My frustration, delight, and general obsession with early and late antique Christian hagiography began during a seminary class on Christian monasticism, when we read the Life of Antony.

Saint Antony was born in Egypt in the middle of the 3^rd century CE. As a young man gave up his earthly possessions to retreat into the wilderness and live an ascetic life. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote the Life of Antony shortly after Antony’s death, describing the holy man’s asceticism, commitment to prayer, and encounters with demons, among other things.

This Life is an early Christian example of hagiography, a text that records the lives of saints, often with particular emphasis on their holiness, connection with God, and spiritual practice. Usually full of interesting vignettes, vivid descriptions of demons, and conceptions of humanity’s relationship with the divine, they give a modern reader plenty of food for thought and deeper engagement, if not grounds for full agreement.

The Life of Antony emphasizes Antony’s robust physical health throughout his long lifespan, despite a rigorous ascetic practice of fasting and living in harsh conditions. In fact, the second-to-last section of the Life of Antony is titled, “How Antony remained hale until his death, and how the fame of him filled all the world” (trans. Ellershaw). His strength and physical health are not portrayed as a coincidence or good luck (or good genes). They are a blessing from God and a result of Antony’s virtuous life, at least as interpreted by his hagiographer.

Now, that’s all well and good. Given the genre of hagiography and the historical context, those connections make sense, even if my modern sensibilities might find something to disagree with in that theology.

I began to wonder, however, if there were any early or late antique Christian hagiographies that had to wrestle with the ill health of a saint. If Saint Antony’s physical health was a divine blessing and a mark of his virtue, were there other saints who didn’t have the same experience of health? How were their lives recorded? How do their hagiographers make sense of the connections between illness and the divine, holiness and fragility?

I’ll admit these questions were not wholly academic for me. I spent much of my time at seminary dealing with some chronic health issues and finding that institutions are not particularly easy places to navigate when living with chronic illness or disability. Beyond the practical questions about accessibility, there are a lot of theological questions to wrestle with: how do we read (and preach) Bible stories about healing? What do we actually believe about God and the fragility of our bodies, or about God and pain? I found some wonderful modern theologians, writers, and biblical scholars who helped me sort through these threads—Nancy Eiesland, Sharon Betcher, Amy Kenny, and Kate Bowler, to name a few.

But I kept finding myself being drawn back in time, too, to these early and late antique Christian saints living before our modern categories of chronic illness and disability. Saint Antony was hale and hearty until his death, but surely there must be hagiographies that tell more complicated stories about health and holiness, too.

Then I began reading about Pachomius, a fourth century Egyptian Christian ascetic who founded one of the earliest Christian monastic communities, the Koinonia. And because Pachomius lived in community, it was well-known that he did not live a life of robust physical health. On the contrary, he was often sick, and physical illness shows up time and time again in his hagiographies, both the versions written in Coptic and in Greek.

Now, I have a tendency to go slightly overboard, so I decided to spend a full semester studying the First Greek Life of Pachomius (one specific hagiography of his) and ended up writing 35 pages about Pachomius: his ascetic practice, his illness, his life in the Koinonia. 

There are parallels between the two saints. Pachomius actually withdraws to become a hermit (directly following in Antony’s footsteps) for a period of time before he founds his Koinonia. They are both cast as men of God to emulate, committed to holiness and ascetic practice.

But Pachomius experiences physical affliction again and again throughout his life. He suffers from sickness, from fevers, from demonic affliction, and he perseveres in his faith through it all. There are several instances in his Life where he miraculously heals another person. Yet he himself is not miraculously healed. At the end of his life, he lies ill for forty days before eventually dying of sickness.

I’m not sure exactly what I was looking for when I began that project, a few years ago in my own life and sixteen centuries in the past. I highly doubt there’s some sort of universal way to write about pain and suffering and holiness and God. Some things simply exist beyond our ability to put words to them.

But at the very least, we’re still asking the same questions, saints and hagiographers and 21^st century seminary students alike. And for every story we hear of an Antony, may we read one of Pachomius too: the presence of God even in the absence of miraculous healing, the truth that pain might persist however holy or unholy we are, a record of life and love inside these fragile bodies that one day return to dust.