about the size of the sky in comparison to the earth; they question the prevalence of certain practices among the Christians of Egypt (why do Egyptians take communion with a full stomach?); they complain about the situation of the church or the power of the devil.103 Like a true spiritual guide, Shenoute responds by placing the questioners themselves in question. “The real question is less what is being talked about than who is doing the talking.”104 Governors—he claims—should not use the devil as an excuse for their own faults nor should they waste his time with inappropriate questions:
For a military governor asked me when he came to us: “Is the sky the same size as the world?” I answered him: “Your horse seems by all means stronger than many. Mount it, spur it on, go up [to the sky!], check it, and come back! … Go up and you will find out the measure of sky and earth and come back, so that not only you know but so that you also tell us!” …
You see, he was asking for things that are not fitting that I might not talk to him about what is fitting.105
Such harsh dismissals were in store for magistrates who inquired after things that were none of their business. The proper questions for a military governor to ask—Shenoute insisted—were those about his own duties as a magistrate:
If I talk with the soldier about the duties of a monk and with the monk about those of a soldier, what will the soldier do with the things of a monk and the monk with those of the soldier?
This is a point that Shenoute needed to make time and again. It is well known that Eastern Christianity tended, like Theravada Buddhism, to develop a two-tiered morality. While upholding the supremacy of renunciatory, otherworldly orientations and values, it tended to isolate them and segregate them from day-to-day life.106 Enshrined at the very apex of the hierarchy of cultural orientations, the values embodied by a holy man like Shenoute could be revered, but their scope kept at bay. Such a double standard threatened to render Shenoute’s parrhēsia on behalf of the “poor” harmless and ineffective. Military commanders, for example, thought that they could come to the monastery to talk about otherworldly things only to go back to their mundane concerns feeling reassured that sinlessness was demanded only from the “perfect.”
Hence Shenoute’s firm refusal to be thus “domesticated.” This refusal went so far as to deny altogether the validity of a double ethic. Despite their obvious differences, he insisted, the life of a monk and the life of worldly authorities have similar ethical imperatives. Not everyone needs to be “perfect” like a monk—faithful marriage, for example, is a valid alternative—but everyone needs to try. No one should let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Above all, everyone needs to avoid the false hope that salvation will be somehow guaranteed by the prayers of the perfect:
I have not forgotten what a friend said while you listened: “It is [only] monks who are supposed to fast. Truly they are the ones [who should fast] because of their hope in heaven.” But as he has spoken idly, amusing himself, I will also tell him, without shame: he needs to fast more [than we do]. … Who should fast [more]: the righteous monk, who lives with little and inadequate food, or you, who eat calves and drink wine and other goods of every different kind? … When the monk fasts, does he fast on your behalf? When you act as a judge, you do not judge on his behalf, do you? Let each do his best to find God’s mercy.107
Truly all Christians have the same one God, and everyone has the same one piety according to his capacity.108
If the authorities wished to harbor any hope for salvation, therefore, they had better take Shenoute’s parrhēsia seriously. For his criticisms were no joke. His “friends” the military commanders, for example, were told in no uncertain terms that they were not living up to their obligations. The military authorities often rob soldiers and workers of their salary; all they want is money. The common soldier only asks for his annona (i.e., his wage and provisions), and they try to kill him. The soldiers, on the other hand, plunder “villages, cities, houses, roads, boats, vineyards, fields, threshing floors, epoikia, monasteries, and even the offerings that are brought to the places of God.” They threaten and beat up anyone who complains. “They despoil those on whose behalf they claim to fight. Their lawlessness is just like that of the barbarians.” “They do not think whether it is right to take—let us not say plunder—and inhabit the houses of people who are not their enemies.”109 This was the proper kind of conversation between a holy man and the military authorities, not empty talk about the size of the sky. The reason—Shenoute argued—that the emperor and good governors listened to him and not to his “violent” enemies was that, as a bearer of parrhēsia, he invariably said the truth, and the truth was not nice. They might get furious at his words, but they would get the truth from no one else.
Yet Shenoute’s criticisms, I would like to stress, are seldom original. His complaints are highly reminiscent of those of many late antique bishops, rhetors, historians, and the legalistic pessimism of the Theodosian Code itself.110 This was the kind of commonsense criticism everyone could be expected to agree with. I do not think, therefore, that the “parrhesiastic game” was “a rare moment in which the ‘hidden transcript’ of subordinated groups penetrates into public discourse.”111 Rather than an idiosyncratic “Coptic” or “popular” perspective, what the military governors heard from Shenoute was what Edward Shils has called a “hyper-affirmation of the central value system.”112 It was the very predictability and universality of these criticisms that made them such an effective rhetorical tool of self-presentation. For it was such conventional, well-tried parrhēsia that evoked “the respect vice pays to virtue.” The more Shenoute “criticized” his friends the governors, the more they liked him:
Listening to this (i.e., Shenoute’s criticisms) together with those who were with him, he (i.e., the governor) said: “Nobody says this as clearly as you show us and teach us.”
(To which Shenoute replied:) “What I am telling you is clear to you because I speak with you about your duties and those of the people who are here with us.”113
Shenoute’s “opposition” to these governors, therefore, was a very “loyal opposition,” that is, precisely the kind of opposition that the emperors were interested in fostering in the provinces. We have seen that the central authorities of the Roman state, structurally weak and therefore jealous of local powers and even of their own provincial representatives, promoted centralization through a policy of divide and rule that encouraged both local criticism of the powerful and a constant appeal to the imperial court itself as the ultimate judge.114 Shenoute’s words and deeds fit nicely into this role of the emperor’s man in the province. He never questions imperial law directly nor does he ever claim—as it has been argued—that godly zeal overrides secular law.115 When accused by governors, he is easily offended at any hint that he might have broken the laws. “Will you make me a companion of thieves?!” “Will you judge me in absence?” “We thank God and the laws and do not flee from them nor are we provoking disturbances.”116 Anomia, that is, lawlessness, is what defines his enemies in Panopolis.117 He is very much concerned, for example, to show that his actions against paganism did not involve any disturbances in accordance with imperial laws, which forbid any unrest or turbulence on account of religious intolerance.
The reason Shenoute loved to dwell on the accusations made against his person by both enemies and “friends” was not to show that his holy courage was beyond earthly laws. All those accusations and, of course, his replies were simply the best possible evidence for his parrhēsia, which his hypocritical enemies deliberately misrepresented as a blatant disregard for the law. His controversial actions and criticism on behalf of the poor and against paganism may have been holy, but—this is always stressed by him—they were also legal. Far from representing a challenge to Roman power, they were carried out in the name of the emperor and his laws:
For the Christian emperors are
