On Wed, 15 May 1996 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Does anyone know of good secondary literature on the cult of
> John the Baptist before the twelfth century? I am trying to find out
> whether there exists evidence that he was considered a founder of
> monasticism (there is an allusion to this in Isidore of Seville's
> *De ecclesiasticis officiis*) and whether his cult was particularly
> important to monastic communities.
John the Baptist's importance to monasticism is best explored in the
larger context of the search for a biblical typology of monastic life,
which already in the very earliest autors focussed on the prophet Elijah
as the biblical type of the monk. This is seen already in Athanasius' Life
of Antony, where Antony "used to say to himself that the way of life of
the great Elijah ought to serve the ascetic every day as a mirror in which
to study his own life" (Vita Antonii, 7; PG 26:854B). Thereafter it
became a prominent feature of monastic tradition.
Since the NT presents John the Baptist as the new Elijah (Mt 3.1-3; 11.14;
Lk 1.17) there is an obvious connection to be made, and this was done by
various early monastic writers to provide a typological prehistory of
monasticism, whose inspiration was seen stretching back through the
Antonys and Macariuses to John the Baptist and eventually to the sons of
the prophets and Elijah (sometimes Samuel). Cassian, for example, speaks
of this several times: (Conlationes 18.6; 14.4 (without, however, the
mention of the Baptist); Institutiones 6.4, etc.) Jerome also attributes
the origin of monastic life to John the Baptist and Elijah (Vita S.
Pauli, prol.) Isidore also mentions the connection several times, perhaps
most explicitly in De ortu et obitu patrum, where Abdias, Jonah, the sons
of the prophets and John the Baptist are all noted as disciples of Elijah,
and in the Etymologiae 7.13, where he calls Elijah and John the Baptist
the apostles of the eremitical life.
For the most part, as far as I can tell, after looking at this tradition
for some work I am doing on the medieval Carmelites, early writers were
interested in JB and Elijah in a typological rather than a historical
way, i.e. as biblical images and "guarantors" of the monastic
inspiration. Later (13th c.) there was a historicising tendency which
sought to establish a linear succession from OT times through John the
Baptist to Christian monasticism. This approach was adopted especially by
the Carmelites, who developed an elaborate legend to this effect, but was
not exclusive to them.
I hope to touch on some of these issues in a paper on narrative modes of
spiritual discourse at Leeds. I have more references if you want to have
them, and could send them on privately. I don't think there's a great
deal of secondary literature, but you could check Elie le prophete, 2v.
Bruges-Paris, 1956 (in the series Etudes carmelitaines), and there may be
articles on JB in the Dictionnaire de spiritualite and the Dizionario
degli istituti di perfezione.
--
Paul Chandler || Yarra Theological Union
[log in to unmask] || Melbourne College of Divinity
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