“Cloak, Tunic, Book, Cell”

Abstract

Abstract This chapter describes the second phase in the development of East Syrian contemplative reading, its theological definition in the works of Babai the Great, an abbot of the Great Monastery on Mt. Izla. In the early seventh century, Babai wrote three commentaries on the fourth-century author Evagrius of Pontus, an influential theorist of Egyptian asceticism. Babai sought to harmonize Egyptian and East Syrian ascetic theologies. His reinterpretation exemplifies Evagrius’ reception into Syriac monasticism (the so-called “Evagriana syriaca”). This chapter documents how Evagrian literature served as staple ascetic reading materials in seventh-century Mesopotamia. The textual structure of the Evagriana syriaca itself modeled and embodied a variety of ascetic reading practices including: commentary, antirrhetical reading, psalmody, and contemplative reading. Babai sought to promote these practices within a framework of spiritual progress inherited from John the Solitary and Evagrius. Babai taught monastic readers both how to read Evagrius and how to read in an Evagrian contemplative manner, that is, as a step toward the divine vision found in theoria (contemplation). Babai’s works reflect a growing separation between the literary cultures of school and monastery in the Church of the East. Contemplative readers, influenced by Babai and Evagrius, rejected forms of scholastic reading as incompatible with their pursuit of divine knowledge. The end result of this phase in the development of East Syrian contemplative reading was that monks in the Church of the East now claimed their own distinctly Evagrian purposes for reading. The “book” had joined the cloak and cell as monastic essentials.