_GÁSPÁR PARLAGI

The City without(?) Women

Approaches to the Female in Early Monastic Literature

“Abba Sisoes' disciple said to him, 'Father, you are growing old.
Let us now go back nearer to inhabited country.' The old man said
to him, 'Let us go where there are no women.' His disciple said to
him, 'Where is there a place where there are no women except the
desert?' So the old man said, 'Take me to the desert.'”1

This apophthegm by abba Sisoes fits well into our first conception of the attitude of the
desert fathers (the first and radical representatives of monastic life, and champions of self-
restraint) to women. One might expect an even more drastic position on the issue of the
female body which, as I suppose one could also saw from the reactions of the wider public to
the title of this very conference, has inherent sexual implications even today. And indeed, we
do not have to search for long to find an anonym apophthegm which is about a brother who
could not get rid of the memory of a young woman’s sight:

“At Scetis lived a brother who was an experienced fighter. The enemy evoked in him the memory of a beautiful
woman and tormented him severely. One day, through Providence, another brother came down from Egypt to
Scetis, and, in the course of the conversation, told him that the wife of so-and-so had died. This was precisely the
woman who so troubled him. At this news, he took his coat and departed by night to the place where she had
been buried. He opened the tomb gathered the liquid flowing from the cadaver with his coat, and brought it back
into his cell. The stench was intolerable, but he stared at this infection in front of his eyes, fighting his thoughts
by saying: ‘See here what you desired; well, now you have it, sit down again.’ And he subjected himself to this

stench until the battle in him had ceased.”2

It is hard to imagine a more radical therapy for bodily attraction. But the role of women in
early monastic literature is too complex to label it as simple misogyny or radical disdain for
the body related to a strong anthropological dualism.3

The monasticism of the 4th century has got an undoubtedly male character, judging from what
we can see in our literary sources at least. However, the well-organized coenobitic
monasticism has got a female counterpart from almost the beginning, 4 and even Antony (the
founder of eremitic life) had left his sister for a group of virgins before he devoted himself to
an ascetic life.5 Our sources are without exception written by, and, with a few exceptions

1
AP Sisoes 3 (trans. Ward 1984 [1975], 213).
2
Anonymous N 172 (trans. Elm 1994, 257).
3
Rubenson 2009, 271.
4
For the earliest evidences of female asceticism in Egypt: Elm 1994, 227-252 and for the role of females in the
pachomian coenobitic system, see pages 283-310.
5
Vita Antonii 3. (For the question of the group of virgins “parqenw,n” in this text see esp. Garitte 1961).
about, men and mostly to male audiences.6 In any case, if we would like to investigate the
exact attitudes of these men about women, we would run into difficulties not because of the
lack of sources but because of their nature.

For a long while our idea about early monasticism was determined by classical hagiographic
sources such as, above all, the Vita Antonii, the Historia Lausiaca, the Historia Monachorum
in Aegypto, and the sayings collected in the Apophthegmata Patrum, and, especially on such a
special subject as the early fathers’ attitude to women, these texts are indispensable even
today.7 However, we must consider the literary and didactical character of these sources. The
only direct source from the 4th century - in which the thoughts are connected directly to one
certain person, and there is no other author, translator or redactor between the original
informant and us - can be no other than Evagrius Ponticus, the great theoretician of desert life,
who himself was strongly concerned with the problem of the relationship with women. 8 In the
particularly important, but nevertheless seldom used, papyrological sources9 there are almost
no significant details about this issue,10 and the most important inner source of the anchorites
in the 4th century, the probably authentic letters of the first desert fathers, namely Antony and
Ammonas,11 also only superficially deal with the matter of females. We have got more
documents which provide clearer information about the role of women in village communities
and coenobitic monasticism,12 but in the present paper I would like to survey the attitudes of
the first representatives of eremitic life, who became iconic figures even during their own life
in the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire and beyond.

Despite the problems I mentioned before, namely that we can only rely on secondary literary
sources, I omit the detailed, critical source analysis in my present paper, and, because the
present issue is completely independent of the theological debates which determined the
centuries in which our sources originated I would like to focus on the topic of how male
ascetics related to women. I suppose that the texts show us a more or less true picture of

6
King 1989. For the detailed discussion of the consequences of this feature of the sources in the perspective of
gender studies: Simpson 1988; Burrus 1994; Clark 1998a, 1998b; Clark 2001; Brakke 2003.
7
The standard edition for the Vita Anitonii is: Bartelink 1994; for the Historia Lausiaca: Butler 1898, 1904;
Bartelink 1974; (trans. Meyer 1964); for the Historia Monachorum in Aegypto: Festugière 1971 [1961]; Schulz-
Flügel 1990. The tradition of the text of the Apophtegmata Patrum is highly multilingual (Greek, Coptic, Syriac,
Latin, Georgian, Armenian, Ethiopic, Old Slavonic, Arabic) and extraordinarily complex (eg. Rubenson 2011a,
2013). The most important editions of the Greek texts are: Cotelier 1677 [1858]; Guy 1962, 1968 (the
alphabetical collection); Guy 1993, 2003, 2005 (the systematic collection); Nau 1905, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1912,
1913 (the anonymous collection). The most widely used modern translations are: Ward 1984 [1975]; Dion and
Oury 1966; Regnault 1976, 1981, 1985. For detailed list of the editions and the translations of the different
collections consult Harmless 2004, 183-185.
8
eg. Guillaumont 2004, 41-42.
9
See eg. Roberts 1979; and and Ewa Wipszycka’s writings collected in: Wipszycka 2009, esp. 69-106.
10
They are realy informative about the question and history of female communities (Wipszycka 2009, 281-324;
Elm 1994, 234-252); but almost no conclusions can be drawn from them about how the male ascetics thought on
women.
11
Letters of Antony: Rubenson 1995. Letters of Ammonas: Nau 1915 (Greek); Kmosko 1915 (Syriac); (trans.
Chitty and Brock 1979). See also: Rubenson 2007a; 2011b. Although Rubenson’s thesis about the authenticity of
the letters of Antony provoked fierce debate (see esp. Pollok 1995; and for a new chapter of the debate:
Bumazhnov 2006, 139-151.) his opinion has became widely a more or less standard point of view (Rubenson
2007b).
12
A very good owerview about the topic: Elm 1994, 227-252, 283-330.
women in the 4th and early 5th century monasticism. Let us start with the most famous aspect
in which women appear in early monastic literature::

1. The woman as an instrument of demonic temptations

As Evagrius put it: „The demons war with seculars more through objects, but with monks they
do so especially through thoughts, for they are deprived of objects because of the solitude.” 13
So it is not a surprise that the demons usually apply that material which is at hand even in the
wasteland: the memories of females. Evagrius himself defines it as “the demon of fornication
compels one to desire various bodies.” But in his works - as David Brakke points out -

„the only bodies that appear are those of women. Married women and prostitutes, young women and
women in search of spiritual guidance, beautiful women, naked women, and women who are beautiful
and naked — these are the images with which fornication floods the intellect, sometimes at such a great
speed that the intellect can barely keep pace.”14

But beyond this “mental pornography” the temptation could happen in a more concrete way
as well. The demon - especially in hagiographic sources - can materialize in a female body.
The most famous example for this (which often inspired painters as well) is undoubtedly the
temptation of Saint Antony the Great:

“But the enemy saw his own weakness in the face of Antony’s resolve... Then he placed his confidence
in the weapons in the navel of his belly, and boasting in these (for they constitute his first ambush
against the young), he advanced against the youth, noisily disturbing him by night, and so troubling him
in the daytime… And the beleaguered devil undertook one night to assume the form of a woman and to
imitate her every gesture, solely in order that he might beguile Antony. But in thinking about the Christ
and considering the excellence won through him, and the intellectual part of the soul, Antony
extinguished the fire of his opponent’s deception.”15

And this is only the first and quite simple occurrence of this literary scene, which of course
became very popular. Some of the later examples are even more theatrical.16

However, it was not only the visions that were the weapons used by the demons against the
monks. The encounters with real females could awaken the dormant passions, and several
times flesh and blood women also appear as demonic tools in these texts. An anonym
apophthegm speaks about a young woman who, “moved by the devil’s power” made a bet
with some young men that she can seduce a certain monk. In this case the whole story sounds
fictitious and its clear goal is to show the heroic resistance of the abba: he burned all of his
fingers with a candle in order not to give in to the temptation. Other stories, however, are very
lifelike. For example in the case of a woman who went to visit a monk to whom she was
related to and with whom at the end of the story she fell into fornication. There is nothing

13
Praktikos 48. (trans. Sinkewicz 2003, 106).
Praktikos 8. (trans. Sinkewicz 2003, 98).
14
Brakke 2006, 59.
15
Vita Anonii 5.2-5 (trans. Gregg 1980, 34).
16
eg. Veilleux 1981. 117; Vita Benedicti 2.1. (White 1998; 168).
unbelievable or miraculous in the account, unless the motivation that she was “drawn by the
devil” might be considered as such. 17

Nonetheless it is worth noting at this point, that the desert fathers did not convict human
sexuality itself as something demonic or wholly evil, not even in the case of monks. Sexuality
was considered as an inherent part of human nature by them also, but it was believe that the
monk must tame and learn to fully control it, and even deprive of any lust, in order to prevent
it from becoming an effective tool in the demons' hands. Their viewpoint about nocturnal
emissions demonstrates this quite well.18 Saint Antony the Great in one of his letters (which
fragment is survived as an apophthegm as well) writes about the three movements of the soul.
First

„the natural, inherent movement, which does not operate, unless the soul consents... Then there is
another movement as a result of stuffing the body with a multitude of food and drink,” and „there is the
third movement comes from the evil spirits, tempting us of envy.”19

Cassian, the most important Latin author about the legacy of the desert fathers, interprets this
categorization as one definitely relating to nocturnal ejaculations. There is natural emission,
which happens quite rarely and is not accompanied by any passion or pleasure. There is
another type which happens because of the too much or lickerish food, and the third one
which is caused by the assault of demons. 20 With the help of the special grace of God even
natural bodily urges could cease,21 but for most of the monks it is a continual fight to keep
chasteness. As Abba Abraham said to a brother who stated “Ί have destroyed fornication in
myself”:

“If you were to find a woman lying on your mat when you entered your cell would you think that it is
not a woman?' 'No,' he replied, 'But I should struggle against my thoughts so as not to touch her.' Then
Abba Abraham said, 'Then you have not destroyed the passion, but it still lives in you although it is
controlled.”22

Even if the monk cannot control what thought or temptations are suggested to him by the
demons, he can let them dwell in his mind, or he can resist them. According to the definition
of Evagrius the “sin for a monk is the consent of the thought to the forbidden pleasure.”23

It is important to emphasize that in our sources about early monasticism the passages in which
the women themselves are held responsible for the sexual desire induced by them are quite
rare. On the other hand we can find a couple of apophthegms in which the woman is only the
innocent object of a monk’s lust, and in these cases usually it is the woman who resists the
monk trying to seduce her, and sends him back to real monastic life. 24
17
Anonymous N 189 and 176 (Regnault 1999, 27).
18
Brakke 1995.
19
Ep. Ant. I. 35-41. (Rubenson 1995, 199.) cf. AP Antony 22. (Ward 1984 [1975], 6).
20
Collationes 22. 3. (Pichery 1959, 116-119).
21
The concerning literary topos, the motive of the castration in a dream by the angels is an illustrative
visualization of this spiritual grace: Collationes 7. 2. (Pichery 1955, 245.), Historia Lausiaca 29. (Butler 1904,
84.)
22
AP Abraham 1 (trans. Ward 1984 [1975], 33-34).
23
Praktikos 75. (trans. Sinkewicz 2003, 110).
24
Anonymous N 49, 52 and 215. (Regnault 1999, 27; Brakke 2006, 201).
However, the presence of a flesh and blood woman could inevitably, if even unwittingly feed
passionate thoughts. That is why the ideal place to live an ascetic life was where “there were
no women”. This leads us to the primary - and quite simple - strategy of the desert fathers
concerning women: the question of avoidance.

2. The woman as companion, and as seductive source of danger

Beside the sometimes very emphatic sexual character, the woman was considered as a source
of danger in a more general sense as well. As a wife and mother, she also symbolized worldly
life. Even if her (material or mental) presence did not evoke sexual desire, she could still be
tempting for the monk to get married, and turn his back on monastic life in order to live in the
world. The story of Abba Olympius is a good example depicting this lure:

“Abba Olympius of the Cells was tempted to fornication. His thoughts said to him, 'Go, and take a wife.'
He got up, found some mud, made a woman and said to himself, 'Here is your wife, now you must work
hard in order to feed her.' So he worked, giving himself a great deal of trouble. The next day, making
some mud again, he formed it into a girl and said to his thoughts, 'Your wife has had a child, you must
work harder so as to be able to feed her and clothe your child.' So, he wore himself out doing this, and
said to his thoughts, Ί cannot bear this weariness any longer.' They answered, 'If you cannot bear such
weariness, stop wanting a wife.' God, seeing his efforts, took away the conflict from him and he was at
peace.”25

The therapy for the temptation presented here may be interpreted as a special performance of
the words of the Apostle: “one who is married is concerned about the things of the world,
how he may please his wife, and his interests are divided” (1Cor 7:33-34). But other biblical
quotations were also interpreted as encouragements to solitary life, for example from
Jeremiah: “You shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place”
(Jer 16:2). Although the formal monastic vow had not yet developed, the monk made his
choice between God and the World, between monastic retreat and worldly life. And the
woman represented all that he left behind: the World.26

Nevertheless there are some examples of mariage blanc as well and in a few texts virgins also
appear who lived with monks as servants in chastity. Some of these stories attribute a
surprisingly positive role to the woman. The most famous “married” monk was undoubtedly
Amoun of Nitria, the very founder of Nitria, one of the greatest fathers of the first
generation.27 As a young man he was forced into marriage, but in his wedding night they
decided with his wife to preserve their virginity. (To be more precise he deicided it on behalf
of both of them.) The story is preserved in several sources, 28 but its variations are quite
different in two details: for how long this spiritual marriage lasted, and what the fate of his
wife was. According to the Greek version of the Historia Monachorum the chaste marriage
lasted for only a few days, and after that Amoun went to Nitria, and his wife converted the
entire house (including all the servants) into a monastery while according to the Latin

25
AP Olympius 2. (trans. Ward 1984 [1975], 160-161).
26
Brown 1988, 242–244.
27
In the topic of mariage blanc I completely rely on Susan Elm’s summary (1996, 325-326).
28
Historia Monachorum (Greek) 22; Historia Monachorum (Latin) 30; Historia Lausiaca 8; Socrates Hist. Ecc.
4.23.
translation the marriage lasted until the death of his parents, and his wife organized a female
community after Amoun’s leaving. Palladius wrote that the marriage lasted eighteen years and
tells us nothing about the wife except that after “he used to see that blessed lady his wife
twice each year,” while Socrates states that they both went immediately to Nitria and lived
there first in a common cell, and after some time separated. As we can see, our sources
fluctuate between the strict and fast separation and a common ascetic life. We must also note
the role of Amoun’s wife: she is not a hindering person at all. Indeed – in the last two versions
of the story – she is the initiator of separation who presses forward his husband with his
eremitic career.

It is also worth noting before we shortly discuss the chapters of Evagrius about women, that
the tall brothers, the chief figures of the so called "origenist" group of Nitria among whom
Evagrius belonged, also went to the desert with their two sisters, but as Palladius emphasizes
“the women living separately by themselves, and the men by themselves, so as to have a
sufficient distance between them.”29

Nevertheless our sources usually point out the dangers of coexistence as something which can
easily transform cohabitation.30 To prevent the fall in the time of temptation it was the best
way to completely avoid women, sometimes even in a radical way. One apophthegm of Abba
Arsenius, who is the archetype of the misanthropic monk, illustrates this attitude well. When a
virgin of senatorial rank came to visit him, he scolded her thus:

“Have you not heard tell of my way of life? It ought to be respected. How dare you make such a
journey? Do you not realise you are a woman and cannot go just anywhere? Or is it so that on returning
to Rome you can say to other women: I have seen Arsenius? Then they will turn the sea into a
thoroughfare with women coming to see me.”

When she asked him to remember her always in his prayer he answered: “Ί pray God to
remove remembrance of you from my heart.” When she returned obviously very despondently
to Alexandria, Theophilus the archbishop tried to console her saying:
“'Do you not realise that you are a woman, and that it is through women that the enemy wars against the
Saints? That is the explanation of the old man's words; but as for your soul, he will pray for it
continually.”

Do not leave anyone in doubt that it was enough for her to “return home joyfully.” 31

In the light of the foregoing, it is hardly surprising that - even if we leave behind the colorful
stories of the apophthegms - in the instructions given by Evagrius we mostly find the advice
to avoid women. But it is worth noting that the author himself had had a narrow escape from a
troubled relationship with a married woman from Constantinople to Jerusalem. And from
there, again because of a woman, but at this time a positive heroine, Melania the elder, who
urged him to become a monk he traveled to Egypt and became a hermit. 32 His practical advise
is sometimes surprisingly simple:
29
Historia Lausiaca 11. (Butler 1904, 32). see Elm 1994, 326-327.
30
Eg. AP Ammonas 10; AP Cassian 2; Anonymous N 13 and 32.
31
AP Arsenius 28. (trasl. Ward 1984 [1975], 13-14).
32
Historia Lausiaca 38.2-7. (Butler 1904, 116-119).
 “Better you should approach a raging fire than a young woman, if you yourself are young. For when
you have approached a fire and felt pain, you will quickly draw back; but if you have been weakened by
a woman's words, you will not easily withdraw.”33

sometimes quite condemning:

“The sight of a woman is a poisoned arrow; it wounds the soul and injects the poison, and for as long a
time as it stays there it causes an ever greater festering.”34

and in some cases purely projective:

“Flee encounters with women if you want to be chaste, and never allow them the familiarity to be bold
with you. For in the beginning they will have or pretend to have pious reverence, but later they will dare
anything without shame. At the first encounter they keep the eyes lowered, they speak softly, cry
emotionally, dress modestly, and moan bitterly; they inquire about chastity and listen earnestly. At the
second meeting you notice her looking up a little bit. A third time, they look directly at you without
shame, you smile, and they laugh heartily. Then they adorn themselves and make an open display of
themselves for you; they look at you in a way that shows the promise of their passion. They raise their
eyebrows and bat their eyelashes; they bare the neck and use the entire body in an enticing manner; they
speak words that caress the passion and they practice a voice that is enchanting to hear, until they
besiege the soul by every means. These are the hooks laid out to catch you in death and the entangling
nets that drag you to destruction. May they not lead you astray with their nice words, for the evil poison
of beasts is concealed in these women.”35

Nevertheless, it is very important to point out that mostly it is not the woman herself, but the
desire or more precisely the passion for women that was counted as the very source of danger.
Beside his practical advice (though the whole work is addressed to a praktiko,j, who is still
fighting against the passions)36 Evagrius himself also points out: “The sight of a woman
arouses the licentious person to pleasure, but the chaste person it moves to offer glory to
God,”37 which clearly shows that if we are able to see the woman without passion, then with
her beauty she also glorifies the Creator.

The preceding paragraphs also demonstrate that instead of misogyny, at most gynophobia
would be an appropriate term for the monks' attitude to women. But indeed in this case one
should bear in mind Abba Paul’s story, written by Cassian:

„ Abbot Paul had made such progress in purity of heart in the stillness and silence of the desert, that he
did not suffer, I will not say a woman's face, but even the clothes of one of that sex to appear in his
sight.” One time when he was on his way to visit another father „by accident a woman met him, he was
so disgusted at meeting her that he dropped the business of his friendly visit which he had taken in hand
and dashed back again to his own monastery with greater speed than a man would flee from the face of
a lion or terrible dragon... But though this was done in his eagerness for chastity and desire for purity,
yet because it was done not according to knowledge, and because the observance of discipline, and the
methods of proper strictness were overstrained, for he imagined that not merely familiarity with a
woman (which is the real harm,) but even the very form of that sex was to be execrated, he was
forthwith overtaken by such a punishment that his whole body was struck with paralysis...” so „only the
33
De octo spiritibus malitiae 9. (trans. Sinkewicz 2003, 77).
34
De octo spiritibus malitiae 6. (trans. Sinkewicz 2003, 76).
35
De octo spiritibus malitiae 8 (trans. Sinkewicz 2003, 76-77).
36
cf. Young 2001, 57-58.
37
De octo spiritibus malitiae 17 (trans. Sinkewicz 2003, 77).
 tender service of women could attend to his wants: for when he was taken to a convent of holy virgins,
food and drink, which he could not ask for even by signs, were brought to him by female attendants,
and for the performance of all that nature required he was ministered to by the same service to the end
of his life.”38

This text illustrates very well our caution about misogyny and even gynophobia. Although it
is not concretely stated, but the moral of the story clearly suggest that in some ways it is true
about fornication what is quite often emphasized about other temptations: namely that
excessive strictness could be the suggestion of the same demon who recommends negligence
in the time of a trial. If it is not successful in one way, it will try to drive his target to the
opposite extreme.39

3. The woman as a positive symbol

Before talking again about flesh and blood females, we must note that woman as a symbol is
also used in a positive sense in the sayings of the desert fathers: first of all she could appear as
a symbol or example for conversion and repentance. 40 So, in a slightly stereotypical way,
women are representations of transformations related to deep emotions in the stories. The
classical example for this is the repentant prostitute who in this case represents the
psychological emotions, and (because she was depicted as lewd, lustful, heated by desire for
money and possessing low social status) the perpetual possibility of conversion.41

But maybe the most interesting role in which women appear in monastic literature is when the
main goal of the text is to humiliate or even shame men. It is only one type of these texts in
which, as has been mentioned, the woman, who rejects the monk who tried to seduce her and
sends him back to his place.42 It is even more interesting when the women appear as beings
who outdo male monks in ascetic practice. Indeed this motif leads us to the question of female
ascetics.

4. Female ascetics in or around the desert

The motif of a female ascetic who lived incognito among the monks, is well known, and
received quite a lot scholarly attention as well. 43 In the present examined corpus there are two
apophthegm based clichés,44 which later became very popular. Both of them are about monks
who lived in strict retirement, and about whom only after their death was it found out that
they were actually women. In one of these apophthegms Abba Besarion does not hesitate to
offer the obvious moral of this story: “See how the women triumph over Satan, while we still
behave badly in the towns.”45

38
Collationes 7.26. (Pichery 1955, 268-269; trans. Shaff and Wace 1991 [1894], 371-372).
39
eg. Evagrius: Capita Cognoscitiva 35 (trans. Sinkewicz 2003, 177-178); Macarius: Ad filios Dei 6. (Géhin
1999. 105).
40
eg. AP Poemen 26, 72; AP Pambo 4.
41
AP John the Dwarf 16; AP John the Cenobite 1; AP Serapion 1.
42
See footnote n. 25.
43
eg. Anson 1974; Patlagean 1976; Davis 2002; Brakke 2003.
44
Anonymous N 63; AP Bessarion 4;
45
AP Bessarion 4. (trans. Ward 1984 [1975], 41).
The historical credibility of these texts is very doubtful, as is the question of female ascetics in
the deep desert. But because in this present paper we are interested in the representations of
female ascetics given by male authors, we should avoid the historical critical research about
the problem. Howewer, it is a fact that on the outskirts of inhabited areas there were women
as well as members of some kind of village asceticism, 46 and there were at least three “desert
mothers” who lived in quite close connection with the male anchorites and of whom sayings
became part of the great alphabetic collection of the Apophthegmata Patrum.47 Nevertheless,
it is particularly interesting to examine how the gender of these women was regarded.

Palladius's goal with his work was, to give an account “of both male and female anchorites,
those I have seen and others I have heard about, and of those I have lived with...” 48 However,
when he reaches the point when he should write about female ascetics, he says

“I must also commemorate in this book the courageous women (literally gunaikw/n avndreiw/n, „manly
women”) to whom God granted struggles equal to those of men so that no one could plead as an excuse
that women are too weak to practice virtue successfully.”49

In the apophthegms related to Amma Sarah (one of the “desert mothers”) we found an even
more concrete expression of the transcendence of gender:

“Another time, two old men, great anchorites, came to the district of Pelusia to visit her. When they
arrived one said to the other, Let us humiliate this old woman.' So they said to her, ‘Be careful not to
become conceited thinking to yourself: ‘Look how anchorites are coming to see me, a mere woman.’’
But Amma Sarah said to them, ‘According to nature I am a woman, but not according to my thoughts.'”

and in another saying: “She also said to the brothers, 'It is I who am a man, you who are
women.'”50

These apophthegms are not only interesting because they represent some kind of ancient
antitype of the distinction between sex (as biological) and gender from a cultural or social
aspect, but because they show a strange tension in the role of gender in ascetic life. The
ascetics’ main goal is to live an angelic life, to rise above the limits of the body, where there is
“neither male nor female” (Gal 3:28) but all are one in Christ. Nevertheless, these ascetics
have an unmistakable male character. For females to reach the sexless status it was necessary
to become male in some way, to belong among the “eunuchs for heaven” (Matt 19:12) in quite
literal sense. There where certainly some social stereotypes in this approach as well as there
was in the anthropological point of view behind it. But for the assessment of these
stereotypes we must also consider the prominent combat metaphors used in relations of
ascetic life. The monk, and especially the anchorite (even the female one) was first of all an
avgwnisth,j a “fighter” or „contender” which is a quite peculiarly male archetype.51

46
Historia Lausiaca 31 (Butler 1904, 86); AP John the Dwarf 40; (for detailed anaisys of the texts see Elm 1994,
259-261, 315-316.
47
cf. AP Theodora; AP Sarah; AP Syncletica. See also Harmless 2004, 440-442.
48
Historia Lausiaca Prol. 2. (Butler 1904, 10; trans. Meyer 1964, 23).
49
Historia Lausiaca 41. (Butler 1904, 128; trans. Meyer 1964, 117).
50
AP Sarah 4; 9. (trans. Ward 1984 [1975], 230).
51
cf. Brakke 2006. 182, 184-186, 195.
However, the goal and the way was the same for male and female ascetics as well. In quite a
similar way to Palladius, it seems Saint Antony in his first letter also made no substantial
difference in rating between the genders:

“I believe that the souls, whether male or female, whom God in his mercy has assembled by his own
Word, are three of kind...”52

But after that the differentiation of the three kinds has nothing to do with genders, but the
eagerness to follow the vocation. And beyond a level all distinction between the genders loses
its significance:

“Truly, my beloved, it is great for you to attempt to understand the spiritual essence, in which there is
neither man nor woman; rather it is an immortal essence, which has a beginning but no end.”53

Just as the strict separation becomes useless if somebody reaches the avpa,qeia (the freedom
from all passions). That is why a female ascetic told to a brother, when he altered his path
when he saw a group of nuns: “If you were a perfect monk, you would not have paid attention
to us as women.”54

5. Short conclusion
I surveyed the most important roles in which women appear in the premier sources of early
monastic literature related to the Egyptian desert fathers. We have seen some texts in which
the female body appeared as a haunting memory or even a manifestation of a demon, and
other ones in which flesh and blood women became tools of the demons or instruments of
temptations for the monks. It can be also easily seen that because of these dangers the primary
and most recommended strategy in monastic sources concerning women was avoidance.
However, we have also seen that women could be positive symbols as well in these
collections and in some cases they appeared not only equals to the monks, but, despite the
supposed weakness of women and the female body they could outdo male anchorites in
ascetic practices and thus even become role models, or at least incentive competitors for men.
Nevertheless, one could also see from the representative collection I tried to compile here that
we did not find a lot of really depreciative characteristics of women in these texts, and no one
in which women themselves are held responsible for evil, or anything which would be
comparable to the passages of the iconic figure of “misogyny” in patristic age, namely
Tertullian:

“The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are
the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine
law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so
easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert - that is, death - even the Son of God had to die. And
do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins?”55

52
Ep. Ant. I. 1. (Rubenson 1995, 197.)
53
Ep. Ant. VI. 5. (Rubenson 1995, 216.)
54
Anonymous N 154.
55
De cultu feminarum I,1,2. (trans. Thelwall 1885, 14.)
But it is also true, that the essence of the monastic texts is very different from this paragraph
of Tertullian. They have little to do with rhetoric, there are almost no mentions of theological
problems in them, and their authors were too occupied by some kind of introspection to pay
too much attention to such external problems as the apparel of women. It is worth noting that
they ideally searched the mistakes in themselves, and avoiding women was mostly only a
necessary circumstance to reach some inner peace to achieve this. It should be emphasized
that the fight against the urge of fornication was only one, and not at all even the hardest step
on the road to an authentic ascetic way of life. On the whole, it received much less attention in
early monastic literature than one would think on the base of this paper.
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