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 the tradition of the preceding centuries, especially from the Alexandrian school, and developed it with abundant speculative and experiential contributions, exerting a very considerable influence on posterity. He was ordained lector by St. Basil the Great and by St. Gregory Nazianzen, with whom he went to Constantinople, where he exercised the ministry of preaching; he remained there, after Gregory’s departure in 381, until the following year, then devoted himself to the ascetic life. After a brief stay in Jerusalem he returned to Egypt, living among the mountains of Nitria and in the desert of the Cells, earning his bread by the work of a scribe. He was a disciple and friend of St. Macarius the Egyptian, and refused the episcopate offered him by Theophilus of Alexandria.
His literary activity was intense, and has only recently been studied in depth through the examination of a portion of the works that have come down to us, mostly in Syriac and Armenian translations. The loss of the Greek text is due chiefly to the anathema pronounced by the Fifth Ecumenical Council and the three synods against Evagrius, who was implicated in the condemnation of Origenism. Notices of his works, though incomplete, are found in Socrates (Hist. eccl., IV, 23) and more fully in Gennadius (De vir. ill., 11).
He wrote: 1) the *Antirrheticus*, a collection of biblical sayings in 8 books, against the 8 capital vices, translated into Latin by Gennadius and preserved for us only in Syriac and Armenian versions; 2) the *Praktikos*, a collection of maxims, mostly brief, for anchorites, arranged without logical order and divided into two parts: the first of 100 maxims, entitled *Praktikos*, for the simple; the second of 50 maxims, entitled *Gnostikos*, 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 a *Mirror for Nuns*, preserved in the original Greek, in Rufinus’s Latin version, and in a Syriac version; 4) 600 *Gnostic Problems*, preserved in Syriac and Armenian, of varied dogmatic and moral content; 5) 67 *Letters*, in Syriac version, mostly brief; 6) a treatise in 11 chapters on the foundations of monastic life, especially on quietude, in Greek and Syriac; 7) *Thirty-Three Chapters* in a series, of allegorical character, in Greek; 8) four series of *Sentences*, partly arranged alphabetically, partly not; 9) a writing *On Prayer* and 10) one *On Evil Thoughts*, hitherto attributed to Nilus of Ancyra; 11) Commentaries on the Psalms and Proverbs, of which notable fragments remain; 12) Gennadius also attributes to him “a few very obscure little sayings, and, as he himself says, comprehensible only to the hearts of monks”; this work cannot be identified among those published. Other unpublished writings remain in Armenian and Syriac versions.
Evagrius is the first among monks to have left a considerable literary legacy and is the most prolific and original writer among the solitaries of Egypt. He loved to express himself in brief maxims, sometimes drawn 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 active or practical life from contemplative or gnostic life. The former is but a preparation for the latter, which reaches its fulfillment in the contemplation of the Trinity, wherein consists the perfection and the highest degree of the spiritual life. Asceticism aims at purifying the soul to remove the impediments to contemplation. The active life is characterized by the practice of the virtues, arranged in ascending order: faith, fear of God, observance of the commandments, from which derive continence, prudence, patience, and hope; from these in turn comes *apatheia* (ἀπάθεια), to be understood not as indifference toward God or men but as perfect peace and freedom of spirit, attained through total renunciation and constant purification. The fruit of *apatheia* is love, which introduces one into the contemplative life. In the ascetic sphere Evagrius attaches great importance to the struggle against demons and passions. It is with him that we first find the theory of the eight capital vices. In contemplation he distinguishes a first degree, “physical gnosis,” followed by “theology,” or gnosis of God, and the degree of “pure prayer,” the ultimate stage of spiritual asceticism. It is a non-discursive knowledge of God, requiring a purity even greater than that of 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. Yet since the infinite cannot be comprehended by finite intellect, precisely this highest vision is also “infinite ignorance.” With the intuition of the Trinity the spirit intuits itself, now purified, hence radiant with beauty. Peace and rest accompany this contemplation, which seizes the man with irresistible power and even affects his body, which seems to lose its natural weight.
Evagrius, as has been said, drew on Alexandrian speculation and enriched its principles so as to produce a profound and detailed theory of the spiritual life. Already St. Jerome acknowledged the wide diffusion of his writings and the great influence they exerted; this continued afterward among the Byzantines and Syrians, and in the East it has not yet faded.