“Τὸν ἄριστον βίον” (<i>Hist. Lausiaca</i> 62). Chastity and pride in the ascetic context of the proto-Byzantine hagiography

Abstract

The hypothesis of this article is that lust is not the worst sin in ascetic life, but it is a trail of pride. Here, some hagiographical texts belonging to the first Byzantine period are revised in order to establish the place given to the sex and to determine that this one has a subordinate role if it is compared with the role of pride. The conclusion is that sexuality had to be present in the hagiographical texts not only, as Kazhdan upholds, because the hagiography was an enjoyable genre whose audience did want to have sex in the content, but because all persons, including monks, are sexed and their way to confront the sexuality had a prevalent importance in ascetic life; but not because the sexual sin were the most serious, but because the ease to fall in it weakens the soul and it gives rise to the worst of the sins, the pride; or because the man’s arrogance about his own virtue blinds him and becomes evident in the lust, in order to promote a really ascetic amendment. Then, the stories which are told by the hagiographers are not only an ‘entertainment’ but a didactic tool.