Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality

Of all the practices that late ancient monasticism contributed to Christian spirituality, spiritual direction must be among the most important and also the most hazardous. For the Christian seeking to make progress in prayer, the relationship with her spiritual director can be indispensably beneficial, but the responsibilities of and challenges to the spiritual director are weighty. A guide requires skill, sensitivity, [End Page 269] and great experience in bringing the wisdom of a long tradition to the journey of a particular individual. One of my colleagues had to suppress giggles when she asked an undergraduate religious studies major about her post-graduation plans, and the twenty-two-year-old replied with absolute sincerity, "I'm going to be a spiritual director." Doubtless Barsanuphius, the Great Old Man of sixth-century Gaza, would smile knowingly.

Nearly all the spiritual directors of late antiquity were monks, and the vast majority of them guided their disciples as their countless successors have—orally, in face-to-face meetings in which both disciple and guide could speak frankly and respond to the immediacy of the other's words, expressions, tone of voice, and bodily posture. For example, Theodore, one of Pachomius's successors as the leader of a large network of monasteries in fourth-century Egypt, purportedly would make the rounds of a monastery's dormitories and speak with the individual monks; he would keep other monks, including housemasters, at a distance, so that he and the monk could speak in confidence. As effective and widespread as this kind of relationship was, it is mostly lost to the modern historian. I do not doubt that we can learn much from the anecdotes concerning "old men" and their disciples ("brothers") in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, as in fact Graham Gould has in his The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (Oxford University Press, 1993), but despite their diversity and vividness, they illustrate the general principles and values of spiritual direction and do not provide a record of the ups and downs in specific relationships over time.

We are fortunate, then, to have the collected correspondence of Barsanuphius and John, two sixth-century holy men of Gaza whose decisions to live in isolation in their cells required that they direct their disciples in writing. Sometime in the first decades of the sixth century, Barsanuphius arrived in Gaza from Egypt and settled at Tawatha as an anchorite loosely affiliated with a coenobium. One of his disciples, Seridos, served as abbot of the monastery and also as the medium for conveying messages between the reclusive Barsanuphius and his correspondents. Around 525 John the Prophet entered his own cell near Barsanuphius's, likewise speaking with others only through a disciple. For about eighteen years the monks at Tawatha looked for their leadership and spiritual guidance to these three men: the "Great Old Man" Barsanuphius, the "Other Old Man" John, and Seridos, disciple to the two anchorites and abbot to the monastic community. This collective leadership lasted until 543, when Seridos and John died and Barsanuphius entered complete isolation and ended his communication with others. A monk of the Tawatha community assembled the approximately 850 letters of Barsanuphius and John, which address the practical and spiritual concerns not only of monks, but also of clergy and lay people.

As precious as they are, the letters of Barsanuphius and John have not received much attention from scholars and are mostly unknown to non-specialists, but that situation should change quickly. In 2002 the final volume of the critical edition of the Greek text of the letters appeared in the series Sources Chrétiennes (edited and translated into French by François Neyt, Paula de Angelis-Noah, and Lucien Regnault), and in 2003...