#GruntGod ep.8: Christian Barthel
The eighth installment of a revolutionary exploration of faith and service.
Transcript
Introduction
📍 Hey, and welcome to Grunt Work's first formation. My name is Brother Logan Isaac, and this is Chapter eight of God Is a Grunt and More Good News for GIS Reboot, um, also known as re-release paperback release. Um, I published my, the book in April of 2022 in hardcover with a publisher I'm not a huge fan of, and so now I'm releasing it myself.
In ebook form in Podcast Serial, which this is. Um, and, and I'm also including a series of icons that are unique to the book and to the figures through whom I talk about different subjects, practices, scripture, et cetera. So today we're talking about pomes of thieves and monasticism, and joined with me is going to be, or joining me is Christian Bartel, who's who wrote on Pius.
And the early monastics in the Syrian and Egyptian tradition in Christianity, and it was actually his work that I found through the academic spheres that helped me kind of contextualize pocos, uh, and monasticism and how koms. Seems very much to be borrowing heavily from his military training in order to take abandoned villages that he encounters as a Roman conscript and turn them into for the Romans fortresses.
But for the church, he builds monasteries. So Pius is a way of talking about monasticism and what the early church and what some Christians still kind of have in their head about. You know, we talk about the early desert fathers and mothers who go out and like sit on a zig rot and hold court and that's great.
And I'm a bit of an introvert. I love my solitude time, but that's also seems kind of inviting. Like I would, I would love, and a lot of veterans love to leave society behind because society sucks and running away from. A broken system or persecution is different from running to God. They're not mutually exclusive, but they are distinct.
And so in my world, I thought of, uh, St. Anthony of the Desert as like he is the person who like created monasticism with the scare quotes. And what Angen did was aromatic monasticism, which is a single person off on their own. And oh, by the way, I'm in the chapter house. If you're watching this on video, which you can do on YouTube, uh, for a podcast, you can see that I've got, uh, some stuff behind me from the chapter House bookstore in Albany, Oregon.
That's where I'm broadcasting from. If you've been following, um, first formation or Grunt, God Live, you'll know that we are building toward opening the chapter house in November. So if you are watching on YouTube. This is, this is the back part of the cast register. Anyway, if you're not watching back to Pius aromatic, monasticism to an introvert like me does not sound like in the, the aesthetic life.
Aesthetic means, uh, somebody who gives up a lot of things in order to find fulfillment. And this is like global faith traditions. Everybody, every faith tradition has aesthetics. Sometimes you call 'em. Sun TAs or yogis, uh, or sages or gurus in Christianity, we call them, probably call 'em monks from, and monasticism comes from the Greek Monas, which means.
Singular or alone or expelled. And I mentioned in the chapter how Paul uses mono to mean, well, you didn't want us, we went on our mono on our own. And I wanna be really careful also to not overemphasize solitude, because the one thing that Genesis talks about being not good is to be alone. And in Hebrew, that's bad.
And in. Greek. I don't know if it's monos. I'd have to look, but my concern here is like I call the monks the rugged isolationists because we have a lot of people for whom getting away from society is something they want to do. And other people want to find God and they go to the desert, or they go into isolation to kind of quiet everything down in search of God as opposed to fleeing from corrupt society, which is what Antony really kind of did, depending on how you read St.
Jerome's life of Antony, which popularized aime. Monasticism. Jerome tells us that MIUs found, or I'm sorry, p uh. Uh, uh, Angen found this paradise. He called it a paradise. Jerome did when he went back and told others. And so when we think about esis, um, and asceticism and monasticism and the higher ideal in a faith tradition to isolate yourself for long periods of time, I'm deeply suspicious of theologically.
Pius, however, seems to have been in inspired by Paul. Not the Apostle Paul, a different Paul, but the first hermit Paul, who does not go off and find a paradise in the desert, which, oh, by the way, Anthony discovered an old Roman mint. So he is literally like walking through money. Anyway, I'm, I'm a little biased, uh, because I want that, I want the solitude life, um, where.
Veterans in particular are prone to this kind of desire. If you look at the enlistment and, uh, veteran status statistics, we're recruiting heavily from the south in America, but veterans are disproportionately represented in northern rural states like Maine, uh, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Alaska. And so that tells a story of people going from the.
Urban and semi-urban south to the very rural and not just farmland, like nothingness kind of areas. And so there is a story, or there is a parallel with Pius and monasticism and isolation that I'm really nervous about because I hear from a lot of friends who want that isolated life because society sucks because society is in decay and has become corrupt.
I feel that. I also am, I find myself in Albany opening up a bookstore with Ezekiel and Jeremiah in mind, where they say, look, shit's bad, just make do with it. And Pius is this inspirational figure because instead of saying, oh, I'm gonna go off and be by myself because people are the problem, he says, no, no, I'm actually going to create communities.
And so he learned from the Roman Empire as a conscript. How to take abandoned villages. Made him, make him into fortifications. He is. He leaves the military under unusual and hard to interpret circumstances, but he finds himself free of his obligation to the military and he begins going around building monasteries at abandoned villages.
And I think that's interesting because it sounds like he took his military training and applied it to the church and when he did, he was the he was. The person who probably most popularized communal monasticism called tic monasticism. And that's why I call it, uh, and I think I call it in the book Monasticism with Friends, because in 2022 there's this book Words with Friends, well, let's do monasticism, let's do faith.
But with friends, because that's. What is good, it's to be together, to be with one another, to be in relationship. And so on the icon of Poko, he has, um, engineers instruments, a, a carpenter square, a mallet in the back, you can kind of see what I see as the Army Corps of Engineers Branch Insignia, which is just like a tower.
And so I call Pius, uh, the engineer because he takes his training. Highly skilled training and applies it to the church in a way that is really good and does something constructive and productive that brings people together instead of helping or allowing us to kind of continue to drift apart. And instead of doing the hard work of relationship, we just, we want to get away.
I want to get away sometimes. I'm sure many of my listeners want to, but what I think little c Christianity calls us to, which is. The Unindustrial, um, unentitled faith that models itself off of the Christ of the first century were called to togetherness. Um. Christ ate with people he knew he would be, that would betray him.
He ate with people who did not work together well or didn't at first. And so that seems to me to be explicitly challenging the idea that the ideal faith practice is you go off to some, you know, remote destination and pray for the world and hope it's saved or something. What do you mean by prayer? Is influenced by what you see when you look at Christ.
Christ doesn't stand alone. He has 12 apostles, and when one takes their own life, they replace him. So the community aspect that S'S life draws us to is not only borrowing from the military because of the training, but most monastic groups that draw from poons, including Benedict, who did not serve in the military.
They create this structure, a regulate a, a rule, an expectation of living in community. That starts with MIUs. Benedict borrows from Mia's Rule, and so if you are fascinated by the monastic life, or if you live near an abbey or a monastery, or a priory, Pius is the person who helps us think. Collectively about that, and joining me is Christian Bartell.
You'll hear from him in a moment. He's, he introduced me to some of the other practices that monasticism, uh, embodies. Uh, we talked a little bit about the lum, which I talked about in the chapter, how like the military belt was. Used as a symbol in the military as well as in monasticism. It was a symbol of your membership.
And if you did something bad in the military, they'd take your belt away. If you do something bad in the monastery, they threatened to take your belt away and they can kick you out. And sometimes they did. It was rare, but they did. So there are boundaries. There are expectations in community. It's not kumbaya.
In fact, that's always the most difficult part, is living to learning to live with other people. Who see faith differently, but you all are coming around this expectation around what are we doing together to serve the Lord and one another. And so without further ado, here is Christian Bartel of, I cannot pronounce the university, but it's somewhere in Europe, and you'll see at the end, I, it's somewhere in northern Germany.
Um, but he and I have a great conversation and um, it was really helpful to hear directly from him after having read a lot of his articles that I borrowed from directly for this chapter. So I hope you'll appreciate it. I also hope you'll. Subscribe to God as a grunt season pass@pqq.com and RSVP or register for Grunt Con in October, uh, October 25th, 2025 in Albany.
Um, but otherwise, here we go. Here's the, uh, chapter slash episode, and I hope you enjoyed as much as I had having the conversation.
Interview
I'm joined by Christian Bartel, uh, assistant or visiting professor at the University of GR Gral in Northern Germany. I know I said I, I was practicing. Why don't you introduce yourself, Christian, and also as this is for the chapter on Poms and monasticism, and particularly the dichotomy or.
Dualism between tic monasticism and Adic Monism, the singular kind of figures and the group figures. But why don't you tell me a little bit about your background and how you came to appreciate pcom and what you've, what you've found. Uh, yeah. Great. Um, so f first of all, thanks for inviting me. Uh, so my name you already mentioned it is Ian Bartel.
I'm an ancient historian, uh, and I'm interested in late antiquity. That's like the area of like 300 to, let's say 900. Later that Okay. Yeah. Long, late and trick. We like to branch out and, um, I'm interested, uh, in military, uh, institutions, the Roman Empire and, uh, stuff like that. And I was always curious about how things work and when you work on the administration and institutions, you, you realize how important religion is in Native Ry.
And so you have to, um. Study something or, uh, do, do research on certain topics. And I was also interested doing, already doing my studies into monoism and I did that as a postdoc project and went Yeah, into Egypt and Egyptian monoism. And that's why, uh, the whole pakos research papers came about. Hmm. And you wrote a couple.
One that I picked up on was, uh, the Militia Day or Die. How, how would you say, why don't you tell me about what you've, what your papers, um, explore and we mm-hmm. And I'm, I'm happy to jump in with what. My, my perspective is I've, I always try to warn people, like I'm not an expert in anything, but I have something like a DHD, and so I can, I can go pretty deep in the rabbit holes.
Mm-hmm. But my, my real interest is laying somewhere between the surface and like the expert level. And one of the things that I really liked, you mentioned Egyptian monasticism in the West. Um, the, the attention focuses on, uh, not necessarily on pos, but like Paul of Thieves was one of the ones that I've, that I delve into a little in the book.
Um, or St. Anthony of Egypt and later. Mm-hmm. I, I, I think Martin is, Martin of Tour is my guy. Yeah. But, um, tell me a little bit about the. The background in which Poms arrives and how, and the weather, he stood out, um, from the other monastic kind of impulses at the, at the time. Uh, well, just like you, I was interested in the origins of monasticism and that's how when you look at the stories hacky, you of course get to the big lives of Anthony and maybe also the hermits in Syria and stuff like that.
Um, and now focused on Omes. 'cause I noticed that, uh, if you look at the Benedict Teen monies in, in the West, there's a similarity there. Now, I was interested in normative uh, texts. Uh, like the rules. Um, and that's how the connection from West to East came about. And then of course, I'd like to contextualize those text and, uh, to get to your question, um, if you think about it, monasticism came about after a prolonged period of civil.
Um, starting, you could say even, uh, middle of the third century, all the way up throughout, uh, at the beginning of depletions reign, that's like the end of the third century maybe, uh, beginning of the fourth where you have got this grade persecution as is it called? We about 2 85, 2 eighties. Yeah. Yeah. And then later on, early fourth century, three or five, that's one, one date, but it's not that important.
Um, uh uh where, where we at least have the sources that tell us, or Christian sources written later on that tell us there was a great persecution and the Christians were persecuted all over the empire. As historians, we don't know really know how much and how severe this whole thing was, but of course, our sources, Christian sources tell us that was a big deal and that was interesting for me.
And I like to get to grips with it and chose Papias because I thought that has to be a fairly, uh, early layer of monasticism. Uh, and that's why. Yeah. Yeah. I talk deeper as a i'll, I, I'll call myself an evangelical, like I'm, I'm a Bible thumper, and that is a particular kind of literature. It's persuasive, it wants to convince you of something, and it's going to use rhetorical devices to persuade people.
And it's only, uh, it, I think it may have been when I was beginning to do some of my research on Poms and the martyrs of the Colosseum, and it's like, mm-hmm. The Christian accounts with an agenda. We all have an agenda. Yes. They want to convince you this is horrible. It was this and that and the other thing, and I mentioned 2 85 because there's a big, there's an edict, I think with Diocletian, and that's where we get the first like.
Almost formal or formal, formal persecution. But throughout that time, even with Saul of Tarsus. Mm-hmm. Like he's being, he thinks he's on the road to martyrdom, but we don't know. And someone that popular, we probably would have an account anyway. Mm-hmm. I mentioned that because. Um, uh, coming, coming to the Bible and to our traditions through military service, Imperial, you know, esque military service.
Um, I read Paul of Thieves, who like is one of the earliest Yeah. Um, ARA Mitic, uh, monastics going out on his own. Mm-hmm. And vets or military families, they love to nitpick at other people and one another. And I read Paul like. He wanted, there was a certain benefit to getting out of the city. Yes. And getting out of some debts.
But also like there was some military thing, like he also happened to be whether I, I guess the question is, do you see. A distinction 'cause, 'cause I see it because I'm hypercritical. But like, do you see a distinction in these early forms of monasticism between like, chasing Jesus or, or belief or, or wisdom chasing it and following it to the desert and how much of, some of it was like, there are worldly concerns that I want to get away from like debt, like military service because in, in the post script we.
Like the Christian persuasion kind of literature, like I am a good person. I did this for Pure and Snow White, you know, ideals. But when you get into the nitty gritty, it's like there's some gray. How much mm-hmm. That did you see in within the monastic? I'll say the mian. Witness a. Mm-hmm. A distinction between I'm following Christ into the desert and I am fleeing the city and urban corruption.
Ooh, that's a, that's a good question. I believe I would go with the latter more. At the beginning I would see more worldly affairs and the need to flee, uh, tax reduction, tax exemption, stuff like that. 'cause if you look, uh, or if you read those early lines against the grain, you see that there's a lot of worldy things going on.
Uh, and, and that's still valuable for an, for instance, Anthony, um. And das his, uh, I think it's his relative, his sister with money. Yeah. And so there's still worthy affairs in the background before you can concentrate on following Christ and, uh, living a religious life. So you have to connect both of them to get to the, to the bottom of it.
And I would start with the worldly affairs, but that's just me as a skeptic, as a scientist. Yeah. And I think, I think you can have both. Mm-hmm. I think, I think maybe one of the concerns with historians and I, I don't know if I'm a historian, is like being honest about both sides of the picture. If I tell my own story and I have a high vision or a high, if I have a high self-esteem that's gonna color my description and someone that, yeah.
Might not have the same interests that I have, would be like, well what about this? Mm-hmm. Like Paul Phibes talks about, I discovered that where he landed had a bunch of palm trees and it was an old mint. Yeah. With maybe coins laying around like mm-hmm. This does not seem austere from a certain perspective.
Mm-hmm. Um, could you tell me a little bit for listeners as well, like a background of PO himself and what he did and what he is known for? Um, yeah, just to connect it with what you said, it's the same with Anthony. I think they, uh, discovered that the area where he chose to live as a hermit was, uh, had like black ground was fertile.
Hmm. So that's the fertile desert. It's not like, uh, a harsh environment. Yeah. And it's a bit of the same with the Ians 'cause they called their, uh, their main hub, their, their monasteries, uh, the village. Or the, the headquarters. So there was still something very much connected to the, uh, yeah, to the fertile Crescent of Nile.
Yeah. So that's not, that's not a world apart. It's still very much connected to the Yeah. Ancient Egypt or Egyptian, uh, landscape. Uh, but Pacom himself, he was. Or at least is later biographers thought it important to portray him as a soldier, as a recruit. Um, and I believe there is. Some truth to that. And he converted to Christianity during his, uh, yeah.
Formative years, his first year of service. And from there on, he chose to first live a sort of a hermit, semi aromatic, we would say. And then later on found like a community of like-minded monks, which he, um, yeah. Led more or less in similar way, like a military leader, like a. Will. Yeah. And, uh, uh, he was conscripted.
Yes. Somewhere out of Egypt. And you describe, or or I, I pick up on some of your description of how. In the military, one of the things that just made up your life as, as a, as a younger soldier was like going out and tr uh, rehabilitating abandoned villages into fortifications. Mm-hmm. And he seems to have done this as kind of when he became a monk, he continued that same, a, a very similar pattern.
Mm-hmm. And I wanted to mention, I see it today, even there's, I'm in Albany, Oregon, um, and. One of the things I think we take for granted is how, how war in, in America, we haven't had a conscription in 50 years or something. And I think that creates a social dynamic where we forget a lot of things that we wouldn't have forgotten if we all felt like, oh, our interests have to be defended and we may ha we, we may be asked to sacrifice for our way of life.
But the way it used to be and like World War II in America, like, we forget that. We, we didn't have, like, we had a standing army. We've always had a standing army, but it wasn't as big as it is in wartime. So World War II comes up, we stand everybody up, and if you can't serve, you might serve at home. Uh, you might serve in the factories.
And then when the war ended, everything's just demobilized and you keep like a skeleton crew of military personnel. But all, all that mobilization and money and economic. Engine just stops. And then you have out in Adair Village in Oregon, uh, it's this cute little unincorporated, I, I don't, yeah, it's not incorporated, but it's like a village.
And, uh, it has the, the old barracks. 'cause it used to be Camp Adair where you would go and train up with 30 other individuals and they would be your unit and your officer would be, will have been trained up a little bit. And then you'd go off and deploy and. You're together until the war is over and then you come home.
In contrast with our own modern way of doing the US where you just send replacement individuals and you just enter a unit already doing it out there, you're alone when you get there. You have to find people to trust and then you come home alone. We're still doing that a little bit. We're doing it by unit now where we had been in Iraq and so this campa dare.
When the war stopped, they didn't need it anymore, so they sold it off to the county. And you can still find the barracks, you can find the officer's club. And what has happened is the old gymnasium and a bunch of the old military buildings have been purchased by a Christian school system, um, San Am Christian School, and it's in this old military.
Base and they're kind of apart from the world. They're not like unincorporated or they're not incorporated and they're not, I dunno, I, I go over there a lot 'cause there's a nice little coffee shop, but it's, it's not connected with like, the urban system here in Albany or in Salem or Corvallis. And it, it just, it's easier to put my mind in the circumstance of Pocos where it's like in hindsight.
I could say like, he built milit, he, he built new military installations. And that would be true, but if we think it has the same like, I don't know, efficiency or whatever, it's, I, I'd love to hear from you about what happens in writing history, that we pick things out that we like. And those get exemplified.
Is there a name for that? I, I don't want to call it confirmation bias, but is there a process through which that historians would say, look, let's be clear. There's like the history of it and then there's the telling of that. Is there a name or a phenomenon for that, that we probably refer to it as a tradition?
That, that's this tradition that's created that is maybe even like a lived tradition, that it's always, uh, actualized at certain parts, parts for the community. Sometimes if, if you've got like a good big library, which call it a manuscript tradition at this point that manuscripts are transmitted and, uh, uh, from Onery to the next, maybe that's one way we would look at it as historians.
Hmm. Yeah. You're absolutely right. And I mean, when you look at Egypt, it's telling that a lot of monastic communities lived in places of, or religious, uh, places that were used, uh, in a totally different context. For example, I think of, um, maybe like a military camp. It's really famous, is the temple of Luxal in the south.
Which was used by the Romans as a military base from, from a temple. And you've got the same, I think it's the big, uh, temple of hardship which housed the monastic community, a large one where we even got, uh, inscriptions and some papyri telling us about that. And similar way pers reused, um, abandoned buildings.
Not for his, for his new community. Yeah. And it's not, it's not unfair to say that he was using his military training mm-hmm. But it's also a rhetorical device that Yeah. That can get carried too far. Mm-hmm. Awesome. Um, well we're gonna take a quick break, Christian, um, and when we come back, I want to hear.
A little bit. We've talked a little bit about the religious stuff and how they're formed over time. I'd really love to get into any military history, and I think in one of your papers you talked about the lum and how like, just like the Roman belt was significant. That, uh, KOMS and others kind of took some of these symbols and traditions and used them, co-opted them, subverted them, um, and that today, some of the things I'm, I'm, I'd be really interested to see how we, that carries forward into, uh, our own contemporary context.
Um, so stick with us, keep listening and we'll be right back with Christian Bartel.
And we're back with Christian Bartel.
Um, as I mentioned, um, there's the, the religious tradition that, that I've inherited and I'm fascinated by. And there's these, there's these Easter eggs I sometimes find, um, one I, I think I mentioned right before we went to the break is the lum and the military belt. Even in some of the early illuminating manuscripts, like, um, I have a, a keen interest in logus.
And the, the fictional character who both pierces Jesus' side and is the first to bear witness to the fact he says, surely this is an innocent man. Or surely this is God's son. And in these ear, the earliest depiction of Logus, he has the belt, the lum, which signifies his military rank. But the, I also think of like the sacramentum, the oath that they took.
Mm-hmm. Even stuff like there's, um, in Philippians. I'm I, Philippians is a, a military community. The church in Philippi was a bunch of military brats and descendants of military families. And I even, I I, you didn't bring it up in any of your papers, but if you have any thoughts, the Christ, HYN and Philippians, it made me wonder how closely it might be related to.
Oaths or cadences maybe that the military might have used. Um, would you tell us a little bit about the Jing Golum and what the military function was of it, and if you know the extent to which the religious community adopted it and modified it? I know you talked a little bit about in your paper and as well I did in the chapter.
Um, yeah, that's a, a loaded question there. Uh, but I try my best. Uh, well, uh, it's all we can do. Okay. If we bring it back to the, the initial thought. Uh, so what, uh, influence could you have on a new com if you want? Build a new community in this, uh, let's, let's say early fourth century after prolonged period of civil war.
I mean, everyone knew. Someone who was in the military who had fought. So of course this was a major in, uh, or that's my belief. Yeah, it has to be a major influence. And of course I did get in the academic circles, I did get pushback, but I still believe I'm right. So, yeah. Um, and, and one, uh, key element was that I found, uh, in the normative texts, certain clear descriptions.
That resemble military language and, uh, for example, punishments or as you mentioned it, single alone. Mm-hmm. Uh, those are terms which we only know from the Roman institutions, like the military or the civil service. It's a clear marker for belonging to this institution. And if it was used in a similar way in a monastic circles, this for me means that there's a clear connection.
Someone knew of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone knew and viewed it with similar meaning and Yes. Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong. So, so I'm not saying it's one-to-one the same. Yeah. But they use it as a key influence. Of course. They create something new that's important for me to say. And there's an, a religious endeavor included of course.
But they had the experience from their, lived their world and their lived in and they used it to create something new. Yeah. And. It, it's my understanding that in religious communities, the Mian community mm-hmm. You're issued a single, um, and if you had done something wrong, if you'd stepped outside the expectations in morays, you would be threatened with taking, having your Yes.
Lum taken. Is that right? Yes. And, and there's a, and there's a similar hierarchy, uh, similar to the, uh, to the military service. So you can lose your belt. Your, uh, belonging to this community is, uh, exemplified by taking your belt away. Yeah. And then you can, you can reenter into the community and then get a new belt, but you have to climb the hierarchical letter and new, that's an important step.
Yeah. And I, even today, uh, a lot of the manas communities that I've. Encountered and interacted with. It's a strict, uh, seniority system. Yes. Like the day you enter entered, um, oops. So biological age is not important. It's the Yes. It's how long you've been formed in this community to the day. Yes. I always found that years of service.
In the military, at least when I was in, like, there's, I dunno, a million, 2 million soldiers. Mm-hmm. But you could drill down into all your information or, or merit badges. Mm-hmm. And someone is gonna outrank someone else, either because of days in rank or merit badges or something. Like even if you got in the same day.
There's some way to distinguish seniority one over the other. Mm-hmm. And it's, yeah. So if the losing your belt, even if you wanted to come back in, you'd also lose your seniority. Yeah. Um, and there's, uh, I wonder also, there was, um, I'd mentioned something earlier about, well, there's the belt. Were there other elements that you see and notice that made it from the military community into the re these religious communities?
Um, well in the norm, in the, in the regulat and the rules, there are punishments and the way the punishments are, uh, formulated on, on a linguistic level, that sounds very much like a military drill command. Short, precise. Uh, and that's, um, usually the idea is that all the rules are based on the 10 Commandments, the way they're structured from a linguistic perspective.
But that doesn't work in this case. And I believe it's more akin to military language. Interesting. Uh, so that, that would be one thing. Yeah. For example, and the, I, I think I remember mentioning the Oath, the Sacramentum. Yes. Could you tell me anything about that and whether or not, uh, the extent to which those were employed?
'cause in mm-hmm. I'm more familiar with the Catholic imagination than the Orthodox. Um, but the sacramentum, the mysteries can be the sacraments. Mm-hmm. But in the military, it was the oath that you took when you entered. Yes. Do you see any parallels or, or connecting points between the military oath and religious practices at the time in the antique period?
Uh, I do, uh, especially 'cause there's a formative period, maybe, uh, not, not similar to a bootcamp, but let's say like a period of exercise and training and afterwards you have to give this oath. And then you receive a new set of rules, but also, uh, there's uh, some privileges attached to it and there's a reciprocity with the community.
You gain through this all or oath. And that's something that's very military in my, or at least in my understanding, that's clearly there with the Ians. Interesting. The only thing that I can think of with the military, what I know of the Roman military. Is that, I mean, for the most part it varies by time and location.
Mm-hmm. Yes. But generally, um, and this may be more late antique with Martin Ofour, but mm-hmm. 25 years, you know, if you were born in Italy mm-hmm. If, if you served, you would serve 25 years, you couldn't get married. Um, you had put all your money into the unit bank and when you got out, you got your money, you probably got some land, um mm-hmm.
And you got, uh, a diploma. Uh, if you were, if you needed proof that you had served as a citizen, like mm-hmm. Paul and Claudius lysis in Acts 22. Um, the only thing I don't notice is that in the military you can get out and there are benefits when you get out to kind of Yeah. Keep you there and incentivize finishing your term.
Mm-hmm. But in monastic communities, there's no way out. I mean, you could leave, but like, were there traditions around? I mean, you just, you, you die and you go to God. But what happens if, or is there anything happening around if you wanted to leave the monastic community or transfer to another community?
That's the only like tradition in my mind that that appears in the military fairly consistently, but like there's no seeming parallel in the religious community. Is there. Um, sort of, uh, because what you just said is correct, but more for the early Roman military. Or the first pre centuries in late antiquity.
You, there's differences. Uh, okay. 'cause you, there's no, no way for you, you, you talked about the diploma, uh, and, and one reason for that was, uh, to get your citizenship. Mm-hmm. And of course you don't need a citizenship anymore 'cause everybody's a Roman citizen in late antiquity. 'cause of there's one big edict by Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, uh, but the, the thing is. Um, you still, uh, could apply the same images, the same, uh, analogy for the military service or for monasticism in late antiquity. So if you serve long enough, you get privileges, uh, and there's a strive to get perfect. Okay? And you could, um, and then you can transfer from one, one street to the next and even, uh, gain more, uh, influence within the community.
That's, that's possible. And that's so, so basically, as a veteran. You could serve more and you can do more in monism as well as in the military and to get certain Yeah. Benefits. Even after that, of course. I mean, it struck me even as, as I'm listening to you, like perhaps in the religious imagination, it's like we never leave the battlefield.
Like the whole world is a spiritual battlefield, cosmological battlefield. So like you, of course, you never age out because once you enter this fight. Yeah, you, you either die of natural causes or you're killed by the enemy. Yeah. And it's all the anecdotes, all the images, all the metaphors. They relate ex this exact information.
It's always gonna be a battle you're never getting out, but you can steal yourself, you can improve, you can progress. Yeah. That's one of the key messages I believe. You mentioned veterans and you could like move between, um, abbey's or um mm-hmm. Communities. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How does one, what does leadership look like in the mian mindset?
Like, how does one, I mean, after MIUs, I suppose mm-hmm. How does, yeah, there's the superiority or the seniority. How are leaders selected and does it have to do with seniority at all? Uh, a bit, but also probably, uh, speaking from a worldly basis, they chose, uh, good connected people who were, could talk, who could give sermons, who were, uh, pillars of the community, uh, that that probably was important.
And they had, they expanded towards the north, towards Alexandria, and they kept close ties, or at least the Alexandrian Church. Kept close ties with them. So after Omim, you can see the Alexandria church getting more and more the hooks into the Ians. So then they probably choose or help a bit to choose the next successor.
And there's a kind of, sort of a crisis in PE in the Peronian Federation after Omim is there. Right. And yeah. And it seems like that's kind of common, especially with these charismatic figures. Yeah. Yes, yes. Um. The Ians, if I understand right. Um, they accepted women as well, and Yes. Were they, were, they kept distinct, I imagine they kept distinct.
Mm-hmm. But tell me a little bit about the gender dynamics, um, and, and whether or not that's a reflection of the Roman, a kind of progressive Roman mind, or is it, like we've, in America, we've had this debate about women in combat roles and I'm mm-hmm. I think it's great. Like, and it. It does. I, I did not serve with women.
I, I got out in oh six. I don't think we integrated, um, genders until, uh, 20, maybe 2015 or 16, I think. Mm-hmm. It was really recent, but can you talk a little bit about the gender dynamics and the extent to which Mian monasticism. Because a lot of religious communities isolate or segregate the sexes. What did it look like within OMIM communities?
Did it follow that kind of norm, or, or am I, am I, do I have too idyllic a, uh, perspective, I guess? No, no. You, you don't. Um, I think that it's. Best suited when, when we talk about the economic context. 'cause then it's very integrated. 'cause they know that usually they're kept separate. But there are certain people, mostly from the leadership circles that are allowed to, um, transverse to from run, uh, monastery to a nunnery and back and forth.
That's okay. But in economic sense, they know, uh, that women are very great at knitting, uh, mats and uh, producing textiles. And close, and they use it to sell them at the market. So that's all fully integrated and they, they've got a go in a, like a, like a, um, economics circle or cycle going on. Interesting.
So there's, there's, they use them, they know their strengths and that's, and they're a part of the militia if you want. Interesting. Yeah. So it, it's an economic engine. There's. Yeah. A certain amount of expectation of self sustainability must mm-hmm. Include some amount of, uh, gender inclusion or equity.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, that brings us up to time. I feel like we gotta cut off early, but I really appreciate you taking the time. It's a fascinating conversation and I'll be sure to leave some stuff in the show notes. Any last words for, uh, my listeners? Oh great. Thanks. Uh, it was a pleasure. Alright, thank you.
Thank you so much. Christian Bartel assistant professor in, I'm just gonna say Northern Germany. Yes. Okay. All have a good rest of your day. You too. Bye.
