Wandering Holy Men and their Conflicts

For those who, as I noted on Monday, have begun their time in the Lenten desert, the themes of conflict, battle, and asceticism will be foremost in mind. Those also happen to be the focus of a recent book: The Wandering Holy Man: The Life of Barsauma, Christian Asceticism, and Religious Conflict in Late Antique Palestine, eds. Johannes Hahn and Volker Menze (University of California Press, 2020), 324pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Barsauma was a fifth-century Syrian ascetic, archimandrite, and leader of monks, notorious for his extreme asceticism and violent anti-Jewish campaigns across the Holy Land. Although Barsauma was a powerful and revered figure in the Eastern church, modern scholarship has widely dismissed him as a thug of peripheral interest. Until now, only the most salacious bits of the Life of Barsauma—a fascinating collection of miracles that Barsauma undertook across the Near East—had been translated. This pioneering study includes the first full translation of the Life and a series of studies by scholars employing a range of methods to illuminate the text from different angles and contexts. This is the authoritative source on this influential figure in the history of the church and his life, travels, and relations with other religious groups.