Based on hagiographical tale collections (i.e. collective biographies, miracle collections, and collections of edifying tales) and miscellanies (i.e. Apophthegmata Patrum) from the early Byzantine period (fourth–seventh century), this chapter will attempt to provide a criterion for the examined tales’ classification, which could prove useful also for approaching other and later tales. This criterion is what we call ‘the agent’ of the story, that is the force or the element which initiates a tale’s episode(s) and drives it forward, defining its form and general structure. Tale episodes in early Byzantine hagiographical collections are like those explained by Tzvetan Todorov in his Introduction to Poetics, namely ‘episodes […] that describe a state (an equilibrium or of disequilibrium) and those that describe the transition from one state to the other’.1
In our corpus, three main types of agents have been detected: the human agent, the marvelous agent, and the supernatural agent. These agents form, in turn, three corresponding tale categories, which are as follows: (1) the (auto)biographical tale, (2) the marvelous tale, and (3) the supernatural tale. Each of these categories, which will be analyzed below, assumes three different structural forms: (1) the single-episode tale, (2) the multiple-episode tale, and (3) the frame tale. As suggested by these structural forms, just one episode might sustain a whole (auto)biographical, marvelous, or supernatural tale, that is, what we have termed ‘the single-episode tale’, while the sequence of episodes is characteristic of multiple-episode tales and frame tales.
A multiple-episode tale might have episodes from the same category ((auto)biographical, marvelous, or supernatural) or a combination of episodes from two or three categories (biographical and marvelous; (auto)biographical and supernatural; marvelous and supernatural; (auto)biographical, marvelous, and supernatural). Finally, a frame tale has a tale-within-a-tale arrangement. The principal storyteller of a given tale tells the story of another storyteller who, in turn, tells his or her own story and/or those of other storytellers or characters.2 Thus, in contrast to the single- or multiple-episode tale, the frame tale has one or more characters who are simultaneously the storytellers of the interpolated tales. The frame tale, therefore, involves more than one narrative level – the so-called frames that include embedded tales each of which might have a single- or a multiple-episode structure. Each embedded multiple-episode tale, as is the case with the non-embedded ones, might contain tales from the same category ((auto)biographical, marvelous, or supernatural) or combinations of different categories.3
1 The Single-Episode Tale
In terms of length and density, the episode of a tale might be described as simple or complex. In general, tales with simple episodes have up to two or three characters, while tales having complex episodes involve more than two or three characters and are therefore longer. In general, single-episode tales are, as expected, shorter than those belonging to the other two structural types, which include more than one episode. The shortest tale with a simple episode comprises three printed lines, and the longest tale with a complex episode has around fifty-five printed lines. A single-episode tale is shaped and structured according to the characteristics of its distinct category: (auto)biographical, marvelous, or supernatural. In our attempt to provide a better understanding of the (structural) character of the single-episode tale, as well as that of multiple-episode tales and frame tales, in this larger section we discuss each tale category separately.
1.1 The (Auto)biographical Tale
The agent driving the single-episode (auto)biographical tale is a human figure performing remarkable conduct which is manifested in a series of actions and/or physical and spiritual trials. Biographical tales are, as described by Patricia Cox Miller, ‘biographical sketches’. They do ‘not analyse character so much as present it in striking images, using a […] “peculiarly expressionistic manner”’. The character is portrayed in a ‘vividly visual and emotional’ way, while ‘conventional biographical data like ancestry, place of birth and death’ are absent.4 Most single-episode (auto)biographical tales follow a similar pattern that, through its frequent repetitions, provides a work with a ritual structure. These repetitions render (auto)biographical tales easily recognizable, memorable, and adaptable – particularly for later authors who intend to create biographical sketches of new heroes and heroines.
As for the (auto)biographical tales’ most common arrangement, they first introduce the protagonist into the narrative by sketching his or her profile, which is constructed through a selection of brief pieces of information including the character’s name, origin, age, monastic career (e.g. hermit, cenobitic monk, or nun) or profession (e.g. merchant, actor, herdsman), sexual/marital status, and geographical location. Then follows an account of the character’s bodily and/or spiritual deeds, which are often witnessed by the tale’s storyteller, who also appears as the protagonist’s biographer and adds his or her own perspective to the biographical sketch. (Auto)biographical tales are mostly open-ended narratives inviting the tales’ readers or listeners to think of more similar episodes featuring in the protagonist’s daily life, which seems an endless repetition of admirable deeds. The lack of a clear end, along with the protagonist’s striking image(s), provides (auto)biographical tales with their distinctiveness and power. Sometimes, (auto)biographical tales, like their marvelous and supernatural counterparts, might at the end include the storyteller’s final comments, which mostly take the form of a short moral lesson.
An indicative example of a single-episode biographical tale is the story of John from the History of the Monks in Egypt, a very brief narrative with a simple episode involving two types of characters: the biographer who sees and reports, and his protagonist. The tale reads as follows:
26. We also visited another John in Diolcos, who was the father of hermitages. He, too, was endowed with much grace. He looked like Abraham and had a beard like Aaron’s. He had performed many miracles and cures, and he was especially successful at healing people afflicted with paralysis and gout.
κςʹ. Περὶ Ἰωάννου
Εἴδομεν δὲ καὶ ἄλλον Ἰωάννην ἐν Διόλκῳ, πατέρα μοναστηρίων καὶ αὐτὸν πολλὴν χάριν ἔχοντα το τε Ἀβραμιαῖον σχῆμα καὶ τὸν πώγωνα τὸν Ἀαρών, δυνάμεις τε καὶ ἰάσεις ἐπιτελέσαντα καὶ πολλοὺς παραλυτικοὺς καὶ ποδαλγοὺς θεραπεύσαντα .5
In Todorov’s words, the biographical episode involving John ‘describes an equilibrium’. Despite its extreme brevity, this biographical tale is constructed on two elements: the biographer’s image of John, and the information he has managed to collect about the ascetic. In John’s face, the biographer-storyteller sees two biblical figures, Abraham and Aaron. Being the father of many monasteries, John appears to the biographer’s eyes as another Abraham, whose name meant ‘father of height’ and whom God chose to make the spiritual father and leader of a new people.
As for Aaron, in Ps. 133.2 he is described as someone whose beard was so long that it covered his garments. By presenting John as both another Abraham and Aaron,6 the biographer brings to the memory of his audience the stories of these important biblical figures, who become part of John’s own biographical tale too. Through this identification, John’s biographical information becomes longer than the written text quoted above, which simply mentions that John established and led monasteries and that he also performed many miracles and particularly healings of paralysis and gout. The biographical tale’s audiences are invited to think that while establishing and leading monasteries, John shared Abraham’s monumental patience, his active and living faith, and his righteousness. At the same time, he had the eloquence of Aaron, his high and holy calling, and his monumental penitence during which he suffered for his own sins and those of others.
Single-episode biographical tales, such as that of John, are less frequently found in miracle collections, whereas they are common in the History of the Monks in Egypt, Palladios’ Lausiac History, Daniel of Sketis’ Narrations, John Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow, Anastasios of Sinai’s Edifying Tales, and the Apophthegmata Patrum. Miracle collections are less concerned with (auto)biographical tales, since they are attached to a saint’s specific shrine (e.g. that of Thekla in Seleukeia, Artemios in Oxia in Constantinople, etc.) and their primary aims are to encourage pilgrimage to the shrine and to promote the saint’s cult through the circulation of stories that manifest his or her posthumous miraculous powers. The miraculous saint’s biography, which is equally important for the establishment and promotion of his or her cult, is provided in a separate text, the saint’s Passion, Life, or Encomium.
1.2 The Marvelous Tale
In a pioneering study on medieval wonder, Caroline Walker Bynum presents Western medieval ways of relating and reacting to strange, bizarre, and marvelous phenomena that, as such, were at the limits of knowledge and rational insight.7 As the famous historian shows, there was a fascination with the marvelous in the Middle Ages, which fostered a cultivation of the extraordinary and the bizarre in various types of writing: the devotional genres of sermon and hagiography, and the literature of entertainment (i.e. writings on travel, chronicles, and collections of odd stories). The Western medieval approach to the marvelous referred to manifestations which challenged and exceeded the limits of the reasonable and the known. These manifestations took many forms, including, for example, spatial manipulation and metamorphosis. In fact, the latter probably represents the most common manifestation of the marvelous in the examined corpus. According to Walker Bynum, the marvelous incites strong emotional reactions that ‘range from terror and disgust to solemn astonishment and playful delight’.8 Walker Bynum’s descriptions of the marvelous in Western medieval genres are to a great extent valid also for the marvelous tales of the examined texts.
Being normally shorter than most single-episode (auto)biographical tales, the length of marvelous tales ranges from approximately five to forty printed lines. In contrast to (auto)biographical tales, marvelous tales do not focus on the extraordinary deeds of a particular human character, but concentrate on happenings or phenomena that exceed human understanding and perception. The marvelous event, which is witnessed by the author-storyteller and/or other, mostly secondary, characters of the tale, constitutes a sudden, unexpected, and, at times, violent intrusion of mystery into the order of normal life. Marvelous tales do not just cause the feeling of admiration that is evoked by (auto)biographical tales, but also a series of often antithetical feelings, including dread, wonder, pleasure, and joy, which, like the admiration of the (auto)biographical tales, are experienced by both the tales’ characters and the texts’ actual audiences.
Whether the extraordinary in our corpus is manifested in the form of an animal exhibiting human behavior,9 a walking headless body,10 the soil spitting out corpses,11 a small source filling up of its own accord and retaining water until Pentecost,12 or the transformation of eucharistic bread into human flesh,13 for the Byzantine listener, reader, or observer the marvelous is received in its individuality and veracity. As John Moschos concludes his marvelous tale on the said tiny source that once a year – on the day of the paschal feast of the Resurrection – fills up with water, ‘these […] wonders are in the Province of Lycia and if one does not believe in them, it is no burdensome journey to Lycia where they can be informed of the truth’ (
The marvelous episodes in our monastic and ecclesiastical tales appear to have a divine origin. Even though they are Christianized and thus normalized, marvelous episodes are not always specifically religious. A case in point is a tale in the Anonymous Collection of the Apophthegmata Patrum about a lion that behaves like a human being. The lion lives in a cave in which a hermit finds shelter from the heat. Upon seeing the elder, the lion shows its dismay by grinding its teeth. Yet it does not attack the elder, as one would expect, but peacefully abandons the cave, thus following the man’s advice, as he tells the animal: ‘This is a place with room for you and me. Get up and leave if you do not like it’ (
The marvelous tales under discussion seem to be more effective and powerful when their readers or listeners are invited not only to gaze at what the characters see, but also to perceive how these characters see. Sometimes it is only select characters (mostly pious Christians) who can see the bizarre, whereas other characters (mostly heathens and heretics) are denied the reality of the extraordinary. In these cases, the tales are structured around two forms of reality: one allowing the marvelous manifestation and one that denies its existence. Yet the first reality is deemed higher, and that is the reason why it is eventually disclosed to the narratives’ good characters, who, in turn, share their experience of the marvelous with their fellows and/or the tales’ storytellers that afterwards transmit it to the texts’ audiences. One such marvelous tale is the following:
In this same Clysma, there was a certain other sailor, who was also called Theodore. Even though he was a Christian, when the ships entered the land of Saracens, he was lured by the one who hates the good, and he became an apostate of the Christian faith, and he rejected the cross and the baptism.
After some days passed, when in the evening one of his colleagues named Menas was going to the church he met the renouncer Theodore. And behold, he saw a headless human being walking. Feeling wonder before this strange sight he asked the creature a question, saying: ‘Headless being, who are you?’ He replied, saying: ‘I am Theodore the sailor who died three months ago.’ Menas then said: ‘Where is your head?’ Theodore replied, saying: ‘Ninety days ago now I lost my head, because I joined the faith of the headless.’ Then he immediately disappeared.
When Menas entered the church, he was trembling with fear because of what he had seen and heard. When he was asked by his colleagues, who are still alive and live in Clysma, for the reason of his fear, he narrated this story so that we might know that there is no godly faith other than that of Christians.
Ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ Κλύσματι γέγονε καὶ ἕτερός τις ναύτης, Θεόδωρος καὶ αὐτὸς λεγόμενος. Οὗτος Χριστιανὸς ὑπάρχων, εἰσελθόντων πλοίων ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ τῶν Σαρακηνῶν, ἀπατηθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ μισοκάλου ἐκεῖσε ἀποστάτης τῆς Χριστοῦ πίστεως γέγονεν ἀρνησάμενος καὶ τὸν σταυρὸν καὶ τὸ βάπτισμα .
Μετ’ ὀλίγας οὖν ἡμέρας ἀπήντησεν ἐν νυκτὶ τῷ ἀρνησαμένῳ Θεοδώρῳ τις ἐκ τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ [ν ]Μηνᾶς λεγόμενος εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἀπερχόμενος. Καὶ ἰδοὺ θεωρεῖ ἄνθρωπον περιπατοῦντα, κεφαλὴν δὲ μὴ ἔχοντα. Καὶ θαμβηθεὶς ἐπὶ τῷ ξένῳ θεάματι ἠρώτα τὸν ὀφθέντα αὑτῷ· Ἀκέφαλον, λέγων, τίς εἶ σύ ;Ὁ δὲ ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ λέγων· Ἐγώ εἰμι Θεόδωρος ὁ ναύτης ὁ γενόμενος μακαρίτης πρὸ τριῶν μηνῶν. Λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Μηνᾶς· Καὶ ποῦ ἐστιν ἡ κεφαλή σου ;Ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ ὁ Θεόδωρος λέγων· Ἔχω ἐνενήκοντα ἡμέρας, ὅτι ἀπώλεσα τὴν κεφαλήν μου καὶ ἐπίστευσα μετὰ ἀκεφάλων, καὶ εὐθέως ἐγένετο ἄφαντος .
Ἐλθὼν οὖν ὁ Μηνᾶς ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ ἦν σύντρομος ἐκ τοῦ φόβου τῶν ὀφθέντων καὶ λαληθέντων αὐτῷ. ἐπερωτηθεὶς τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦ κατέχοντος αὐτὸν τρόμου ταῦτα διηγήσατο τοῖς ἑταίροις αὑτοῦ τοῖς ἔτι ζῶσι καὶ ἐν τῷ Κλύσματι διάγουσιν, ὅπως καὶ διὰ τούτου μάθωμεν, ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλη θεοῦ πίστις εἰ μὴ μόνη τῶν Χριστιανῶν .18
This tale has the typical beginning of a biographical tale. Its first sentence introduces into the narrative the hero whose body will soon become the space of the marvelous. This is Theodore, a Christian sailor from Clysma (an Egyptian city located at the head of the Gulf of Suez) whose conversion to Islam causes a bodily transformation that one evening is witnessed by his colleague Menas on the latter’s way to the church. Being a practicing Christian, Menas is deemed worthy of the marvelous manifestation, which takes place in a setting that is specifically designed both to prepare and to sustain the threat caused by Theodore’s headless apparition.
A theatrical scene is created featuring Menas walking alone in the darkness. Suddenly, he sees an absurd and grotesque sight: a headless human body walking. Through the storyteller’s use of the phrase ‘and behold’ (
The tale concludes with a moral lesson taught by Theodore’s religious conversion and subsequent monstrosity: Christianity is the only true religion, and those who deny their Christianity lose their identity and humanity. This serious loss is allegorically represented through a headless body moving around, violating physical order and thus provoking both wonder and fear. At the same time, Theodore’s headless body reproduces his new, yet ‘godless’, religion that is represented by a headless god (Akephalos) who in ancient magical texts (dating from the second century bc to the fifth century ad) is diversely identified with Osiris, Seth/Typhon, Bes, Helios, and Apollo, and is, among others, associated with apparitions.19 By espousing an Akephalos god and joining his followers, Theodore becomes headless, too.
In general, marvelous tales are characterized by a mysteriousness that is accepted as part and parcel of everyday reality. While the marvelous defies empirically defined reality by exaggerating the real, it also serves to assert the impossible. Insofar as the tales tend to make repeated, yet restricted, use of comparatively few marvelous features, these become predictable and therefore, at least to some extent, acceptable. Thus, the marvelous elements are just as capable of reproducing, and thus valorizing, social situations as the ‘realistic’ features are. For example, marvelous representations of the body, as Theodore’s tale shows, are imbued with desires as well as fears: the desire to learn about the grotesque apparition and the fear that this knowledge brings. The marvelous phenomenon, in whatever manifestation, is best seen and known in person, thus functioning as the greatest proof of the claim to truth of the witness, who, like Menas, will then share the marvelous experience with others. The transformation of the experience into a tale constitutes not only a challenge to available paradigms for making sense of an otherwise unfamiliar world, but also a challenge to the subjectivity of the witness-narrator who, through the narration, tries to make sense of a strange phenomenon that functions as a means of edification.
1.3 The Supernatural Tale
Supernatural tales are the most frequent single-episode tales and the richest in terms of their agents’ variations. As already suggested, the agents of supernatural tales are either divine or demonic figures that enter the human world and interact with a human protagonist (e.g. in an ascetic’s battle against demons and demonic temptations; in a person’s dreamlike or visionary encounter with a saintly figure) or bring about the performance of a miracle (e.g. a dead person’s resurrection; the healing of a deadly disease). In this category, we also include tales whose episode centres on a protagonist’s descent into hell or ascent to heaven through dreamlike or visionary experiences.
In addition to their variety of forms, the supernatural figures depicted in the tales under investigation also serve different functions. There are angels, appearing mostly as handsome men or eunuchs, who are dressed in expensive attire and who frequently undertake roles such as that of the messenger, escort, savior, and punisher. There are biblical and saintly figures (e.g. prophets, the Virgin, apostles, martyrs, confessors, and bishops) in various appearances who perform miracles, foretell the future, instruct, and punish. There are demons in various guises who use various tricks attempting to make pious characters abandon their Christian way of life, and who possess other individuals with the intention of destroying them. Finally, there are undefined divine or demonic figures manifesting themselves through bodiless voices and grotesque forms that help or hinder the protagonists in their endeavors, either pious or sinful. Concerning the supernatural figures who appear in person, they are often depicted as quite fleshy. As such, they possess what Cox Miller has described as ‘ephemeral corporeality’: ‘the supernatural agent’s body is invisible yet seen as quite physical, touching both the man in the story and the reader’.20 This is particularly relevant in the cases in which a supernatural figure touches a character violently to serve various purposes (e.g. to achieve a cure; to punish; to shake an ascetic’s steadfastness).
The great majority of supernatural episodes belong to the second type of episodes identified by Todorov, since they ‘describe the transition from one state’ to another.21 Through supernatural agency, for example, a seriously ill character is healed completely, or the other way round: a healthy character develops a disease; a sinful character repents, or vice versa: a pious character commits a sin; a character’s ignorance turns into knowledge; and calamity changes into blessing or blessing turns into calamity. The supernatural tales included in miracle collections chiefly concern the transition from a state of illness to that of health, while most supernatural tales incorporated into our other collections deal with a character’s transition from ignorance to self-knowledge and divine wisdom.
The following supernatural tale from Artemios’ miracle collection involves a double transition: from illness to health and from ignorance to self- and divine knowledge.
Another man, a Phrygian by birth named George, had swollen testicles and, suffering in the extreme, was waiting for a cure by the martyred saint. But this man chattered incessantly; for neither by night nor by day was his mouth at rest, nor would he allow anyone to rest, and although everyone censured him, he would not be quiet. So the saint appeared to him in the small hours saying: ‘When day comes, withdraw from here. Since if you remain another moment, I will double your hernia. For I hate babblers.’ Rising early, he knew that he was cured and in accordance with what was said to him by the holy martyr, so he acted and did not remain but rejoicing went off blessing God.
Ἄλλος ἀνὴρ τοὔνομα Γεώργιος, Φρύγιος τῷ γένει, ἐξωγκωμένους τοὺς διδύμους αὐτοῦ ἔχων καὶ τὰ ἔσχατα ὀδυνώμενος προσεκαρτέρει πρὸς τὸ ἰαθῆναι αὐτὸν τῷ ἁγίῳ ἀθλοφόρῳ. ἦν δὲ οὗτος λαλῶν πολλά· οὐκ ἠρέμει γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸ στόμα οὔτε νυκτὸς οὔτε ἡμέρας, λοιπὸν οὐδὲ συνεχώρει ἀναπαύεσθαί τινα, καὶ πάντων αὐτῷ ἐπιτιμώντων οὐκ ἐσιώπα. Φαίνεται οὖν αὐτῷ ταῖς πολλαῖς ὁ ἅγιος λέγων· ‘Ἡνίκα ἡμέρα γένηται, ἀναχώρει τῶν ἔνθεν, ἐπεὶ ἐὰν μείνῃς ἄλλην ῥοπήν, διπλῆν ποιῶ τὴν κήλην σου· ἐγὼ γὰρ μισῶ τοὺς φλυάρους.’ ἀναστὰς δὲ τῷ πρωῒ ἔγνω ἑαυτὸν ὑγιῆ, καὶ κατὰ τὸ ῥηθὲν αὐτῷ ἐκ τοῦ ἁγίου μάρτυρος, οὕτως ἐποίησεν καὶ οὐκ ἔστη, ἀλλὰ χαίρων ἀπῆλθεν εὐλογῶν τὸν θεόν .22
George, the human character of this supernatural tale, grows impatient as Saint Artemios, who specializes in the healing of testicular diseases, postpones his miraculous cure. Despite his extreme suffering, George ‘chatters incessantly’ without realizing that this is not proper behavior in the sacred space housing Artemios’ relics (i.e. the church of John the Forerunner in Oxia in Constantinople), and without paying any attention to the fact that he becomes a real nuisance for his fellow patients also waiting, but patiently, for the saint’s healing. It is primarily his (self-)ignorance and indifference to the others’ situation that initiate the dreamlike epiphany of Artemios, whose words have a humoristic effect which is created by the saint’s ambivalent behavior: it appears both human and supernatural. By stating his disgust for babblers, Artemios behaves like George’s fellow patients who, as pointed out, also reveal their discomfort with the continuous chattering. By threatening to worsen George’s suffering, on the other hand, Artemios exhibits his power to miraculously cause – but also heal – testicular diseases.
As George and, along with him, the tale’s audiences realize when he wakes up, Artemios was performing his cure while reproaching him within the dream. Following the saint’s instructions, George leaves the church, yet he does not cease talking, though in a completely different manner: his initial words of misery are now replaced by words of eulogy which in contrast to the previous ones are most desirable and welcome. In sum, supernatural agency in this episode effects both bodily and spiritual transformation. George’s great suffering is transformed into grand happiness, and his ignorance concerning unpleasant aspects of his character and saintly intentions turns into self-knowledge and divine wisdom. He becomes both a healthy and a better man.
As the preceding analysis has hopefully made clear, despite their extreme brevity and simplicity, single-episode tales from early Byzantium constitute powerful narratives whose human, superhuman, and marvelous agents manage to engage their audiences’ senses and emotions. The episode, as defined through its agent type, constitutes the building block of the early Byzantine tale. It is a complete and free-standing narrative unit. As such, the episode becomes essential not only for the tale’s creation, but also for its further development, which is materialized in longer and more complex structures, such as those of the multiple-episode tale and the frame tale. Multiple-episode tales unroll through a series of episodes, whereas the even more complicated frame tales develop through series of embedded episodes. But let us first examine how a multiple-episode tale is structured.
2 The Multiple-Episode Tale
The multiple-episode tale does not have a unified or consistent length and structure: the more the episodes, the longer the tale, and the longer the tale, the more complicated the structure. In terms of the types of episodes they involve, multiple-episode tales might be divided into two groups: monothematic and polythematic tales. Monothematic tales are those having episodes with the same agent, (auto)biographical, marvelous, or supernatural. Polythematic tales, on the other hand, include combinations of episodes with two different agents (i.e. (auto)biographical and marvelous; (auto)biographical and supernatural; marvelous and supernatural) or episodes with all three agents (i.e. (auto)biographical, marvelous, and supernatural). The arrangement of episodes in polythematic tales, which varies from tale to tale, is determined by the author’s individual purposes, aesthetic, didactic, or other.
An indicative example of a short monothematic multiple-episode tale comprising just two episodes is the biographical story of Makarios the Younger from Palladios’ Lausiac History. The tale reads as follows:
A young man named Makarios about eighteen years of age was playing with his comrades along Lake Marea. He was pasturing animals and accidentally killed someone. Telling no one about it, he went off to the desert; he was so afraid of God and of man that he had no regard for himself, and he stayed in the desert for three years without a shelter. […] Afterwards he built himself a cell and lived another twenty-five years there. He was deemed worthy of the gift of spitting upon demons, and he rejoiced in his solitude.
I spent quite some time with him, and I asked him how he felt about his sin and homicide. He said that it was far from his thoughts, and that he even rejoiced in it, since it was actually the starting point of his salvation. He said, bringing testimony from Holy Writ, that Moses would not have been deemed worthy of the divine vision and the great gift of writing inspired words if he had not fled to Mount Sinai in fear of Pharaoh, because of the homicide he had committed in Egypt.
I do not say this to make light of homicide, but rather to show that there are virtues which are due to circumstances, when a man does not advance to good of himself. For some virtues are deliberately chosen and others are dependent upon circumstances.
Νεώτερός τις ὀνόματι Μακάριος, ὡς ἐτῶν δεκαοκτώ, ἐν τῷ παίζειν μετὰ τῶν συνηλικιωτῶν παρὰ τὴν λίμνην τὴν λεγομένην Μαρίαν, τετράποδα νέμων, ἀκούσιον εἰργάσατο φόνον. Καὶ μηδενὶ μηδὲν εἰρηκὼς καταλαμβάνει τὴν ἔρημον, καὶ εἰς τοσοῦτον ἤλασε φόβον θεῖόν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπινον, ὡς ἀναισθητῆσαι αὐτὸν καὶ ἐπὶ τριετίαν ἄστεγον μεῖναι ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ . […]Οὗτος ὕστερον ᾠκοδόμησε κέλλαν ἑαυτῷ· καὶ ζήσας ἄλλα εἰκοσιπέντε ἔτη ἐν τῷ κελλίῳ ἐκείνῳ χαρίσματος ἠξιώθη καταπτύειν δαιμόνων, ἐντρυφῶν τῇ μονότητι .
Τούτῳ πολλὰ συγχρονίσας ἠρώτων πῶς αὐτοῦ διάκειται ὁ λογισμὸς ἐπὶ τῇ τοῦ φόνου ἁμαρτίᾳ· ὃς τοσοῦτον ἔλεγεν ἀπέχειν λύπης ὡς καὶ προσευχαριστεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ φόνῳ· γεγένηται γὰρ αὐτῷ ὑπόθεσις σωτηρίας ὁ ἀκούσιος φόνος. Ἔλεγε δὲ ἀπὸ γραφῶν φέρων τὴν μαρτυρίαν ὅτι οὐκ ἂν Μωσῆς ἠξιοῦτο τῆς θεϊκῆς ὀπτασίας ⸢καὶ τῆς τοσαύτης δωρεᾶς καὶ τῆς συγγραφῆς τῶν ἁγίων λόγων ⸣,εἰ μὴ φόβῳ τοῦ Φαραὼ διὰ τὸν φόνον ὃν ἔδρασεν ἐν τῇ Αἰγύπτῳ κατειλήφει τὸ ὄρος τὸ Σινᾶ .
Ταῦτα δὲ λέγω οὐχ ὁδοποιῶν εἰς φόνον, δεικνύων δὲ ὅτι εἰσὶ καὶ περιστατικαὶ ἀρεταί, ὅταν μὴ ἑκουσίως τις τῷ ἀγαθῷ προσέλθῃ· τῶν γὰρ ἀρετῶν αἱ μέν εἰσι προαιρετικαί, αἱ δὲ περιστατικαί .23
The first two lines of the tale introduce the protagonist by giving just his name (Makarios), age (18 years old), and occupation (herdsman). Makarios’ accidental killing of an anonymous young man initiates plot movement. Wishing to repent for his crime, Makarios withdraws secretly to the desert. The severity of his bodily renunciation is quite striking: he lives alone in the open air, enduring the desert’s difficult weather conditions. No further explanation is provided concerning the homeless phase of Makarios’ asceticism, but its specified time frame (three years) highlights the hero’s continuous suffering, which renders it even more praiseworthy. The second phase of Makarios’ ascetic life, which is equally elliptically described, is marked by his sheltered feats and his ability to perform exorcisms, which constitute the strongest proof of his deliverance from his serious sin. The duration of this second phase is also given. It lasts twenty-five years, that is, about eight times longer than the first phase, which functions as a preparation for the second phase.
A third phase in the hero’s ascetic life – marked by a new paragraph in the above quotation – is initiated through the appearance of another hero, the storyteller and Makarios’ biographer, who is Palladios himself. In this third phase, Makarios’ total isolation, characterizing the first two phases, is broken. Now Makarios acquires disciples and becomes a teacher of repentance. Palladios, who, as he explains, had the chance to spend considerable time with the protagonist, is very interested in hearing about Makarios’ experience of homicide and sin. However, he allows the tale’s audience to get only a very sketchy impression of this experience, which appears as a duplication of the biblical Moses’ corresponding experience. At this point Makarios’ biographical tale ends.
In the last paragraph of the above quotation, Palladios briefly explains his choice as a storyteller. In so doing, Palladios recalls Menas, the previously discussed sailor from Anastasios of Sinai’s Edifying Tales, who, as Anastasios remarks, narrates his experience of the marvelous – which is related to another religion that is condemned by the author – to prove the truth of Christianity. Here, Palladios highlights the reason why he is sharing Makarios’ previous experience of such a serious sin as homicide. His intention, as he points out, is to use this very experience as a moral lesson for the tale’s readers or listeners. For Palladios, Makarios’ example constitutes a strong manifestation of the fact that goodness might be a result of circumstances and not of innate ability. He thus implies that had Makarios not committed homicide he would never have become such a holy man. It is, in fact, due to the life he acquired in penitence that his bios could be turned into the biographical tale which Palladios includes in his Lausiac History, a work aiming at ‘increasing the [moral] strength’ of its audiences, particularly when they are ‘afflicted with spiritual dryness’ (
As for an example of a polythematic multiple-episode tale, a case in point is the following narrative from the miracle collection of Thekla:
The miracle concerning myself […] I will tell. ‘Anthrax’ is the name given […] to a certain malady […]. I was greatly afraid […] that the infection […] might put my entire life in jeopardy. […]
I saw the virgin entering the place where I was sleeping. […] After entering and witnessing the wasps’ attack against me, […] she scared away that great swarm of wasps […] and set me free from all those terrible enemies. This is the vision which happened to me. But when daylight appeared and began to shine, I found I had been delivered from that fierce pain and suffering […]. The miracle happened in this way and such was its resolution. I will now recount the one which followed […].
This youngster Basil – let me pass by now how he came to be bishop and gained control of the church, ⟨a tale⟩ which does not deserve to be narrated – began to rage against me […] – for I […] opposed this destructive election, as being an impure, unjust and profane act – and he continued to plot against me in every way possible.
Once he even fabricated a charge […] and he excluded me from the divine mysteries, as it is customary to exclude those who truly sin. […] A black pygmy filled with darkness and doom […] – Zamaras was the name of this black man – this fellow seemed to approach me while I was sleeping, and held out what we commonly call a tremisis […]. This coin, too, was dark and very black […]. I took it against my will and without pleasure, I must confess. For the dream seemed to me to be the sort of prophecy auguring nothing good. The dream ceased at that point, just as day was coming on, and, while I was still ruminating and disturbed by this vision, our own white Zamaras [i.e. Basil] […] imposed upon me the sentence of my excommunication […].
Once this had occurred, a great disorderly tumult of shouting arose in the church and in the city, since everyone was amazed at the shamelessness and irregularity of the deed. My friends were downcast, as were all those in authority, as many of them as knew what had befallen me. Thomas, a holy man and beloved of God, […] railed against Basil and Euboulos, reproaching their ridiculous machination against me […]. Relatives and friends were already preparing for battle against Basil and Euboulos and were ready to do something rash against them. But I restrained them from their impulse. […] Then […] I recalled my vision of Zamaras, recognizing that those images had been symbols of these current events, even a forewarning, and that now the evil would cease.
I was already in the second day of my excommunication and night was falling. […] The martyr stood at my side in a girl’s appearance […]. And taking my right hand, she gave me that very thing of which Basil had wickedly deprived me. ‘Take this and be courageous, my child […].’ Having uttered [these words], she flew away […]. But I stood up and found my hand filled with an extraordinary fragrance. I […] said to my friends who were present: ‘Today […] Basil will revoke the excommunication […].’ When the third day arrived, Basil summoned me and revoked the sentence against me.
Τὸ δὲ περὶ ἐμὲ αὐτὸν θαῦμα , […]λέξω. Ἄνθραξ καλεῖταί τι πάθος […]καὶ ἦν πολὺς ὁ φόβος ἐμοί […]μὴ […]τῇ πάσῃ μου λυμήνηται ζωῇ . […]
Ἐδόκουν […]καθεύδειν […]ἐπεισελθοῦσαν [τὴν παρθένον ]δὲ καὶ θεασαμένην τὸν κατ’ ἐμοῦ τῶν σφηκῶν πόλεμον […]τὸν πολὺν ἐκεῖνον ὅμαδον τῶν σφηκῶν ἀποσοβῆσαί […]καὶ ἐμὲ πάντων ἐκείνων ἐλευθερῶσαι τῶν δεινῶν πολεμίων. Καὶ ἡ μὲν ὄψις ἡ γεγονυῖά μοι αὕτη· τῆς δὲ ἡμέρας ἤδη φανείσης καὶ ὑπολάμπειν ἀρχομένης, ἐγὼ μὲν ἀπηλλάγμην τῶν ἀγρίων ἐκείνων πόνων καὶ ἀλγηδόνων […].Καὶ τόδε μὲν τὸ θαῦμα ὧδέ τε ἔσχε καὶ ὧδε ἐτελεύτησεν· ὃ δὲ ἐφεξῆς εἰμι ἐρῶν .[…]
Τὸ μειράκιον τοῦτο Βασίλειος, τὸ μὲν ὅπως ἐπίσκοπός τε ἐγένετο καὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἐκράτησε, τὸ μηδὲ σκηνῆς ἄξιον, ἀφείσθω τὰ νῦν· [...] ἀρξάμενον ὑπομηνιᾶν μοι –καὶ γὰρ […]ταῖς περὶ αὐτοῦ κακαῖς καὶ ὀλεθρίοις ψήφοις ἀντέκρουσα, ὡς οὔτε εὐαγέσιν, οὔτε τὸ δίκαιον, οὔτε τὸ ὅσιον ἐχούσαις –,πάντα τρόπον ἐπιβουλεῦόν μοι διετέλει .
Καὶ δή ποτε καὶ πλασάμενος αἰτίαν […]τῶν θείων εἴργει με μυστηρίων, ᾗ νόμος τοὺς ἀληθῶς πταίοντας εἴργειν . […]Ἀνθρωπίσκος γάρ τις αἰθίωψ, ζόφου καὶ ἀχλύος πεπληρωμένος […] –Ζαμαρᾶς δὲ ἦν ὄνομα τούτῳ τῷ Αἰθίοπι –,οὗτος καθεύδοντί μοι προσιέναι τε ἔδοξε καὶ ὀρέγειν ὃ καλεῖν ἔθος ἡμῖν τριμίσιον […]ζοφῶδες δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ἦν καὶ μελάντατον […].Τοῦτο ἄκων ἐδεξάμην καὶ οὐχ ἡδέως, ὁμολογῶ· καὶ γὰρ ὄναρ ἔδοξέ μοι οὐκ ἀγαθοῦ τινος εἶναι μάντευμα τὸ τοιοῦτο. Καὶ τὸ μὲν ὄναρ εἰς τοῦτο ἔληξεν, ἄρτι δὲ ἡμέρας γεγονυίας, καὶ ἔτι μοι τὰ κατὰ τὴν ὄψιν ταύτην διανοουμένῳ καὶ ἀσχάλλοντι ὁ λευκὸς οὗτος Ζαμαρᾶς […]ἐπάγει μοι τὴν τῆς ἀκοινωνησίας ψῆφον […].
Τούτου δὲ γεγονότος, θόρυβός τε πολὺς καὶ θροῦς ἄτακτος κατὰ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, κατὰ τὴν πόλιν, πάντων τὸ τοῦ πράγματος ἀναιδὲς καὶ ἄτοπον θαυμαζόντων, κατηφεῖς δὲ οἱ φίλοι καὶ οἱ ἐν τέλει πάντες, ὅσοι δὴ καὶ τὰ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ᾔδεσαν. Ὁ δὲ Θωμᾶς, ἀνὴρ ἅγιος καὶ Θεῷ φίλος […]κατεβόα μὲν τοῦ Βασιλείου καὶ Εὐβούλου, τὴν καταγέλαστον αὐτῶν ἐπ’ ἐμοὶ σκαιωρίαν ὀνειδίζων […].ἤδη δὲ καὶ συγγενῶν καὶ φίλων ὁπλιζομένων κατὰ τοῦ Βασιλείου καὶ Εὐβούλου καὶ δρᾶσαι κατ’ αὐτῶν νεανικόν τι βουλευομένων, ἐκείνους μὲν τῆς ὁρμῆς ἐπέσχον […].Ἐπὶ τούτοις […]ἦλθον καὶ εἰς μνήμην τῆς κατὰ Ζαμαρᾶν ὄψεως, καὶ ὡς τῶν γεγονότων τούτων ἐκεῖνα σύμβολα ἦν καὶ προάγγελσις, καὶ ὡς ἤδη λωφήσει τὸ κακόν .
Δευτέρας γοῦν ἡμέρας ἤδη μοι οὔσης ἐπὶ τῇ ἀκοινωνησίᾳ καὶ τῆς νυκτὸς ἐπιλαβούσης , […]ἐφίσταταί μοι ἡ μάρτυς ἐν κορικῷ σχήματι […]καὶ λαβομένη μου τῆς δεξιᾶς χειρὸς ἐντίθησί μοι ὅπερ Βασίλειος οὐκ οἶδα εἰ καλῶς ἀφείλετο· ‘Ἔχε καὶ θάρρει, τέκνον […].’Καὶ ἡ μὲν ταῦτα εἰποῦσα ἀπέπτη […],ἐγὼ δὲ διαναστὰς τὴν μὲν χεῖρα ἐξαισίου τινὸς εὐωδίας εὗρον πεπληρωμένην […]τοῖς παραγεγονόσι τῶν φίλων εἶπον εὐθὺς ὡς· ‘Σήμερον [...] Βασίλειος λύσει τὴν ἀκοινωνησίαν […].’τῆς γὰρ τρίτης ἡμέρας ἐπιγενομένης, μεταπεμψάμενός με ὁ Βασίλειος λύει τὴν ἐπ’ ἐμοὶ ψῆφον .25
This tale consists of six episodes which, as above, we have made discernible by presenting each episode in a new paragraph. There are four autobiographical and two supernatural episodes, which are organized in the following manner: autobiographical – supernatural – autobiographical – autobiographical – autobiographical – supernatural. In other words, the tale starts with an autobiographical episode and ends with a supernatural one. The two supernatural episodes provide solutions to the hagiographer’s health and personal problems as exemplified in the autobiographical episodes. Thematically, the six episodes might be divided into two units, which the hagiographer presents as two distinct miracles that are combined in one tale: the hagiographer’s miraculous cure (the first autobiographical episode and the following supernatural episode), and the enmity of Basil against the hagiographer followed by the miraculous end of the latter’s excommunication (the subsequent three autobiographical episodes and the last supernatural episode).
The first and shorter unit, which consists of two episodes, concerns the hagiographer’s life-threatening disease (described in some detail) and its miraculous healing. The night before his scheduled surgery in which one of his fingers was to be amputated to prevent the infection’s spreading throughout his body, Saint Thekla appears in a dream (also described in some detail) to rescue the author’s finger and life through a healing that takes place in an allegorical way.26 The martyr’s destruction of the murderous wasps that attack the author in his dream functions as a symbol for the cure of a disease that ‘feels like a hotly burning inflammation’ (
The episode introducing the second unit explains the source and initiation of Basil’s hatred against the hagiographer. The latter refrains from embedding another tale into this tale – ‘which does not deserve to be narrated’. This other account concerns Basil’s ascendance to the bishopric throne, which, as the hagiographer believes, being achieved by ‘impure’ and ‘unjust’ means and machinations, deserves to remain untold.28 According to the hagiographer, Basil developed a strong hatred against him because he openly opposed his treacherous election as a bishop.
The following episode develops around the most striking display of Basil’s hatred: the hagiographer’s excommunication, a charge normally imposed against true sinners. The hagiographer is warned of this development by an unpleasant premonitory dream that is an allegory of Basil’s villainous charge. The last autobiographical episode revolves around the stark reactions of both churchmen and laymen against the hagiographer’s excommunication. Our hero undertakes immediate action in an attempt to prevent his friends from preparing a battle against Basil and his supporter Euboulos.
The last episode has many parallels with the first episode. Here, too, the author is greatly distressed. His previously imminent biological death is now replaced by a social death provoked by the excommunication. The martyr arrives once again in a dream to act as a deus ex machina. This time, however, she looks different: she has the guise of a young girl. Yet her behavior does not cease to be allegorical. She places something in the hero’s hand that symbolizes his right to be member of the church. This mystical substance is transformed into an extraordinary fragrance when the hagiographer wakes up from the dream. This very fragrance has a function key to the dream’s interpretation. The hagiographer concludes that the excommunication will soon end. The next day – the excommunication’s third day – Basil is forced by the martyr to summon the hagiographer and cancel the punishment. The excommunication’s end also brings an end to Basil’s enmity, and the two men are on good terms thereafter.
As the previous discussion of a monothematic multiple-episode tale and its polythematic counterpart has shown, each episode of such a tale can be approached and apprehended on its own, but its actual narrative power lies in the fact that it constitutes part of a series of episodes that shape the tale. These episodes are frequently connected with each other through transition words or phrases. For example, these might indicate time (e.g. ‘it was still night’,
In multiple-episode tales, episodes are stitched together both thematically and chronologically. For example, a series of (auto)biographical episodes is strung together following the course of the protagonist’s life after the performance of certain actions (e.g. homicide leading to repentance leading to spiritual teaching) or in situations such as disease and enmity (e.g. the beginning and development of the disease or enmity). The interchange of (auto)biographical and supernatural episodes, for instance, might serve purposes related to the protagonist’s situation, with the latter episodes being the result of the first ones. As the case of chapter 12 from the Miracles of Thekla indicates, supernatural episodes follow autobiographical episodes to provide divine solutions to central issues in the protagonist’s life.
3 The Frame Tale
Being anthologies, the examined texts are unavoidably framed by a prologue and/or an epilogue in which the redactor-storyteller directly addresses his audience, presenting among other things the general character of his work and its sources, authenticity, purpose, and importance. The function of such frames is as what the famous narratologist Gérard Genette has termed ‘paratexts’.31 According to Genette, a paratext ‘surrounds and extends’ a text ‘in order to present it […] to ensure the text’s presence […], its “reception” and consumption’.32 In short, Genette proposes that paratexts attempt to ‘frame’ both positive reception and ‘correct’ text understanding and interpretation. Likewise, the paratexts of our texts – namely their prologues and epilogues – legitimize and contextualize their collective and polyphonic character. Without this frame, the texts would appear to be a haphazard accumulation of tales. Through the frame, by contrast, the tales become part of a whole – a work that constitutes a conscious gathering of oral tales which were written down by a pilgrim visiting desert fathers or an ecclesiastic related to a miraculous saint’s shrine. Surrounded by such a frame, the tales are presented as worthy of consumption and consideration. All in all, the frame makes visible the necessity and importance of the work of the redactor, who seeks to provide the tales with validity as fundamental cultural documents of early Byzantine Christianity.
In addition to their external frame, the works under discussion have several internal frames which can be detected within their individual tales. One of these internal frames might be another prologue and/or epilogue that reproduces on a smaller scale the external frame of an anthology. The rest of the internal frames, which form what we call here a ‘frame tale’, establish a tale-within-a-tale arrangement created through the presence of a primary storyteller who introduces further storytellers telling new tales that are embedded in the frame tale. It is these storytelling frames that we are examining in this final part of the present analysis.
In the History of Monks in Egypt, we read the following frame tale:
ON KOPRES
There was a priest called Kopres […]. He was a holy man, nearly ninety years old and the superior of fifty brothers. […] When he saw us, he embraced us and prayed for us. […] But we asked him rather to explain to us the virtues of his own rule of life. […] He gave us an account of his own life and that of his great predecessors […].
ON PATERMUTHIOS
‘For example, there was a father who lived before us called Patermuthios. He was the first of the monks in this place and was also the first to devise the monastic habit. In his former life as a pagan, he had been a brigand chief and a tomb robber, and he had become notorious for his crimes. But he found the following occasion of salvation. […]
He once […] was taken up in a vision into the heavens. […] He related how he had eaten of the fruits of paradise, and he showed evidence of the fact. For he had brought the disciples a large choice fig, deliciously scented, to prove to them that what he said was true.’
The priest Kopres who was telling us this story, being at a time a young man, saw this fig in the hands of Patermuthios’ disciples, and kissed it, and admired its scent. ‘For many years’, he said, ‘it remained with his disciples, being kept as evidence of the father’s visit to paradise. It was of enormous size. Indeed, a sick man had only to smell it and he was at once cured of his illness […].’
‘These and even greater things’, said Kopres, ‘were achieved by our Father Patermuthios while performing signs and wonders. And other such men have lived before us of whom the world was not worthy […].’
While Father Kopres was telling us these stories, one of our party, overcome with incredulity at what was being said, dozed off. […]
He immediately woke up and told the rest of us who were listening to Kopres, in Latin, what he had seen.
While he was still speaking to us about these things, a peasant carrying a shovelful of sand came up and stood by him, waiting for him to finish his discourse. We asked the father what the peasant wanted the sand for. He replied ‘[…] for the sake of your zeal and edification, because you have come so far to see us, I will not deprive you of what may be edifying, but will explain in the presence of the brethren what God in his providence has effected through us.
The land bordering us was infertile. […] For a worm developed in the ear and destroyed the whole crop. Those farmers who had been catechized by us and had become Christians asked us to pray for the harvest. […] at once their land became extremely fertile, more than anywhere else in Egypt […].’
ON ABBA SOUROUS
‘Once Abba Sourous’, said Kopres, ‘and Isaiah and Paul, all of them devout men and ascetics, met one another unexpectedly at the river bank as they were on their way to visit the great confessor Anough […].
Abba Anough said to them, “[…] Everything I have asked from God I have received at once. I have often seen tens of thousands of angels standing before God […].”
Having spoken to us about these things and much else for three days, he delivered us his soul. At once angels received it, and choirs of martyrs led it up to heaven, while the fathers looked on and heard the hymns.’
ON ABBA HELLE
‘Another father, called Abba Helle, had preserved since childhood the ascetic life. He often carried fire to his neighbouring brethren in the fold of his tunic […].’
When father Kopres had finished telling us these amazing stories and other things even more wonderful, and had treated us with all customary kindness, he took us into his own garden and showed us date-palms and other fruit trees which he had planted himself in the desert. This had been suggested to him by the faith of those peasants to whom he had said that even the desert can bear fruit for those who have faith in God: ‘For when I saw that they sowed sand and their land bore fruit’, he said, ‘I tried to do the same and I succeeded’.
Περὶ Κόπρη
Ἦν δέ τις πρεσβύτερος […]Κόπρης λεγόμενος, ἀνὴρ ἅγιος ἐτῶν σχεδὸν ἐνενήκοντα, ἡγούμενος ἀδελφῶν πεντήκοντα […].ὡς οὖν ἡμᾶς ἐθεάσατο, ἠσπάσατο καὶ ὑπερηύξατο […].ἡμεῖς δὲ ἠξιοῦμεν αὐτὸν μᾶλλον ἡμῖν τῆς οἰκείας πολιτείας τὰς ἀρετὰς ὑφηγήσασθαι […].ὑφηγεῖτο ἡμῖν τόν τε ἑαυτοῦ βίον καὶ τῶν αὐτοῦ προγενεστέρων […].⟨
Περὶ Πατερμουθίου ⟩‘
Ἦν γὰρ πατήρ τις πρὸ ἡμῶν, ὀνόματι Πατερμούθιος, πρῶτος τῶν ἐν τῷ τόπῳ τούτῳ μοναχῶν αὐτὸς γενόμενος καὶ τὸ μοναδικὸν ἔνδυμα τοῦτο πρῶτος ἐφευρών. οὗτος ἀρχιλῃστὴς πρῶτον καὶ νεκροτάφος Ἑλλήνων ὑπάρχων καὶ διαβόητος ἐπὶ κακίᾳ γενόμενος πρόφασιν εὕρατο σωτηρίας τοιαύτην […].
καὶ ἀπῆχθαι δὲ αὐτὸν ἐν σαρκὶ ἔφη εἰς τὸν παράδεισον […].μετειληφέναι δὲ αὐτὸν ἔλεγεν ἐκ τῶν καρπῶν τοῦ παραδείσου καὶ μάρτυρα τοῦ πράγματος ἐδείκνυεν· σῦκον γὰρ ἓν μέγα καὶ ἐξαίρετον καὶ εὐωδίας πολλῆς μεστὸν πρὸς τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ μαθητὰς ἀπεκόμισεν ἐπιδεικνύων αὐτοῖς ὅτι ἀληθές ἐστι τὰ παρ’ αὐτοῦ λεγόμενα .’
ὅπερ σῦκον ὁ διηγούμενος ἡμῖν ταῦτα Κόπρης ὁ πρεσβύτερος νεανίας τότε ὑπάρχων ἐν ταῖς χερσὶ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ ἐθεάσατο καὶ κατεφίλησεν καὶ τὴν πνοὴν ἐθαύμασεν. ‘Πολλοῖς γὰρ ἔτεσι’, φησί, ‘διέμεινεν παρὰ τοῖς αὐτοῦ μαθηταῖς εἰς ἐπίδειξιν φυλαττόμενον. ἦν γὰρ παμμέγεθες. μόνον γάρ τις ὀσφρήσατο αὐτοῦ τῶν κακουμένων, εὐθέως τῆς νόσου ἀπηλλάττετο […].’‘
Ταῦτά τε καὶ ἄλλα πλείονα καὶ μεγάλα’, φησίν, ‘κατώρθωσεν ὁ πατὴρ ἡμῶν Πατερμούθιος ποιῶν σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα. καὶ ἄλλοι τοιοῦτοί τινες πρὸ ἡμῶν γεγόνασιν, ὧν οὐκ ἦν ἄξιος ὁ κόσμος . […].’
Καὶ ὡς ἦν ἔτι ταῦτα διηγούμενος ἡμῖν Κόπρης ὁ πατήρ, ἀπονυστάξας εἷς ἐξ ἡμῶν ἀδελφὸς ἀπιστίᾳ περὶ τῶν λεγομένων φερόμενος […].
ὁ δὲ ταραχθεὶς εὐθὺς ἡμῖν ἀκροωμένοις αὐτοῦ τὸ ὁραθὲν ῥωμαϊστὶ ἐξέφηνεν .
ἔτι δὲ τούτου λαλοῦντος πρὸς ἡμᾶς ταῦτα ἐπῆλθέν τις ἄγροικος κύαθον ἔχων μεστὸν ψάμμου καὶ παρειστήκει πληρῶσαι αὐτὸν ἐκδεχόμενος τὴν διήγησιν.ἐπυνθανόμεθα δὲ ἡμεῖς αὐτοῦ τοῦ πατρὸς τί ἄρα θέλει ὁ ἄγροικος μετὰ τῆς ψάμμου. ἀπεκρίνατο δὲ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ὁ πατὴρ λέγων· ‘[…]διὰ δὲ τὴν ὑμῶν σπουδὴν καὶ ὠφέλειαν, ὅτι ἐκ τοσούτου μήκους πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἐληλύθατε, οὐ ζημιῶ ὑμᾶς τῆς ὠφελείας, ἀλλ’ ἅπερ δι’ ἡμῶν ὁ θεὸς ᾠκονόμησεν παρόντων τῶν ἀδελφῶν διηγήσομαι .
Ἄκαρπος ἦν ἡ πλησίον ἡμῶν χώρα . […]σκώληξ γὰρ γεννώμενος ἐν τῷ σταχύι ὅλον τὸν ἀμητὸν διέφθειρεν. οἱ δὲ κατηχηθέντες παρ’ ἡμῶν γεωργοὶ καὶ Χριστιανοὶ γεγονότες ἠξίουν ἡμᾶς εὔχεσθαι ὑπὲρ τοῦ θερισμοῦ . […]καὶ ἐξαίφνης πολύκαρπος ἡ χώρα γεγένηται παρὰ πᾶσαν τὴν Αἴγυπτον […].’
Περὶ ἀββᾶ Σούρους .‘
Ἀββᾶ Σούρους δέ ποτε’, φησίν, ‘καὶ Ἡσαΐας καὶ Παῦλος συνέτυχον ἀλλήλοις ἐξαπίνης ἅμα ἐπὶ τῷ ποταμῷ εὑρεθέντες, ἄνδρες εὐλαβεῖς καὶ ἀσκηταί, ὡς τὸν μέγαν ὁμολογητὴν ἀββᾶν Ἀνοὺφ ἐπισκεψόμενοι […].
Εἶπεν δὲ ἀββᾶ Ἀνοὺφ πρὸς αὐτούς· “[…]πᾶν αἴτημα παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ μου εὐθὺς ἐλάμβανον. εἶδον πολλάκις μυριάδας ἀγγέλων τῷ θεῷ παρεστώσας […].”
Ταῦτά τε καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ διηγούμενος ἐπὶ τρεῖς ἡμέρας παραδίδωσι τὴν ψυχήν. τὴν δὲ εὐθὺς ἄγγελοι ὑποδεξάμενοι καὶ χοροὶ μαρτύρων εἰς οὐρανὸν ἀνῆγον αὐτῶν ὁρώντων καὶ ἀκουόντων τοὺς ὕμνους .’
Περὶ ἀββᾶ Ἑλλῆ .‘
Ἄλλος δέ τις πατήρ, ἀββᾶ Ἑλλῆ καλούμενος, ἐκ παιδόθεν τῇ ἀσκήσει προσκαρτερήσας τοῖς πλησίον ἀδελφοῖς αὐτοῦ πολλάκις πῦρ ἐν κόλπῳ ἐβάσταζεν […].’
Ταῦτά τε καὶ ἄλλα πλείονα θαυμαστὰ ὁ πατὴρ Κόπρης ὑφηγησάμενος καὶ φιλοφρονησάμενος ἡμᾶς κατὰ τρόπον εἰς τὸν ἑαυτοῦ κῆπον εἰσῆγεν δεικνύων ἡμῖν φοίνικας καὶ ἄλλα ὀπωρικὰ ἅπερ αὐτὸς ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ ἐφύτευσεν ὑπὸ τῆς τῶν ἀγροίκων πίστεως ὑπομνησθείς, πρὸς οὓς εἶπεν ὅτι δύναται καὶ ἡ ἔρημος καρποφορῆσαι τοῖς ἔχουσι πίστιν πρὸς τὸν θεόν· ‘Ὡς γὰρ εἶδον’, φησίν, ‘αὐτοὺς τὴν ψάμμον σπείραντας καὶ τὴν χώραν αὐτῶν καρποφορήσασαν, κἀγὼ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐπιχειρήσας ἐπέτυχον’ .33
Being one of the longest frame tales included in the History of Monks of Egypt, comprising 360 printed lines, this frame tale consists of four different frames, which together include eight embedded tales. The first frame is created by the primary storyteller and author of the text, who starts telling the biographical tale of Kopres, which involves two episodes until the point at which a second frame or storyteller is introduced. The first episode concerns Kopres’ ascetic and miraculous deeds. The second episode refers to the author’s and his companions’ meeting with Kopres. So far, the tale appears to follow the pattern and structure of two-episode biographical tales, such as that of Makarios the Younger from Palladios’ Lausiac History, which was examined earlier. When the primary storyteller and his companions ask Kopres to tell his own story, the ascetic promises to ‘give an account of his own life and that of his predecessors’. In so doing, Kopres initiates a second frame that is in turn interrupted by other storytellers.
Kopres’ first story is a multiple-episode tale involving one of his predecessors and teachers, Patermuthios. This rather long tale has fifteen episodes and is polythematic, as it includes episodes from all three categories: biographical, marvelous, and supernatural. It is possibly due to the tale’s many marvelous and supernatural episodes that one of the listeners, a member of the author’s group, is ‘overcome with incredulity’ and falls asleep. The episode with the sleeping man breaks down Kopres’ second frame and brings us back to the first frame. The primary storyteller takes over to tell the episode of the sleeping man. In the meantime, the sleeping man, who receives a divine dream, wakes up and starts telling his own supernatural experience, thus disrupting the first frame once again and opening a third frame. Yet, while the man shares his experience, we are informed by the primary narrator that a peasant arrives, and we thus return to the first frame. The first frame is interrupted again by Kopres, who is asked about the reason for the peasant’s presence.
At this point Kopres starts the narration of his second tale. This shorter monothematic tale consists of four autobiographical episodes. Kopres explains how he transformed the surrounding infertile land into a fertile one; how he exposed the wrongness of a Manichaean who was leading people astray; how he showed the incorrectness of pagan religion, convincing some pagans to convert to Christianity; and what happened to the vegetables that a pagan stole from his garden. Kopres’ second tale, like his first one, is open-ended. Without any intervention from another storyteller, Kopres moves to this third tale, which involves three other ascetics: Sourous, Isaiah, and Paul. After having been miraculously informed about the imminent death of another ascetic called Anough, the three men decide to visit him, wishing to hear from him for one last time.
This single-episode tale on the three men’s mission is interrupted by Anough’s own tale, as he introduces the fourth frame. This tale – the seventh in sequence – has an autobiographical and a supernatural episode. He talks about his acquisition of ascetic virtues and his supernatural experiences with angels, saints (i.e. martyrs and confessors), and Satan. His storytelling is abruptly interrupted by Kopres, who talks about Anough’s death, thus marking the return to the second frame. Kopres, however, does not return to the story of Anough’s three visitors. He goes on to relate another tale instead – his fourth tale, that is, the eighth story of the frame tale. Kopres’ last tale is another polythematic multiple-episode tale involving another desert father called Helle. Like all his previous tales, Kopres’ final tale has no proper end. It is once again interrupted by the primary storyteller, who brings us back to the first frame, which closes with a third and last episode that belongs to the storyteller’s first tale. The primary storyteller resumes the first frame through the phrase ‘When Father Kopres had finished telling us these amazing stories […]’. He then goes on to describe Kopres’ hospitality, which included a guided visit to his garden. The primary storyteller’s tale on Kopres is another open-ended tale, which closes with Kopres’ words: ‘For when I saw that they sowed sand and their land bore fruit, I tried to do the same and I succeeded’.
As the analysis of this frame tale reveals, storytelling in this third and most complex structure of early Byzantine tales operates on multiple levels with diverse combinations of storytellers, tale structures (single-episode tale; multiple-episode tale, either monothematic or polythematic), and audiences. The first frame or level consists of the primary storyteller – the redactor of the collection as a whole – and his audience of all readers and listeners at different places and times throughout the centuries. The primary storyteller starts his art of storytelling (level 1) by constructing a frame that will come to support a highly elaborate tale structure.
While introducing the first frame, or the main framing story, the primary storyteller introduces a new protagonist, Kopres, who becomes a storyteller too, and initiates a second narrative level (level 2) containing its own audience, who are Kopres’ visitors, including the primary storyteller and his fellow travelers. At some point, the primary storyteller breaks the second level to initiate the third one (level 3) through the episode of the sleeping monk who undertakes to tell his own dreamlike experience. The now awakened monk’s listeners are those of Kopres plus Kopres himself. When Kopres resumes his storytelling, he creates a fourth narrative level (level 4) by introducing a fourth storyteller, the hermit Anough.
Through the four storytellers and the narrative levels they create, a number of tales are enclosed within others. The primary storyteller’s tale boxes eight tales, while Kopres’ tale on Sourous, Isaiah, and Paul embeds Anough’s tale. Even though different storytelling levels are at work simultaneously, each boxed tale is completed before the tale within which it is enclosed closes. The variety of storytelling voices also creates an uncertainty concerning who is telling the tale each time. The open-endedness of most tales, including those of the first frame, gives the impression that the frame tale and the History of the Monks in Egypt as a whole, and by implication all tales involving Egyptian ascetics, are ongoing. They could go on forever.
In general, the arrangement of tales within the frame tales of the examined corpus shows certain patterns of balance and repetition, stressing either similarity between individual tales or contrast. For example, Kopres’ autobiographical tales and those he tells about his predecessors stress the similarities that bring together their exemplary protagonists. The episode of the disbelieving man, by contrast, highlights the differences among tale protagonists and also audiences: those who believe the stories and use them as exemplars and those who do not. The associations of resemblance and difference are established by various devices, such as imagery, characters, situations, and words or phrases. These devices function independently to strengthen the internal cohesion of a frame tale, but they also tighten a collection’s internal structure.
4 Conclusions
Through the preceding analysis, we have sought to establish a new theoretical framework for the study of hagiographical tales in early Byzantine hagiographical collections. These tales may be divided into categories according to their agents: biographical, marvelous, and supernatural. Their structural forms are also three in number: the single-episode tale, the multiple-episode tale, and the frame tale. An episode creates and sustains a single tale, while a series of episodes form the more complicated structures of the multiple-episode tale and the frame tale. In the two latter cases, episodes that, in one sense, are complete, independent narrative units with a certain intrinsic value in themselves are connected with other episodes and with a given frame. These connective threads weave a broader context from which the tales or episodes derive a certain meaning that might be quite distinct from that of the tales told in isolation.
Early Byzantine hagiographical authors used the agents and structural forms of tales in diverse ways according to the types of their collections and their personal needs and tastes, as well as those of their audiences. Although the biographical, supernatural, and marvelous agents are present in the tales of all the examined works, certain collections showcase a preference for one or another. For example, collective biographies favor (auto)biographical tales, miracle collections are more interested in the supernatural, while collections of edifying tales have the tendency to include marvelous tales.
Bibliography
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Constantinou S. – Andreou A., “The Voices of the Tale: The Storyteller in Early Byzantine Collective Biographies, Miracle Collections, and Collections of Edifying Tales”, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 46.1 (2021) 24–40, DOI: 10.1017/byz.2021.31.
Cox Miller P., The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia: 2009).
Cox Miller P., “Strategies of Representation in Collective Biography: Constructing the Subject as Holy”, in Hägg T. – Rousseau P. (eds.), Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: 2000) 209–254.
Crisafulli V.S. – Nesbitt J.W. (trans.), The Miracles of St. Artemios: A Collection of Miracle Stories by an Anonymous Author of Seventh-Century Byzantium (Leiden – New York – Cologne: 1997).
Genette G., Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. J.E. Lewin, Literature, Culture, Theory 20 (Cambridge: 1997).
Goodison L., “Sunlight, Divination, and the Dead in Aegean Ritual Tradition”, in Papadopoulos C. – Moyes H. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology (Oxford: 2022) 185–206.
Johnson S.F., The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study, Hellenic Studies 13 (Cambridge, MA – London: 2006).
Johnson S.F. (trans.), “The Miracles of Thekla”, in Talbot A.M. – Johnson S.F. (trans.), Miracle Tales from Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 12 (Cambridge, MA – London: 2012) 1–201.
Le Goff J., The Medieval Imagination, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago – London: 1988).
Lockyer H., All the Men of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: 1958).
Meyer R. (trans.), Palladius: The Lausiac History, Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation 34 (New York – Mahwah, NJ: 1964).
Russell N. (trans.), “The Lives of the Desert Fathers”, in Ward B. – Russell N. (eds.), The Lives of the Desert Fathers, Cistercian Studies 34 (Kalamazoo, MI: 1981) 47–119.
Todorov T., Introduction to Poetics, trans. R. Howard, Theory and History of Literature 1 (Minneapolis: 1981).
Walker Bynum C., Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: 2005).
Wortley J. (ed. and trans.), The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation (Cambridge: 2013).
Wortley J. (trans.), John Moschus, The Spiritual Meadow: Introduction, Translation and Notes, Cistercian Studies Series 139 (Kalamazoo, MI: 1992).
Wortley J., “Judgment, Heaven and Hell in Byzantine ‘Beneficial Tales’”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001) 53–69.
Todorov T., Introduction to Poetics, trans. R. Howard, Theory and History of Literature 1 (Minneapolis: 1981) 51.
For the storyteller’s role in early Byzantine tale collections see Constantinou S. – Andreou A., “The Voices of the Tale: The Storyteller in Early Byzantine Collective Biographies, Miracle Collections, and Collections of Edifying Tales”, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 46.1 (2021) 24–40, DOI: 10.1017/byz.2021.31.
Of course, the three tale categories ((auto)biographical, marvelous, or supernatural) with their corresponding structures (single-episode, multiple-episode, and frame tale) are not only found in the examined texts, but are also included in later anthologies, while at the same time they are inserted into other types of texts. Yet, for reasons of time and space, this study discusses the three tale categories and their structures as they appear in early Byzantine hagiographical collections and miscellanies. It should be noted that no discussion of the conception, production, and consumption of the tales’ particular arrangements in hagiographical anthologies or miscellanies is undertaken here. These issues concerning anthologies in general are certainly important and deserve a thorough examination; nevertheless, this is beyond the scope of the present chapter, which focuses on hagiographical tales’ structural forms (single-episode tale, multiple-episode tale, and frame tale) and discusses their ‘how’ and main characteristics.
Cox Miller P., “Strategies of Representation in Collective Biography: Constructing the Subject as Holy”, in Hägg T. – Rousseau P. (eds.), Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: 2000) 209–254, at 209–210 and 230.
History of the Monks in Egypt (BHG 1333–1334), ed. A.-J. Festugière, Historia monachorum in Aegypto, Subsidia hagiographica 34 (Brussels: 1961); trans. N. Russell, “The Lives of the Desert Fathers”, in Ward B. – Russell N. (eds.), The Lives of the Desert Fathers, Cistercian Publications 34 (Kalamazoo, MI: 1980) 47–119, at 117.
The descriptions of Abraham and Aaron in the Old Testament are presented in Lockyer H., All the Men of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: 1958) 28–29 and 19–21.
Walker Bynum C., Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: 2005) 37–75. For medieval marvels see also Le Goff J., The Medieval Imagination, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago – London: 1988) 27–44.
Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity 57.
John Moschos, Spiritual Meadow (BHG 1440f–1442z), ed. in Patrologia Graeca (PG) 87.3:2852–3112, at ch. 108, 2965–1971.
Anastasios of Sinai, Edifying Tales (BHG 1448q–1448qo), ed. F. Nau, “Le texte grec des récits utiles à l’âme d’Anastase (le Sinaïte)”, Oriens Christianus 3 (1903) 56–75; S. Heid, “Die C-Reihe erbaulicher Erzählungen des Anastasios vom Sinai im Codex Vaticanus Graecus 2592”, Orientalia Christiana periodica 74 (2008) 71–114 [second collection], at ch. 6, 89–90 (Heid).
John Moschos, Spiritual Meadow, ch. 88, 2945.
Ibidem, ch. 215, 3108.
Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum), Anonymous Collection, ed. F. Nau, “Histoires des solitaires égyptiens”, Revue de l’Orient chrétien 12 (1907) 43–69, (1908) 171–189 and 393–413; 13 (1909) 47–66, 266–297; 14 (1912) 357–379; 17 (1913) 204–211, 294–301; and 18 (1913) 137–146; trans. J. Wortley, The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation (Cambridge: 2013), at 3, ch. 18.4 (Nau).
John Moschos, Spiritual Meadow, ch. 215; trans. J. Wortley, John Moschus, The Spiritual Meadow: Introduction, Translation and Notes, Cistercian Studies Series 139 (Kalamazoo, MI: 1992) 192, with minor adjustments.
Apophthegmata Patrum, Anonymous Collection N.333/19.19, ed. Wortley, Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers 216; trans. ibidem, 217.
Miracles of Thekla (BHG 1718), ed. G. Dagron, Vie et miracles de sainte Thècle: Texte grec, traduction et commentaire, Subsidia hagiographica 62 (Paris: 1978) 285–412; see Johnson S.F., The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study, Hellenic Studies 13 (Cambridge, MA – London: 2006) 172–220.
For thauma in paradoxography and hagiography, see Chapter 2.
Anastasios of Sinai, Edifying Tales, ch. 6 (89–90 Heid); our own translation.
Goodison L., “Sunlight, Divination, and the Dead in Aegean Ritual Tradition”, in Papadopoulos C. – Moyes H. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology (Oxford: 2022) 185–206, at 197.
Cox Miller P., The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia: 2009) 107.
Todorov, Introduction to Poetics 51.
Miracles of Artemios, ch. 8, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia Graeca sacra (St. Petersburg: 1909) 1–75; trans. V.S. Crisafulli – J.W. Nesbitt, The Miracles of St. Artemios: A Collection of Miracle Stories by an Anonymous Author of Seventh-Century Byzantium (Leiden – New York – Cologne: 1997) 93.
Palladios of Hellenopolis, Lausiac History (BHG 1435–1438), ed. D.C. Butler, The Lausiac History of Palladius, vol. 2: Introduction and Text (Cambridge: 1904) 1–169, ch. 15; trans. R. Meyer, Palladius: The Lausiac History, Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation 34 (New York – Mahwah, NJ: 1964) 51–52.
Lausiac History, Prologue, 16.4; trans. Meyer, Palladius 29.
Miracles of Thekla, ch. 12; trans. S.F. Johnson, “The Miracles of Thekla”, in Talbot A.M. – Johnson S.F. (trans.), Miracle Tales from Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 12 (Cambridge, MA – London: 2012) 1–201, at 47, 49, 51, 53, 55. For ch. 12 from Thekla’s collection, see also Chapter 5 in this volume.
For allegorical healing dreams, and mainly for this particular one, see Constantinou S., “The Morphology of Healing Dreams: Dream and Therapy in Byzantine Collections of Miracle Stories”, in Angelidi C. – Calofonos G. (eds.), Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond (Aldershot: 2014) 21–34, at 33–34.
Trans. Johnson, “The Miracles of Thekla” 47, with minor changes.
Ibidem, 51.
Miracles of Thekla, ch. 12, 18, 72, 91; trans. Johnson, “The Miracles of Thekla” 49, 53, 55.
Miracles of Thekla, ch. 12, 41; trans. Johnson, “The Miracles of Thekla” 51.
Genette G., Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. J.E. Lewin, Literature, Culture, Theory 20 (Cambridge: 1997).
Ibidem, 1, emphasis in original.
History of the Monks in Egypt, ch. 10–12; trans. Russell, “The Lives of the Desert Fathers” 82–92, with slight modifications.