medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Kolb" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 4:41 AM
Subject: [CLASSICS-L] Ever Since A.D. 270, the Need to Get Away From It All
> September 28, 2005
> Ever Since A.D. 270, the Need to Get Away From It All
> By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
>
> ZAFARANA, Egypt - Men have retreated to the desert for centuries in
> search of God, drawn by the quiet and the isolation, by a feeling of
> divine presence in the barren landscape.
>
> The Rev. Maximous Elantony was one of those men drawn to the desert
> in search of a relationship with God. But he could hardly believe it
> when he recently helped to discover some of the earliest physical
> evidence of Christians who made that quest as well.
>
> Follow Father Maximous inside the 15th-century Apostle Church in the
> desert near the Red Sea and see history in the torn-up floor. Frozen
> in time, hidden for hundreds of years beneath one church, and then
> another, are what Egyptian antiquity officials say are the oldest
> monastic cells ever discovered, dating to the fourth century. They
> are so well preserved it is as if someone just lifted off the roof.
>
> "When you live in a quiet place, like a cell, and you are not busy
> with anything but God, you start to hear yourself and to see
> yourself," Father Maximous said during a recent tour of the unearthed
> cells. "We only want to be busy with God, to hear God, to see God."
>
> Father Maximous is a Coptic monk who for 27 years has made his home
> inside the walls of St. Anthony's Monastery, a fortress of
> Christianity 100 miles southeast of Cairo that is generally
> considered the birthplace of Christian monastic life.
>
> During the third century, there were Christians who sought piety
> through abstention and self-denial. But St. Anthony is credited with
> taking those practices a step further when he went to live in a cave
> in the mountains of the desert, not far from the monastery that bears
> his name, around the year 270.
>
> The monastery is breathtaking, two tall towers rising up from the
> sand, each topped with the Coptic cross, dotted with churches and
> cells for 110 monks. But it is the green that is so striking, the
> green that historians say drew Anthony, the green palm trees that
> signal the presence of water. It is easy to feel a divine spirit
> where water emerges from the desert floor.
>
> And so the men who sought to live like St. Anthony built cells in the
> ravines of a craggy, bare mountain with all they needed to survive,
> and with quiet. They made their cells of bricks and plaster, durable
> but lost over the years, buried beneath Apostle Church.
>
> Father Maximous is deeply interested in the past and is busy working
> with crews that have dug and scratched away at layers in every corner
> of the monastery. He said he knew that his predecessors used to build
> basins into the floor of their churches for what he called a "water
> mass." So he began looking. Working with contractors, and with the
> help of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, he found one basin, and
> then, mysteriously, a second.
>
> The second was a bit deeper down than the first, and in the wrong
> position to have been part of Apostle Church. "The direction of this
> one could not be for this church," he said, pointing at the second basin.
>
> So they kept digging, pulling away flooring and stone until they
> uncovered the foundation of an 8th-century church beneath the floor
> of the 15th-century church. So they kept digging, and beneath that
> found a stone with a Coptic inscription: "Forgive me Savior. Forgive
> me Lord," is roughly what it said. Father Maximous tried to take the
> stone out of the ground, but it would not budge. So they kept digging.
>
> "This was a complete surprise," Father Maximous said pointing at the
> monastic cells.
>
> In the corner of one is a brick stove that was used for cooking.
> Another was used for prayer. The cells told a story of monks who
> lived together, with several people in one cell. There was also a
> basin that was used to soak palm fronds, which they used for weaving
> things like mats and baskets.
>
> Exploring the past tends to inspire reflection on the present, and as
> Father Maximous spoke about the cells he helped find, he commented on
> how much life has changed for Coptic monks in Egypt. The struggle
> back then was to avoid being killed by Bedouins roaming the desert.
> Today it is to hold onto the solitude that drew the monks here in the
> first place.
>
> "To be a monk is to let yourself free of everything, to connect
> yourself only with God," he said, adding that today's monks are
> nevertheless a different breed.
>
> He said the younger monks wanted access to e-mail, and he himself
> carries a fancy cellphone. They want suitable toilets, too. "Those
> are for modern monks," he said, a bit condescendingly as he pointed
> to newer housing on the monastery grounds.
>
> But they also get tourists and pilgrims, busloads in the summer, who
> traipse through the monastery, taking pictures, making noise. The
> monastery, once sealed shut with no gate at all, is now open for
> tours daily, and monks are the tour guides. For a time, tourists were
> allowed to spend the night, but that was a bit much for the monks. So
> starting three years ago, all tourists were required to leave by 6 p.m.
>
> Even now, Father Maximous is happy to show off the monastery's
> historic sites, but will not show the cells the monks are actually
> living in. He appears reluctant to take visitors into the library,
> where there are 2,300 ancient manuscripts, and steps in only after
> banging repeatedly on the door so that anyone who wishes to can hide or
leave.
>
> Some of the older monks are so put off by the tourists that they take
> food and head into the mountains to spend the day in a cave,
> returning only after the crowds have left.
>
> Still, Father Maximous has a plan for Apostle Church that is certain
> to attract even more tourists. He wants to restore the monastic
> cells, then cover then over with a glass floor so the church may once
> again be used for prayer without burying the historic evidence of
> early monastic life.
>
> "We are trying to find a balance between our spiritual life," he
> said, "and the needs of the people."
>
>
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2005/09/28/international/afric
a/28monklife.html&tntemail1=y&adxnnl=1&emc=tnt&adxnnlx=1127907591-Akv6UivPns
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