EVAGRIUS PONTICUS. - 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 up the tradition of the preceding centuries, especially of the Alexandrian school, and elaborated it with a copious contribution of speculation and experience, exercising a very notable influence on posterity. He was ordained lector by St. Basil the Great and deacon by St. Gregory of Nazianzus, with whom he was at 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 at Jerusalem he withdrew to Egypt, living among the mountains of Nitria and in the desert of Cells, earning his bread by the work of a copyist. He was a disciple and friend of St. Macarius the Egyptian, and he refused the episcopate offered him by Theophilus of Alexandria.
His activity as a writer was intense, and only recently has it been studied in depth through the examination of a part of the works that have come down to us, for the most part 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 by the three following ones against E., involved in the condemnation of Origenism. Notices of the works, though incomplete, are had from Socrates (Hist. eccl., IV, 23) and more extensively from Gennadius (De vir. ill., 11).
He wrote: 1) the Antirrheticus, a collection of biblical sentences in 8 books, against the 8 capital vices, translated into Latin by Gennadius and come down to us only in the Syriac and Armenian versions; 2) the Monasticus, a collection of maxims, for the most part brief, for anchorites, brought together without logical order and divided into two parts: the first of 100 maxims, entitled Practicus, for the simple; the second of 50 maxims, with the title Gnosticus, for learned monks, also translated by Gennadius into Latin. We have the first part in two Greek recensions, the second only in Syriac; 3) a Mirror for monks and one for nuns, come down to us in the Greek original, in Rufinus's Latin version and in the Syriac version; 4) 600 Gnostic Problems, preserved in Syriac and in Armenian, of various dogmatic and moral content; 5) 67 Letters, in Syriac version, for the most part brief; 6) a short treatise in 11 chapters on the foundations of the monastic life, especially on quiet, in Greek and in Syriac; 7) Capitula XXXIII per serium, of allegorical character, in Greek; 8) four series of Sentences, arranged partly alphabetically and partly not; 9) a writing De oratione and 10) one De malignis cogitationibus, hitherto attributed to Nilus of Ancyra; 11) Commentaries on the Psalms and on Proverbs, of which notable fragments remain; 12) Gennadius further attributes to him « paucas sententiolas valde obscuras et, ut ipse ait, solis monachorum cordibus agnoscibilis »; a little work not identifiable among those published. Other unpublished writings remain in Armenian and Syriac versions.
E. is the first among the monks who left a notable literary heritage and is among the solitaries of Egypt the most fecund and original writer. He loved to express himself in brief maxims, sometimes taken from Scripture, thus initiating among Christians the gnomological genre.
His spiritual doctrine is inspired by Clement of Alexandria and by Origen, whom he studied carefully. He distinguishes the active or practical life, and the contemplative or gnostic life. The first is nothing but a preparation for the second, which has its fulfillment in the contemplation of the Trinity, in which consists perfection and the highest degree of the spiritual life. Ascesis aims at purifying the soul in order to remove the impediments to contemplation. The active life is characterized by the practice of the virtues, arranged in this ascending order: faith, fear of God, observance of the commandments, from which derive continence, prudence, patience and hope; from this then comes impassibility (ἀνάθεσις), to be understood not as indifference toward God nor toward men, but as perfect peace and freedom of the spirit, attained through total renunciation and constant moralization. The fruit of ἀνάθεσις is love, which introduces into the contemplative life. In the ascetic field E. attributes great importance to the struggle against demons and the passions. In his work there is found for the first time the theory of the eight capital vices. In contemplation a first degree is distinguished, the "physical gnosis," to which follows "theology," or gnosis of God, at the degree of "pure prayer," the ultimate summit of spiritual ascesis. E. [posits] a non-discursive knowledge of God, which requires a purity even greater than the 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, precisely this most lofty vision is also "infinite ignorance." With the intuition of the Trinity the spirit intuits itself, now purified, therefore shining with beauty. Peace and rest accompany this contemplation, which seizes man with an irresistible power and influences even his body, which seems to lose its natural weight.
E., as has been said, draws on Alexandrian speculation and fertilizes its principles so as to give a profound and detailed theory of the spiritual life. Already St. Jerome recognized the diffusion of his writings and the great influence exercised by them; this continued also afterward, on the Byzantines and the Syrians, and in the East it has not yet set.