EVAGRIO PONTICO. – Ecclesiastical writer, b. at Ibora in Pontus ca. 356, d. in 399. A leading figure among the theorists of spirituality in the ancient Church, he gathered together the tradition of the preceding centuries, especially that of the Alexandrian school, and elaborated it with a copious contribution of speculation and experience, exercising a remarkably strong influence on posterity. He was ordained lector by s. Basil the Great and deacon by s. Gregory Nazianzen, with whom he was in Constantinople, exercising the ministry of preaching; he remained there, after Gregory’s departure in 381, until the following year; then he devoted himself to the ascetic life. After a brief stay in Jerusalem he withdrew to Egypt, living among the mountains of Nitria and in the desert of the Cells, earning his bread by the work of a copyist. He was a disciple and friend of s. Macarius the Egyptian, and refused the episcopate offered to him by Theophilus of Alexandria.
His activity as a writer was intense, and has only recently been studied in depth through examination of some of the works that have survived, mostly in Syriac and Armenian translations. The loss of the Greek text is due above all to the anathema pronounced by the Fifth Ecumenical Council and the three following councils against E., who was implicated in the condemnation of Origenism. Information about his works, although incomplete, is provided by Socrates (Hist. eccl., IV, 23) and, more extensively, by Gennadius (De vir. ill., 11).
He wrote: 1) the Antirheictus, a collection of biblical sayings in 8 books, directed against the 8 capital vices, translated into Latin by Gennadius and surviving among us only in Syriac and Armenian versions; 2) the Monasticus, a collection of maxims, mostly brief, for anchorites, placed together without logical order and divided into two parts: the first, of 100 maxims, entitled Practicus, for the simple; the second, of 50 maxims, entitled Gnosticus, for educated monks, likewise translated into Latin by Gennadius. We possess the first part in two Greek recensions, the second only in Syriac; 3) a Mirror for Monks and one for Nuns, which have survived in the Greek original, in Rufinus’s Latin version, and in the Syriac version; 4) 600 Gnostic Problems, preserved in Syriac and Armenian, with varied dogmatic and moral content; 5) 67 Letters, in a Syriac version, mostly brief; 6) a short treatise in 11 chapters on the foundations of monastic life, especially on quietude, in Greek and Syriac; 7) Capitula XXXIII per serium, allegorical in character, in Greek; 8) four series of Sentences, arranged partly alphabetically and partly not; 9) a work De oratione and 10) one De malignis cogitationibus, until now attributed to Nilus of Ancyra; 11) Commentaries on the Psalms and the Proverbs, of which considerable fragments remain; 12) Gennadius also attributes to him « paucas sententiolas valde obscuras et, ut ipse ait, solis monachorum cordibus agnoscibilis »; a little work not identifiable among those publi-
shed. Other unpublished writings remain in Armenian and Syriac versions.
E. is the first among the monks to have left a considerable literary legacy and is, among the solitaries of Egypt, the most prolific and original writer. He loved to express himself in brief maxims, sometimes taken from Scripture, thus initiating among Christians the gnomic genre.
His spiritual doctrine is inspired by Clement of Alexandria and Origen, whom he studied carefully. He distinguishes the active or practical life from the contemplative or gnostic life. The former is merely preparation for the latter, which reaches its fulfillment in the contemplation of the Trinity, in which perfection and the highest degree of the spiritual life consist. Asceticism aims to purify the soul in order to remove the impediments to contemplation. The active life is characterized by the practice of the virtues, arranged in the following ascending order: faith, fear of God, observance of the commandments, from which derive continence, prudence, patience, and hope; from this, in turn, comes impassibility (ἀνάθεσις), to be understood not as indifference toward God or toward human beings, but as perfect peace and freedom of spirit, attained through complete renunciation and constant moral formation. The fruit of ἀνάθεσις is love, which introduces one into the contemplative life. In the ascetic sphere E. attributes great importance to the struggle against demons and passions. In him we find for the first time the theory of the eight capital vices. In contemplation, a first degree is distinguished, the « physical gnosis », followed by « theology », or the gnosis of God, at the level of « pure prayer », the ultimate summit of spiritual asceticism. E. is a non-discursive knowledge of God, requiring an even greater purity than initial contemplation, so that the spirit may be entirely « naked ». Through it, man sees the light of the Trinity, God, the nature of God, not through an image but in an absolutely simple and immediate vision of reality. But since the infinite cannot be comprehended by the finite intellect, this very highest vision is also « infinite ignorance ». Through the intuition of the Trinity, the spirit intuits itself, now purified and therefore resplendent with beauty. Peace and rest accompany this contemplation, which seizes man with irresistible power and also affects his body, which seems to lose its natural weight.
E., as has been said, draws upon Alexandrian speculation and makes its principles fruitful, so as to give a profound and detailed theory of the spiritual life. Already s. Jerome recognized the circulation of his writings and the great influence exercised by them; this continued thereafter among the Byzantines and the Syrians, and in the East it has not yet died out.
BBL.: Editions: that of PG 40, 1231-86, which reproduces, with some additions, the edition of Gallandi, is insufficient and must be supplemented by that of W. Frankenberg, in Göttinger Abhandlungen. Philol.-hist. Kl., new series, XIII, 2, Berlin 1912; P. E. Sarchis, Das hl. Vaters Evagrius Pontibus Leben und Werke in einer armenischen Übersetzung des 5. Jahr., Venice 1907; H. Gressmann, Texte und Untersuchungen, 39, 4, Nomenspiegel und Mönchspiegel des E. P., Leipzig 1913, pp. 146-65; the works attributed to s. Nilus in PG 79, 1093-1140, 1165-1228. – Studies: O. Zöckler, Bibliothe und Kirchenhist. Studien, IV, Evagrius Pontibus, Munich 1893; Bardenheuer, pp. 93-98, 669; W. Bousset, Apophthegynta Patrum, Tufbius 1923, pp. 281-314; O. Stöblin, Die Altertisti. Griech. Liter., Munich 1924, pp. 1388-92; M. Viller, Aus marces de la spiritualité de 11 Massime. Les oeuvres d'Écugne et Pontique, in Revue d'arrêt. et de mystique, 11 (1930), pp. 155-84, 239-68, 321-36; S. Marelli, Giovanni Cassiano ed E. P. Dottrina sulla carità e contemplazione (Studia Anselmiana, 5), Rome 1936; M. Viller and K. Rahner, Assees und Mystik in der Väterzeit, Freiburg im Br. 1939, pp. 97-110.