on monks

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on monks

Kassia and the Meaning of Monachos: A Philosophy of Monastic Life

In her gnomic verses, Concerning Monachoi, Kassia meditates on the monachos—the monk, the one who lives a single-thought life. Her opening words, “Monachos is having only yourself. Monachos is a single-thought life,” announce both the theme and rhythm of her philosophy. Concerning Monachoi, is a meditation not on the institution of monasticism but on its interior grammar—its struggle toward unity, silence, and divine contemplation.

Her vision aligns with the monastic ideals, but her tone is distinct. Unique among Byzantine writings, her gnomic verses distinguish her from authors such as Ioannes or the Florilegium Marcianorum (see Zugravu 2013, 90). Whereas those texts often stress obedience and detachment as moral imperatives, Kassia’s reflections move toward what might be called a theology of interior music—a life tuned to divine rhythm. As Gheorghita Zugravu aptly notes, while echoes of John Klimakos’s Ladder of Divine Ascent can be heard in her verses, Kassia’s reflection is not derivative: it redefines monasticism as both spiritual discipline and poetic vision, addressing not only monks but also the aristocracy of ninth-century Byzantium. (2013, 90)

Paradox and Purity

Thematically, Kassia’s text unfolds within the long genealogy of Byzantine asceticism, but reframes it through a poetic lens. The monachos is defined by paradox: “order and a state of bodilessness achieved in a material and unpurged body.” The body remains, but disciplined; matter persists, but purified through restraint. Kassia’s tone is more lyrical than schematic. The monachos is both “walking corpse” and “spiritual lyre”, a living embodiment of contradiction where renunciation becomes praise.

Her insistence that the monachos is “without curiosity,” “a non-wandering eye”, and “a completely shut door” invokes both physical and doctrinal enclosure. In the wake of the iconoclastic controversy, these verses acquire polemical undertones: “a firmly fixed mind” and “a non-wandering eye” can also be read as injunctions to resist heresy and remain faithful to Orthodox teaching (see Bentzen 1994). Kassia’s asceticism thus carries an epistemological dimension—control of vision and thought as fidelity to divine order.

Beyond Solitude: Light and Pedagogy

Kassia's monachos is not only withdrawn but luminous: “a lamp bringing light to all”, “a guide to those led astray”, “a banisher of demons”. The imagery situates the monk as a social exemplar and here Kassia subtly expands the function of the monastic beyond self-purification to moral pedagogy—a “support of the unsupported” an “established book showing the model to be imitated”. The monachos, though solitary, becomes a communal text, written in life rather than ink.

In Byzantine spirituality, monastic life was often described as “angelic”—a way of living beyond the body while still in the flesh (Harvey 1990, 16). Kassia echoes this ideal but reconfigures it: “Monachos is order and a state of bodilessness achieved in a material and unpurged body.” The paradox is deliberate. She situates holiness within the tension of embodiment rather than in its denial. Between death and song, Kassia finds a metaphoric space where renunciation becomes expression—a poetics of asceticism that transforms deprivation into praise.

Kassia’s philosophical reach is apparent in her paradoxical anthropology: the monk is “an earthly angel” ,“a godly man”, and “a house of God, a royal throne, palace of the Holy Trinity” . The monastic self thus becomes both instrument and dwelling, a space where the divine plays and abides (see Talbot 1996). This fusion of the human and angelic echoes thw patristic concept of the “angelic life” but carries a distinctly feminine inflection. For Kassia, as a nun and abbess, the angelic state is not flight from the body but disciplined embodiment—a theology of presence within enclosure. Her monachos “struggles with the flesh” not to despise it, but to free it from the passions that distort divine likeness.

The ascetic struggle, then, becomes intellectual as well as corporeal: “Know the Scriptures and do not treat them cursorily”, she writes, warning against shallow or heretical readings. This exhortation gestures toward her resistance to iconoclastic literalism—a subtle theological stance disguised within ascetic discourse. The monk’s purity of mind mirrors the exegete’s purity of reading.

Rhythm as Pedagogy

Kassia’s language is deliberately economical. The repetition of monachos—often without verbs—creates an incantatory rhythm. This is not didactic command but interior persuasion, avoiding uthoritarianism or the moralizing lectures of later ascetical treatises. Rather than issuing rules, she composes a pedagogy of rhythm: the moral ideal becomes embodied through repetition and musicality. The homophony of her Greek, rich in short o vowels, forms what Bentzen calls “a rhythmic force espousing the presence of melodic lines” (Bentzen 1994, 131). Kassia’s work is also musical in a theological sense, recalling the theomusicology of Byzantine hymnography—a harmony between body, scripture, and divine praise. The monastic life thus becomes a cosmic symphony—an “earthly angel” who participates in divine praise. This intertwining of lyric and ascetic registers situates her at the intersection of poetics, theology, and pedagogy (see McKinnon 1987).

In the closing lines—“Monachos is a friend of fasting, enemy of pleasure. Monachos is hatred of the passions, love of the good. Monachos is the pride of the Christians”—Kassia condenses centuries of ascetical tradition into rhythmic formula. Her text is both rule and song, both discipline and delight. As Derek Krueger (2004) has argued, Kassia’s authorship exemplifies how holiness in Byzantium could be written, sung, and lived at once. Her “single-thought life” thus stands not only as a spiritual ideal but as a philosophy of writing itself: concentrated, rhythmic, and oriented entirely toward the divine.

The Solitary and the Single-Thought

As modern scholars have noted, Byzantine women’s monastic writing was not merely devotional but deeply intellectual. [1] Kassia’s prose, like her hymns, is an act of theological authorship: she writes herself into the continuum of ascetic thought traditionally dominated by men. Her description of the monachos as “a completely shut door” could also be read as a figure for female authorship in Byzantium—withdrawn from worldly circulation, yet sustaining a powerful, luminous presence.

Ultimately, Concerning Monachoi reads as both definition and self-portrait. Kassia’s monastic voice, formed by enclosure and contemplation, opens onto a broader reflection on spiritual authorship. To be monachos is to live as a single-thought life, a life of unbroken attention—a life, perhaps, much like Kassia’s own: disciplined, lyrical, and solitary in its devotion.

Notes

[1] See amongst others, Bentzen 1994, Tsironis 2003, Krueger 2004, Garland 2006, Harrison 2010, Cameron 2017.

References

Bentjen, J. A. (1994) A Study of the Liturgical and Secular Works of Blesses Kassia, Byzantine Nun and Poet. MA Thesis, University of New England, Australia.

Cameron, Averil. (2017) Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium, ed. with Niels Gaul (Milton Park: Routledge, 2017)

Harrison, Nonna Verna. (2010) God’s Many-Splendored Image: Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (1990) Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Krueger, Derek. (2004) Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East. University of Pennsylvania Press.

McKinnon, James. (1987) Music in Early Christian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Talbot, Alice-Mary (1996) Ed. Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

Tsironis Niki (2003) “The body and the senses in the work of Cassia the Hymnographer: literary trends in the iconoclastic period”, Byzantina Symmeikta, 16, pp. 139‑157.

Zugravu, Gheorghita (2013) Kassia the Melodist. And the Making of a Byzantine Hymnographer, PhD thesis, Columbia University, USA.

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