[Published on the website of the Holy Monastery of St George, Yellow Rock, 11/04/2019.

It can be read online

On Envy
Mario Baghos

Ancient persons, even before the coming of Christ, knew of the forces at work, both human
and supernatural, that disrupted interpersonal and institutional relations. Cultures throughout
the world still believe in the ‘evil eye’ (βασκανία), which consists in misfortune befalling a
person when someone gives them an aggressive or envious stare. The extent to which such a
force is considered anchored in the supernatural is ambiguous. In other words, it is unclear
whether the evil eye is viewed as a spiritual force, or whether it ‘proceeds’ from the eyes of
the one casting it. Perhaps the ‘evil eye’ is a way of explaining just how important it is to
positively regulate our perception of things? The Lord Himself affirms, “the eye is the lamp
of the body. If your vision is clear, your whole body will be full of light” (Matthew 6:22).
Elsewhere, He exhorts us to let our light “shine before others, that they may see your good
deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16). Here, the positive effect of ‘seeing
clearly’ can be related to doing good works for the glory of God. Conversely, the Lord warns:
“But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light
within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Mt 6:23).

In any case, the ‘evil eye’ was so widespread in the collective folklore of the Balkans and
beyond that the Orthodox Church was compelled to compose a prayer against it. (The
superstitious accompaniments in the use of this prayer by laypersons could be either
‘magical’ accretions or ‘leftovers’ from pagan practices.) What is interesting is that instead of
rejecting wholesale this pre-Christian spiritual phenomenon, the Church, in its pastoral
wisdom, met the people halfway by acknowledging that one can be affected by negative
thoughts and perceptions—whether from people or evil spirits—and that the only One who
can defend us from them is the Lord Christ; the same One who exhorts us and helps us to
change our way of viewing the world, people included.

Related to this, in ancient times there was another force that facilitated disunity or chaos and
had to be warded off at all costs. This was, in Greek, phthonos (φθόνος)—which was
sometimes used interchangeably with βασκανία—what we would translate as ‘envy.’ The
Romans personified ‘envy,’ or in Latin, Invidia, as a malevolent entity that was pertinently
described by Ovid in his Metamorphoses:

She never smiles, save at the sight of another’s troubles; she never sleeps, disturbed
with wakeful cares; unwelcome to her is the sight of men’s success, and with the sight
she pines away; she gnaws and is gnawed, herself her own punishment.
(Metamorphoses 2)

The role of envy as causing and even embodying unhappiness and suffering (the extent of
which are typified in a sort of self-cannibalisation) is a powerful metaphor for the destructive
effect of this passion on a person’s wellbeing. Because of the power of this metaphor, it crops
up again and again in Greco-Roman historiography. Cassius Dio (Roman History 44) and
Sallust (The War with Catiline 5) used it in a similar way to how the ‘evil eye’ has been
described above; a tendency towards envy, causing strife. Later, the earliest Christian
historians, who modeled their writings on Greco-Roman historiography (but of course
infused it with Christian content), appropriated the concept of envy in relation to demonic
and human activity that disrupted the unity of the Church. Thus, in his Ecclesiastical History,
Eusebius of Caesarea referred to two kinds of envy.

One kind, described aptly in relation to the historical circumstances that prevailed in the
Church just before the Great Persecution in AD 303, occurs when there is peace within the
Church, where: “increasing freedom transformed our character to arrogance and sloth: we
began by envying and abusing each other” (HE 8.1). This reminds us that the external peace
and comfort that the Church experiences at various times and places could come with a
terrible cost if one drops his or her guard. As St Antony the Great stated to St Poemen, “This
is the great work of a man [or woman]: always to take the blame for his [or her] own sins
before God and to expect temptation to his [or her] last breath” (Sayings of the Desert
Fathers).

In the case described by Eusebius, the lack of circumspection among Christians in a time of
ostensible ‘freedom’ made them haughty, so that they turned against one another. This,
Eusebius argued, is why the Great Persecution was permitted to take place: it was a sort of
divine pedagogy to bring the people of God back to spiritual health. Another kind of envy
that Eusebius referred to is in relation to demonic activity. In his Proof of the Gospel,
Eusebius described envy as conditioning the demons’ behaviour insofar as it was because of
their envy of humankind’s salvation that they fell and turned against God and the saints (PG
4.9). In his Ecclesiastical History, the bishop of Caesarea gives many examples of these
attacks against saints and martyrs, in some cases explicitly naming them as motivated by the
demon envy (such as in the death of St Apollonius the martyr in EH 5.21).

So far, we have seen that the two kinds of envy referred to in the classical sources, whether in
relation to the ‘evil eye’ or as an entity that disrupted unity, are likewise reflected in the
writings of the first Christian historian in relation to human beings and demons. The fact that
Eusebius deployed envy in his History as a source of division in the same way historians such
as Dio and Sallust did points to two things: that envy is seen in all cultures as malignant, with
the Church being able to identify this passion as either the result of human behaviour or
demonic activity, the latter possibly influencing the former (though not in every case); and
that, by using the literary device of envy as a force of division in his History, Eusebius was
engaging with readers in the Greco-Roman context who would have been familiar with the
writings of classical historians who used the same motif.

This form of cultural appropriation that—in interpreting a term/motif from the ancient world
from a Christian point of view—sheds light on the forces at work against the Church, was
repeated by subsequent Christian historians. Socrates the Constantinopolitan, whose
Ecclesiastical History comprises a continuation of Eusebius’ to his own day, includes a letter
from St Pope Julius of Rome on the trials of St Athanasius the Great, concerning which he
declared that “our Lord Jesus Christ” protected Athanasius from envy/phthonos in order to
restore him to the see of Alexandria after his second exile (EH 2.23). It is not clear if Julius,
in referring to envy in the singular, is denoting the envy of the Arians who contrived against
Athanasius or the demon envy. Elsewhere, however, Socrates referred to the demon as
“insidiously at work in the midst of a prosperous condition of affairs” (EH 1.22). Socrates
then ponders “for what reason the goodness of God permits this to be done”—i.e. for envy to
attack the Church—whether He wishes to perfect the Church thereby or to “break down the
self importance” which often accompanies faith. Either way, the test of such conditions is
meant to strip away the pride that can creep up on Christians. Moreover, the humble
endurance in the wake of attacks from envy is a testimony of the faithful adherents of the
Gospel. This much can be discerned in the life of St John Chrysostom, who, according to an
unnamed disciple (whom posterity knows as Ps.-Martyrius and who composed the saint’s
Funerary Speech) was attacked by two kinds of envy, both human (FS 13) and supernatural
(FS 39), the latter being the source of the former, until the saint’s life came to an end in
martyrdom on account of their attacks.

Although I have given a brief outline of the use of envy as a literary device by way of
consulting the early Christian historians, in fact this motif is prevalent in Christian spiritual
literature. For example, in a sermon Concerning Envy, the fourth century Cappadocian father
St Basil the Great related φθόνος and βασκανία in a way that denotes the effect of ‘envy’
(phthonos) on a person, namely by making them ‘evil-eyed.’ Moreover, the saint alluded to
Ovid’s description of the self-cannibalising personification of envy, the Latin Invidia, by
stating that “the envious [person] consumes himself, pining away through grief,” before
asserting that the demons find kinship with, and attach themselves to, envious souls (CE).

Having given a brief account of how envy, or phthonos/indivia, was appropriated by the
earliest Christian writers to describe a reality affecting the Church and us all, what lessons
can we infer? In the examples given above, the Christian authors cited were concerned with
envy as it affected, not the outside world, but the Church. This is because of the concern of
these writers for the Church whenever it lapsed into disunity. Did not our Lord Jesus Christ
pray that “all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they
also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21)? Disunity
within the Church, caused by envy, is an unfortunate reality: but we must also
acknowledge—however difficult it is for us to do so—that it is an affront to the unity
between Christ and God the Father and the witness to the Gospel. This is why the demon
envy attacks the members of the Church, which is the body of Christ, more violently than
anyone (or anywhere) else. And according to the testimonies that we have seen, envy attacks
precisely when the Church seems to be flourishing. In such times, no one is immune: both the
enactors of envy and its targets become victims of the “father of envy” (FS 39), and the only
way it can be overcome is by showing humility, dispassion, and love to all parties involved.

My goal in exploring the cultural appropriation of ‘envy’ in the writings of the early
Christians has been twofold. To remind us that this phenomenon is real, and that it continues
to afflict us in the Church. The Lord exhorts us to participate in His life through communal
fellowship and love for our neighbour, even our enemy. Loving unity in Christ is the polar
opposite of the disunity, chaos and pain caused by envy, which makes us, according to St
Basil: “sharers in the works of our Adversary … so [that we may] be found condemned
together with him” (CE). It is precisely by engendering envy that the enemy foils both our
participation in Christ and the witness to the Gospel. But the Lord exhorts us to be agents of
light, to have clear vision (Mt 6:22) and to “shine before others, that they may see your good
deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16). In order to get there, we need to cast off
the false presumption that we are ever spiritually safe, expecting, to paraphrase St Antony,
temptation to our last breath. We need to cultivate a constant vigilance, better still, to “put
aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light” (Rom 13:12). This armour is
described by St Paul in Romans as a change in behaviour, which implies a change in thought.
It is also associated with ‘clothing ourselves with Christ’ (Rom 13:14). To get there, let us
together—as one Orthodox Christian family—turn our minds and hearts in prayer towards
God the Son, our Master and Saviour. Let us imitate Him in loving one another, to the
mockery of envy, and for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.