Any historian interested in this field will have to tackle two forbidding disciplines: papyrology and Coptology. Both have traditionally valued the philological study of documents—Greek papyri and Coptic manuscripts respectively—over the research of historical issues. As a result, they tend to be mutually blind and to ignore each other’s accomplishments. Papyrologists rarely read Coptic literature, and Coptologists have little use for Greek papyri. I have tried, therefore, to integrate the insights of both disciplines, an undertaking that is not easy but very rewarding. For the combination of an unparalleled wealth of documentary evidence with a large literary corpus presents a rare opportunity in the history of the ancient world. When this exceptional body of evidence is set against its wider, non-Egyptian background—as I try to do throughout this study—it becomes possible to ask questions of it that are rarely raised by scholars of late antique Egypt.
I owe much to innumerable scholars whose works I have pillaged for information of all kinds. In particular, I would like to name Stephen Emmel, without whose reconstruction of Shenoute’s literary corpus this study would not have been possible; Jairus Banaji, who has been a fundamental inspiration for my third chapter; and Daniel Caner, whose work on the ideology of exchange in late antiquity taught me the importance of the notion of “blessings” in a monastic setting. How much I have learned from my teacher Peter Brown and his work should be obvious to everyone. Above all, I have learned from him not to answer long questions with short answers. I can only hope that my answer is long enough.
I would like to dedicate this work to the memory of my father. It was he who instilled in me, from an early age, a sense of duty and a respect for truth.
MAP 1. Egypt in Late Antiquity
MAP 2. The Nile Valley around Panopolis
Introduction
“Rustic Audacity”
This book studies the public life of an extraordinary Egyptian monk, Shenoute of Atripe, and the discourse on poverty that he put forward to promote and legitimize his active role in society. Shenoute was abbot of a group of three monasteries located near the city of Panopolis, in southern Egypt, during the first half of the fifth century.1 By this time, monasticism in Egypt already had a long and vigorous tradition behind it. Pachomius had founded coenobitic monasticism in the early fourth century. Saint Antony’s instantly famous biography was written not long after, around 360. Even before the end of the fourth century, the monks of Egypt had acquired celebrity status in the Mediterranean world. Pilgrims from all over the Roman Empire now invaded Egypt in search of the “Desert Fathers,” supreme exemplars of Christian piety.
The monastic tradition encountered by these pilgrims is well known because it quickly became canonical and has had an enduring influence throughout the Christian world. Monks were deemed to belong to a special, separate world, the “desert”—in Egypt itself a stark-enough reality. They were expected to spend life in their cells (either a natural cave or a man-made hermitage) practicing asceticism, paying attention to themselves, and steering clear of any disturbing involvement in the world. The values of work, humility, and obedience were assigned paramount importance. In southern Egypt, where the coenobitic system was particularly influential, most monks gathered around charismatic holy men in unusually large monasteries. Written rules regulated their life in painful detail.
Shenoute’s monasticism belongs in this prestigious tradition in its southern, coenobitic variant. Though living in a desert cave, he kept a firm grip on three large monasteries—two for men and one for women—through occasional visits, harsh letters, and innumerable written regulations. The organization of these three communities clearly imitates the monastic system of Pachomius, who is explicitly recognized by Shenoute among the founding fathers of monasticism. The economic interdependence of several monasteries, the internal division into so-called houses, the hierarchy of authorities in each monastery, all this and much more make Shenoute a faithful exponent of the Egyptian tradition of coenobitic monasticism.
Yet unlike his celebrated countrymen, Shenoute has had a bad reputation in modern scholarship. It has been traditional to portray him as an enfant terrible whose unseemly behavior deviates from what is otherwise an admirable pattern of religious life. A version of his biography has been published in English but only to be read as “a warning sign for everything that can go wrong with monasticism.” His name evokes associations of violence, intolerance, tyranny, and a disturbing fanaticism that knows no bounds. His temperament has been described as “an erupting volcano: an impressive sight, though not necessarily a pretty one” An embarrassing aberration, in short, that needs to be explained away.2
This bad reputation stems not only from Shenoute’s supposedly cruel treatment of his own monks and nuns, but above all from his energetic interventions in the world at large. For Shenoute may have been a cave-dwelling inhabitant of the desert, but the affairs of the world were still very much his concern. Many other Egyptian monks are known to have been involved in the world that they had supposedly renounced, yet few if any seem to have played a role in society comparable to Shenoute’s. Public preaching, a care of the poor on a monumental scale, large building projects, loud denunciations of social injustice, criticism of imperial authorities, and an aggressive struggle against paganism were beyond their means if not intentions. Yet, as we shall see, all these are defining aspects of Shenoute’s public life, and he was unashamedly proud of them.3 The desert, for Shenoute, was not only a refuge from a sinful world. It was a platform from which the powers of the world could be challenged and confronted with irrefutable evidence of their injustice. He was at once Desert Father and biblical prophet.
Derwas Chitty once defined the late fourth century, when pilgrims invaded the Egyptian desert in order to witness the spectacle of humanity at its best, as a moment when “the world breaks in.”4 What we witness with Shenoute in the first half of the fifth century is quite the opposite: monasticism breaking into the world at large and claiming a position of political, economic, and religious leadership that nobody was willing to give up without a fight. Shenoute was no longer content to be the spiritual leader of a private religious institution, as Pachomius and many other monks had been. Prepared for the first time to occupy the high ground of society, holy men like Shenoute had to carve out for themselves a place in public life that was by no means guaranteed beforehand. The monastery therefore could no longer be simply an interesting prospect for religious overachievers. It had to be a public institution recognized by the state and respected by the local elite. This book is a study of this restless struggle for leadership and public recognition—a study, in other words, of an abbot’s public career.
Shenoute’s remarkably active role in society has been noted by scholars before, but this aspect of his life has been usually subsumed either under the issue of his extraordinary character or under that of his prophetic self-understanding. The first, traditional option—widely discredited nowadays—simply turns him into a negative stereotype that is self-explanatory, an object of moral condemnation and not of historical understanding. However remarkable Shenoute’s character may have been, it cannot—in any case—explain by itself his rise to public prominence. More recent studies, on the other hand, have paid closer attention to Shenoute’s prophetic language and self-presentation as instruments of religious authority.5 But they have done so from a purely religious perspective, and they have focused on Shenoute’s relations to his own monks and nuns, and not the world at large. Such an approach, although responsible for the very best work on Shenoute done so far, leaves many of the issues discussed in this book unaddressed, and it tends to isolate Shenoute from his political, economic, and social background no less than traditional opinions. Shenoute’s “prophetic” life did not take place in a social vacuum, but against the background of major social and cultural transformations in late antique Egypt. These transformations need to be spelled
