Legal Acrobats in 10th/16th Century Cairo

This piece was written in response to "Kramer vs. Kramer in a 10th/16th Century Egyptian Court: Post-Formative Jurisprudence Between Exigency & Law" by Sherman A. Jackson

            After having gone through a child custody dispute myself recently, I found it very interesting to read that even in early Islam, there was disagreement regarding bias toward the father or mother. It was also very interesting to read about how the 10^th/16^th century Maliki judge and jurist, Badr al-Din al-Qarafi, had to perform legal and psychological acrobats in an attempt to present a convincing argument in favor of the mothers in regard to premature forfeiture on the fathers’ part.

            Al-Qarafi’s opinion on this matter seems to have, on the surface, gone against the grain in the Maliki school of thought that he was part of. As Maliki law was cumulative and could not abolish any earlier rules, he had to find ways to argue in favor of his opinion by finding logic from earlier rulings or analogies that worked in his favor. This included not only legal maneuvers, but also playing on the emotions of the men he would be up against when presenting his argument, by pointing out what they might have to lose if they disagreed with his line of reasoning. He formed his arguments to lead the audience into agreeing with him by answering questions and opposition arguments before they could come and essentially “tricking” the audience into agreeing with him by way of an analogy that hit too close to home.

            I found that his methods seemed convincing enough to me and that he was quite clever to hide his opposition to the normative train of thought about the subject in a cloak of Maliki mnemonics. It would have made it difficult indeed to call him out as a rebel when his logic came from the school itself. It also seemed very apparent that he knew his audience well enough to know what psychological and social triggers to pull. I have always said one of the first rules of debate (or when constructing a convincing argument) is to know your opponent. If you know how your opponent thinks or feels, you will have a better time knowing what buttons to push and how to word your argument effectively. It seems to me, although he may not have enjoyed much in the way of fruits of his labor, that he was a pretty good legal architect/acrobat.  

Written for my Modern Muslim Thought class on 1/23/2012 

Biblical Wisdom

Many people read the Bible in an effort to understand their life; to find answers to their questions about life and perhaps the problems they are facing.  Ancient holy books, like the Torah and the Bible, have been considered not only history books by their readers, but also guidebooks to life and how to live it.  They are instruction books to life and encourage the reader to remember that God is the one in control and that to revere God is the beginning of wisdom (Journey).

In the Hebrew Bible, there is a section of writings that are considered wisdom literature. They are Proverbs, the Book of Job, and Ecclesiastes.  All three writings try to tell the reader how he/she should live their life. Proverbs is a book of writings credited to Solomon. It is essentially an anthology of sayings and poems that make observations about life or instruct the reader in the forms of advice and admonitions (Journey).  Proverbs gives dual choices that are rather black and white to deal with most issues that come up in life. The dualistic nature of proverbs is evident not only in their meaning, but also in their structure, where wisdom and folly are often contrasted within the same short sentence: “Those who are hot-tempered stir up strife, but those who are slow to anger calm contention” (Proverbs 15:18).  The wise person follows the wise choice, and the fool goes astray.  Not only is choice in life simplified to two choices for every question, but it suggested that divine justice is always served.  The wise person is rewarded and the fool is punished; therefore, be wise (choose rightly): “Therefore walk in the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the just. For the upright will abide in the land, and the innocent will remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be roosted out of it” (Proverbs 2:20-20).

Proverbs gives the reader the sense that God is control of all things and that the meaning of life is to be good, choose wisely, and you will be rewarded. The flip side of the idea is that any wrong against you will be meted out in punishment of the fool.  The wisdom to some might give the idea that if they do good deeds, they will always be rewarded; but one of the main concepts that is strung through Proverbs is that reverence of God is of the most importance. Without that you have no wisdom (Journey). The other wisdom writings, the book of Job and Ecclesiastes, are not as optimistic about life and divine justice.

The Book of Job is a writing that is structured as a poetic drama enveloped within a folk tale. This book might ultimately tell the reader to have faith in God, no matter what, because the reader cannot possibly understand the ways of God. Either God’s ways are outside comprehension or we are simply unable to know or understand all the facts. The story is roughly an account of what a righteous man, Job, is put through because God took up a wager with one of his court, the accuser. The accuser, or Satan, suggested that Job was only thankful and reverent to God because he had abundance in life. He wagered that if Job was afflicted, he would no longer remain so pious. So, taking Satan’s bet, God allowed Satan to afflict Job and bring suffering upon him in rapid succession.  Job knows that he has been wise and good and is perplexed with his sudden calamity. He knows that he is righteous, yet his suffering went against divine justice.  He essentially asks, “why me?” while lamenting.

Many people throughout the ages and into the future have and will identify with Job, asking the same, “why me?” when finding themselves in what they perceive as unjust situations. Stricken with cancer even though you lived a healthy life? You may ask, “why me?” Lost your job even though you were an exemplary employee? Again, “why me?” The Book of Job tries to explain to the reader that not only can we not begin to understand God, but that also, humanity is not the center of the universe. Human justice is not necessarily of God’s concern, but our own (Journey). It does give a bit of reflection to the idea of the righteous being rewarded, however, as Job is rewarded doubly after passing this test of his love for God. It gives hope to the sufferer that the reward will come as long as he/she is faithful and patient.  Again, we hear the idea that wisdom begins with reverence for God.

Ecclesiastes is yet another writing in the wisdom literature. It is perhaps less optimistic than Job in that it writes off life as essentially meaningless and the pursuit for wisdom is futile. There is no divine justice as it seems the wicked and the good both die in the end and in life the wicked are often treated well, and the good treated wickedly (Journey and Ecclesiastes). This writing is also attributed to Solomon, but may have been written by an old sage (perhaps an old disillusioned Solomon?). It gives the idea to the reader that it is best not to question the way of the world or the ways of God, as god is inscrutable and all else is vanity and emptiness. It suggests to the reader to essentially, eat drink and be merry, for life in this world is short, so enjoy it as it comes, moment by moment (Journey).

It doesn’t remove the reader from God, but basically reiterates the idea from Job that one should have faith in God that all is as it should be, and that he/she cannot possibly fathom the reasons. It suggests that we should try to find the good in every situation – for how else can one enjoy life moment by moment unless he/she looks for the good in that moment? It gives the reader the sense to persevere, not because we will be rewarded like Job, but because we can’t completely understand what God may be up to. The book finishes with a touch that may have been added by an editor to reign in the work to include God and retribution a bit more: “The end of the matter; all has been heard, fear God, and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). Again we hear the echo of the reverence of God being the beginning of wisdom. 

Written 12/5/11 for my Intro to Biblical Literature class

Ancient Arabian Civilization

In The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington defines Civilization as “a cultural identity”, specifically, “the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity have short of that distinguishes humans from other species. “ (Huntington 23-24) The author of Arabia and the Arabs: From the bronze age to the coming of Islam, Robert G. Hoyland, essentially agrees – “There is some awareness that [the Arab people] may not all have possessed the same racial origins, but none doubted that they had come to form a single ethnic (socio-cultural) community.” (Hoyland 229). Before we can discuss how a people as diverse as those who lived in ancient Arabia can end up having a single cultural identity, we must first look at who these people were.

In Hoyland’s book, Ancient Arabia is demarked as the land including the Arabian Peninsula, stretching northward through the Syrian Desert. This area is approximately equivalent to one-quarter of the continental US. This large piece of land contained diverse people with distinctive histories and traditions due to their original isolation from each other (because of the vast deserts) and due to their closeness to different nations and cultures near to each corner of Arabia (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, etc.) (Hoyland 5). Because of the lands great deserts and lack of resources, such as the bare necessities: food and water, many Arab tribes were nomadic in nature. In fact, even the term “Arab” is used in biblical texts, describing these nomadic people, and was likely used by these nomads themselves as a way to describe themselves separate from others. Those that were sedentary generally existed near the boundaries to other nations or along habitable shorelines.


Because of the natural resource issue and weather tendencies, Arab civilizations first appeared where resources were more abundant and living conditions more stable and comfortable – in the South and East ends of Arabia. The people living on the east side of Arabia had much contact with and thus influence from Mesopotamia and trade and thus show up in historical writings first (Hoyland 10). Later, due to trade and military conquests by outside parties (Byzantine Empire, Sasanian Empire, Rome, and Iran to name a few), Arabia opened up and forced Arabian people to take part in world power games. What brought these people of diverse backgrounds together was namely language, but also their military prowess and religious ideas, the last of which became more important post-Islam (Hoyland 230-246).

Although the Arab people had influences exerted over them from neighbors via trade and greedy empires, language was their glue of unity and it primarily identified them from the others. The southern Arabs were noted as the “Arabic-speaking Arabs” by historians and it is likely a mass migration of these southern Arabs that brings the language to the rest of the land (Hoyland 233-236). Arabic is written in a script that has its origins in the Nabataean alphabet, which now, post transformations, constitutes the Arabic script. Although documents describing the history of Arabia are rare, the oral tradition of Arab poetic mastery is where much information about the history of these people is derived. One of the features of Arabic that united the people of this vast land was the ability for the diction of the poetry to be understood by anyone speaking Arabic, regardless of dialect. Their poetry was a way to write the past, especially for the nomadic tribes, who likely used oral traditions versus written as a way to pass along information (Hoyland 242). Many of the poems celebrated their military prowess, which was another part of the cultural glue.

Although many nomadic Arabs aided the entering empires with their battle skill, they still seemed to hold their own identity as Arabs. But, because of their military partnerships with these outside forces, they were also influenced by their culture, idea of imperialism, and even religion. Still, an Arab was an Arab. Even the settled Arabs, whether settled due to an abundance of resources, or because of the economic relations with neighboring empires (or conquering empires), they still held their language and historic identity enough to remain Arab first.


Even with the advent of Islam, perhaps because of the advent of Islam, the Arab identity is even stronger. Language again played a very important role of even Islamic “Arab-ness”. There was a lot of upheaval and confusion in the early days of Islam, after Mohammed’s death. It was to the Islamic nomadic Arabs that the scholars turned to in order to sort out the confusion of what laws should be composed and how Islam should be taught. Abu ‘Amr ibn al-‘Ala’ ultimately tied the Arabic language to the study and practice of Islam by promoting “Quranic and grammatical studies” by routinely dispatching “his students to nomad informants to resolve [points] of grammar, to ask about ‘the speech of the nomadic Arabs’… especially elderly sheikhs who had been alive before Islam” (Hoyland 245).

Ancient Arab identity was firmly rooted in language. Even as tribes migrated, settled, and dispersed, language was something they held in common, in opposition to the “others”. Language separated them from the Romans and Iranians, even as imperialism infiltrated their culture. Language tied religion to the identity of ancient Arabs in the early Islamic days. Even now, language plays a huge role in the identity of Muslims, as Arabic is the language of the holy book and prophet. Many non-Arab converts to Islam often adopt an Arabic name in honor of that tie. They will often have a desire to learn Arabic to read the Qur’an and even visit the homeland of the prophet Mohammed. (Hoyland 8)

By this standpoint, Arab civilization fits with Huntington’s definition, as Language is what separates the Arab from the non-Arab, more than anything else, although their cultural and religious traditions often also play a large part. It is even possible to agree with his idea of a “clash of civilizations” with the knowledge that Arabic is becoming less important in a world almost ruled by the English language. Most Arab students learn English early in life, whereas English and other speaking students don’t usually learn Arabic unless it is in relation to Islamic education. Will a war erupt over language? I doubt it. It is more likely that Arabic could be lost to assimilation. Would that change the identity of “Arab”? Likely. What would take its place? Perhaps religion.

Bibliography

Hoyland, Robert G. Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. London: Routledge, 2001. Print.

Huntington, Samuel. The clash of civilizations. Foreign Affairs, 72(3):22-49. 1993.

Written on October 10, 2011 for my Global Studies class, Encountering Differences

The Mission: A Reflection of Two Christian Responses

 

                “The Mission” is a film portraying a conundrum of politics and religion. It takes place in the 1700s in the South American jungle, in territories to be divided between Spain and Portugal. It portrays two Jesuit missions, San Miguel and San Carlos. The San Carlos Mission is above the falls where only Indians live, as it is very remote and difficult to get to. Regardless of the remoteness, the Portuguese want the missions aborted and to take territory over the land so that they can put the Indians into slavery, as they consider them to be “lecherous and lethal animals”. The Spanish agree to this, as although they do not legally recognize slavery, they take advantage of the Portuguese slave trade for their plantations as well (although they do not admit this).

                A Cardinal from Rome is sent to make a decision regarding the life of the missions in the eye of the Church, but the decision has essentially already been made to release the church from pressure from the Portuguese and in an effort to stamp out the Jesuit order. The Cardinal goes through the motions of listening to both sides, listening to a young child sing and asking how the Portuguese could ever see them as animals. The Spaniard speaks up against slavery to which one of the main characters, Rodrigo Mendoza, disputes openly.

                Mendoza is a mercenary and slave trader turned Jesuit priest after he kills his brother in a fit of rage over the fact that he, Philippe, slept with the object of Mendoza’s affection, Carlotta. He is despondent after this act and Father Gabriel, the main Jesuit priest of the San Carlos Mission comes to his rescue and provides a penance for his redemption. Mendoza does not believe he can be redeemed because of who he was and what he had done. They essentially make a wager to prove each other wrong and Mendoza accepts the penance offered: to carry a net full of armor through the jungle to the San Carlos Mission. He almost loses his life on the climb of the cliff face to the mission, but he overcomes and makes it to the top where he near collapses upon the sight of the Indians who he has possibly been involved with their slave trade before. 

            One of the Indians approach him and first puts a knife to his neck, but then, after yelling at him in his foreign language, he is ordered to cut the net from Mendoza, and shoves the bundle into the river below. Mendoza breaks down with emotion, perhaps from the compassion of the Indians, the grace of their forgiveness, and the flow of grief and remorse that he is finally able to let out. Thus, his penance has been served, but he remains with the mission and eventually asks to become a Jesuit priest.

                When Mendoza confronts the Spaniard as a liar in front of the cardinal and others, he starts a controversy regarding the Jesuit order, thus strengthening the possibility that the missions will be severed from the church and the order to be eliminated. He is ordered to apologize and speaks to Father Gabriel about this.

                Father Gabriel is a peaceful man, a Jesuit priest, who in the beginning of the film befriends the Indians above the falls with music. He is finally successful in founding a mission for the Indians above the falls, in which the Indians are offered sanctuary from slavery and deprivation. The Indians come to the mission freely and are welcome to the conversion to Christianity and live as good Christians in their community. Father Gabriel preaches love and labor, as the Jesuit order is known for, along with being known for obeying. When he is asked by the cardinal if Mendoza will apologize, he confirms it and orders Mendoza to do so.

                Mendoza apologizes in a flamboyant way, making his distaste for the action known, but yet apologizes as ordered. One can tell that he is chomping at the bit to do something to protect the mission that has redeemed him and accepted him. He was taught to love the Indians and has felt their love for him. In his mercenary way, he wants to protect that Christian community and their right to exist in much the same way as the crusaders of days past. To him, the fight to protect the mission is a justified one, not a sin, although he must break his vows to take up the sword again. He asks Father Gabriel’s blessing, but he replies that he will not bless him, but if he (Mendoza) is right, then God will bless him. Mendoza goes out to defend the mission and dies doing so.

                Father Gabriel keeps with his vow to peace and faith and against violence, and in the impending raid; he set about having mass and carries the host and the service out of the mission in the face of the attacking enemy. The Indians with him sing and walk tall and strong in procession as they are ruthlessly cut down by the attackers. He keeps to his vows to the end and is martyred.

                Neither men were willing to hand over the mission, but they handled the takeover in different ways. One took up the sword as a Christian and the other took up the host. 

 Originally written on 11/29/11 for my Christianity class

The Crusades

Image from the movie Kingdom of Heaven

The strength and spread of Islam in what was previously the Christian world greatly angered the Church. Islam was seen as worse than heresy and was completely blasphemous as Islam rejected the divinity of Jesus Christ, although the Muslims accepted him as the word of God, as Messiah, and as a very important prophet of God. The conquering of lands and holy places caused Christians to become inflamed with a vengeful zeal. IN 1095 CE, Pope Urban II was especially zealous and called for the destruction of Islam, which had been equated with the evil in Revelations, with Mohammed starring as the antichrist (Global and Tradition). 

Pope Urban II had specific goals in mind regarding how Christian unity could be strengthened with a Holy War against Islam. He wanted to avenge the conquest of Christian lands and holy places, calling for an ongoing war against the Muslims, while at the same time promoting peace and unity within the Christian lands. Unity is often formed by a common enemy, and Pope Urban II and some prominent Christians before him, like John of Damascus, had done a lot of work to show Islam as Christianity’s enemy. Pope Urban II hoped that the common goal to defeat Islam would bring together Christians who were previously divided over differences in opinion of how to celebrate Christianity. One major unifying concept was to reclaim Jerusalem from Muslim control (Global). 

Other goals of the crusades developed over time to include the reclamation of holy relics, protection of Christians on their pilgrimage to holy places, such as Jerusalem. The crusades were originally termed a pilgrim’s war due to this goal. This pilgrim’s war called for the need of Christian Soldiers (the song “Onward Christian Soldiers” comes to mind), which eventually became a defining feature of Western Christianity (Global). A special order of Knights was created during the crusades, called the Knights Templar. They were considered to be the Holy Knights of Solomon’s Temple. They were specifically called to protect pilgrims during their pilgrimages (Global).

Medieval Christians were attracted to the call for Christian soldiers and to the Pilgrim’s War because it offered them a chance to redeem themselves. Even those with a tendency for violence could be fully forgiven for their sins by becoming a crusader (Global and Tradition). The crusades gave them a chance to fight. Previously, Christians were not allowed to fight in wars, as they might end up having to kill someone, which was against the Ten Commandments, “Thou shall not kill”. This ability to have justified warfare and justified death (killing) became a divider between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism. Justified killing in the name of Christ was not akin to murder, and was not a sin anymore. Crusading Knights were even sanctified by the Church as servants of Christ (and therefore, God, in Christian theology).

The crusades were not only directed at Islam, but also at those things that the Western Christians found sinful about Eastern Orthodoxy, furthering the Christian divide. It gave Iconoclasts permission to destroy images of the Eastern veneration and crusaders permission to “retrieve” holy relics from the Eastern churches and “return” them to the Western churches. As such, a siege on Constantinople was conducted during the crusades.

Christianity evolved from being the persecuted religion to being the persecuting religion. In the intolerance for any other religion, the crusades also picked up a goal against the Jewish people and sought to punish them to avenge the death of Jesus Christ. From Jewish Perspective though, they were not only wrongly persecuted, but that the Pope of Rome was Satan himself (Tradition). The crusades actually ended up distracting Jewish intolerance of Islam to the new threat of Christian persecution and Jews were called to sward against Christians in this Holy War, just as Christians were called to the sword against all that was not Christian and was a threat to “pure” Christianity (Tradition).             
 I wrote this piece on 11/29/11 for my Christianity class 

Icontroversy

The icon is a defining element of Eastern Orthodox Christianity that, like much of Christian history, has a controversial past. Icon veneration became prominent, and subsequently controversial, in the eighth century CE (Global). The central theme in the midst of the controversy related to incarnation versus idolatry. Much controversy was perhaps initially an inter-religious argument, but also was a controversy within the Christian church – eventually dividing the Western Catholic Christians from the Eastern Orthodox (Global).  

The inter-religious controversy was between the iconophilistic (image-loving)Christians and Jews and Muslims, who both abhorred the veneration of images, feeling that it was akin to idolatry (Global). One prominent Christian wrote in Arabic, the language of the Muslims, to the iconophiles that they should not allow pressure from Jews or Muslims to prevent them from worshiping the images of their Christian veneration (Global).  John of Damascus, who lived in Muslim lands, wrote to the iconophiles in both that their veneration of the images of Christ, the Mother Mary, or any of the Saints, was an appropriate form of worship to those individuals (Global and Tradition).

Iconoclasm, the destruction of images, began in the eighth century CE when the Byzantine ruler, Leo III ordered that all the icons be destroyed and those that promoted or made icons should be punished or killed (Global and Tradition).  Emperor Leo III saw the icons as idols and the veneration of them as idolatry, which was against the Ten Commandments, therefore he sought to destroy them same as he did the pagan idols. His successor, Constantine V was also an iconoclast and continued the siege against icon veneration. He even convened a council in Nicea in the late 700s to officially condemn icon veneration and the iconophiles as he considered them to be blasphemous for two reasons. First, he saw the veneration of idols as idolatry, as mentioned above. Second, he believed that the iconophiles were limiting God by assuming that divinity can be captured in paintings or even be divine themselves. This condemnation was the moment that Western Catholic Christianity and Eastern Orthodox Christianity essentially split, as the Orthodox Christians maintained their veneration of idols as one of their defining elements of Christian identity and ritual. John of Damascus was pivotal to the continuation of icon veneration to be orthodox (Global and Tradition).

Since John of Damascus lived in Muslim lands, he was protected from the church and Leo III’s siege against iconoclasts. He wrote against the iconoclasts and encouraged the Orthodox Christians to continue their veneration of icons because of how he believed in the incarnation of the spirit in the material. He saw that the icons were divine for the same reason that Jesus Christ was divine. Christ was an incarnation of the spirit of God in human flesh. Since divinity could be captured in human flesh that was of the material world, so could pictures of Christ contain divinity. John extended this incarnation to the Mother Mary, as he believed her holy for being the mother of God, and also the saints, as they obviously (to him) contained divinity as witnessed by the miracles they were able to perform, both alive and dead (relics collected by the church and Christians).

Not only did John of Damascus think that the icons could contain the divine, but also he believed that the images served as prototypes that conveyed the worship of the icon to the individual represented. It was that representation that was important to John. The representation was actually a presentation and therefore a presence of the individual in the image. He did not believe that iconophiles were worshiping of the material that contained the images, but the actual individual that was represented in the image. The image was a presence, a reminder, and a prototype that allowed the worshiper to pass the worship to the Christ, Mary, or the saints and in return receive miracles of the divine. The image was not an idol to John; rather it was a gateway or door to the divine. Icons were how the world could see the unseen, just as Jesus Christ as an incarnation of God was how the unseen was made visible (Tradition). 

I originally wrote this piece in November 2011 for my Christianity class

Christianity and Withdrawal from the World

                Everyone has been alone at some point in their life. When one finds solitude, they typically can hear their own thoughts more clearly, whether they are thoughts of reflection, ponderings about the meaning of life, or even more mundane things like a to-do list. For two Christians, St. Antony and St. Martin, solitude is not just a means to think clearly, but the way to be a better Christian.

The accounts of these saints’ lives in Life of Antony by Athanasius and Life of Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus show similarities on how they lived their lives and why they lived their lives that way. Both men had a desire from childhood to be religious men and upon becoming adults, decided to live for Christ and forgo earthly things, with the exception of the food that their bodies required to live. Antony was inspired by the Acts of the Apostles to reject everything worldly to follow the Savior. This inspiration was confirmed for him when he went to church and heard a Gospel passage read, “If you wish to be perfect, go and sell everything you possess and give it to the poor and come, follow me and you will have treasure in heaven” (Ant. 2). Neither Antony nor Martin were not worried for their welfare in becoming Ascetics, as they believed in the Gospel that said, “Take no thought for the morrow” (Ant. 3, Mart. II).

Selling their possessions or refraining from collecting material things was only the first step in their journeys to solitude. Antony believed in a hard and arduous life and set out for it immediately, for the Bible told him that, “He who does not work, does not eat” (Ant. 3). Martin on the other hand, was taken into bondage with the military, as he was the son of a military man. Both men only kept what little of their earnings they needed for the bare sustenance and distributed the rest to the needy. The second step of their journeys was to literally withdraw from human interaction as much as possible. Once alone, the men could devote their time to prayer, their thoughts to Christ their Lord, and to dispelling demons and thwarting the devil himself.

It seems that it is in their solitude that both Antony and Martin become able to discern between the spirits, knowing angel from demon. The demons they wrestle with and expel from the possessed. Satan has no power against the sign of the cross or the mention of Christ’s name from the lips of these men. Both men also gained other miraculous abilities during their solitude. Both Antony and Martin gained the ability to heal the sick, and in the case of Martin, bring back the dead. Further, both men, on occasion, were given accurate information about things to come from a source only thought to be that of Christ the Lord. However miraculous these abilities were, they were not the only characteristics that these men both seemed to acquire during their ascetic lives.

Antony and Martin are both praised for their strength of character, as well as their dedication to their Lord Christ. It was because Antony was ever vigilant in his prayers, constant in his renunciation of demons and Satan, and patient with his trials that he believed God transforms what were habits into his second nature and his divinely anointed powers grew (Ant. 7).  Martin also believed that his daily devotion to God, to prayer, and steadfastness in faith is what provided for his holiness and his power over evil (Mart. XXVI). It is in his endeavor to be rid of material things and focus on the soul that Antony believes is what is most important for Christians – to strive for those characteristics that “lead to heaven, namely wisdom, chastity, justice, virtue, an ever watchful mind, care of the poor, firm faith in Christ, a mind that can control anger, and hospitality” (Ant. 17). Likewise, Martin had an even temper, was steadfast in faith and cared for even the sinners (Mart. XXVII).  In solitude, wisdom is found in clarity of thought, chastity is kept without temptations near, faith is deepened for needs to be met, and a patient temperance is surely cultivated.

One of the main ideas involved in Antony’s faith was not only to be rid of worldly things and to rely on faith in Christ for daily survival, but to understand that death could come at any given moment in time. To Antony, a Christian should ever be fearful of death’s approach, and to act accordingly. Since death could come at any time and without warning, it was best that the Christian of true faith be ever vigilant of his/her actions and thoughts to be sure that the way they behave on earth will lead them to acceptance in heaven. They should guard their minds from sordid thoughts, stay humble, and let their stomachs be hungry so that they don’t become lazy and idle, yet eat enough to be able to sustain hard arduous work, so again they don’t become idle. They should not allow too much comfort for themselves lest they be tempted into laziness as well (Ant. 19, 43, 65).  Antony regularly slept on either a mat or on the bare floor and both Antony and Martin wore the most meager of clothing. Both men were not concerned with vanity and looked dirty and disheveled.

Although both Antony and Martin sought solitude to be able to focus their minds on Christ, they both became hunted men by those eager to understand them, follow them, or seek healing from them. They tried often to go further and further into the wilderness to seek their solitude, but were ever found. It is possible to say that they were never in solitude for long, if ever. If you consider their regular battles with demons and Satan, and their constant faith that Christ was with them and in them, they may never have truly been alone, even if they were not being plagued by other humans. Still, in their solitude they were able to accomplish wondrous things by being faithful enough, thus perhaps deserving, in their choice to give up all for Christ. It is easy to see how their choice to give up material possessions and to rely only on faith that God will provide would force one to keep their mind on faith and on God. If they have to toil to provide for themselves, and keep busy so as not to have idleness lead to sordid thoughts, it leaves little time for much to enter their mind except for prayers and devotions: prayers to make it through the day, thankfulness for sustenance, and constant mind battles against evil thoughts. When one is forced to rely on God for everything, there is little time to think of worldly things. It is in this way that Antony and Martin withdrew from worldly things and became the Christian saints they are known as today.

I originally wrote this piece in September 2011 for my Christianity class