Nilus of Ancyra and the Promotion of a Monastic Elite

Abstract

Among the new elites that emerged in late antiquity, none so consciously defined and postured itself against traditional markers of elite status in the Roman world (e.g., family, wealth, education, civil or military service) than the monastic movement. By the late fourth century, its most outstanding members were identified with those few who had expressed their renunciation of the “world” and its trappings by withdrawing to the far desert or countryside. Such new “philosophers” of Christian culture were presented to ordinary Christians as proof that it was possible to disentangle oneself from the web of competitive relationships and hierarchical concerns found elsewhere in late Roman society. 2 Early hagiography gives the impression that the only care dogging these monks in their alternative, monastic world was eluding the visitations, solicitations, and flatteries constantly thrust on them by pursuing admirers. 3 This was, ideally, a reluctant elite, whose members best drew attention to themselves through the measures they took to evade that status. In reality, of course, the early monastic world was notoriously competitive. From the torturous one-upmanship of Symeon Stylites at Teleda and Telanissos to the “theatrical one-downmanship” of monks in the Egyptian