of Alexandria. And for good reason. The power of the Alexandrian archbishop over his church—he had absolute power over every single episcopal ordination—was unparalleled anywhere else in the empire.71 Egypt never had a counterpart to Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Porphyry of Gaza, or Rabbula of Edessa in late antiquity. As far as we can tell, no Egyptian bishop outside of Alexandria ever had more than a local impact in this period. A powerful abbot like Shenoute could act therefore as if these low-profile bishops did not exist, and he could afford to refuse any offers for episcopal ordination. Even though late antique sources from Egypt talk about the care of the “poor” as a defining duty of the local bishop and his church, Shenoute willfully ignores them and focuses all his expectations for help on the imperial governors.72
How, then, should these governors show their love for the “poor”? Above all, according to these peculiar “panegyrics,” through their exercise of justice. As Peter Brown has noted, the qualities admired by Shenoute in “his” governors were the standard values of an ancient and Mediterranean-wide language of power that emphasized control of anger, humanity, wisdom, and justice.73 This language had become suffused, since the late fourth century, with the Christian ideals of the care of the poor, and, as a result, it had come to represent the ideal of “vertical solidarity.” The governor’s two cardinal virtues should be mercy and justice, which has itself “become a form of almsgiving”:74
The first good thing (Shenoute tells Flavianus) is to protect justice, and its ornament is mercy. For these are the two principal and necessary things. They crown each other, justice and mercy. Whoever protects justice but is not merciful although he has [wealth to give] or whoever is merciful but does not protect justice although he has the power [to do it] is like a maimed person whose hand is not straight and has become weak, that is, he has gold, silver, money, power but no mercy, for his power to have mercy and to do justice has become weak.75
The governor, as described by Shenoute, towers high above local society and is expected to condescend to the “poor” in the same way that God lowered himself to become human. Old Testament prophets, “who speak about us, and not about themselves,” provide the language to describe his virtues and potential vices. A good governor will avoid the typical sins of a late Roman bureaucrat: buying his post and selling justice for bribes. “If the magistrates desire it,” he tells Flavianus, “they can become rich in good works in a single year and a single tour to the province.” Such a good governor had a bright future both in heaven and on earth:
Truly, just as he (i.e., Flavianus) is famous for his way of life, he is even more famous because he protects righteousness, mercy, and justice. He gives what belongs to God to God and what belongs to the emperors to the emperors with the wisdom and zeal of his intelligence. He is loved by the poor, he is also loved by the emperors [so much so] that they gave him the magistracy three times for nothing. He will be honored by the emperors and praised by Christ.76
Shenoute’s endeavor to become the privileged friend of imperial magistrates was, without any doubt, a reasonable political strategy. There is no question that he needed a direct link to the imperial authorities if he was going to bypass the local town and become the preeminent interpreter and spokesman of local interests (the “poor”). Having the ear of the governor could turn a monk into an influential personality. The letters of John of Lycopolis, preserved in papyri, show this clearly. “The knowledge of our intimacy,” John wrote to a magistrate, “causes many who know your feelings toward me to flee to me and (in this case) to make me ask from your nobility [the following favor … ].”77 In the case of Shenoute, it cannot be denied that his “friendship” with imperial magistrates produced spectacular results: his impressive church building, which—as we shall see in the next chapter—was founded and financed by the military governor Caesarius. Indeed, even Cyril of Alexandria needed the help of Shenoute when traveling to the emperor, and Cyril’s enemy Nestorius, the disgraced patriarch of Constantinople exiled to a fortress near Shenoute’s monastery, had no other choice but to turn to him when dealing with the authorities. After several unsuccessful letters to Andreas, a military governor and one of Shenoute’s “friends,” Nestorius “sent to Antinoe and appealed to Caesarius, the military governor, because he was a friend of our father Shenoute.”78
That having been said, it is essential not to confuse Shenoute’s hopes with an accurate description of reality. His very insistence on his friendship with Roman magistrates and on their admiration for him should make us somewhat skeptical about his claims. For they seem to be as exaggerated as his enmity toward Panopolis. If the imperial authorities were this close to Shenoute, if they listened to him with such unfailing respect and invariably protected him from his enemies, why did he feel such a pressing need to reassure his audience of it? Behind the plethora of names and titles listed by Shenoute among his powerful “friends,” there lies a deep sense of insecurity and uncertainty. It could not have been any other way. With a new foreign governor showing up at Antinoe every one or two years, the struggle for the governor’s favor was a never-ending affair. We know from Dioscorus’s archive, for example, that petitions had to be repeated every time a new governor took office.79 For every “God-loving” governor praised by Shenoute, there may have been several others—both pagan and Christian—who were either indifferent or hostile. The use of the language of “friendship” to describe a relationship to imperial magistrates was a rhetorical device regularly used in the later Roman Empire to co-opt a powerful stranger of uncertain intentions.80 Libanius knew only too many such “self-styled friends” of the powerful, who induced the emperor—he complained—with their “hurtful counsel” to behave unlike his “true self.”81
We cannot therefore take Shenoute’s success for granted. In any case, the power of a short-term foreign governor would have been limited in a strange province. He would have been highly dependent on the local aristocracy, that is, on people like Shenoute’s own bête noire, Gesios. Gesios himself was a former governor—although probably not of the Thebaid—and therefore a honoratus.82 As such, he must have claimed the right to “fill the governor’s headquarters with turmoil” and to feel offended when the governors did not visit him.83 Honorati “felt entitled to treat the incoming governor as a junior colleague.”84 Such a situation must have been as intolerable to Shenoute as it was to Libanius, and it helps to explain the former’s exasperating self-promotion in front of provincial governors.
Altogether, Shenoute’s penchant for branding the “rulers” of the world as either his friends or his enemies should not be interpreted simply as the result of a prophet’s black-and-white perception of the world. For this is a distinction with a profound political meaning.85 Shenoute may have been an abbot, a holy man, and even a prophet. But his ostentatious display of powerful “friends” and “enemies” in front of powerful visitors conveyed a clear message: I am one of you, and I cannot be ignored.
“VIOLENCE” AND PARRHĒSIA
Any analysis of Shenoute’s role as spokesman of the “poor” needs to define two notions that are fundamental to his self-understanding: “violence” and parrhēsia. As Shenoute puts it, his enemies are the “violent” (nrefči-nqons), who do “violence” (či-nqons) to the “poor.” Gesios, above all, is “the prince of the violent.”86 But the accusation of “violence” was also leveled against Shenoute himself by disgruntled monks, and against his own monasteries by malicious outsiders. The Coptic word that we usually translate as “violence” has a wider range of meaning than its English counterpart. As used by the Coptic Bible—particularly in the Prophets, the Psalms, Job, and Proverbs—and by Shenoute himself, it means essentially “social injustice.”87 A “violent” man is an unrighteous man who takes advantage of his power or wealth to abuse those weaker than him, that is, the “poor.” “Violence” is therefore an active transgression against the ideal of vertical solidarity that may but does not need to include a physical assault. As Shenoute sees it, much of the wealth of the rich has been wrung from the “poor” through “violence,”
