accepted in recent scholarship, as in most of the articles in Jacobs and Elton 2019.