Poemen, Arsenius, Moses, and Sisoes

The great old men of Scetis as the Apophthegmata remembers them — Poemen the master of discernment and mercy, Arsenius the Roman noble turned silent hermit, Moses the Ethiopian brigand turned model of humility and not-judging, and Sisoes the man of unfeigned self-accusation. Each man’s life is deferred to his own collection; this file treats them as a school, gathering their characteristic “words” and the shared ethos they transmitted.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Egyptian desert monasticism)

A School, Not Four Biographies

The greatness of Scetis is inseparable from a handful of old men whose sayings fill the Apophthegmata and who together define its spirit. This file does not tell their lives — each is treated in his own collection: St. Poemen the Great, St. Arsenius the Great, St. Moses the Black, and St. Sisoes the Great. The purpose here is to read them together as a school: to show what the desert’s teaching looked like in its finest exponents, and how four very different men — a shepherd, a courtier, a brigand, and a hermit of few words — transmitted one ethos of humility, discernment, silence, and mercy. Their sayings are cited to the Apophthegmata as the earliest attestation, in the manner set out in The Sayings and Their Collections; the collection remembers persona and characteristic teaching more securely than it fixes verbatim wording (per METHODOLOGY §3.5).

Poemen — Discernment and Mercy

Abba Poemen (Greek Poimēn, “shepherd”; c. 340 – c. 450) is the central voice of the Apophthegmata: his name heads by far the largest block of sayings in the alphabetical collection, and much of the desert’s teaching on the thoughts and on mercy reaches us through the Poemen material (Ward, introduction to The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, Cistercian, 1984; and see St. Poemen the Great, where the source-criticism of the vast Poemen corpus is treated). Poemen is remembered above all for diakrisis — discernment — and for a mercy toward the fallen that refuses to judge. “We have not been taught to be slayers of the body, but slayers of the passions,” runs one of his words on the moderation of asceticism (Poemen material, Alphabetical Collection, trans. Ward, 1984). When a brother sinned and the assembly wanted him punished, Poemen’s instinct was always toward covering and healing rather than exposing: asked what to do about a brother caught in sin, he taught that one should “throw the cloak” of mercy over him (Poemen material, trans. Ward, 1984; on Poemen and mercy, Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, Oxford, 1993). His teaching gathers the whole desert ethic: guard the thoughts, weep for your own sins, and do not judge your brother.

Arsenius — Flight and Silence

Abba Arsenius (c. 354 – c. 449) came to the desert from the summit of the Roman world. The Apophthegmata and Palladius remember him as a Roman of senatorial rank and great learning who had been tutor to the sons of the emperor Theodosius at Constantinople, and who fled the palace for Scetis around 394 (Arsenius material, Alphabetical Collection, trans. Ward, 1984; and see St. Arsenius the Great). His most famous saying is the word he is said to have heard at his conversion: praying to be shown the way of salvation, he heard a voice say, “Arsenius, flee, keep silent, be still (fuge, tace, quiesce); these are the roots of sinlessness” (Arsenius 1–2, trans. Ward, 1984). Arsenius became the desert’s supreme exemplar of withdrawal and silence — a man who kept to his cell, wept so constantly that he wore a hollow in his chest with his tears, and spoke to visitors as little as he could. “I have often repented of having spoken, but never of having kept silent,” runs a word of the tradition in his spirit (cf. Arsenius material and the systematic collection on silence). In Arsenius the desert holds up the ideal of hesychia — stillness — in its most austere form (see Hesychia, Nepsis, and Unceasing Prayer).

Moses — Humility and Not-Judging

Abba Moses “the Black” or “the Ethiopian” (c. 330 – c. 407) came from the opposite extreme of the social world: the Apophthegmata and later tradition remember him as a former slave and brigand — a large, violent man, leader of a robber band — who was converted and became one of the gentlest of the fathers (Moses material, Alphabetical Collection, trans. Ward, 1984; and see St. Moses the Black). His sayings are the tradition’s classic teaching on not judging. The most famous is the story of the brother who had sinned: when the elders of Scetis assembled to judge him and sent for Moses, he came carrying a leaking basket of sand on his back, and said, “My sins run out behind me and I do not see them, and today I come to judge the sins of another” — and the assembly forgave the brother (Moses 2, trans. Ward, 1984). To him too is attributed the foundational counsel on stillness: “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything” (Moses 6, trans. Ward, 1984). His life ended in the first devastation of Scetis (c. 407), where, tradition holds, he and a company of brothers were killed by the raiders, having refused to take up arms (see The Desert of Scetis).

Sisoes — Unfeigned Repentance

Abba Sisoes (d. c. 429), who lived for many years on the Inner Mountain of Antony after the great father’s death, is remembered for the depth and reality of his humility and repentance (Sisoes material, Alphabetical Collection, trans. Ward, 1984; and see St. Sisoes the Great). The tradition’s most celebrated deathbed scene is his: as he lay dying, his face shone like the sun, and he was seen conversing with unseen visitors — the fathers, the prophets, the angels, and at last the Lord Himself; and when the brothers begged him for a last word, he said that he did not think he had yet even begun to repent (Sisoes 14, trans. Ward, 1984). The scene became an icon of the desert’s teaching that the nearer a man comes to God the more he knows his own sinfulness — that true holiness always reckons itself at the beginning of the way, never the end. Sisoes’ word is the perfect counterpart to Antony’s saying that the great virtue is discernment and to Poemen’s mercy: the humility that makes both possible.

The One Ethos

Four men could hardly differ more in origin — a Coptic shepherd, a Roman senator, an Ethiopian brigand, a hermit of the Inner Mountain — and yet the Apophthegmata remembers them speaking, in the end, one language. Its grammar is this: keep silence and stillness (Arsenius); sit in your cell and guard your thoughts (Moses); weep for your own sins and refuse to judge your brother (Moses, Poemen); temper your asceticism to the killing of the passions, not the body (Poemen); and never suppose you have arrived (Sisoes). This is the ethos the whole desert transmitted, and these are the men through whom the Sayings transmit it (Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert, Oxford, 1993; and see Penthos, Discernment, and Humility). To read them as a school is to see the Apophthegmata not as a scatter of anecdotes but as the coherent teaching of a single spiritual tradition, carried by a communion of very different saints.

References

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Trans. Benedicta Ward. Rev. ed. Kalamazoo / London: Cistercian Publications, 1984. (Poemen material on the passions and mercy; Arsenius 1–2, “flee, be silent, be still”; Moses 2, the leaking basket, and Moses 6, “your cell will teach you”; Sisoes 14, the shining deathbed.)
Ward, Benedicta. Introduction to The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 1984. (The prominence of the Poemen corpus; the personae of the old men.)
Gould, Graham. The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. (Poemen on mercy and not-judging; community and correction.)
Burton-Christie, Douglas. The Word in the Desert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. (The shared ethos of humility, silence, and not-judging.)
Palladius. The Lausiac History. Trans. Robert T. Meyer. ACW 34. New York: Newman Press, 1964. (Arsenius’ background at the imperial court; Moses the Ethiopian.)