Whether or not Philo Judaeus should be classified as a 'Pythagorean' or a 'Platonist' (and given the problematic nature of all labels), I strongly suspect that further analysis of the Therapeutae as a Pythagorean cult will prove insightful. Towards that line of inquiry, here is one scholar's essay which I have not seen translated before - this is what DeepL and a few corrections produces, for English readers.
"Un monasterio pitagórico: los terapeutas de Alejandría" Gerión. Revista de Historia Antigua, Vol. 11 [1993], 245.
p.245
A Pythagorean Monastery: The Therapeuts of Alexandria
DIMAS FERNÁNDEZ-GALIANO (1921-2002) Guadalajara Museo
Two stimuli motivate the writing of these lines: the first, advice from Professor Jacques Fontaine, who, upon learning of my theory on the existence of non-Christian monasteries in Classical Antiquity, recommended that I base it on a specific text; the second, the reading of a masterful but improvable work by MH. Quet, where he studies a Roman mosaic and traces the path from image to concept, from the archaeological object to the ideas which had given birth to it.1
The present writing seeks to offer a response to the objections of both researchers, with whom I shared unforgettable hours in the city of Lyon during the Spring of 199{2}. I hope the observations in this paper will assist understanding and appreciating this theory of the existence of monasterial lifestyles in the Classical World, formulated a little more than a year ago, whose acceptance in academic circles I now foresee as a long process of birthing. I take Professor Fontaine's words as a salutary challenge, to seek a text that can irrefutably prove the existence of Pagan Monasticism in Antiquity. This invites me to consider whether Catholic historiography, in its appropriation of philosophical and religious texts from the Ancient World, may have left loose ends; by appropriation I mean a process of adoption, not necessarily fraudulent, of ideas and values originally belonging to the Classical World, which the Church would make its own, and which time would end up legitimizing. The search for such a text involves several problems: if we assume that in Classical Antiquity there
1. M. H. QUET, "Naissance d'image: la mosaique des Thérapénides d'Apamée de Syrie". Cahiers du centre G. Glorz, IV, (1993), 129-187. The author gathers previous bibliography, among which J. BALTY "Les Therapénides d'Apamée. Textes littéraires et iconographie". Dialogues d'Histoire Ancienne 18.1 (1992), 281-291.
246
existed some patterns of lifestyle and interfaith monasticism*, a first problem consists in defining these.2 Having broadly accepted the possibility of the existence of groups of people who had withdrawn from the cities to live religious lifestyles,
we can face a second problem: to know how we would have to identify their possible traces. On one hand, archaeological information available to us is limited, brief and mute, but truthful and objective; on the other hand, textual information is — juicy and rich in data, although biased and interested -; the work we have proposed requires us to focus on the second. In order to fully prove the existence of pagan monasticism in antiquity, some extraordinary circumstances should have occurred: for example, the fortunate discovery in recent times of the library of one of these monasteries, like the Qumran manuscripts, which, to our knowledge, has not happened; or that the written tradition had preserved a document that incontestably demonstrated the existence of these forms of life in antiquity; for example, the rule of an order, or the narration of a pagan monk about the forms of life in his sect. Accepting the first assumption, i.e., that of the existence of monastic orders in the classical world, it is quite probable that documents such as those mentioned existed; indeed, it would be strange if they had not existed. It is worth asking under what conditions and by what means such a document could have come down to us; in short, the problem of manuscript tradition. A text such as the rule of an order would be a document for internal use, which by its very nature would have very little chance of transcending outside the cloistered enclosure. It is theoretically possible, although not probable, that a text of these characteristics could have been preserved by a religious group or sect of thought and doctrine different from the one that created it; if we accept the strenuous effort that the Roman authorities carried out to extirpate paganism from the Empire, according to the historiography in use, we must recognize that the chances of survival of a document of this type would be quite remote. Then there is an additional problem that would have hindered the dissemination of such a document: much of the religious knowledge and ideas of antiquity were protected by the veil of silence. To speak in public, even in private, about certain subjects was a way of desacralizing them, of losing respect due to them. As far as is known, in the Ancient World, the
1. “formas de vida y convivencia monasteriales” ; “Convivencia” is a rich, pregnant ideological concept first elaborated by Américo Castro in 1948: shared values of different peoples implying cultural acceptance, religious tolerance, syncretism.
2. In a recent work I have proposed to apply the term ‘monasterial’ to any group of people who meet two conditions in their way of life, the escape from the world and the religious purpose of this escape, understood as broadly as one wishes and independently of the beliefs and doctrines they profess: D. FERNÁNDEZ-GALIANO, "Monasterios paganos: una propuesta"> AEspA 65 (1992), 331-334. I have based this definition on the one offered under the corresponding heading in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
p.247
publication of religious books was always restricted for reserved use of a small circle of initiates. Let it suffice to recall the dedication to the goddess {Artemis} of his book on nature which Heraclitus of Ephesus {c.550 BC} made and deposited in her temple as an offering. As the pinnacle of a compendium of knowledge that was to a large extent also sacralized, religious knowledge did not lend itself easily to triviality, especially during times of insecurity and persecution which such groups of believers often experienced.
Despite all these difficulties, such circumstances have arisen. On the one hand, we have some internal documents of the life of one of the non-Christian monastery communities. On the other, we also have our wanted description of a pagan monastery by someone who knew it in sufficient detail to describe the community that inhabited it, and who is likely to have lived — at least for a time — with its members. The work to which I refer, Philo of Alexandria’s De Vita Contemplativa, is also fundamental to explain the genesis of the term ‘monastery’ and the related concept. First of all, I will mention the documentation of life within a pagan monastery: they belong to a set of papyri distributed in different museums in Europe and which come from the Serapeum of Memphis4. They are documents for internal use which belonged to the Temple’s archives, testifying to the existence of a community of men, the katochoi {=recluses, therapeuts, asylum-seekers, etc.}* who are able to freely move about the sacred precinct yet detained by a divine mandate. Bound by this call of Serapis, the katoches feel obliged to lead a life of worship beyond that required of the rest of the laiety. They participate in certain cultic services close to the priests. In some cases, their pattern of subsistence depends on relatives who provide what they need; in others, they depend on the charity of pilgrims. Although we do not know if the katoches practiced asceticism, the fact they remained within the Temple’s sacred area had them in permanent service and sharing cult obligations with priests, permitting them to take part in ritual meals. Katochoi interpreted dreams and had prophetic gifts. Similar forms of special consecration by the faithful to a god have also been documented in Smyrna5 and are important to understand phenomena that becomes generalized at the end of the Empire and to which I will refer later. It may be questioned to what extent we can legitimately refer to these enkatochoi as ‘monks’, but it is also difficult not to recognize traits of a monastic life in them. The characteristics which I have proposed as defining this type of
* See Gil Renberg, Where Dreams May Come: Incubation Sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman World, Vol.1[2017], p.731.
3.This seems to be indicated by Philo himself in one of his works: De Specialibus legibus, 3.1-2.
4. W. Otto, Priester und Tempel in hellenistischen Aegypten. Berlin-Leipzig, [1905] Vol.1, p.1155.; U. Wilcken, Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit (ältere Funde). Band II. Lieferung 1, Papyri aus Oberägypten [1934], pp.52-77; F. DAUMAS, Philon d'Alexandrie. De vita contemplativa. Introduction, texte, traduction et notes [1963], pp. 62-66.
5. WILCKEN, o.c., pp.56-57.
p.248
lifestyle are met in this case: there is an effective isolation from the world, due to what these people feel as a divine call. It could be argued what specifically defines a monastic order is precisely its rule. But although time has deprived us of the compendium of ordinances that regulated the life of these men within the sanctuary, the series of provisions preserved in the papyri leads us to suspect the existence of a broad and elaborate set of rules regulating Temple worship and to which the katoches would be bound.
THERAPEUTAE {=Therapeuts}
For that subject which interests us here, Philo's work On the Contemplative Life is much more complete and illustrative than the aforementioned documents. Though there are current and excellent editions of this writing in modern languages, I know of no Spanish translation. So given its importance for the subject we are dealing with I will, in the first place, offer a broad summary followed by some observations which came to my mind while I was translating it. The summary I offer is partly a translation, partly a free reading of the text; I indicate in square brackets that part corresponding to the latter.
De Vita Contemplativa
1. After my treatise on the Essenes, who have devoted their zeal and efforts to the active life, and have distinguished themselves in all aspects or — to speak moderately — in most {of its departments}, I will also now give the adepts of the contemplative life their due share; I will not add any embellishments of my own to improve the facts, as historians and poets usually do when they lack beautiful subjects: I will stick punctually to the truth, which , I know, can discourage even the most gifted writer. It is necessary, however, not to lose heart or give up the struggle, because the greatness of the virtue of these men should not make those who do not want anything beautiful to remain mute in silence.
2. The vocation of these philosophers is indicated by the name they bear: Therapeutae and Therapeutides, which is their true name, because they profess a better art of healing than what is current in the cities, which only cures the bodies, while theirs also cures souls oppressed by almost incurable diseases, such as pleasures, desires, afflictions, fears, greed, madness, injustices and the infinite multitude of other passions; but also in the sense of ‘worshippers,’ because nature and the sacred laws have taught them to worship the Self-Existent One, who is better than The Good, purer than the One, and more primordial than the Monad.
249
3-9. [A broad rhetorical exposition continues in a gradual descent comparing these men with servants of other religions, from worshipers of the elements* (3-4), stars (5), demigods (6), images (7), to reach the nadir of depravity, worshipers of animals: the Egyptians (8-9)].
10-11. [The Therapeuts desire the vision of the Existent One, to elevate their senses beyond the Sun, and to never abandon their Company, which transports them to perfect happiness.]
12. And those who are prepared for this service, not merely aping a custom nor as followers of others’ advice, but carried away by a Heaven-sent loving passion, remain rapt and possessed like Bacchantes and Corybantes until they attain their desired object.
13. Then such is their longing for blessed and immortal life that they think their mortal life is already ended and they abandon their property to their sons and daughters or kin, thus advancing the time of inheritance, while those who have no family give these to comrades and friends.
14-17. [Mentions some antecedents of this type of life among Greeks, such as Anaxagoras and Democritus (who left their material goods to cultivate philosophy), and compares them with the Therapeutae, with advantage to the latter].
18. Since they have divested their possessions, nothing holds them back, and they flee without any nostalgia, leaving behind brothers, children, wives, fathers, mothers, many kinfolk, friends, and the homelands where they were born and which nourished them.
19. And they do not settle in another city, like those unfortunate or worthless slaves who demand to be sold by their owners and thus obtain a change of master but not freedom. For every city, even the best governed, is full of untold turmoil and tumult, which no one could endure once he has placed himself under the guidance of Wisdom.
20. Instead they spend their days ‘beyond the walls’, pursuing solitude in gardens or solitary spots. And it is not from an acquired habit of misanthropic bitterness, but because they know how unprofitable and malignant are associations with persons of dissimilar characters.
21. These people are found in many parts of the inhabited world — for it was necessary that both Greece and the barbarous world should share perfect Goodness — but they abound in Egypt in each of the nomos (provinces, districts), as they are called, and especially around Alexandria.
22. For the best of these {votaries} travel from various places in order to settle in a very suitable place which they regard as their homeland, which is on a hill of medium height above Lake Mareotis, very well situated both for its safety and for the mildness of its climate.
23. Security is guaranteed by the surrounding farms and villages, and the salubrity of the air by the continuous breezes that are
* Creation from the Elements in C.H.1.25
250
generated from both the lake and the nearby sea.
24. The abodes of the society thus assembled are extremely simple, offering protection from the most pressing dangers, the strong heat of the sun and the icy cold winds. They are not close together as in the cities, since living too close to each other causes problems and is not pleasing to those who wish to satisfy a desire for solitude; but neither are they at a great distance, because of the sense of fellowship they foster and to help each other if robbers attack.
25. In every house there is a consecrated room called a sanctuary or monastery (semneion kai monastérion), and closeted therein they are initiated into the mysteries of the holy life. They take nothing there, neither drink, nor food, nor anything necessary for the body, but laws and oracles uttered by the voice of the prophets, and hymns and all that enables science and piety to grow and attain their fullness.
26. They always keep the memory of God alive, never forgetting it, so that even in dreams the image is none other than that of the Divine Excellencies and Powers. Indeed, many, while asleep in their dreams, proclaim the truths of the sacred philosophy.
27. They pray twice a day, at sunrise and sunset; at sunrise they pray for a good day: ‘good’ in the true sense, that the heavenly light to which they pray may fill their minds. At sunset they ascertain that their soul be free from the burden of the senses and the objects of sensation; resting, she becomes a council chamber and a tribunal of herself, pursuing the search for Truth.
28. The interval between early morning and late evening is wholly employed in spiritual exercise. They read sacred writings and pursue Wisdom from their ancient philosophy by taking both as allegories, for they think the words of the literal texts are symbols of something whose hidden nature is revealed by studying the underlying meaning.
29. They also preserve writings of the ancients, founders of their sect, who left many memoirs of ideas used in allegorical interpretation, and taking them as models they imitate the method in which this principle is developed. And in this way they do not limit themselves only to contemplation but also compose hymns and psalms to God in all kinds of verses and melodies which they write with appropriate rhythms to make them more solemn.
30. For six days they seek wisdom for themselves in the aforementioned cells, never going beyond the exit of the house or even looking at it from the side. But on the seventh day they gather in assembly, sitting in order according to their age, with the proper attitude, their hands inside their robes: the right hand between the breast and the chin, the left hand withdrawn, along the flank.
Trans.: Un monasterio pitagórico, by D.Fernández-Galiano (1992)
Trans.: Un monasterio pitagórico, by D.Fernández-Galiano (1992)
Last edited by billd89 on Thu Dec 16, 2021 4:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Pt 2: Un monasterio pitagórico, by D.Fernández-Galiano
251
31. Then the most senior of them, who also has a fuller knowledge of the doctrines, comes forward and with serene and calm countenance and voice delivers a wise and well-composed discourse. He does not make an exhibition of brilliant rhetoric like the orators and sophists of today, but follows a careful examination through careful exposition of the exact meaning of his thoughts and thereby fills not only the exterior of the ears of his audience, but through the hearing passes into the soul where it is firmly lodged. The others remain seated and listen, showing their approval simply by looks or gestures of affirmation.
32. This common sanctuary where they meet every seventh day consists of a double enclosure (diplous peribolos), one portion which is for use of the men, the other for the women. Normally the women form part of the audience and participate in the same principles and the same fervor.
33. The dividing wall between the two chambers rises about three or four cubits, in the form of a dividing parapet, while the remaining space up to the ceiling is left open. This arrangement serves two purposes: it safeguards the modesty of the female sex and at the same time allows the seated women to hear what is said, since there is no obstacle to the voice of the speaker.
34. They understand self-control as the foundation of their souls and upon it they build the other virtues. They neither eat nor drink before sun-down, for they hold that philosophy finds its right place in the Light, and the needs of the body in the Darkness, and therefore assign to the former the day, and some small part of the night to the other.
35. Some of them, in whom the love of wisdom is still more firmly implanted, remember to take food only after three days. Others delight and rejoice so much in the banquet of truths that wisdom brings them so abundantly that they double that time and only after six days do they take sustenance, when it is absolutely necessary. They have become accustomed to abstinence like grasshoppers, which are said to live on air because, I suppose, their song makes the lack of food bearable.
36. But on the seventh day as they consider it to be sacred and festal in the highest degree, they reward themselves with privileges as is proper: just as animals are redeemed from their continual toil, so on that day, after the cares of the soul, they anoint their bodies with oil. {**This ‘anointing’ is not mentioned in the Colson translation.}
37. Even so, they eat nothing luxurious, only common bread with salt seasoned with hyssop, and their drink is spring water. For they appease these two mistresses which nature has set upon the human race, Hunger and Thirst, and they admit them without using anything that would flatter them, but only useful food, without which life would not be sustained.
38. As to the two forms of protection, clothing and shelter, we have already indicated that the house is unadorned and is built only for utility; their garb is of the most austere kind, sufficient to protect them from extreme cold and heat: a thick cloak instead of an animal
252
skin in winter, and in summer a thin dress or linen cloth.
39-63. [Long excursus aimed at denigrating the customs of other thiasoi, where we are informed that their participants drink until they lose their minds, turning into rabid dogs and throwing themselves on each other, tearing each other to pieces and eating each other. After this accusation of cannibalism that makes victims of relatives and friends, the diners are branded as heartless and drunkards (41-46), libertines (47), ostentatious (48-49), pederasts (50-56), to denigrate the most famous banquets of Greece, attended by Socrates himself (57-59); he culminates this immoderate vision with a condemnation of vulgar love and homosexuality, concerned, along with moral degradation, by the effects it brings, such as the depopulation of villages and the low birth-rate (60-63)].
64. Since the banquets celebrated are full of such follies and contain their own condemnation, I will — in the hope that it will be admitted to disregard their traditional reputation as perfect models — I will set in opposition the banquets of those who have dedicated their lives and their persons to science and the contemplation of nature, according to the very holy prescriptions of the Prophet Moses.
65. In the first place, these people assemble at the end of seven periods of seven days, for they marvel not only at the simple ‘seven’ but also at their square {i.e. 72}: they know that it is the number of purity and perpetual virginity. This {i.e. 7x7=49} is the eve of the great feast which Fifty receives, ‘Fifty’ the most sacred of numbers and the most firmly rooted in nature, formed as it is from the square of the right triangle, which is the origin of the generation of all things.
66. Thus they gather, dressed in white and their faces reflecting joy combined with extreme seriousness. Before reclining, at the signal of one of the ephemerides, which is the name usually given to those charged with these services, they take their places orderly in a regular line, eyes and hands raised toward heaven, the eyes because they have been taught to fix them on things worthy of contemplation, the hands in proof that they are clean from having taken profit and untainted by material gain. So standing they pray to God that the feast may be acceptable in their eyes, and they proceed as if it were acceptable to them.
67. After the prayers, the most senior (presbyteroi) recline according to the order of their admission, and by ‘eldest’ they do not mean the other aged and gray-haired, who are regarded as mere children if they have only lately embraced the doctrine, but those who have passed from youth to maturity and employed the prime of their lives in the pursuit of the contemplative branch of philosophy, indeed the most divine and noblest part.
68. The feast is also shared by women, mostly mature virgins, who have preserved their chastity not under duress like some of the Greek priestesses, but of their own free will in their ardent yearning for Wisdom.
253
Eager to have Her as a companion, they have disdained the pleasures of the body and do not desire mortal offspring, but those immortal children that only souls dear to God can give birth to without need of a midwife, because in Her the Father has sown His spiritual rays, allowing Her to apprehend the truths of Wisdom.
69. The order of reclining is so established that men sit apart on the right and women on the left. It may be thought that the sofas, though not costly, could at least have been made somewhat softer for well-born people, of high character and trained in the practice of philosophy: they are frames of the commonest wood covered with a layer of the cheapest papyrus, raised slightly about arm's length, just to have something to rest upon.
70. They have no slaves to attend them, for they consider the possession of servants entirely contrary to Nature: for Nature has made all men to be born free, but the covetous acts of some who pursue that kind of evil, inequality, have imposed their yoke and invested the stronger with power over the weak.
71. At this sacred banquet there are, as I have said, no slaves, for the services are attended to by free men who perform their duties as helpers, not forcibly or even waiting for orders, but with deliberate good will, diligently and zealously anticipating the requests that may be made of them.
72. For it is not only free men who assemble in these offices, but young members of the association chosen with all care for their special merits who by their good and noble character are raised to the summit of virtue. They offer their services haughtily and proudly as sons to their royal fathers and mothers, whom they regard as the parents of all in common, in a closer affinity than that of blood, since for the good and just there is no greater bond than the noble life. And they appear to serve with ungirded waist and short loose robes, so that in their appearance there is nothing to remind one of a slave.
73. At this banquet — I know that some will laugh at this, but only those whose actions seek tears and lamentations — no wine is brought on such occasions, but only the clearest and limpid water, cold for the greater part of the diners, but hot for the older as well as the more delicate. The table is kept pure of animal flesh; the food presented consists of loaves of bread with salt as seasoning, sometimes also flavored with hyssop as a concession to the most demanding palates.
74. Right reason teaches them to be sober in their lives, just as the priest while sacrificing abstains from wine, so they abstain from wine throughout their lives. For wine acts as a drug that produces madness, and expensive dishes awaken that most insatiable of
254
animals, Desire.
75. Such are the preliminaries. But when the diners have reclined neatly in line, as I have described, and the attendants (tous diakónous) are standing with everything ready for their ministry, the president (proedros), when a general silence is established — it may be asked when there is no silence there — well, when there is a greater silence than the preceding, so that no one dares to make the slightest noise or exhale more loudly than usual; In the midst of this silence, I say, he comments on some question from the sacred writings or solves some other question that has been proposed to him by someone. In doing so, it is not in his mind to show off, because he has no ambition to gain reputation for his skillful oratory, but he wishes to gain insight into a given matter and having achieved it, he does not keep it to himself selfishly, but shares it with those who may not have the same clarity of vision, but at least have the same yearning to learn.
76. His teaching proceeds in a leisurely manner: he delays and extends with repetitions, thus naturally impressing the ideas on the souls of the listeners, for if the speaker proceeds quickly and without taking breath, the minds of the listeners are unable to follow his discourse, lose touch and are unable to understand what is being said to them.
77. His audience listens with attentive ears and eyes fixed on him, always in exactly the same posture, indicating their comprehension and understanding by gestures and looks of assent, their approval by the glowing expression of their faces, their difficulty in following by a gentle nodding of the head and by pointing slightly with the forefinger of the right hand.
78. The exposition of the sacred writings deals with the inner meaning implied in the allegories. The whole of the laws is to these men analogous to a living being: the body is the written letter, and the soul the invisible spirit resting in the words It is in this spirit especially that the rational soul begins to contemplate things akin to itself, and looking through the words as through a mirror contemplates the wonderful beauties of the concepts, unfolds and sets aside the symbolic coverings and makes manifest the thoughts and exposes them naked to the light of day for those who need only a little reminder that enables them to distinguish the inner and hidden by means of the outer and visible.
79. When the chairman considers that he has spoken sufficiently, and both parties are sure that he has achieved his object — the speaker that his speech has been effective, the hearing of the substance of what they have heard — a general round of applause rises manifesting complete satisfaction in prospect of what is yet to follow.
255
80. Then the president rises and sings a hymn composed as a prayer to God, either as a new creation composed by himself, or an old one by poets of old, who have left hymns of different meters and melodies, haxameters and iambs, lyrics suitable for the processions, for the libations before the altar, or for the choir, with careful metrical arrangements adapted to the different movements. After him, it is the turn of the others in previously established order, while the rest listen in complete silence except when they have to sing the refrains and reponses: then all raise their voices, men and women in unison.
81. When each one has finished his hymn, the ‘young’ men bring the tables mentioned above on which is the purest food of bread and leaven seasoned with salt and hyssop. It is in reverence for the sacred table housing the holy vestibule of the Temple, on which rest loaves of unseasoned bread and salt, unleavened bread and unmixed salt.
82. For it is considered fitting that the purest and simplest food should be assigned to the caste of the highest rank, namely the priests, as a reward for their ministry, and that others while aspiring to such privileges should refrain from claiming the same as themselves, and allow their superiors to maintain their priority.
83. After supper they observe the sacred vigil which proceeds as follows: they rise at one time and standing and in the midst of the refectory they divide themselves into two choirs, one of men and the other of women, choosing as first voice and conductor of the choir the most honorable of them and at the same time the one with the greatest musical ability.
84. Then they sing hymns to God composed in various metrical stanzas and adapted in many melodies, sometimes singing in unison and sometimes responding with one melody to another in antiphonal fashion, following the rhythm with their hands and dancing, carried away by enthusiasm, sometimes performing the chants of a procession, sometimes the stanzas and antistrophes of a choral dance.
85. Then when each choir has performed its part in the feast, having drunk (as in the Bacchic rites) the pure wine of the love of God, they mingle and together unite in one choir, a copy of the choir established of old by the Red Sea in honor of wonders wrought there.
86. For at God's command the sea became a source of salvation for one side and of perdition for the other. Dividing in two and retreating under the violence of the forces that held it high on the two opposite sides, like two frozen walls, while the space thus opened between them stretched out like a smooth, dry path through which the people marched straight on until they reached the uplands on the other side. But when the sea returned with the rising tide, and on each side the waters were overturned to where the dry land had been
256
before, the enemy who pursued them was submerged and perished.
87. After this marvelous vision and experience, a fact that transcends word, thought, and hope, both men and women were so filled with ecstasy that, forming a single chorus, they sang songs of thanksgiving to God the Savior, the men led by the prophet Moses, the women by the prophetess Miriam.
88. The choir of the Therapeutae, men and women, faithful imitation of this one, combines the high voices of the women with the low voices of the men, each note in response to another note and each voice to each voice, forming a harmonious whole, music in the truest sense. Exalted are the thoughts, exalted are the words, and worthy of reverence are the choristers, and the joint end and object of thoughts, words and choristers is piety.
89. Thus they continue until dawn, drunk with this inebriety of which they are not ashamed, not with heavy heads and drowsy eyes, but more alert and awake than when they came to the banquet, standing with their faces and their whole bodies turned towards the East. And when they see the rising sun they stretch out their hands towards heaven and raise prayers for a joyous day, the knowledge of truth, and clear-sightedness in judgment. After the prayers, each one retires to his private sanctuary to apply himself to the practice and cultivation of the field of his beloved philosophy.
90. So much for the Therapeuts, who have taken to their hearts the contemplation of Nature and of what it contains, who live by the soul alone, citizens of Heaven and of the Cosmos, commended to the Father and Maker of all by their protector Virtue, which procures for them the friendship of God and adds a gift that goes with it: true excellence of life, a gift preferable to any good fortune and which leads to the highest summits of happiness.
This is, in short, the text that gave birth to the word ‘monastery’, and the community described in it not only reflects one type of monastic life: it is, in short, the prototype, ‘the monastery’ par excellence. From this point of view, I am not adducing just any text in support of my thesis. The term seems to have been invented by Philo of Alexandria and spread by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Ecclesiastical History, which is followed by the entire subsequent tradition. Until the Eighteenth Century, historiography in general (and particularly that of the Roman Catholic Church, since it is such an important subject for the study of its institutions) has blindly followed Eusebius in the belief
6. H.E., 11, XVI-XVIL; D. FERNÁNDEZ-GALIANO, AEspA 65 (1992), where this tradition is questioned.
31. Then the most senior of them, who also has a fuller knowledge of the doctrines, comes forward and with serene and calm countenance and voice delivers a wise and well-composed discourse. He does not make an exhibition of brilliant rhetoric like the orators and sophists of today, but follows a careful examination through careful exposition of the exact meaning of his thoughts and thereby fills not only the exterior of the ears of his audience, but through the hearing passes into the soul where it is firmly lodged. The others remain seated and listen, showing their approval simply by looks or gestures of affirmation.
32. This common sanctuary where they meet every seventh day consists of a double enclosure (diplous peribolos), one portion which is for use of the men, the other for the women. Normally the women form part of the audience and participate in the same principles and the same fervor.
33. The dividing wall between the two chambers rises about three or four cubits, in the form of a dividing parapet, while the remaining space up to the ceiling is left open. This arrangement serves two purposes: it safeguards the modesty of the female sex and at the same time allows the seated women to hear what is said, since there is no obstacle to the voice of the speaker.
34. They understand self-control as the foundation of their souls and upon it they build the other virtues. They neither eat nor drink before sun-down, for they hold that philosophy finds its right place in the Light, and the needs of the body in the Darkness, and therefore assign to the former the day, and some small part of the night to the other.
35. Some of them, in whom the love of wisdom is still more firmly implanted, remember to take food only after three days. Others delight and rejoice so much in the banquet of truths that wisdom brings them so abundantly that they double that time and only after six days do they take sustenance, when it is absolutely necessary. They have become accustomed to abstinence like grasshoppers, which are said to live on air because, I suppose, their song makes the lack of food bearable.
36. But on the seventh day as they consider it to be sacred and festal in the highest degree, they reward themselves with privileges as is proper: just as animals are redeemed from their continual toil, so on that day, after the cares of the soul, they anoint their bodies with oil. {**This ‘anointing’ is not mentioned in the Colson translation.}
37. Even so, they eat nothing luxurious, only common bread with salt seasoned with hyssop, and their drink is spring water. For they appease these two mistresses which nature has set upon the human race, Hunger and Thirst, and they admit them without using anything that would flatter them, but only useful food, without which life would not be sustained.
38. As to the two forms of protection, clothing and shelter, we have already indicated that the house is unadorned and is built only for utility; their garb is of the most austere kind, sufficient to protect them from extreme cold and heat: a thick cloak instead of an animal
252
skin in winter, and in summer a thin dress or linen cloth.
39-63. [Long excursus aimed at denigrating the customs of other thiasoi, where we are informed that their participants drink until they lose their minds, turning into rabid dogs and throwing themselves on each other, tearing each other to pieces and eating each other. After this accusation of cannibalism that makes victims of relatives and friends, the diners are branded as heartless and drunkards (41-46), libertines (47), ostentatious (48-49), pederasts (50-56), to denigrate the most famous banquets of Greece, attended by Socrates himself (57-59); he culminates this immoderate vision with a condemnation of vulgar love and homosexuality, concerned, along with moral degradation, by the effects it brings, such as the depopulation of villages and the low birth-rate (60-63)].
64. Since the banquets celebrated are full of such follies and contain their own condemnation, I will — in the hope that it will be admitted to disregard their traditional reputation as perfect models — I will set in opposition the banquets of those who have dedicated their lives and their persons to science and the contemplation of nature, according to the very holy prescriptions of the Prophet Moses.
65. In the first place, these people assemble at the end of seven periods of seven days, for they marvel not only at the simple ‘seven’ but also at their square {i.e. 72}: they know that it is the number of purity and perpetual virginity. This {i.e. 7x7=49} is the eve of the great feast which Fifty receives, ‘Fifty’ the most sacred of numbers and the most firmly rooted in nature, formed as it is from the square of the right triangle, which is the origin of the generation of all things.
66. Thus they gather, dressed in white and their faces reflecting joy combined with extreme seriousness. Before reclining, at the signal of one of the ephemerides, which is the name usually given to those charged with these services, they take their places orderly in a regular line, eyes and hands raised toward heaven, the eyes because they have been taught to fix them on things worthy of contemplation, the hands in proof that they are clean from having taken profit and untainted by material gain. So standing they pray to God that the feast may be acceptable in their eyes, and they proceed as if it were acceptable to them.
67. After the prayers, the most senior (presbyteroi) recline according to the order of their admission, and by ‘eldest’ they do not mean the other aged and gray-haired, who are regarded as mere children if they have only lately embraced the doctrine, but those who have passed from youth to maturity and employed the prime of their lives in the pursuit of the contemplative branch of philosophy, indeed the most divine and noblest part.
68. The feast is also shared by women, mostly mature virgins, who have preserved their chastity not under duress like some of the Greek priestesses, but of their own free will in their ardent yearning for Wisdom.
253
Eager to have Her as a companion, they have disdained the pleasures of the body and do not desire mortal offspring, but those immortal children that only souls dear to God can give birth to without need of a midwife, because in Her the Father has sown His spiritual rays, allowing Her to apprehend the truths of Wisdom.
69. The order of reclining is so established that men sit apart on the right and women on the left. It may be thought that the sofas, though not costly, could at least have been made somewhat softer for well-born people, of high character and trained in the practice of philosophy: they are frames of the commonest wood covered with a layer of the cheapest papyrus, raised slightly about arm's length, just to have something to rest upon.
70. They have no slaves to attend them, for they consider the possession of servants entirely contrary to Nature: for Nature has made all men to be born free, but the covetous acts of some who pursue that kind of evil, inequality, have imposed their yoke and invested the stronger with power over the weak.
71. At this sacred banquet there are, as I have said, no slaves, for the services are attended to by free men who perform their duties as helpers, not forcibly or even waiting for orders, but with deliberate good will, diligently and zealously anticipating the requests that may be made of them.
72. For it is not only free men who assemble in these offices, but young members of the association chosen with all care for their special merits who by their good and noble character are raised to the summit of virtue. They offer their services haughtily and proudly as sons to their royal fathers and mothers, whom they regard as the parents of all in common, in a closer affinity than that of blood, since for the good and just there is no greater bond than the noble life. And they appear to serve with ungirded waist and short loose robes, so that in their appearance there is nothing to remind one of a slave.
73. At this banquet — I know that some will laugh at this, but only those whose actions seek tears and lamentations — no wine is brought on such occasions, but only the clearest and limpid water, cold for the greater part of the diners, but hot for the older as well as the more delicate. The table is kept pure of animal flesh; the food presented consists of loaves of bread with salt as seasoning, sometimes also flavored with hyssop as a concession to the most demanding palates.
74. Right reason teaches them to be sober in their lives, just as the priest while sacrificing abstains from wine, so they abstain from wine throughout their lives. For wine acts as a drug that produces madness, and expensive dishes awaken that most insatiable of
254
animals, Desire.
75. Such are the preliminaries. But when the diners have reclined neatly in line, as I have described, and the attendants (tous diakónous) are standing with everything ready for their ministry, the president (proedros), when a general silence is established — it may be asked when there is no silence there — well, when there is a greater silence than the preceding, so that no one dares to make the slightest noise or exhale more loudly than usual; In the midst of this silence, I say, he comments on some question from the sacred writings or solves some other question that has been proposed to him by someone. In doing so, it is not in his mind to show off, because he has no ambition to gain reputation for his skillful oratory, but he wishes to gain insight into a given matter and having achieved it, he does not keep it to himself selfishly, but shares it with those who may not have the same clarity of vision, but at least have the same yearning to learn.
76. His teaching proceeds in a leisurely manner: he delays and extends with repetitions, thus naturally impressing the ideas on the souls of the listeners, for if the speaker proceeds quickly and without taking breath, the minds of the listeners are unable to follow his discourse, lose touch and are unable to understand what is being said to them.
77. His audience listens with attentive ears and eyes fixed on him, always in exactly the same posture, indicating their comprehension and understanding by gestures and looks of assent, their approval by the glowing expression of their faces, their difficulty in following by a gentle nodding of the head and by pointing slightly with the forefinger of the right hand.
78. The exposition of the sacred writings deals with the inner meaning implied in the allegories. The whole of the laws is to these men analogous to a living being: the body is the written letter, and the soul the invisible spirit resting in the words It is in this spirit especially that the rational soul begins to contemplate things akin to itself, and looking through the words as through a mirror contemplates the wonderful beauties of the concepts, unfolds and sets aside the symbolic coverings and makes manifest the thoughts and exposes them naked to the light of day for those who need only a little reminder that enables them to distinguish the inner and hidden by means of the outer and visible.
79. When the chairman considers that he has spoken sufficiently, and both parties are sure that he has achieved his object — the speaker that his speech has been effective, the hearing of the substance of what they have heard — a general round of applause rises manifesting complete satisfaction in prospect of what is yet to follow.
255
80. Then the president rises and sings a hymn composed as a prayer to God, either as a new creation composed by himself, or an old one by poets of old, who have left hymns of different meters and melodies, haxameters and iambs, lyrics suitable for the processions, for the libations before the altar, or for the choir, with careful metrical arrangements adapted to the different movements. After him, it is the turn of the others in previously established order, while the rest listen in complete silence except when they have to sing the refrains and reponses: then all raise their voices, men and women in unison.
81. When each one has finished his hymn, the ‘young’ men bring the tables mentioned above on which is the purest food of bread and leaven seasoned with salt and hyssop. It is in reverence for the sacred table housing the holy vestibule of the Temple, on which rest loaves of unseasoned bread and salt, unleavened bread and unmixed salt.
82. For it is considered fitting that the purest and simplest food should be assigned to the caste of the highest rank, namely the priests, as a reward for their ministry, and that others while aspiring to such privileges should refrain from claiming the same as themselves, and allow their superiors to maintain their priority.
83. After supper they observe the sacred vigil which proceeds as follows: they rise at one time and standing and in the midst of the refectory they divide themselves into two choirs, one of men and the other of women, choosing as first voice and conductor of the choir the most honorable of them and at the same time the one with the greatest musical ability.
84. Then they sing hymns to God composed in various metrical stanzas and adapted in many melodies, sometimes singing in unison and sometimes responding with one melody to another in antiphonal fashion, following the rhythm with their hands and dancing, carried away by enthusiasm, sometimes performing the chants of a procession, sometimes the stanzas and antistrophes of a choral dance.
85. Then when each choir has performed its part in the feast, having drunk (as in the Bacchic rites) the pure wine of the love of God, they mingle and together unite in one choir, a copy of the choir established of old by the Red Sea in honor of wonders wrought there.
86. For at God's command the sea became a source of salvation for one side and of perdition for the other. Dividing in two and retreating under the violence of the forces that held it high on the two opposite sides, like two frozen walls, while the space thus opened between them stretched out like a smooth, dry path through which the people marched straight on until they reached the uplands on the other side. But when the sea returned with the rising tide, and on each side the waters were overturned to where the dry land had been
256
before, the enemy who pursued them was submerged and perished.
87. After this marvelous vision and experience, a fact that transcends word, thought, and hope, both men and women were so filled with ecstasy that, forming a single chorus, they sang songs of thanksgiving to God the Savior, the men led by the prophet Moses, the women by the prophetess Miriam.
88. The choir of the Therapeutae, men and women, faithful imitation of this one, combines the high voices of the women with the low voices of the men, each note in response to another note and each voice to each voice, forming a harmonious whole, music in the truest sense. Exalted are the thoughts, exalted are the words, and worthy of reverence are the choristers, and the joint end and object of thoughts, words and choristers is piety.
89. Thus they continue until dawn, drunk with this inebriety of which they are not ashamed, not with heavy heads and drowsy eyes, but more alert and awake than when they came to the banquet, standing with their faces and their whole bodies turned towards the East. And when they see the rising sun they stretch out their hands towards heaven and raise prayers for a joyous day, the knowledge of truth, and clear-sightedness in judgment. After the prayers, each one retires to his private sanctuary to apply himself to the practice and cultivation of the field of his beloved philosophy.
90. So much for the Therapeuts, who have taken to their hearts the contemplation of Nature and of what it contains, who live by the soul alone, citizens of Heaven and of the Cosmos, commended to the Father and Maker of all by their protector Virtue, which procures for them the friendship of God and adds a gift that goes with it: true excellence of life, a gift preferable to any good fortune and which leads to the highest summits of happiness.
This is, in short, the text that gave birth to the word ‘monastery’, and the community described in it not only reflects one type of monastic life: it is, in short, the prototype, ‘the monastery’ par excellence. From this point of view, I am not adducing just any text in support of my thesis. The term seems to have been invented by Philo of Alexandria and spread by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Ecclesiastical History, which is followed by the entire subsequent tradition. Until the Eighteenth Century, historiography in general (and particularly that of the Roman Catholic Church, since it is such an important subject for the study of its institutions) has blindly followed Eusebius in the belief
6. H.E., 11, XVI-XVIL; D. FERNÁNDEZ-GALIANO, AEspA 65 (1992), where this tradition is questioned.
Pt 3: Un monasterio pitagórico, by D.Fernández-Galiano
257
the Therapeuts were Christians. However, doubts about the religious identification of this group have persisted, with several scholars highlighting the Judaic character of their proselytes. As the thesis of Eusebius was almost as difficult to accept as that the Therapeuts were orthodox Jews, in 1879, Lucius published a treatise to demonstrate the work was false and to settle the problem once and for all. 7 In principle his interpretation was accepted by several historians, but it motivated the rejection by eminent linguist Conybeare, who six years later published a critical edition that has remained as a classic and which uses both the Greek text and the preserved Latin and Armenian versions. In it, he dispels any doubt about the authenticity of the work, whose Philonian authorship no one has questioned since.8 The problem that interests us here is the one that successive editions and studies have failed to clarify: that of the religion of these Therapeuts.
It has been thought that Eusebius, when transcribing Philo's information about the Therapeutae, is convinced we are dealing with a Christian community, which would have been established on Alexandria’s outskirts and which would owe its existence to St. Mark’s evangelization, as he states in his work: “That Philo, when he wrote these things, had in mind the first heralds of the Evangelistic doctrines transmitted from the beginning by the Apostles, is clear to everyone.”9 Judging by the reasons with which in the same text he tries to convince his readers, it should not be so obvious to everyone, but less obvious than to anyone else, to himself. I do not think Eusebius is surprised by the curious resemblance between the community described by Philo and the life of the Christian ascetics. I am rather inclined to think that he is well aware — he cannot not be aware — of the existence of such establishments of his time (whether they are called monasteries, thiasoi, philosophical schools, or whatever one wants to call them) of which he knows enough about, what they are devoted to, and what kind of life their members lead in them. But it happens that he is not at all interested in admitting that they may belong to a religious group different from his own. For a simple reason: Eusebius is a religious apologist, a man committed to a specific faith and doctrine, and his opinions, his very vision of reality, are inevitably influenced by this fact. A religious sectarian tends to an incredible simplification in his way of understanding reality: aligned with an evaluation of the world and of things he considers "the right one", and that he identifies with the good, the consideration of everything
7. PB. Lucius, Die Therapeuten und ihre Stellung in der Geschichte der Askese. Strasbourg 1879.
8. F.C. CONYBEARE, Philo: About the Contemplative Life. Oxford, 1895.
9. H. E. II, XVII, 24.
10. Idid. 15,17-18
258
around him is deeply imbued with this conviction. It is a universal evaluation, which does not admit nuances, and which divides the world, people, into two excluding categories: ‘us’ and ‘others’. Since it is not always clear who belongs to one or the other group, a more or less fanatical believer — and it is hard to believe that the first Church historian, writing under the great persecution of Diocletian, is not to a large extent fanatical — divides people into two categories, those who are in the truth and those who are outside it. The thought of a sectarian could be paraphrased as follows: “to the extent that someone participates in goodness, in goodness, he is one of us; to the extent that he moves away from them, he belongs to the others”. The spirit of the writings of the bishop of Caesarea is not far from this sensibility. Therefore, it is hard to believe his sincerity when he refers to Philo as "one of ours", as if he ignored the unbridgeable rift opened between Jews and Christians following the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, as if he had not read the exhortations of a St. Ignatius Martyr, the Epistola Barnabae, the Dialogue with Trypho of Justin, and many other works of a Christian literary current that makes clear his distance from the Judaic world; this selective amnesia leads him to forget circumcision, the Sabbaths, the fasts and in short everything characteristic of Judaism, in order to make the reader believe that Philo and the writer belong to the same religious faith. Eusebius feels the same little modesty in Christianizing Philo as in Christianizing the Therapeutae, and this, we do not doubt, with his best faith, but put at the service of a doctrine. His suggestion to see in the therapeutae a group of Christian ascetics is, however, too risky a gamble, which has led the later tradition into curious blind alleys.11
The Christian faith of this first monastery is based only on the interested opinion of Eusebius, so that it is convenient to look for plausible alternatives. All those who have studied the work have coincided in emphasizing the Judaic components of the Therapeuts. Given the source of the news, the really strange thing would be that they did not have them: Philo, when treating religious subjects, is not more reliable than Eusebius; he makes partisanship, of course Judaic and not precisely of the finest. These Alexandrian Therapeuts are probably not Jewish; if they were, it would be strange that Philo had not explicitly stated it in his writing. Nothing would have pleased him more than to bring this angelic way of life closer to the true religion, his own; but since they probably are not, the author is content to Judaize them. Although the
11. For example, when Epiphanius quotes the Therapeutae and follows Eusebius in believing that they are Christians. This creates certain moral problems for him, because on the one hand (I suppose insofar as they are virtuous people) he has decided that they are Christians, but at the same time he believes that they are Nazarenes, the primitive Jewish followers of Jesus, whom he is about to attack (Panarion 29, 5,1). In 5,5 he tries to resolve the contradiction without much success, wrapping the terms of the problem in a mist of polemic and allegory: R.A. PRITZ, Nazarene Jewish Christianity. Jerusalem-Leiden, EJ. Brill, 1988, 39.
259
fact of whether they are Hebrews or not does not seem essential to me: if Philo lived with this community for some time, it seems logical to leave open the possibility some of its members could have been Jews, yet I insist this is not relevant. The essential thing is to understand the religious habits of this community. Philo describes a kind of universalist philosopher, dedicated not only to contemplation but also to study, reading, meditation, writing books, hymns, musical composition. The Judaism of the Therapeutae owes more to Philo than to the religion they practice: while some of their customs are foreign to the Hebrew tradition, others openly clash with it. The paragraphs with the most Hebraic flavor are those that the author introduces on his own to bring the angelic life of these people closer to the ways of the Jewish religion. For example, the allusion to the holy prescriptions of the prophet Moses at the end of paragraph 64, which have no more value in the text than other religious expressions, such as the Bacchic ones in paragraphs 12 and 85. More biased, because they freely interpret some of the rites described, giving the reader no choice but to accept their interpretation, are the allusions to the loaves of bread in the proposition of paragraph 81, which according to Philo explain the whole background of the ritual meal of the Tarapautas, and the excursus of 85-87, implying that all the sacred dances of these men and women commemorate the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites. To this Judeo-Christianizing vision of the writing the successive translators of the text have contributed in good measure, that when implicitly admitting the community described is Jewish they orient the terms in that direction; thus, concepts like Sacred Scriptures (hierois grámmasi) (28), the Torah (nomoi)(25), the Sabbath (hebdomnis)(30, 36) and others that do not appear with this sense in the text are introduced. There are also several features in the community described by Philo which openly clash with Jewish traditions. For example, the way of praying raising eyes and hands to the sun (56), as opposed to that of orthodox Judaism of lowering the eyes to the ground and raising the heart upwards; the anointing of the body with oil (36), expressly rejected by other Jewish groups of the time, such as the Essenes12; these people’s abstinence from wine (74) or the same participation of the Therapeutrides (opposed to orthodox Judaism which denies women the right to be instructed). Undoubtedly, the Therapeutae share traits with Jewish religious groups such as the Essenes or the Qumran community, but many of these traits are precisely alien to orthodox traditions. For example, the use of a calendar based on the fiftieth day13 or the prayers addressed to the sun by both Essenes14 and Therapeutae (27,89).
12. F. Josephus, Jewish War, 2.8.3: “They think that oil is a defilement; and if any one of them be anointed, without his own approbation, it is wiped off his body...”
13. E. Schürer, G. VERMES; F. MILLAR, M. GOODMAN, M. BLACK, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. Vol.1, p.600, n 31; J.M. BAUMGARTEN, Studies in Qumran Law (1977) 131-42; Y. YADIN, The Temple Scroll (1983) pp.116-119.
14. Jewish War, 2.128; “And as for their piety towards God, it is very extraordinary; for before sun-rising they speak not a word about profane matters, but put up certain prayers, which they have received from their forefathers, as if they made a supplication for its rising.”
p.260
A PYTHAGOREAN COMMUNITY
Philo's work is part of the Judaic apologetic current, with a polemical character, under which the religion of the members of this ancient monastery can be identified without any doubt, who are presented as "true philosophers, healers of the soul and worshippers of the Self" (1-2). The community that the author tries to pass off as Jewish follows, in the totality of its patterns, the Pythagorean ways of life, as we know them from authors such as Porphyry or Lamblichus. Given the late date at which these authors write, the doubt could arise as to whether the ways of life they expound as characteristic of the Pythagoreans were written to compete with Christian asceticism and might already be tinged with it, as has been said; therefore, in order to consider the problem of the religion of the Therapeutae, it seems to me advisable first to define the essential concepts of Pythagoreanism as we know it . from older sources, from Plato onwards, and to see to what extent the ascetics of the dellago Mareotis follow these patterns; secondly, to compare the details of the lives of the Therapeutae with known specific aspects of the Pythagorean religion.
Pythagoreanism owes its fame to a few influential ideas that have been attributed to it since Antiquity: 1) The metaphysics of number and the conception that reality is, at its deepest level, mathematical in nature. 2) The use of philosophy as a means of spiritual purification. 3) The divine destiny of the soul and the possibility of its ascension and union with the divinity. 4) The use of an allegorical methodology based on the explanation of symbols, sometimes mystical, such as the tetraktis, the golden section and the harmony of the spheres. 5) The Pythagorean theorem. 6) The requirement of keeping strict discipline and silence by the members of the order. These principles are precisely those that sustain the religious spirit of the Therapeutae, a community that faithfully follows the Pythagorean norms; Philo's writing in no way contradicts or deviates from these ideas, but rather reflects the topics of Pythagorean thought.
Mathematics is so important for these people that they refer to the Supreme Being as “purer than the One, more primordial than the Monad”(2); they admire Seven and its square {=49} (65); they consider Seven as ‘the number of perpetual virginity’15; they believe that 50 is “the holiest of numbers and the most important in nature” (65), with a language that reveals, in form and substance, a clear veneration of mathematics as a source of knowledge and a mystical consideration of number, a product of that abstraction necessary to
15. Mystical conception of the number 7 which, of those that constitute the decade (for the Pythagoreans the beginning of everything), is the only one not begotten, being prime, and which does not beget any of the others.
p.261
interpret the writings in an allegorical way. One of the sacred symbols of Pythagoreanism, the famous theorem, is explicitly consigned in the text (65); moreover, in referring to it as the principle of universal generation, Philo uses the same formula of the sacred oath of the Pythagoreans16.
Music, linked to mathematics since ancient times, is another of the favorite dedications of the Therapeuts, who compose and interpret hymns, poems and sacred dances (29,80,83-85). For the Pythagoreans, music was more than the study of measure and rhythm: it was, essentially, a curative means to overcome the passions, a means of spiritual purification17. The Alexandrian ascetics aspire to this purification when they direct their prayers to the supreme Being and long for the ascent of their souls to rejoin him (11-12, 78).
In contrast to music, another of Pythagoreanism’s common beliefs is silence,18 which Therapeuts follow scrupulously and which an admiring Philo never ceases to praise in his writings (75, 80). In a certain way, it explains the circumstances in which DVC has come down to us. We know little of the way in which Pythagoreans taught their knowledge, partly because of the well-known rule of silence among members of the sect, but there can be little doubt about their sacralization of silence, which for them meant the counterpoint of a cosmic and absolute music that orders the universe and which certain privileged like Pythagoras could hear. Silence was not only a fundamental part of Pythagorean thought and doctrine, it was also a guarantee of self-control and the safeguard of esoteric knowledge which could only be acquired after a long time. To reach the full acquisition of knowledge and doctrine (that is: to become part of the select nucleus of the initiates), it was necessary to follow a first stage of probation which lasted three years, in which the aspirant was in a more or less regular relationship with members of the sect, then a novitiate proper, much more strict, of five years.19
Unfortunately, we cannot know for certain whether the length of these periods of familiarization and adherence to the sect was still enforced during Philo's day, though it is plausible that was so. Anyway, what is our interest here and important to note: Pythagorean groups, like any Hermetic association, could not remain in total isolation from the rest of humanity. Between themselves and the rest of society there was a space visited by sympathizers, those in contact with group members who after some period of time could decide whether to join or leave the sect, and after the mandatory novitiate becoming a full member: a Pythagorean proper.
16. Iamblichus, De Vita Pythagorica (c.300 AD), 28.150: “Just as the Pythagoreans abstained from using the names of the Gods, also, through reverence, they were unwilling to name Pythagoras, indicating him whom they meant by the invention of the Tetraktys. Such is the form of an oath ascribed to them: I swear by the discoverer of the Tetraktys, which is the spring of all our wisdom; The perennial fount and root of Nature.”
17. Iamblichus, V.P. 15.64, where he indicates the purifying, tempering and therapeutic power of music: “Pythagoras … obtained remedies of human manners and passions, and restored the pristine harmony of the faculties of the soul. …divinely contriving mingling of certain diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic melodies through which he easily switched and circulated the passions of the soul in a contrary direction, … corrected by the use of virtue, tempering them through appropriate melodies, as if through some salutary medicine.”
18. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 1.14: “Pythagoras was commended for his saying that ‘a man should have no intercourse except with his own wife’.”
19. Iamblichus, V.P., 17.72. In this second stage it was obligatory to keep five years of silence and to renounce material possessions.
p.262
It is unlikely that a full member, that hypothetical pagan monk mentioned above, could have written a treatise on the ways of life within his sect: doctrinal precepts would probably prevent him from doing so. It is not strange, however, that someone who sympathized with these people, who knew something of their teachings, who admired the form of holy life that their members led within the walls, could have written about them, with different intentions.20 Philo never ceases to praise the silence that governs the life of these men (75, 80), but neither in the public forums nor in the synagogue nor in his works does he personally keep it. According to Eusebius, “he was well acquainted with the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras”21; it is plausible to conjecture that he would have learned it from contact with these Therapeuts. On the one hand, knowledge of the rites and ways of life of the community that he manifests in the work, evidences a direct contact with the sect, but on the other hand, this knowledge is shown to be quite superficial: the author lets us glimpse a monasterial order of organization and habits much more complex and typified than what his simplified account suggests. He tells us nothing of the internal economy of the monastery, nor of the organization of the common spaces, nor of the phases of the learning of the doctrine, nor of the full integration in the order, and this because he probably does not know them from the inside. The news that the members of the community are veterans according to the order of admission, not according to their age, suggests a systematic and guided learning of the doctrine, necessary when dedicating oneself to science and the contemplation of nature (64,67), learning that seems arduous in the teaching (75-77) and certainly contrasts with that picturesque account of ascetic sages isolated in their cells the writing offers. Philo describes a monastery whose members, already trained, devote most of their time to study and philosophical meditation; however, the retreat of these men gives the impression of being the final result of a long process of acquisition of knowledge, not a spontaneous impulse of detachment from the world, as the text implies. The author was probably in direct contact with the Therapeuts and learned part of the Pythagorean doctrines through them, but it is unlikely that he would have been able to
20. In the monastery of Khirbet Qumran, around the time of Philo's writing, this seems to have been a fairly common form of relationship with the monasterial nucleus: the necropolis discovered, with more than a thousand tombs, seems to indicate the existence of an abundant number of ascetics who lived in the caves or in more or less ephemeral lodgings in the surrounding area.
21. H.E. 11,IV, 3.
the Therapeuts were Christians. However, doubts about the religious identification of this group have persisted, with several scholars highlighting the Judaic character of their proselytes. As the thesis of Eusebius was almost as difficult to accept as that the Therapeuts were orthodox Jews, in 1879, Lucius published a treatise to demonstrate the work was false and to settle the problem once and for all. 7 In principle his interpretation was accepted by several historians, but it motivated the rejection by eminent linguist Conybeare, who six years later published a critical edition that has remained as a classic and which uses both the Greek text and the preserved Latin and Armenian versions. In it, he dispels any doubt about the authenticity of the work, whose Philonian authorship no one has questioned since.8 The problem that interests us here is the one that successive editions and studies have failed to clarify: that of the religion of these Therapeuts.
It has been thought that Eusebius, when transcribing Philo's information about the Therapeutae, is convinced we are dealing with a Christian community, which would have been established on Alexandria’s outskirts and which would owe its existence to St. Mark’s evangelization, as he states in his work: “That Philo, when he wrote these things, had in mind the first heralds of the Evangelistic doctrines transmitted from the beginning by the Apostles, is clear to everyone.”9 Judging by the reasons with which in the same text he tries to convince his readers, it should not be so obvious to everyone, but less obvious than to anyone else, to himself. I do not think Eusebius is surprised by the curious resemblance between the community described by Philo and the life of the Christian ascetics. I am rather inclined to think that he is well aware — he cannot not be aware — of the existence of such establishments of his time (whether they are called monasteries, thiasoi, philosophical schools, or whatever one wants to call them) of which he knows enough about, what they are devoted to, and what kind of life their members lead in them. But it happens that he is not at all interested in admitting that they may belong to a religious group different from his own. For a simple reason: Eusebius is a religious apologist, a man committed to a specific faith and doctrine, and his opinions, his very vision of reality, are inevitably influenced by this fact. A religious sectarian tends to an incredible simplification in his way of understanding reality: aligned with an evaluation of the world and of things he considers "the right one", and that he identifies with the good, the consideration of everything
7. PB. Lucius, Die Therapeuten und ihre Stellung in der Geschichte der Askese. Strasbourg 1879.
8. F.C. CONYBEARE, Philo: About the Contemplative Life. Oxford, 1895.
9. H. E. II, XVII, 24.
10. Idid. 15,17-18
258
around him is deeply imbued with this conviction. It is a universal evaluation, which does not admit nuances, and which divides the world, people, into two excluding categories: ‘us’ and ‘others’. Since it is not always clear who belongs to one or the other group, a more or less fanatical believer — and it is hard to believe that the first Church historian, writing under the great persecution of Diocletian, is not to a large extent fanatical — divides people into two categories, those who are in the truth and those who are outside it. The thought of a sectarian could be paraphrased as follows: “to the extent that someone participates in goodness, in goodness, he is one of us; to the extent that he moves away from them, he belongs to the others”. The spirit of the writings of the bishop of Caesarea is not far from this sensibility. Therefore, it is hard to believe his sincerity when he refers to Philo as "one of ours", as if he ignored the unbridgeable rift opened between Jews and Christians following the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, as if he had not read the exhortations of a St. Ignatius Martyr, the Epistola Barnabae, the Dialogue with Trypho of Justin, and many other works of a Christian literary current that makes clear his distance from the Judaic world; this selective amnesia leads him to forget circumcision, the Sabbaths, the fasts and in short everything characteristic of Judaism, in order to make the reader believe that Philo and the writer belong to the same religious faith. Eusebius feels the same little modesty in Christianizing Philo as in Christianizing the Therapeutae, and this, we do not doubt, with his best faith, but put at the service of a doctrine. His suggestion to see in the therapeutae a group of Christian ascetics is, however, too risky a gamble, which has led the later tradition into curious blind alleys.11
The Christian faith of this first monastery is based only on the interested opinion of Eusebius, so that it is convenient to look for plausible alternatives. All those who have studied the work have coincided in emphasizing the Judaic components of the Therapeuts. Given the source of the news, the really strange thing would be that they did not have them: Philo, when treating religious subjects, is not more reliable than Eusebius; he makes partisanship, of course Judaic and not precisely of the finest. These Alexandrian Therapeuts are probably not Jewish; if they were, it would be strange that Philo had not explicitly stated it in his writing. Nothing would have pleased him more than to bring this angelic way of life closer to the true religion, his own; but since they probably are not, the author is content to Judaize them. Although the
11. For example, when Epiphanius quotes the Therapeutae and follows Eusebius in believing that they are Christians. This creates certain moral problems for him, because on the one hand (I suppose insofar as they are virtuous people) he has decided that they are Christians, but at the same time he believes that they are Nazarenes, the primitive Jewish followers of Jesus, whom he is about to attack (Panarion 29, 5,1). In 5,5 he tries to resolve the contradiction without much success, wrapping the terms of the problem in a mist of polemic and allegory: R.A. PRITZ, Nazarene Jewish Christianity. Jerusalem-Leiden, EJ. Brill, 1988, 39.
259
fact of whether they are Hebrews or not does not seem essential to me: if Philo lived with this community for some time, it seems logical to leave open the possibility some of its members could have been Jews, yet I insist this is not relevant. The essential thing is to understand the religious habits of this community. Philo describes a kind of universalist philosopher, dedicated not only to contemplation but also to study, reading, meditation, writing books, hymns, musical composition. The Judaism of the Therapeutae owes more to Philo than to the religion they practice: while some of their customs are foreign to the Hebrew tradition, others openly clash with it. The paragraphs with the most Hebraic flavor are those that the author introduces on his own to bring the angelic life of these people closer to the ways of the Jewish religion. For example, the allusion to the holy prescriptions of the prophet Moses at the end of paragraph 64, which have no more value in the text than other religious expressions, such as the Bacchic ones in paragraphs 12 and 85. More biased, because they freely interpret some of the rites described, giving the reader no choice but to accept their interpretation, are the allusions to the loaves of bread in the proposition of paragraph 81, which according to Philo explain the whole background of the ritual meal of the Tarapautas, and the excursus of 85-87, implying that all the sacred dances of these men and women commemorate the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites. To this Judeo-Christianizing vision of the writing the successive translators of the text have contributed in good measure, that when implicitly admitting the community described is Jewish they orient the terms in that direction; thus, concepts like Sacred Scriptures (hierois grámmasi) (28), the Torah (nomoi)(25), the Sabbath (hebdomnis)(30, 36) and others that do not appear with this sense in the text are introduced. There are also several features in the community described by Philo which openly clash with Jewish traditions. For example, the way of praying raising eyes and hands to the sun (56), as opposed to that of orthodox Judaism of lowering the eyes to the ground and raising the heart upwards; the anointing of the body with oil (36), expressly rejected by other Jewish groups of the time, such as the Essenes12; these people’s abstinence from wine (74) or the same participation of the Therapeutrides (opposed to orthodox Judaism which denies women the right to be instructed). Undoubtedly, the Therapeutae share traits with Jewish religious groups such as the Essenes or the Qumran community, but many of these traits are precisely alien to orthodox traditions. For example, the use of a calendar based on the fiftieth day13 or the prayers addressed to the sun by both Essenes14 and Therapeutae (27,89).
12. F. Josephus, Jewish War, 2.8.3: “They think that oil is a defilement; and if any one of them be anointed, without his own approbation, it is wiped off his body...”
13. E. Schürer, G. VERMES; F. MILLAR, M. GOODMAN, M. BLACK, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. Vol.1, p.600, n 31; J.M. BAUMGARTEN, Studies in Qumran Law (1977) 131-42; Y. YADIN, The Temple Scroll (1983) pp.116-119.
14. Jewish War, 2.128; “And as for their piety towards God, it is very extraordinary; for before sun-rising they speak not a word about profane matters, but put up certain prayers, which they have received from their forefathers, as if they made a supplication for its rising.”
p.260
A PYTHAGOREAN COMMUNITY
Philo's work is part of the Judaic apologetic current, with a polemical character, under which the religion of the members of this ancient monastery can be identified without any doubt, who are presented as "true philosophers, healers of the soul and worshippers of the Self" (1-2). The community that the author tries to pass off as Jewish follows, in the totality of its patterns, the Pythagorean ways of life, as we know them from authors such as Porphyry or Lamblichus. Given the late date at which these authors write, the doubt could arise as to whether the ways of life they expound as characteristic of the Pythagoreans were written to compete with Christian asceticism and might already be tinged with it, as has been said; therefore, in order to consider the problem of the religion of the Therapeutae, it seems to me advisable first to define the essential concepts of Pythagoreanism as we know it . from older sources, from Plato onwards, and to see to what extent the ascetics of the dellago Mareotis follow these patterns; secondly, to compare the details of the lives of the Therapeutae with known specific aspects of the Pythagorean religion.
Pythagoreanism owes its fame to a few influential ideas that have been attributed to it since Antiquity: 1) The metaphysics of number and the conception that reality is, at its deepest level, mathematical in nature. 2) The use of philosophy as a means of spiritual purification. 3) The divine destiny of the soul and the possibility of its ascension and union with the divinity. 4) The use of an allegorical methodology based on the explanation of symbols, sometimes mystical, such as the tetraktis, the golden section and the harmony of the spheres. 5) The Pythagorean theorem. 6) The requirement of keeping strict discipline and silence by the members of the order. These principles are precisely those that sustain the religious spirit of the Therapeutae, a community that faithfully follows the Pythagorean norms; Philo's writing in no way contradicts or deviates from these ideas, but rather reflects the topics of Pythagorean thought.
Mathematics is so important for these people that they refer to the Supreme Being as “purer than the One, more primordial than the Monad”(2); they admire Seven and its square {=49} (65); they consider Seven as ‘the number of perpetual virginity’15; they believe that 50 is “the holiest of numbers and the most important in nature” (65), with a language that reveals, in form and substance, a clear veneration of mathematics as a source of knowledge and a mystical consideration of number, a product of that abstraction necessary to
15. Mystical conception of the number 7 which, of those that constitute the decade (for the Pythagoreans the beginning of everything), is the only one not begotten, being prime, and which does not beget any of the others.
p.261
interpret the writings in an allegorical way. One of the sacred symbols of Pythagoreanism, the famous theorem, is explicitly consigned in the text (65); moreover, in referring to it as the principle of universal generation, Philo uses the same formula of the sacred oath of the Pythagoreans16.
Music, linked to mathematics since ancient times, is another of the favorite dedications of the Therapeuts, who compose and interpret hymns, poems and sacred dances (29,80,83-85). For the Pythagoreans, music was more than the study of measure and rhythm: it was, essentially, a curative means to overcome the passions, a means of spiritual purification17. The Alexandrian ascetics aspire to this purification when they direct their prayers to the supreme Being and long for the ascent of their souls to rejoin him (11-12, 78).
In contrast to music, another of Pythagoreanism’s common beliefs is silence,18 which Therapeuts follow scrupulously and which an admiring Philo never ceases to praise in his writings (75, 80). In a certain way, it explains the circumstances in which DVC has come down to us. We know little of the way in which Pythagoreans taught their knowledge, partly because of the well-known rule of silence among members of the sect, but there can be little doubt about their sacralization of silence, which for them meant the counterpoint of a cosmic and absolute music that orders the universe and which certain privileged like Pythagoras could hear. Silence was not only a fundamental part of Pythagorean thought and doctrine, it was also a guarantee of self-control and the safeguard of esoteric knowledge which could only be acquired after a long time. To reach the full acquisition of knowledge and doctrine (that is: to become part of the select nucleus of the initiates), it was necessary to follow a first stage of probation which lasted three years, in which the aspirant was in a more or less regular relationship with members of the sect, then a novitiate proper, much more strict, of five years.19
Unfortunately, we cannot know for certain whether the length of these periods of familiarization and adherence to the sect was still enforced during Philo's day, though it is plausible that was so. Anyway, what is our interest here and important to note: Pythagorean groups, like any Hermetic association, could not remain in total isolation from the rest of humanity. Between themselves and the rest of society there was a space visited by sympathizers, those in contact with group members who after some period of time could decide whether to join or leave the sect, and after the mandatory novitiate becoming a full member: a Pythagorean proper.
16. Iamblichus, De Vita Pythagorica (c.300 AD), 28.150: “Just as the Pythagoreans abstained from using the names of the Gods, also, through reverence, they were unwilling to name Pythagoras, indicating him whom they meant by the invention of the Tetraktys. Such is the form of an oath ascribed to them: I swear by the discoverer of the Tetraktys, which is the spring of all our wisdom; The perennial fount and root of Nature.”
17. Iamblichus, V.P. 15.64, where he indicates the purifying, tempering and therapeutic power of music: “Pythagoras … obtained remedies of human manners and passions, and restored the pristine harmony of the faculties of the soul. …divinely contriving mingling of certain diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic melodies through which he easily switched and circulated the passions of the soul in a contrary direction, … corrected by the use of virtue, tempering them through appropriate melodies, as if through some salutary medicine.”
18. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 1.14: “Pythagoras was commended for his saying that ‘a man should have no intercourse except with his own wife’.”
19. Iamblichus, V.P., 17.72. In this second stage it was obligatory to keep five years of silence and to renounce material possessions.
p.262
It is unlikely that a full member, that hypothetical pagan monk mentioned above, could have written a treatise on the ways of life within his sect: doctrinal precepts would probably prevent him from doing so. It is not strange, however, that someone who sympathized with these people, who knew something of their teachings, who admired the form of holy life that their members led within the walls, could have written about them, with different intentions.20 Philo never ceases to praise the silence that governs the life of these men (75, 80), but neither in the public forums nor in the synagogue nor in his works does he personally keep it. According to Eusebius, “he was well acquainted with the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras”21; it is plausible to conjecture that he would have learned it from contact with these Therapeuts. On the one hand, knowledge of the rites and ways of life of the community that he manifests in the work, evidences a direct contact with the sect, but on the other hand, this knowledge is shown to be quite superficial: the author lets us glimpse a monasterial order of organization and habits much more complex and typified than what his simplified account suggests. He tells us nothing of the internal economy of the monastery, nor of the organization of the common spaces, nor of the phases of the learning of the doctrine, nor of the full integration in the order, and this because he probably does not know them from the inside. The news that the members of the community are veterans according to the order of admission, not according to their age, suggests a systematic and guided learning of the doctrine, necessary when dedicating oneself to science and the contemplation of nature (64,67), learning that seems arduous in the teaching (75-77) and certainly contrasts with that picturesque account of ascetic sages isolated in their cells the writing offers. Philo describes a monastery whose members, already trained, devote most of their time to study and philosophical meditation; however, the retreat of these men gives the impression of being the final result of a long process of acquisition of knowledge, not a spontaneous impulse of detachment from the world, as the text implies. The author was probably in direct contact with the Therapeuts and learned part of the Pythagorean doctrines through them, but it is unlikely that he would have been able to
20. In the monastery of Khirbet Qumran, around the time of Philo's writing, this seems to have been a fairly common form of relationship with the monasterial nucleus: the necropolis discovered, with more than a thousand tombs, seems to indicate the existence of an abundant number of ascetics who lived in the caves or in more or less ephemeral lodgings in the surrounding area.
21. H.E. 11,IV, 3.
Last edited by billd89 on Fri Dec 17, 2021 9:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
Pt 4: Un monasterio pitagórico, by D.Fernández-Galiano
p.263
follow the whole process until he became one of these Pythagorean monks22. He shared with them a strong monotheism, a desire for transcendence, a burning piety and the same passion for philosophy, which perhaps brought him closer to the walls of the sanctuary he describes.23
If the general features of the religion of the Therapeutae are clearly inspired by the essential ideas of Pythagoreanism, the concrete details of their habits, rites and customs make this dependence even more evident. They divine by means of dreams that the Godhead sends them (26)24, and for this they relax their bodies and minds, previously undergoing a rigorous examination of conscience (27), another typically Pythagorean custom 25. This method of physical and mental self-control carried out by the Therapeuts is also typical of Pythagoreanism 26, and serves to foster self-mastery (encrateia), the basis on which to base all the other virtues. A detail that we have pointed out as alien to Judaism, the participation of the Therapoeutrides in monastic life, fits perfectly into this sect: suffice it to recall that, of all the philosophical schools of antiquity, it is precisely the Pythagorean school that has bequeathed to us the greatest number of female names, of those chaste women dedicated to study and pious life, some fragments of whose works have even been preserved 27. The Therapeuts have embraced the ways of life advised by the master even in the smallest details: as good Pythagoreans, they practice sexual abstinence 28, dress in linen (38) 29, are vegetarians and abstain from drinking wine (37,73)30, and according to the prescriptions of the founder, they anoint their bodies with oil (36)31 A final feature of these monks, closely related to Pythagorean ways of life32, is that they are worshippers of the sun33, to whom they direct their prayers, to whom they fear to sully by the satisfaction of their
22. Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 37.
23. lamblicus, V.P. 163.
24. lamblicus, V.P. 65, 70.
25. Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 40; lamblicus, V.P. 60, 65, 70, 165, 256.
26. lamblicus VP. 186,195.
27. lamblicus VP. 132, 210.
28. Philostratus V. Apollonius 1, 13.
29. Iamblichus VP. 100,149.
30. Customs both foreign to orthodox Judaism, and to the Qumran sect. lamblicus, VP. 69, 85, 106, 187. Philostratus, V. Apollonius 1, 8; Porphyry VP. 34.
31. lamblicus, VP. 97. Philostratus, V. Apollonius 1, 16.
32. Philostratus V. Apollonius 1, 16.
33. This statement might seem to contradict what was expressed in section 5; yet naturally, what the Therapeuts worship in the sun is the image of the supreme God.
p.264
bodily needs, in whose honor they offer the whiteness of their robes, hands and souls (66) and whose course governs the calendar by which they order their days.
SERVANTS: THERAPEUTAE, THERAPEUTRIDES, THERAPENIDES
The proposed identification of the Therapeutae as a Pythagorean group helps to explain their geographical diffusion. Philo affirms, at the beginning of epigraph 21, that this type of people is found in many parts of the world. Lucius used these words to support the supposed falsehood of the work, according to the following reasoning: if we have no other information of the Therapeutae besides what is in De Vita Contemplativa, we must suppose the work is false or the author is lying. This disjunctive is misleading, since Philo refers to the fact that this type of people (not the specific order of the Therapeutae, but those who follow the Pythagorean ways of life) abound in the oikoumene { known, inhabited world} and outside it. Contrary to what has been believed until now, the Therapeutae are not an ascetic group isolated in the environs of Lake Mareotis disconnected from what is happening in the rest of the world, but a monastery of evolved forms, with features common to other groups of people who have decided to adopt similar ways of life: e.g., Hellenized Jews such as the Essenes, the community of Qumran, and other Pythagorean religious communities distributed throughout the Empire. Within their logical diversity, these groups had some common features; one of them, a theme dear to Stoics, Pythagoreans and Cynics, was the egalitarian consideration of all members, derived from an equitable idea of the human race as a whole. By this way of understanding relations between men (based, among other things, on common possessions), they reject slavery as something negative, since it is caused by the greed of some and is alien to the order of Nature, which has created all men free. At the moment of maximum Imperialist military expansion (while nation after nation are subjected to the power of Rome), Pythagoreanism and other philosophical schools are advocating values radically opposed to those justifying and legitimizing Roman domination. These schools, sects, or whatever you want to call them advocate a reversal of values and which will gradually permeate all society leading straight to medieval thought. Indeed, reading Philo's text on the Therapeutae, it is difficult to believe that, in so many ideas and forms, we are not already in the Middle Ages. For these people, slavery will become the exact opposite of what it was before: the serfs will no longer be men whom their very status marks as inferior, but silent witnesses and accusers of an unjust social order, that social order which the monks reject by their withdrawal. Within the convent, the title of servant, serf, slave, will be an honorable title:
p.265
naturally, because all its members are slaves of God, the only master whom they can and must serve without dishonor. The word Therapeutae, in Greek, means in the first meaning worshipper, servant of a god. The Therapeutae are servants of the Supreme Being.
It is possible that in the future some fortunate archaeological find will uncover the vestiges of other groups of people also called Therapeuts, which will help to clarify what we know of these ancient monks; but, in the meantime, we will use what is presented here to help explain archaeological remains of a specific site which can, in turn, help us to understand these Alexandrian ascetics: the building located under the Eastern Cathedral of Apamea in Syria. In it a mosaic has been found with a representation of Ulysses returning to Ithaca, embracing Penelope in the presence of Eurycleia and six young women dancing; above them, the title of the painting: Therapenides (fig. 1). Although the mythological identification of the scene does not present many doubts, the major problem remains, to elucidate its iconographic, archaeological and historical meaning. M.H. Quet, relying partly on the work of J. Balty, has proposed a literary, philosophical, eschatological and symbolic reading of this image, studying the process by which the servants of Ulysses became the servants of Greek philosophy, and the way in which these characters of The Odyssey came to be understood, more and more, as allegories of the different disciplines — Grammar, Geometry, Music, etc. — which made access possible to the last step of knowledge, Hellenistic Philosophy.34
The proposed iconographic reading thus leads from a direct interpretation of the painting — the return of Ulysses to Ithaca — to a Platonic interpretation which would understand these images as an allegory of the return of the soul and its reunion with Beauty. Based on symbolism, this reading sees in Ulysses, the Soul; in Penelope, Philosophy; in Eurycleia and her maid-servants, the encyclical science which leads to the culmination of knowledge: to Philosophy. In general terms, I subscribe to this reading proposed by other scholars, but I must make some clarifications without which I do not believe it is possible to understand either this representation or the archaeological ensemble of which it was a part. The image shows several women dancing in harmony, in an open circle that heads towards an inner enclosure, the palace of Ithaca, or more abstractly, the final destiny of the hero. The representation, however, highlights these Therapenides or maid-servants as the main motive: they are maidens who can be understood as the different sciences leading to knowledge, although, among them, Eurycleia, servant par excellence, appears in a different attitude from the others: wrapped in her cloak, she observes the scene of the reunion, she observes the dance. The young servants are active servants, while the last servant, the most mature, passively contemplates the scene:
34. M.H. QUET, o.c. ** Janine Balty — Les "Thérapénides" d'Apamée. Textes littéraires et iconographie. In: Dialogues d'histoire ancienne, vol. 18, n°1, 1992 **
266
belongs to a higher rank and symbolizes Philosophy35. Philosophy, that last step in the scale of knowledge, leads to a contemplative attitude, the supreme attitude to which the Therapeuts oriented their lives. More allied to contemplative Philosophy, there is only Beauty, which a Platonist always identifies with the Absolute Good, symbolized here by Penelope, an allegory of the highest fidelity, of the Supreme Faith.
The representation of the Apamean mosaic is explained, in part, by an image of another pavement of the same building, in a scene with the Judgment of the Nereids. Next to a splendidly naked Cassiopeia, a lady holds the veil that covered her; next to her, a sign in Greek, TERAPENA = servant, allegory of the Philosophy that discovers the truth. The Therapenides of the mosaic of Ulysses can be understood as allegories of the scien ces and liberal arts, but also, and essentially, as servants of Faith and of the Supreme Being. Philosophy is not for the pagan world a point of arrival in itself; in its highest degree, it is conceived as passive activity, passion in the contemplation of Being. This seems to me important to understand both these images where servitude is enhanced, as well as the building for which they were made. It is difficult not to associate these Terapénides apameas in their sacred dances with those described by Philo, the Terapéutrides dancing in honor of the Supreme Being: it would be extraordinarily improbable that they were not related. These dancers are allegories, but it is impossible to know whether they are allegories of the liberal arts, or of the vir-tudes; the language of these images is deliberately ambiguous and to try to define it we must take into account the archaeological data accompanying the find. In addition to the two mosaics mentioned above, with themes of the return of Ulysses and the trial of the Nereids, there are others: of one of them only the word KALLOC is preserved, another shows Socrates surrounded by six wise men. These remains have inclined their discoverers to think that the building for which they were created was a school of philosophy, presumably the one in which Julian's teacher, Jamblichus, taught. This adds one more point of coincidence between the place described by Philo of Alexandria and this building, given that both are probably dedicated to the same purpose, the teaching of philosophy36. Of the first we know quite a lot; of the second, quite little; we do not know if in its halls it is
35. I emphasize this role of active servants, as opposed to the passivity of the more venerable servant, in order to compare these figures with those of another mosaic studied by us, belonging to another pagan monastery: the so-called Oran Hunting of Piazza Armerina, where the activity of the servants contrasts with the passive figure of the philosopher who majestically observes the scene. D. FERNÁNDEZ GALIANO, "La filosofía de Filosofiana", Actas delCongreso sobre Anfiteatros Romanos. Mérida, 1992 (in press).
36. J.Ch. Balty, "Nouvelles mosaiques pafennes et groupe épiscopal dit "Cathédrale de I'Est" á Apamée de Syrie". CRA 1, 1972, 103-127; J. and J. Ch. BALTY, "Un programme philosophique sous la cathédrale dApamée: l'ensemble néoplatonicien de lempereur Julien". Texte et Image. Actes ducolloque international de Chantilly. Paris, 1984, 167-176.
267
classes were given, and if they were attended by women, how is it possible. We only know that in the decoration of one of its rooms they were represented in a presumably sacred dance, but the same allegorical language used prevents us from knowing if the women who would receive classes in the building could feel identified in an idealized way with the dancers of the mosaic, given that both would be servants of philosophy. In any case, if philosophy is considered as something alien to faith and religion, there is a danger of misunderstanding the intended use of this building. In the ancient world, religion and philosophy were too mixed to allow a clear distinction between them; the higher plane on which they coincided — theology, relations with the Supreme Being — is by force abstract, and so it is not surprising that the language they use — both written and graphic — inevitably tends to ambiguity.
An ambiguous text, written in an age of ambiguous beliefs, can help to appreciate these images. It is The Shepherd of Hermas, an interesting work that uses many of religious allegories of the time37. The Shepherd narrates different visions and apparitions that appear to him, one of them especially illustrative for our images: a {great white} rock, with a carved gate that shines brighter than the sun, flanked by twelve cheerful and eager virgins “dressed in linen tunics and gracefully girded, leaving the right shoulder bare”38. They take part in the construction of a tower, allegory of the Church, and then the prophet is left alone in the company of the virgins: “...I began to play with them. In fact, some of them formed dance circles, others danced freely, others sang. And I felt very happy in their company...”. 39.
My opinion is that all of this enclave’s mosaics represent symbolic scenes related to the intended use of the building, probably dedicated to the teaching of philosophy. Data supporting this are both the iconography of the mosaics and the continuity of the site, on which a new religious building would later be established. But contrary to what is defended by other authors, I do not think it convenient to necessarily attribute the building of which these mosaics belonged to the brief reign of Julian, a dating forced by a sharp division between paganism and Christianity40; In general, it does not seem to me a good method of approach to the study of Late Antiquity to
37. A book that, after being appreciated by great churchmen like Clement of Alexandria and Origen, passed into oblivion in the Middle Ages. Its rediscovery in the Nineteenth Century made it possible to know the revelations of a prophet (perhaps Christian) whose opinions so imbued with Gnosticism still today cause astonishment among specialized critics.
38. (Sim. IX,2).
39. Sim. IX,11.
40. J. and J.CH. BALTY, “Julien et Apamée. Aspects de la restauration de l'hellénisme et de la politique antichrétienne de l'empereur”. DHA 1(1974) 267-304; 1. BALTY, "Iconographie et réaction paienne". Mélanges P. Lévéque, 17-32.
follow the whole process until he became one of these Pythagorean monks22. He shared with them a strong monotheism, a desire for transcendence, a burning piety and the same passion for philosophy, which perhaps brought him closer to the walls of the sanctuary he describes.23
If the general features of the religion of the Therapeutae are clearly inspired by the essential ideas of Pythagoreanism, the concrete details of their habits, rites and customs make this dependence even more evident. They divine by means of dreams that the Godhead sends them (26)24, and for this they relax their bodies and minds, previously undergoing a rigorous examination of conscience (27), another typically Pythagorean custom 25. This method of physical and mental self-control carried out by the Therapeuts is also typical of Pythagoreanism 26, and serves to foster self-mastery (encrateia), the basis on which to base all the other virtues. A detail that we have pointed out as alien to Judaism, the participation of the Therapoeutrides in monastic life, fits perfectly into this sect: suffice it to recall that, of all the philosophical schools of antiquity, it is precisely the Pythagorean school that has bequeathed to us the greatest number of female names, of those chaste women dedicated to study and pious life, some fragments of whose works have even been preserved 27. The Therapeuts have embraced the ways of life advised by the master even in the smallest details: as good Pythagoreans, they practice sexual abstinence 28, dress in linen (38) 29, are vegetarians and abstain from drinking wine (37,73)30, and according to the prescriptions of the founder, they anoint their bodies with oil (36)31 A final feature of these monks, closely related to Pythagorean ways of life32, is that they are worshippers of the sun33, to whom they direct their prayers, to whom they fear to sully by the satisfaction of their
22. Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 37.
23. lamblicus, V.P. 163.
24. lamblicus, V.P. 65, 70.
25. Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 40; lamblicus, V.P. 60, 65, 70, 165, 256.
26. lamblicus VP. 186,195.
27. lamblicus VP. 132, 210.
28. Philostratus V. Apollonius 1, 13.
29. Iamblichus VP. 100,149.
30. Customs both foreign to orthodox Judaism, and to the Qumran sect. lamblicus, VP. 69, 85, 106, 187. Philostratus, V. Apollonius 1, 8; Porphyry VP. 34.
31. lamblicus, VP. 97. Philostratus, V. Apollonius 1, 16.
32. Philostratus V. Apollonius 1, 16.
33. This statement might seem to contradict what was expressed in section 5; yet naturally, what the Therapeuts worship in the sun is the image of the supreme God.
p.264
bodily needs, in whose honor they offer the whiteness of their robes, hands and souls (66) and whose course governs the calendar by which they order their days.
SERVANTS: THERAPEUTAE, THERAPEUTRIDES, THERAPENIDES
The proposed identification of the Therapeutae as a Pythagorean group helps to explain their geographical diffusion. Philo affirms, at the beginning of epigraph 21, that this type of people is found in many parts of the world. Lucius used these words to support the supposed falsehood of the work, according to the following reasoning: if we have no other information of the Therapeutae besides what is in De Vita Contemplativa, we must suppose the work is false or the author is lying. This disjunctive is misleading, since Philo refers to the fact that this type of people (not the specific order of the Therapeutae, but those who follow the Pythagorean ways of life) abound in the oikoumene { known, inhabited world} and outside it. Contrary to what has been believed until now, the Therapeutae are not an ascetic group isolated in the environs of Lake Mareotis disconnected from what is happening in the rest of the world, but a monastery of evolved forms, with features common to other groups of people who have decided to adopt similar ways of life: e.g., Hellenized Jews such as the Essenes, the community of Qumran, and other Pythagorean religious communities distributed throughout the Empire. Within their logical diversity, these groups had some common features; one of them, a theme dear to Stoics, Pythagoreans and Cynics, was the egalitarian consideration of all members, derived from an equitable idea of the human race as a whole. By this way of understanding relations between men (based, among other things, on common possessions), they reject slavery as something negative, since it is caused by the greed of some and is alien to the order of Nature, which has created all men free. At the moment of maximum Imperialist military expansion (while nation after nation are subjected to the power of Rome), Pythagoreanism and other philosophical schools are advocating values radically opposed to those justifying and legitimizing Roman domination. These schools, sects, or whatever you want to call them advocate a reversal of values and which will gradually permeate all society leading straight to medieval thought. Indeed, reading Philo's text on the Therapeutae, it is difficult to believe that, in so many ideas and forms, we are not already in the Middle Ages. For these people, slavery will become the exact opposite of what it was before: the serfs will no longer be men whom their very status marks as inferior, but silent witnesses and accusers of an unjust social order, that social order which the monks reject by their withdrawal. Within the convent, the title of servant, serf, slave, will be an honorable title:
p.265
naturally, because all its members are slaves of God, the only master whom they can and must serve without dishonor. The word Therapeutae, in Greek, means in the first meaning worshipper, servant of a god. The Therapeutae are servants of the Supreme Being.
It is possible that in the future some fortunate archaeological find will uncover the vestiges of other groups of people also called Therapeuts, which will help to clarify what we know of these ancient monks; but, in the meantime, we will use what is presented here to help explain archaeological remains of a specific site which can, in turn, help us to understand these Alexandrian ascetics: the building located under the Eastern Cathedral of Apamea in Syria. In it a mosaic has been found with a representation of Ulysses returning to Ithaca, embracing Penelope in the presence of Eurycleia and six young women dancing; above them, the title of the painting: Therapenides (fig. 1). Although the mythological identification of the scene does not present many doubts, the major problem remains, to elucidate its iconographic, archaeological and historical meaning. M.H. Quet, relying partly on the work of J. Balty, has proposed a literary, philosophical, eschatological and symbolic reading of this image, studying the process by which the servants of Ulysses became the servants of Greek philosophy, and the way in which these characters of The Odyssey came to be understood, more and more, as allegories of the different disciplines — Grammar, Geometry, Music, etc. — which made access possible to the last step of knowledge, Hellenistic Philosophy.34
The proposed iconographic reading thus leads from a direct interpretation of the painting — the return of Ulysses to Ithaca — to a Platonic interpretation which would understand these images as an allegory of the return of the soul and its reunion with Beauty. Based on symbolism, this reading sees in Ulysses, the Soul; in Penelope, Philosophy; in Eurycleia and her maid-servants, the encyclical science which leads to the culmination of knowledge: to Philosophy. In general terms, I subscribe to this reading proposed by other scholars, but I must make some clarifications without which I do not believe it is possible to understand either this representation or the archaeological ensemble of which it was a part. The image shows several women dancing in harmony, in an open circle that heads towards an inner enclosure, the palace of Ithaca, or more abstractly, the final destiny of the hero. The representation, however, highlights these Therapenides or maid-servants as the main motive: they are maidens who can be understood as the different sciences leading to knowledge, although, among them, Eurycleia, servant par excellence, appears in a different attitude from the others: wrapped in her cloak, she observes the scene of the reunion, she observes the dance. The young servants are active servants, while the last servant, the most mature, passively contemplates the scene:
34. M.H. QUET, o.c. ** Janine Balty — Les "Thérapénides" d'Apamée. Textes littéraires et iconographie. In: Dialogues d'histoire ancienne, vol. 18, n°1, 1992 **
266
belongs to a higher rank and symbolizes Philosophy35. Philosophy, that last step in the scale of knowledge, leads to a contemplative attitude, the supreme attitude to which the Therapeuts oriented their lives. More allied to contemplative Philosophy, there is only Beauty, which a Platonist always identifies with the Absolute Good, symbolized here by Penelope, an allegory of the highest fidelity, of the Supreme Faith.
The representation of the Apamean mosaic is explained, in part, by an image of another pavement of the same building, in a scene with the Judgment of the Nereids. Next to a splendidly naked Cassiopeia, a lady holds the veil that covered her; next to her, a sign in Greek, TERAPENA = servant, allegory of the Philosophy that discovers the truth. The Therapenides of the mosaic of Ulysses can be understood as allegories of the scien ces and liberal arts, but also, and essentially, as servants of Faith and of the Supreme Being. Philosophy is not for the pagan world a point of arrival in itself; in its highest degree, it is conceived as passive activity, passion in the contemplation of Being. This seems to me important to understand both these images where servitude is enhanced, as well as the building for which they were made. It is difficult not to associate these Terapénides apameas in their sacred dances with those described by Philo, the Terapéutrides dancing in honor of the Supreme Being: it would be extraordinarily improbable that they were not related. These dancers are allegories, but it is impossible to know whether they are allegories of the liberal arts, or of the vir-tudes; the language of these images is deliberately ambiguous and to try to define it we must take into account the archaeological data accompanying the find. In addition to the two mosaics mentioned above, with themes of the return of Ulysses and the trial of the Nereids, there are others: of one of them only the word KALLOC is preserved, another shows Socrates surrounded by six wise men. These remains have inclined their discoverers to think that the building for which they were created was a school of philosophy, presumably the one in which Julian's teacher, Jamblichus, taught. This adds one more point of coincidence between the place described by Philo of Alexandria and this building, given that both are probably dedicated to the same purpose, the teaching of philosophy36. Of the first we know quite a lot; of the second, quite little; we do not know if in its halls it is
35. I emphasize this role of active servants, as opposed to the passivity of the more venerable servant, in order to compare these figures with those of another mosaic studied by us, belonging to another pagan monastery: the so-called Oran Hunting of Piazza Armerina, where the activity of the servants contrasts with the passive figure of the philosopher who majestically observes the scene. D. FERNÁNDEZ GALIANO, "La filosofía de Filosofiana", Actas delCongreso sobre Anfiteatros Romanos. Mérida, 1992 (in press).
36. J.Ch. Balty, "Nouvelles mosaiques pafennes et groupe épiscopal dit "Cathédrale de I'Est" á Apamée de Syrie". CRA 1, 1972, 103-127; J. and J. Ch. BALTY, "Un programme philosophique sous la cathédrale dApamée: l'ensemble néoplatonicien de lempereur Julien". Texte et Image. Actes ducolloque international de Chantilly. Paris, 1984, 167-176.
267
classes were given, and if they were attended by women, how is it possible. We only know that in the decoration of one of its rooms they were represented in a presumably sacred dance, but the same allegorical language used prevents us from knowing if the women who would receive classes in the building could feel identified in an idealized way with the dancers of the mosaic, given that both would be servants of philosophy. In any case, if philosophy is considered as something alien to faith and religion, there is a danger of misunderstanding the intended use of this building. In the ancient world, religion and philosophy were too mixed to allow a clear distinction between them; the higher plane on which they coincided — theology, relations with the Supreme Being — is by force abstract, and so it is not surprising that the language they use — both written and graphic — inevitably tends to ambiguity.
An ambiguous text, written in an age of ambiguous beliefs, can help to appreciate these images. It is The Shepherd of Hermas, an interesting work that uses many of religious allegories of the time37. The Shepherd narrates different visions and apparitions that appear to him, one of them especially illustrative for our images: a {great white} rock, with a carved gate that shines brighter than the sun, flanked by twelve cheerful and eager virgins “dressed in linen tunics and gracefully girded, leaving the right shoulder bare”38. They take part in the construction of a tower, allegory of the Church, and then the prophet is left alone in the company of the virgins: “...I began to play with them. In fact, some of them formed dance circles, others danced freely, others sang. And I felt very happy in their company...”. 39.
My opinion is that all of this enclave’s mosaics represent symbolic scenes related to the intended use of the building, probably dedicated to the teaching of philosophy. Data supporting this are both the iconography of the mosaics and the continuity of the site, on which a new religious building would later be established. But contrary to what is defended by other authors, I do not think it convenient to necessarily attribute the building of which these mosaics belonged to the brief reign of Julian, a dating forced by a sharp division between paganism and Christianity40; In general, it does not seem to me a good method of approach to the study of Late Antiquity to
37. A book that, after being appreciated by great churchmen like Clement of Alexandria and Origen, passed into oblivion in the Middle Ages. Its rediscovery in the Nineteenth Century made it possible to know the revelations of a prophet (perhaps Christian) whose opinions so imbued with Gnosticism still today cause astonishment among specialized critics.
38. (Sim. IX,2).
39. Sim. IX,11.
40. J. and J.CH. BALTY, “Julien et Apamée. Aspects de la restauration de l'hellénisme et de la politique antichrétienne de l'empereur”. DHA 1(1974) 267-304; 1. BALTY, "Iconographie et réaction paienne". Mélanges P. Lévéque, 17-32.
Pt 5: Un monasterio pitagórico, by D.Fernández-Galiano
268
understand everything related to knowledge and reasoning belongs to paganism, reserving faith and religiosity as the exclusive preserve of Christianity. This view, however, is common among those engaged in the investigation of these subjects, due in large part to the immense effort in Patristics to vindicate for Christianity the exclusivity of that which pertains to religion and the life of the spirit. Although there was a tendency to separate philosophy and religion later on, for a long time this separation was not sharp; respect and admiration of a St. Augustine for the Greek philosophers — no longer for Plato or Socrates, but for his near contemporaries Plotinus or Porphyry — would be a generalized attitude in a great part of the Christians of that time. It is interesting to see St. Justin’s conviction when he blames both the persecution of Christians and that of Socrates on demons, since the Greek would have revealed the existence of false gods as demons: “these {themselves}, using men who indulge in wickedness {as their instruments}, condemned him to death for being impious and an ‘atheist’; as they do with us”41. In these moments of religious indefinition, Socrates, and a good number of Greek philosophers were not so much an enemy to be fought as a spoil to be fought over.41 Then the demarcation between paganism and Christianity would slowly be established, which would not become a reality until centuries later.
I will conclude with some final reconsiderations. The monastery described in De Vita Contemplativa is not the only one of the period; although we do not know much about this type of life, we have enough information to affirm undoubtedly the existence of monasterial forms of life in the ancient world. The type of life which attracted the attention of Philo in the First Century will become increasingly important as time progresses, and will become more and more common moving into the Middle Ages. As we have already seen analyzing the text, ecclesiastical historiography will defend that monasticism begins to exist only with the definitive establishment of Christianity, implicitly postulating that only the new faith could create such a perfect type of pious institution and vindicating for itself every form of holy life. The reality is different: the evolution of these establishments (with their peculiar lifestyles and co-habitation) was slow, uneven, subjected to different impulses and vicissitudes in different places, and was affirmed, slowly and progressively, throughout the Empire. This is not the place to present my conclusions about the pagan monasteries, a subject on which I am currently preparing a monograph; I will simply point out that these establishments developed, at times, under the protection of family nuclei or thanks to the initiatives of individuals, in other cases promoted by guild and communal associations, and in other cases, probably supported by imperial patronage.
Its development in Roman times was by no means a marginal phenomenon, but was of extraordinary importance: its
41. Justin Martyr, First Apology, (1.5).
269
archaeological manifestation occurs in part in the monuments known as villas and in others, of a similar nature and purpose, in the heart of the cities. I cannot offer here even a list of all those places that should be reviewed from this new point of view, although I will cite as examples some well-known monuments: the Hamada casa del Mitreo in Merida, the villa of Montmaurin or that of Piazza Armerina, to which I have devoted several studies, belong to this genre of buildings. These three archaeological sites offer different forms of a phenomenon that encompasses religion and philosophy at the same time, without Christianity being present in any of them, which is present, however, in other contemporary monuments. The rise of these schools of philosophy cannot be separated from an essential factor to understand them, the religious, which manifests itself in different doctrines and beliefs; one of them, closely related to the others, would be Christianity, which would be defined over time. But this clear break between paganism and Christianity that Christian apologetics defends did not come to exist; for it to exist, a clear dividing line would have been necessary between Philosophy and Faith, which did not take place: this unbridgeable gap between one and the other would be born much later, and would be the natural and legitimate daughter of the ideas of the Enlightenment.
42. He gave an overview of the Mithraeum of Merida in several conferences during 1991 and 1992, in different museums and universities. There is only one publication with a small advance on the Cosmological Mosaic: D. FERNANDEZ-GALIANO, "Observaciones sobre el mosaico de Merida con la eternidad y el Cosmos" (Observations on the Mosaic of Merida with eternity and the Cosmos). ANAS 2-3 (1989-1990). 173-182. The Hamada villa of Montmaurin has not yet been published as a religious site, nor has that of Piazza Armerina, of which there is only a study of the great hunt, in press, cited above. These three buildings will receive sufficient coverage in my next monograph.
43. I wish to record my thanks to o.- Ester Sanchez Millon and D. Antonio Pinero, for their valuable observations in the reading of this paper.
Translation.
understand everything related to knowledge and reasoning belongs to paganism, reserving faith and religiosity as the exclusive preserve of Christianity. This view, however, is common among those engaged in the investigation of these subjects, due in large part to the immense effort in Patristics to vindicate for Christianity the exclusivity of that which pertains to religion and the life of the spirit. Although there was a tendency to separate philosophy and religion later on, for a long time this separation was not sharp; respect and admiration of a St. Augustine for the Greek philosophers — no longer for Plato or Socrates, but for his near contemporaries Plotinus or Porphyry — would be a generalized attitude in a great part of the Christians of that time. It is interesting to see St. Justin’s conviction when he blames both the persecution of Christians and that of Socrates on demons, since the Greek would have revealed the existence of false gods as demons: “these {themselves}, using men who indulge in wickedness {as their instruments}, condemned him to death for being impious and an ‘atheist’; as they do with us”41. In these moments of religious indefinition, Socrates, and a good number of Greek philosophers were not so much an enemy to be fought as a spoil to be fought over.41 Then the demarcation between paganism and Christianity would slowly be established, which would not become a reality until centuries later.
I will conclude with some final reconsiderations. The monastery described in De Vita Contemplativa is not the only one of the period; although we do not know much about this type of life, we have enough information to affirm undoubtedly the existence of monasterial forms of life in the ancient world. The type of life which attracted the attention of Philo in the First Century will become increasingly important as time progresses, and will become more and more common moving into the Middle Ages. As we have already seen analyzing the text, ecclesiastical historiography will defend that monasticism begins to exist only with the definitive establishment of Christianity, implicitly postulating that only the new faith could create such a perfect type of pious institution and vindicating for itself every form of holy life. The reality is different: the evolution of these establishments (with their peculiar lifestyles and co-habitation) was slow, uneven, subjected to different impulses and vicissitudes in different places, and was affirmed, slowly and progressively, throughout the Empire. This is not the place to present my conclusions about the pagan monasteries, a subject on which I am currently preparing a monograph; I will simply point out that these establishments developed, at times, under the protection of family nuclei or thanks to the initiatives of individuals, in other cases promoted by guild and communal associations, and in other cases, probably supported by imperial patronage.
Its development in Roman times was by no means a marginal phenomenon, but was of extraordinary importance: its
41. Justin Martyr, First Apology, (1.5).
269
archaeological manifestation occurs in part in the monuments known as villas and in others, of a similar nature and purpose, in the heart of the cities. I cannot offer here even a list of all those places that should be reviewed from this new point of view, although I will cite as examples some well-known monuments: the Hamada casa del Mitreo in Merida, the villa of Montmaurin or that of Piazza Armerina, to which I have devoted several studies, belong to this genre of buildings. These three archaeological sites offer different forms of a phenomenon that encompasses religion and philosophy at the same time, without Christianity being present in any of them, which is present, however, in other contemporary monuments. The rise of these schools of philosophy cannot be separated from an essential factor to understand them, the religious, which manifests itself in different doctrines and beliefs; one of them, closely related to the others, would be Christianity, which would be defined over time. But this clear break between paganism and Christianity that Christian apologetics defends did not come to exist; for it to exist, a clear dividing line would have been necessary between Philosophy and Faith, which did not take place: this unbridgeable gap between one and the other would be born much later, and would be the natural and legitimate daughter of the ideas of the Enlightenment.
42. He gave an overview of the Mithraeum of Merida in several conferences during 1991 and 1992, in different museums and universities. There is only one publication with a small advance on the Cosmological Mosaic: D. FERNANDEZ-GALIANO, "Observaciones sobre el mosaico de Merida con la eternidad y el Cosmos" (Observations on the Mosaic of Merida with eternity and the Cosmos). ANAS 2-3 (1989-1990). 173-182. The Hamada villa of Montmaurin has not yet been published as a religious site, nor has that of Piazza Armerina, of which there is only a study of the great hunt, in press, cited above. These three buildings will receive sufficient coverage in my next monograph.
43. I wish to record my thanks to o.- Ester Sanchez Millon and D. Antonio Pinero, for their valuable observations in the reading of this paper.
Translation.