The Multiple Traditions of Asceticism in the Eastern Roman World

Askesis is denial of bodily pleasures, separation from the body. It's done as a tool to get you to a state, right? And it seems to me that people who are engaging in extreme asceticism ... they're surrounded by a whole milieu where increasingly people are doing really, really hardcore stuff to their bodies. So there's this culture of askesis and it's some of its like proper extreme stuff.