系列：占卜：重读古代晚期宗教
在四世纪末，基督教世界因对三世纪神学家奥利金的教义及其对上帝的非物质存在的立场的争论而四分五裂。公元400年，亚历山大大主教西奥菲卢斯召开了一次会议，宣布奥利金后来的追随者为异教徒。此后不久，提奥菲卢斯驱逐了所谓的“高大兄弟”（Toll Brothers），即四名原生态僧侣，他们与数百名兄弟一起领导着埃及西部沙漠的僧侣社区。在一些报道中，提奥菲卢斯带领一群喝醉的年轻人和被奴役的埃塞俄比亚人洗劫和亵渎修道院；在其他方面，他公正地履行了自己的主教职责。在一些版本中，提奥菲卢斯的暴力行为有效地结束了沙漠修道的黄金时代；在另一些作品中，他对沙漠之父表示了适当的尊重，他们的禁欲主义生活随后被一群野蛮的掠夺者摧毁。对一些人来说，沙漠与暴力和创伤密不可分，而对另一些人来说，沙漠则成了怀旧的回忆之地。
后代相信这些叙事中的哪一种在很大程度上取决于他们阅读的来源。在《沙漠之死》（Death of the Desert）一书中，克里斯汀·卢卡里茨·马奎斯（Christine Luckritz Marquis）对基督教历史上的这一关键时刻进行了全新的审视，并将在学术传统中基本分离的叙事线索引入对话。她将提奥菲卢斯所犯下的暴力行为视为沙漠僧侣制度的转折点，并思考僧侣如何卷入暴力行为，以及暴力如何卷土重来困扰他们。更广泛地说，她对记忆实践、场所修辞结构、种族化话语、语言和暴力行为之间动态关系的仔细关注，向我们展示了我们这个时代。
Death of the Desert: Monastic Memory and the Loss of Egypt’s Golden Age
Series: Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion
In the late fourth century, the world of Christianity was torn apart by debate over the teachings of the third-century theologian Origen and his positions on the incorporeality of God. In the year 400, Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria convened a council declaring Origen’s later followers as heretics. Shortly thereafter, Theophilus banished the so-called Tall Brothers, four Origenist monks who led monastic communities in the western Egyptian desert, along with hundreds of their brethren. In some accounts, Theophilus leads a violent group of drunken youths and enslaved Ethiopians in sacking and desecrating the monastery; in others, he justly exercises his episcopal duties. In some versions, Theophilus’ violent actions effectively bring the Golden Age of desert monasticism to an end; in others, he has shown proper respect for the desert fathers, whose life of asceticism is subsequently destroyed by bands of barbarian marauders. For some, the desert came to be inextricably connected to violence and trauma, while for others, it became a site of nostalgic recollection.
Which of these narratives subsequent generations believed depended in good part on the sources they were reading. In Death of the Desert, Christine Luckritz Marquis offers a fresh examination of this critical juncture in Christian history and brings into dialogue narrative strands that have largely been separated in the scholarly tradition. She takes the violence perpetrated by Theophilus as a turning point for desert monasticism and considers how monks became involved in acts of violence and how that violence came back to haunt them. More broadly, her careful attention to the dynamic relations between memory practices, the rhetorical constructions of place, racialized discourse, and language and deeds of violence speak to us in our own time.
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