RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESit might attract demons,129 Such fears were increased by the celibacy
of Christian monks. According to current theories, the reason for
night-long vigils lay in the danger of dreams in which the demons
would incite the sleeping monks-the chaste to lust, the fasting to eat.
In an apotropaic fashion, the recitation of the Psalms during the monks'
nightly vigils was believed to turn back the attacks of demons. The
only safe time of day was between dawn and sunrise and between
sunset and darkness, when the demons were occupied with their own
business. The practice by Christian monks of fasting all day long and
of only eating in the evening after sunset was related to the popular
belief that the first hour of the night was the time when the demons
performed their own worship and ceased to do evil and harm to
people.130 Magians also relied on the apotropaic effect of rituals, such
as the Gahanbar and Myazd feasts, and of consanguinous marriage
to prevent the demon of anger from causing evil.l3l There seems to
be a similar attitude in Qur'an 29:45 that "worship preserves from
lewdness and iniquity."
There is ample evidence that many Christians simply continued to
do pagan things. The fifth-century Rules of Rabbiila, bishop of Edessa
(411112-35) for the Benai Qeyama, specified that diviners, wizards,
those who wrote charms and anointed men and women, and those
who went about under the pretense of practicing medicine should be
expelled from places controlled by Christians.^132 The twenty-third
canon of the Synod of Mar Aba in 544 sought to outlaw auguries,
divination, spells, tied charms, amulets, incantations and the cult of
the demons-"all things which constitute the service of the devil and
... which appertain to paganism."133 The reference was obviously to
cryptopagans within the Nestorian Church, as was recognized in 554
by the nineteenth canon of the Synod of ]oseph, which was directed
against Christians who "devote themselves willingly to diabolic works,
strange speech [pagan incantations], tied charms, amulets, auguries,
and divinations, or say that there are destinies, fates and horoscopes,
or observe the time and moments to perform their actions. "134 Like-
129 Montgomery, Incantation Texts, pp. 142, 143; Neusner, History, pp. 300, 388.
130 Voobus, Asceticism, 11, 261-62, 289; idem, Literary Critical and Historical Studies
in Ephrem the Syrian, in Papers of the Estonian Theological Society in Exile (Stockholm,
1958), p. 99.
131 Casartelli, Philosophy, pp. 90-91.
132 Voobus, Syriac and Arabic Documents, p. 40.
133 Chabot, Synodicon, pp. 549, 559.
134 Ibid., pp. 107, 363-64.