The second, economic antithesis will be analyzed in chapters 2 and 3, the center of this book. Shenoute’s own monastery was the ultimate example of the generous love of the poor. Its welfare activities and its miraculous wealth will be analyzed in chapter 2. It will be shown that his discourse of endless abundance and generosity legitimized—in terms reminiscent of a “Christian euergetism”—the receipt of unprecedented amounts of lay gifts. Furthermore, Shenoute’s tireless denunciation of the violence of the rich—who loved wealth more than their own souls and oppressed the poor without mercy—will be discussed in chapter 3. It will be shown there that Shenoute’s discourse of economic inequality betrays his active involvement in a conflict of rural patronage. The third and last antithesis, that between Christians and pagans, will be analyzed in the fourth chapter. My analysis will show that Shenoute’s discourse in favor of intolerance and his attempts to justify his controversial actions against paganism by deliberately confusing religious with economic issues reveal his powerlessness to put a definite end to the old religions.
This reading of Shenoute’s literary corpus, I would like to stress, is anything but straightforward. It demands a constant and often difficult distinction between representation and reality. Many of the fundamental issues addressed in this study can be identified, in the first place, only by comparing and contrasting Shenoute with his better-known contemporaries. It is crucial, therefore, to read these texts in the right context. But this has seldom been done. Modern scholarship has tended to confine Shenoute within the narrow boundaries of Coptic literature and has thus isolated him from the wider late antique world in which he truly belongs. The result has been an undue emphasis on his uniqueness. For it has to be admitted that, when confined to Egypt, Shenoute seems indeed incomparable and larger than life. After all, how do we explain the emergence of a public preacher who thrives on controversy and factionalism within a monastic tradition characterized by an inward-looking mentality, an emphasis on social peace and noninvolvement, stability, and humility? Even in the sixth century—when monasticism had become very much part of the fabric of daily life—it is hard to find any parallels for Shenoute’s public role among Egyptian monks. This may be simply due to the scarcity of monastic sources for the sixth century, yet even Shenoute’s own disciple Besa seems, in comparison, to have had a low profile in society. Among his surviving writings, we find no equivalent to Shenoute’s “discourses” aimed at society in general, nor any attacks on the corruption and sinfulness of the world at large.
In any case, to decide whether Shenoute was unique or exceptional we first need to look outside Egypt and set him in a wider context. We need to abandon, therefore, a “Coptological” perspective. I do not like the idea of Coptology. It encourages narrow-mindedness and ahistorical thinking. Shenoute may be the only really good example of the development of the care of the poor in Egypt,61 but he seems unique only when seen in isolation from his eastern Mediterranean background. A purely Egyptian perspective is not enough. Particularly so when a rich literary documentation originating in Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor is available for comparison. There is, as a matter of fact, no better introduction to Shenoute’s world than the famous speeches of Libanius of Antioch—although from a point of view diametrically opposed to that of Shenoute. And there are no better historical parallels for his role in society than the archimandrites of fifth-century Syria and Constantinople, many of whom were his exact contemporaries. Like Shenoute, fifth-century holy men such as Hypatius, Alexander, and Marcellus the Sleepless or Symeon the Stylite—all of them Syrian—were very much involved in the world that they had given up. Far from rendering them indifferent to the concerns and controversies of their age, their asceticism had given them the capacity and the will to impinge upon society with unlimited self-confidence and determination. Their unavoidable and disturbing public prominence, their denunciations of social injustice, their advocacy on behalf of the poor, their criticisms of Christian hypocrisy, and their hostility toward paganism: all this shows that Shenoute was not an aberrant character but rather a faithful exponent of his age.62
Let us take the case of Hypatius, for example, one of the many holy men who pursued a career in the area around Constantinople. When Thrace was devastated by the Goths at the end of the fourth century, he protected the poor at his monastery and interceded on their behalf before the imperial authorities. Shenoute did exactly the same thing some time later when Upper Egypt was invaded by Nubian tribes. While Shenoute attacked private pagan shrines, village temples, and the secular traditions of the city (baths, theaters, poetry, etc.), Hypatius attacked the sacred trees of Bithynia and threatened violence when a prefect intended to celebrate the Olympic games at Chalcedon. Hypatius also became the head of a rapidly growing monastery outside this city, but that did not stop him from preaching in public. Every feast day, he would leave the monastery and go to a large church (originally built by the praetorian prefect Rufinus for his suburban villa) to celebrate Mass there.63 As I have already noted, Shenoute also preached regularly to nonmonastic audiences. Finally, both holy men constantly interacted with the authorities, provincial in Shenoute’s case, imperial in Hypatius’s case, and derived important material benefits from this interaction.
One crucial obstacle in any attempt to set Shenoute’s “career” against a specific historical background can unfortunately not be definitely solved: the chronology of his life and activities. We know for certain that, in general terms, his activities have to be located in what has been called the “classical period” of preaching on poverty, that is, the years 370–450.64 Given our circumstantial evidence, more precision can be achieved only tentatively. This issue requires a long and technical discussion, and I have therefore relegated it to an appendix. What is important here is that, regardless of when Shenoute was born or died, the few unambiguous pieces of evidence we have point to the years 420–460 as his floruit as a prominent abbot. It was in this period that Shenoute communicated with the archbishops of Alexandria, that he attended the council(s) of Ephesus, that he received the frequent visits of imperial governors, that he built a grandiose monastic church, and that he attacked a pagan village nearby.
It has been suggested, on the other hand, that the beginning of Shenoute’s public life should be pushed much further back in time. The claim in his biography that he lived for no less than 118 years; his own statements that he had spent, at some point in his life, “more than a hundred years in the desert” and that he had been “reading the Gospels for more than sixty years” when attending a council at Ephesus (but which one?); the possible identity of his enemy Gesios with an imperial governor of southern Egypt who ruled in the years 376–378, that is, more than forty years before the floruit I propose: all this has made scholars seriously consider the possibility that Shenoute had a preternatural life span, that he accomplished some of his greatest deeds—like the building of his church—when he was in his hundreds.
Though not impossible, this claim seems improbable to me.65 As long as we have no clear evidence to the contrary, I think we should stick to the few certainties we have and see in Shenoute essentially a fifth-century character, an inhabitant of the “Greek Roman Empire” of Theodosius II recently described by Fergus Millar.66 Shenoute’s contemporaries are, therefore, men such as Rabbula of Edessa, Symeon the Stylite, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, not the Cappadocian Fathers. This is important, among other things, because the fifth century is a poorly documented period but one in which critical transformations are thought to have taken place in the Near Eastern countryside. The importance of Shenoute’s writings as a historical source lies not least in their capacity to illuminate the social and economic history of this dark but crucial period.
1
Loyal Opposition
“SIN CITY”: SHENOUTE, PANOPOLIS, AND THE POOR
One of the basic difficulties any study of Shenoute must face is the lack of context. Even for the fifth century, a particularly ill-documented period, his is an unusual case. He is not mentioned in any contemporary sources, from Egypt or anywhere else. Although he has a relatively important place in later Coptic tradition, Greek hagiographers and historians of the church pass him over in silence. With few exceptions, his works cannot be dated and do not name people known otherwise. The only datable “event” in his life would