David Lorimer and New World Values

David  Lorimer

Seven years ago, the present writer composed a letter of complaint to David Lorimer. The mailing list was extensive, and included over sixty members of the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN), led by Lorimer.  Yet only one of those recipients replied, and in a purely personal context. The key addressee, David Lorimer,  was notable for a total lack of response.

The contents of that letter included reference to various anomalies within organisations influenced by Lorimer, and also the Findhorn Foundation, closely linked to SMN membership and subscriptions. Discrepant behaviour of authority figures was a primary feature. Evasion was preferred by SMN recipients.

Lorimer is known for his activities as a writer and lecturer, including the book Radical Prince (2003), the subject here being the Prince of Wales. He is Programme Director for the SMN, and Vice-President of the closely associated Wrekin Trust, “a charity concerned with adult spiritual education” to use one of the media descriptions. Lorimer’s blog emphasises “vision and values for a new world view.” So what are the royalist connotations of “spiritual education” and “new world”?

Lorimer has expressed estimation for both Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen, two controversial new age celebrities promoted by the Findhorn Foundation. His arguments were not convincing. In 2004, Lorimer even stated: “I have been impressed by the level of debate between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber in What is Enlightenment?” This deference to a commercial magazine, the well known vehicle of Cohen, tends to confirm “new world” drawbacks in spiritual education. Elsewhere, Wilber and his “integral spirituality” are the subject of strong critical attention from former enthusiasts and other commentators. Cohen has gained a very unenviable reputation as an American guru of extremist tendency.

To provide an update here,  other  entities are favoured  in the SMN ratings. In 2011, Lorimer named “Jung, Maslow, Stanislav Grof, Charles Tart” as being “far more meaningful” than the psychology syllabus in British universities. In particular, the explicit deference to Grof merits close attention.

In the same interview, Lorimer stated: “One of the assumptions I am making is that my mind is the Universal Mind.” Reminiscent of the Ken Wilber “Big Mind” lore promising enlightenment, this belief can cause acute confusion. We should be very careful before assuming that our very limited individual bundle of mental impressions has any relation to a “Universal Mind.” The neo-Advaita of Cohen is noted for the theme of cosmic identity, which is flippant to the point of absurdity in new age circles. 

The designation of Scientific and Medical Network is quite affirmative. This organisation is not calling themselves, e.g., the Alternative Scene for New Age Beliefs and Daring Theories. No, they are something far more reliable, far more ultimate, and indeed far more authoritarian. To the extent, indeed, that they can ignore complaint. They are too scientific to be criticised. That is the implication. They are too medical to be taken to task for supporting the holotropic and psychedelic beliefs of Grof. New world values mean, e.g., that hyperventilation (employed by Grof) is a deceptive avenue to cerebral hypoxia, denoting a decreased supply of oxygen to the brain (Stephen J. Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation, 1996, pp. 45-6). The results are purely material, not spiritual, like the blatantly commercial motivations involved.

Holotropic Breathwork (HB) was a very lucrative exercise devised by Grof at the Esalen Institute in California, and also employed at the Findhorn Foundation for several years until official intervention occurred. In this “new age workshop” sphere, everything is done for money. Grof resorted to HB because his LSD psychotherapy faced legal problems in the 1970s reaction to the hallucinogenic drug. He also employed “MDMA therapy” until the mid-1980s, his method having been described as “drug-aided mind manipulation in order to create paranormal beliefs” (Shepherd, Pointed Observations, 2005, p. 126). Yet Grof chose to gloss problems as “spiritual emergencies.” Grof transpersonalism has enjoyed a big dollar turnover via Grof Transpersonal Training Inc.

In this suspect scenario of the new world elite, wealthy academics and promoters can profitably ignore complaints. Entrepreneurs thrive on the absence of criticism, which is banished from the convenience of commerce and pseudo-meaning. On the basis of LSD experiences and holotropic sessions, Grof has devised a "cartography of the psyche," which critics reject as spurious (cf. Grof, Psychology of the Future, 2000, pp. 20ff.).

Alternative therapy has been big business for several decades at places like Esalen and the Findhorn Foundation. I have related how a 1990s unfortunate lost his wife in this popular quicksand, and after she had suffered most of the following drawbacks created by group sessions of “therapy”: nervous breakdown, suicidal tendencies, severe headaches, involuntary muscle spasms, memory failure, and lack of decision making ability. Yet therapy deceptions have gained the status of “a unifying shift in our worldview,” to quote one of the ubiquitous celebrations on the new age media.

In the direction of drug use, the exhortations are widespread on the internet, and some channels are strongly associated with the Grof bandwagon. Even at relatively low volume pitch on email responses to journalism, one can find strident web voices urging that humanity has been taking drugs for thousands of years, and the police are therefore an obstruction to presumed benefits. More realistically, there are devastated LSD victims in wheelchairs, while the recent craze for ketamine  has involved extreme bladder problems and stomach operations for young victims.  The new age now features teen sufferers with incontinence. Also in evidence are daily “recreational” users of skunk cannabis who favour the popular “shift in worldview.” They are unable to stop their drug habit, which can prove deadly, being only a step away from cocaine and heroin.

The main subject of the Letter of Complaint to David Lorimer was a former member of the SMN, whose situation (as a relative of mine) I was closely familiar with. Jean Shepherd (Kate Thomas) suffered discrimination because she was a critic of drug use.  David Lorimer’s close colleague, the Findhorn Foundation Trustee Janice Dolley, was here the agent of cordon. The victim expressed the realistic view  that drug experiences are counterfeit, comprising a delusion of “spirituality” for the partisans, and a misleading cue to addiction for the clientele. Yet the critic was downgraded by the SMN in favour of Grof’s academic disciple Christopher Bache, an exponent of psychedelic neoshamanism. 

The Bache encounter with LSD involved a major problem: “I interrupted my work [for seven years] because the extreme nature of the states I was entering became too stressful for my family to endure” (Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, SUNY Press 2000, p. 311 note 10). Anomalously, the academic drug advocates deny causing any problem, talking of their “moderate” usage as distinct from street excesses. Yet the pro-cannabis refrains of Tart, and the LSD lore of Grof and Bache, have been very influential, permeating counterculture with false concepts, thereby assisting drug-pushers on the street.

The academic drug advocates are viewed by citizen philosophy as “shallow mystics who invent a form of specious logic that misleads thousands and millions of people deceived by prestigious credentials” (Shepherd, Some Philosophical Critiques and Appraisals, 2004, p. 50).

In the strongly contested new age, Scientific and Medical now signifies evasion, commercial “workshops,” Jung lore, and psychedelic theory. The “new world” orientation leads to a blind alley of “channelling” delusion, hallucination, visits to real medics for assistance in survival, aversion to criticism  in the interests of income and economic expansion, and  a  neglect of ethical considerations.
 

See further David Lorimer, SMN, Findhorn Foundation.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd

ENTRY no. 53

Copyright © 2013 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved

Findhorn Foundation Discrepancies

A book by Eileen Caddy

My Citizen Initiative website, launched in 2007, was at first greeted with disbelief by those accustomed to deceptive promotionalism of the Findhorn Foundation. After a while, some parties grasped that I was telling the truth. Evasion and exploitive commerce are involved in the project at issue. The "workshops" at this venue are notorious for the high prices charged.

Recent law court actions in Scotland are of interest. A complication was created for the Findhorn Foundation by an immigration officer acting for the Secretary of State. The "accredited education" advertised by the Foundation was mentioned, though a great deal  of what is taught there has no accredited basis. The legal procedure  provided a support for the defending party, mentioning (amongst other matters) that "the Scottish Charities Register shows that the Findhorn Foundation is a charitable trust" having objectives such as "the promotion of human rights, conflict resolution and reconciliation." The theme of conflict resolution is elsewhere known to be a farce in the case of dissidents. The petitioners favoured the theme of  a Findhorn Foundation economic impact. 
 

The theme of an economic   impact  is controversial, and  also associated with the tourist income insistence favoured by Moray Council, who are money-oriented, with no interest in ethics.  Bureaucratic laxity is widespread, and the law can no longer be relied upon. Only money talks in a decadent society. 

BBC News still maintains inadequate coverage of the Findhorn Foundation, without reference to ongoing controversies.  The deficiency is habitual. Twenty years ago, I was living at the same building in Forres (Moray) where a BBC television camera team snubbed a major local critic of the Foundation, their attitude being completely partisan to the Foundation, with no cognisance of any facts involved. The camera team provoked a reaction from their intended subject, who refused to be filmed. I knew that this development would be welcome to the Foundation, whose insidious propaganda had influenced the BBC team. I now confronted the impudent leader of the camera crew, who had derisively said to the critic: "It is just your view against theirs." This gesture strongly implied that the Foundation could not be wrong in any way. The BBC spokesman proved evasive when confronted. 

I was then obliged to telephone the BBC management in London, to find my worst fears confirmed about the total irresponsibility of BBC officials.  At first, the official I spoke with groaned and said "Oh no!" Afterwards he became evasive, and would not acknowledge any error of deportment. The image of the Findhorn Foundation was thus preserved as being one of perfect charity. A due apology was overlooked. It is no surprise to me that Sir Jimmy Savile  fooled the BBC excusers for so many years. The paedophile could do anything he wanted, because the BBC media protected him as a praiseworthy exemplar of charity.

A relevant fact neglected by the BBC television fiasco was that the local critic (Kate Thomas) had been ostracised by dictatorial Findhorn Foundation officials. One of these oppressors was an American bisexual with near schizophrenic moods of aggression and amity. Another was a dogmatic and persecuting German partisan of alternative therapy who declared that God had given him the custodianship of Cluny Hill College (now the Findhorn Foundation College), which was a centre for new age therapy, channelling, and shamanism. The extreme behaviour, including harassment, did not accord with the glowing publicity instigated by such personnel.

Commercial promotion of Stanislav Grof's danger therapy known as Holotropic Breathwork (hyperventilation) was another problem in the "spiritual education" package at the Findhorn Foundation. Dissenters from therapy were blacklisted; the promoters were glorified. Thomas strongly resisted Holotropic Breathwork, as did medical doctors, and this meant that she had to be suppressed by the management.  The BBC failure to negotiate anti-medical bias occurred in 1992, a year before the medical verdict from Edinburgh University emerged. The Foundation management was reluctant to comply with the warnings, and never did acknowledge that Thomas had been right, instead opting for a continual hostility towards her.

A decade later, Thomas  was cordoned by a Findhorn Foundation Trustee (Janice Dolley), and because of her resistance to drug use and related matters. Standing for principle in the new age is a dead-end, as this instance confirms. Scruple is very unpopular, in view of widespread indulgences.

BBC Radio is another defective organ of the media, to date neglecting any due response to a quite lengthy complaint made in 2006 concerning a Findhorn Foundation “workshop” entrepreneur, who was hosted on BBC Radio as an authority in “holistic” matters. BBC Radio made no mention of the fact that William Bloom had promoted in London the lunatic exercise in hyperventilation devised by Grof Transpersonal Training Inc. The commercial therapist promoted this dubious activity despite the medical warnings which had occurred in Scotland, causing the Findhorn Foundation to desist from promoting the dangerous practice of Holotropic Breathwork, mistakenly advertised as a therapy. See further Letter to BBC Radio. 

To update here, Bloom has stated in contemporary idiom, that he is "pissed off with the BBC." Perhaps that organisation are suitably impressed by holistic gestures.

Meanwhile, the continuing evasion of Findhorn Foundation staff and supporters has been evident in such matters as online book reviews. One of these deceptive items (in 2011) was composed by a person who stated that he lived in the neighbourhood of the Findhorn Foundation. This semi-literate troll asserted that Kate Thomas had made a “brief stay” at the Foundation, and strongly implied that she wished to be accepted there as the “leader.” She was here accused of an "ego trip." In reality, the dissident stayed in the near vicinity for ten years (as is quite well known), and never wished to become the Foundation leader, but only to be given a fair hearing in the face of suppression, and eventually illness. See Kate Thomas and the Findhorn Foundation.  I happen to know because the misrepresented person is my mother, and I myself lived in Forres at the period under discussion. Findhorn Foundation gossip, like their promotionalism, is very unreliable.

Love drips like blood from the hate campaign daggers of trolls and their mentors. The distortions achieved by the "spiritual community" are neither convincing nor exemplary. Trolls ignored a recent complaint made via solicitors; the response to this complaint by the Findhorn Foundation management did not show refinement.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd

ENTRY no. 52

Copyright © 2013 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Pete Townshend

The recent autobiography of Pete Townshend (born 1945) is entitled Who I Am, and has aroused diverse assessments, including my own contribution.  He was guitarist and songwriter for The Who, and also became known for a religious affiliation to the Eastern mystic Meher Baba (1894-1969). A very obvious discrepancy is that the religious sympathies did not mix too well with the career of a rock star, in this instance featuring a long term alcohol  problem and a susceptibility to hard drugs during the years 1980-81.

 

The British rock group known as The Who emerged in the mid-1960s, and eventually became superstars in America. They became icons of the Woodstock Festival at Bethel in 1969, an entrepreneurial event celebrated in a well known film. Ironically, Pete Townshend did not approve of the hippy venue, which he described as a mudbath laced with LSD. The previous year, he had declared himself to be a follower of Meher Baba, who was strongly opposed to LSD and other drugs. Townshend ceased his intake of marijuana (cannabis), and did not revert to LSD.

The stage performance of Townshend was noted for athletic leaps and the smashing of guitars. The “destruction art” was derived from his attendance at Ealing Art College and the questionable ideas of lecturer Gustav Metzger, who did however, disagree with Pete Townshend over the issue of a new commercial promotion. Townshend writes: “I was supposed to boycott the new commercial pop form itself” (Who I Am, p. 115). He also admits that “at a psychic level the Angry Yobbo, or hooligan, had seared himself into my soul” (p. 194). 

 

In 1970, by his own account, he began to experience “regular manic-depressive episodes” (p. 210). His very questionable remedy for this setback was to drink alcohol. To such an extent, indeed, that he cultivated a habit of drinking brandy while performing on stage. His situation was surely not assisted by the activities of his fellow performers Keith Moon  and John Entwistle, both of whom were alcoholics who developed a partiality for cocaine. The ill-fated career of Moon ended in 1978, when  that drummer  overdosed with medication for his chronic alcoholism. 

 

Townshend was evidently upset by this development. “The incredibly charged emotions around Keith’s death made me lose all logic” (p. 309). He was suffering from impaired hearing, and had previously resolved not to tour again with The Who. Yet now he favoured a replacement drummer, and was keen to undertake concerts again in 1979. His alcoholism became evident, and in 1980 his resistance failed when he was offered cocaine. A drastic two years of addiction followed, and eventually included a resort to heroin. 

 

The effect on Townshend was catastrophic. At one point he came close to death in a Chelsea hospital. His reckless disorientation included the well known incident where he jumped a fence into the bear pits at Berne, Switzerland. “I could have been eaten alive” (p. 330). There were other dangers also. Medical doctors knew that he had to break the bad habit of night club attendance, the root of his troubles. He was told to take up physical exercise instead, or invite certain  death; he wobbled badly, and eventually had to seek help in California. A month of neuroelectric therapy switched off the addiction, but anxiety attacks and psychological unravelling entailed five years of psychotherapy during the early 1980s. 

 

The subject continued his musical career and became an editor at the London publishing house of Faber. These events are well known, but rather more obscure is the phase of Meher Baba Oceanic. This centre was established by Pete Townshend at Twickenham in 1976, and featured  facilities for  filming and recording. Something went wrong, and the project changed name to Oceanic, becoming a purely private enterprise relating to Townshend’s musical career. Different explanations were given by onlookers at the time. Some Meher Baba devotees implied that Townshend had lost interest in Meher Baba as a result of his drug and alcohol excesses. This is contradicted by his own subsequent statements, which strongly indicate a continuing allegiance to Meher Baba. 

 

The available data suggests that Townshend was basically confused in his project of Meher Baba Oceanic. This conclusion is inescapable when reading a report written by his close friend Richard Barnes: 

“He [Townshend] was constantly initiating new ideas and concepts, but in a few days or weeks his mind would have raced ahead to something new.... At first there were facilities for filming and editing, then it was video, then it was recording. Pete was like a rich kid with too many toys.... I was staggered at the stupidity of some of the people Pete had given key jobs. By mistake, the tape would be wiped off after a day’s recording session, or a video would be ruined because somebody forgot some vital function.... The incongruous combination of recording studio and Baba workshop under one roof was a typical, badly thought-out move by Pete. The whole place [Meher Baba Oceanic] seemed to be a reflection of his own confused state of mind at that time.” (Quoted in Geoffrey Giuliano, Behind Blue Eyes: A Life of Pete Townshend, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1996, pp. 144-5) 

The most controversial event in the life of Pete Townshend occurred in 2003, when allegations surfaced on the media about his purported interest in child pornography on the internet. He denied these allegations, but some critics were persistent, including certain partisans of a rival guru to Meher Baba, who were eager to imply that Townshend’s conjectural role as a paedophile amounted to proof of Meher Baba being a deficient guide. Sectarian thinking often exhibits peculiarities. 

 

The autobiography of the subject supplies details that negate the allegations (pp. 482ff.). His home was surrounded by reporters and camera crews intent upon a celebrity scoop. Townshend was taken to a police station, but released on bail. Forensic examination of his computers could not find any evidence to incriminate him. These and other matters are mentioned in Who I Am, and the allegations may accordingly be set aside. 

 

Unless otherwise specified, all page references above are to Pete Townshend, Who I Am (London: HarperCollins, 2012). 

Kevin R. D. Shepherd 

ENTRY no. 51 

Copyright © 2013 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

P. D. Ouspensky

P. D. Ouspensky

Piotr D. Ouspensky (1878-1947) was a Russian philosopher in the citizen category. Born in Moscow, Ouspensky “refused to follow conventional academic training.” In 1907 he became a Theosophist, and afterwards travelled to India, seeking a deeper knowledge. He subsequently gave public lectures in St. Petersburg (Petrograd). An amateur mathematician, he wrote The Fourth Dimension (1909). This was followed by a more philosophical work entitled Tertium Organum (1912), which became well known in an English translation.

Ouspensky severed his link with the Theosophical Society when he became a pupil of the Caucasian “occultist” Giorgii Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c.1866-1949). This new affiliation occurred at Moscow in 1915, and has proved influential in alternative thought. Ouspensky is the most famous of Gurdjieff’s pupils, but soon assumed a rival role as an expositor of “the Work,” to employ a well known abbreviation for the Gurdjieff teaching. The complexities in this situation are of some interest.

The rift between Gurdjieff and Ouspensky commenced in 1918 at Essentuki; they both became part of the refugee exodus from Bolshevik Russia. Ouspensky was committed to Gurdjieff’s teaching, but resisted additional factors like the “sacred dance” movements that were now favoured by his mentor. Gurdjieff’s unpredictable personality appears to have been a major problem for the Russian thinker.

Ouspensky left a record of his encounters with Gurdjieff via the book In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (1950). This coverage was not published until after the death of both men. Ouspensky details the teaching at some length, and his editorial hand has been emphasised by commentators. The origins of this teaching have been much discussed, and with several different explanations. Some analysts say that Gurdjieff applied his own accents and flourishes to some older teachings, including Sufism and Greek Christianity. Gurdjieff was not a Theosophist and nor a professed member of any religion. The “pseudo-scientific” casting (admixed with astrological and other beliefs) clearly appealed to Ouspensky, who was in revolt from orthodox religion, desiring a rational form of explanation for a mystical approach.

The strong divergence between Ouspensky and Gurdjieff has been a subject of disagreement. Partisans of Ouspensky have depicted Gurdjieff as aberrant, while partisans of Gurdjieff say that the Russian pupil made a serious error in asserting his own role as a teacher of “the Work.” Critics of Gurdjieff have made the accusation that his ideas were distortions of concepts found in other traditions, and that he even plagiarised some concepts found in Ouspensky’s early writings.

In 1920, Ouspensky fled to Constantinople some months ahead of Gurdjieff. A reconcilement followed, although the divergence remained. Gurdjieff moved on to Germany, meeting obstructions, while Ouspensky became a successful lecturer in London, creating a “system” from the concepts acquired via Gurdjieff. However, Gurdjieff gained the ascendant when he secured the allegiance of prominent students of Ouspensky, notably Alfred R. Orage, who was editor of the influential New Age journal.

In 1922, Gurdjieff acquired a new base in France, namely the Chateau du Prieure (or the Priory) at Fontainebleau. Oupensky made visits to this place, but became estranged from events in process. “In spite of all my interest in Gurdjieff’s work I could find no place for myself in this work nor did I understand its direction” (In Search of the Miraculous, p. 389). Early in 1924 at London, the Russian lecturer announced that he would proceed independently of his former teacher. Ouspensky gave the strong warning that “it is very dangerous to be near him [Gurdjieff]” (J. G. Bennett, Witness, 1962, p. 126). From that time onwards, Ouspensky was averse to mention of Gurdjieff, although he did make a rather frustrated visit to the latter in 1931, which did not go smoothly and lacks detail.

Ouspensky’s wife Sophie Grigorievna (“Madame Ouspensky”) is more enigmatic. She remained loyal to Gurdjieff during the 1920s, and only moved to England when the latter urged her to leave France. From 1931 she assumed a role as an assistant to her husband, teaching the System (or “Work”) at Lyne Place in Surrey. The Ouspenskys are reported to have gained more than a thousand followers during that decade. The publication of Piotr’s early book A New Model of the Universe (1931) is said to have contributed to this development.

Despite his success in promoting the System, Piotr Ouspensky was subject to depression, and developed a drinking habit which amounted to alcoholism. In 1940 he moved to America with his wife, escaping wartime problems in England, and living a comfortable life in New York. His secretary Marie Seton left a report revealing deficiencies. His expenses were paid by followers, and Ouspensky would instruct Seton to buy expensive food for him. On some evenings, he would spend long hours drinking at a restaurant, into the early morning hours. Seton was his companion on these occasions, and records that he confessed a loss of control. “It is a long time since I could control my state of mind.” Yet the “Work” presupposes control.

Ouspensky even told Seton that his pupils were fools, and that they had gained nothing from the “System.” She suggested that he stop lecturing and reorient himself. He expressed an inability to do this, saying that “the System has become a profession with me.... I have become dependent on the comfort, the luxury.” In January 1947, Piotr Ouspensky returned to England, and thereafter presided at six meetings which have led to different interpretations. These question and answer sessions are extant. While detractors of Gurdjieff have urged that Ouspensky totally abandoned the Gurdjieff teaching as an aberration, it is possible to deduce that he had taken heed of Seton’s advice and was retreating from an authority role, admitting ignorance on various matters instead of presumptive knowledge. Nevertheless, Ouspensky became identified with the viewpoint that “there is no System.” 

Whatever the precise angle of his thinking, he was suffering kidney failure; his drinking precipitated his death in October 1947. Madame Ouspensky (1878-1961) survived this setback, and continued to direct the “System” community at Mendham in New Jersey. She also liaised with Gurdjieff in his last days, and as a consequence, Piotr’s book In Search of the Miraculous was subsequently published, providing a stimulus to the nascent Gurdjieff movement and becoming Ouspensky’s most well known work. That book can be misleading on some accounts, and requires due contextual analysis, which is frequently not forthcoming. 

See further Gary V. Lachman, In Search of P. D. Ouspensky (Theosophical Publishing House, 2004); P. D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe (New York: Knopf, 1931); Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (London: Routledge, 1950); Ouspensky, The Fourth Way (New York, 1957); Ouspensky, The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution (1950; second edn, 1954); Ouspensky, A Record of Meetings (London, 1993); Ouspensky, A Further Record: Extracts from Meetings 1928-1945 (London, 1988); William Patrick Patterson, Struggle of the Magicians: Why Uspenski left Gurdjieff (San Anselmo, CA: Arete, 1997). 

Kevin R. D. Shepherd 

ENTRY no. 50

Copyright © 2012 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

G. I. Gurdjieff

Georgii Ivanovich Gurdjieff

Georgii Ivanovich Gurdjieff (circa 1866-1949) is a controversial figure variously described as an occultist, mystic, and charlatan. His early life is obscure. He was born at Alexandropol (Gumri), a Russian garrison town in Armenia. Gurdjieff has been described as an Armenian Greek; his mother was Armenian, and in this respect he was reared to beliefs of Armenian Christianity. His father Giorgios Giorgiades was a Greek, a cattle herdsman who also functioned as an ashokh or bardic poet. The paternal legacy was complex, in that the bardic repertory of Giorgiades extended to the Turkic oral tradition of Caucasia, in which strong Islamic elements figured. The bardic recitals have been viewed as a strong influence upon the young Gurdjieff.

This entity does not gain secure factual profile until his move to the big cities of Western Russia in 1912. Gurdjieff’s legendary early career was described by himself in terms which have been considered by some as a mixture of fact and storytelling, and by others as sheer parable (see Inventors of Gurdjieff). He is associated with Sufi dervish and Tibetan Buddhist environments. Gurdjieff claimed to have visited Tibet, and made much of his encounter with the Sarmoung monastery, an obscure venue in Central Asia to which he attributed his deepest inspiration. He became mistakenly identified with “secret agents” working in the Tibetan political sector; for instance, Lama Aghwan Dordjieff (d. 1938) was a completely separate entity, despite the confusing account relayed by Rom Landau.

Gurdjieff moved from Central Asia to Moscow and St. Petersburg (Petrograd). That same year of 1912, he married (or partnered) Julia Ostrowska (d. 1926), a Polish woman. He conducted group meetings in both cities, expressing a teaching that has become well known via the reporting of his Russian disciple Piotr D. Ouspensky (d. 1947), who was a writer and lecturer associated with the Theosophical Society. Ouspensky at first assumed that Gurdjieff was just another occultist, of whom there were many at that time. He afterwards altered his assessment, and viewed Gurdjieff’s tuition in terms of an “unknown teaching.” Ouspensky’s book on this subject (In Search of the Miraculous) has been very influential.

A basic teaching of Gurdjieff was that man is mechanical and effectively asleep in relation to real life. He asserted that most men cannot develop or progress; the process involved is so difficult that progress is ordinarily impossible. He claimed to provide a means of achieving this development via the Fourth Way, an approach that departs from established religious routes of expression. Ouspensky was much impressed by this concept (and later used the phrase “fourth way” more intensively than his teacher); he left the Theosophical Society and aligned himself with Gurdjieff. After a few years however, a rift commenced  to show, and Ouspensky eventually opted to become a teacher of what he had learned from Gurdjieff.

Meanwhile, the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution caused chaos in Russia. Gurdjieff then retreated south, staying at Essentuki, a town adjoining the Caucasus. In August 1918, he made a carefully planned departure, in the face of the civil war that had arisen. On the pretext of an archaeological field study, he led a party of his followers (but not including Ouspensky) across the Caucasus in very dangerous conditions. They reached the port of Sochi, where a number of them defected, but Gurdjieff and five companions moved on to reach the safety of Tbilisi (Tiflis) in Georgia. 

Gurdjieff now created his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. He had commenced to choreograph the “sacred dances,” an activity said to be "based on movements and gestures which had been handed down by tradition and paintings in Thibetan (sic) monasteries where he had been” (quote from Carl Bechofer-Roberts, Journey Through Georgia).

Further political unrest caused Gurdjieff to move to Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1920. That city was flooded with Russian refugees at this period. A temporary reconcilement occurred between Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, who had gained his own group of Russian students. Together, they made several visits to the Mevlevi dervishes. Yet they departed in different directions. Gurdjieff went to Germany, where his plans met with obstruction. Ouspensky moved to England, where he commenced a successful role as a lecturer on the “Work,” as the Gurdjieff themes became known.

Ouspensky found that many of his new English students developed a strong interest in Gurdjieff, a trend which gained impetus when the latter gave a talk in London in February 1922. Gurdjieff spoke in Russian, via an interpreter, to sixty British intellectuals, including Alfred R. Orage, who proved very enthusiastic. Orage accepted Gurdjieff as his teacher from then on; he was the editor of the London weekly review New Age, an influential organ of literary and political interest. Both Orage and his teacher have been described as  black sheep philosophers.

Later that same year, Gurdjieff moved to France, where he acquired (via a benefactor) the Chateau du Prieure, a mansion at Fontainebleau, some forty miles from Paris. This property became the new site for his Institute, and the setting for two contingents of pupils, meaning the Russian and British. The new British recruits notably included Orage and Dr. Maurice Nicoll, a psychiatrist of Harley Street and an acquaintance of Jung. Dr. Nicoll  subsequently gravitated back to Ouspensky, but Orage became a strong supporter of Gurdjieff’s activity, and later acted as his emissary in America.

Gurdjieff's dancers, 1920s

 

The Prieure (Priory) became a scene of manual work, including construction of the Study House, a building whose interior resembled a dervish tekke or meeting place, being decorated with Eastern rugs. The Study House was the focus for the “sacred dances” supervised by Gurdjieff. The gymnastic programme far outweighed any formal teaching; Gurdjieff's approach contrasted with the lecturing role associated with Ouspensky. The latter made visits to the Priory until 1924, but thereafter strongly diverged, even advising Nicoll and others to dissociate from Gurdjieff. The Russian ex-pupil is believed to have reacted to the dance programme and the unpredictability inherent in Gurdjieff’s temperament.

The Caucasian gained many French critics, but much of the disparagement was based on rumour. Gurdjieff was said to be a Freemason and a hypnotist. His reputation as a hypnotist  has some basis in his own admissions. The gossip and slander moved to an extreme, and was markedly erroneous in relation to Katherine Mansfield, an authoress from New Zealand who died at the Priory in January 1923. She was a terminally ill victim of tuberculosis. Gurdjieff was not the cause of her death, and was actually benevolent.

One of the most revealing sources is Professor Denis Saurat, who gained a lengthy private interview (involving an interpreter) with Gurdjieff in February 1923. His account discloses that Gurdjieff was capable of marked courtesy, “and gave not the smallest impression of being a charlatan.” However, the same report attests that the English pupils were disconcerted by the routine at the Priory, which entailed protracted manual labour and no adequate explanation. Saurat never saw Gurdjieff again, although he became influenced by the views of his friend Orage, and in later years credited Gurdjieff with the spiritual status of lohan, a term deriving from Chinese Buddhism. This theory is not everywhere accepted.

In 1924, Gurdjieff was active in America, as an impresario of “sacred dance.” Some of the audience were impressed by the unusual performances of his pupils, which required considerable control and coordination. As a consequence, he gained many American followers. Yet after his return to France that same year, he met with a motor accident, suffering severe head injuries. Although he recovered quickly, this event clearly affected him strongly. He thereafter relegated the dance movements, and instead adopted the vocation of a writer. He also took more recourse to alcohol than previously, favouring vodka and armagnac.

For the next decade or so, he did much writing, and authored his “Three Series,” including the “autobiographical” Meetings with Remarkable Men, and the more lengthy Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.  The lastmentioned creation has been viewed as a bizarre mythology reflecting to some extent the bardic milieu of his father, and  delivered in a rather distinctive style. A strong critique of Western society is incorporated. These works were not published during his lifetime. The only writing of Gurdjieff which did get into print was a disconcerting pamphlet entitled The Herald of Coming Good (1933), and this he himself afterwards withdrew.

Gurdjieff’s debts became a primary factor in losing the Priory, which he was obliged to vacate in 1932, thereafter living solo in Paris. He made several visits to New York during the 1930s, and became notorious amongst some of his admirers for requesting money. His general reputation as an occultist achieved reference in a bestselling work by journalist Rom Landau, who believed that Gurdjieff was a hypnotist.

Critics have since targeted the subject’s sexual activity, of uncertain extent, but known to have involved a number of illegitimate children. This matter has been considered reprehensible in that the known women involved were his pupils. It is apparent  that Gurdjieff’s contested encounters derived some inspiration from his eccentric belief that women needed sexual contact with men to acquire a soul.

Gurdjieff in old age

 

During the Second World War, Gurdjieff lived in Paris, and at this period gained French followers for the first time. He also revived his interest in the sacred dance “movements,” and taught in group meetings at his apartment. Gurdjieff now charitably assisted poor people outside his following. After the war, he gained further interest from American and English admirers, and acquired the support of John G. Bennett, an English neo-Ouspenskyan who had numerous followers.

In 1948, Gurdjieff suffered another motor accident, although not as severe as the first one. He recovered with surprising speed, but the following year, his health deteriorated, leading to his death. After his decease, his pupil Jeanne de Salzmann organised his following into a movement, a number of Gurdjieff centres resulting in different countries.

See further Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson (1950); G. I. Gurdjieff, Meetings With Remarkable Men (1963); Rom Landau, God is My Adventure (1935); James Moore, Gurdjieff: A Biography (1991); C. S. Nott, Teachings of Gurdjieff: A Pupil’s Journal (1961); Nott, Journey Through This World (1969); P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous (London, 1950); Paul Beekman Taylor, Shadows of Heaven: Gurdjieff and Toomer (1998); Taylor, Gurdjieff and Orage: Brothers in Elysium (2001); Taylor, Gurdjieff’s America (2004); Taylor, G. I. Gurdjieff: A New Life (2008); James Webb, The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers (1980). For a more extensive bibliography, go to my web article Gurdjieff: Life and Controversy.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd

ENTRY no. 49

Copyright © 2012 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Desert Fathers

Antony and Paul of Thebes, Isenheim Altarpiece c. 1500

The early Christian phenomenon known as the “Desert Fathers” is of interest outside the theological domain. Commonly misunderstood, and also still widely neglected, this subject will not be unlocked by the contemporary indifference to “monks,” a category fitting very different psychologies and lifestyles.

The earliest Christian monks did not resemble the medieval varieties, especially those in European countries. The Desert Fathers, basically meaning Coptic (and Greek) ascetics of Graeco-Roman Egypt, were frequently anchorites in the early phase, and in retreat from the persecutions inflicted by the Roman regime. A major ideological influence was Origen (entry no. 45), active at Alexandria in the early third century CE. Some (or perhaps many) ascetics similarly came from an urban background, and likewise possessing a strong degree of literacy.

The Greek word monachos later became the standardised description for all types of monk, including many destitute peasants during the fourth century, when the monasteries proliferated in Egypt. By that time, earlier figures were becoming legendised, especially Antony, who was the subject of a hagiography composed by the bishop Athanasius. “The legacy at hand for anyone who like Antony, at the turn [end] of the third century, retreated from the duties of social life for the life of a philosopher, was not what, half a century later, a bishop like Athanasius wanted his flock to be fed with” (Rubenson, The Letters, p. 125).

The distinction is vital between what came before and what followed after. The subsequent phase was increasingly manipulated by the Christian clerics, who sought to outlaw Origenism and other teachings which became maligned as heresies. Athanasius (c. 298-373) was a major factor in the trend to orthodoxy; this bishop of Alexandria sought to create a unified Egyptian church within the Roman Empire, and made the monks subservient to his scheme of organisation and doctrine. The simplified concepts attending “monasticism” became a vehicle of episcopal mandate.

Paul of Thebes, by Mattia Preti c. 1660 

The earliest anchorite on record was Paul of Thebes, an obscure figure who fled to the desert from the Decian persecution (249-51 CE). A legendary meeting between Paul and Antony occurred in the Eastern desert of Egypt, as related by Jerome (d. 419), a Latin-speaking scholar who favoured the monastic lifestyle.  Standard conceptions and beliefs about the early hermits derived from the pious milieu of a later era, in the hagiological literature which developed from the mid-fourth century. This corpus was extensively edited during the fifth and sixth centuries, and has to be regarded with caution. The lives (vitae) and sayings (apophthegmata) of revered “desert fathers” reflect preoccupations of later writers.

In the latter half of the fourth century, numerous places in Egypt were the scene of ascetic activity. Many hermits favoured the desert cells of Nitria and Scetis in the Delta region, and not far south of Alexandria. Their lifestyle is often classified as semi-anchoritic, as they were not completely cut off in solitude. The early ideal was that of cells at a sufficient distance apart to enable total privacy; the hermits assembled on Saturday and Sunday to share a meal, some travelling three or four miles to the rendezvous church. Over the generations, a standard form of mud-brick hermitage developed, accommodating up to three monks. Bread and salt was the staple diet, alleviated by pilgrim visitors who supplied gifts of more exotic food, including honey, fruits, and wine. There was no fixed monastic rule amongst the hermits; wine was discouraged by the elders. A widespread recourse was that of weaving mats, ropes, and baskets from halfa grass or palm fibre, these items being sold in the towns.

The Greek word monasterion originally designated the hermit cell; only at a later period did this term apply to a collective monastery. The cell varied in appearance, but with the passing of time, frequently comprised two rooms: an ante-room for manual activity such as rope-weaving, and a rear room for prayer and sleep. It is evident that quite a large number of the early Egyptian solitary monks lived a surprisingly practical existence, not at all resembling the medieval European models of cloistered existence. Ideas about ascetic extremism are wide of the mark, and certainly on an aggregate basis, it would seem.

Egyptian (or Coptic and Greek) asceticism was mild by comparison with the Syrian Christian version of the anchoritic life. The desert fathers tended to disapprove of severe austerities. “Although evidence of excessive mortification can be found in Egypt, it nonetheless was an exception rather than the rule, and was usually practised most often in terms of food deprivation” (quote from Jeffrey Conrad, Egyptian and Syrian Asceticism, online PDF).

The sayings of the fathers are preserved in numerous collections, and in different languages varying from Latin and Greek to Arabic. These utterances have often been regarded as authentic fourth century records, but strong doubt applies on this point. “There is every reason to suspect theological and ecclesiastical tendencies at work in the sifting and transmission of the material over more than a hundred years. Thus the overall picture given in the sayings, even if only the earliest stratum is used, reflects the way the leading monastic circles wanted their forerunners to be remembered” (Rubenson, The Letters, p. 39).

The complexity of these trends as a whole is reflected in the fact that urban, village, and desert environments were all represented in early Egyptian monasticism. In this respect, the phrase “desert fathers” can be misleading. The Athanasian hagiography of Antony stressed the desert milieu, which the clerical version preferred. “The city and village ascetics continued in their role, but their place in history was lost” (Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert, p. 88).

Athanasius resorted to the phrase “a city in the desert,” supposedly created by Antony. In reality, most of the ascetics seem to have resided near inhabited sites. The desert myth has been interpreted as the contraction of a multi-faceted trend which the clerics wished to monopolise and control. A relative minority of the Egyptian ascetics really did move into the desert, and at a substantial distance from towns and villages, walking as much as three days or more before stopping at a cave or other location.

In an atmosphere of dogmatic manipulation, Athanasius wrote his Life of Antony at circa 360. The subject had recently died, and was now presented as a model of orthodoxy. The bishop’s alleged contact with Antony is strongly in question. His involvement in the Arian controversy was a doctrinal incitement to enlist the monks in his (anti-Arian) clerical cause. “Athanasius tried to involve the monks more fully in the public life of the Church by appointing many of them as bishops; he also asserted the right of bishops to intervene in monastic affairs” (Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, p. 12). This was the death-knell of vintage monasticism. Origenist and other teachings were crucified in the ritualist cause of sacraments enforced by the clergy.

The conventional life of Antony (d. 356) exhibits clerical strictures and superficial lore, including the extravagant Athanasian demonology. Factual occurrences are slender. Seven formerly relegated letters of Antony are now considered to be a more reliable guide, serving to cast light upon what he really taught. “The obvious dependence on popular Platonic philosophy and Alexandrian theological tradition reveals that the author was no ‘ignorant monk’ who had simply exchanged the garb of the peasant for the monastic habit, but a teacher who wore a monk’s garment as if it was the robe of a philosopher” (Rubenson, The Letters, p. 11).

In his allegorical exegesis, Antony has been revealed as a follower of Origen. Antony’s sense of inward reflection exhorted his associates to “know thyself,” a spiritual essence being the subject of contemplation. This was far removed from the extroverted activities of the ritualist clerics, who were fixated on sacraments, pomp, and revenue. By the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, there were already 72 bishoprics in Egypt. “The Church, through donations of money, grain, valuable articles, animals, slaves, and above all of land, rapidly accumulated considerable wealth.... Apparently, the office of the bishop was soon regarded as so attractive that people tried to become bishops in order to enrich themselves” (ibid., p. 107).

Coptic monastery of St. Antony, Egypt

Antony was born in Middle (or Lower) Egypt, and is also associated with Mount Kolzim, near the Red Sea, where he reputedly lived in a cave, and later the site of a monastery. To the south, in the Thebaid, a strongly contrasting form of monasticism emerged, being communal (coenobitic) rather than anchoritic. The coenobitic model eventually became the standard for Christian monasticism, a situation in which the earlier hermit life was eclipsed.

The reputed founder of the coenobitic lifestyle was Pakhom (292-346), whose career also became legendary. He was born a pagan Copt, but became baptised as a Christian. Pakhom initially lived as an anchorite on the banks of the Nile, being the disciple of the obscure hermit Palamon. At the deserted village of Tabennesis, Pakhom established a community of monks, which eventually harboured a hundred inmates. His community flourished, and by the time of his death, there were nine monasteries under his direction. Manual labour was a strong feature of the coenobitic lifestyle.

“Most Pachomian monks were Coptic speaking peasants, but several brothers clearly belonged to the Graeco-Roman elite” (Elm, Virgins of God, p. 289). There were also two Pachomian monasteries for nuns, many inmates being the sisters, wives, mothers, and daughters of the monks. The discipline became codified into a formal Rule, committed to writing at an uncertain date.

There are strong indications that Pakhom resisted clerical interference, and avoided ordination. In his monasteries, ordination was regarded as a source of pride and jealousy. The ego inflation caused by clerical status was despised. In 345, a disapproving episcopal synod placed Pakhom on trial at Latopolis; he escaped during a riot. After his death, the practice of appointing monks to bishoprics became widespread by the fifth century.

The Pachomian communities adapted to clerical orthodoxy, but a rival grouping was eclipsed by episcopal strategies. The Melitian schism  produced a separate church in Egypt, primarily Coptic, which found supporters amongst Coptic ascetics. The Melitian monasticism was “mainly located in or very close to villages and towns” (Elm, Virgins of God, p. 345), and like the Pachomian model, was engaged in agricultural work and trade. The Melitian church had also evolved a clerical hierarchy by 334 CE, and they were effectively rivals to Athanasius, who regarded them as heretics.

The complexities in events included the participation of women, meaning the Christian virgins who appeared in the third century, particularly at Alexandria. They were noted for religious study; this trend attracted literate young women from a wealthy background, and was part of “academic Christianity,” to use a modern scholarly label. Bishop Athanasius campaigned against this tradition, wishing to impose clerical authority against the rivals like Origen. “Athanasius’ effort to separate virgins from the discourse of academic Christianity thus involved intensive censorship of the virgin’s speech and hearing” (Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, p. 72).

The clerical ogres maintained their cordon in subsequent generations. Bishop Augustine enlisted the support of Jerome against the dissident Pelagius (entry no. 47), who was ousted from the scene as a heretic. Pelagius had strong connections with the monastic movement, and was not encumbered by the clerical appetite for ritual and predestination dogma.

See further David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford University Press, 1995); Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Harvard University Press, 2006); Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert (Oxford University Press, 1993); Susanna Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 1994); James E. Goehring, The Letter of Ammon and Pachomian Monasticism (Berlin: Gruyter, 1986); Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (Trinity Press, 1999); William Harmless, Desert Christians (Oxford University Press, 2004); Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth Century Egypt (University of California Press, 1985); Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd

ENTRY no. 48

Copyright © 2012 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Pelagius

The moral right of Pelagius to a fair hearing should be asserted, despite the shadow cast by Augustine of Hippo (entry no. 46). The former was pushed off the ideological map by the latter. Indeed, Augustine composed fifteen anti-Pelagian treatises. An antique  Calvinist print (to left) supplies an imaginary depiction of Pelagius, along with  hostile  emphases influenced by orthodox stigmas. 

Pelagius was born in Britain at circa 350/360 CE. “He seems to have been one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of that remarkable series of men who issued from the monasteries of Scotland and Ireland, and carried back to the Continent in a purified form the religion they had received from it” (quote from Pelagius).  Augustine and Jerome referred to Pelagius as a monk, a description which has been questioned. 

His early life is very obscure. Different assessments have ascribed his move to Rome as dating to the 380s or circa 405. In Rome, Pelagius gained profile as an ascetic and moral reformer; he was well read and composed a commentary on the Pauline Epistle to the Romans. Pelagius denied any hereditary transmission of sin devolving from the fall of Adam; instead, he maintained that sin was caused solely by wrong choices and voluntary will. 

Shortly before the invasion of Rome by the Goths in 410, Pelagius moved to Sicily and Carthage, finally settling at Palestine. He lived in relative peace until 415, when Augustine sent two letters (via a Spanish priest named Orosius) warning Jerome against him. By 417, Pelagianism had become an obsession for Jerome. “All the eloquence and violence of his invective were now aimed at these pestilential Pelagians and especially at the man whom he believed to be their leader” (Rees, Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic, p. 17). 

Jerome  (d. 419) was a Latin ascetic and savant well known for his polemical attacks on dissenters. This period saw the inception of a dogmatic Latin theology, in which Augustine figured as a seminal influence, even more so than his ally Jerome. In his status role as Bishop of Hippo, Augustine supplied an inflexible cordon against heretics and pagans, meaning the doctrine of predestination. This disconcerting persuasion has been described in terms of: 

“In pressing his case on the need for salvation even if it meant applying coercion, on the eternal damnation of infants dying unbaptised, on the absolute necessity for regeneration through baptism within the church, on the exclusive power of divine grace to save or destroy, on a form of predestination which limited the number of the saved right from the moment of creation... he [Augustine] was impelled to adopt extreme positions in order to buttress his own arguments” (ibid., p. 17). 

Described by some scholars as a reformer of Christian morals, Pelagius became “the leader of a large and influential circle of loyal adherents comprising not only educated aristocrats, many of them women, but also clerics who were later to form the nucleus of the opposition to his final condemnation in 418” (ibid., p. 19).

Pelagius advocated that the church should be formed of “perfect Christians,” as distinct from nominal Christians who retained pagan habits. Yet it was not merely the aggregate Christians who were under criticism here; the official church hierarchy were also implied as compromising with self-indulgence and the values of mammon. Pelagius has been described as the last exponent of the ancient Christianity, in contrast to the conveniences implemented by the clerics. In more recent times, the original or “primitive” Christianity has been discerned as something overlaid by what the status exponents chose to substitute. 

Pelagius was a baptised layman, and did not seek ordination as a cleric. Although sometimes described as a monk, he was “neither a monk nor a priest” (ibid., p. xiv). In Rome and elsewhere, laymen and women gained prominence in the multi-faceted ascetic movement,  a phenomenon which Augustine and Jerome tried to influence. However, the predestination dogma was not accepted by many monks. Pilgrims from all over the Christian world passed through the homes and meeting places of the radical Christian laypeople in Rome.

Similar to Augustine, Pelagius  resisted the Manichaean doctrine. Yet he was very different in other ways. Jerome composed Against the Pelagians, censuring those who taught apatheia (freedom from passions), which entailed a belief in the attainment of spiritual perfection; this concept was deemed heretical, and is now associated with Stoics, Manichaeans, and Origen. The heresy was deemed a threat to the mediation of sacraments by the clergy, who maintained a stifling  ritualism. 

Pelagius wrote formal letters of exhortation to the perfect Christian life. He attracted patrons and inspired young disciples from educated families. A fair number of the latter seem to have renounced the world in a monastic spirit, including Celestius, possibly an Italian, who opted to join the clerical status programme by receiving ordination. The latter was censured in 412 by a synod in Carthage for holding Pelagian views.

Freedom of choice was an important aspect of Pelagian teaching. Nothing could make sense without this component. The individual had to create better values in the decadent Roman society, and not rest content with the conventional habits. Numerous pagans in Rome had recently become Christians, but the general tendency of these converts was to maintain former customs. Many of them were members of a ruling class desiring to protect their extensive properties at any cost to society. This was the underlying rationale for the imperial laws which exacted brutal punishments. These upper class “good Christians” of Rome “were capable of discussing at the dinner-table both the latest theological opinion, on which they prided themselves as experts, and the kind of judicial torture they had just inflicted on some poor wretch” (Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 347). 

Unlike the layman Pelagius, the prestigious Bishop Augustine was insensitive to the fact that crude dogmas of salvation could endorse injustices. The elect Christians could so easily abuse dissident Christians and pagans who were sentenced to damnation by predestination. Meanwhile, the Pelagian cause agitated at the public executions maintained by Roman ruling class barbarity at the expense of the poor and discontented. 

The last decade of the fourth century CE saw many imperial edicts against paganism and heresy. Hereditary occupations were enforced in a milieu “where the secret police (agentes in rebus) seemed ubiquitous, and where the screams of those under judicial torture and the gibbets of arbitrary executions were common sounds and sights” (Chadwick, The Early Church, p. 222).

“Pelagius wanted every Christian to be a monk” (Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 348). His precise relation to monasticism is uncertain, but his ascetic outlook is evident. “To sell all one’s possessions, as he himself had done; to refrain even from what was permitted; to be content, like pilgrims, with bare necessities; and to live in celibacy – these were his ideals” (quote from Pelagius). In contrast, Augustine favoured the affluent and married Christian layman disposed to vendettas and keen to fight for his property (Brown, op. cit., p. 348). In many ways, the African bishops represented underlying Roman Empire social attitudes. 

“For the Pelagians, man had no excuse for his own sins, nor for the evils around him” (ibid., p. 349). Augustine invented a new excuse, that of heavenly predestination for the baptised elect. He asserted the transmission of hereditary sin, and urged that pagan virtues were annulled by sin. Only divine grace for the elect counted. 

Many Pelagians wished to part with their enormous wealth in the pursuit of renunciation, a factor basically foreign to the pedagogical and episcopal outlook. Pelagians asserted that the (Christian) rich were damned, in contrast to the clerical insistence that non-Christians are eternally blighted. Augustine and other churchmen counteracted excess wealth being given to the poor by the pious injunction to endow Catholic monasteries (ibid., p. 350). The clergy and establishment monks depended on wealthy landowners, who were thus screened from criticism. 

The letters of Augustine to the Roman noblewoman Proba have been viewed with caution; he did not exhort Proba to change her situation, but merely to dwell on pious themes like corruptibility. Yet she was “the heiress of a vast agricultural empire, acquired by rapine and maintained with a selfishness that had aggravated the miseries and resentments of the Gothic disaster” (ibid., p. 351). 

The Bishop of Hippo missed out basic causality in his deceptive attitude to Roman life, whereas the Pelagians began to perceive the realistic deficit of huge problems underlying social and political existence. 

In 418, the Emperor Honorius ordered the banishment of Pelagius and Celestius from Rome (wrongly assuming they were still in that city), and condemned all those who denied the Fall (meaning original sin). In unison, the Council of Carthage issued a series of nine canons against Pelagianism. Pope Zosimos, under pressure from the conservative African bishops and Roman opponents, condemned and excommunicated the heretics. Augustine, the chief instigator, made further hostile gestures, with the result that Pelagius was expelled from Palestine, seeking refuge in Egypt, an event leading to his oblivion. 

Meanwhile, eighteen Italian bishops appealed against the condemnation, only to find themselves condemned, excommunicated, and banished from their homeland (Rees, 1988, p. 141). The repressive clerical programme lasted in variants for over a thousand years. 

See further Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London: Faber, 1967); Theodore de Bruyn, trans., Pelagius’ Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Oxford University Press, 1998): Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967; revised edn, 1993); R. F. Evans, Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (New York, 1968); Evans, Four Letters of Pelagius (London, 1968); J. Ferguson, Pelagius: A Historical and Theological Study (Cambridge, 1956); B. R. Rees, Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1988); Rees, Pelagius: Life and Letters (Boydell, 2004). 

Kevin R. D. Shepherd 

ENTRY no. 47 

Copyright © 2012 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.