Saint John Chrysostom, the early church father and Archbishop of Constantinople, was widely lauded for his legendary oratorical skills and prolific writings.

In this two part series of essays, written to fulfil the taught portions of the Master of Arts degree programme (2015) in Theology and Religion at Durham University, UK, I unpack some of his thinking.

In part two, I explore Chrysostom’s thoughts on the value of monastic traditions in relation to the priesthood. My supervisor Associate Professor Krastu Banev was great. He made the course on Patristic Ecclesiology interesting and engaging throughout. People in the Anglophone world are typically not exposed to Orthodox theology and the Eastern traditions. Reading about monastic and ascetic traditions, and well as the sayings of the Eastern church fathers were eye-opening.

I recall being a ball of stress during the winters months, being surrounded, physically and digitally, by literally hundreds of books, journal articles, quotations, and research notes that I had to weave into two coherent, defensible, and insightful essays. For my efforts, I received distinctions and am grateful.

Inside a Monk, Outside a Priest: A Proposal Concerning Chrysostom’s views on the Compatibility of Monasticism with the Priesthood

Before Emperor Constantine adopted the Christian religion, which became the official state religion under Emperor Theodosius I, Christianity had a tumultuous relationship with the Roman Empire. Many Christians were martyred for refusing to observe pagan religious practices. One of the most infamous periods is now known as the Diocletianic Persecution, which lasted until Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 CE. Following that, in an environment more favourable to Christians, such that, in Michael Gaddis’ words, ‘dying for one’s faith as a Christian [now] took some effort and imagination’, Christians of ascetic orientation, probably originating from Egypt, who desired to act on their idealistic vision of a completely Christian empire, continued to cause consternation to the ruling authorities by interrupting their affairs and sometimes even using violence to get what they wanted. [1] To list just some instances, ‘in 388, zealous Christians set fire to a synagogue in Syrian Callinicum. […] At about the same time, some monks burned a meeting place of the Valentinian Gnostic sect’, acting ‘violently and without the sanction of state authority, destroying property belonging to law-abiding citizens’. They tended to receive little disciplinary action from the state because of the spiritual authority and support that the Christian masses vested them with. Some bishops tried to deal with these disruptions to order and peace by ordaining them so that appropriate disciplinary action could be taken against them if they crossed a line. [2] The Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, did this by ‘appointing monks as bishops, by writing personal and encyclical letters of admonition or encouragement, and by publicising the monastic life to the church at large’. [3] John Chrysostom, as Archbishop of Constantinople, also ‘attempted to bring many of these monks directly under his disciplinary authority by ordaining them, in some cases against their will’. [4]

It is interesting to note that Chrysostom himself was an ardent defender and supporter of the monastic life. When he was a young man, he escaped from ordination to pursue an ascetic life on Mount Silpios, spending four years under the tutelage of an elderly Syrian [5] and another two years ‘continually standing, scarcely sleeping, and learning the Old and New Testaments by heart’. [6] As presbyter at Antioch he also ‘sang the praises of the Antiochene hermits and glorified them particularly for their fearless confrontations with secular authorities’. [7] It seems fitting to ask if Chrysostom only had disciplinary intentions in mind when he attempted later as Archbishop to ordain the unruly monks. In other words, was there something about their theology that he could have resonated with and given him additional incentive to ordain them? To answer this larger question, this essay wishes to pursue a narrower question concerning how his approach to Paideia for the priesthood, and his portrayal of the monks’ apparent inability to handle these responsibilities in his book On the Priesthood, can be reconciled with his positive conceptions of them elsewhere. This essay, using recent scholarship to deflate the notion that the early ascetics and monks in Egypt and elsewhere in the East were largely illiterate and uneducated, will argue that Chrysostom’s theology and life share similarities with this new picture of the monk. Therefore, he could have seen in their practices—which focused on education and moral formation—the potential to effect change in the public sphere. This proposal then helps to answer the larger question: While it is undeniable that Chrysostom used ordination as a tool for discipline and control, it is concurrently possible also to construe his actions as an attempt to give genuine monks a platform to make external use of their inner transformation.

The typical reason for an individual pursuing the ascetic or monastic life, as depicted in the hagiographical literature, tends to be connected with the desire to turn away from the corruptions of the larger culture and to focus on one’s relationship with God. Chrysostom, in his On The Priesthood, claims that the qualities engendered by individuals who adhered to this life were insufficient for the priesthood. In his reference to ascetics in Book Three, he writes that piety itself is not a quality fitting for the priestly office. In Book Four, he writes that one’s piety will not help with refuting spurious doctrine, a perpetual necessity for the priest of his time. He goes to on elaborate in Book Five, that when the priest ‘stands up in public and would say what might disturb those who live at ease, and then stumbles and falters, and through lack of words is forced to blush, the benefit of what is spoken is utterly lost’. He writes that the recluse is unable to speak winsomely or defend orthodoxy because he is not trained in rhetoric. For Chrysostom, this rhetorical skill is attained from Classical Paideia and therefore ‘comes not from nature but by learning’. [8] In Book Six, Chrysostom argues that even where recluses are meant to be superior, that is, in their Godly character, they still fall short. This is because

1. Recluses are hedged on every side, making it easier for them to remain pure.
2. The priest must be multi-talented, able to deal with different people, circumstances, emotions, and secular affairs.
3. Greater fortitude of the soul against sinful thoughts and the commitment to ceaseless labour for the flock are required in the ministry. [9]

These suggest that he did not hold positive views about the recluse’s ability to be a priest for three main reasons: their apparent illiteracy, [10] their unwillingness to relate productively with the larger society, and their inability to administer a flock. The following paragraphs will show how these conceptions of ascetics and monks were commonplace in the literature of that time.

In Athanasius’s influential Life of Antony, [11] which ‘inaugurated the genre and therefore established the frame of Christian hagiography’, he depicts Antony as lacking in learning, because ‘he could not bear to learn letters’. This, then, enabled him to be vested with a greater wisdom that came solely from faith in Christ. This characteristic polarization between Godly Parrhesia and pagan Paideia [12] is then expressed throughout the book in his confrontations with Greek philosophers, who, in some cases ‘went away marvelling because they had seen such understanding in an untrained man’. Antony proclaims:

we Christians, then, do not possess the mystery in a wisdom of Greek reasonings, but in the power supplied to us by God through Jesus Christ. […] See now that although we have not learned letters, we believe in God, knowing through his works his providence over all things. […] See now that we rely on the trust that is in Christ, but you rely on sophistic word battles’. [13]        

In another famous exchange recorded in the sayings of The Desert Fathers, which are considered ‘the earliest surviving source for contact with the monastic world of Egypt’ [14] attributed to two highly educated men, Evagrius and Arsenius, they were recorded to have said: ‘we have nothing because we go chasing after worldly knowledge. […] I have indeed been taught Latin and Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet of this peasant’. [15] Peter Brown has noted that their illiteracy helped them gain ‘a charismatic authority in the eyes of their followers’. According to Gaddis, instead of secular learning and knowledge, it was ‘the practice of asceticism, and especially the willingness to martyrdom’ which ‘helped to define the personal holiness of these charismatic figures in the eyes of their audience’. [16] The content of these influential texts explains the many instances purportedly recording the monks’ bold illiteracy and consequent unwillingness to relate productively to society. [17]

Scholars have characterised the ascetic and monastic life as a form of struggle or conflict with evil, [18] which, when paired with the identification of the world as a manifestation of that evil, created in the minds of those so committed ‘a sense of separation from a corrupt world, and an aversion to compromise’. This can be seen in some of the writings of the Desert Fathers. One such apophthegm reads: ‘do not give to or receive anything from worldly people’. [19] This can also be evidenced in the violent actions that the ascetics and monks took against their perceived demonic opponents. [20] David Brakke mentions Shenoute, an Egyptian abbot who, in the fifth century, burned temples and committed ‘raids on the crypto-pagan Gesios’ home’, stating elsewhere that ‘there is no crime for those who have Christ’. On another occasion, Theophilus of Alexandria ‘probably recruited monks to participate’ in ‘the plundering of the Serapeum in Alexandria in 391’, which then led to ‘raids on other pagan sites’. [21] On yet another occasion in 386, the pagan orator Libanius complained ‘that marauding monks were destroying temples in Syria’. [22] In the polemical literature against monks, there were records that 

certain groups of monks [were] practice[ing] a lifestyle of “apostolic” poverty, wandering from place to place, renouncing manual labor and living from charity. […They] were not really driven by literal obedience to the commands of the gospel, but simply wanted a free meal.

This certainly was the view that Libanius held when he claimed that ‘the monks used the laws against pagan sacrifice merely as an excuse to steal goods and seize property’. [23] The numerous state and ecclesial rulings that were enacted at the time against monks also speak to the problems that the state and church faced with them. [24]     

It seems therefore that this popular view of monks’ illiteracy and unwillingness to relate to society seems very much in concord with Chrysostom’s negative views on them in On The Priesthood. In order to attempt to show how one can find continuities between monastic thought with Chrysostom’s, this essay, with the aid of recent scholarship, will now seek to show that the literature in antiquity is also replete with contrary evidence for monastic literacy and education. It seeks to show that some kinds of monastic thought bore continuities with pagan philosophical dualism and that many monasteries were steeped in educational practices akin to Classical Paideia. Joseph Lienhard argued that ascetic theology finds common ground in an Encratism that was rooted in gnostic dualism. [25] Brakke notes that literature on demons has been around since the time of Plato, was present in the writings of Philo and Plutarch, and was adopted by Origen who ‘created a rich and multifaceted demonology, whose legacy we shall find in many of our monastic authors’. Therefore, it is from fighting demons—the knowledge of whom was bequeathed to them from ancient philosophy—that ascetics and monks retreated into the Egyptian desert. [26]

Samuel Rubenson has also argued that the historical Antony, regarded as the figurehead of monasticism, was ‘a thoughtful, philosophically inclined ascetic, whose teaching emphasizes the transformative nature of “knowledge” (gnosis) of self and God’. [27] His team of scholars working in the Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia research group at Lund University therefore believe that there were some significant continuities between Greek educational practices and monastic ones. Consequently, they reject the hitherto commonly held view that monks were mostly illiterate and uneducated. Lilian Larsen, in her article on monastic Paideia, gives several examples of monastic educational curriculums at the time. The first is from Basil of Caesarea who outlines a curriculum that focuses on teaching the language of scripture in order to make souls pliable so that the ‘power of discrimination’ will ‘run its course’ when reason is added. [28] In one of Jerome’s letters to a female friend Laeta, he advises her to send her young daughter Paula to a monastery in Bethlehem to be educated. And in Egypt, she writes that the ‘Pachomian milieu likewise portrays training in basic literary skills as part of the monastery’s daily rhythms’. There had been an edict there that stated: ‘there shall be no one whatever in the monastery who does not learn to read and does not memorize something of the scriptures’. She notes that, like in Classical Padeia, ‘students moved from writing letters to manipulating alphabets, to syllables, and words’. She also mentions Evagrius’ Capita Paranetica, which ‘re-works material that is elsewhere assigned to Sextus and Pythagoras where maxims were fit into ‘a sequence corresponding to each letter of the Greek (or Coptic) alphabet’. Henrik Rydell Johnsén, who is another member of the research group, revealed thematic and structural similarities between the monastic writings of John Cassian, Dorotheus of Gaza, and John Climacus with Plutarch, and argued from that observation that they all share a pattern related ‘to a broader Greco-Roman philosophical tradition’. He concludes by arguing that this presents strong evidence that ‘the early monastic patterns are dependent upon, or even originate from a complex array of philosophical traditions to which Plutarch belonged’. [29] Rubenson, who concurs with the findings of his research team, supplements their case with additional contextual evidence in his book on the letters of St. Antony. Looking at the context of Egypt under Roman (Byzantine) rule in the 3rdand 4th centuries, he writes:

the background of the early ascetics and founders of monastic tradition must instead be sought among the same groups as the Christians and Gnostics in general, i.e. the demoted elite and the middle class of the growing towns, who were the ones burdened by heavy obligations and attracted by new social and religious ideas. [Therefore] instead of regarding the early monks as poor fugitives and the monastic communities as groups of antisocial ‘hippies’, we have to acknowledge that the sources depict the creation of new social and economic enterprises.

Furthermore, he argues that in that same context, the label “illiterate” included individuals who were ‘able to read and write in Egyptian or Coptic’, and because ‘Greek had been the official language for a long time’, these agrammatoi were ‘therefore not necessarily ignorant of Greek language and literature’ either. [30] This enables Larsen to conclude that ‘the question of “whether” the earliest monks engaged in literate pursuits is more usefully reframed as “how” and “to what degree”. [31]            

This research helps to show how the monastic and ascetic tendency to separation and violent opposition is not rooted in illiteracy, but in the dualistic Greek philosophies that had been transmitted to them through theologians like Origen and supplemented by their own educational practices that shared similarities with the Classical Paideia of their time.

Concerning violence, recent scholarship has also put into question how much violence was really perpetrated by genuine monks. Gaddis notes that much of the literature claiming responsibility for violence on ascetics and monks came from sources that were in opposition to them. Libanius is a prominent example. Concerning their writings, Gaddis argues that

all these polemical strategies, which can be considered as part of the discourse of latrocinium, serve the key function of dismissing or downplaying any religious significance or pious purpose for the activities condemned, making religious zealots themselves vulnerable to the same charges of hypocrisy they routinely hurled at others. [32]

Rousseau also writes that although the historical record bears witness to monks and ascetics taking matters into their own hands, they must not be taken out of proportion, especially since they were sparse, sensational, and short-lived. [33] In Egypt, Rubenson notes that while those individuals who accompanied the bishops and acted violently for them were usually identified as monks among scholars, they probably were not since the sources themselves called them hoi philoponoi and hoi spoudaioi (the ardent or the zealous). [34] Another set of anecdotal evidence that suggests a concurrent non-violent attitude can be culled from the sayings of The Desert Fathers. The sayings include:

• ‘if anyone speaks to you in a controversial manner, do not argue with him’,
• ‘if you are stirred to anger when you want to reprove someone, you are gratifying your own passions’,
• ‘despise no one, condemn no one, revile no one: and God will give you quietness’. [35]

Taken together, the picture of the violent marauding monk of the 3rd and 4thcenturies, who regularly attempted to usurp authority for less noble reasons, is reduced to its proper size: they were not as prevalent as one might be tempted to assume especially since some of these instances cannot be attributed to them.  

This new historical image of the philosophically knowledgeable and educated monk is then one that captures the image of Chrysostom’s thoughts on the skills necessary for the priesthood since he himself had been trained in Classical Paideia under Libanius. Within Margaret Mitchell’s larger argument in her comprehensive book The Heavenly Trumpet, that Chrysostom ‘quite knowingly employed his rhetorical skills and strategies’ in his work, she writes that Chrysostom saw ‘monks as the quintessential philosophers’ and ‘that Chrysostom’s depictions of Christian monastic life in general often had an apologetic intent, to demonstrate to “pagans” that the monks were far superior to any luminaries of virtue in Greek philosophy and history’. [36] On one occasion, when a massive and destructive riot broke out in Antioch in 387 because of an ‘imposition of an unusually heavy tax […] directed at all classes of the city’, Chrysostom composed six rhetorically charged homilies arguing that Christian virtue is what truly ‘forms people in the virtues most necessary for public life’. He pointed out that, unlike the pagans, who fled from Antioch, Christian monks from the mountains came down to the city to intercede for the people ‘before the tribunal at Antioch’, and were able to do so because ‘they already had readied themselves for death’. [37] When one takes his famous rhetorical skills—which earned him the name “golden-mouth”—in conjunction with his praise of the moral virtues of monasticism, one may begin to see how he could have viewed the image of the philosophically inclined and well educated monk that recent scholarship has uncovered, positively.

Concerning monastic violence, it is important to note that Chrysostom himself was not averse to violent dissent if its purpose was to glorify God. According to Gaddis, Chrysostom proclaimed that ‘one way to imitate the martyrs was by rebuking “blasphemers”—with one’s mouth, or with one’s fists’. He is recorded rebuking the Emperor Arcadius who was negotiating a treaty with the barbarian warlord Gainas, telling him: ‘it is better to be deprived of empire, than to become guilty of impiety, a traitor to the house of God’. Gaddis also points out that Chrysostom

was himself no stranger to the exercise of extralegal power. During his tenure as bishop of Constantinople, and also during his years of exile in Cucusus, he sponsored and encouraged groups of monks and clergy who forcibly demolished temples and replaced them with churches in the countryside of Phoenicia Libanensis. [38]

Even as Archbishop of Constantinople, he maintained a sensibility that bears striking continuity with those of the monastic movements that had been spreading throughout the empire of his time. In Chrysostom’s encomiums of his beloved St. Paul, he portrays him as possessing all the qualities of the quintessential monk to the nth degree. [39] However, he was even superior because

not only did he not retreat from the world, Paul journeyed far wide. And his involvement in the world paradoxically is what enabled him to travel as far as heaven itself. […] Paul becomes for him the model both for the life of the Christian pious in the cities, and for a style of “apostolic” monasticism that is concerned not solely with retreat for self-perfection, but equally with spreading the gospel to the world.

Chrysostom’s own life resembled that of his image of Paul. Therefore, by adopting the rhetorical strategy of encomium, Chrysostom exhorts his audience to imitate this image of Paul and himself: a “worldly ascetic”, [40] who possesses the inner qualities of a monk and the outer disposition of a priest. Consequently, concerning the larger historical question, it is now conceivable to contend that Chrysostom ordained monks in his tenure as Archbishop not only because he wanted to discipline and control them, but also because he wanted to help those genuinely disposed to realize their own potential to effect the change in the world that they had already done in themselves.

This essay has attempted to show that the historical picture of ascetics and monks as stubbornly illiterate and violent has been strongly challenged in recent scholarship. Instead, scholars have offered an alternative picture of the monks as well educated, whose zeal came from an imbibing of Greek philosophy and Paideia with Christian conviction rather than from an ignorant “hippie” rebellion against the state. This picture then coheres with the image of the archetypal Christian that Chrysostom paints in his portraits of St. Paul and his own life. [41] Consequently, when he implicitly calls his readers to imitate this image through the rhetorical strategies that he used, this opens the possibility of forwarding the contention that there could have been sympathetic motivations behind his forced ordination of monks, who in Gaddis’ words, had become ‘a disciplinary headache’ to him. Within this proposal, one way of interpreting his comments in his On The Priesthood is to take into account its literary frame, as a rhetorical exposition constructed to convince his friend Basil that he was not fit for the priesthood at the time, which is why he ran away from it to pursue an ascetic life. This enables the reader to see his raising the qualities necessary for the priesthood and downplaying the significance of his own choice of vocation to be, not his accurate diagnosis of affairs, but a reflection of his humility, which is, incidentally, one of the key virtues of the archetypal monk. [42] It is therefore fitting to say that  

John never ceased to regard the monk, whether layman or priest, as representing authentic Christianity. What [he] consistently demanded, with a seriousness which his own experience of clerical office greatly intensified, was that the monk should always be ready to place himself at the service of the community, since “there is nothing chillier than a Christian who is not trying to save others”. [43]

Endnotes

1. In the relevant scholarly and ancient literature, the terms hermit, monk, ascetic and recluse seem to have been used interchangeably. While scholars like Samuel Rubenson are careful to make distinctions between them, and there are indeed important distinctions between different types of monasticisms and holy men, this essay will not because its central thesis focuses not on their historical minutiae but on what can be said of their theological sensibility as a whole.  
2. Gaddis’ helpfully nuanced and inclusive definition of violence as ‘a use or display of power that others consider wrong or hurtful or that transgresses their ethical or moral norms’ is one that this essay also adopts, Michael Gaddis, There is no Crime for Those Who Have Christ (University of California Press, 2005), p. 4.
3. See details concerning Athanasius’ Letter to Dracontius which shows how ‘monks were co-opted into the episcopate’, in Normal Russell, ‘Bishops and Charismatics in Early Christian Egypt’, in Abba. Festschrift for Bishop Kallistos Ware, ed. by A. Louth, J. Behr, and D. Conomos (Crestwood: NY, 2003), pp. 3, 4.  
4. Gaddis, There is no Crime, pp. 163, 194, 216, 234. 
5. This is according to Palladius of Galatia, see J. N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom (Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 29.  
6. Wendy Mayer and Paul Allen, John Chrysostom (Psychology Press, 2000), p. 6.
7. Gaddis, There is no Crime, p. 234. ‘On another occasion, in Antioch, he praised the “magnificent spectacle, fervent love and unrestrained desire” of the crowd assembled to celebrate martyrs’ festivals’, p. 171. He has also written that ‘the solitary life even now fills the just with many goods, and when this life is over, it conducts them glorious and joyful to the judgment seat of God’, David G. Hunter, trans. A King and a Monk / Against the Opponents of the Monastic Life (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), p. 70.
8. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood In Six Books, trans. by Benjamin Harris Cowper (Memphis: General Books, 2012), pp. 31, 31. ‘Chrysostom was fully aware that a monastic formation, desirable as it was, did not provide sufficient training for the ministry’, Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 2005), p. 149.
9. Philip Schaff, NPNF1-09. St. Chrysostom: On the Priesthood; Ascetic Treatises; Select Homilies and Letters; Homilies on the Statutes by St. Chrysostom (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1886), book III, IV, VI. See also Kelly, Golden Mouth, p. 84, and Margaret Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), pp. 287-88. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, himself no stranger to Eastern spirituality, endorsed a similar sentiment when he argued that the true test of character comes from being in communion with people who disagree with you because ‘the barriers of egotistic fantasy are broken by the sheer brute presence of other persons’, Byron Smith, ‘The Humanity of Godliness’, in On Rowan Williams: Critical Essays (Oregon: Cascade Books, 2009), p. 132.
10. ‘The majority could not read or write and those who could learned to be cautious about relying on this ability in any way that would make them despise others or neglect the interiority of the Scriptures’, Benedicta Ward, ‘Introduction’, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, (England: Penguin Books, 2003), p. xvii.
11. For a short account of its influence, see Joseph Lienhard, ‘The Origins and Practice of Priestly Celibacy in the Early Church’, in The Charism of Priestly Celibacy, ed. by John C. Cavadini (Ave Maria Press, 2012), p. 57.
12. This phrase can be found in Gaddis’ discourse on the conflicts between Christian bishops and holy men in the 4th century, Gaddis, There is no Crime, p. 216. 
13. Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. by Robert C. Gregg (London: SPCK, 1980), pp. xiii, 10, 30, 87, 84, 87.
14. The Desert Fathers, p. xxix
15. Lilian Larsen, ‘On Learning a New Alphabet: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and the Monostichs of Menander’, Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia, ed. by Samuel Rubenson, 3 (2011), 60.
16. Gaddis, There is no Crime, pp. 9, 153.
17. Samuel Rubenson has also noted that ‘the emphasis on reticence, humility, and simplicity in the [sayings of the desert fathers] and the fear they reveal of theological speculation, ecclesiastical dignitaries and city life, moreover, corresponds to the traditional emphasis on a contrast between Greek and Coptic, between cultured and illiterate, between philosophical and fanatical’, Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 10.
18. ‘The monks are fundamentally “resisters”, always in combat’, Brakke, Demons, p. 152.
19. The Desert Fathers, p. 111
20. ‘The Christian monk was formed in part through imagining him in conflict with the demon’, David Brakke, Demons and the Making of Monk (London: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 5. Gaddis notes that several patristic sources uphold Phinehas in the Bible as an ‘illustration of justifiable homicide’, Gaddis, There is no Crime, p.183.
21. See Romans 2.22. Paul himself saw those who sacked temples to be false Christians.
22. Brakke, Demons, pp. 219, 219, 214.
23. Gaddis, There is no Crime, pp. 25, 1, 214, 214.
24. See Canon 60 at the Council of Elvira: ‘those who were killed for breaking idols were not to be honoured with the title of Martyr’, Gaddis, There is no Crime, p. 176., the Canons of the Council of Gangra, Codex Theodosianus 390 16.3.1: ‘Monks are to live in the desert or otherwise uninhabited place where they may find solitude’, and Council of Chalcedon Canon 4: ‘Those who practise monasticism in each city and territory are to be subject to the bishop, and are to embrace silence and devote themselves to fasting and prayer alone, persevering in the places where they renounced the world; they are not to cause annoyance in either ecclesiastical or secular affairs, or take part in them, leaving their own monasteries, unless indeed for some compelling need they be permitted to do so by the bishop of the city’.  
25. Lienhard, ‘The Origins and Practice of Priestly Celibacy’, p. 56.
26. Brakke, Demons, pp. 11, 12, 13.
27. Brakke, Demons, p. 16.
28. These quotes are taken from Basil’s Regulae fusius tractate 15.
29. Henrik Rydell Johnsén, ‘Renunciation, Reorientation and Guidance: Patterns in Early Monasticism and Ancient Philosophy’, Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia, ed. by Samuel Rubenson, 3 (2011), 80, 93.
30. Rubenson, The Letters of St Antony, pp. 118, 98.
31. Larsen, ‘On Learning a New Alphabet’, pp. 63, 64, 66, 66, 67, 70, 77.
32. Gaddis, There is no Crime, p. 214.
33. Philip Rosseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p. 11.
34. Rubenson, The Letters of St Antony, p. 108.
35. The Desert Fathers, pp. 7, 24, 86.
36. Chrysostom also proposed ‘Christian parents send their children to be educated in monasteries […] for at least ten years’, Larsen, ‘Learning a New Alphabet’, p. 65.
37. David Hunter, Preaching in the Patristic Age: Studies in Honour of Walter J. Burghardt (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), pp. 121, 120, 128-29.
38. Gaddis, There is no Crime, pp. 175, 192, 218.
39. See Chrysostom, adhortationes ad Theodorum lapsum 1 and 2, adversus oppugnatores vitae monasticae, comparatio regis et monachi, de compunction ad Demetrium, de compunction ad Stelechium, de virginitate, ad viduam juniorem 1-2; contra eos qui subintroductas habent.
40. Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet, pp. 310, 322-23, 322. He writes: ‘It is possible to live a life of self-control without a literary education, but no one could ever achieve oratorical power without good behavior, since all of his time would be spent in wickedness and immorality’, Hunter, A King and a Monk / Against the Opponents of the Monastic Life (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), p. 149.  
41. One who is well-educated and full of Godly zeal
42. Rapp argues that the rather common literature detailing monastic repudiation of the ecclesiastical office at the time can be seen a reflection of humility, rather than evidence for a ‘pervasive dualist struggle between monasticism and ecclesiastical hierarchy’, Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, p. 137.
43. Kelly, Golden Mouth, p. 85.

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• ——— , Preaching in the Patristic Age: Studies in Honour of Walter J. Burghardt (New York: Paulist Press, 1989)
• Johnsén, Henrik Rydell, ‘Renunciation, Reorientation and Guidance: Patterns in Early Monasticism and Ancient Philosophy’, Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia, ed. by Samuel Rubenson, 3 (2011), 79-94, in Studia Patristica Vol. LV, ed. by Markus Vinzent.     
• Kelly, J. N. D., Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom – Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Cornell University Press, 1998)
• Larsen, Lilian I, ‘On Learning a New Alphabet: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and the Monostichs of Menander’, Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia, ed. by Samuel Rubenson, 3 (2011), 59-78, in Studia Patristica Vol. LV, ed. by Markus Vinzent.  
• Lienhard, S. J., Joseph T., ‘The Origins and Practice of Priestly Celibacy in the Early Church’, in The Charism of Priestly Celibacy: Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Reflections, ed. by John C. Cavadini (Ave Maria Press, 2012)
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• Mitchell, Margaret, ‘The Archetypal Image: John Chrysostom’s Portraits of Paul’, The Journal of Religion, 75 1 (1995), 15-43
• ——— , The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002)
• Neville, Graham, ‘Introduction’, in Six Books On The Priesthood (USA: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996)
• Price, Richard, and Michael Gaddis, trans., The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, (Liverpool University Press, 2007)
• Rapp, Claudia, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (University of California Press, 2005)
• Rousseau, Philip, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)
• Rubenson, Samuel, ‘The Formation and Re-formations of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers’, Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia, ed. by Samuel Rubenson, 3 (2011), 5-22, in Studia Patristica Vol. LV, ed. by Markus Vinzent.  
• ——— , The Letters of St Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) 
• Russell, Norman, ‘Bishops and Charismatics in Early Christian Egypt’, in Abba. Festschrift for Bishop Kallistos Ware, ed. by A. Louth, J. Behr, and D. Conomos (Crestwood: NY, 2003)
• Schaff, Philip, NPNF1-09. St. Chrysostom: On the Priesthood; Ascetic Treatises; Select Homilies and Letters; Homilies on the Statutes by St. Chrysostom (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1886)
• Smith, Byron, ‘The Humanity of Godliness’, in On Rowan Williams (Oregon: Cascade Books, 2009)
• Stang, Charles, M., ‘Digging Holes and Building Pillars: Simeon Stylites and the “Geometry” of Ascetic Practice’, Harvard Theological Review, 85 (2010), 447-470.  
• Stroumsa, Guy, G., ‘The Scriptural Movement of Late Antiquity and Christian Monasticism’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 16 (2008), 61-77. 
• The Canons of the Council of Gangra (mid 4th century) – the original Greek text with English Translation – and Latin versions, Early Church Texts
• The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, trans. by Benedicta Ward (England: Penguin Books, 2003)
• Torrance, Alexis, ‘Standing in the Breach: The Significant and Function of the Saints in the Letters of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 17 (2009), 459-473.  
• Ward, Benedicta, ‘Introduction’, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, trans. by Benedicta Ward (England: Penguin Books, 2003)
• Watts, Edward Jay, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (University of California Press, 2006)