The early history of urban asceticism in the West cannot be understood without reference to the burgeoning city life and culture that accompanied it; indeed, the new urban situation had been forming for at least two centuries. It is hard to imagine Francis undertaking his ascetic labors without the backdrop of the town of Assisi, or his prosperous merchant family, the Bernardones, and their strong-willed patriarch, Pietro. It is equally difficult to think of him and his work outside of the events that followed the Gregorian Reforms of the late eleventh century, culminating in the Fourth Lateran council in 1215. In this regard, Francis, and many of the saints that emerge out of this milieu would seem to be best understood from Vauchez and Little’s historical-sociological approach. Hagiographers, however, will always try to make their subjects fit into the mold of the received tradition of sanctity, and just as Gregory the Great made his urban bishops look to some extent like Anthony, so hagiographers like the author of the Life of St. Norbert will make his subject fit into the urban ascetic mold.
With the expansion of towns and cities came a new cultural shift-a merchant ethos which would add a new element in the social fabric of the medieval vision of the three-tiered society: the nobility, who engaged in warfare, the clergy and monks, who prayed, and everyone else, who worked. Where does the merchant fit into this scheme?
In the new urban environment, these relationships would soon become somewhat obsolete, and various people reacted in different ways to this social change. Many peasants, as a result of this new-found ability to grow a surplus of crops to be sold in the open market, bought their own freedom from serfdom, and henceforth became renters.
How did the religious orders react to these changes? One way was to accept the new situation, and include a new class of benefactors. Monasteries were generally patronized by landed nobility, and became wealthy due to generous gift endowments. How did the rise of cities affect this relationship? A new class of people-the burghers-became more prominent benefactors in the mid-eleventh century. In Cluny, the income of the monastery came in large part from rich merchants. One made a lavish gift of “a gold cross decorated with gems, a cup, a chalice, gold and silver candelabra, and 24 marks of silver.”
Monastic houses might also collect huge sums of money from the shrine of a local saint that they controlled, like the Benedictine monks of Canterbury at the shrine of St. Thomas Beckett. A bigger source of income would be in the form of rental property they controlled. The monks ended up owning “one-half of the domestic property of the town of Canterbury, with over 400 separate holdings” by the end of the 12
th century.
Lester Little rightly asks, “What did the monks do with all this wealth?” His answer: “In their own words, they prayed; their own social ideal defined them functionally as
oratores.”
As
oratores, their main task would be the elaborate celebrations of the liturgy on behalf of all the orders of society. Thus, the money coming in from merchant activity benefited urban monastic houses like those of Canterbury, maintaining large communities of praying monks, and maintaining elaborate liturgies where the faithful (i.e. the benefactors and the rest of humanity) benefited from their prayers. As “God’s warriors,” they would take on the spiritual weapons of prayer against the world, the flesh and the devil; as the “poor in Christ,” they would exemplify for the age a renunciation of personal power, wealth and honor. All this was made possible, first by the castellan in the post-Carolingian period, who would make rich endowments to the monasteries, and then by the burghers in the new urban culture.
But the monastic orders could not long maintain this arrangement, because many of them would in fact become administrative centers for the management of wealth than monastic establishments of prayer. As Lester Little observes, “the successful abbots of the twelfth century were of necessity fiscal administrators rather than saints, like Suger of Saint-Denis, who wrote a book on administration and took charge of the royal government during Loius VII’s crusade, or like Samson of Bury St. Edmund’s, who inherited an enormous debt upon his accession and spent the rest of his reign wiping it out (with the help of a pogrom in the town of Bury, which he controlled.).”
How does a traditional ascetic, and the hagiographers that write about them, negotiate around all of this in order to produce the transcendent saint who rises above time and place in order to live out “the one life of Christ,” as Heffernan puts it?
For the traditional ascetic, this form of life was unacceptable.
For someone like Romauld of Ravenna (952-1027), this would constitute a compromise of the original vow of poverty, so he, inspired by the Desert Fathers, would leave the monasteries and cities to live out his life as a solitary. He found monastic life too lax, and left the monastery of Saint-Apollinaris for the salt marshes of Pereum (after a stay in the monastery of Cuxa in Catalonia), where he immersed himself in the lives of the Egyptian Desert Fathers.
These new “desert ascetics” would form “communities” of solitaries, in a way reforming Benedictine life in the process. Monks like Romuald could not find satisfaction in the new urban environment; nor, apparently, could the monastic orders. Reformed monastic movements like the Cistercians, Carthusians and Premonstratensians would grow out of the dissatisfaction that drove Romuald out to the wilderness, but rather than evolve these eremitic movements into coenobitic communities, as in the case of the Desert Fathers in Egypt and Palestine, Bruno of Cologne, Robert of Molesme, and Norbert of Xanten would establish reformed monastic houses.
So we see two major attempts to deal with the new urban reality: in one, monastic benefactors (which now include burghers) and the monasteries take an active part in the new urban culture as renters and keepers of popular shrines. On the other hand, we see an extreme reaction to these developments, especially as solitaries such as Romuald attempt to get as far away as possible from what they see as the corrupting influence of the city.
Peter Damian’s
Vita Sancti Romualdi , written shortly after St. Romuald’s death in 1025, has all the features that characterize many monastic hagiographies: a father of the nobility or other influential social caste, a moment of crisis, and a resolute desire to withdraw from the world.
Like Francis two centuries later, he would lead the life of a dissolute youth, engaged in the “sins of the flesh,” which Peter Damian considers a temptation for the high born, burdened with too many riches.
Peter identifies Romuald’s father as a certain Sergius, from an “illustrious ducal family”
This situation where worldly temptation and proclivities towards the “sins of the flesh” is highlighted in the beginning of the narrative, where Peter Damian gives an
O tempora lament over the sins and vanities of the age in the prologue:
Our charge against you, foul world, is that you consort with a mob of intolerable “wise” fools who keep you company, who through vain and empty philosophy know how to extol themselves arrogantly with pride to overflowing. You have no one who can bring forth anything for the edification of your neighbors or anything worthy of note for posterity. You have, I daresay, those who know how to skillfully argue and make beautiful speeches about every kind of injurious business in a law court, but you have no one who can write about the virtues and noble deeds of the saints of Holy Church.
These opening lines might give force to the argument that St. Romuald is reacting to the nascent “profit economy,”
but viewed generally from the standpoint of a broader context of ascetic literature, Little agrees that this is no different from what Pachomius and Anthony did in considering the ascetic life of the desert.
Peter Damian’s railing against the world, or the city, and what he deemed its corrupting influences, finds its analog in the experience of eremitic flight into the Nitiran desert. The revival of city life in the West brings about a similar spiritual dynamic in the desire for ascetic struggle in the face of city life, much like Roman Alexandria, impelling Anthony to seek spiritual struggle in desolate and lonely places.
The strict discipline of a monastery would be Romuald’s initial response to the urban pressures, especially those produced by his own father, Sergius. Sergius is described by St. Peter Damian as a man given over to worldly affairs, violent of temper, even to the point of engaging in a feud where he kills his own brother. This fratricidal event (all over a piece of property) proves to be a key turning point in the life of Romuald, since it propels him into the beginning of a life of penitence through monastic flight.
He takes flight to the monastery of San Apollinare in Classe in order to “spend forty days in mourning and tears” for the crimes inflicted by his father.
It is after this forty-day period of self-imposed penance that he considers leaving the world for the monastery, and would do so immediately, if he were only to see the martyr. St. Apollinarus appear in plain sight. The martyr obliges, appearing twice, thus indicating to Romuald the life of self-martyrdom that he was to undertake. He starts a three-year novitiate at San Apollinare, where he would take on the hardships of constant prayer and work, only to find that the way of life of the monks was too lax, and begins to call the monks on their laziness, invoking the Rule of St. Benedict. It is not long before he incurs the ire of the monks, who want to murder him. The murder attempt fails through a miraculous intervention, and his desire for perfection becomes more intense as time goes on. A hermit by the name Marin, who lives near Venice, would take him under his direction. From that point on, under Marin’s direction, he would learn the art of the eremitic life, leaving his cell a few times for the chanting of the Psalms.
Peter Damian continues this parallel with Anthony in the sense that the farther Romuald would go to live out his life as a hermit, the more followers he would attract. He would set up monasteries based on the strictest observance of the Rule of St. Benedict, and then go on and live in a cell further into the forests of Cuxa in Catalonia. In order to find further seclusion, he would retire to Monte Sitria in 1013, where, like St. Anthony, a number of enthusiastic followers would seek him out. He arranged them into eremitic brotherhoods, and this, for St. Peter Damian, cements the parallel with Anthony:
In truth Romuald, after he had abandoned the Appenine mountains, he ascended Mount Sitria, where he made his abode. We must be exceedingly cautious, however, upon hearing about the holy man having moved around so much, lest we taint his pious work with the vice of levity. For the cause of these moves, without doubt, are due to the fact that wherever this venerable man would go, a large and innumerable number of penitent men would follow. Reason therefore demanded that, once he saw that one place had become full to overflowing, he would put in place a prior, and would hurry off to another place to fill (with the holy discipline).
The desire for solitude is what marks Romuald’s quest for holiness, much as it did for Anthony, but like his Egyptian predecessor, the crowds can’t stay away. The quest for the perfect eremitic life seems to elude him. As much as he seeks solitude, his retirement from “the world” is never that far from urban centers where this “large and innumerable crowd of penitent men” would follow him.
His struggles would be with brothers who would afflict him, instead of demons and wild animals, as with Anthony.
In spite of these hardships arising from rebellious and insolent brothers, he remained in Sitria as a recluse for fourteen years, observing a vow of silence.
The culminating passage, which also cements St. Peter Damian’s analogy with Egyptian Thebaid, occurs in chapter 64, and the parallels for him are obvious:
It was not only in the likeness of the name, but also in the works lived out that made Sitria seem like a second Nitria, inasmuch as all the monks were walking about barefoot, un-groomed, pale and content in all hardship. Truly some behind closed doors seemed so close to death’s door that they seemed already lying in their graves. There no wine was drunk except in the cases of grave illness. Yet why do I speak of the monks, when their servants, those who guarded their sheep, observed the rule of silence, kept each other under discipline, and underwent penance for any idle talk. O golden age of Romuald, which although it did not know the torment of persecution, it nonetheless did not lack for anything in voluntary martyrdom. A golden age, I say, which in the midst of wild beasts in the mountains and forests there was nourished so many citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem.
Peter Damian saw in Romuald a revival of the Desert experience. As Lester Little observes, having drawn from the Desert Fathers, Peter Damian created his own Nitrian desert in the mountains of Sitria.
While the eremitic movement had died out in the Latin West, it did indeed enjoy a revival during the first stages of the urban renaissance of the early eleventh century, to the point that some, like St. Romuald, opted for the life of solitude away from the city, but at a close enough distance to be of some benefit to those who wanted to follow him into that life. This is one response to the urban explosion, which parallels the beginnings of monasticism in the Egyptian Thebaid. Others took a more Pachomian approach to city life, choosing to make of it the arena of their own spiritual struggle. This is where the reformed Augustinian canons come in, and Norbert of Xanten will be their most energetic reformer.
By the time we come upon St. Norbert of Xanten in the early twelfth-century, we find an urban culture that is already well developed. In addition to this, a well-organized program of monastic reform, undertaken by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercians, and St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusians, had streamlined monastic practice to such an extent that they made the liturgy and monastic holdings a little leaner, with a stricter adherence to the rule of St. Benedict, and with a tendency to escape city life. But then there were other groups who responded to the urban explosion by functioning as ascetic strugglers within it, rather than fleeing from it. Norbert and his Canons Regular would constitute such a movement.
Having led a worldly life as a subdeacon and canon of St. Victor’s in Xanten, Norbert spent more time as a courtier at the courts of Archbishop Frederick of Cologne and the Emperor Henry V than in the ascetic arts of prayer and fasting. This would all change after a life-threatening thunderstorm caused him to rethink the course of his life. He refused the bishopric of Cambrai and retired to the abbey of Siegburg near Cologne, where he would perfect the arts of the ascetic life
. The kind of progress he makes is in harmony with the kind of life that constitutes one of great ascetic feats, and the abbeys of Siegburg and Rolduc would be the kind of “schools” of holiness where he would learn to live that life. The hermit Ludolph, the “lover of poverty,” would also be a good teacher in the ways of ascetic holiness, teaching him the way of “temperance.” Apparently, Ludolph’s strict ascetic life would draw fire from “perverse priests and clerics” that were not keen on any kind of monastic reform. But Norbert would persevere in his task, inquiring into the “life and customs of anyone living under a rule-monks, hermits, and recluses,” wishing to follow after their examples. Norbert, at this stage, is the ascetic novice, building up for himself a reservoir of monastic experience that would serve him well as an itinerant preacher, combining coenobitic and eremitic lifestyles. Of course, like all monastic reformers, and perhaps reminiscent of the troubles that Benedict experienced with the monks of Vicovaro, Ludolph and Norbert would also experience the same sorts of trials at the hands of their opponents. As ascetics, this came with the territory, as a form of spiritual martyrdom. Being made a priest in 1115, and taking on formal monastic vows, he returned to his brother canons in Xanten in order to reform their way of life. The reaction was swift, and immediate. At the Synod of Fritzlar in 1118, he was interrogated.
The main focus of their attacks consisted of 1) his apparent lack of authorization to preach, 2) his wearing of the religious habit while “in the world,” and 3) his wearing of sheepskin while preaching. In other words, why had he taken up extreme ascetic practices while in the world? His response to these interrogations would set the tone for much of his ministry and dedication to religious poverty. Reminding them of the definition of pure religion in St. James’ epistle, he defends his way of life by arguing that to “visit the orphans and widows in their tribulation,” and to “keep oneself pure from this world” are what constituted a proper religious life. To be “in the world, but not of it” forms the basis of his approach to the ascetic life as he was living it as an itinerant preacher. This would be expressed outwardly in his manner of dress, imitating St. John the Baptist who would also be known as the patron saint of monks. The ascetic thrust of Norbert’s itinerant preaching puts him in the company of St. John the Baptist, and perhaps even the prophet Elijah. This, at least, is the picture that his hagiographer draws, and with good effect.
The Synod of Fritzlar was a major milestone in the direction that St. Norbert would take his reforms of the monastic life. His brother canons made it clear they wanted nothing to do with his reforms. This would propel him to the life of an itinerant preacher, a life that would make him sell the benefices he held while under Archbishop Frederick of Cologne, as well as other houses he held as hereditary possessions, keeping only his priestly vestments, and then going out “on his pilgrimage in the name of the Lord.”
At Castle Huy, he fulfills his vow of poverty by distributing silver and other possessions to the poor, and “leaving behind all his temporal possessions, and clad only in a woolen tunic and mantle, barefoot and with his two companions,” he sets out for St. Gilles for the remainder of the bitter winter.
It is in this manner that Norbert presents himself to Pope Gelasius II in the monastery of St. Gilles in order to receive absolution for his former way of life, and having received two sacramental orders at the same time. The Pope’s impression of Norbert is more than favorable. He desires that he remain with him, but St. Norbert, explaining his intentions and desires to the Pope, receives permission to preach “anywhere the Pope confirmed in writing.”
This papal permission would be put to good use: he sets out for Orleans “trodding barefoot through the cold ice, deep snow up to his knees.” Arriving at Valenciennes on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, he sets out to preach throughout the town.
The ascetic endeavor of walking barefoot through the snow, and his meager manner of dress during the harsh winter, must have given Norbert’s preaching an extra air of spiritual insight to his audience, since the citizens of Valenciennes not only listened, but received his preaching quite favorably. Asking him to stay and rest, he stayed “against his will,” given the illness of his three companions, who ultimately died on the octave of Easter. Norbert was now free to go about preaching under papal mandate throughout the towns and booming cities of northern France. But before he sets out from Valenciennes, he meets Burchard, bishop of Cambrai. Norbert, with his “bare frozen feet and rough clothing,” makes an immediate impression on the bishop, especially as he recognizes him from the days in the court of Emperor Henry V, and recounts how he refused the bishopric of Cambrai for the life he was leading now. The bishop’s attendant, Hugh of Fosse, was moved by Norbert’s story, and wished a similar life of an itinerant ascetic. After a brief illness, Norbert allowed Hugh to accompany him, and now Hugh had the opportunity to travel with a man who was building up a reputation for ascetic feats “on the road
.” Here the author represents Norbert and his companion Hugh as ascetics cut from the same cloth as the traditional solitaries and monks of traditional monasticism, but at the same time taking their ascetic battles into the streets, villages and castles, bringing “reconciliation,” and trusting God for all of their necessities. This last item especially underscores the ascetic thrust of their task, as renunciation is a key virtue in any life of spiritual struggle. The impression he makes as he travels throughout the cities and towns in his preaching ministry on the townspeople would leave no room for doubt about what he is all about: the preaching of an ascetic focus on heaven, a singularity of focus that removed one’s attention from earthly to heavenly matters. This message (at least insofar as St. Norbert’s hagiographer was concerned) was very well received. This following of the “Gospel mandate” would certainly set him up as an alter Christus, or at least an alter apostolus. Norbert’s hagiographer cements this image of the longsuffering apostolic ascetic preacher at the end of chapter six. He is a man who, after being asked to give a word of exhortation, is nonetheless attacked and mocked by the hecklers in his audience. This does not faze him, however, as he continues to “perform the work of God eagerly…practice(ing) fasting and vigils…diligent in work, pleasing in word, pleasant to see, kind toward simple people, stern against the enemies of the Church…” The rest of the narrative is punctuated with accounts of Norbert going barefoot to the Council of Rheims to see Pope Callistus,the offer of an abbacy over the Canons Regular of Laon, who subsequently rejected his abbacy because he insisted on their being “imitators of Christ” and accept poverty, and his confrontation with the devil. While the Canons of Laon would not adhere to his discipline, many in Cologne, having heard him, “became imitators of the poverty of Christ.” With thirty companions, he would form a community of priestly ascetics in Premontre who would eventually become the Premonstratensian Canons, an order that would reform the order of the Augustinian Canons. Eventually, Norbert would be offered, and accept (albeit with great protest), the post of Archbishop of Magdeburg in 1125. How would he live out his ascetic lifestyle as a hierarch? We come, in the life of Norbert, to the same dilemma that faced John the Almsgiver, Martin of Tours and Gregory the Great (or at least, the dilemma faced by their hagiographers). It is in this capacity that Norbert would find the greatest spiritual contest he would encounter, one that begins almost immediately after his election as Bishop of Magdeburg. After his reception at the church, he proceeds to the palace, only to be rebuffed at the door by the porter who, upon seeing his shabby cloak, thinks him a common beggar, and not the new bishop. Norbert’s response is to put him at ease by reminding him that he “see(s) me with a clearer eye than those who force me to this palace to which I, poor and simple, ought not to be raised.” The ascetic value of poverty is unmistakable, given that Norbert, in spite of his election to the dignity of bishop, is esteemed in this narrative for his shabby demeanor, immediately identifying him as one who will continue to pursue the ascetic life even in his new role as bishop. Unlike Anthony, however, whose contests were directly with the devil and his hellish minions, Norbert would face angry noblemen from whom he would take church possessions. Indeed, as the narrative suggests, this was not a setback for him; quite the contrary, it was an opportunity to show his spiritual resolve. In the words of Norbert’s hagiographer, moments like these “afforded them the opportunity to malign him,” and to those who had at one time acclaimed him he would now be “hateful.” While Norbert’s biographer would not come out and say it, the identification with Christ here is unmistakable, setting Norbert up as one in solidarity with Christ, and with the monk-ascetics who sought spiritual struggle with the devil, or at least with his unearthly (and in this case, quite earthly) minions. As a result of his “fall from grace” among his former supporters, his greatest contest would await him, first in the form of a would-be assassin, and then in a revolt that almost ended his life. In the first case, Norbert, now a bishop, was receiving penitents for confession when one dressed in the garb of a penitent approached him. Norbert gave orders not to let him in, but as the knocking on the door became more and more persistent, the porters let him in. Norbert commanded him not to approach, and ordered him to be stripped, revealing a dagger. The young man fell to his feet, trembling, and reporting the names of those who had given him the task of assassinating the bishop. At this point, Norbert’s hagiographer makes an obvious connection with Christ (and, by extension, the martyrs): “The just Norbert, however, calmly responded that it was no wonder that the ancient enemy was preparing these snares for him, since on this same most sacred night he persuaded the Jews to proceed to the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.”The Christ-like significance is not lost to the anonymous hagiographer: “Norbert was happy that he was found worthy to share in the Lord’s passion, especially on that day when mercy is given to those without hope, pardon to sinners, and life to the dead.” The other incident occurred after his return from the Council of Rheims (1131). Something was afoul at the cathedral church in Madgebug, requiring a new consecration. The city elders were not happy with this, arguing vehemently against it, since “the consecration ought not to be repeated since it had been celebrated on the authority of many kings and bishops.” Norbert would not be persuaded, refusing to celebrate mass there until “the anathema (was) removed from the church.” As he proceeded to consecrate the church again, a tumult arose outside, prompted by a rumor that “the archbishop had smashed the altars, opened the sanctuary, broken up the tombs and reliquaries and laid them aside for himself, then under the darkness of night decided to flee with all of these things as well as the treasures of the church.” This put St. Norbert’s life in immediate danger, and those with him were terrified. Norbert, however, showing characteristic ascetic calm, “was undaunted and wanted to go out to the people,” but was bidden not to do so by his companions, who subsequently sequestered him into a high fortification built by the emperor Otto, where they await what seems to be their impending deaths. Norbert, at peace in the midst of this maelstrom, celebrates solemn Matins for the feast of St. Paul. Here the anonymous author has achieved, in two strokes, two very significant associations: Christ and St. Paul, for in the first instance, the author sees an intimate identification with Christ, in that the conspiracy to assassinate Norbert occurred on Maundy Thursday, the day when Christ instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice, and subsequently turned over to the Jews to be crucified. The second instance occurs during this great revolt, on the feast of St. Paul, intimately linking Norbert to the great apostle and martyr, who knew his share of sufferings for Christ’s sake. Norbert, the great ascetic and reformer of the canons regular, has achieved what few hermits, monks and ascetics have, and the anonymous author will capitalize on this for all its worth. In this crisis, where Norbert nearly loses his life, he shows an ascetic nerve, “joyfully await(ing) the martyr’s palm.” In the end, he shows a Christ-like forbearance, forgiving his persecutors, and is reinstated with all honors to his episcopal dignity. The author rounds out his life by putting him squarely in the camp of Pope Innocent II against the Emperor Lothair during a scuffle over the right of investiture, but at the same time, imparting healing to the wounded emperor. The martyrological aspect is taken up with full force by the author of the B Life of St. Norbert, often calling him a “martyr” after having survived the uprising of Madgeburg. The author of the B Life is also intent on drawing the parallels with Christ that author of the A Life leaves mostly understated, making comparisons between St. Norbert and Christ more explicit. The B Life goes into a long chapter on why saints must suffer. It is structured in such a way as to constitute a moral/theological treatise on suffering, beginning with the need for “a rational creature to understand the reasons for those things that happen,” good and bad. Then he show sthe two ways of experiencing and knowing: the way of cognition, which he characterizes as the means by which “the interior reasoning of the soul is fed,” and “the effect, by the use of which the exterior sense of the body is aided.” This results in a “double perception of things”: bodily and noetic. In other words, those who act rationally know that even the trials and tribulations happen by providence, and therefore there is a reason for them. There is no room for gratuitous suffering for the author of the B Life, especially for a saint. For him, this differentiates Norbert from the rest of his companions during the uprising of Magdeburg, seeming almost stoic in the face of certain death. He was the model of the calm ascetic, who took patiently everything that came to him, because in him, reason was supreme, resting in the knowledge that what was happening to him came from God to test his resolve, his commitment to become an alter Christus. It is as though all the ascetic struggles he went through to found the order of Premontre prepared him for this contest. For the author of Life B, Norbert is the ultimate ascetic, given his pursuit of ascetic sanctity even as a bishop. Norbert’s desire for complete poverty finds expression in his statement about the “nakedness” of Christ, as he directs his disciples: nudus nudum Christum sequi (be naked, following the naked Christ). This is what Fr. Andre Vauchez highlights as the new gospel spirituality of the age, where “(t)he central place held by Christ in the twelfth-century was expressed. On the level of spirituality, by the greater value afforded to the New Testament.” He continues: “A more exacting fidelity to the word of God led the best minds beyond a moral and discipiinary notion of the apostolic life.” And yet, we must ask, is this urban spirituality, of which Norbert was an active participant, really “new”? What makes it new? Fr. Vauchez offers an evangelical explanation, emphasizing the fact that it was motivated by a desire to imitate the gospel poverty of Christ. Is this any different than the encomium which Evagrius Ponticus, nine-hundred years before, sings of holy poverty as “a fruit of love and a cross of life, a life free of suffering, a treasure free of envy…the practice of the Gospels”? With Romuald and Norbert, we have, within a space of over one hundred years, two responses to the challenges of the new urban culture: eremitic flight (Romuald) and ascetic engagement (Norbert). Both men sought a life of poverty and ascetic struggle, and while one found inspiration in his reading of the eremitic fathers of the Thebaid, the other found ways to channel those same impulses within city walls, first as a reformer of the Canons Regular, and then as Archbishop of Madgeburg. In both cases, the desire for a life of ascetic struggle and discipline was the same, but took on different contexts. Both of these contexts can be called “spiritual deserts,” whether the arena be Mount Sitria or the city of Madgeburg, where Norbert took a decidedly more “Pachomian” approach-i.e. living out the ascetic life, alone or in a brotherhood, in or near the city.
The question now becomes how all of these elements of the urban ascetic movements are present in the life and work of St. Francis of Assisi, and how his two biographers-Thomas of Celano and St. Bonaventure-perceived the nature of his ministry. It will be the task of the next chapter to examine Francis’ own perceptions of his ministry, and how they line up with received traditions and pieties from the past.
