Martyrs, Monks, and Heretics in Rocky Cappadocia

In the 3rd and 4th centuries different protagonists of Christianity occupied the “lunar” landscape of rocky Cappadocia: firstly, martyrs, such as Hieron, a vineyard owner and military conscript from Cappadocia II, who sought refuge under Diocletian and Maximian (296 AD?) in a cave at Göreme; secondly, anchorite and cenobitic monks in search of solitude (St Basil mentions rock dwellings as providing a suitable place for himself and his compatriot, Amphilochius, while Gregory of Nazianzus specifically commended the “isolated caves” of Cappadocia as a habitat for anchorites) and a place to pray and study, as well as the basis for an agrarian life (Sozomen drew attention to the cenobitic life of monks in the towns and countryside of Galatia and Cappadocia, where Christianity had been adopted at an early date); thirdly, heretical opponents of Constantinopolitan orthodoxy (Theodoret recorded that the followers of Eunomius were also known as Troglodytai, “cave-dwellers”, probably used as a term of humiliation by their orthodox enemies). In the vision of Gregory of Nyssa were not the loca sancta of Palestine but the strange landscape of rocky Cappadocia that offered pilgrims a surrogate destination, or an accessible alternative, poised in balance between the isolation of the Egyptian desert and the solitude of the Syriac steppes.