Abstract This work looks at the notion of ξενιτεία in early hesychastic tradition, standardly analysed as a metaphorical extension of “exile” into the notion of “alienation” of the self from the material circumstances that lurk along the way of ascetics towards divination. It is argued that ξενιτεία can only be understood as a relational network of conceptual elements, otherwise a cognitive model, which includes “silence” and “self-sufficiency” against the conceptual backdrop of CITY. The present analysis, tracing the origins of this complex model, detects a conceptual blueprint that also underlies the very first attestation of the term, found in Democritus. It shows that, beyond their superficial referential disparity, the two uses represent the two ends of a diachronic continuum along which the model evolved. In the latter, STILLNESS as a natural state of self-contained development runs against random MOVEMENT within a space of multiplicity and fragmentation. The latter in the monastic writing is instantiated as the mundane noise to be avoided. In Democritus, it is argued, this model configures both the physical and ethical plane, whereby the atomic world of unknowable randomness is paralleled to the multiple chances of material fortune. Further nuances of self-substitution found in the use of the term in the early Christian era are shown to stem from the highly schematic configuration of SUBSTITUTION, diachronically present in the conceptualisation of the term ξένος.
Georgios Ioannou (Wed,) studied this question.