The Practice of Lenten Solitude in the Lives of Cyril of Scythopolis

In his hagiographical works Cyril of Scythopolis described an annual practice during which a select number of monks would leave their monasteries for the solitude of the surrounding desert for the period of Lent. This article examines the appearance and use of this unique monastic practice within the literary context of late antique Palestinian monasticism. Rather than being widely adopted as some scholarship has suggested, the practice of Lenten solitude was primarily used by the abbots of the Judean Desert as a method to temporarily achieve hesychia, stillness and solitude. Within Cyril’s narratives spiritually advanced monks continually sought more reclusive forms of asceticism for the sake of heyschia by limiting their contact with other individuals by enclosing themselves in a cell or fleeing the region entirely. The administrative and temporal duties expected of monastic leaders prevented their engagement with these practices. I argue that Lenten solitude provided abbots the temporary opportunity to engage with their desired ascetic praxis without abandoning their monastic institutions and positions as leaders. This reveals the continued interplay between institutionalized monasticism, with its connections to the imperial church, and the internally focused ascetic goals of spiritual perfection which remained at the heart of the monastic way of life in sixth-century Palestine.