Shenoute of Atripe and the Uses of Poverty. Ariel G. Lopez

      It happened once that there was a great drought, and the inhabitants of the district of Panopolis and those of Ptolemais came in a crowd to my father to be fed by him. My father gave them bread until the loaves ran out, and the brother who was in charge of the bread-store came to my father Apa Shenoute and said: “That was a blessing (i.e., a great amount) of bread, my father (apismu šōpi henniōik)! What will you do [now] for the multitudes who have gathered to us and for the brothers?” In reply, my father said to me and to the one who distributed the loaves: “Go and gather up the remaining loaves together with [all] the little fragments, moisten them, and give them to the crowds to eat.” We then went off in accordance with his word and gathered them up, and we left nothing behind. We went back to him and told him: “We have left nothing behind,” and he said to us: “Pray to God that he will bring about such a blessing (smu) that you can feed them all.” We did not wish to disobey him, but instead went away, and when the time came, we went to open the door of the bread-store, and the abundance (smu) poured forth upon us while we were still outside the door of the bread-store. In this way, the multitudes ate, and when they were full they glorified God and our father.³⁹

      Indeed, the abundance of grain was so great that the bakers complained about the amount of ashes they had to carry away from the ovens.⁴⁰ Similarly, when Shenoute brought home a magic grain that he had found at the imperial palace in Constantinople—quite an interesting place to “find” the source of endless wealth—he threw it under the millstone, and “the Lord sent so great an abundance (smu) from the mill-stone that they were quite unable to gather it all up.” Only Shenoute, with his palm branch, was able to stop the mill from producing.⁴¹

      These stories present us with a stark contrast between famine and overwhelming abundance. The generation of wealth at the monastery follows an explosive rhythm: just like the grandiose church, extraordinarily completed in “only four months or five in all,” scarcity is miraculously resolved at one stroke.⁴² What makes such abundance legitimate and acceptable—and what produces it in the first place—is that it is used in the right way: in the care of the poor. Material “blessings” are a divine reward for the piety and charitable work of Shenoute’s monastery. As the apostle Paul himself told Shenoute in a vision:

      Because you love charity and give alms to anyone that asks you and keep all the commandments in all ways because of the love [of God], behold! The Lord has sent me to you to comfort you because of what you do for the poor and the destitute.⁴³

      Paul gave Shenoute a loaf of bread blessed by Jesus himself, which he secretly deposited in one of the bread stores. What happened next follows the same rhythm as in the previous stories. Shenoute’s servants complain that the storeroom is empty and ask permission to open another one. Shenoute insists, but the steward cannot open the door. Then, the climax: at Shenoute’s commandment (“Arise and bring forth the Lord’s abundance (smu), and if it should not be enough, we will open another store-room and draw from that”),

      the door then opened immediately, and from inside a great heap of bread poured forth, and there was such a mass of bread that it filled up the doorway. In this way, the multitudes and the brothers were supplied for six months by the abundance (smu) of bread which came forth from the door of the bread-store, and to this very day that bread-store is called the “Store-Room of the Blessing” (paho mpismu).⁴⁴

      It is not surprising that the traditional hostility of late antique bishops toward granaries, the symbol of social injustice and selfish speculation by unscrupulous landowners,⁴⁵ is almost entirely absent from Shenoute’s rhetoric against the rich. As we shall see, he was far more concerned about what dishonest landowners did with their wine than about their accumulation of grain or bread. Nor is it surprising that Shenoute’s enemies found the availability of a large surplus of bread at the monastery alarming. Where Shenoute and his biographer saw “multitudes” of the “poor” being fed, his enemies saw rural patronage in action and an out-of-control abbot. In the words of his accusers, he was “gathering men to fight each other on account of the villages” and “giving them bread.”⁴⁶ One is reminded of the accusations usually leveled against the patriarchs of Alexandria and their use of grain to buy loyalty.⁴⁷

      The recurring idea that God tended to reward those truly faithful to him with economic miracles was a new development of fifth-century Christianity and should not be taken for granted as inherently part of the Christian tradition. Jesus may have multiplied bread and fish, but fourth-century bishops and monks seldom, if ever, claimed to do so. Unlike Shenoute and his contemporaries, their economic life took place in a far more realistic framework, in which scarcity and economic struggle were facts of life. This can be seen very clearly in another story contained in Shenoute’s Life, very similar and yet so different from one contained in the Pachomian corpus.

      During a time of drought and famine, we are told, Shenoute’s monastery was suffering from an unusual scarcity:

      We suffered very much. When the people came to us, we thought, “Where will we find bread to feed those who come to us?” We thought hard.⁴⁸

      Eventually, Shenoute decided to send his disciple Besa “into that worthless city,” that is, Panopolis, to buy as much wheat as possible with one hundred solidi—and we know in fact from Shenoute’s rules that his monastery regularly bought wheat.⁴⁹ One solidus usually bought ten artabas of wheat in normal conditions, but the landowners of Panopolis disrespectfully told Besa that his hundred solidi would not even fetch a hundred artabas:

      Nobody agreed to sell or to give generously. My father sighed against Panopolis and cursed those who desire drought and famine.⁵⁰

      But Shenoute did not despair. He knew exactly what to do:

      We arose, we went into the church and prayed. When we had finished praying, we turned around and saw wheat rising up, shining brighter than the sun, and we did not know where it had come from. … When we had finished milling, we found one thousand artabae of flour. … Instead of one month’s baking, or two or three, we had six months.⁵¹