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 out clearly if we are to understand the significance of Shenoute’s actions and what made them possible in the first place. Let us take a moment, then, to look at the rural world of late antique Egypt and the Near East, the world that produced both Shenoute and his admirers.
A fourth-century document written by a certain Papnuthis may be a good starting point. Papnuthis was the agent of an urban landowner in Oxyrhynchus, a city in the middle Nile valley. Sometime between the years 359 and 365, he wrote a letter full of frustration to his employer. People like Papnuthis, usually called pronoētēs in the papyri, played a key role in the rural economy of the ancient world. His job was to collect from the villages around Oxyrhynchus the rents owed by his employer’s tenants, and the taxes for which this landowner, as a member of the civic elite of Oxyrhynchus, was responsible. In the southern village of Berky, however, the local inhabitants did not have a friendly welcome for Papnuthis. The wheat they were supposed to pay was mixed with cheaper barley, and their intention was to measure it using their own measure, which they claimed was equivalent to the standard public one. One of the two villagers who were supposed to help him collect what was due disrespectfully replied, “I don’t have any time,” while the other excused himself simply by saying, “It’s none of my business.” Papnuthis’s letter demanded further instructions from his employer, but he also suggested the use of soldiers, following the example set by another urban magistrate who—with the help of soldiers—“collects from them as he pleases.”6
No reply to this letter has been preserved, but any sensible landowner would have told Papnuthis that having recourse to soldiers was a risky strategy. Soldiers would want their own share, and, more importantly, they were not under the direct control of civic magistrates. Once they were involved in the process of tax or rent collection, there was little stopping them from engaging in this activity for their own benefit. A new, unpredictable interest group standing between urban landowners and rural tenants and taxpayers was the last thing any civic magistrate wanted.
Papnuthis’s troubles were no isolated incident. Fourth-century documents from Egypt contain many such complaints against “rustic audacity” (komētikē authadeia). Stubborn villagers were accused of refusing to pay rents and taxes, and of failing to show deference to their natural superiors. Outside Egypt, too, many late antique landowners expressed a similar sense of outrage. In Gaza, for example, a group of villagers was said to have refused to pay the rents on land owned by the church and to have beaten the church’s steward