Abstract
The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between old age and asceticism in early Christianity by specifically comparing the views of John Chrysostom (349–407 C.E.) and Philoxenus of Mabbug (ca.440–523 C.E.). The study starts with an overview of the relevant literature published on the topic. Thereafter the notion of old age is contextualised within the ancient Mediterranean world, with attention given to sociocultural and medical perspectives and age structures. This then serves as a trajectory for the comparative analysis of Chrysostom’s and Philoxenus’s views respectively.
In the past two decades there has been an upsurge of studies on children, childhood and education in the ancient world. For example, in 2013 The Oxford handbook of childhood and education in the Classical world (Grubbs and Parkin eds) was released, which represents a thorough and expansive analysis of the topic in classical antiquity. One of the leading experts in the field of children and childhood in antiquity, Ville Vuolanto, together with several collaborators, has compiled an online bibliography of works related to the study of children in antiquity. In the fourth edition of the bibliography (2008) there appear 1 140 entries, in the fifth (2010) there are 1 573, and in the sixth (2014) there are 1 771. The latest (2015) version boasts 2 067 entries, which would have increased in the meantime. And while the growth in this field is welcome and encouraging, the field of studies related to old age in antiquity remains scant.
It is unfortunate that elderly persons experience marginalisation even in the process of historiography, a criticism that Simone de Beauvoir (1972:134) voiced more than four decades ago. We have a handful of sources on old age and the elderly (and especially the care of the elderly) in the ancient Near East and ancient Greece. There are two important studies of which to take note for the Roman period. The first is the excellent monograph of Tim Parkin, Old age in the Roman world (2004), in which he analyses all sociocultural aspects of old age and aging in the Roman world. The second is the work of Karen Cokayne, Experiencing old age in ancient Rome (2003), which especially covers social and psychological aspects of aging in the Roman world. These two monographs, however, rarely if ever refer to early Christianity. Edward Watts (2015:191–211) also discusses the experience of elite elderly persons, like Libanius and Themistius, in the later Roman Empire.
The work of Christian Gnilka is fundamental for approaching a study on old age in early Christianity. He is especially interested in the care of the elderly in the early church, and the role of aged persons in the church more generally (see Gnilka 1972; 1977; 1980; 1983; 1995; 2005). After Gnilka’s 1972 monograph, Aetas spiritualis: Die Überwindung der natürlichen Altersstufen als Ideal frühchristlichen Lebens, we do not find any other monograph published on the topic. Georges Minois’s History of old age: from Antiquity to the Renaissance (1989) does cover early Christian views, but as this article will show, his conclusions are at times problematic. The article goes on to discuss some other studies on the topic of old age and aging.
Thus, old age in this article is approached as a discourse, known as gerontology, which is a way of speaking about both the individual and social body. Old age is a complex phenomenon that cannot be limited to one fixed locus, but finds expression in manifold social, cultural, religious and political formations. Old age and aging are therefore phenomena that are socially constructed.
When looking at old age as a social and cultural phenomenon in the ancient Mediterranean world, we also find that it differs quite substantially from modern concepts of old age and aging. Aging is not necessarily based on the number of years an individual has lived, or whether they have retired from an occupation. Retirement in antiquity differed fundamentally from how we understand retirement today. The status and experiences of non-elite persons in the ancient world are even more ambiguous. There are also important intersections between old age and gender, as De Wet (2016:491–521) has shown.
The article also provides an overview of ancient medical approaches to aging, and especially highlights old age as a period characterised in humoral medicine by an excess of phlegm, and the characteristics of coolness and dryness.
The popularity of the ancient age structure (or the so-called “ages of man” scheme, or in Latin, gradus aetatum) is quite interesting. These structures tell us that persons in ancient times often attempted to give meaning to their experience of aging by seeking other parallel structures. The article gives a brief summary of a few such structures. For instance, Solon and some in the Hippocratic corpus provide us with an age structure consisting of ten separate divisions of seven years each. Age structures consisting of seven ages were equally popular, especially among early Christian and Jewish writers. Augustine, for instance, provides a six-plus-one age structure in which each age corresponds theologically to a certain period in biblical salvation history. The final age, the seventh, is eternal life. The Pythagoreans, on the other hand, followed a scheme of four ages. Both of the writers examined in this article, Chrysostom and Philoxenus, structured each age group ethically, attributing a characteristic vice or virtue to the corresponding age group. This way of approaching human development and aging, from an ethical perspective, enables these authors to draw close links between aging, old age, and asceticism.
When the views of Chrysostom and Philoxenus on old age and asceticism are compared, several similarities and differences are evident. Both authors understand old age as a process of cooling and drying, as Galen has suggested, and then understand this as a correlate for asceticism, which also entails adopting practices that serve to cool and dry the body – to mortify it, so to speak. Old age is supposed to cultivate wisdom and discipline, but this is not a given. Both authors are very concerned about a person’s behaviour in old age. Philoxenus goes somewhat further than Chrysostom by suggesting that one can transfer the heat of adolescence to one’s old age by depositing it, so to speak, in the soul.
Keywords: age; aging; asceticism; early Christianity; gerontology; John Chrysostom; old age; Patristics; Philoxenus of Mabbug
Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans: Bejaardheid en asketisme in die vroeë Christendom: ’n Vergelyking tussen die sienswyses van Johannes Chrusostomos en Filoksenos van Mabboeg