The Cell
“The anchorite leaves the world and travels toward the desert. There he builds the cell of his repentance, the place of his rebirth, where he settles.” [6]
The Physical Environment of the Cell
As we have seen, the cells of the desert monks, both male and female, were often caves or built onto caves, portions of abandoned forts or villages, tombs carved into rock cliffs, natural rock formations, simple hand-built dwellings within or attached to hand-hewn openings into cliffs, or free-standing hermitages. Building materials were a combination of rock, desert clay and local wood, when available. [7] In some cases, such as the apotaktikoi who lived in or near Egyptian villages, it may have been a separate room in a house. In the semi-eremitic communities where several disciples lived near their wise mentor, each disciple had a separate cell and all came to the abba or amma for instruction or worship. In the later coenobitic communities in the Pachomian tradition there were “houses,” each comprised of twenty cells. Smaller coenobitic communities had individual cells or rooms for each monk, a common place to eat and a place for worship. Cells were simple and free of physical distractions. They were not intended as places of refuge from others or a locus for self-pity or indulgence.
There were always individual hermits called to the strict eremitic life who remained almost totally on their own. Some of the coenobitic communities would permit more mature monks to separate themselves from the koinonia for extended periods of solitude. Yet they, too, never severed their ties to the coenobium. [8]
The Significance of the Cell
”In the cell the human person comes face to face with God, and in this sense he becomes like a holy place.” [9]
The cell is above all the place where the monk encounters God. It is a physical space, yet a space “in accordance with the image of one’s inward nature.” [10] The cell is the intentional environment where the monk is separated for personal prayer, meditation on Scripture, repentance, some manual labor, ascetic discipline, and transformation. It is the place where one comes face-to-face with what it means to be human and with one’s self. The primary tools of the cell are solitude, silence, listening and the Spirit.” [11]
Abba Antony said:
Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cells or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of inner peace. So like a fish going towards the sea, we must hurry to reach our cell, for fear that if we delay outside we will lose our interior watchfulness. [12]
~David G.R. Keller, Oasis of Wisdom: the Worlds of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
Notes:
6. Stelios Ramfos, Like a Pelican in the Wilderness, trans. Norman Russell (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000) 25.
7. For photographs, see Coptic Orthodox Monastery of St. Antony the Great-Red Sea Egypt. Prepared by Bishop Dioscorous for the Coptic Patriarchate. Anba Reuis Press. Photographs by Nabil Selim Atalla.
8. Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth Century
Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) 78-79. For a detailed description of daily life in a Pachomian community, see chs. 4 and 5.
9. Ramfos, Pelican, 29,
10. Ramfos, Pelican, 26. The remainder of this section is indebted to the research of Ramfos in ch. 5 of Pelican entitled “The Cell.” I take responsibility for my own conclusions.
11. Charles Cummings, O.C.S.O., Monastic Practices (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986) 154.
12. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection., trans. Benedicta Ward, S.L.G, (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984) Antony 10, 3.
