The grazers or boskoi (in ) are a category of hermits and anchorites, men and women, in Christianity, that developed in the first millennium of the Christian era, mainly in the Christian East, in Syria, Palestine, Pontus, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. However, the majority of them were situated in Palestine and Syria.
They derived their name from their practices, which consisted of nourishing themselves only with raw plants, often on all fours, and living in a wild manner, "among the beasts." They were dressed in clothes made exclusively from leaves and vegetation, or simply completely naked. Furthermore, they did not cultivate plants and did not use fire. They were linked to another type of hermits called the "dendrites", which seemed to have the same way of living but in trees.
The grazers may perhaps be among the inspirations for the wild man archetype, a legendary figure in medieval Europe.
Etymology
Their name comes from the Greek verb βόσκω, romanized as boskô, which means "to pasture, graze." The ambivalence of the term, which signifies both "those who pasture" and "those who graze," is the same in the corresponding Syriac term.
Theological foundations
The grazers seemed to base themselves on various biblical verses to embark on this particular eremitic life. First and foremost, they aimed to resemble John the Baptist, whom the New Testament, especially the Gospel of Matthew, presents in the following manner:John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.The figure of David was also invoked through the Psalms, and some of them quoted Psalm 102 from the Septuagint. Thus, this psalm was invoked in the epitaph of Paul of Thebes, one of the most famous grazers, who declared:Our days, mortals, are like the grass of the fields," says the prophet David. Therefore, it is fitting that we eat grass and wear clothes made of it throughout our lives.More generally, for the grazers, it was about returning to the Adamic state, meaning the condition of Adam and Eve before the Fall of mankind, where humanity would have been vegetarian, naked, and living among the animals. This led Christian authors to generally consider that wild animals lived in peace with the grazers because they would have lived Adam's life on earth. A passage from Genesis could have encouraged them to embrace nudity:And the two were naked, both Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.However, some researchers believe that the nudity of the grazers is not so much connected to the Adamic state, but is more linked to a general rejection of society and its moral norms. Among the theological foundations underlying this lifestyle choice, one also finds the anticipation of the end of the world and the hope for the salvation of humanity, two significant ideas in Christianity.
History
It appears that although the practice can be found in various Eastern regions such as Syria, Palestine, Pontus, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, the grazers were most numerous in Palestine and Syria. There are numerous attestations of them in Christian literature; for instance, John Moschus dedicated a work called "The Spiritual Meadow" to Palestinian monks, where he mentioned many grazers, a total of fifteen, indicating that the practice was common in the region. John Moschus mentioned the practice more times than all other occurrences in Greek literature combined, suggesting that dedicating oneself to this lifestyle was quite popular in his time. They are also cited by Sozomen, Evagrius Scholasticus, Theodoret, Ephrem the Syrian, and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers.