Palladius, Lausiac History 17.11
Another story about a demoniac with an insatiable appetite was related by the ascetic bishop Palladius (first bishop of Helenopolis, but by this period probably bishop of Aspuna), as part of his LausiacHistory.
Palladius had spent almost a decade in the Egyptian desert in the 390s and was keen to claim firsthand acquaintance with some of the ascetic superstars whose stories he retrospectively related. He had, for example, spent considerable time with the famous ascetics Macarius of Alexandria and Evagrius of Pontus. However, the saintly Macarius of Egypt had died before Palladius arrived, and so the stories about this saint in chapter 17 of the Lausiac History are thus presented in the form of second-hand reportage. They include a striking incident of a possessed young man brought to the saint by his desperate mother:Once a young man possessed by a demon was brought by his weeping mother to Macarius, tied to two young men. And the demon had this mode of working: after eating three measures of bread and drinking a Cilician [amphora] of water, belching out the food, he would dissolve it into vapour, for in this way he would consume what had been eaten and drunk as it were by fire. For there is a class [of demons] called fiery. For there are differences among demons, as also among men, not of nature but of judgment. This young man, then, not being satisfied [in his hunger] by his mother, ate his own excrement and often drank his own urine.[612]
Like Paulinus' demoniac, this man's possessed status was indicated by his ravenous appetite and other disturbed behaviours. Critically, however, the grammatical subject of gluttony in the second sentence of this passage is clearly the demon, not the young man: we are told that the demon had a particular ener- geia, or mode of operation, before the description of how and what he ate and drank.
The initial foodstuffs enumerated are plain and staple, but the three measures (modioi) of bread consumed by demon-through-demoniac are staggering. The modios was a dry measure which corresponded to anywhere between eight and twelve litres; it was normally used of grain rather than of bread, and Palladius' usage here, as elsewhere, seems to be rather idiosyncratic[613] As a very rough estimate, the demoniac's daily intake probably corresponded to about a month's ration of food[614] More extraordinary still was the manner of consumption of this food: the man belched it out, dissolved it into a vapour, and then consumed what had been eaten and drunk ‘as it were by fire'. The explanation for the mode of eating hinges on the particular kind of demon inhabiting this man; it belonged to a ‘fiery order' (tagma... purinon) of demons. Palladius emphasised that the differences between demons were not primarily those of nature or being (ousia), but of judgment or knowledge (gnome).Palladius had already flagged up the idea that there are differences of gnome between rational creatures in the introductory epistle to Lausus which prefaced his History. Here, he explained that only God is untaught, but all others are taught, and learning among the first order of beings derives from the Trinity; learning among the second order derives from the first order, and so on. He concluded that ‘those who are higher in gnome and virtue teach the lower.'[615] He went on to introduce the fall of the demons as a departure from their heavenly teachers, and related this to the dangers of fancy words and injurious teaching. Given Palladius' closeness to Evagrius, with whom he spent years in ascetic retreat, and given his interest in promoting an Origenist theology, his demonology can be related to both these writers' taxonomizing of rational beings.37 Origen thought that the ranks of angels were determined by their merit and the degree of their fall;38 Evagrius suggested that rational beings were granted a body according to the degree to which they had originally fallen away from God, and distinguished their faculties according to the elements of fire, earth, and air.39 Their demonologies thus related demons' different classes and bodies back to the degree of their sin, which was in part a sin of judgment or gnome.
Palladius' demon had a particular dominance of fire which required him to operate in this manner, and this could presumably be related to the degree of his first sin and thus fall.Beyond the unconventional mode of consumption, some of the things consumed by this demoniac were also shockingly taboo; his appetite and thirst were so insatiable that he was actually driven to eating his own excrement and drinking his own urine. Here we find a variation on the revolting, transgressive, bestial activity of Paulinus' demoniac gobbling live hens and carrion; in Greek and Egyptian culture eating dung was probably a worse transgression of social and ritual boundaries than eating raw meat, and something which was only reported as happening under circumstances of extreme desperation, such as during siege warfare.[616] [617] There are other instances of demoniacs eating their own excrement in, for instance, Athanasius’ Life of Antony (which Palladius had read),41 where it is one of the shocking symptoms exhibited by a person of rank possessed and deranged by a terrible demon[618] Compared to Paulinus’ silence on the precise technique of the exorcism worked on the hyperhungry demoniac, Palladius offers considerably more detail about the mode of cure: As then his mother wept and implored the saint, he [Macarius] took him and prayed over him, beseeching God. And after a day or two, the malady having eased a little, the holy Macarius said to her: ‘How much do you want him to eat?’ She replied saying: ‘Ten pounds of bread’. So having rebuked her, saying this was too much, and having prayed over him along with fasts for seven days, he put him on to a regime of three pounds, with obligation to work; and having thus cured him he returned him to his mother[619] [620] Macarius’ cure began with prayer, which resulted in an easing of the sickness; the second phase of cure involved both prayer and fasting, though it is not clear whether the fasting was on the part of the exorcist, or the demoniac. The disagreement between the ascetic and the demoniac’s mother about what kind of appetite should be indulged in a healthy young man is also revealing. She wanted him to eat ten pounds of bread a day but Macarius rebuked her and put him on a more reasonable regime of three pounds of bread a day.[621] From comparative evidence, it seems that ten pounds was on the high side for daily sustenance, and that Macarius' prescription of three pounds was a more realistic quantity. For instance, workers at the monastery of Abu Mina in the seventh century received a single pound of bread a day, and workers in Oxyrhynchus in the sixth century received two pounds[622] Of course, there was also a bigger didactic point to Macarius' institution of a regime of three pounds of bread a day which is underlined by the frequent mentions throughout Palladius' Lausiac History of feats of dietary restriction. As Palladius noted in his life of Macarius of Egypt, ‘as regards the partaking of food and drink, it would be pointless to go into detail, since even among the easygoing in these parts one cannot find gluttony or indifference. This was because of the dearth of necessities and the fervour of the inhabitants.^[623] It seems, however, that the young man's post-cure regime of three pounds of bread a day was still quite generous when compared with the extreme diets of other ascetics mentioned by Palladius. Posidonius the Theban subsisted for a whole year on dates and wild herbs, and eschewed bread for forty years, while Philoromus abstained from all cooked foods including corn bread[624] Even the more moderate diets on display were restricted: Dorotheus ate, presumably daily, six ounces of bread, a bunch of small vegetables, and a proportionate amount of water; Macarius of Alexandria ate four or five ounces of bread and as much water for three years; Moses the robber took ‘nothing except dry bread to the extent of twelve ounces'[625] [626] Evagrius, with whom Palladius had lived for almost a decade, was reported as eating a pound of bread (daily) for fourteen years, before giving it up altogether^0 It therefore seems that three pounds of bread a day was a comparatively reasonable, even a generous prescription for a desert ascetic, not starvation rations. Furthermore, Palladius' precise, repeated specifications of different holy men's restrictive diets allowed the reader to compare (and perhaps calibrate) his own consumption on a scale that ranged from moderate to extreme deprivation. This promotion of relative frugality and bodily discipline related to existing traditions which presented ascetic practice as warfare against the demons. Evagrius famously outlined the eight logismoi or evil thoughts which troubled men, and which were promoted by demons.[627] [628] [629] [630] [631] [632] [633] The first and arguably most fundamental of these sins was gluttony (gastrimargia), and fasting was thus one of the cornerstones of Evagrian ascetic practice^2 Evagrius was also said to have counseled monks to moderate the amount of water they drank: “For,” he said, “If you flood the body with a lot of water you generate even more fantasies, and offer a bigger space to the demons.'·’’·3 Palladius similarly deployed the terminology of greed and gluttony in association with the devil and evil spirits. In his life of Macarius of Alexandria, he related how he had overheard the old man rebuking himself and the devil, addressed as ‘glutton' (poliophage).’4 He reported Sarapion's complaint that he has been plagued by three vices, which seem almost to have the quality of personifications or demons, and tally with three Evagrian logismoi: covetousness, unchastity, and greed (philarguria, porneia, and gastrimargia).’’ He also explained that Philoromus ‘underwent the battle of fornication (porneia) and of greed (gastrimargia) which he drove out by confining himself in irons and by abstaining from wheaten bread and anything that had been cooked on a fire', exemplifying how the related sinful drives for sex and food could be tamed by a combination of confinement and fasting.’6 Finally, in an autobiographical passage, Palladius narrated an encounter with John of Lycopolis in which the holy man asked him whether he wanted to be a bishop. If the Greek version of Palladius' story about the overeating demoniac offered a lesson about the proper limits to appetite, the adjustments made to this story in other versions suggest some rather different moral lessons. The Lausiac History survives in translations into a number of different languages. There are no significant additions to, or changes in, the arch of the story in the seventh-century Syriac version or in the two Latin translations.[634] [635] However, the Coptic version, itself likely very ancient, contains a notable number of additions, including more details about Macarius' rebuke to the mother, in which he criticizes her for suggesting her son eat ten pounds of bread a day: ‘The amount you're saying is too much, but if you have more than you need, give seven pounds each day to the helpless widows and give the other three pounds to your son.' The Coptic version also explains why the demon possessed the young man. Macarius says: ‘His father died and left you a few necessities, more than you needed to live, and there were old women, widows—poor, powerless, and infirm—who were your neighbours and were in need of alms and you gave them nothing. Because of this, God allowed this demon to enter your son so he would eat your goods and dissipate them through his insatiable appetite so you yourselves would become poor, because you would not give alms to the infirm.' The story concludes explaining that ‘in this way [Macarius] taught them to give alms, having given the young man back to his mother, healed.'59 The Coptic version of this story thus offers an explicit moral lesson where that in the Greek version is implicit, and the lesson is not about greed or diet, but about alms-giving. It is also striking that the Coptic version offers an aetiology for the young man's becoming possessed at all: this is attributed squarely to God as a cunning way of punishing sinful humans and of effecting God's desired redistribution of resources. This variation in the aetiology of and rationale for possession shows how an overeating demoniac could be used to teach different moral lessons.