Ketevan Mamasakhlisi

Tbilisi Theological Academy

Assistant to the Head of the Department of Georgian Language and Literature, Tbilisi Theological Academy

Philology

Tbilisi, Georgia

qetimamasakhlisi@yahoo.de

St. Palladius of Helenopolis’s Lausiac History is a chronicle of Christian monastic life. It incorporates accounts witnessed personally by the author, oral narratives, and written sources. The work reveals that Palladius, after setting out for the desert to pursue the ascetic life, did not settle permanently in a single monastery; rather, alongside his own ascetic practice, he sought to become acquainted with the earliest Desert Fathers. He first visited the Theban Desert in Egypt and subsequently travelled to Mount Nitria. According to scholarly sources, Palladius began his eremitic life around 388.

The Old Georgian translation of the Lausiac History is attributed to Ephrem Mtsire (Ephrem the Minor). Most of the manuscripts preserving this translation date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. From the standpoint of their archaic character, three manuscripts are of particular importance: A 143, A 682, and A 128. Two of these manuscripts consist of two epistles and seventy-two chapters, whereas the third, A 128, contains two epistles and only twenty-one chapters. Manuscript A 143, which preserves the “complete” form of the Georgian translation of the Lausiac History, is nearly contemporary with Ephrem and is written on parchment. Manuscript A 128 preserves an abridged recension of the Lausiac History, compiled by an anonymous Georgian author through the selection of the most significant episodes. In our view, it represents a cenobitic recension that served a practical purpose in Georgian churches and monasteries.

The work presents the history of Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries and, alongside accounts of male monasteries, also records the lives of female monastics. According to Palladius, during the first centuries of monastic life, the number of women seeking the ascetic vocation was no smaller than that of men. In the city of Antinoë alone, there were twelve convents. In one of these monasteries Palladius visited Mother Atilda, who had served the Lord for eighty years. According to those close to her, Atilda was the spiritual leader of sixty virgins.

The same monastery was home to the virgin Taor, who for thirty years neither put on new clothing nor acquired a new head covering or footwear. The holy woman never left her cell and was constantly engaged in handiwork so that no one might be distracted or tempted by her physical beauty. In addition to the cenobitic mode of life, the work also recounts the lives of solitary female ascetics. Moreover, it tells of women who turned their backs on the world by enclosing themselves in tombs. One such figure is the virgin Alexandra, who spent twenty-five years in solitude and silence in order to overcome the temptations of worldly life.

The Lausiac History also contains the story of a female holy fool, whose life has been compared in scholarly literature with that of Isidora. Palladius further tells of a virgin who sheltered the persecuted John Chrysostom for six years. The Lausiac History also describes women of high social standing who renounced aristocratic life in favour of serving Christ. Among them were Melania the Elder of Rome and her granddaughter, who bore the same name as her grandmother and endured many trials while following the path of the Lord.

The female figures presented in the work are also distinguished by their apostolic activity. Thus, the Lausiac History is one of the earliest written sources for the study of women who pursued the ascetic life alongside the holy fathers during the formative centuries of Christian monasticism.

The work may also be regarded as a Mravaltavi—a multi-text collection—commissioned by the imperial official Lausus, in which selected episodes from the spiritual lives of ascetic fathers and mothers are arranged according to certain chronological and geographical principles. At the same time, the work has a distinctly didactic character. Palladius of Helenopolis’s Lausiac History is prescribed as a reading for use during church and monastic services in the period of Great Lent.

Keywords: Palladius, Egypt, Lausiac History, monastic, holy fool, Mravaltavi, Melania the Elder.