This monograph studies the notion and experience of joy-bearing grief, penthos, and the tears shed in consequence, in the context of late-antique and medieval Eastern Christianity. Penthos--and its western quasi-equivalent, compunction, expressed in Greek by katànyxis--is an important concept of medieval spiritual life. It denotes a spiritual and psychological transformation process, from mourning of one's sins through the consideration of the ephemeral human condition to the consolations and divine blessings resulting in joyfulness for the believer who is generally a monk. It is "godly grief" bringing salvation and thus containing an eschatological aspect, that Saint Paul distinguishes from the mourning of worldly things, which brings death. Hunt places this specific spiritual concept and experience in four different contexts of Eastern Christianity and around four figures: in the desert tradition with John Klimakos; in the context of early Syrian Church with Ephrem; in a later (seventh century) Syrian perspective around Isaac of Nineveh; finally she examines the eleventh century Byzantine understanding of penthos with Symeon the New Theologian whom she considers as the illustration of the "byzantine apotheosis of the tradition of penthos" (p. XIV).
The introductory Section I sets the scene. A study of the Greek and Syrian lexicographical field of penthos distinguishes the variants of repentance, compunction, mourning for sin, and melancholy. The author explains her focus on the Eastern territories of a Mediterranean world where all the cultures, from ancient Israel to that of Islam, knew some form of mourning for sin. The following status questionis on joy-bearing grief underlines clearly the deficiencies of the most notable precedent, Hausherr's Penthos [1], written in the 1940's from a western scholastic point of view, and duly criticizes the most important contributions to the debate on spiritual mourning and weeping. The following four sections of the book are constructed in the same, concentric way: starting with an examination of the historical context of the author and of his bio-bibliographic problems, gradually Hunt focuses on the structure of the oeuvre and the characteristics of penthos in a specific author.
Section II deals with John Klimakos, especially with Step 7 of his Ladder of Divine Ascent concerning penthos. In an excellent contextual panorama, Hunt analyses the theological concept of desert and shows the centrality of repentance in the desert experience, with the hope of a rebirth in the love of God. According to Klimakos, penthos is not selfish: besides one's own sins, it is mourning also for the sins of the whole fallen world. Hunt's considerations on the genre of the Ladder--rather a spiritual testimony than an ascetic rule--are valuable, and help to explain the structure of the text. Already in Klimakos the main lines of Eastern teachings on penthos can be drawn around the importance of meditation of death as a means to purify the soul. In a dialectic of fear and love of God, tears of fear intercede for the sinner and give place to love. Tears of penthos purify more than baptism and can be understood within a hierarchy of spiritual growth. Klimakos speaks of spiritual laughter as the outcome of tears: mourning for sin is the way to restore the innocence, the joy, Adam felt before he fell.
Section III deals with the Ephremic interpretation of Luke 7:36-50, the passage of the sinful woman washing the feet of Jesus with her tears. Hunt describes in luminous pages the specificity of the Syrian outlook, which does not consist of a geographical background or a language only, but first of all of a biblically based methodology. Ephrem's (and his school's) mode of operating is symbolic, biblical, with typological and poetic modes of expression. Hunt underlines the tension which animates the whole Syrian insight, between a holistic anthropology and the accusation of encratism [2] that Ephrem had to endure. In his thought, asceticism and asexual behaviour function in the perspective of virginity as a permanent state of mind rather than simply genital control. Syrians adopt a Semitic rather than Greek interpretation of sin, which considers the heart (and not the nous) as the center of the human being. This heart-centered anthropology, which can be found throughout the ancient Mediterranean Christian world, allows the integration of the body as an essential aspect of humanity. This is the reason why the conversion of the sinful woman is so important in Ephrem: her gestures repristinate her body which becomes the sacrifice of a contrite heart; her tears are a symbol of redemptive potential hidden in the bodily nature of mankind. In the homilies of the school of Ephrem, female sexuality, says Hunt, is presented as symbolic of all humanity's need for Christ's healing. However, she does not comment on the fact that in this vision, female sexuality becomes the ultimate symbol of sin or sinful humanity.
Section IV concerns Isaac of Nineveh's teachings on tears of repentance: we remain in a Syrian context but the discourse, which with Ephrem included lay people and women, now addresses an exclusively male, monastic world. For Isaac, spiritual hierarchy is determined by social status: the process of holy mourning is a prerogative of the monastic model of life, an ideal for humanity. Again it is clear that penthos is not an individualistic virtue but a process oriented towards the human community as a whole. Mourning is a participation in the sufferings of both Christ and fellow humanity; it constitutes both loving God and one another. Hunt analyses the importance of triadic structures in Isaac's works: division of the soul, stages of the mystic route, description of the human person, all are in the same time triadic hierarchies. Isaac asserts the superiority of spirit: purification of mind and soul depend on the prior purification of the body. The author shows that, while Isaac is very negative about the body, he underlines the strong link between body and soul. Body has to be fully used in prayer, because through prayer, the integrity of body and soul, incorporation to the life of Christ can be achieved. Physical experience and gestures effect an actual experience of the pure emotions suggested by prayer, those of holy joy and sadness, distinct from the illusions of other passions as they are focused on and inspired by God. Isaac insists on the gradual purification through tears, a gift of God, which concerns first body, then mind and finally soul. The body having been purified, the heart is pricked with contrition. Tears of remorse cleanse the person who sheds them further, and move him to a state so purified and unified that he ceases even to weep. In the end, weeping liberates the weeper from tears and the fruits of those tears appear, that is a fervent love of God which inflames the soul with joy.
Section V focuses on Symeon the New Theologian. Half of the section is concerned with his context and relation with his spiritual father, Symeon the Studite, whom Hunt prefers to call--against the reigning scholarly custom--Symeon Eulabes, without explaining her choice. Explanation of Symeon's biography and context is excellent, showing the rich aristocrat's way to God, who uses his situation for spiritual causes and can allow himself attitudes that the Church hierarchy would not tolerate from a less well-born man. Nevertheless the cult of his mentor as well as his positions concerning spiritual authority of a man of charismatic experience caused Symeon conflicts with Church hierarchy. Discussing these conflicts, Hunt convincingly refutes the accusation of messalianism laid upon him by later scholarship. Important too are the considerations concerning his sources, which show how Symeon synthesises the earlier tradition and elaborates an authentic theology of tears. An important key for Symeon is his relation to his spiritual father, to spiritual fatherhood in general, and to guidance. This last aspect is for him the only way to transmit spiritual authority, in a golden chain of empirical mysticism. For Symeon was an empiricist: personal experience of God constitutes the key both to salvation and to writing, that is the means to the construction of one's own spiritual authority. Hunt underlines discipline and obedience to the authority of the spiritual mentor, the agent and mediator of God's mercy. The chain of spiritual gifts transmitted from mentor to disciple is a literal process of enlightening for Symeon, who frequently uses metaphors of fire and light. Tears of penitence are other-oriented for him too, as a sign of love and perfect compassion. And yet they are personal as well: tears, and their counterpart, vision, purify and illuminate, and are thus instrumental in experiencing holy mysteries. Symeon's conception of penthos and tears is based on the two major sacraments. Tears are a second baptism which repeats and perfects the first one, as it is a conscious process. Weeping is necessary to communion, since, as a bodily function, it enacts participatively the incarnation and redemption of the son of God. Hunt notes here the parallel Symeon draws between the flow of tears and the emission of sperm: neither is intrinsically bad or good; all depends on the use made of them. Thus for Symeon body is the locus for the gift of the Spirit. If the body is used conscientiously, spiritual enlightenment, union with God, can happen in a sacramental context or way. Symeon speaks about a new life in terms of a new birth, using an imagery of pregnancy and motherhood. Spiritual regeneration through tears concludes in the theosis promised to God's creation.
The conclusion of the book recapitulates the main themes of the book and synthesises them from a theological point of view. All four of the authors are inscribed in the tradition, the paradosis, of the Eastern Church, with a great reverence for it. They evidence a strong will to keep this tradition alive, to appropriate and transmit previous patterns. The stress on penthos in the four authors shows that while they use a rhetoric hostile to the body, they integrate the body into the spiritual route, as an important tool of redemption. It is in this process that tears gain their main value: penthos can be understood as the physical, psychological and spiritual process of restoration to the image of God. Klimakos insists on the rightly focused desire. Ephrem concentrates on the re-ordered use of one's sexuality and on a subtle understanding of inner and outer, in the example of visible (wo)man making it possible to perceive invisible God. Isaac has the greatest contradiction between encratism and the role of human body in salvation, which he tries to resolve in addressing body and emotions in prayer. Symeon's main emphasis is on consciousness of integral participation with God, where bodily experiences are instrumental. All of the authors explore the thematic of dissolution of self in the experience and incorporation of God, through mourning, and the dialectic of fear and love. In their thought, penthos articulates humanity's relationship with Christ. Weeping for sin is a way of transformation of the human being, where finally God's law replaces human law and, under the work of both effort and God's grace, tears make place for the joy of a new, spiritual life.
Throughout the book Hunt underlines the Eastern meaning of theologia, as based on spiritual experience. This conception, fundamentally different from what the word comes to signify in the West from the late eleventh century on, explains the difficulties experienced by Western-trained scholars in their scholastic approach to Eastern spirituality and theology. The theology of tears, which developed between the experience of the desert and the eleventh century, has nothing of a pure philosophical theory. This theology makes use of the body and makes a place for it in the approach to salvation. Through consequent, short comparative remarks, Hunt shows well how this optimistic vision of a mankind capable of theosis through and with his/her terrestrial body, is a particularity of Eastern Christian anthropology as opposed to that of the West. Certainly, the place and role of tears in the theology and history of the Eastern and Western Church were not the same. However it is regrettable that Hunt seems to ignore the western medieval development of gift of tears, which uses the same images, biblical passages and instrumental metaphors, in order to attain a comparable goal; the most recent monograph on the history of spiritual weeping in the West, Le don des larmes au Moyen Age by the humble author of these lines [3], which deals also with two of her four authors, could have helped her to enlarge her perspective. The greatest reproach one can make to Hunt is that her book, which focuses on theological anthropology, does not offer any opening, in the form of questions or interpretations, in a wider historical perspective. Knowing the Eastern context, the reader wonders why she does not complete her panorama by including a fifth stage, concerning fourteenth century hesychasm, a logical last step on the path followed by her before the fall of Byzantium. While historical considerations are thorough and well-exposed in regard to the contexts and biographical details of the authors discussed, Hunt does not deal with historical perspective or meaning once she has finished analyzing the texts. For instance, we do not learn what a theology of penthos meant and represented in the life and history of Eastern Church. Were its success and practice reduced to the inner circle of salvation-seekers, namely monks--or diffused more widely in society? Probably for the same reason, a comparison of medieval and contemporary issues suffers from schematism, for instance in the parallel drawn between "modern urban deserts of physical and metaphorical alienation and solitude" and that of late-antique deserts (42). If one thinks about it, urban deserts, where detachment is difficult to find among all the worldly temptations, seem rather the functional inversion of late antique deserts than their modern equivalent. One can equally question if any historical figure can ever be described as an exemplification of "the Byzantine man" (171). Some editorial clumsiness, producing unfinished bibliographical references (for instance, p. 184, n. 16 missing in the bibliography) or printing errors (the nicest of which is Symeon's "attitude of semen," p. 206) and the strange idea to reproduce the image of the cover of the book instead of the author's photo on the back cover, could have been avoided on behalf of Brill. Besides these points, Hunt's book is an important contribution to the renewal of the study of medieval Eastern spirituality from anthropological and historical points of view. The issue of integration of the body with the spiritual path in Eastern Christianity is a question of modern historiography; her answers help to compare the religious anthropology of late Antique and medieval Christian East with that of the medieval West and to better understand the great articulations of historical Christianity.
NOTES
[1] Iré né e Hausherr, penthos, la doctrine de la componction dans l'Orient chré tien, Rome, Pont. Institutum orientalium studiorum, 1944.
[2] The domination of the flesh by the spirit and a corresponding abstinence from the pleasures of the flesh.
[3] Piroska Nagy, Le don des larmes au Moyen Age. Un instrument spirituel en quête d'institution, Paris, Albin Michel, 2000.