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The Making of Monastic Demonology: Three Ascetic Teachers on Withdrawal and Resistance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

David Brakke
David Brakke
Affiliation:
Associate professor of religious studies at Indiana University.
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Extract

Although in recent years fourth- and fifth-century Egyptian monasticism has received much scholarly attention of increasing methodological and theoretical sophistication, conflict with demons, a primary metaphor for the ascetic life in the literature of the period, has been left relatively unexplored. One reason for this lack of attention is a shift in the intellectual paradigms through which scholars approach ascetic literature: as they have moved from psychological and theological models to social and performative ones in interpreting ascetic theory and practice, seemingly subjective or theological themes such as demonological theory have given way to more cultural topics, such as constructions of the body and formations of ascetic institutions and practices, with their accompanying politics. But the neglect of demons is a function also of the weighty influence exercised by two fourth-century demonologists, Athanasius of Alexandria and Evagrius of Pontus, and of the powerful modern explications of monastic demonology based on these important sources. Together the Life of Antony and the works of Evagrius construct, it seems, the monastic demonology, upon which later sources only elaborate.

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Church History , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 19 - 48
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2001

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References

Earlier versions of this paper were read at the American Society of Church History (ASCH) Winter Meeting (Chicago, January 2000) and at the Princeton University Seminar on Late Antiquity (February 2000). I am grateful to the organizers of those sessions, Elizabeth A. Clark (ASCH) and Jaclyn L. Maxwell and Peter Brown (Princeton), and to the participants, especially Teresa Shaw, Virginia Burrus, Sarah lies Johnston, and Peter Struck, for their questions, criticisms, and suggestions. For comments on the written version, thanks go to Bert Harrill and to the anonymous readers for this journal. Research for this paper was supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

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