Children And Family In Late Antique Egyptian Monasticism

Early Christian asceticism emphasized renunciation of family, while Egyptian monks in late antiquity cared for children.

This book explores the personal practices and group rituals for monitoring and training the thoughts of ancient Christian monks. It focuses on the earliest sources for communal monasticism, many translated into English for the first time, while drawing on cognitive studies to understand key disciplines like prayer and collective repentance.

This book traces changing perceptions of Egypt's monastic landscape through an analysis of archaeological and documentary evidence from late antiquity.

An authoritative and multidisciplinary Companion to Egypt during the Greco‐Roman and Late Antique period With contributions from noted authorities in the field, A Companion to Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt offers a comprehensive resource that covers almost 1000 years of Egyptian history, starting with the liberation of Egypt from Persian rule by Alexander the Great in 332 BC and ending in AD 642, when Arab rule started in the Nile country. The Companion takes a largely sociological perspective and includes a section on life portraits at the end of each part. The theme of identity in a multicultural environment and a chapter on the quality of life of Egypt's inhabitants clearly illustrate this objective. The authors put the emphasis on the changes that occurred in the Greco-Roman and Late Antique periods, as illustrated by such topics as: Traditional religious life challenged; Governing a country with a past: between tradition and innovation; and Creative minds in theory and praxis. This important resource: Discusses how Egypt became part of a globalizing world in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine times Explores notable innovations by the Ptolemies and Romans Puts the focus on the longue durée development Offers a thematic and multidisciplinary approach to the subject, bringing together scholars of different disciplines Contains life portraits in which various aspects and themes of people’s daily life in Egypt are discussed Written for academics and students of the Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt period, this Companion offers a guide that is useful for students in the areas of Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and New Testament studies.

The most detailed glimpse to date of daily life in a small town at the end of the Roman Empire.

Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World explores what it meant to be a child in the Roman world - what were children’s concerns, interests and beliefs - and whether we can find traces of children’s own cultures. By combining different theoretical approaches and source materials, the contributors explore the environments in which children lived, their experience of everyday life, and what the limits were for their agency. The volume brings together scholars of archaeology and material culture, classicists, ancient historians, theologians, and scholars of early Christianity and Judaism, all of whom have long been involved in the study of the social and cultural history of children. The topics discussed include children's living environments; clothing; childhood care; social relations; leisure and play; health and disability; upbringing and schooling; and children's experiences of death. While the main focus of the volume is on Late Antiquity its coverage begins with the early Roman Empire, and extends to the early ninth century CE. The result is the first book-length scrutiny of the agency and experience of pre-modern children.

Religion requires education. Soon after the emergence of Christianity, religious education became crucial to the development of Christian communities in towns and in the countryside. The present volume analyzes the human agents of this education: bishops, catechists, mothers and fathers, monastic teachers. It thus offers a comparative analysis of teachers' roles in Christian educational contexts, dealing with questions such as: Who taught in late antique Christianity? Which imagery is used to describe such teaching? What impact do gender ascriptions have on teaching roles and processes? And where do conflicts emerge between different roles and their social settings? Contributors: Christoph Birkner, Carmen Angela Cvetkovi'c, Juliette Day, Therese Fuhrer, Peter Gemeinhardt, Katharina Greschat, Henrik Rydell Johnsen, Olga Lorgeoux, Andreas Muller, Maria Munkholt Christensen, David Rylaarsdam, Arthur Urbano

Shenoute of Atripe led the White Monastery, a community of several thousand male and female Coptic monks in Upper Egypt, between approximately 395 and 465 C.E. Shenoute's letters, sermons, and treatises—one of the most detailed bodies of writing to survive from any early monastery—provide an unparalleled resource for the study of early Christian monasticism and asceticism. In Monastic Bodies, Caroline Schroeder offers an in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, and material culture. Schroeder details Shenoute's arduous disciplinary code and philosophical structure, including the belief that individual sin corrupted not only the individual body but the entire "corporate body" of the community. Thus the purity of the community ultimately depended upon the integrity of each individual monk. Shenoute's ascetic discourse focused on purity of the body, but he categorized as impure not only activities such as sex but any disobedience and other more general transgressions. Shenoute emphasized the important practices of discipline, or askesis, in achieving this purity. Contextualizing Shenoute within the wider debates about asceticism, sexuality, and heresy that characterized late antiquity, Schroeder compares his views on bodily discipline, monastic punishments, the resurrection of the body, the incarnation of Christ, and monastic authority with those of figures such as Cyril of Alexandria, Paulinus of Nola, and Pachomius.