05 — Sources
Where our knowledge of Arsenius comes from and how far it reaches: the Apophthegmata Patrum (the Arsenius collection) as the primary witness, Palladius and the wider monastic dossier as context, the later vitae and synaxaria as elaboration; and the careful question of what can be known of the historical Arsenius behind the conventions — the topoi — of the genre that remembered him. These files name the sources and the scholars and weigh the kernel against the shaping.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; father of stillness)
Arsenius is a test case for the source-criticism of a saint known through sayings. The earliest and best witness, the Apophthegmata, is itself a compiled and shaped tradition, written down a century or more after his death; the biographically richer sources — the Life, the synaxaria — are later still. To use them well is to know what each can bear: to take the Apophthegmata as the primary record while recognizing its genre, to use Palladius and the monastic dossier for context, and to read the later vitae as the developed form of the tradition rather than as independent documentation. This section sets out the sources and the scholarship, and then asks, soberly, what can be known of the historical man.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Apophthegmata and the Tradition | The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (the Arsenius collection) as primary source; Palladius’ Lausiac History and the monastic dossier; the later vitae and synaxaria; the named scholars — Ward, Chitty, Harmless, Regnault, Guy. |
| The Historical Arsenius | What can be securely known versus the topoi of the genre; the court career, the dating, and the wonders weighed; the honest state of the evidence. |
See Also
- The Apophthegmata of Arsenius — the sayings themselves
- The Roman Tutor — the court career as a source-critical problem
- Monasticism — the desert tradition the sources document
References
- Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Rev. ed. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984.
- Harmless, William. Desert Christians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Palladius. The Lausiac History. Trans. Robert T. Meyer. ACW 34. 1965.