The Rhetoric of the Pious Empire and the Rhetoric of Flight From the World by Jeon Kyung-mee;

Author:Jeon, Kyung-mee;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Lang Copyright AG
Published: 2018-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 3 Flight from the World and Crossing over to Jerusalem

The ascetical monastic lives of Melania the Elder, Paula, Eustochium, and Melania the Younger are characterized by relocating themselves in Jerusalem and its environs. For them, the ascetic idea of flight from the world was carried out not only in their inner flight from evil thoughts and vices, but also in their physical flight. As seen in the previous chapter, Egyptian desert monks truly practiced both physical flight and inner flight as their ascetical monastic basis. Evagrius of Pontus clearly distinguished voluntary physical exile (ξενιτεία) from other ascetic practices arising from the life of renunciation (ἀναχώρησις). The ascetic exile in the desert tradition was undertaken in order to separate oneself from places of distractions and focus on the ascetical monastic practice and life. Thus, for example, Abba Longinus says, according to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, “If you cannot control your tongue, you will not be an exile anywhere”1; also, Evagrius says, “love voluntary exile, for it separates you from the circumstances of your own country and allows you to enjoy the unique benefit of practicing stillness.”2 Desert monks migrated to the desert, departing from their own home and land. But it was not like going to and living in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, as seen in the ascetic pattern of Melania the Younger and those Roman women.

The migration to and life-long settlement in the Holy Land by way of other eastern regions, which were made by Melania the Elder in about 378, Paula and her daughter Eustochium in about 385, and Melania the Younger in about 417 reveal the perfect blend of the ascetic practice of voluntary exile with the Christian religious journey to the Holy Land (known as Holy Land pilgrimage). In this chapter, my primary question is: what was the underlying spirituality of these ascetic women’s voluntary exile to Jerusalem and its environs. This quest will allow us to understand another aspect of Melania the Younger’s and those Roman women’s asceticism of the heart, linked to the idea of fleeing from the world. In order to explore this theme (reading of sacred texture) according to a socio-rhetorical approach, I will mainly use an intertextual reading of the Life of Melania the Younger and other late antique Christian texts related to ascetical monastic migration to Jerusalem and related to the Christian Jerusalem as historical and religio-cultural reality and ← 107 | 108 → as theological and spiritual value. The exploration of how other late antique Christian texts as well as the Life represent and refer to the phenomena of the Christian monastic Jerusalem will illuminate Melania the Younger’s and other Roman women’s ascetic migration to Jerusalem.

First, I will scrutinize how the practices of ascetic voluntary exile in Jerusalem of Melania the Younger, Paula, and Melania the Elder are described in textual narratives, particularly in the Life of Melania the Younger. These examinations will clearly show the pattern of those women’s ascetic practices of being aliens in this world with a highly concrete destination.

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