Events

Ilia State University cordially invites you to the public lecture by Prof. Marianne Saghy (Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest) on SAINT MARTIN OF TOURS AND THE DESERT FATHERS: MONASTIC COMPETITION BETWEEN EAST AND WEST IN LATE ANTIQUITY

Marianne Sághy is an associate professor at the Medieval Studies Department, Central European University, former academic director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Paris, is a historian interested in transitions and transformations: Late Antiquity and the late Middle Ages. Focusing on the religious, social, cultural and political history of the fourth- century Latin West, her heroes are controversial bishops and eccentric ascetics like  Damasus of Rome, Jerome, Martin of Tours or Genovefa of Paris. Her books include Martyrs and Poems: The Cult of the Saints in Rome under Damasus, A. D. 366-384, and Saint Martin of Tours: Asceticism and Power in Late Antiquity.” She also works on trecento treatises concerning the Holy Land, publishing a bilingual Latin-French critical edition of Pierre Dubois’s De la récupération de la Terre Sainte”.

Sághy has taught courses on Religion and Society in Late Antiquity, Saint Augustine and the Confessions, Body and Society, Women and Christianity, Monasticism and Hagiography, Angevin Europe in Budapest as well as in Tours, Poitiers, Turku, Warsaw, and Paris. She organizes summer courses at CEU and at the Hungarian Academy in Rome. 

Abstract:  Competition was nothing new among ascetics in Late Antiquity, from the Egyptian desert to the Cappadocian and Roman family monasteries as well as among the educated Christian élite who chronicled throughout the Roman Empire the astonishing feats of the ascetic heroes: Antony of Egypt, Paul of Thebes or Martin of Tours. A somewhat more striking feature is the competition between Western and Eastern ascetics posited in the foundational texts of Latin monasticism. The lecture presents the literary ambitions and implications of the prime example of the complex strategies of monastic competition, the work that demonstrates with brio the superiority of Gallic monasticism over the Egyptian one: Sulpicius Severus’ Gallus, or Dialogues on the Virtues of Martin.  Sulpicius not only places Gaul alongside Cappadocia, Northern Italy, Palestine, and Egypt as yet one more region that turned the desert into a heavenly city, but posits Gaul as a model for Eastern ascetics who look to Western monks for guidance: in the desert, the fathers read only one book: Sulpicius’ Life of Martin and they loudly beg him to write a sequel! In the Gallus, Martin is superior not only to Plato in wisdom and to Cyprian in his enthusiasm for martyrdom, but he excels bothAntony and Pachomius in ascetic vigor— despite his “compromised” lifestyle of episcopal service. Even more pressingly, Sulpicius presents himself as a new kind of Christian writer: a hagiographer who largely irrespective of personal or ecclesial achievement nevertheless serves as an authoritative mediator of ascetic charisma. The desert fathers’ endorsement extends not only to Martin but to Sulpicius as well: it is his written testimony concerning Martin that is in demand. What does all this tell us about the sacred status of the hagiographic text in particular and of monastic literacy in general? This is what this talk sets out to explore.  

27.10.2015, 17:00

Ilia State University, E-301