Monaci e monachesimi nella Storia ecclesiastica di Evagrio Scolastico

The Ecclesiastical History by Evagrius can be seen as an attempt to provide a memoir of monasticism and the monks: the author is interested in preserving and delivering a shared narrative and, above all, in reflecting upon the model which monks offered to his contemporaries. Amongst the monastica in Evagrius’ works, a group of texts addressing all the biographical narrations of monks can be found; then, another group includes texts dealing with a ‘monastic pattern’ created by the author on the basis of his information; finally, several texts are about disputes in which both Syriac and, mostly, Palestinian monks are protagonists or actors. The present paper illustrates each of these three text typologies. The aim is to highlight the strategies used by Evagrius to narrate only what interests him, thus shaping monasticism and its variety of forms in a way that is consistent with his use of ecclesiastical history as a militant historian.