Sleep and the Desert Fathers

JOHN WORTLEY 21 SLEEPAND THE DESERT FATHERS John Wortley . . . Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast . . . (Macbeth 2.2.36–39) Most people would wholly concur with Shakespeare's fine sentiments. Many would consider sleep to be not only one of the great blessings of this life; they would also count it a necessary blessing. A variety of recent articles have signaled the harmful effects of attaining less than the appropriate amount of sleep; indeed, the deleterious consequences of sleep deprivation are now well recognized.The Desert Fathers, however, saw sleep in a very different light; for them sleep was not so much a blessing as a painful necessity, something they both resented and resisted. Athanasius the Great says of Antony: "When he was about to eat or sleep or take care of other physical necessity, he would feel ashamed, reflecting on the brevity of life" (VA 45.2).1 Presumably Antony was ashamed because he regarded the need for sleep (and of the other physical consolations) as a mark of weakness that ought to be overcome. Poemen2 went a little further: "These three injurious factors [traumata] I am unable to suppress: food, clothing and sleep. But we can partially suppress them" (Poemen 185). Thus an important element in the life of the primitive monk was his attempt to suppress his physical needs, i.e. to reduce his dependence on food, clothing, shelter, and sleep to the absolute basic minimum at which life could continue. We are told that, very early in his career, Antony was struggling to minimize the amount of that sleep of which he was so ashamed: "He kept such lengthy vigils that he would often pass the entire night John Wortley was a professor of medieval history (University of Manitoba) and an Anglican priest. In more recent years his work focused largely on the "sayings" of the Desert Fathers and Christian monasticism. He died on August 22, 2019. 1 There is a key to the references at the end of this article. 2 Poemen occupies by far the largest place in the collections of sayings. About three hundred items either quote what he is alleged to have said or make mention of him in some way. There appear to have been two fathers of this name: one who had known Antony (d. 356), another who was involved in the migration to Terenouthis after the devastation of Scêtê in 407. 22 ABR 71:1 – MARCH 2020 without sleep. Doing this not once but many times, he was marveled at" (VA 7.6). Keeping vigil [agrypnia] would become a very familiar practice for the monks, who firmly believed vigil to be a powerful weapon against the forces of evil (VA 32.2). But it would be misleading to suggest that it was any new thing, for Antony himself had acquired the practice from others: This is how Antony conducted himself, and he was loved by everyone. He went to those who devoted themselves to ascetic discipline and sincerely submitted himself to them and closely observed the excellence of each person's zeal and ascetic discipline. He observed the graciousness of one and the intense prayer of another; he meditated on one's lack of anger and another's love for humanity; he came to understand how one passed the night in vigil [agrypnia] and another studied the Bible. He marveled at one's patient endurance and another's fasting and sleeping on the ground [chameunia] (VA 4.1). If we are "to understand how one passed the night in vigil" [agrypnia] the answer is to be found in the Gospels where the following charge to his disciples is attributed to Jesus: See that you keep awake [agrypneite, Vg vigilate] for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake [grêgorein]. Therefore stay awake [grêgorein, vigilate] for...

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