“Against the demon that said to us, ‘Property can, when a person acquires riches, serve the Lord’: No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth (Matt 6:24).” - Evagrius Ponticus
Among Evagrius’ multiple works is Talking Back, a short treatise on the tactics needed to defeat the eight demons that undermine monastic life: gluttony, fornication, love of money, sadness, anger, listlessness, vainglory, and pride. In this post, I will rely heavily on a translation of Talking Back and an essay on Evagrius Ponticus in Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity by historian David Brakke of Ohio State University. In the prologue to his translation, Brakke notes, “In Talking Back we find the thoughts, circumstances, and anxieties with which the demons assailed the monk, and we observe a primary strategy in the struggle to overcome such assaults: antirrhe¯sis, the speaking of relevant passages from the Bible that would contradict or, as Evagrius puts it, cut off the demonic suggestions.”[2]
The “cutting off” of demonic suggestions and rigor of Evagrius’ ascetic regimen are particularly pointed when it comes to the demon Love of Money. In addition to addressing corruption and lack of generosity to the poor, Evagrius argued while a monk should strive for sufficiency - and give all surplus to the poor - monks should avoid falling prey to the demon Love of Money by confusing sufficiency with economic security. The ideal monk, in Evagrius’ opinion, cultivated economic vulnerability as a means of developing spiritual dependence on God and openness to other people.[3] Evagrius therefore saw the demon Love of Money at work in the stockpiling of goods for the metaphorical rainy day or even the accumulation of wealth to survive old age. He wanted monks to cultivate economic vulnerability and a near-complete dependence on God and others in the monastic community.[4]
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In order to understand the occasionally extreme asceticism found in Talking Back, I’ve found it helpful to bear in mind how Evagrius arrived at the monastery as well as his seemingly self-inflicted death that occurred not long after completing this treatise.
Evagrius was born to a “country bishop” in the region of Pontus in Asia Minor and appears to have been destined for a prominent ecclesiastical career. His early life intersected with and impacted many of “the greats” that are still known and studied today. Evagrius was ordained a lector by Basil the Great in Pontus as a young man. He traveled to Constantinople and was ordained a deacon by Gregory of Nazianzus around 380. His later writings and teachings as a monk in Nitria and Kellia in Egypt would go on to have significant influence on the development of western monasticism through translations of his works from Greek into Latin and by drawing followers like John Cassian who, in turn, would greatly influence Benedict of Nursia's Rule. Many of Evagrius’ works became very popular even in his own lifetime, and Talking Back was eventually translated from the original Greek into Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, and Sogdian.[5]
Yet despite this seeming ecclesiastical promise and prominence, it is also clear that Evagrius was a tortured and even self-destructive soul. The first glimpse of this aspect of his personality appears during his time in Constantinople. It was not long after he became the protege to Gregory of Nazianzus that he went the way of the Jerry Falwell Jrs. of the world by becoming embroiled in a sexual scandal.
In Constantinople, the handsome Evagrius had a romantic entanglement with a married woman and had to flee quickly when he was warned in a vision of her husband’s plans for revenge. A confession: I’ve enjoyed reading accounts that insist that this was an unconsummated romantic affair, even as these same accounts acknowledge that Evagrius is vague on this entire episode. Who's to say, then? What we do know is that after fleeing to Jerusalem, Evagrius sauntered the streets of the Holy City until he had a mental and physical breakdown. He found refuge and the restoration of his health in a monastery in Jerusalem in 383.
It is only then, around the age of 38, that Evagrius left Jerusalem to become a semi-eremetic monk in Nitria and later Kellia in Egypt. The term ‘semi-eremetic monasticism’ describes an arrangement in which monks lived in individual residences, were under the supervision of an abba, yet came together regularly for teaching, meetings, and fellowship.[6] Over the next sixteen years, Evagrius would become a renowned spiritual teacher to this synod of monks in part because of the sophisticated demonology that he developed. Yet, soon the elders of the monastery were repeatedly warning him about his extreme asceticism. His protracted struggles against the demons catalogued in Talking Back and the bodily mortifications he engaged in led to his early demise just sixteen years after departing from Jerusalem for Egypt.
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The Egyptian monasticism that Evagrius joined in the late fourth century had developed as a form of ‘silent protest’ against the worldliness of the Church and societal instability of the second and third century. Darmaid McCullough’s Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years describes monasticism’s development in Syria and Egypt as an “implied criticism of Church’s decision to become a large-scale and inclusive organization.”[7] Monastic communities were an alternative and refuge that nevertheless remained within the acceptable bounds of an increasingly monarchical and worldly church. It also provided Christians an opportunity to engage in a martyrdom of the self at a time when the Roman persecutions of Christians were in decline, a tradition of self-crucifixion which Evagrius enthusiastically embraced two centuries later.
By stepping out of society -- literally walking out into the desert in many cases -- first ascetic hermits and then early monastic communities in the third century developed a way of life that fused two things held in uneasy tension. By separating from wider society, monks followed Jesus’ rejection of cultural conventions, including the abandonment of worldly wealth, while their communities remained under authority of the bishop and therefore part of the orbit of the wider Church.[8]
Even in the desert, however, it was impossible to separate one’s self from the spiritual dangers of wealth and finances. The semi-eremetical model of monasticism in Nitrea and Kellia meant that monks ended up being even more directly engaged in their own financial survival. David Brakke notes “Still, unlike his cenobitic brother, who took his place in a well-structured collective, the semi-eremetical monk had to manage his own financial affairs, and thus monastic renunciation complicated his relationship to money and possessions, rather than ending it completely.”[9] This may be the reason why the demon Love of Money appears more often in the literature from semi-eremetical monastic settings than in monastic models wherein most monks were less engaged in the day-to-day finances of the monastery.
It was during Evagrius’ time in Nitria and Kellia, at some point in the last decade of the fourth century, that a monk named Loukios wrote to Evagrius requesting a practical treatise for dealing with the demons that undermined monastic life, including the demon Love of Money. Scholar Augustine Casiday wrote about how the demonology that Evagrius developed in response to Loukios’ request was the result of an extreme regimen of self observation: “[Evagrius] slept no more than a third of the night, devoting the rest of his time to prayer, contemplation and study of Scripture. To keep himself awake, he was in the habit of walking in the courtyard of his cell. He scrupulously attended to his thoughts and, based on these observations, prepared a dossier of verses from Scripture to be cast in the face of attacking demons.”[10]
The subtlety of Evagrius’ writings on the demon Love of Money is striking. For instance, Evagrius would at first appear to concur with his (unlikeable) third century predecessor Clement of Alexandria in arguing that materials - including gold - are not in and of themselves evil, but rather evil is to be found in the passions we bring to them. In Clement’s case, this leads to a disturbing spiritualization and internalization of Jesus’ teachings on wealth. Clement writes “If an affluent person can control the power that wealth brings and remains modest and self-controlled, seeking God and placing God above all else, that person can follow the commandments as a poor individual, one who is free and unencumbered by the wounds of wealth.”[11]
Although Evagrius shared the view that objects in and of themselves were morally neutral and that it was incumbent on the monk to eliminate passions for possessions, I also suspect he would have seen the demon Love of Money’s fingerprints all over Clement’s self-comforting conclusions. In Talking Back, he bluntly argues “Against the demon that said to us, ‘Property can, when a person acquires riches, serve the Lord’: No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth (Matt 6:24).”[12]
Instead, Evagrius maintains that while objects in and of themselves are morally neutral, possessiveness and possessions are the spiritually dangerous fruit of both concupiscence and irascibility. He notes that “If we have property, then we become like a dog that barks at and attacks people because it wants to protect its things,”[13] and sees the epitome of this behavior in Christians who engage in lawsuits over property and in the corruption of those who misuse funds intended for the whole community.[14]
The moral dangers of possessions and possessiveness were especially acute for monks in their efforts to become self-sufficient through manual labor. This is a striking observation because this - along with generosity to the poor - constituted one of the most cherished values of early monastic life.
Evagrius observed monks falling into the temptation of workaholism and the exploitation of other monks in the name of creating wealth and economic security. Talking Back warned monks “against the thought that demanded more manual labor from a brother than he is capable of…” and “against the thought that, on account of love of money, leads us to afflict with the burden of many labors a brother who has recently become a disciple.”[15] He also observed a tendency to labor so hard that it resulted in neglecting prayer and study: “Against the thought of love of money that, on account of the desire for wealth, drove us to perform manual labor night and day, and so deprived us of reading the Holy Scriptures and prevented us from visiting and ministering to the sick: Wealth does not profit on the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death (Prov 11:4).”[16]
Indeed, on the whole, Evagrius sees monks’ over-involvement in financial affairs as fraught with moral dangers. A keen observer of his own thoughts, he notes the way that financial hardship causes anxiety and a distortion of priorities. To struggle against the demon Love of Money is to struggle “Against the thought that anxiously serves in business affairs on the pretext that the money has run out, and now there is nothing left of it, and it cannot be regained,” and “Against the inner thoughts that want to acquire riches and to consume the intellect with anxiety about them.”[17]
The rigor of Evagrius’ asceticism extends even to the accumulation of wealth in order to offset destitution in the monk’s old age. “Against the soul that seeks more than food and clothing and does not remember that it entered the world bare and it will leave it naked. For we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these (1 Tim 6:7-8).”[18] Such warnings against making provisions for old age are perhaps why Benedict of Nursia’s Rule, which stipulates compassion and basic medical care for elderly monks who could no longer engage in manual labor, was considered a remarkably humane contrast to prior monastic models.
Along with self-sufficiency, giving any surplus to the poor was foundational to a monk’s economic life, and like self-sufficiency, Evagrius sees this aspect of a monk’s economic life as fraught with moral dangers. Here it is important to point out that when speaking of “the poor”, Evagrius is speaking of monks who were economically vulnerable, some as a result of old age.
On the one hand, Talking Back encouraged generosity - “Against the thought of love of money that withheld compassion from a brother who asked out of his need and that advised us to store up for ourselves alone…”[19], and skewered the tendency in monks to give and then regret such generosity, as well as the tendency to lend only to the monks who could repay. On the other hand, Evagrius also observed how giving to the poor could become a point of pride, and that the demon Love of Money could transform even generosity into an excuse to accumulate wealth.
David Brakke points out that “Already in Foundations of the Monastic Life, a work aimed at beginners, Evagrius must command, ‘Do not desire to possess riches in order to make donations to the poor, for this is a deception of the evil one that often leads to vainglory and casts the mind into occasions for idle preoccupations.”[20] Instead, “the monk must create in himself or herself a spiritual condition of reliance on God and openness to others, summed up in the virtues of apatheia and agape. It is this spiritual vulnerability and generosity that economic vulnerability and generosity are meant to cultivate.”[21]
Economic Self-Sufficiency and Manual Labor
Manual labor in the service of economic self-sufficiency is a fascinating theme that stretches across the first six centuries of Christianity and beyond. In Evagrius one finds someone who worked as a calligrapher while advising manual labor for monks. “Echoing Athanasius (Life of Anthony), Evagrius instructs the monastic beginner, ‘Give thought to working with your hands, if possible both night and day, so that you will not be a burden to anyone, and further that you may be able to offer donations, as the holy apostle Paul advised” (meaning most likely 1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess 3:8).”[22]
While I don’t believe the value of economic self-sufficiency appears anywhere in the Gospels, it most certainly appears in Paul’s epistles which are then directly referenced as the source of this ideal by later generations of Christian monks. In this section, therefore, I would like to briefly review how several Christian community builders described manual labor and self-sufficiency across very different contexts, including Paul, Evagrius, John Cassian, and Benedict of Nursia.
In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul first names and then reverses Jesus’ teaching that those who proclaim the Gospel should get their living by the Gospel. In contrast, Paul insists that although it is his right to be paid by the Christian communities he was founding, he offers the Gospel free of charge so as not to be a burden on the early Christians. In A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Diarmaid McCullough notes: “Characteristically, [Paul] takes a contrary line to the Lord. Jesus had said that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel’: that is, they deserve support from others. Paul emphasizes that he has not done this: he tells us that he has supported himself, although in what seems to be in an attempt to face down criticism, he proclaims his contradiction of Jesus’ practice as a privilege renounced rather than an obligation spurned.”[23]
Paul took up manual labor as a means of not being a burden to others, a decision that appears to have been a significant step down from his prior socioeconomic status. Paul occasionally expressed shock at the hardship of the toils he endured. Abraham Malherbe notes, “Paul’s attitude toward his labor is reflected by the fact that he lists it in a series of hardships (1 Cor. 4:12) and that he regards it as service (1 Cor. 9.19) and an act of abasement (2 Cor. 11.7).”[24] Even so, there appears to also be evidence that this abasement was part of a broader strategy for “getting close” or “proximate” to the lives of those who comprised the earliest Christian communities, the majority of whom would have been hovering near or at subsistence-level poverty.[25]
Paul and Evagrius’ insistence on self-sufficiency through manual labor would later be echoed by monastics such as John Cassian and Benedict of Nursia in the fifth and sixth centuries, primarily in their discussions of the abjectio of the entering monks. John Cassian was deeply influenced by Evagrius and he saw the monastery as a place where, as Peter Brown describes it, a great reversal took place: “In it, free men became slaves and the wealthy became paupers.” Nevertheless, one should note that this abjectio refers to what takes place within the walls of the monastery. Gone is the notion of Paul’s manual labor as a means of identification with the majority of early Christians in urban communities. This is also distinct from the semi-eremetic model that we see in Evagrius’ writings, a loose synod of monks living independently who come together for teaching and study. The monastic model of Cassian and Benedict is far more enclosed and exists as a pointed contrast to the unholy world beyond the monastery's threshold.
This dualism between the holiness of the monastery and the depravity of the world beyond becomes clear in how John Cassian saw monks and a monastery’s productivity. Peter Brown writes that “In Cassian’s opinion, the monk was the exact opposite of the leisured rentier. He was the only productive member of society. He depended on himself to feed himself. Everyone else was like a beggar, living on the agape - the handouts - of others. Landowners collecting rents; emperors collecting taxes: compared with monks, they were all parasites, expecting to be fed by others.”[26]
Benedict’s 48th chapter of his Rule addresses daily manual labor in the service of monastic self-sufficiency - “for they are truly monks when they live by the labor of their hands, as did our Fathers and the Apostles.” Observing that “idleness is the enemy of the soul”, Benedict prescribed that monks “should be occupied at certain times in manual labor, and again at fixed hours in sacred reading” and later says this should go so far as doing the work of gathering the harvest themselves if and when necessary.
Despite the emphasis placed on getting one’s hands dirty, later generations of Benedictine communities would broaden the Rule’s directions on manual labor to prioritize intellectual labor, and would frequently use their collective wealth to assign manual labor to others. The intellectual, literary, and artistic pursuits that would ultimately have such a profound impact on Western culture were not originally envisaged by its founder.
Evagrius imagined manual labor and economic self sufficiency as a part of how a monk could generate donations to the economically vulnerable. In contrast, while Benedict’s Rule called for the abjectio and dispossession of individually-owned property within the monastery, required manual labor, and the extending of hospitality to sojourning brothers who crossed the threshold, the poor beyond the walls of the monastery are relatively absent from consideration. When Benedictine monasteries did engage in offering charity to the poor, it appears to have been primarily liturgical and ritualistic, confined to certain feast days, and primarily served as symbolic offerings. It wasn’t until the tenth century that the role of almoner became an important function in Benedictine communities, yet even then monasteries primarily distributed alms around liturgical occasions to signify the importance of the poor rather than as a means of offering practical aid.[27]
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When reading Evagrius in Talking Back, I occasionally had the sense of being trapped in an inescapable net. There is, quite frankly, no space in either thought or action that isn’t beset by the imperiling whisper of demonic forces. As uniquely perceptive and sophisticated as his denomology is, his writings betray the inner workings of a self destructive mind, and it is somewhat surprising to realize this included a prideful refusal to heed the moderating wisdom of his elders.
In Augustine Casiday’s Evagrius Ponticus, the author notes, “[Evagrius] ate only once per day. When he did eat, his diet was extremely limited. He assiduously abstained from lettuce, green vegetables, fruit, grapes and meat; he refrained from bathing and took no cooked food; eventually, he ruined his digestive tract and probably suffered from urinary tract stones. He slept no more than a third of the night, devoting the rest of his time to prayer, contemplation and study of Scripture.”[28] Evagrius possibly alluded to his self-denying regimen and economic divestment in Talking Back when he warned, “Against the soul that wants to attain the death of Jesus while retaining some wealth and forgets how Elisha the prophet, when he renounced the world, divested himself of all that he had.”[29]
This ascetic regimen proved to be so harsh that his elders in Kellia warned him to moderate his practices, warnings that Evagrius pridefully ignored. Evagrius’ ruined digestive tract resulted in his early death on the feast of Epiphany in 399. This strikes me as a profoundly tragic end for someone who so carefully observed the ways we delude ourselves, whether in regard to Love of Money or many of the other demonic forces that circumscribe our lives.
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[1] Talking back : a monastic handbook for combating demons / Evagrius of Pontus ; translated with an Introduction by David Brakke, Trappist, Ky. : Cistercian Publications ; Collegeville, Minn. : Liturgical Press, c2009. Page 2
[2] Talking back : a monastic handbook for combating demons / Evagrius of Pontus ; translated with an Introduction by David Brakke, Trappist, Ky. : Cistercian Publications ; Collegeville, Minn. : Liturgical Press, c2009. Page 2
[3] Care for the Poor, Fear of Poverty, and Love of Money: Evagrius Ponticus on the Monk’s Economic Vulnerability by David Brakke, Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Pages 76-87 / Pages 77-78
[4] Care for the Poor, Fear of Poverty, and Love of Money: Evagrius Ponticus on the Monk’s Economic Vulnerability by David Brakke, Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Pages 77-78
[5] Talking back : a monastic handbook for combating demons / Evagrius of Pontus ; translated with an Introduction by David Brakke, Trappist, Ky. : Cistercian Publications ; Collegeville, Minn. : Liturgical Press, c2009. Page 1
[6] Casiday, Augustine. EVAGRIUS PONTICUS (Early Church Fathers S.) 1st Edition. Page 10
[7] McCullough, Dharmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. 200-206
[8] McCullough, Dharmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. 201-202
[9] Care for the Poor, Fear of Poverty, and Love of Money: Evagrius Ponticus on the Monk’s Economic Vulnerability by David Brakke, Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Pages 76-87, 77
[10] Casiday, Augustine. EVAGRIUS PONTICUS (Early Church Fathers S.) 1st Edition. Page 13
[11] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 844
[12] Third Book - Concerning the Love of Money (Pontus, Evagrius Of. Talking Back: Volume 229 (Cistercian Studies) (p. 85). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.) Page 94
[13] Care for the Poor, Fear of Poverty, and Love of Money: Evagrius Ponticus on the Monk’s Economic Vulnerability by David Brakke, Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Pages 76-87, 79
[14] Care for the Poor, Fear of Poverty, and Love of Money: Evagrius Ponticus on the Monk’s Economic Vulnerability by David Brakke, Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Pages 76-87, 80
[15] Third Book - Concerning the Love of Money (Pontus, Evagrius Of. Talking Back: Volume 229 (Cistercian Studies) (p. 85). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.)
[16] Third Book - Concerning the Love of Money (Pontus, Evagrius Of. Talking Back: Volume 229 (Cistercian Studies) (p. 85). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.) Pages 91-92
[17] Third Book - Concerning the Love of Money (Pontus, Evagrius Of. Talking Back: Volume 229 (Cistercian Studies) (p. 85). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.) Pages 97-98
[18] Third Book - Concerning the Love of Money (Pontus, Evagrius Of. Talking Back: Volume 229 (Cistercian Studies) (p. 85). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.) Page 97
[19] Third Book - Concerning the Love of Money (Pontus, Evagrius Of. Talking Back: Volume 229 (Cistercian Studies) (p. 85). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.)
[20] Care for the Poor, Fear of Poverty, and Love of Money: Evagrius Ponticus on the Monk’s Economic Vulnerability by David Brakke, Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Pages 76-87, 84
[21] Care for the Poor, Fear of Poverty, and Love of Money: Evagrius Ponticus on the Monk’s Economic Vulnerability by David Brakke, Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Pages 76-87, 87
[22] Care for the Poor, Fear of Poverty, and Love of Money: Evagrius Ponticus on the Monk’s Economic Vulnerability by David Brakke, Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Pages 76-87, 82-83
[23] McCullough, Diarmaid. Three Thousand Years of Christianity. Page 113
[24] Mahlberg, Abraham. From Paul and the Thessalonians: The philosophic Tradition of Pastoral Care (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), p. 56 n.83
[25] Rhee, Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation. 35
[26] Brown, Peter. Eye of the Needle. Page 417
[27] Kleinhenz, Christopher. Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia. Entry on “Charitable Institutions.”
[28] Augustine Casiday.Evagrius Ponticus, Page 13
[29] Third Book - Concerning the Love of Money (Pontus, Evagrius Of. Talking Back: Volume 229 (Cistercian Studies) (p. 85). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.) 88
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