Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity.
Russell, Jeffrey Burton
Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early
Christianity. By David Brakke. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2006. ISBN 0-674-01875-3. Pp. ix + 308. $51.50.
This vividly readable book has appeal beyond its scholarly value to
experts in the two fields of monasticism and demonology. Up-to-date with
modern scholarship as well as grounded in the original sources,
Professor Brakke divides his book into two sections. The first is a
vivid, sympathetic, and critical study of four Egyptian monks: Antony,
Evagrius, Pachomius, and Shenoute--and what amounts to a fifth: Antony
as presented by Athanasius. The second part consists of analysis of a
variety of topoi in early monastic literature, including the formation
of legends; the place of black Africans, women, and boys in monastic
consciousness; the transformation of gods into demons; and the monastic
hero's replacement of the pagan priest as wonderworker. The
Afterword describes how the Egyptian model spread throughout the Empire
and was eventually translated into medieval thought through Cassian.
The author centers on "the negative side of the early monastic
experience" (240), regretting that he treats the positive side
sparingly but explaining (rightly) that the focus of the book is on
conflict: the conflict of the monks with external demons and with
interior sins.
Although the second part suffers from overuse of Freud and Kristeva
and from overemphasis on the currently pet subjects of gender and
ethnicity, the author frequently uses psychoanalytic insights fruitfully
while almost always remaining in touch with the monks' own
worldviews (an exception is 161: "inflated egocentric language
found in the speeches of divinities such as Isis and Jesus"). A
problem always arises when exploring the minds of the past using
categories of which those minds had no idea, but Brakke handles it with
delicacy and sophistication. He early emphasizes that studies of
religion relying on an exclusively "modern scientific and
historical worldview" always fall well short of the mark (8).
Only in one respect does the author blur the reader's vision:
his use of the term "gnostic." "Gnosis" currently
enjoys a scholarly vogue that extends even to the general public, but
the term must be used with great care, since it has been employed in so
many various ways. Gnosis can be used generally to describe the wisdom
that one learns on the way to God, or to indicate a secret knowledge
possessed only by adepts and giving them power. Most specifically,
"gnosticism" refers to a medley of spiritual and theological
ideas emphasizing the dualistic conflict between (evil) matter and
(good) spirit. Christianity and gnosticism certainly influenced one
another, but they are quite distinguishable, and to label Evagrius and
other monks "gnostics" leads to misunderstanding. It is
essential to bear in mind that the monks understood by gnosis a wisdom
imbued in them by opening themselves up to Christ and that they regarded
the claim to secret knowledge as a grave manifestation of the sin of
pride, as the author recognizes in observing that Antony's
"enduring integrity is rooted in the divine integrity of
Christ" (37). True wisdom includes the realization that one does
not know. For the monks the gnostics' arrogance of knowledge was
intolerable. The monks believed that humility was the primary virtue.
Evagrius was not a gnostic.
The author does best in the first section, where his accounts of
the lives, ideas, and practices of the monks are most vivid and
sympathetic. Both sections explore new perspectives and extend existing
ones. Brakke shows that monastic demonology is not ignorant, folkloric,
or illiterate, but rather the product of "literate, educated
persons, who often use demons to address pressing intellectual
problems" (9). Discernment of spirits has always been central to
the spiritual life, for we are easily deceived by temptations. The monks
(Evagrius most successfully) linked external temptations by demons to
internal impulses to sin on the part of the individual monk. It is
indeed likely that Evagrius used his careful categorization of demons
and the sins that they were in charge of in order "to repel demons
by naming them and gaining rational control over" (70) them (one
might say the same of the DSM IV].).
The author shows great insight in analyzing the alterity (a useful
if jargon term) of the monks in their struggles against evil. Whether
exterior or interior or both, temptations to sin were perceived as
enemies, so that the monk had to fight both a war against the forces of
The Enemy and a war against his own internal inclinations to pride and
vainglory. These were the worst sins, but not the most pervasive. That
distinction went to carnal lust, which almost every monk found a
persistent, continual torment. The lurid forms in which carnal visions
presented themselves were "simultaneously attractive and
frightening [as an] embodiment of alterity within the self" (175).
Horrified at what their minds conjured up unbidden, the monks often
projected the lascivious images upon an external "other" an
"other" that was both weak and strong, both seductive and
terrifying. The demons often appeared as black people (Ethiopians),
women, boys, and animals, categories that often carried a dual sign of
being both powerful and exploited (although boys do not fit the pattern
well).
Brakke successfully avoids the common modern fault of projecting
homosexuality onto the monks (they would scarcely have been so tormented
by visions of females), he rightly points out that monasticism was
"homosocial" (170). Friendship among monks had to be carefully
monitored, and such temptations as women and boys (depending on
one's tastes) had to be kept right out; therefore their forms were
projected onto demons. (Whether there actually are demons is properly an
issue that does not arise in this book.) But often these are not just
women or boys but specifically black women and boys. Brakke traces the
perception of blacks as "other" back to pre-Christian Romans,
who viewed both the dark skin of African people and the white skin of
Germanic people as abnormal and threatening. His section on "The
Blackness of the Ethiopian" (159-81) is a fascinating analysis of
the roots and development of at least 2,500 years of stereotyping,
including the notion that black men are macrophallic (167).
His section on the female as other is also fascinating, drawing on
his own earlier work and on legitimate feminist studies. Most
interesting is his discussion of "the masculine female monk in
monastic literature" (185-95), detailing the life of Saint
Syncletica, who, representative of female monks, must be a warrior for
Christ against Satan and possess virtue, virtus (from vir,
"masculine, even heroic, man") in combat against demons.
This book is recommended to all interested in Christian literature,
gender and ethnic issues, monasticism, church history, spirituality,
psychology, and / or theology. It should become a classic.
Jeffrey Burton Russell
University of California, Santa Barbara
