Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery: Egyptian Monasticism in Late Antiquity 9780198029618, 0198029616

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Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

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Shenoute & the Women of the White Monastery EGYPTIAN MONASTICISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY

Rebecca Krawiec

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

2002

UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Copyright © 2002 by Rebecca Krawiec . Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York-10016

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ~ _Krawiec, Rebecca. Shenoute and the women of the White Monastery: Egyptian monasticism

in late antiquity / Rebecca Krawiec. . p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-512943-1

1. Shenoute, ca. 348-466. 2. Monastery of Apa Shenoute (Sahaj, Egypt) —History

3. Monastic and religious life of women—Egypt—S4haj—History—Early church, | ca. 30-600. I. Title

BR1720.848 K73 2001 271'.900623—de21 —-00-050131

[§~135798 642

| on acid-free paper

Printed in the United States of America

For

JOHN

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Acknowledgements |

This book began as my dissertation, written under the direction of Bentley Layton at

Yale University. | must begin by thanking Bentley for his many fine qualities as an ad- | viser, including his uncompromising standard of excellence, the work he contributed to help me strive towards that standard, and the faith he had that I could achieve it. To whatever degree I have succeeded both then and now, I owe him my gratitude.

Stephen Emmel suggested this project to me and has been extremely generous in , sharing his own work, including transcriptions and translations, with me. For that and his supportive friendship I give him thanks. Rowan Greer and Wayne Meeks

both contributed helpful advice and warnings that kept me from going down treach- | erous paths. Two institutions furnished me with financial support at the dissertation stage. In 1995 Yale University awarded me an Enders travel fellowship which helped make

possible a trip to Paris to study some of the pertinent manuscripts in person. That | same year the Mellon Foundation provided generous support through a dissertation fellowship. | would like also to thank the librarians at the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris for their hospitality. In the years since finishing the dissertation, when I was revising the manuscript into a book, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work at several places and give papers to a variety of audiences. In 1997—98 I was a Research Associate and Visiting Lecturer in the Women and Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. I wish to thank the interim director, Deborah Valenze; the other research associates, Katherine French, Carol Karlsen, Susan Shapiro, and Amina Wadud; the administrative assistant, Julia Starkey; Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, Francois Bovon, and the New ‘Testament faculty and graduate students; and the members of my seminar. All con-

, vii Acknowledgments , tributed to a lively, friendly, and stimulating community that helped my ideas grow and develop. Susan Shapiro’s scholarship and conversations were especially important for shaping my thesis on monasticism and gender. In the summer of 1999, I was a participant in an NEH summer seminar on Roman Egypt, led by Roger. Bagnall at Columbia University. I would like to thank Roger and the participants of the semi-

nar for their discussions. a a Portions of chapters have been given as papers on the following occasions: the

, 1995, 1997, and 1998 national meetings of the AAR; a regional meeting of the AAR ~ in St. Paul, MN in 1997; the 1997 and 1998 meetings of the North American Patris— tics Society; lectures at the University of Minnesota (1997), Duke University (1997), Bryn Mawr College (1998), Harvard Divinity School (1998), and Brandeis University (1998). I thank all audiences for their comments and questions on these occasions. In addition, thanks to Philip Sellew, Elizabeth Clark, Richard Hamilton, and Bernadette Brooten for their invitations to speak at their institutions. Finally, a paper I gave at the 1997 annual meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt was published in the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrology; much of that article ap-

: pears at varous points in this book. Thanks are due to the editor of BASP, Terry Wilfong, for his comments and encouragement. In addition, I presented a draft of that article to a faculty seminar on religion in antiquity at Brown University (1997). Thanks to Stanley Stowers for his invitation on that occasion and to the participants for their

suggestions. , ,

As I was finishing the final revisions, David Brakke and Caroline Schroeder read the entire manuscript, and Roger Bagnall read the Introduction and Chapters | and 7. For their comments and insights, as well as corrections, I am grateful. Bentley Lay-

ton, at an earlier stage, graciously checked my translations of the Coptic throughout. Dwight W. Young generously corresponded about recent translations. | would also like to thank the two anonymous readers, Cynthia Read, Robert Milks, and my copy

| editor at Oxford University Press. All errors, needless to say, remain my own. ~ Finally, I would like to thank the following people who have provided support in a variety of ways throughout this process: Dean Béchard, SJ; Regina Plunkett Dowl- | ing; Susan Harvey; Andrew Jacobs; Flora Keshgegian; Derek Krueger; James Ross Smith; Stanley Stowers; Kristen Welsh; my colleagues in the Department of Classics | , | at the University at Buffalo, especially Martha Malamud who read the manuscript, and Melissa Rothfus, who provided last-minute babysitting; my parents, brother, and sister-in-law; and, of course, my husband, John Dugan, to whom I dedicate this work. , Our son, Joseph Joo Won Dugan, arrived to us from Korea just as the manuscript re- |

ceived final copyediting. I can think of no happier ending to a long project.

Contents

Abbreviations, xi , Introduction, 3

1. Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute, 13

2. Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute, 31 , 3. Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power, 51

4. Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power, 73 5. “They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery, 92 6. Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity, 120

Power and Gender, 133 |

7. Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of , 8. “According to the Flesh”: Biological Kin in the White Monastery, 161

Bibliography, 237 ,

Notes, 175

Index, 245

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Abbreviations

AHR American Historical Review APF — Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebeite BASURSS — Bulletin del’ Academie des sciences de 1 URSS, classe des sciences sociales

CGC Catalogue général des antiquités égyptienne du musée du Caire CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Eccleasiastiacorum Latinorum HE Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History

Let. Letter LH _ Palladius, Historia Lausica HTR Harvard Theological Review JAAR — Journal of the American Academy of Religion

JAC Jahrbuch fiir Antike und Christentum JECS — Journal of Early Chvistian Studies

| JFSR — Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion JHS — Journal of the History of Sexuality

JJP Journal of Juristic Papyrology JAOS — Journal of the American Oriental Society

JRS Journal of Roman Studies JThS Journal of Theological Studies Leipoldt, Opera Leipoldt, Sinuthii Archimandritae Vita et Opera Omnia Muséon Le Muséon: Revue d’ Etudes Orientales New Test. Stud. New Testament Studies x1

, a xii Abbreviations Or Orientalia , PG Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne a OLP = Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica |

| — VC _ Vigiliae Christianae | |

WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift fiir die Kunde des Morgenlandes

| YCS Yale Classical Studies Oo

| Works of Shenute ,

Young, Manuscripts Young, Coptic Manuscripts from the White Monastery:

Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

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Introduction

Shenoute and the White Monastery This book provides an account of a group of women who lived in a monastic com- | munity in Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries. I cannot begin my study with these women, however, but must start with the man who provides us with their story. About

385, a monk named Shenoute became the third head of the White Monastery, located near modern Sohag in Upper Egypt.! Shenoute, then in his mid-thirties, had lived in the monastery for nearly thirty years, since the age of seven. He remained head until his death, which is thought to have occurred in 464 when he was some-

where between 115 and 118 years old (the span of his life was roughly from 348 to , 464).? During his tenure as head, he was active both in his monastery, as his many letters to the 4,000 monks (2,200 men and 1,800 women) under his care attest, and in

the surrounding community, as the numerous extant public sermons show.’ Like other Christian leaders of late antiquity, Shenoute was involved in civic affairs in his vicinity.* His role in the non-monastic community has interested scholars of Egypt in late antiquity, but his place in the development and history of monasticism has been largely ignored.? He was an advocate for the poor, willing to speak on their behalf to both Christian and pagan civic leaders.° His monastery provided bread for the hunery’ and shelter for refugees during military raids by foreigners.* He linked Upper Egypt to the hierarchies of Alexandria, both civil and ecclesiastical.? He was also a

violent opponent of native Egyptian religion in his area.!° In one sermon, for example, Shenoute gives an account of a raid he led on a local governor’s house during which he defiled the house by pouring urine out of vessels.!! Shenoute was not simply a spiritual patron, as Athanasius portrayed Anthony, but a civic and economic one as 3

4 Introduction well.'* In his leadership of the monastery also, Shenoute was a man of extremes, which at times aggravated his followers and yet did not hinder the growth of his monastic community.

Shenoute rose to prominence when Alexandria was one of the most important cities in the Mediterranean world and its patriarch had become one of the most powerful church leaders. He was involved in the controversies of his day, even traveling to the ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431 to defend Alexandrian theology in the christological controversy.'? His numerous writings appeared only a century after

Coptic emerged as a normalized language. As the first great author in Coptic, Shenoute was never surpassed for his literary contribution as a prolific author and for

applying the principles of Alexandrian theology and Greek rhetoric to Egyptian monasticism.!4 Why, then, is Shenoute’s name virtually unknown, and why are his life and writings largely ignored by studies of antiquity? Shenoute’s absence from the

Greek and Latin sources that dominate the study of Egypt in late antiquity is one reason for his obscurity. Also, after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Egyptian Christianity separated from Catholic Christianity, and so from the future of either Catholicism in the West or Orthodoxy in Byzantium. But even within the African Mono-

| physite context, Shenoute’s writings, which were copied by monks in the monastery for centuries after his death, eventually ceased to be transmitted, even as the remaining manuscripts fell into disuse and decay.!° Coptic had ceased to be a living language by about 1000 CE, and Shenoute’s works, which are rhetorically elaborate and difficult to read, were understandably neglected as middle Arabic became the literary vehicle of Christianity in Egypt. The recent publication of an English translation of the hagiographic life of Shenoute has helped revive his name among historians of Christianity. His own writings, however, remain in disarray and, for the most part, unknown and even inaccessible to historians of ancient Christianity and indeed even to Coptic monks who continue to live in the White Monastery today.'° The study of ancient history is often intertwined with technical questions of doc-

umentation and nowhere is that more true than the current state of study on Shenoute. The historian encounters two enormous problems when studying Shenoute’s works. First, there is no critical edition of any of Shenoute’s writings, of which many remain unpublished. Shenoute collected his literary works to be transmitted in two

large units: (1) nine collections (Canons) of letters, which he wrote either to the whole monastery, to the men’s or women’s communities, or to individuals; and (2) public sermons (Discourses, or Logoi), which he preached throughout his tenure as archimandrite of the White Monastery.'? These sermons and letters are preserved in some ninety-two separate manuscripts, many of them badly damaged and nearly illegible.!® Only some of his works have been translated into Latin, French, or English.!? Even though a large number of manuscripts are extant, few individual works survive in their entirety. Scholars have long noted the need for a critical edition of all these manuscripts so that interpretation and translation can begin.?? Only when such an edition appears will Shenoute be given his rightful place in the historical study of

late antique Egypt. , ,

~ Shenoute’s style poses a second obstacle. His Coptic, which is rhetorically complex, is notoriously difficult, with many stylistic oddities that hinder idiomatic English translations. In order to make my translations more immediately intelligible, |

| Introduction 5 have taken the liberty of smoothing certain aspects of Shenoute’s syntactical structures such as his references to himself as “the one who speaks to you” or other thirdperson phrases, his unexplained changes in pronouns, and his cryptic monastic language.

~ The Women of the White Monastery: A Methodology But is this a study of Shenoute or is it a study of women in the White Monastery?! It is, and must be, both. While it is possible to study Shenoute, or the monasticism practiced in the White Monastery, without focusing exclusively on the women’s lives, it is not possible to examine the evidence for these women’s lives apart from the author of that evidence, Shenoute. Our knowledge of the women’s monastic experiences, therefore, results from Shenoute’s narratives, since the letters the women wrote have not survived. Women were involved in every type of monasticism in every part of the Mediterranean world, and so it is not surprising that there were female monks in the White Monastery.”” Unlike other forms of monasticism, women seem to have been part of the White Monastery from its inception, rather than brought into an already-

established male system later, when the need arose. The beginnings of the White Monastery, however, are obscure, and so we have to limit ourselves to understanding the state of affairs in the time of Shenoute. The nine Canons are our main source of information about the functioning (and dysfunctioning) of Shenoute’s monastery, giving “a detailed view of him as a monk, father of the monastery, prophet of doom

for the sinners in his community and prophet of salvation for those who repent.” Throughout these canons are thirteen letters that Shenoute wrote either to the female community or to individual women. In this study, then, we must first understand Shenoute as the author of the letters and as head of the monastery, and then approach the women who were under his care and control.

This problem of the relationship between the author and audience of the letters immediately raises a serious methodological question, namely, How should one read Shenoute’s letters in order to reconstruct the women’s experiences? Is such a reconstruction even possible, without entailing an uncritical acceptance of Shenoute’s version of events? I will argue that we can understand some of the quality and experiences of some of the women’s monastic lives under Shenoute’s leadership, though often only through Shenoute’s representation of those experiences, shaped by his

own goals and agenda. Indeed, in some ways we can learn more about this form of fe- | , male monasticism than contemporaneous movements elsewhere in Egypt, in Palestine, Asia Minor, and North Africa. For the most part, we have only monastic rules

and hagiographies as the sources for other monastic systems in the late antique Mediterranean world. Such non-Egyptian letters about monastic women as happen to survive are more like treatises and less like documentary sources about the women’s monasticism. So, unfortunately, the study of late antique women’s monasticism is hindered not only because our sources are all authored by men, a well-known problem, but also because, in the words of Elizabeth Clark, “[they are] so propagandistic and rhetorical that the attempt to extract historical information from [them] might seem futile.”’* Shenoute’s letters are also written by a man and they are also highly

6 Introduction rhetorical, yet they contrast starkly with other sources for female monasticism. Since they were written in response to conflicts in the monastery, they record the break-

down of the ideal presented by the monastic rules and, unlike hagiographies, we can be reasonably sure the events they record actually happened. Rather than being compared to other fourth-century letters, they would be better compared to those of Paul, as | explore later. While at times difficult and obscure, they nevertheless reveal a type of evidence that has rarely survived for women in antiquity. They record both incidental details about the women’s lives and occasionally their voices and actions, albeit as reported—often spitefully—by a disapproving male leader. Not only does Shenoute, as their monastic leader, deserve his rightful place in the history of the development of monasticism; so do the female monks themselves, even though we can

hear their words only on Shenoute’s lips. ,

This project, therefore, has three methodological layers which need to be distinguished: textual, rhetorical, and historiographical. First, it was necessary to translate the thirteen letter fragments, published and unpublished, themselves. For the most part, my access to unpublished manuscripts has been through microfilm copies. I was also able to collate some manuscripts during a research visit to the Bibliothéque nationale of Paris; these constitute a majority of the textual witnesses for Canon 2 (discussed in chapter 2). Wherever I cite unpublished sources, 1 have provided a transcription of the text at the first citation.’* These letters suffer from the same problems of fragmentation as does the rest of Shenoute’s corpus: only one has survived more or less complete, and even this manuscript has occasional tears. Consequently, some of these “letters,” and their ensuing translations, consist of little more than a sentence or even just part of a sentence. Many manuscript pages are isolated, missing several folios both preceding and following them, and the pages that do survive are often torn as well, so that as much as a half to two-thirds of the page might be missing. For example, four “pages” of one of the first letters to the female community consist of two manuscript folios (with a front and back). The pages preceding the first folio (which is numbered pages 63 and 64) are missing, as is the intervening page (65 and 66), and anything following the second page (number 67 and 68).’° Thus we have four pages of a letter of undetermined length, but even these four pages are interrupted by a lacuna. While some full sentences of this particular letter make sense on their own, often only comparison to fuller descriptions, from other, more complete letters, of the women’s monastic experience makes sense of an isolated comment or half-phrase. Some phrases might reappear in another letter, or some issue might recur, expressed in similar enough language to make sense of a half-sentence whose meaning was obscured by lack of context. Overall the various fragments provided clues that had to be pieced together to create a picture of women’s life in the White Monastery. It is a picture, sadly, with many missing parts. In the presentation that follows, I have not belabored what we do not know, but it is always helpful when studying antiquity to remain humble in the face of the vast amount of lost knowledge. I must add, as a final caveat about the state of these sources, that the picture I present might easily change with future translation and interpretation of Shenoute’s works that have survived. Once translated, the letters had to be read, that is, their meaning had to be deciphered. Here two different levels of meaning emerge: Shenoute’s language in the letters and the historical situation(s) underlying that language. These are rhetorically

Introduction 7 constructed documents which provide representations of events, rather than a doc-

umentary, “factual” account, but they also respond to historical events in the monastery.”” Rather than functioning as propaganda, these letters were meant to provide a “fitting response” to the historical situation of the White Monastery.’® Each of the thirteen letters of Shenoute’s that I analyze responds to an actual problem, sometimes describing it in concrete terms and at other times through metaphors whose precise meaning is lost. It is possible, therefore, to analyze Shenoute’s arguments to reconstruct the situations that led to his response. Since, however, the facts of the situation were known to Shenoute and his audience, he does not often provide the details we would like to know. His concern is rather with the rhetorical construction of his argument and the tropes therein. Our reconstruction is thus necessarily limited.” Nevertheless, we must attempt to recover what we can of the women’s voices through

the echoes of Shenoute’s epistolary response. But even in locating these echoes, Shenoute’s rhetoric necessarily takes center stage. If ideology means the relationship between language and the social structures that language supports, as Dale Martin has argued, then this study examines Shenoute’s ideology of monasticism and the effects of that ideology on the women to whom he was writing.*° Three themes recur in Shenoute’s language: power, gender, and family, and these have become the increasing focus of recent scholarship on Christianity from Paul to the fifth century, especially those studies that examine asceticism and the body. One might expect that this study would locate Shenoute and his monasticism in the context of other forms of late antique monasticism and the gender issues they raise; and, indeed, I discuss these very issues in chapter 6. However, the references to Pauline scholarship at various points in this study might be more surprising. There are, of course, many competing methodologies for reading Paul’s letters and for reconstructing these early Christian communities, as well as variety in the degree to which one can use them to reconstruct accurately events in these communities. I am indebted to some recent Pauline methodologies, not because I wish to argue that they are the best methods to read Paul but because they provide the best methods for understanding these particular thirteen letters of Shenoute’s.>! This scholarship on Paul is pertinent to Shenoute’s letters since the two authors share literary strategies that respond to similar situations. First, many of Shenoute’s tropes for issues of authority, monastic unity, family, and gender reflect Paul’s own language. That is, like other late antique Christian writers, Shenoute’s rhetoric is infused with references to, and interpretations of, Scripture.*? In addition, both men were physically distant from the communities they address; both sought to establish themselves as the proper moral and religious authority to that community, often against challenges to them; both shared a similar understanding of their closeness to God and the knowledge that relationship affords them; both can be frustratingly obscure about the details of the situation that has led them to write;? and both have complex rhetorical structures in the presenta-

tion of their authority. Finally, each man needed a discourse to create power in his | particular circumstances. Elizabeth Castelli has compared the power Paul created | through his discourse to Foucault’s definition of “pastoral power”: a power that exists to lead followers to salvation; in which the holder of the power is willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the community; that addresses individuals as well as the group; and that requires full confession of those under his care.** Shenoute’s power, in its

8 Introduction , - goals and its functions, shares many of these same qualities and so shapes his letters

much as “pastoral power” shapes Paul’s. a

| Approaching the Women: Format of the Study ~ In her introduction to Women, Men, and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium, Liz James - provides a useful analysis of three stages in feminist scholarship: the rediscovery of

“Jost? women, added to standard historical description; then the placing of these women in their “socio-economic context”; and the movement from “women” to “oender.”” She, like others, remarks on the naiveté of the first stage, which simply added women to standard history. Because my study examines women in a littleknown community, it must necessarily go through similar stages even while incorpo- | rating the scholarly developments that have occurred. First, I present the background of life in the White Monastery for all monks, male and female, based on the rules Shenoute set for that life (chapter 1). Since the letters are largely unknown, and to some extent unavailable, I then have to present these “lost” women, as recovered through the voice and description of Shenoute. Chapter 2 consists of a series of narratives of the ten periods of conflict that the thirteen letter fragments record. These , narratives, which are my interpretations of the letters and not historical fact, are necessary to provide context for the analysis that follows. They are meant simply to familiarize the reader with Shenoute, the White Monastery, and the issues the women ,

faced. OO a

~ Once | have introduced the historical context of the monastery and the literary context of the letter fragments, I analyze how constructions of power, gender, and | family influence life in the monastery. One central thesis links these three separate analytical lenses: that Shenoute advocated a universal monasticism he defined in terms of purity of the body, both individual and communal, a purity that could result from properly disciplining the flesh by the spirit so that differences located in the flesh

, (gender, biological kinship, social status) would not affect monastic practices (labor, fasting, prayer, corporal punishment, and seclusion for women).*° This type of mo- | nasticism, under Shenoute’s leadership and guidance, would allow the monastery to

become a salvific community, one that created in this life what Shenoute expected the afterlife to be, like “God and his angels, who live in heaven.”3? This trope of monastic life as an angelic life was common in early Christian monasticism, as Teresa Shaw has pointed out.*® Just as the ideal ascetic body represented the future body of paradise, so too the monastic community as a whole was meant to represent this state. Just as Shenoute borrows from Paul’s language to express the spirit’s superiority, so also he characterizes error as carnality, as being rooted in the flesh. Like other ~ monastic leaders, such as Evagrius, he does not regard flesh as evil but as limiting.” Shenoute saw his leadership as necessary to teach the monks the right way to live in the flesh, a way that is in accord with the relationship between body and asceticism

evident in other fourth-century Christian theologians. A valorization of the spirit over the flesh is a precondition for living “like God and his angels” since this metaphor requires humans (embodied in the flesh) to discipline that flesh in order to live like “angels,” who might also be corporeal creatures, but who did not suffer the

Introduction 9 weaknesses of the flesh. These themes, which Shaw has examined in their specific relationship to fasting, characterize Shenoute’s writings to the monks in his care.

Shenoute taught this form of monasticism, namely, monasticism as a representa- , tion of the next life, to all his monks, women and men. Despite Shenoute’s universal application of his teachings, the single biggest difference between the future eschatological state and its current earthly version lay in gender. Women in the monastery provided a litmus test for the limitations placed on Shenoute’s metaphor, in a way

that other cases of carnality (such as biological relatives living together in the monastery) did not. His paradoxical intention seems to be to include the carnal within the monastery while wanting to deny its continuing existence once it has been

included. Shenoute thus advocates an asceticism that transforms the carnal into something else, something closer to the spiritual realm of God’s community. At the same time, however, he insists that gender cannot be transformed in this life, as he requires the transformation of biological familial relationships into spiritual monastic relationships. The sexes, male and female, would continue in the next life but gender—the social constructions of maleness and femaleness embodied most clearly in sexual tension—would not, and thus the sexes could be united. In this life, however, separation of the sexes was essential to the structure of the community, even though it was directed to resemble “God and his angels in heaven.” This need to separate the sexes, for Shenoute, created an inherent tension between the theological reasoning of the goals he established for monasticism, which denied difference, and his actual leadership of the women’s community, which relied on social constructions of mas-

culinity and femininity to justify the structure of the monastery. | As noted previously, Shenoute’s presentation of his authority—the necessity of his leadership for the women to achieve salvation—governs his correspondence to the women more than does the gender of his audience. Indeed, Shenoute eventually collected these letters into the Canons for the monastery presumably because each letter taught all the monks some aspect of proper monasticism (no matter whether the original audience was male or female, or both). Despite our excitement at reading Shenoute’s letters to women, gender is less important than power in Shenoute’s own discourse. It would not be surprising to find in Shenoute’s addresses to men in his monastery, language similar to that in his addresses to women, since all, as monks, shared the same need for Shenoute’s leadership in light of their fragile human state.

, In this respect, we can regard some parts of Shenoute’s rhetoric as egalitarian in that he situates both men and women in a position similarly subordinate to himself. We need to make sense of that discourse before examining where Shenoute’s egalitarian ideal failed to come to fruition in the experience of the monks. Therefore, although the gender of the letters’ recipients defines the corpus for the two chapters on power, I will not explicitly engage in gender analysis of Shenoute’s presentation of his authority in those chapters (3 and 4). Rather, they will focus on investigating the main tropes of Shenoute’s rhetoric which construct his power over the monks (chapter 3), and a historical reconstruction of the women’s response to Shenoute’s power (chapter 4), Chapter 3 shows that Shenoute, like Paul, uses imitation to valorize sameness over difference and that he uses two main rhetorical self-representations, of being a prophet and of suffering, to create his power over the monks. Chapter 4 examines how Shenoute’s efforts to construct his power in the women’s community reflect the

10 Introduction ways the women were able to protect their own power. Their spatial distance from Shenoute gave them the freedom to be less than fully compliant to his dictates and

to hide transgressions in their community. oe

, Gender is, nevertheless, the crux of many disputes between Shenoute and some of the female monks in his monastery. On the one hand, Shenoute attempts to efface gender, both in his language and in his standardization of monastic practices between the male and female communities. On the other, he allows gender stereotypes to enter his rhetoric at crucial moments when he chastises the women, and he uses gender as the basis of the very monastic structure of separation that created obstacles to his leadership. Chapter 5 explores this dynamic by examining both Shenoute’s rhetoric of unity, in which he acknowledges gender but dismisses its importance, and his rhetoric of difference, in which he highlights sexual difference as the reason for women’s _

| place in the monastery. Both uses of gender in rhetoric reflect historical issues in the | monasticism Shenoute was shaping: his rhetoric of unity appears when he wants to subsume gender, as a source of carnality, into spiritual monasticism, while his rhetoric of difference surfaces when he needs to explain or even justify the decisions he has made for the female community. Chapter 6 analyzes gender in the White Monastery in the context of other forms of female monasticism in the late antique Mediterranean world to show not just points of similarity but also what is uniquely Egyptian about the forms of male and female authority in question. It also compares another level of gender interactions in Shenoute’s monastery and in the rest of early Christianity by focusing on a particular group of monks, eunuchs. Since eunuchs had posed a conundrum for Christian ascetic theology from its early days, their treatment in the White Monastery and Shenoute’s ambivalence about them points to similarities between the historically isolated monastery and more well-known Christian authors like Clement and Origen of Alexandria. Shenoute is not the only early Christian author who engages is what seems to us to be contradictions. It may well have been that Shenoute, like his contemporaries, did not see a problem in his ambivalent attitude toward women monks, according them the same discipline, monastic practice, and leadership as the men, and yet isolating them in their own community and creating a restricted space for them, because they were women. One reason that Shenoute saw no discrepancy (at least that he acknowledges) may be that he treated the monastery as a family. Such a trope supported Shenoute’s egalitarian language, in that all monks were siblings or, in Shen-

oute’s phrase, “brethren,” and simultaneously allowed Shenoute to map certain hierarchies—parent over child, male over female—onto the monastery. Chapter 7 explores both Shenoute’s use of familial language to shape relationships in the monastery and the ways the monastery functioned as a family, replacing areas of material, emotional, and social support traditionally supplied by the family in antiquity. [ particularly focus on the position of the women in the monastic family, to see how Shenoute used certain familial ideals to validate the gendered monastic structures de-

scribed in chapter 5. |

Yet this familial imagery and function exists alongside a Christian suspicion, or even hostility, toward the family. Typically, Christian leaders argued against the biological family, in favor of a spiritual relationship mimicking the family, and the same is true in Shenoute’s monastery where biological kin and those who renounced their

Introduction I] families, parents, siblings, and children lived side by side. As we will see in chapter 8, Shenoute strove to reconcile his pro-family rhetoric with the expectation that fleshly

family ties were to be renounced. Both biological kin and those without kin in the monastery tended to treat biological kin as a separate and special group. In the case of women with biological male kin, moreover, Shenoute sought to exploit those relationships for his own purposes. The only contact allowed between the male and female communities was through the male envoys that Shenoute sent to the female community, as proxies for his leadership. These envoys might well include male relatives of female monks, and, on two occasions, Shenoute deliberately chose such men to gain an upper hand in his power struggle with certain female monks. For both spiritual and biological kin in the monastery, the experience of family in the monastery combined issues of power and gender in monasticism.

Such is the organization of the chapters that follow. And yet a central fact obstructs true clarity in this scheme: the letters themselves, with one exception, cannot be dated, either independently or in relationship to each other. The exception is a group of letters that date within a few years of Shenoute’s appointment. Thus it is impossible to trace the development of any of these issues, such as developing authority, changes in gender roles, or more or less positive responses to biological kin. My thematic approach compensates to some extent for the lack of chronology but necessitates some repetition of the evidence, albeit with new insights on each occasion. Despite these difficulties and limitations, | attempt to avoid excessively cautious

conclusions. The pages that follow introduce both a little-known figure in Christianity—a man who, like many of his contemporaries, can be harsh in his language and controlling in his leadership—and also some women who lived under his leadership, at times happily and other times with serious conflict and dispute. For those readers who are conversant with the scholarship on this period, Shenoute and his women followers will at times appear well known, since they face similar issues and share similar responses with many of their contemporaries. Yet there is also much that is different and exciting in the sources I introduce, and altogether the familiar and the new help situate Shenoute and the women of the White Monastery in their rightful place in the history of Christianity.

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I Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute

The daily life of the monks in the White Monastery revolved around prayer and work,

which, for Shenoute, were equally important. The spirituality of monastic life was thus linked to the daily habits of the monks. In outlining this daily life, it is not enough simply to describe the dress, work, worship and eating habits of the monks. Rather, we must also determine how those rules created a sense of identity for its inhabitants-——particularly, for the purposes of this study, the women. The specific re-

quirements of life in the White Monastery created a culture that was separate and distinct from its surroundings: the regulation of food, dress, shelter, and sexuality that constituted daily life created a communal identity for the monks. It was a salvific community that was meant to live human life in a new way, dwelling “with our com-

panions in peace without sin and deceit, like God and his angels who live in heaven.”! Those who held positions of power were also important in shaping monastic culture, since the exercise of power contributed to the spiritual experience of those in the White Monastery. As head of the monastery, Shenoute, most scholars argue, had inherited a pattern of austere life from its founder, who was his uncle Pcol. By

means of such austerity, Shenoute attempted to instill a sense of salvation in the monks. His emphasis on obedience to his regulations as the sole means to salvation permeated daily life and fostered a communal sense of redemption that determined the ethos of the community. In order to recreate this picture of daily life, I have relied on portions of Shenoute’s monastic rules. There are two difficulties with this approach: first, because the rules

are not yet published in any systematic way, I have had to limit myself to those rules , which scholars have used in previous descriptions of the White Monastery.’ Second, as will become evident in my discussion of the development of communal monasti[3

14 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

cism in Egypt, the rules do not record what life was actually like in the monastery, but

rather what the author of the rules wished that life to be. That is, they present an ideal. For the purposes of this study, however, this ideal provides a useful backdrop for

the picture that will emerge from Shenoute’s letters to the women under his care. These letters, although they contain Shenoute’s construction of events, provide the best access to the reality that did not always, if ever, match the rules’ ideal. Nevertheless, the problems Shenoute will address in those letters—the conflicts that arose and the transgressions that resulted——will make the best sense within the context of what he had expected, as expressed in the outline of the daily life of the monks.

The White Monastery and Late Antique Egypt The White Monastery was founded. during the rise of monasticism in Egypt. The traditional division in Egyptian monasticism has been between eremitical, semieremitical, and cenobitic. Eremitical and semi-eremitical (also called “desert”) monasticism—that is, people retreating to the desert to live alone, in pairs or small groups—remained vital but was more prevalent in the north, which had as formative influences the urban culture of Alexandria, the growing power of the patriarch, and the legend of Anthony’s withdrawal. In terms of cenobitic, or communal, monasticism, it had only been half a century since Pachomius (ca. 292-346) founded his first community in southern Egypt about the year 323.> The White Monastery, however, challenges these categories. It was a communal monastery, although the various communities that composed the monastery as. a whole existed at some distance from one another. At the same time, there were anchorites, or hermits, who lived in the area and were associated with the monastery; Shenoute himself lived alone in the surrounding desert for much of the time, rather than in the community with other male monks. The White Monastery, then, had both similarities and differences with both forms of monasticism, communal and solitary. Since this study examines the life of women within the monastery, the main emphasis is on studying these women within the context of communal monasticism. — It is perhaps simplistic to say that obedience was central to monasticism. Nevertheless, locating the sources of authority monks were supposed to obey is important in the history of the development of monasticism. For the White Monastery, we first have to place it in the context of the development of monasticism as an institution,

and then examine the role of Shenoute as its leader. Communal monasticism permitted a number of monks to follow one leader, thus replacing the master-disciple relationship of desert monasticism with a general master who administered a written constitution, or Rule. The Rule, and the general program of institutionalization of which it was a part, affected monasticism in a variety of ways: authoritative figures other than the master came to power; a need developed for mutual accountability of the monks; and obedience was more strongly emphasized.* Although these new sources of authority developed, it remains uncertain to what extent the monks felt compelled to obey them, despite the encouragement to do so. Philip Rousseau points out the problem in the Pachomian communities: “To live under rule, then, was to

Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 15

acknowledge that a variety of influences governed your life, or rather, provided for your weaknesses and fostered your spiritual growth: the scriptures, the elders of your community, your immediate superiors. It is vital to interpret aright the quality of submission implied by that acknowledgment.” Given the dispersion of power, the superiors in the Pachomian monasteries had to develop strategies for maintaining their own authority.° The desert monks had advised their disciples to confess their hidden thoughts; in the communal monastery, confession became more urgent, along with

judgment and correction, as the leader’s fear that some monks might lead others astray became more acute. Communal life carried with it accountability and responsibility for one’s fellow monks, aspects of the monastic life that had previously been restricted to the monk and his disciple in the desert. The solitary monk’s obedience was necessary, not just as a good in itself, but as the means to insure that his or her actions were correct. Ac-

cording to Graham Gould, “the fundamental problem here is, obviously, that a brother who relies on his own knowledge and judgment rather than on his abba may be deceived about his own life and fall into error or sin, or even just achieve nothing.”’ The monks in the Pachomian communities had a sense of responsibility to their fellow monks but were aware of the danger of leading one’s companions astray.® The ability of the communal monastery to function as an institution, therefore, rested on the monks’ adherence to the Rule. The details of the monastic Rule do not record, for the historian, everyday life within the monastery but rather the expectation of that monastic life. The Rule describes the structures of authority in the community but only in their ideal form; even in the Pachomian monasteries, which scholars generally have regarded as more stable than the White Monastery, the rules did not precisely correspond to the real lives of the monks.° Given that the monks could not adhere precisely to the Rule without occasional lapses, the leaders of the monastery had to decide how to manage transgressions of it or, in other words, what punishments were appropriate for a monastic community. In the Pachomian communities, despite the fact that the Rule allows for beatings for many transgressions, the only evidence of actual corporal punishment for disobedience is “confused” and for the sentence of expulsion, Rousseau adds that “probably the most we can conclude is that expulsion was a rare sanction.”!° Even though the monastic leadership feared that sinners would damage their companions and pollute the community, the communal monks, like those in the desert, hesitated to judge their companions out of a fear of God.!! Both the leader and the exercise of the Rule were vital to the development of the monastic institution. Rousseau has argued that a “hardening of attitudes” accompanied the stabilization of the monastic communities.'!? He points to Pachomius’s fear that, with authority residing in the institution, “jealousy and conflict are inevitable.”'’ Pachomius also feared that legislation, rather than the archimandrite’s example, would govern the monks.'* Scholarly opinion is split as to whether or not there was a shift from verbal instruction to exemplary behavior as the primary means of teaching in the development of monasticism.!® Even so, Rousseau and Gould agree that the example of the monastic leader was important in both desert and communal monasticism. Gould argues that monks “were concerned with the questions of what (apart from direct divine assistance) makes teaching authoritative, and how an abba

16 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

can teach effectively while at the same time maintaining his own integrity, his own practice of virtues like humility and endurance and, above all, the surrender of his own will.”!6 Just as the purpose of the teaching relationship between master and disciple in desert monasticism was to instruct the monk in the basic practices of the monastic life, so the Rule in communal monasticism was to help the monk live an ascetic, solitary life in the midst of a community.'’ But the solitary desert monks were reluctant to present their sayings as divinely inspired, another means of authority.'® Shenoute, however, based his power on his Rule, which he codified and developed from the version handed down from his predecessors, but which he presented as divinely inspired. Despite this difference, however, Shenoute’s leadership was, as | will argue in Chapter 3, characteristic of his time period: he strove to establish the Rule and to determine punishment for transgressors and used himself as an exemplar of

complete obedience to the Rule and so to God.

Late antique Egypt is characterized not only by a variety of types of monasticism, but also by the occasional power struggle between bishops, representing ecclesiastical authority, and monks, representing spiritual authority independent of church

structures. Among the many controversies and struggles that occurred during Athanasius’s career as bishop of Alexandria, his attempt to include the monastic movement, both solitary and communal, within the church institution had important consequences for Christianity. As a result of this maneuver, Athanasius could enlist the powerful monks—whose holiness granted them a say in theological and church matters, and who were infamous for their willingness to riot—to help him pursue his own goal of a unified Chutch.'® Three different forms of monasticism, soli-

tary monasticism (Anthony), communal monasticism (Pachomius), and that composed of female ascetics (in Alexandria), were all part of Athanasius’s strategy. The first was described in his Life of Anthony, which limited Anthony’s authority to the moral realm, in order to exclude him from exercising power in doctrinal decisions: “This ethical mode of authority could co-exist peacefully with the political, doctrinal and sacramental authority of bishops and priests.”’° Athanasius’s presentation of Anthony as a model for imitation both drew on the role of the saint as exemplar in late antique thinking and reflected Athanasius’s own belief that Christians should use past figures as models for their own lives.?! Thus, Athanasius’s description of Anthony as a paradigmatic figure in his hagiography had both a social and a theological function within Athanasius’s agenda. Likewise, Athanasius visited the Pachomian communities in the south in order to establish ecclesiastical control over them, an intrusion that Pachomius was at first reluctant to accept.”? Athanasius and Pachomius’s eventual cooperation unified ecclesiastical and communal monastic authority within the institution of the orthodox Church. Finally, women ascetics, “brides of Christ,” who lived in Alexandria played a significant role in Athanasius’s program, since their inclusion within ecclesiastical structures expressed the same concerns as are evident in the Life and in Athanasius’s relationship with Pachomian monasticism: curtailing the independent authority these holy figures had, which made them possible rivals to the ecclesiastical figures Athanasius supported. In the next generation, the key figures were Cyril as patriarch of Alexandria and Shenoute as head of the White Monastery, two men who at times worked together to promote Egyptian Christianity.

Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 17

Daily Routine in the White Monastery The White Monastery was located near the Western wall of the Nile Valley, 250 miles south of Cairo and about 90 miles north of Luxor.”? The nearest modern village is Sohag, which lies across the river from Achmin (ancient Shmin). In the fourth and fifth centuries it was in the Panopolite nome, with a metropolis of Panopolis.24 The complex of monastery buildings does not survive intact and the site, which is located at

the edge of the desert, has not yet been fully excavated.> The church building still stands and its fortress-like structure suggested a militaristic interpretation to Johannes Leipoldt.’® Its white walls are the source of the modern name of the monastery. The climate of Sohag is typical of much of Egypt: the average temperature ranges from highs of 68 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and lows of 41 to 73. There is less than an inch of rainfall a year. Until construction of the Aswan Dam in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nile rose and fell annually, creating the harvest schedule. Today in modern Egypt, the region of Sohag is agricultural, and one presumes that much the same was true in late antiquity, although the content of the crops has changed.’’ Life in the monastery seems to have been focused on the work necessary to produce

food and clothing to support the community. Today crops, which are cash-oriented, include tomatoes, cotton, watermelons, oranges, onions, and potatoes, while domes- , tic food crops are corn, rice, wheat, millet, pumpkins, squashes, and especially dates. In the late antique monastery, meals seem mostly to have consisted of bread and vegetables but it unclear which vegetables were meant. There is no indication in standard scholarly descriptions of the White Monastery that animals were raised, but to-

day livestock is important to the region; water buffalo and dairy cows provide milk, | while chickens, sheep, goats, ducks, pigeons, and asses are all present. Life in the White Monastery, then, was necessarily influenced by its geographic location but the daily routine was equally important. A full account of a day in the life of a monk in the White Monastery requires detail about the schedule of the day: the time to rise, the order and range of activities after rising, the time of the daily meal,

how that meal was structured, and the services that took place following the meal. | Contributing to this daily routine were provisions for regulating food and clothing, and forms of spiritual exercise, that also comprised the life of the monks. , It is generally thought that Pcol, when founding the monastery, followed the struc-

ture established by Pachomius.’® The many similarities between the two systems sug- , gest this correspondence. The monks lived in houses, each with a house-master or mistress; the monks themselves lived in cells, which may have been solitary or had two to three monks in each cell. All monks shared work in the monastery, with different chores assigned to each house.” In the case of the women’s houses, at least some, if not all, female monks were responsible for making clothing. There was a common eating area, a common gathering place for worship, and an infirmary. Prayer life was focused on services and psalm-recitation. However, there were also differences between the Pachomian and Shenoutean models, which have received much attention in scholarship on Shenoute. Most important is the difference in severity of life: Shenoute seems to have required more fasting (one meal a day rather than two) and less food-centered worship (one Eucharist service a week rather than two) and

18 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

used corporal punishment and expulsion extensively in his leadership. The contrast between Shenoute and Pachomius’s leadership could relate to differences in person-

— ality, but such determinations are difficult for the historian.*° | Despite the importance of work in the White Monastery, it has been argued that prayer, not labor, was the activity around which the day was structured.?! The monks _ slept two to acell in the monastery.** They rose about an hour and a half before light and immediately prayed; if they rose earlier, they were to pray longer.’ No monk was | to go to work without praying first.** They were also exhorted to pray ceaselessly, apparently throughout their workday. Praying was not just contemplative; it was a physical activity that required the monks to bend and rise several times in succession.*

~ Monks also recited Scripture during their work, and Shenoute was much like other , , monastic leaders in his esteem for the Bible.*° Also at the beginning of the day, apparently before the monks went to work, a worship service was held with the reading of Scripture and recitation of Psalms; the male monks read the Psalms without a break between them.” It is unclear whether the female monks attended the same service, but it seems unlikely given Shenoute’s concerns elsewhere that men and women in the monastery did not attend funerals of their companions together.*® Prayer was thus" incorporated into nearly every aspect of a monk’s day. But neither the activity of praying nor its primary role means that life in the White Monastery was contemplative and so inactive; rather, physical labor defined the monastic life, both in the act of

praying and in daily life. | a ,

A long workday accompanied the monks’ prayer life. Devotion to prayer was not an excuse to avoid labor, even for the superiors of the monastery. Apparently the monks did not eat before going to work, and the daily communal meal was held at ‘three in the afternoon.’ For the men, there were various forms of work, but the women were apparently limited to the production of clothing.*° Female monks would

have learned to weave before joining the monastery, since women of every class in antiquity acquired this skill.*! Likewise, many of the male monks had previous occu-

pations; they were allowed to continue in the same line of work not by their own | choice but only if Shenoute appointed them to it.” Doctors especially were among those permitted to continue practicing their craft within the monastery; priests and _ deacons who joined the monastery were also still authorized to perform the Eucharist,

though only at the request of someone called “the father of these congregations,” most likely the head of the monastery.” Other men performed more menial labor: reaping rushes, plucking palm-leaves, filling up the vessel used for pounding soaked reeds, gathering date-palm fibers, grinding grain, and baking.*# Certainly one aspect of the White Monastery was economic support for its members and the surround- — ing villages, leading Bell to call it, at least in Shenoute’s successot’s day, the “local in-

~ dustry.’*° The monks’ labor contributed to the monastery’s ability to provide economic assistance both to themselves and those seeking hospitality and charity from — them. Another form of work in the monastery was service to other monks.#° Monks worked in the infirmary, the kitchen, or some other part of the monastery that performed the services necessary for a community of people. Thus the varied tasks necessary to furnish material support (especially clothing) and the jobs necessary to run the monastery as an institution were all forms of work required of the monks, male

and female. ,

Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 19

At the end of the workday (about 3 PM when the stifling heat begins to be un-

bearable), the monks gathered in their separate communities, men with men and , women with women, for the daily meal. The main food item was bread, baked by the monks of the male community and distributed to all.” The monks grew cabbage and

other vegetables to supplement their diet, but other foods that some monks from | poorer backgrounds tended to have as special treats were not allowed.*8 The bread could be mixed with vinegar, but wine was forbidden; the monks were permitted to drink water, but only in small amounts. All eating was to take place during the main meal of the day, at three o’clock, in the main refectory.*° The amount of food distributed at mealtime was supposed to be meager, but we know from one crisis in the women’s community that the servers did not always follow this rule.*! Shenoute often spoke against clandestine eating, and the basic rule for daily eating was that “no one shall eat bread in these congregations except in the places appointed.”*? He condemned the practice of monks who shared food from their own portion with fellowmonks; Shenoute’s condemnation was especially strong if the monks were kin.** In

eating outside it.*° , addition to sharing, there was a prohibition against stealing the food of others. Shenoute also warned against claiming to be fasting within the refectory, but then

Shenoute’s rules do not describe the process of the meal in much detail.°® The monks were called to the refectory by the clanging of a metal gong.*’ The door of the

refectory was not closed until the conclusion of the meal to allow for latecomers. All | monks had to attend the meal as a communal activity, even if they were in the midst of a two-, three-, or seven-day fast.°* This last point makes clear the importance of the meal for the community; even those members who might suffer hardship being near food (since they were trying to fast beyond the daily requirement) had to attend the daily meal in order to share the experience with their companions. Individual choices about fasting did not allow for a monk to disrupt the communality of the monastery. After the daily meal there was a worship service, although it is unclear how this

service differed from morning prayers. Leipoldt argues that Shenoute preached ser- | mons during the weekend services, which laity attended as well as monks.*? The rules for attending the worship service were typical of Shenoute’s leadership of the White Monastery: there was a stringent rule, accompanied by exceptions and allowances for

deviation.” In addition to this post-meal service, there could also be night vigils.®! , The ceaseless praying during the workday and the many worship services constituted

much of the structure of the monk’s daily spiritual life. Additional spiritual exercises | were performed by the monks, but not necessarily on a daily basis. One such exercise was religious education, including Biblical instruction, but less is known about this

practice.” The Eucharist was celebrated in the monastery, not daily but probably every Sunday,® an hour before the common meal, perhaps, argues Leipoldt, so that

Fucharistic materials were received on an empty stomach.®* Their only other reli- | gious services were funerals, which, like the Eucharist, required a priest or a deacon.™

Although not part of the daily routine, other rules governed the distribution of clothing. The clothing that was distributed by the monastery was probably made

there; raising and harvesting flax was the men’s work, while weaving and making the clothing fell to the women.®° The women’s control over the production of clothing was at issue in several of their conflicts with Shenoute. From these conflicts we learn

, 20 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery that clothing was originally made in generic sizes but was eventually made to measure for the men, or at least for Shenoute; and that it was more ornate than one might expect in an austere life, with fringes, varied colors, and other decorations. These de-

| tails suggest that although the rules more often pertain to secret eating, conflicts | about clothing were also a central problem in the functioning of the monastery, especially in relations between Shenoute and the women’s community.

In their daily life, female monks prayed together, worked together, ate together, _

, ~ and lived together, as did male monks, but in their separate community. All the monks, male and female, lived within a system that was meant to foster mutual material support among all its members. Rules about the rest of the day are either missing or have not yet been explored; did the monks have free time? Were they allowed to visit other monks during the day? The silence on these questions are due to both |

| the nature and state of the sources. A description of a day in the life of a monk necessarily focuses on schedules and the regulation of the monks’ access to fulfillment of physical needs, mainly food and clothing. Questions remain, however, concerning the monastery’s provisions for emotional, social, and spiritual support among its

maintains. , ,

| ~ monks. The analysis of these less tangible issues leads from a functional description of daily life into an investigation of the culture that daily life represents, supports, and

The Monastic Culture of the White Monastery

, Oo — Spiritual Values _ The main spiritual goal of the monks—the purpose of their work, prayers, worship, obedience, and general ascetic life—was to assure their salvation. While no one could know for certain who was going to be among the saved, a monastic life correctly _ lived offered a greater sense of the assurance of receiving that salvation. The belief that one would receive salvation at Judgment Day, then, was the present reward for living a monastic life. All aspects of monastic culture were transformed by the spiri-

tual goal of the monastery: the control and limitation of both material goods and ~ emotional bonds defined the salvific monastic life, and the exercise of power functioned to help monks adhere to it. As head of the monastery, Shenoute presented himself as one who was certain of his own salvation and certain that he could guide

his followers to salvation provided that they obey him (chapter 3). oo _ The process of becoming a monk and thus a member of the community was twofold: taking an oath and renouncing possessions.” The oath provided a general outline of the basic rules and the consequences of transgression, both of which treceived more detailed treatment in the rule material and in Shenoute’s epistolary responses to conflicts. The oath indicated how the boundary between the community , and the outside world was to be maintained (through particular actions) and the reward for obeying those boundaries (salvation), as well as the punishment for trans-

-gressing them (damnation): , , ,

Thus, each person shall speak as follows: In the presence of God, in his holy place, I confirm what I have spoken and witness by my mouth. I will not defile my body in any way;

Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 21 I will not steal; I will not bear false witness; | will not lie; I will not do anything deceitful secretly. If I transgress what I have agreed to, I will see the kingdom of heaven, but will not enter it since God, in whose presence I have established the oath, will destroy my soul and my body in fiery Gehenna because I transgressed the oath I established.”

The oath made purity of body the main symbol for purity of community; the body is the thing that must not be defiled and that (along with the soul) would be destroyed as a result of transgression.’! Moreover, the oath made obedience central by mentioning two specific concerns that, according to the letters, plagued monastic life: stealing and the hiding of secret sins. The oath thus implicitly emphasizes uniformity of material possessions, which was not to be altered through stealing, and confession, to one’s elder and ultimately to Shenoute. Since the oath also describes salvation as the goal of the monastic life, and even more vividly describes falling short of salvation, Shenoute’s view of the importance of his rules is evident. Monks received salvation not merely by joining the monastery but by obeying him as the divinely chosen head of that monastery. When a person took this oath, then, she or he undertook allegiance to acommunity that defined itself by purity in body and by obedience, both of which were necessary to achieve salvation. The tenets of the oath contributed to a sense of membership in a group that was privileged, that is, one separate in its way of living and thus deserving better rewards than those obtained by people in the surrounding non-monastic culture. Despite the religious nature of the community, not all people joined the monastery to gain salvation; but even so their religious motivation should not be discounted. In the Pachomian system, for example, hagiographic sources attribute two motivations to Theodore’s mother for joining the female community: to see her son occasionally from a distance and to gain her salvation.” Even monks who had nonspiritual motivations, such as fleeing arrest, taxes, and family conflict, could also have been con-

cerned about their salvation.”> Those who had mixed motivations, then, did not necessarily challenge the spiritual values of the community. Any member of the community could transgress the monastic rules and thus pose a threat to the assured salvation by incurring God’s wrath. In his rules and letters, Shenoute usually describes transgressions as “pollutions,” which include but are not limited to bodily pol-

lutions, such as illicit sexual activity.“ Stealing, lying—especially when hiding sins—and slander were common transgressions while blasphemy, drunkenness, perjury, and idol worship were apparently rare.” Nevertheless, the limited scholarship on the White Monastery usually describes life these as filled with disobedience. These portrayals are based on the abundant documentation of acts of wrongdoing, a situation that scholars then contrast to the paucity of evidence of such behavior from the Pachomian monasteries.”© What is ignored in this comparison is the difference between the nature of the sources from the two monastic systems: rules and hagiography are all that survive from the Pachomian. One suspects that a different picture of that system might emerge were there letters like Shenoute’s. Nearly all the scholarly descriptions attribute the rampant vice practiced in the White Monastery to the failure of Shenoute’s leadership. Susanna Elm claims that the monks engaged in so many violations that chaos reigned in the monastery, thus suggesting that Shenoute was an ineffectual spiritual leader.’” Leipoldt suggests that

22 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

Shenoute’s policy of strict self-denial of material things led to an increased valuation of material goods, and thus to widespread theft; and likewise that his strict regimen of fasting, combined with long hours of physical labor, explain the frequent stealing of food, even the food for the Eucharist.’® Still another description, from Bagnall, views the monks as typical Egyptian peasants, with sullen disobedience as their strong characteristic.”? But Bell, in his introduction to his translation of Besa’s hagiography, argues the opposite: that the rules emphasized “obedience (the natural virtue of the fellahin [peasants]).”°° Veilleux further argues that in setting as many rules as he did to regulate the many monks, Shenoute and his followers undermined “true” monasticism.®! None of these descriptions takes into account the evidence that Shenoute’s leadership attracted many people to join his monastery. Even more striking is the length of Shenoute’s leadership: despite evidence throughout the letters of numerous periods of crisis during Shenoute’s nearly eighty-year reign, on the whole the monks remained loyal to Shenoute and committed to his leadership. Otherwise these conflicts, severe as some of them were, would have fragmented the community. The precise historical question, then, is: At what points did the monks consider life in the White Monastery unduly harsh, and what were their consequent reactions?®’ Later chapters attempt to answer this question, as it pertains to the female monks. Material Aspects of Monastic Culture

The monastery served as a source of limited material support for the monks. The monks enjoyed a guaranteed level of support but sacrificed the possibility of periods of plenty, or a life of variation. Every monk was to receive equal treatment and thus equal amounts, in uniform quality, of food and clothing. The only valid exceptions to this mandate were for those who sought greater asceticism than what was required by the monastic rules or those who were ill. The distribution of food and clothing was another means Shenoute used to cultivate a sense of community; that is, the regulations of material possessions had emotional consequences, fostering relationships among the monks. Monks were also assured another need, shelter, so long as they remained members of the community. In this way monastic membership provided a sense of safety.*? The material aspects of monastic culture were thus not merely mundane, but also a means to create a communal identity, which in turn would provide social and emotional support for the monks. Food was the most carefully regulated material commodity in the White Monastery, and its regulation had a dual purpose: first, to insure that the biological need for food was met adequately, which is to say, according to the ascetical values of the community rather than the complete fulfillment of the monks’ culinary desires; and second, to create a communal identity through the uniformity of quantity and quality of meals. Shenoute argued for this uniformity as the basis of communal identity: the monks knew that all were members of the same community because all ate the same food as did their companions.*4 At the same time, the monastic rules also allowed for occasional snacks.* Thus it seems that eating outside the regular mealtime was allowed but only if Shenoute’s rules were followed. If a monk gave herself permission to have extra food, or ate without the knowledge of others, conflicts could arise not simply because of the food, but also because of the secrecy of the act.

Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 23

According to Shenoute’s definitions of what was necessary to live “like God and his angels who live in heaven,” secrecy threatened the cohesion of the group, as did any form of unexplained inequality. Accordingly, monastic superiors were not to exempt themselves from these same food regulations.*® The elders also had a responsibility to make sure that the monks did not work too long without eating nor fast excessively.®’ The only monks who were allowed food that was different, in quantity or type, from the norm were the sick; these monks were given, among other things, oil in which to dip their bread, and also wine.** Even with the allowances for additional eating, there was thus a large discrepancy between the dietary rules for healthy monks and for the ill. Shenoute had to include rules warning against feigning illness to get more food, pointing out that truly sick people despise eating.®? The rules both for the daily meal and for the many other forms of eating indicate that food was a complicated issue that could profoundly affect the communal identity and sense of mutual support among the monks. The regulation of food addressed not only circumstances in which more food could be eaten, but also those involving less food. There were monks who waited to eat until after the main meal, later in the day, in order to perform a more severe fast. This practice was allowed only if their asceticism did not lead to competition or jealousy among the monks, thus disrupting the harmony that the equality of portions was

meant to achieve. There was a special fast during Lent for all except the older monks, whether male or female, who were excused from it throughout.?! Once again, it must be kept in mind that these descriptions of proper eating and fasting do not so much represent the actual daily life of the monks as Shenoute’s ideal of what that daily life should be; if the rules were followed by every monk, the ideal would be achieved. Of course, as we would expect, the monks often fell short of this ideal; conflicts about food are one of the most common kinds within the women’s community of the monastery. In his letters, Shenoute upheld the ideal of the rules—what was considered necessary for a monastic community dedicated to a path to salvation—in the face of the reality of how the monks actually lived and fought; his ideology, the arguments he used to uphold the structure of the rules, and the monks’ acceptance and resistance to that ideology, created the monastic culture of the com-

munity. ,

Transgression of these rules covered a wide range of possibilities. As mentioned earlier, one crisis among the women took place when the food servers did not provide equal portions but varied the amount of their servings according to recipient.” In addition, some monks stole food to eat in secret, both for themselves and to help their companions. Monks who were able to eat less were known to give food to others to assuage their hunger.°’ In one case, some female monks were so hungry that they stole the bread for the Eucharist.°* While some of these actions were supportive of fellow monks, they did not provide the type of support Shenoute advocated because they

were not uniform in application. Monks who stole or hoarded food to help other monks were being selective about whom they helped, thus reflecting an individual choice. Shenoute objected to the introduction of such individuality into the community. To foster further this environment, Shenoute’s regulations about food aiso had to

control the emotional ties that the giving and receiving of food could create. The

24 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery | monks were to regard the food they received at mealtimes as a gift from God, not as a gift from the food server, and were to regard eating as an action done for God.” ~ Moreover, the monks were not to be ungrateful about the food they received, even if. it was not to their taste. Rather, there was to be a uniform response of thankfulness. Shenoute’s regulations about food, therefore, were not simply about providing necessary material support but functioned to create a communal feeling of mutual support.

~ The monks’ feelings in areas of life other than eating also were subject to Shenoute’s attempts at control. Leipoldt argues that for Shenoute work was not an’ end in itself but the means to accomplish something else, namely control of the monks’ activities and prevention of boredom.” At the same time, Shenoute did not _ want the monks to engage in work that they enjoyed, since satisfaction from work was

not its purpose.?® As with food, Shenoute’s regulations of work entailed regulating

tic experience. , , ,

emotional responses to work, in order to create uniformity in every area of the monas-

Clothing also provided a means of creating a sense of shared identity among the

members of the monastery. The tunic that a person received when joining the monastery served to identify the monk as an inhabitant of the White Monastery.” As

in the case of food regulations, clothing helped to develop a sense of partnership among the monks, and its misuse could lead to division among them. Superiors were , not allowed to wear badges or any special material marking their authority.!°° Of prime importance, moreover, was that previous differences in economic class among the monks not be noticeable in the clothing that they wore in the monastery; as with — food, Shenoute used clothing to control envy and promote peace among the monks so that they would support one another.'®! The arguments that arose over clothing, _at least among the women, were not based on the quality of the clothing but on quantity; as with food, some monks received extra clothing, while others did not.

Shelter was obviously provided in the monastic buildings. While the White Monastery was one community under one Rule, it was not under one roof. There was an infirmary, a refectory, the cells, and eventually a church building.'™ It was a “monastic compound,” with several buildings in various locations; some of the buildings were for men, some were for women. The men’s community was at the edge of the desert, contrary to the Pachomian style of location in a deserted village and more in

keeping with the literary conceit of desert withdrawal.'!° The women’s houses, how- | ever, were ina village, and thus at some distance from the men’s.'!* Monks were also , ~ allowed to live as hermits in the desert, though still officially associated with the ~ monastery.'° Within each community, there were also individual houses; monks — lived in cells in these houses, possibly two to a cell, though the evidence is unclear , about exact numbers.!°° It has been argued that Shenoute forbade living alone in an attempt to hold monks accountable for their obedience to the Rule; one’s cell-mate was a potential informer about transgressions. However, the regulation may also have

been a consequence of limited space.!°”

, _ The shelter provided by the monastery led to a sense of economic security and physical safety, especially in times of foreign invasion. Given, however, the limited ~ resources (both in shelter and food) that the monastery provided, it is uncertain to what extent this security was a compelling attraction of monastic life. There were three economic groups in Egypt by late antiquity. The smallest group consisted of the

Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 25

most wealthy urbanites, those who could live off the income from their property. The second group, also property holders, lived in both the cities as part of the urban economy and the villages as landowners. The rest of the population survived through various economic relationships—serf, servant, or slave—with the landowners.!® Recently, the common view that there was a severe economic crisis in fourth-century Egypt has come under criticism, along with any consequent arguments that the population shifted into the monasteries because of economic deprivation.'© Landowners were, however, facing heavy taxation, from which the lands of the White Monastery

may have been exempt.!!° It is true that poverty, even if not widespread, was not simply a difficulty in antiquity but was life-threatening, especially for women; it may be less true that the poor were the main source of Shenoute’s converts to a monastic way of life. Nevertheless, that several hundreds, and possible thousands, joined the monastery was not an expression of naiveté about monastic life, as Leipoldt suggests.!!! Rather, it reflects a religious movement that, whatever the economic conditions, in turn created a monastic culture. Partly through material means, this culture formed a communal identity, encouraged a sense of mutual support, and fostered an allegiance to the monastery. Social and Emotional Aspects of Monastic Culture

The most often noted characteristic of Shenoute’s rules are their great complexity and great number: they covered every detail of the monks’ lives. The Rule not only set down the expectations but also provided for exceptions, provisions, and possible inconsistencies between various rules. The amount of regulation and length of the

monastic code is one reason that many scholars have described life within the monastery as severe.'!? It is certainly true that Shenoute was quite concerned about the monks hiding deeds from him, a theme that recurs often in both the rules and the letters to the women.!!? However, to describe the number of rules merely as excessive ignores their role for the formation of the community. By regulating the monks’ lives, Shenoute provided certainty about receiving both material goods and emotional security.!'4 “Emotional security” is, of course, a rather vague and modern concept that might prove difficult to assess in the monks lives. What I mean is the certainty of the monks’ receiving salvation on the Judgment Day, if they followed the rules correctly. These rules reinforced the boundary, also expressed in the oath, between the monastery and the surrounding society, between insiders, who were living for their salvation, and outsiders, who were in a less certain position.' Regulation of the community encouraged protection of that boundary, to keep the group pure from polluting activities that violated the integrity of the community.''* In addition to the pollution with which transgressions infected the community, Shenoute was often anxious about protecting his own purity and he would consequently chastise the monks for their polluting actions. Symbolically, the rules regulating the boundaries for the human body reflected the boundary that determined monastic (social) identity: rules about eating, especially, but also rules regarding treatment of the body during corporal punishment and latent concerns about illicit sexual activity.''’ By these means the monastery molded the monks’ identity not simply as monks but as members of the White Monastery in particular.

, 26 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery i The division between the monastic community and the outside world created a need among the monks to rely upon one another for emotional support. As head, Shenoute encouraged love among them but also argued that it should be uniform toward all monks. Thus, while it has been argued that one goal of the monastic rules

was to hinder bonds of affection between monks, especially between kin within the | monastery, it is more accurate to say that the goal was to maintain adequate emotional support, with no variance; in other words, Shenoute’s approaches to emotional

support were similar to his views on material support.'!® | Whether sexual activity is a biological or an emotional aspect of culture, it is in

, any case a part of human life that is expressly forbidden by Christian asceticism and monasticism. There were, nevertheless, two means by which the sexual desires of the monks were either met or, at least, acknowledged.'!° The first and more obvious of the two was outright illicit sexual activity, most often homoerotic.'!”° Sexual actions by the monks were illicit within the monastery as an institution and were punished accordingly. Second, there occurred within the monastic institution a discourse about sexuality, most often in Shenoute’s recurring entreaties for full confession by the

monks of any and all misconduct, including, but not limited to, sexual misdeeds. While the number of known cases of illicit intercourse are relatively few, Shenoute’s — use of sexual imagery to describe at least the female monks’ transgressions makes clear that a discourse of sexuality responded to the sexual desires and tensions between the archimandrite and monks. Shenoute’s discourse about sexuality, then, reinforced his power as head of the monastery because he was the speaker who was allowed to talk about the forbidden, and he was the listener who forgave sinful monks and reconciled them to the rest of the community.'”! As with other material and emotional aspects

of monastic culture, Shenoute’s control of the discourse of sexuality, like his control , over the distribution of goods and the monks’ emotional relationships, was the part of the authority structures of the monastery, structures that existed to exercise power

as a means of guiding its members to salvation. , The Organization of Authority Structures

One of the boundaries negotiated by the monks within the monastery consisted of positions of rank, by which Shenoute delegated authority to superiors under his care.

At the same time, the superiors’ allegiance to Shenoute, and the requirement that © — they fully disclose all transgressions to him, reinforced his status as supreme head, or archimandrite. The physical layout of buildings in the monastery determined much of the hierarchical structure of the monastery. Given that the monks were spread out over a considerable area, there had to be a way to hold them accountable to the Rule and to identify, control, and punish sources of pollution, that is, transgressions of the Rule. In addition to the geographical expanse of the community, there was also the _

problem of the large numbers of monks. The solution for controlling thousands of monks lay not only in the delegation of authority, but also in restricting the movements of the monks and thus their contact with the outside world. In addition, the physical separation of the female community from the male led to special problems in establishing Shenoute’s authority among the women, as will be evident in later chapters,

Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 2/

In both the men’s and the women’s communities, there was a position of authority known as the elder, who was an overseer of some sort. There were also monks who served as the heads of the individual houses, who were known as house-people, ot fathers and mothers.!”* For each house, there was also a house second, an assistant to the mother of the house.'*? All other monks seem to have been divided according to the amount of time they had lived in the monastery, creating two positions: senior and junior. All the elders and house-people were expected to report activities, especially transgressions, to Shenoute; their reports were based on monthly inspections of the monks in their cells for contraband food and for other transgressions of the rules.!”4 This requirement was no less true for the men than for the women, an im-

portant point for understanding gender relations within the monastery. Thus, Shenoute had a system in place whereby each monk reported to his or her houseperson, who reported to an elder, who in turn reported to Shenoute.!”° This system delegated not only authority but also the responsibility for the care of the souls of the monks. Those issues that were left to the elder or the house-leader to judge became her or his responsibility; she or he would be held accountable for the decision and its consequences before God. In addition, Shenoute could demand information about the transgressions of the monks under him with the justification that he needed to protect his own salvation, which rested on his accountability for the sins of his

followers. Accountability, therefore, rose with increased authority within the monastery. In addition to the positions of authority, Shenoute’s rules also required separation from the outside world and between the sexes within the monastery.'*° When male

monks went out from the monastery, they were to stay together so that they would not have contact with those who were not monks.!2’ Even when they traveled in groups, they were to talk little.'!“* There were two purposes for the monastic separation: one was to control situations in which illicit sexual activity could occur. This goal is also evident in the rule that the doctors in the monastery were not for any rea-

son to treat people, especially women, who were not members of the monastery or treat men with sexual diseases even if monks.'!”? The second goal was to enforce the boundary between the monastery and those outside. Finally, the rules for separation

also emphasized the barrier between those with and without power in the monastery. | The women, for example, had no one to complain to if they disagreed with the limits placed on their activities.

| The Exercise of Power The authority structures allowed a few of the monks to exercise power over most of | the others, but for the most part Shenoute made final decisions. The system of cells , and houses set up surveillance of monks by their companions (even if they did not

share a cell) through constant reporting of transgressions for the purpose of instilling guilt and maintaining obedience. Once a monk was reported for a transgression, there were various punishments, escalating in severity: demotion in rank, corporal punishment, and finally expulsion. Neither the oath that the monks took upon entering the monastery nor many of the rules themselves allow for forgiveness or penance in lieu of punishment, both of which formed, however, part of the power structure of the

28 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

monastery. Punishments were not necessarily fixed for particular transgressions but seem to have been based in part on whether the monk had previous transgressions. Repeat offenders were dealt with more harshly. Altogether, the exercise of power was — meant to achieve a unified community living without sin or conflict; that is, the exercise of power was the means to creating a salvific community “like God and his an-

gels in heaven.” |

The main purpose of the initial phase of punishment was to correct the monk, so that she or he did not lose her or his salvation. Two methods were possible: for the first level of punishment, a monk could be demoted back to the level of novice;° the _ second level was corporal punishment. Both these means were intended to teach the monk about her error, and return her to the correct path to salvation. Corporal punishment was common in the White Monastery. Leipoldt has argued that, given the large number of monks and thus the lack of any personal bond between them and the archimandrite, Shenoute would have felt free to administer frequent and severe

corporal punishment without emotional pain and hesitation.’’! By postmodern Western standards, the severity of the beatings may seem extreme, but it is less certain what judgment the ancients would have levied. I discuss both acceptance of, and resistance to, corporal punishment by the monks mote fully in later chapters; what is important for my present purpose is the role of corporal punishment in the power structure, enforced by the assumption that it would ensure that the errant monks cease their illicit activities and return to a life that led to salvation.!** Furthermore,

only through all the monks’ acceptance and obedience could a communal sense of

the assurance of salvation survive. ,

Scholars have noted the supposedly greater severity and frequency of beatings in the White Monastery than in the Pachomian monasteries, but here especially the lack of attention to the varying reliability of the different kinds of evidence for each community is problematic.!*’ In the case of Pachomian monasticism, the mainly hagiographic genre of the evidence does not permit us to form a view of Pachomius’ selfproclaimed position on controversial topics, whereas for life in the White Monastery under Shenoute, first-person evidence, in which he defends and explains his positions, as well as hagiography survives. If we had this range of evidence for the Pacho-

mian monasteries, it is unclear whether the picture of Pachomian culture would be as

dissimilar to Shenoute’s as scholars have claimed.

We know from a letter. to the women’s community, that at least to women, the male elder administered beatings with a reed applied to the soles of the feet.'** Shenoute administered beatings to the men, which were more severe than those given to the women, as can be seen in the case of a monk who incidentally died during a beating.'*° If there was a list of punishable offenses correlating to severity of beating, it has been lost; what can be known is gathered from various references to beatings throughout Shenoute’s letters. Not all beatings were inflicted in public; some were carried out in the monk’s private cell and others at the gatehouse of the community.!*° The severity of the beating depended in part upon the transgression; again the best evidence comes from the women’s community. Ten women received beatings that ranged from ten to forty blows for sins that included: disobedience or insubordination; homoerotic activity; stealing; lack of spiritual development; illicit teaching; and lying.'®’ While some of these—stealing, lying, disobedience and sex-

Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 29

| ual activity—were clear violations of both the oath and the set monastic rules, others—lack of spiritual development and illicit teaching—were more ambiguous and suggest that the rules served as an outline of the monastic life, while the reality lay in the details of everyday experiences.!* Since the beatings were meant as a corrective, if a monk were caught in the same transgression repeatedly, presumably they would become more numerous. At some point, however, the beatings would cease and the monk would be expelled from the monastery. Expulsion was the most serious punishment available in the White Monastery. D. Bell has asserted that expulsion was the equivalent of a death sentence, assum-

ing that an exiled monk would have no means of economic support.!? This explanation, however, does not consider the fact that there were monks who voluntarily deserted the monastery.'*° Presumably these monks are not opting for death over life in the White Monastery. Furthermore, as opposed to the tenure of Shenoute’s successor, Besa, under Shenoute entering monks could renounce their belongings to a secular person and were not obliged to hand them over to the monastery. Thus expelled monks had at least the possibility of returning to their biological families and reclaiming their former property.'"! “While not a death sentence, expulsion was still a harsh punishment that caused

much conflict. Shenoute used expulsion in order to cleanse his community of pollu- | tions.'*? Given the strong boundaries of the community, transgressions violated its integrity and repeated transgressions were too much of a violation to prevent purification. Expulsion occurred because a monk had, by her actions, become too polluted to be able to live in the pure community without endangering the salvation of everyone within that community. Expulsion also had social and emotional ramifications for the monks who continued to live in the monastery, because they suffered both a social

disruption in their communal identity and grief over the loss of monks with whom they had established relationships.' Expulsion suggested that a monk had become incapable of salvation, a tenet that was in conflict with the communal identity of a

| privileged status and Shenoute’s advocacy that the monks always show support and forgiveness to one another. However, another of Shenoute’s rules for his monks was not simply to avoid sin, but also not to associate with sinners, both within and outside of the monastery.!*4 Such a command, while seemingly harsh and strict, was held to be a necessary part of maintaining the purity of the community upon which salvation was premised.!*

Conclusion In the ethos of the monastery, salvation was assured if all accepted Shenoute’s leadership, and it was endangered by any immorality, including disobedience, within the community. The fact that only extreme possibilities existed in Shenoute’s representations and the tension between these two possibilities, obedience and resistance, morality and immorality, both fueled monastic conflicts over the exercise of power; in the case of the women, these arguments regularly focused on Shenoute’s role in their community. On occasions when the monks objected to the harshness of Shenoute’s leadership, his response persistently drew upon his status as the man who was able to

30 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

lead them to their salvation. Such a defense was not “merely” rhetorical but based on the spiritual values of both Shenoute and his followers. Moreover, Shenoute’s rheto-

, ric created and underscored those values. When Shenoute demanded detailed accounts of the transgressions of all his monks, this request arose from his belief that se-

cret transgressions would, in addition to their inherent evil, destroy the communal spirit that so much of his leadership promoted. In addition, the compliance of the monks made Shenoute a confessor to the monastery, thus reinforcing his power as the one man capable of reconciling errant monks to God. As head of the monastery, Shenoute could try to control the monks’ activities, their emotional attachments and their obedience, but his effectiveness was proportional to his ability to convince his followers that he could enable them to fulfill their purpose in joining the monastery: that he could lead them to salvation. Shenoute was an effective leader of this community, for he challenged his monks to attain the ideal life, even while allowing for failure and forgiveness (through punishment) within the community. The doubts that historians have expressed about Shenoute’s effectiveness and their low evaluation of his style of leadership arise in large part from the fact that the surviving sources, especially those for women’s life in the White Monastery, are controversial. These present mainly an embattled picture of the women, of Shenoute, and of their relationship, since every letter addresses some type of conflict—either an internal conflict among the women which Shenoute was trying to quell, or a conflict between the women and Shenoute. Chapter 2 narrates these conflicts to broaden our picture of women’s life, in particular, in the White Monastery. However, our only access is through Shenoute’s own words including the types of images he used, the words he chose, and the way he expressed them—that is, his rhetoric. It is essential, therefore, to understand how Shenoute verbally established and maintained his authority in the women’s community (chapter 3) before we can then examine the impact of his

leadership on the women’s lives (chapter 4). ,

2 Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute

We can now turn our attention to the thirteen letter fragments themselves, the subjects they cover, and the reconstruction of the events to which Shenoute was responding. Although in the wider array of all the letters of the Canons, Shenoute covers any number of issues, in the case of these thirteen, it is safe to say that happy occasions never led Shenoute to write. Of the thirteen, the four letters in Canon 2 merit special attention for both literary and historical reasons. This canon is the only one of the nine that contains a preponderance of letters to women, and so provides a window into one period that shaped the lives of the women in the White Monastery

| under Shenoute. Moreover, these letters date from the beginning of Shenoute’s tenure as archimandrite of the monastery and so document the period in which Shenoute needed to establish his authority as the newly appointed head of the monastery. !

The other nine letters each record a conflict that varies in its level of severity. Although other letters were written about these various problems, only these nine were collected in the Canons.’ They are spread throughout Canons 3-9, with Canon 6 containing four of the nine. These other letters share points of similarity with the first four, especially when Shenoute presents arguments for his authority. There are also

new sources of conflict, such as Shenoute’s use of corporal punishment and expulsion |

to punish errant monks. These nine letters, like the four in Canon 2, all survive in | varying states of fragmentation, leading to similar interpretative difficulties (see Introduction). In addition, Shenoute rarely gives many details about the conflicts that occasioned his epistolary response. Rather, he assumes the women knew the details

and spends much of his letter presenting instructions about some aspect of monastic | life that he thought was relevant to the conflict. Thus, as noted in the Introduction, 3]

32 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

the historical situation must be reconstructed through Shenoute’s rhetorical re- , sponse, peppered with some straightforward statements but largely filled with metaphors, biblical exegesis, and the like. What follows is my interpretation of these letters for the purpose of creating a narrative of the historical events, and a summary of the arguments Shenoute used.’ I have assumed that Shenoute’s rhetoric provided the “most fitting response” to the situation but at the same time have to recognize that his response was shaped by his belief that his view of the situation was correct, and

that the transgressors were in error.’ | ,

Although the four letters of Canon 2 date from early in Shenoute’s tenure as head, the chronology of the letters in the remaining Canons (3 to 9) is uncertain. Thus, for example, events that are mentioned in Canon 4 may have happened before or after those mentioned in Canon 6. It also is not certain that these letters span the entire

| seventy remaining years of Shenoute’s tenure as archimandrite. I will present the crises in the order which they are mentioned in the Canons. My numbering thus is arbitrary, based on Shenoute’s collections of the Canons, and not an indication of historical order.’ | have also assigned shorthand names to each crisis, usually referring to ~ the major crisis in the letter but not encompassing all the topics of a letter, which | will use to refer to these crises in the analyses in the following chapters.

The Initial Crisis (Canon 2) Although the four letters in Canon 2 provide a record of the events following Shenoute’s appointment, it is an incomplete record since none of these four survives in its entirety. Most important, none of the beginnings or endings of the letters survives, with the exception of the ending of the last letter.° Thus, the boundaries of the

four distinct letters are no longer evident in the surviving fragments. The Canon therefore must be used as one body of documentation that addresses a variety of is- | sues, all of which pertain to one underlying crisis.” The crisis began shortly after Shenoute became archimandrite following the death of his predecessor, Ebonh, who was the second head of the monastery, succeeding the monastery’s founder, Pcol.® It

stemmed from the institutional change as power shifted to Shenoute, and as he sought to establish his authority over the women’s community. The crisis manifested itself in a number of separate conflicts, some of which arose from Shenoute’s objections to behavior in the women’s community and some of which were internal to the

women’s community but now had Shenoute as an arbitrator. , The crisis is first apparent in the surviving record when Shenoute, as often hap- — pens with a transfer of power, became aware of current situations in the women’s community which he wished to change. In this case, he somehow learned about behavior among the women which he believed was in need of correction. The women were areuing about the distribution of material goods in their community, namely, two dif-

ferent types of clothing, sheep-hides, food, or “any material possession at all.” Shenoute, in accordance with the rules for the community, dictated that these materials should be distributed equally, without regard to monastic rank, gender, or any bi-

, ological relationship among the monks: “Whether a male elder or a senior female monk, whether a junior male monk or a junior female monk, whether blood relatives,

Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 33

or strangers, or orphans who do not have kin among us.”!° The latter distinction, whether or not a monk had kin within the monastery, seems to have been the most important source of disagreement among the monks. The women who did not have kin have complained that the monks with kin were better taken care of than they. When Shenoute described the women “lying in the presence of the Lord, whispering off to one side, in secret from your companions,” the whispers were “that it is the one who has kin in this place who is taken care of, or who will be taken care of.”! In reminding the women of the communal requirement of equal treatment, Shenoute also made it clear that the women were not to change these rules and award more material support to some monks over others, without consulting him first: “Therefore do not do any deed on our behalf beyond what is appointed for us, as a result of which

you give things more to certain people among you (pl.) apart from what was appointed for us.”!* In Shenoute’s view, his instructions were meant to still the conflict, which in turn was necessary for God to be pleased with the monks, and the community might prosper: “But rather take care of your companions ‘with fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2:12) so that the Lord might bless you and strengthen you in every good thing.” !? Shenoute chose to intervene in the women’s internal disagreement about favoritism among the monks toward their kin to make certain that nothing “sinful” existed in the monastery, “either in our community or in your community.” His intervention consisted of visits to the women’s community, three of which had occurred prior to his writing this letter. These visits did not go well, so much so that Shenoute described “the affliction which came upon me as I was speaking with you.” Later he mentioned three visits (most likely the same three, although this is not entirely certain) with a great rhetorical flourish about how he made the visits despite the fact that they exacerbated his illness and caused him great suffering.'° For two of these three visits, Shenoute arrived in the evening and ended up spending the night in the women’s community.!” He appears to have been accompanied by senior male monks, one named Papnoute and one sharing his name of Shenoute.!® Ironically, Shenoute’s visits themselves were controversial, a problem in part because Shenoute

and the women seem to have argued throughout them, with no resolution being reached, and in part because the women objected to the visits themselves. Shenoute began this unprecedented practice, another suggestion that this crisis dates from the beginning of his appointment; Pcol never came to visit the women and Ebonh only came to consecrate the Eucharist for them.'!? The reasons for the women’s objections to Shenoute’s visits are not explicit, save one. In the course of his arguments with the women, Shenoute had torn his cloak, a common biblical and cultural gesture of grief and frustration.”° Shenoute explains that he tore his cloak in front of the women “be-

, cause we were not able to tear our heart in place of our cloak.”’! For whatever reason, at least one female monk did not respond to Shenoute’s action as a biblically inspired

performance, or as culturally explicable, but accused him of sexual misconduct. Whether the woman perceived his action as a sexual threat or a sexual overture is unclear since her accusation is vaguely worded: “What’s wrong with you [Shenoutel], that you tear your garments?””? But the allegation must have been sexual in nature because Shenoute, while discussing the accusation, also defended his virginity to the women: “But we did not ever do that which the world does, either in illicit sex, or in

honored marriage, or in a bed undefiled.”’? Shenoute turned the accusation back

34 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery |

toward the woman who made it and issued a physical threat against her: “And I was very angry in my heart, most wrathfully, not only that she said this thing but that it would be best if she herself would rend her heart and not her garments. Andthe Lord ~ , knows that, except that I refrained because of the mercy of the Lord, I would tear her

garments in half on her body."* |

Shenoute countered the problems created by his innovations by ceasing from his new practice. He decided to stop visiting the women, not altogether, but for the pur- _ ,

pose of chastising and correcting them. His change in purpose alleviated the crisis caused by his behavior during the visits, because his behavior was no longer confrontational. Several comments made later in the crisis make it clear that Shenoute was not visiting the women’s community as a judge, as he had earlier. As soon as he had defended himself against the woman’s accusation, he also warned a larger group of women that on judgment day he would be close enough to judge them, rather than being a distant judge as he is now: “And I will reproach you, not separated from you , as | am in this world, and not distant, but only a footstep away.””° On another occasion later in this same crisis, Shenoute viewed the women’s behavior as so disruptive that he threatened to visit the women, even though it was not proper for him to do so: “If I come to you angrily, | will not spare you as before . . . But it is not [proper] for me to come to you boldly, in person, on account of this precept to speak with you in _ person and to see you face to face except in a great matter of difficulty which gains im-

portance from God.””° |

Instead of these visits, Shenoute argued that rather there needed to be new monas-

tic authority structures that would still allow for his control over the women, even though his visits had been rejected. He first required accountability and responsibility among the women themselves, and that they report all transgressions to him. Shenoute used blood imagery to express the notion of mutual accountability: “T will seek your blood from the hands of her who is called ‘mother’ among you and the one who comes after her. And I will seek your blood from the hands of everyone to whom a person is entrusted among you. And I will seek your blood from those of your companions. And I will seek the blood of each one of you from her own hand, from the — greatest to the least of you.”*”? Shenoute insisted, however, that despite this relation-

ship among the women, he was still to be informed of all events so that the women could be assured of his leading them to salvation: “Is it your heart’s desire to see us [in - the afterlife] just as we wish to see you? Then why do you not pay attention to my instruction which I told you with my own mouth, ‘Do not hide anything among yourselves from us, but communicate it to us that we may judge it either by means of your elders appointed for you or through all your relatives who are about to come to you.’ Why do you refrain from telling us what goes on among you?”’®> What is most uncertain in Shenoute’s emerging monastic authority structure is whether the “elders” in _ the female community were women, or men who either resided with the women or

visited them regularly.” ,

, _ The initial visits by Shenoute also led to another crisis over whether the women

should be allowed to go to the men’s community.*° Some of the women, as it turns out, had “children” (or “sons”), “brethren,” “menfolk,” and “relatives” in the men’s community?! Although Shenoute’s predecessors had not allowed the women to see their - male relatives, the women were now doing so. This changed behavior seems to have

Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 35 | arisen from the similar fact that Shenoute himself had changed his predecessors’ practice of not visiting the women. However Shenoute, his own conduct notwithstanding, objected strenuously to the women’s visits.** His vigorous arguments that the women were endangering their salvation suggests that this conflict addressed the actual practice of the women visiting the men, and not simply a request to do so.*? In his objections, Shenoute focused on the women’s motivations in visiting the men: “Altogether, indeed, I see you now, whenever you spend a single month without seeing them, you then are upset about them and you wonder because you have not seen them.”*4 He acknowledged that, when he was separated from the men of the community, he missed them as well: “But if 1, this wretched one, pass a single week without having seen your children and your brethren and your menfolk and all those who are with us together, I am expecting to see them like a brother who has not seen his brethren for a year.”** In addition, the men also missed the women from whom they were separated: “You are upset about them and are wondering because you have not seen them, just as they too wish to see you.” *° In acting on these motivations, the women were endangering their salvation by violating the segregation of the sexes in his monastery: “And I had thought that you would make the feast of life together, you, your sons, brothers, and menfolk, but now instead | tell you that many of us shall be estranged from their own and their fathers, and their brothers.”*’ It was at the end of this specific conflict in the overall crisis that Shenoute set up the power structure of accountability and confession described earlier. Despite his decision not to visit the women’s community as a judge, Shenoute continued to have visits that included the sharing of meals and, even though judging was not supposed to be a part of these visits, conflicts still arose. These shared meals became an issue on one occasion when Shenoute was not allowed to sit with the women, apparently during a visit. The conflict arose when Shenoute was accusing the women, again, of not being repentant enough for some behavior: “I think that [Papnoute, the male elder and the brothers] are greater than you in repentance and compassion and that wretched person, who is I, is not worthy to be counted among humans.”*® Shenoute’s “pain afflicts [him] greatly.” Whenever he “sits down at a table to

eat or to drink... when I eat bread and drink water, | know to sit in that place.” Shenoute’s alienation in this meal was somehow connected to his disapproval of the women and the sins of the monastery as a whole.*© Conflicts about food continued, though for the next period they were primarily internal to the women’s community, as at the beginning of the crisis. Now, however, it was not biological relationships that served as the basis for inequality in the distribution of material goods, but rather the food servers’ favoritism was central to the conflict. In the refectory a woman served the portions, choosing both quality and amount of food, which she then handed to the recipient: “And in the case of one woman, she came to be served and to reach out for you to hand her the very choicest piece and give her the very largest and most abundant serving. Whereas, in the case of another woman, she came to be served and to reach out for you to give her the humblest and smallest portion, like a pauper.”*' At least one woman who performed these tasks was | conspiring to give better quality and a greater quantity of food to certain of the female monks who came to receive it. Indeed, even if the favored recipients were served by someone else, this woman sought her favorites to give them extra portions.** These

36 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

recipients, in Shenoute’s description, probably refer to both individual women and, simultaneously, entire groups: those who receive more, and better, food and those who receive less, both in quality and quantity. In Shenoute’s view, the food server's motivations for such favoritism were twofold—love and admiration. For the motivation of love, Shenoute claimed, “And whenever the one you feel desire for comes to be served, you serve her the larger portion.”*? Shenoute also claims that the food server thinks about the recipient: “She is someone important.”4 Finally Shenoute notes that this food server gave smaller portions of lesser quality to women whom she did not love and did not admire.*? Once again, Shenoute’s concerns were both specific to the conflict and more general. His specific problem was about the food but his general reaction was to the disruption caused by these conflicts: “Each one insults her neighbor, as you boastfully claim to match one another’s accomplishments.”* He also

objected to the motivations of both love and admiration and countered that one monk was not more special than another. Furthermore, he viewed the women’s love as hate, since it was causing conflict among the community: “This particular woman is not the one whom you love in your fleshly desire but you hate because love is not perfected in your heart and in your charity.”*’ The woman who received less and

lower quality food “enters her house weeping and sighing because of you [the women],” whereas the one who received better food “enters her house, rejoicing and

blessing you vainly.”*° _ In addition to favoritism in the distribution of food, stealing food was also a problem in the women’s community. The female monks were stealing both from other monks’ portions of food and from the storehouses where food was kept.” These thefts,

however, did not cause conflict among the women, or at least Shenoute does not refer to a conflict.°° Rather it was mainly Shenoute who objected to this practice, because it proved that a monk did not have the self-control necessary to adhere to the ascetic standard of fasting between meals: “Those who are not satisfied by their por-

tion, reveal that their god is their bellies and that their glory is in their shame... Those who steal from the portion of their brethren reveal that they are uncontrollable, as they prepare for themselves scourges, as it is written. Indeed truly, are you not ashamed as I say these things to you?”*! There were rules that allowed for eating be-

tween meals in the monastery (chapter 1, p. 23). These monks, however, were not taking advantage of that option but were acting on their own to take food when they wanted it. As a result, Shenoute threatened the thieves, along with those who were

causing disruptions, with expulsion from the monastery.” , By the end of period of crisis, signaled by the end of the Canon, Shenoute again became concerned about conflicts among the women and so he sought to strengthen the monastic authority structures between the men’s and women’s communities. At this point, the relationship between Shenoute and the female leaders of the women’s community becomes more adversarial, including threats of expulsion. The fragments begin with several threats that he would again visit the women’s community, even though such visits had been deemed inappropriate; but he added that these visits would not be like the earlier ones. In referring to these earlier visits, Shenoute also referred to the expulsions that had taken place as a result, most likely to remind the women that he could expel monks again.>? Moreover, Shenoute warned the women

Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 37

that God will have to judge which leadership is better.°* The women had authority in

their own community in that Shenoute looked to them for information about the problems they faced. In addition, they either had autonomy in setting the rules for their own community, or were requesting that it be granted: “Indeed, did we do something wholly without your judgment? Indeed, was it not you (pl.) who sent [us] a let-

ter so that you could establish yourselves according to your (pl.) ordinances?” In either case, Shenoute denied the women the right to determine their own rules; instead, he established elders to “set ordinances for you.”*° Again, however, it is unclear what the gender of these elders was, though the implication seems to be that they were male. If so, it is also unclear whether the elders lived among the women or were sent to them.*” At least one elder was male and was an envoy, since Shenoute ends the letter by saying that he is going to send the “male elder” to the women; the man of this rank, who appears throughout the rest of the letters, seems to have taken on the role that Shenoute shed after the controversy caused by his initial visits. For the most part, Shenoute no longer chastises and corrects the women in person, but rather through letters and in the person of the male elder. Shenoute believed that the women’s leadership failed because, under their guidance, the women’s community contained a variety of factions.*® He claimed that some female monks were giving valuables to other monks so that they would be their servants: “What thing of value did you give to them so that they would be your ser-

vants?”®? As a result, the monks were not looking after one another in the way Shenoute thought appropriate to a monastery: “Indeed, if you will not take care of these people, who is it who will take care of you?”© The resulting fragmentation con-

~ tradicted Shenoute’s goal of one unified monastery of monks living in equality, an ideal that Shenoute found completely reasonable: “Moreover, if it were not possible for you, I would not have found fault with you.”*! In addition, a monk named Tachom was at odds with the female elder of the community.® Besides appointing elders for the women, Shenoute concluded the crisis in two other ways. First, he admonished the women to live in peace with one another and to give up the enmity that had divided the community.® Second, he submitted the women to his instructions, which

he planned to send to them, and to the “lesser instructions,” which they apparently already had.* The record of the crisis ends abruptly at this point and we must look to later accounts to determine Shenoute’s success in maintaining the new authority structures for the women’s community.

Crisis Two: Female Homoeroticism (Canon 3) Only a small amount of evidence from this crisis survives: the end of a letter indicating that Shenoute has learned about a few specific transgressions among the women. In this letter, he is requesting more information and “therefore, I have sent the male elder to you once again.”© The fragment begins with Shenoute’s request that “with regard to the junior female monks about whom we have heard that they run after their companions in a fleshly desire, tell me more about them.” This request for more in-

formation is meant as the foundation for determining future punishments for the

38 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery | , ~ transgressors. When Shenoute continues, it is unclear whether he is speaking about another transegressor. This seems to be the case since he begins, “And concerning this one [fem. sing.| also, you (pl.) have said concerning her that she departs from the position to which you appointed her for her to do her work in it, as she speaks to you, saying, ‘If you will bring me from this position to that, I will not work on the labors which I am doing.’””®? He adds that “if she is not willing, then again tell me and I will | teach you what you should do to her.”®* That is, Shenoute now is asking for more in-

formation about another female monk—not one who is “running after her compan- , ions in a fleshly desire” but one who has apparently objected to a transfer from one | position, or possibly rank, to another. This woman’s situation, and Shenoute’s language concerning it, is similar to that which appears at the end of the next letter, Abraham, Our Father. Shenoute ends with a warning about the need for the women to give him the information he is requesting, again with language that is important

to keep in mind for the rest of the letter fragments: “And whenever all of you hide | | from us a guileful deed amongst yourselves, so that you do not tell us about it, you ~ wake Satan within yourselves and you alone turn yourselves from the help of God.”® The notion that by not reporting deeds to Shenoute, the women alienate themselves

~ from God and make themselves vulnerable to Satan, provided the explicit justifica- , tion for Shenoute’s position as head of the authority structures of the monastery and

overseer of all punishments, a position that becomes more evident in a letter in

Canon 4 (discussed later in this chapter). | Crisis Three: A Monk Refused Promotion |

Oo (Abraham, Our Father from Canon3) A crisis arose when a monk refused a promotion to higher status in the female community.’° There was general confusion as to whether the woman refused “because she was not capable of bearing up under the task appointed to her,” in which case “she can stay peacefully in the rank where she was before,” or whether “she refused argumentatively and ignorantly and she lied in the presence of the Lord.””! The woman herself pleaded her lack of ability but there is uncertainty about the reliability of that claim. The uncertainty, however, belongs more to Shenoute than the woman’s female companions. The female leaders had reported her refusal but in neutral terms: “And

now, since you wrote to me that the sister whom you appointed to the place of the one who died has refused the task that you assigned to her.””” The wording makes it uncertain whether there were complaints about the monk’s refusal, or if the women | were simply informing Shenoute, though why remains unclear since the women had made the appointment (and not Shenoute). The monk’s refusal would therefore seem a conflict limited to the women’s community. Perhaps some women are upset, and have asked Shenoute to intervene. In any case, Shenoute seems now to believe he should arbitrate the situation, since he then requests more information to evaluate the situation. In this process, he speculates about a variety of reasons why the monk — might have refused her appointment, including the possibility that she may have

to her: | ,

| been lying about her inability to perform the (legitimate) monastic duties appointed -

Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 39 After some time should we find out that she refused dishonestly, then you all know what it is we shall do to her because she did not inform us that she had been abused violently or any way in which she had been humiliated. Finally, if we find out that she did not tell the truth because others prevented her, we shall punish the others. They shall not be hidden from you for both she and they have taken an oath with falsehood on the advice

of Satan. After all this, behold, I will send the male elder to you so that you can remember God, and pity yourselves, female monks in your community and male monks in ours, and you tell us all the disturbances that happen in your community so that we can be free from pain, we and you.”

This possibility—that the monk lied to refuse monastic service —leads to his larger teachings of the letter: the necessity of labor for the monastic life, the importance of suffering, the proper definition of service, and the role of truthfulness. Shenoute defined the proper monastic life as one based not on contemplation but on redemptive suffering rooted in labor. The women’s monastic duties were, in Shenoute’s description, a new type of suffering that replaced the non-monastic alternative, the suffering of bearing and rearing children. He began the letter with many examples of biblical women who prayed for relief from their barrenness; these exemplars provided him an opportunity to teach the women that they had a responsibility to replace their role of mother with that of monastic servant.’* Yet some monastic women were not replacing the labors of childbearing with monastic labors, as they were supposed to: “But you are stupid and wickedly stubborn when monks in your community choose to give up childbearing with God’s help, yet still argumentatively and disobediently insist on renouncing certain labors that they are capable of doing, namely, taking care of people, assigned monastic duties or any other kind of good work that you do for one another in fear of the Lord.”” Shenoute did not limit his description of infertility to the biblical women but also included their husbands. So too he warned male monks to discharge their duties as required in the monastery but omitted any mention of renunciation of begetting children: “So we are foolish, or blind, when male monks in our community refuse argumentatively and disobediently to do certain labors that they are capable of doing, namely, taking care of people who live with them, assigned monastic duties or any other kind of good work that we can do for one another through God’s agency for the salvation of our souls.”’® The purpose of the suffering that was inherent in monastic labors was to receive salvation, just as humanity had previously sought salvation through procreation. In Shenoute’s definition of the monastic life, suffering was the essential component of its spirituality. Shenoute’s use of these barren couples is noteworthy, as I will discuss in chapter 7, because his audience of monks included those with family in the monastery and those

who had left their families behind to join. While it is unclear whether the division between these two groups influenced the monk’s refusal to promote her, it is clear that the issues of proper monastic duties and the status of the monk having or not having kin in the monastery were intertwined. Shenoute’s description of the monks with kin linked their family, their economic status, and their monastic membership: A father or a mother, who have children and grandchildren and numerous possessions but whom affairs of the world make incapable of caring for their children and all the other things of life, must therefore care for their children with the help of God and all

40 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

help.” ,

kinds of righteous works. And we should note that people like these are incapable of be- | ing subordinate to their relatives, so instead they are subordinate to strangers with God’s

~ Monks without kin, however, were claiming a higher spiritual rank due to the “purity” of their status as “eunuchs and virgins”; Shenoute describes these monks asthose who “have not had children, or who renounced those they did have, along with their numerous material possessions because they wished to follow the worthy path that

they were called to, who are indeed eunuchs and virgins—and this means you, brethren.”’8 Shenoute countered the differences between the two groups by redefine ing them as monks, who must all undergo similar suffering despite variation in fam-

ily background or in motivation for joining the monastery. | Suffering in the White Monastery comprised certain monastic duties, especially taking care of one another as members of the same community. For Shenoute, this meant both that the monks were not allowed to refuse any duty appointed to them, ~ and that they were not allowed to rule over one another as master and servant, for all

were servants.’? Rather, the monks were to take care of one another , in everything, whether with instruction about the Scriptures, or with food and clothing, care while sick, and everything by which their caretakers act like their servants. Therefore let us not say blasphemously, ‘Those who rule us are our masters and we are beneath _ them like servants.’ Those who rule us are not over us, but we are over them and they are beneath us; indeed they are our servants because they take care of us, with God’s

help, in everything.® , ,

— Shenoute’s meaning is clear: the women were saying that monastic superiors were al- _ lowed to act like masters over their inferiors. Rather than a stage in spiritual development, monastic rank had come to reflect the realities of economic status in the outside world. Moreover, it was not simply the rulers who accepted this structure, but the ruled as well. Shenoute countered this erroneous development with long examples of proper models of service provided by Jesus and the prophets and apostles, especially Paul. This crisis, then, expanded beyond one monk’s refusal to accept promotion to

include the proper role of the biological family, monastic rank, and monastic duties |

in life in the White Monastery. , , , Crisis Four: The Beatings of Women (Canon 4)

This crisis suggests that the monastic authority structures Shenoute had begun inthe first crisis were not working as he had intended.*!:** The male elder was supposed to visit the women, learn of their transgressions, and report back to Shenoute “not because he is our slave or our ignorant inexperienced servant” but because Shenoute was the ultimate authority in the monastery: “[the male elder] did not do anything to ~ you without [our knowledge].”®? Shenoute did at times allow the male elder to act _ without consulting Shenoute “because he knows more.” Thus the male elder was able to make decisions about the punishment and forgiveness of the women “and he is responsible.” However, Shenoute never transferred responsibility to the women, even the female elders.** Even when he called on the women to be responsible for each

Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 4]

other in the Initial Crisis, he still claimed that their community was ultimately under his care. This authority relationship depended on the women’s cooperation, which was not always forthcoming. The male elder had made at least one visit to the female community to try to discipline the women and learn about events in their community. He returned frustrated and complained to Shenoute that the women were successfully concealing events from him: “What was wrong with [the elder] that he was not happy with you when he visited you during the days of summer?... You yourselves ought to have told him everything [going on] in your community when he visited you in those days [of summer]. But you did not tell him.”’®® Shenoute then sent the elder again, bearing a warning of a possible visit from Shenoute himself.’ The women’s secrecy led Shenoute to distrust their reports to him: “To this day you still have not written to us a truthful report after [the elder] departed from you.”*® Since the women were not complying with his requests for information or cooperating with the male elder, Shenoute denied his responsibility for them and their eventual salvation: “Moreover, if you hide any evil deed from [the elder], or if there are other people with you whom you know about who deserve blows, either people about whom you have written to me, whom | have forgotten, or rather other people whom you have not written about to me, and no matter who they are, if you do not tell [the elder] about them all... you are responsible for yourselves on your own.”®? The result was a division between the two communities in the monastery; the male and female monks were no longer monastic companions but strangers to one another: “You are now alone your own masters. Do not allow yourselves to have any concern for us.”?° The women were no longer led by Shenoute, but by demons: “But take care, wretches, lest—since you have rejected submission to your brethren, so that they do not rule you by their instruction and by their teaching in your community, [which would be proper] according to the eternal rules of divinity—you rather submit in your community to many masters which are the demons and every evil thing.”?! Shenoute sarcastically granted the women their own authority, to show that they were not prepared for the accompanying responsibility: “You are responsible; do anything that pleases you.”””

Shenoute made it clear that he wanted the women to report transgressors so that he could assign proper punishment, specifically corporal punishment. Corporal punishment was, in his view, a method of monastic instruction, and the women “will have to receive their instruction by blows, for they too are our brethren, just like our brothers are over here in our community.”?? Moreover, Shenoute argued instead that the women were not exempt from this instruction simply because they were women: “And if you report to us regarding those who contradict you disobediently, or regarding any other evil, we shall be responsible for them, to chastise them and have them be instructed in all knowledge, just as you have been hearing about what we have been doing over here in the our community.”** Shenoute got to decide the punishments because he was archimandrite; he said of himself, “I know the punishment you deserve to get.””” The women did report some transgressions to Shenoute. Several of the ten women whose beatings were listed in Canon 4 had committed transgressions that Shenoute said were reported to him by members of the female community: “You have written to us earlier.” However, the women wanted to be able to determine their own pun-

42 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

ishments, rather than have Shenoute or the male elder decide them: “And you say that we, in our community, are the ones who prevent you from governing your own affairs as you will.”?’ Shenoute’s statement opposed to women’s setting their own punishments makes clear that the women were acting on their own, against his wishes. His sarcasm shows his reluctance to give the women authority over corporal punishment: “With regard to the instruction that we gave with a fear of God, that you shall not punish anyone in your community with blows without informing us in our community first: in the presence of the Lord, we release you from this obligation and we

release you from being judged by us.”

Shenoute gave explicit instructions for how the beatings were to be administered to the women as well.°? The male elder was in charge of delivering the actual blows but the female elder, the monk Tachom, and several monks senior in rank were all involved as well. Ten women were being beaten for sins that included disobedience or insubordination to female leaders, stealing, lack of spiritual development, illicit teaching, and lying.!© At the same time, Shenoute absolved a monk named Tapolle from being beaten.!°! The description of the disagreements among the women shows the level of violence of monastic life, with monks slapping and hitting each other. Noteworthy also is further unambiguous evidence for homoerotic activity among the women, which was the transgression of two of the ten women. More intriguing, there is a coincidence in the names of the women who were making sexual advances and those who were the object of their desires: “Taese . .. about whom you wrote to us, ‘She is running after Tsansno in friendship and carnal desire... and Tsansno . . . because she ran after her neighbor in friendship.”'™ It is not certain that Tsansno’s “neighbor” was Taese, nor that the two Tsansnos were the same woman. Neverthe-

less, it seems highly likely that these two monks were having a mutually agreeable | affair, which had been found out (and not, as the phrase “run after” might suggest, harassing a monastic companion with unwanted advances). This possibility takes on ereater weight when these transgressions are compared to the fragment for Crisis 2: there only “fleshly desire” was at stake, whereas here “friendship” is the shared description, with only one woman having “fleshly desire.” Since we do not know the relationship between these two fragments, it is impossible to know if Taese and Tsansno were the two women about whom Shenoute was requesting further information, but

the possibility does exist. !° Crisis Five: Gossip (Canon 6)

A female monk had been caught spreading gossip in her community. Since it was not her first offense, Shenoute now labeled her as having an “eagerness for slander.”'°+ He claimed that it was proper for this monk to receive punishment at this point: “It was

necessary for her to sit among the angels so that they might pour their anger down upon her because of the great extent of her perversion.”!° Moreover, Shenoute threatened her with possible expulsion but then claimed she was to receive forgiveness one last time: “Therefore I say to you, ignorant woman, ‘Neither on account of people or God, whose desire I know is not to tolerate this sort of person, but on account of fear... 1 will have [the male envoys] spare you yet once more.”!°° Shenoute

Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 43

warned her that if she were caught in any transgression or caught talking back to the male elder, she would be sent to the gatehouse to receive her punishment.!® Since the gatehouse was the place where initiates in the monastery lived and also where beatings were inflicted, it is unclear whether she was being threatened with a demotion or a beating. After dealing with this individual monk, Shenoute then addressed the larger female community, “all of you in your community,” in order to instruct them to be wary of demonic forces who work against their monastic life: “Just as you are not in the habit of showing your faces to men with a devilish boldness, so also do not open your heart to a hostile demonic devil.”!°° The women were to guard against those things that could cause them to turn away from the monastic community.

Crisis Six: The Death of a Male Monk (Canon 6) The next crisis addresses three different long-standing and troubling conflicts: the stealing and hoarding of food, Shenoute’s use of corporal punishment, and an argument between the female elder and Tapolle, who was a senior monk, which had been taking place for over two months.!” As usual, conflicts over food were causing divisions in the community. The monks who were stealing and hoarding food were not doing so for themselves but for others who were unable to maintain the ascetic level of fasting Shenoute required. The monks they were helping were both monastic companions and biological kin. Their motivation, they claimed, was similar to that which we saw in the Initial Crisis: love for their companions.'!° As in his earlier conflict over

unequal distribution of food (Canon 2), Shenoute questioned the monks’ understanding of their motivation: “O, you who have not understood the wish of those who love you and love us, this one and them! You have not understood that they wish to act justly! It is you who hate your neighbors and your relatives, since you are deceiving them by your outward behavior.”!'!' Moreover, the monks were concerned that their companions and relatives not be forced to leave the monastery and hence endanger their salvation. Shenoute answered that the monks were losing the benefit of

their vocation in the monastery, the attainment of salvation, through their transgression: “But God gets no benefit from those to whom you give stolen things in the community. ...[T]hese deceivers say, ‘We have given stealthily to those who, with their insatiability, deceive so that they might not leave the community and lose their suffering.’ Listen to this nonsense! They destroy the suffering of these people along with their own!”!” The full implication of Shenoute’s statement lies in understanding what he means by suffering. This word 21Ce is a technical term in Shenoute’s vocabulary for the entire range of emotions and experiences of monastic life, all of which were intended to attain salvation. Thus, the errant monks have destroyed their companions’ and relatives’ hopes for salvation by following their own desires rather than Shenoute’s in-

structions. It is unclear from Shenoute’s description whether monks other than Shenoute opposed either the actions of their companions or the secrecy that accompanied the actions, but at the very least Shenoute suggests that other monks would want the same treatment if they knew: “You order them, saying, ‘Be careful! Do not let yourselves get caught, do not let anyone know, that we have given you these things

44 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

lest such-and-such a person or persons hear about it and we not be able to satisfy them.’ But you did not say, ‘God will repay the evil of everyone on his head’ because | you were a scandal to others.”!!> The last aspect of the conflict over food involved some monks who feigned illness in order to be allowed greater amounts of food. Their alleged “illness” led to excessive eating, stealing of food, and, finally, an “insatiable” appetite. Shenoute warned that God would bring a real illness on these monks, which would make it impossible for them to eat, and he used his own illness as an example of God’s retribution: “It is good if God brings a sickness on these sorts of people and then they are not even able to eat the things they have, and their soul is saved more than if he had given them over to insatiability and folly of the belly until he made them strangers to the truth and they made truth a stranger to themselves. Did you not | see what happened to me, how because of my sins God caused me to vomit up what I

had eaten?”!"4 , , , ,

Part of the conflict over food seems to have included a willingness on the part of the monks to question an aspect of Shenoute’s leadership: his decisions about ascetic standards for the monastery. Another conflict called into question another aspect of Shenoute’s leadership: his decisions about corporal punishment. A male monk had died while being beaten in corporal punishment by Shenoute. At least some of the monks thought that Shenoute killed the man, an accusation of which Shenoute was aware: “I know that many among you will say, ‘He has killed him violently before the end of his life.’””!!> In the ensuing crisis, Shenoute had to provide a defense of his de- _ cisions about beatings. Shenoute argued first that he did not kill the man, but rather the man’s natural life-span had come to an end: “As if Shenoute had killed people, when in fact it was that their limit of life was fulfilled, or that it was the day when God was pleased to bring death upon them.”!!° This excuse implied that it was mere coin_ cidence that the monk’s life had ended in the midst of a beating. Shenoute then took this excuse a step further. He attributed the beating itself to God; thus any accusation

of killing was an accusation against God. Shenoute pointed out that if God were to kill every monk with whom God was angry, there would be many dead monks. Rather, Shenoute offered the same excuse for God that he had claimed for himself. He argued that God had not killed the monk but that it was time for the monk to die: “God was not angry with him, nor did he kill him, because he had done wrong ot - sinned more than the rest of us, or lied more than any among you, but because the days of his life were complete. If God killed him in anger, then why did he not kill us who have sinned more than [he]?”!"’ Finally, Shenoute pointed out the advantages of dying while in the process of repenting of one’s sins: God’s anger, which was justified by the monk’s transgressions, was appeased through corporal punishment; and given —

| the possibility of dying suddenly, without time to repent, it was better to die suddenly while undergoing penance: “Or is the judgment of God not sufficient for each one of ~uson the day of anger when we have not distanced ourselves from our impieties forthwith, even though we have not yet died like our brothers, or like others who, as we saw, died suddenly.”!!® These, then, were Shenoute’s defenses: the monk had not been

killed, either by Shenoute or by the real actor, God, and, in any event, the timing of |

~ the monk’s death was beneficial for the monk’s salvation. Be

The last portion of the record of this crisis focuses on an argument between the female elder and Tapolle, and on both Shenoute and the male elder’s inability to re-

Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 45

solve that conflict. Shenoute had already written the women at other points over the past two months: “We wrote to you for more than two months wishing you to be of a single heart and to perfect your work.”!'? In the letters, he had advised the elder to forgive Tapolle and to seek mutual reconciliation.'”° Tapolle was under the female elder’s authority, her “daughter,” and was supposed to be obedient to her. The elder,

in turn, had reported their conflict to Shenoute: “I revealed my heart to you.”!! Shenoute was reluctant to take sides in the argument, which involved accusations of gossip and name-calling: “Indeed, do we love you while we hate Tapolle? Or do we love her while we hate you? Indeed, do we love anyone of all of you in your community, while we hate another? Or do we hate one man in our community while we love another? Is it not evil that we hate?”!?* Nevertheless, he thought Tapolle was in the wrong at first, spreading slander behind the elder’s back: “Are there other sins which she committed against you beyond the ones which we heard about? Have you caught her transgressing against any one of the commandments about which we worry day and night? Come now, do I honor her because she spoke gossip against you?”!?3 Now, however, he absolved Tapolle of blame for starting the conflict, as the

| female elder apparently contended, and held the female elder responsible for the continuation of the conflict: “And you were not able to tolerate what you were told with God’s help, namely, “Try again with your daughter; if she is disobedient to you, write to us’. Being even more disobedient than she, you were not able to endure for three or four days without sending me news of your distress and of your collective distress.”'’4 Besides his opinion of the excessive complaints by the female elder, Shenoute took this stand because Tapolle was more willing to confess her wrongdoing in order to heal the rift: “And why did you [the elder] change so that you no longer stood with her [Tapolle] nor she with you, after she had spoken in the presence of God and the male elder and those who accompanied him and all the brethren who are in your community while you were gathered together?”!*> Tapolle agreed to efforts at reconciliation, taking an oath before the male authorities whom Shenoute sent.!*° The female elder, however, refused to take such an oath as many as four times. The elder was

still annoyed about the gossip Tapolle had spread, the origin of the conflict two months earlier. That the elder was still annoyed is apparent in the words Shenoute ascribes to her, “Indeed, did you not write to us, saying, ‘I will not stand with her’?”!?? As a result, she was refusing to cooperate with the male leaders’ efforts at reconciliation: “We examined you [the elder] many times, saying, “Tell us what your problem with her [Tapolle] is,’ and you did not say.”!78 Tapolle’s obedience to the female elder during the past two months suggested to Shenoute that the elder was now holding a grudge and he chastised her accordingly. In addition, Tapolle was now attacking the elder for refusing to forgive her, though Shenoute did not support Tapolle in her accusations.!’”

In the long account of the conflict, Shenoute presents more information than usual about the actions and personalities of both the elder and Tapolle. The elder seems hurt and yet stubborn: “We entreat you to forgive your sister.”° She also questioned the usefulness of Shenoute’s advice, as he reported sarcastically: “You are ereatly justified in saying, ‘I was not able to join my heart to hers.’ | know why your heart is not completely joined to her heart. Her saying is not useful to you, nor is yours useful to her. So accordingly, how is your saying useful to us? Our saying is not useful

, 46 — Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery — to you.”3! The portrait of Tapolle is less coherent, perhaps because Shenoute himself was not sure of her role in the conflict. For both women, however, Shenoute argued that they needed to heed the male elder’s advice in stilling this conflict, as well as any others. He was aware both that the monks rejected his solution and that they remained hostile to one another. He reiterated his advice and explained why it was ben-_eficial for the situation.'°? He concluded the letter, “Do not let me hear that you made

many statements to the male elder, saying, ‘Yes, yes, no, no.’””!? ,

Crisis Seven: Jealousy among the Women (Canon 6) , The fragmentary state of the next letter is one of the most troubling for piecing to| gether the narrative of the conflict.°+ Some women were jealous of another group of women for unidentified reasons.25 Apparently this conflict had consumed the women’s community for awhile, but there was a mixed reaction to it. Some monks — were indifferent to the conflict, and indeed seem not to have paid much attention, whereas others studied it in order to learn from it.°° The male envoys had already judged which side in the conflict was correct, and Shenoute had already told the women about the men’s decision in a letter.!*’ Nevertheless, not all the female monks who had been found to be at fault had reconciled themselves to the community. They continued to be in conflict, which Shenoute mentioned through what he considered an unflattering description: they were laughing and mocking the letter as it was read

to them.!® oo ee oe

As with other letters, Shenoute shifts subject abruptly. In a brief paragraph,

_ Shenoute made an appeal to God for relief from an illness he has suffered.!? He also began to warn the women that they needed to be obedient to him in order not to be —— expelled from the community “because of their pollutions and their thefts and their disobedience and all their other evils.”'4° As much as Shenoute was displeased with those who disobeyed him, he was that pleased with those who were obedient."*! Shenoute made this contrast between obedience and disobedience apparently so he could then address another problem in the female community. This problem, however, was one he himself had with the women, not one they had with each other. -Shenoute had received a cloak from the women which had not fit correctly. He had asked for alterations, but these had not solved the problem.'*? Shenoute side-

stepped his role in the confusion about clothing size and now asked for yet another | alteration.'*? He also held the women accountable for the problems since they did not take any measurements to begin with.!*# Not only was Shenoute’s garment ill fitting, but so were many others so that many of the male monks wore the cloaks only when they had to do so.'*° They were often embarrassed by the cloaks, and wore them as

little as possible. The women, however, refused to allow Shenoute, or the male monks, to come to the women’s community to have their measurements taken.'*°

Shenoute now sought to change the women’s position by arguing that the material ! interdependence between the two communities, food and clothing, were meant to _ unite them, not separate them.'*’ The fragment ends with Shenoute ready to act on his wishes: “But I am visiting you, the elder, and Tapolle, and the mothers who are with you and all those who are in agreement both with you and with us.”!*

Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 47

Crisis Eight: A Request for a Transfer (Canon 6) A monk wrote to Shenoute to request a transfer from her current house, under a mother named Maria, to Theodora’s house: “You sent word to us... ‘Help me and transfer me to the house of Theodora so that I might not lose my sufferings.’”!?” She was worried that her unhappiness in her current house would cause her to leave the monastery and so lose her salvation. Shenoute denied the monk’s request, arguing that personality conflicts should not affect the monastic experience. He pointed out that the monk had not given proof of any wrongdoing on the part of her mother that warranted a transfer. Moreover, if she had trouble with her current mother, why should he expect that her relationship with another would be any different? The frag-

ment ends with the suggestion that this conflict has also affected the rest of the monastic community.!°°

Crisis Nine: Excessive Leadership

, (My Heart Is Crushed, from Canon 8) The second to last record of conflicts in the women’s community is the longest and best preserved of the letters.!°! Again, the crisis covers more than one topic. Shenoute begins with a long discussion of a conflict he was having with the women over a special cloak of his. That discussion, however, serves as the introduction for the more serious conflict over the increase in expulsions in the monastery. The arguments over the proper use of expulsion led to an evaluation of Shenoute’s leadership and the rise of opponents against Shenoute. The female elder and Tapolle visited Shenoute after hearing of his neglect of a cloak they had made for him. This cloak was not a simple garment but one custommade for Shenoute, according to the measurements and specifications about color and decoration he had sent.'** The reason Shenoute needed a new cloak seems to have been disputed. He claimed that a moth had eaten his cloak, making it unwearable because of all the holes in it.’ Rather than make the cloak’s condition public, however, Shenoute had hidden it until some other monks came across it.!°* Shenoute’s action led to speculation that a moth had not eaten it, but that the cloak had been ruined by misuse, a conjecture Shenoute rejected.'? At any rate, Shenoute had needed, and received from the women, a new cloak, but he was dissatisfied with its production. It was too heavy, and its tassels were set on it in such a way that it was not the right type of garment.!*’ Shenoute now faced criticism that his complaints were excessive, and that he should accept the cloaks the women gave him.!°* The monks’ characterization of Shenoute’s actions in this specific conflict had broader application to the rest of his leadership. Shenoute faced charges that his entire leadership of the monastery was as excessive as his actions in the conflict over the cloak. Part of the problem again arose from secrecy among the monks. Shenoute calls the transgressors “deceitful” because they were hiding their sins, rather then reporting them to Shenoute for correction.!” In addition, not only had Shenoute been expelling people from the monastery for two months, but he had also refused to meet with the monks for the past seven:

48 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery This is the point at which a stumbling block was put at my feet so that | could not come to you: on the days when I told you which one it is, and said that until now there was a stumbling block on the road and accordingly said, “Just as I did not gather together with you straight-away (or in fact, for more than seven months) or contentedly, to pray or, indeed, to examine a saying of God, so | will not gather now.” Why indeed? Is it not because of this number of people whom God has alienated from us for over two months on account of their wicked deeds? And also now it will happen that others will be alienated from his congregations on account of each and every one of these pestilent deeds, which we, whether male or female, have not distanced ourselves from as of now.!

Some of those expelled were biological kin of monks still within the monastery, who had a general resentment of losing their relatives as monastic companions and who also seem to have worried about their relatives’ fate in both this world and the next: Also, do not let people among us in these congregations at any time be timid in their endurance because of sons or daughters or a brother or sisters or mothers or any other blood relatives of theirs being thrown out of the holy places of God because of pestilent deeds. Let your love display to God that you love him more than sons or daughters or brothers or sisters or fathers or mothers and more than the world and all those who are in it. Is this not sufficient on the subject of the things we, whether male or female, have done

among these congregations until now?!

Finally, as part of his self-imposed exile from the rest of the monks, Shenoute also refused to celebrate Easter with them.!” It was all these actions that led to debate over Shenoute’s leadership, which survives, as in other conflicts, in his defense of it. Unlike other conflicts, however, this one also led to the rise of opponents against him. Shenoute acknowledged that his leadership was excessive but, as in other conflicts, he placed the responsibility for his actions on the monks: his actions were merely reactions to them. At the same time, Shenoute defended some of his statements to the women, that although they might seem greatly excessive, they were inspired by God: “Indeed, is it not a greatly excessive saying that I spoke to you, that as long as I am in this sinful body (or this body by which I sin), people shall not even think about receiving approval when they sin secretly in these communities. Or is it God speaking with me, so that I might say to you, ‘I am against you who destroy their hope altogether.””!®? Shenoute also defended the appropriateness of being excessive, if strong words and actions were necessary for proper leadership.'®* The debate over the evaluation of Shenoute’s leadership was also a struggle over the nature of the monastic life. What degree of purity, what amount of forgiveness, what virtues were

necessary for salvation, and what deeds were unforgivable? , This particular conflict arose not simply from disobedience but from rebellion, since it included monks who sought to replace Shenoute’s answers to these questions with their own. These opponents had made such statements as, “There are hidden deeds,” that is, that not all sins had to be confessed within the community.'® They had also questioned the truth of Shenoute’s commands, saying, “The words which he speaks are not true.”!©° One opponent claimed, “] am against those who do evil within

us.” In making this statement, this opponent also acted like a leader, “raising his hands to the sky, speaking to the ones who are not pleased, so you are thinking that he prays to this one, or he is anxious about him, so that God instructs him.”!°’ The

Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 49

monk’s actions suggest that she or he was arguing for Shenoute to be replaced as head. Unlike other letters, this one does not end with a call for reconciliation but a warning that the monks need to return to Shenoute’s leadership, and not others’.!®

Crisis Ten: Tachom (Shenoute Writes to Tachom from Canon 9) Shenoute had sent a male envoy to the female community, but the female leader, Tachom, had refused to meet with him. She refused for reasons that remain unknown. Shenoute now wrote to Tachom, in a letter that mixes conciliatory laneuage with commands for obedience. He began his salutation, “It is Shenoute who writes to Tachom, like a barbarian to a barbarian, and not like a father to a mother nor like a brother in the presence of a sister.”!”° Shenoute suggested that their con- , flict is the result of miscommunication: “I am amazed that a great many times God has hindered your communication in your community and in our community.”!”! However, he also reminded her that she had a subordinate position by claiming that even if they had both erred, she had to request forgiveness from him: “As for me, I said, ‘If you do not realize that you should write to us saying, “Forgive me,” then you do not know anything at all—even though we did sin against you during all these days when we did not bother to send to you the person whom you did not deem worthy to come out to meet.””?”? Shenoute advised Tachom to receive his envoy for two reasons: he was her monastic superior and also her biological brother: And if the man whom we sent is not your father according to rank (and he is [your father] according to divine ordination), then you are not a mother; if you do not admit that the man whom | sent you has the same authority as myself (especially since he is physically your brother), then you have separated yourself from us.'?

The fragment breaks off with Shenoute warning Tachom that her position of leadership is in jeopardy because of her actions.

Conclusion These, then, are the ten incidents that constitute our entire knowledge of women’s life in the White Monastery. The narratives provide the basis for the analyses that occur in the following chapters. When using events from, or descriptions of, a particular conflict, I will not repeat all the details but refer to the crisis by number and title, allowing the reader to return to the longer descriptions here as necessary. Having established this narrative background, we can now move to analysis, first of issues of authority and power. This analysis is twofold. Since the letters were Shenoute’s, there is a focus on his perception of his relationship with the women; moreover, since they often address times of conflict, his arguments for his authority are primarily defensive. Even so, his statements provide evidence needed to understand his perception of his own authority. An account of that perception provides the first step to understanding the women’s lives under his leadership. Although these descriptions are Shenoute’s, they also grant us the ability to reconstruct aspects of the women’s resistance

50 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

to his leadership: how they managed to create their own power within the monastic structures that were meant to limit their authority. In the context of these power struggles, two further aspects of the women’s lives greatly affected their monastic experience: their gender and family background. Discussion of these two issues will reexamine the same material, provided in the narratives above, which will provide a

Monastery.

more complete picture of the complicated lives led by the women of the White

3 Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power

In the survey of evidence for women’s life in Shenoute’s White Monastery (chapter

2), the nature of the letters creates a focus on the women’s relationship with Shenoute as head of the monastery. These letters were meant to resolve periods of conflict and crisis, not to present eulogies of the women of the monastery, such as exists, for example, in some of Jerome’s letters. One major theme that emerges is the struggle for control over the female community. My analysis of this struggle is at the center of much of the rest of this study, although I approach it from the various angles of power, gender, and kinship. In this chapter I examine how Shenoute presented his claims to authority and how he created his power. It is thus necessary to differentiate between these two terms—authority and power—since the two are intertwined in his relationship with the women yet present different interpretive concepts. Shenoute’s authority was located in his position as head of the monastery. Yet Shenoute could not maintain that position, or be an effective leader, without power, that is, without the ability to persuade his monks that he was the best person to have the position of authority as archimandrite. [t would seem, based on these definitions, that Shenoute’s “authority” is easily determined. Yet the evidence suggests that some of the duties of the head of the monastery, especially with regard to the women’s community, were not yet settled at the time of Shenoute took this position. In the course of these letters, therefore, he needed to justify additions to his authority, including the extension

of his authority over the female community. In order to expand his authority, Shenoute needed to prove that he had the power to do so; to understand how he presented this power, we must examine Shenoute’s rhetoric, that is, his “characteristic means or ways of expression.”' His description of his own power presents his selfunderstanding as head of the monastery, a self-understanding that must also make 5]

_ 52 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery |

suffering. , , , sense to his followers. The two religious paradigms that shape Shenoute’s self-

_ presentation are that of prophet—relating wisdom received from God—and that of

: Monastic leadership in late antique Egypt, both anchoritic and cenobitic, fol-

lowed a pattern, of which Shenoute is a typical example. The monastic movement

attracted those for whom the assurance of salvation was a pressing need. For Chris- , tians to be sure that the actions they took and the sort of life they led would lead to eventual salvation, it was necessary to follow a leader whose decisions and guidance

were certain to be correct. In order to convince their followers that they were capable of leading them to salvation, monastic leaders cultivated several characteristics, all of which are evident in Shenoute’s writings to the women. The first two categories figure into what I call Shenoute’s self-presentation as a prophet. While Shenoute never _ referred to himself as a prophet, his description of his relationship with God and his right to lead the monastery are consistent with this status: (1) Shenoute had to pres-

| ent his leadership as commensurate with the total power that ordinary Christians as- , , sociated with secular powers and, more important, the spiritual authority of biblical figures; (2) he had to convince his followers that he was inspired by God, and that all his decisions were based on God’s guidance and direction. The third category | shapes Shenoute’s rhetoric of suffering: he had to persuade the monks that his own | pattern of life could be used as a successful model for them to “arrive at a similar state of perfection.”* This pattern had as its overriding characteristic the suffering Shenoute endured as a monk and as head of the monastery. At the same time, the bound— aries between these categories are not fixed, either in Shenoute’s self-presentation or , in my analysis. Shenoute asserted his authority using reasons that make him out to be | a prophet; he described his leadership in such a way that he becomes a suffering ser-

vant, like the prophets of the Old Testament. , ,

, Shenoute’s discourse of monastic power was consistent with many of the elements | of power and authority in Christianity and monasticism in fourth-century Egypt.’ His emphasis on harmony and his suspicious attitude toward dissenting opinions con-

formed with contemporary trends toward uniformity in Christianity. These charac- , _ teristics are also evident in other charismatic leaders, Anthony, the desert fathers,

, and Pachomius among them—and thus, not surprisingly, also shaped Shenoute’s leadership. The difference in scholarly understanding between these leaders and _ Shenoute is attributable to the difference in the sources. Anthony and Pachomius may have thought themselves to be prophets, but no written record of their self-

, understanding survives.° Shenoute’s letters provide rare evidence of an Egyptian monastic leader’s understanding of his own authority, his efforts to convince his fe- |

sponses.’ — |

male followers to adopt his perception as their own, and hints of the women’s re-

| Authority and Power in the Female Community | | At the beginning of his tenure as archimandrite, Shenoute had authority over the men, but the amount of authority he had over the women’s community is less clear.

The only evidence for the relationship between the female community and

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power 53

Shenoute’s predecessors comes from Shenoute’s own explanation for his changes. In the years before Shenoute became head, there seems to have been two different models for male leadership of the women’s community: one of distance and one of proximity. We can recall from chapter 2 that of Shenoute’s two predecessors as head of the White Monastery, Pcol, the founder of the community, never came to see the women; the second head came only to deliver the materials for the Eucharist, “and he then left and went away without having seen you.”® Neither of these men, according to Shenoute, “came to you (pl.), commanding to you an oath by the Lord.” From the leaders of the White Monastery, Shenoute inherited a model of leadership that used the space between the two communities to distance the men from the women. At the same time, a man named Apa Pshoi, who was the anchorite associated with the Red Monastery and a contemporary of Pcol’s, came to see the women “many times” in order to “speak the truth” to them.’ So the female community had relationships with both monasteries: liturgically, at least, with the White Monastery, and in terms of

| spiritual leadership with the Red. Shenoute, however, altered the tradition of the White Monastery leaders by beginning to visit the women; he made a series of three visits early in his tenure. We do not know what happened during the visits of Apa

Pshoi: what “many truths” he was speaking, or how the women responded to his speaking them. But, as described in chapter 2, we do know that Shenoute’s visits were fraught with controversy.!° Shenoute’s relationship to the female community has points of similarity and difference with his relationship with the male community of the monastery at this time. During the tenure of Shenoute’s immediate predecessor, Ebonh, there was, according to Stephen Emmel’s description, a crisis of sin in the male community.!! Shenoute knew about the sin but was appalled that neither the sinful monk’s immediate super-

visor, nor Ebonh, as head of the monastery, took steps to correct it. As a result, Shenoute left the community to live in the desert as an anchorite so that, as member of the same monastic body, he would not be polluted by the monk’s sin. His departure did not end Shenoute’s association with the male monks; indeed, his actions during this crisis led him to prominence and eventually to his appointment as head. Moreover, after he became head, Shenoute continued to live in the desert for much of the time. His separation created a boundary between his own purity, which he protected, and the danger of pollution from a sinful community. The contrast between. purity and pollution underscores much of his rhetoric in his leadership of the monastery. At the time of his visits to the female monks, then, Shenoute lived apart from both the female and male communities of the monastery and led both groups from a distance through the use of letters and visits. However, as 1 have noted, in the case of the women’s community, the visits, at least, were a departure from the custom of his predecessors. In addition, in the course of his initial visits, Shenoute explicitly states that, after a period of intense argument and a few expulsions, during his third visit, he and the women “established an oath as we spoke together through God’s agency.”!” The content of the oath was both negative, cursing those who broke the rules after establishing the oath, and positive, blessing those who “stand strong.”'? This was apparently the type of oath that had been missing in the relationship between his two predecessors and the female community. Moreover, this oath seems to be the basis for Shenoute’s claims to extending his authority over the female community, as a visitor,

54 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

as a spiritual guide, as someone who could correct erroneous monastic practices, and

as someone who could preach to the women.'* As we saw in the narratives in chapter 2, however, these visits themselves became a source of controversy and so were not effective in establishing Shenoute’s authority. Thus, through the rest of the Initial Cri-

sis and in his later defenses of his expanded authority at various times of challenge, , Shenoute for the most part constructed his power through narrative representations of his leadership in his epistolary correspondence with the women. It was necessary to convince the women of his power to be able to validate the new definitions of his authority in the women’s community. In both chronological periods of his leadership—the initial crisis and the rest of his leadership—Shenoute had to construct two different types of power: a “powerover,” or dominion, and a “power-to,” which lay in identification.!> Despite the pres-

ence of both in his rhetoric throughout his leadership, Shenoute emphasized alter- | nate types of power at different points. Since during the initial crisis of his leadership Shenoute established “power-over,” or dominion, in the monastery, his rhetoric focuses largely on the legitimacy of his status. What develops is a self-presentation as a

- prophet, that is, an agent of God who has access, not just to God’s power, but to knowledge. Shenoute’s knowledge is manifold: he knows what God requires as necessary to achieve salvation and so knows God’s desires for the monastery, God’s will,

and God’s standards for the monastic life. Shenoute’s claim to this knowledge, and its link to salvation, created his power to be head of the monastery.'° A monastic leader’s |

power lay in the belief among his followers that he had the knowledge necessary to , lead them to salvation; hence much of Shenoute’s discourse of monastic power was

meant to persuade his audience that he had the knowledge that justified his appointment as archimandrite. In addition, Shenoute used a rhetoric of suffering that enhanced his claims to authority: his suffering underscored his commitment to the

, salvific life. 9 , , | , ,

Once the Initial Crisis had passed—and since Shenoute remained head of the

monastery, we can safely assume that the crisis did pass—there were still moments of

conflict and crisis during which Shenoute had to reiterate his claims to authority, | through his descriptions of his power, to maintain his status. During these periods, however, it becomes clear that not only was Shenoute’s “power-over” in jeopardy, but so was his “power-to,” that is, his ability to be the leader who could guide the monks

to salvation.!’ This ability lay in the perception of the monks—whether or not Shenoute as leader embodied the monastic values he proclaimed and they accepted

, as the basis of salvation. Shenoute continued to present his authority through the same image of a prophet, which was dominant in the Initial Crisis, but his other rhet-

— oric, that of suffering, took on added importance. Shenoute’s description of his own sufferings was necessary in order to present “the effectiveness of material practices.”!®

a His aim was to present his own monastic performance, here the practice of suffering, in order to prove his status not just as monk, but as the model monk.’ Since Shenoute _ suffered in a variety of ways, so too his descriptions of his suffering had different func-

, tions. If necessary (and, as we shall see, at times it was) he could appeal to his suffering as a means of connection and identification with the rest of the monks; they suffered in the monastic life, and so did he. At other times, however, Shenoute described

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power = 55

his sufferings to prove his superiority over the rest of the monks. His rhetoric of suffering was structured around a renunciation of the status of archimandrite as a means to legitimate his claim to that status. His entire language uses the rhetoric of Christianity as it had developed in its “rise” throughout the previous centuries.”° Using this rhetoric, Shenoute was able to create a discourse of monastic power: a series of natratives, self-presentations, and images that supported his claim to be the ultimate authority for the entire monastery, including the female community.

Shenoute as Prophet As the third head of the monastery, Shenoute was sufficiently removed from the charismatic authority of the founder of the institution, Pcol, to allow his followers more latitude in questioning the transfer of authority from one leader to the next. A similar situation prevailed in the Pachomian monasteries in the years following the death of their founder. Pachomius and his monks had prepared for Theodore to take over after Pachomius’s death. However, when Pachomius, at death’s door during a plague, felt betrayed by Theodore, he chose another monk to succeed him. That monk died soon after his succession and was replaced by another monk who had no link to the founder of the movement; this disruption in the transfer of authority led to revolt by many of the monks until Theodore, the originally designated successor, eventually took control.”! The need for the founder of a movement to transfer the authority that his charisma established, to assure the continuity of the movement, has

long been recognized in studies of authority, power, and community.” Often this transfer is hereditary or through direct appointment.”? Shenoute, even though the nephew of Pcol, nevertheless was not his direct successor. Moreover, his predecessor, Ebonh, had the disgrace of having failed to lead the community during the crisis of sin that drove Shenoute into the desert.’* Shenoute’s rise to a position of authority,

nity. | then, occurred at a point in the institutional development when his followers had more opportunities to question the basis of authority: he was two steps removed from the founder and there had already been a crisis of leadership. Following Shenoute’s appointment, his authority and charisma had to be established to maintain the structure of the institution. In addition, as noted earlier, his need was especially acute with

the women, who had even more reasons to questions his (new) authority in their community since it contained a number of innovations for them and their commuShenoute’s most important self-presentation of his power in his letters to the

women was as a prophet, a figure who could lead any who obeyed him to salvation.” Since Shenoute wanted to be the sole head of the monastery, there is little evidence in his correspondence with the women of compromise between them, while there are frequent examples of his claim to absolute authority. The power to claim this institutional authority came, in his descriptions of it, from his avowal of a special relationship with God, a relationship that served as the basis of his belief that he had knowledge of God’s expectations on judgment day, and thus the terms of salvation. In the Initial Crisis, Shenoute based his authority on divine guidance and approval by em-

—— «56 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery | , -phasizing the aspects of his leadership that were most like a prophet is. There were —

a three points in his arguments: that he shared an alliance with God; that he knew and , could carry out God’s will; and as a result, that he was the leader most capable of guiding the monks to salvation. During later crises, Shenoute often repeated these three

points as new challenges to his authority arose. In addition, he presented his contro- | versial use of corporal punishment and expulsion as the result of divine guidance, and indeed divine action. Shenoute used his proclaimed knowledge of the punishments necessary to cleanse the community of transgression as the basis for his power over the monks, especially over their bodies, which served as symbols of the larger monas-

tic community. , , , , The Initial Crisis

One piece of evidence from the Initial Crisis is unlike any of the evidence from later

periods: Shenoute’s prophet-like performance. We can recall that in one of his first -_-visits to the women, he tore his cloak in the midst of a debate to show his torment | over their conflict, in imitation of the actions of grieved biblical leaders.”° We can recall also, however, the failure of that gesture, which led to accusations of Shenoute’s sexual impropriety rather than to the women’s obedience to Shenoute as a prophet of

God. This response suggests that early in his leadership Shenoute’s status was not a given, but that he had to create a self-presentation as a prophet. Throughout the rest of this crisis, his language in chastising the women evoked the themes listed earlier:

he had divinely granted knowledge of proper monastic practice, and any disobedi, ence to him would result in alienation from God. This differentiation between his own relationship with God and the monks’ relationship with God was the basis of

- Shenoute’s leadership and shaped his presentation of it. |

Shenoute’s self-proclaimed relationship with God gave him knowledge of what

, God required for salvation and the power to judge the women accordingly. In his de- | scription of what Jesus required of the perfect monastery, Shenoute listed not only the ~ monastic deeds that were required “so that your body and soul might be saved” but —

, also the corresponding interior state of being: to be full of justice, peace, love, mercy, , faith, and patience.2’ These were the actions and feelings necessary for the monks, as

| children of God, to receive their inheritance; that is, to receive salvation.”® Besides | these positive statements, Shenoute also claimed knowledge of how God would act | toward errant monks, both now and at the day of judgment. At one point, Shenoute warned the monks against doing wrongful deeds, by threatening that God would inflict upon them whatever harm they might cause to others.?? When the female monks - were not responsive, or at least not properly responsive (in his opinion), to his admonishments, Shenoute claimed the ability to judge their spirituality, their relation-

ship with Gad, and to predict their eventual judgment: | , If you are not ashamed when I say these things to you, then the spirit of God is notin you. If you do not repent of your deeds, then no one will have compassion on you. But

, if, on the other hand, you were ashamed when I, a wretched man, said these things to you and if your heart grieved as you listened to these things, because the sins of each one

, of you are hidden from her neighbor, then how much will I not be ashamed on the day _

when God will judge our hidden things?° , oo

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power = 57

Shenoute was, in his description, not only able to know God’s eventual judgment, but he also implied that before God rendered his judgment, no deeds should be kept hidden from Shenoute, just as they cannot be kept hidden from God. He draws on the notion of shame to force the women to display their hidden deeds: if not ashamed, they will suffer at Judgment Day and if ashamed, then their shame releases Shenoute from his shame before God. This rhetoric was meant to give Shenoute dominion, rather than serve as a source of identification with the monks as followers of the same vocation. As the divine agent, Shenoute acted in proxy for God in this life, as God’s prophet. Only through Shenoute’s approval could one hope also to receive approval from God. In a similar vein, Shenoute foresaw himself as one of the women’s judges, alongside God: “Thus, behold, I will stand and reproach you in the presence of the throne of God’s glory. And I will reproach you, not separated from you as I am in this world, and not distant, but only a footstep away.”?! Such a use of references to a future time of judgment to remind followers to maintain an acceptable level of behav-

ior was not unknown in ancient epistles, and Shenoute may have been emulating Paul’s rhetoric in this respect.*” On the other hand, Shenoute’s representation of his power differed significantly from that of the desert monastics, who left judgment up to God rather than judge each other.*? Rather than receiving punishment alongside

| the monks, Shenoute made himself their judge, in alliance with God. Based on this relationship with God, Shenoute could claim God’s favor, both at

the eventual day of judgment and as already in place in current disputes in the monastery. At times in the Initial Crisis, Shenoute placed his leadership under the judgment of God; he measured the success of his leadership not by its effects upon the monks but by his suppositions about God’s reaction to him.** He addressed a conflict

between himself and the women by making God the judge: if God listened to his prayers rather than theirs (and Shenoute seems confident God would), then he knew the correct path to salvation, while the women were on the wrong path. He notes sarcastically, “If it is you who are most straight in the presence of the Lord, and J who am crooked before him, then let God listen to your prayers in your community.”** One of Shenoute’s responses to the accusation of sexual impropriety was self-imposed separation from the women’s community, which he described in terms of their alienation from God, here in the person of Jesus: “If, then, your least brother [Shenoute] will prevent his spirit from remaining with you, O miserable ones, then how much shall the Lord of all, Jesus, prevent his holy spirit from remaining with you?”** Since Shenoute aligned himself with God, he presented to the women the choice whether to be with Shenoute and God, or without them. Yet besides power, this relationship and this knowledge also gave Shenoute responsibility, namely for the salvation of the monks entrusted to his care. His salvation, therefore, was linked to that of his followers: “Therefore I tell you that I will reproach you face to face in the presence of the Lord Jesus, who will look to my hands for your blood [i.e., accountability].”?? At one point in the Initial Crisis, Shenoute wrote to the women about some aspect of their conflict that needed to be resolved “for our salvation together.”’® Yet, in cases where he had sought to correct the monks’ error and had failed to do so, he described himself as no longer accountable for the women’s transgressions. When he threatened the women with the loss of salvation, he argued that it was neither he nor God who hindered their salvation but their own

58 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

wrongful actions. Their own willful disobedience and refusal to accept Shenoute’s leadership had led them astray: “But I am innocent of your blood [i.e., accountability], because I have commanded you; and not only have I commanded you but also even with blows and cajolings and petitions and a great many other things which I ought not to do, so that to you I seem to be a wicked man, though I have no other relationship with you except the love of God.” Shenoute’s interest in the women’s salvation, then, was not merely altruistic but also self-serving, in his understanding of God’s requirements for Shenoute’s own salvation. It is important to note that the criteria for salvation differed among the monks, depending on monastic rank. Each monk’s salvation became dependent on that of the monks below her. Finally, Shenoute’s prophetic status was evident in the divine status of the monastic rules he enforced. He described his reception of the rules for the monastic life “inside the veil, upon the altar of the Lord; you have transgressed the words which I have commanded in the presence of God.”*° In his representation, Shenoute’s edicts for running the women’s community were not his, but God’s. Not only did this claim suggest that Shenoute’s enforcement of these rules had a corresponding divine approval

but it also equated the monastic rules with Scripture in that they were God’s commandments.*! As the recipient of these commandments, Shenoute again presented himself as God’s chosen agent, and so as having the power to act as archimandrite of the White Monastery. Not only was the monastic Rule like Scripture, since both were given by God, but Scripture, if correctly interpreted, also validated the Rule. Because of his alliance with God and Jesus, Shenoute had knowledge of the authentic interpretation of Scripture. Like other Christian leaders in late antiquity, Shenoute ex-egeted the Old Testament as if it had been spoken allegorically by Jesus. Here the allegory shows that the monks should behave in accordance with the description in the

Song of Songs 5:1: , The Lord, Christ Jesus, says to you, “I ascended to my garden (which is the community). I harvested my myrrh and my incense (which are your fasts and your night vigils and all your labors which you do in his name so that your body and soul might be saved). I ate my bread and my honey (which are the blessings and chants that you perform as you bless him day and night through your good deeds and all the sayings of the Scripture). | drank my wine and my milk (which are justice and peace and love and mercy and faith

and patience and every good thing which you do).’”” , By giving this description and exegesis, Shenoute has granted himself divine approval , of his leadership. The actions of the monastic life that he commanded were all ordained in Scripture, according to his reading of it. He made the same connection between word and practice as did the desert fathers.” Thus, his claim to knowledge of God’s will and wishes, as revealed in sacred writings, also served as the basis for his claim to divine validation of his supreme authority. Shenoute’s discourse of his monastic power upholds the structures that he created in the authority relationship between himself and the women’s community depicted in the description of the Initial Crisis in chapter 2. His drive toward active leadership in the women’s community involved an expansion of the authority of archimandrite,

which could be achieved only if his actions were perceived as legitimate by the | women who lived in the affected community. Shenoute’s discourse was meant to se-

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power 59

cure that legitimacy, in a way his visits had not. This discourse, especially with its emphasis on his exclusive access to knowledge of salvation, supported his changes and validated the increasing inclusion of the women into the structure of the monastery

as a whole. In addition, his creation of the mutual accountability of each monk for the other’s salvation, in the female community, corresponds to the creation of male

, envoys and intermediaries in his relationship with the women’s community. By having monks accountable to and for one another, Shenoute supported ultimate accountability to himself as head of the monastery. By resting his own salvation on his successful leadership of the women, Shenoute secured power over them. Although his discourse in later crises is more complex, his claim to knowledge gained through being a prophet remains central. The Aftermath

Shenoute described his relationship with God and its consequential power in order to persuade the women to accept his authority and to submit to the changes he was making in their monastic experiences. The same themes—his alliance with God, his knowledge of God’s will, and hence his ability to lead the monks to salvation—are all evident in later crises: moments when a conflict over some issue allowed or forced Shenoute to articulate his perception of his authority, and the power that underlay it.44 This possession of knowledge was crucial for two controversial issues: corporal punishment and expulsion. In discussing those topics, however, Shenoute also began to modulate his claim to “power-over” with expansion of his discourse into “powerto” (defined earlier, n. 15). His claim to knowledge that the punishments were required was not sufficient to support his power in these more controversial areas of monastic life, and so we see a more complex discourse emerge. Rather than simply portraying himself as a judge, as we saw earlier, Shenoute also presented himself as God’s obedient servant, who had no choice but to obey God’s commands to beat and expel the monks. His obedience required him to suffer since God’s requirements were

painful for him to execute. Hence his representation was meant to forge an identification with the monks; like them, he was to be obedient even if suffering resulted from that obedience. Shenoute’s claim to an alliance with God, stated repeatedly in his description of the Initial Crisis, allowed him to assert the power that relationship granted him. But this rhetorical strategy would carry weight only if the monks believed that God participated in their lives and their monastery. Shenoute had to show God’s relationship with the community, and these descriptions surface in later crises. The monastery, Shenoute argued, was a community, a congregation, of monks who were headed by God; Shenoute alternatively referred to the whole monastery as one congregation, or as a group of congregations, apparently indicating the various buildings that made up _ the monastery. These were “God’s holy places, his congregations.”*° As such, they belonged to God, not to any person, and God was to take care of the monks who lived within them: “For these congregations belong to God, not to people. Also, God is perfectly capable of exercising care over whatever thing, or things, have to be done among us.”*’ In Shenoute’s scheme, it did not matter whether he or another human being was archimandrite; God was still the head of the monastery.** His portrayal of

60 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

God’s leadership of the monastery again reflects its ideology as an earthly version of

the heavenly realm.

This metaphor of the monastery as God’s holy place also led Shenoute to argue that the monastery was to be a pure place that would allow God to reside there (just as God and his angels reside in heaven): “How could the purity of the blessed Lord God not remain in his holy places that span from one end of the earth to the other?” Any pollutions would make the monastery uninhabitable by God. Moreover, Shenoute asserted that God would make sure that the congregations remained pure by imposing purity upon it: “God, according to what is written, will spread his purity, or his purification, upon those whom he finds to be beloved, at any time in virginity, and modesty, and any righteous thing in his congregations everywhere.”*° However, in cases where the monks’ actions have polluted the monastery, Shenoute did not believe that God would abandon the monks, both because of God’s own mercy and for the sake of those monks who remained faithful: “Grace does not belong to you, you deceitful people, for God did not remove himself from his holy places because of your abominable deeds, but it [grace] belongs to his mercies and to the faithful brethren who dwell among us.”*! Despite these reassurances, Shenoute still thought it best to

avoid pollutions altogether; such purity was attainable, in Shenoute’s thought, through obedience to a leader trusted by God, that is, Shenoute. Further rhetorical support of Shenoute’s status, as we shall see later, comes from the condition of Shenoute’s body, healthy or ill, as a reflection of the purity or pollution of the

monastery. ,

Throughout the rest of his tenure, Shenoute repeated the key themes of his discourse that we saw in the Initial Crisis. He continued to claim that he gave proper in-

terpretation of Scripture: “What would I do, or what can I do, except these things? I do not see any other option except that I teach according to what I believe from the Scriptures, lest | wound or hurt someone.” He chastised any of the monks who did not accept his letters as divinely inspired, like Scripture; alienation from the community and hostility would come upon these monks “for they did not believe what was said in another letter even though the written word of God says it.”*? He continued to assert that the rules for the monastery came from God, and that anyone who did not obey the ordinances was an enemy: “And even though I gather together with the entire congregation in everything in every way, in every pattern and every ordinance from God, | am an enemy to those people who did not listen to, or to those who will not obey, the sayings and the ordinances which God commanded in his congregations.”°** He also contended that God, not other humans, instructed him about his sins.°? An implication of this claim was that his ability to instruct the monks about their sins had a divine basis. In his description, God continued to be Shenoute’s ally in all his actions and sayings toward the monks: “It is God who bears witness to me as I tell you that I did not act in this way without command.”** Shenoute thus sought to convince his monks that obeying him was the equivalent of obeying God. In one instruction to the monks, Shenoute maintained that God was the companion only of those who obeyed Shenoute and led the life he advocated. Otherwise he sarcastically notes, “Let God be with you, if he is the companion of thieves or doers of deceit among you, whether male or female, if they have not distanced themselves from their

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power 6]

sins thus far.”®? Shenoute’s discourse persisted in creating a distance between the monks as a group and God and Shenoute as their superiors. Also consistent in these later crises was Shenoute’s claim to knowledge of God’s evaluation for eventual salvation as the basis for his current authority over the monks as their judge. With regard to reporting disobediences to him, Shenoute instructed the monks that they would not be able to lie to God at his judgment as they lied to him.°*8 On one occasion, Shenoute used threats of God’s condemnation to compel the monks to confess their misdeeds to him, that is, to compel them to accept the authority of his judgment: “If you do not get reproach, you deceitful people, on the day of judgment, and if your holy brethren do not get approval in that place, then I, whom you consider to be drunk (or who was drunk) from the bitter pain, have not said any instructions to you.””? The transgressors were “deceitful” because they were hiding their sins, rather then reporting them to Shenoute for correction.” As in the Initial Crisis, not only did this use of apocalyptic language support Shenoute’s authority, but it was meant as a moral guide for the monks. Shenoute wanted to remind the monks always to think of their future salvation, and to allow that goal to shape their current actions (in obedience to him) and their current self-understanding as monks (subservient to Shenoute, their guide to salvation). In addition to these many similarities, however, there are two new characteristics in Shenoute’s discourse about the later crises and both these characteristics are connected to two topics that were only hinted at in the Initial Crisis: corporal punishment and expulsion. First, Shenoute at times had to make strenuous arguments for instances when forgiveness was no longer an option for errant monks, but corporal punishment or expulsion had to be used. Second, he at times had to make a clear distinction between himself and God, even while arguing that God was the instigator for the punishments of beatings and expulsion. In terms of the former issue, punishment over forgiveness, Shenoute used beatings as one means to correct the monks’ behavior and to provide them with the opportunity to do penance for their sins. Various types of behavior could lead to corporal punishment, and the beatings themselves could be severe, involving reeds, straps, rods, and a great amount of physical pain. In the crisis over the Death of a Male Monk (Crisis 6), at least some monks apparently proposed that forgiveness would be preferable to beatings or expulsion. Shenoute, although he rejected the monks’ position, seems to have been aware that these beatings were liable to seem incongruous with the life of love and companionship that his ideal promoted. Indeed, his leadership often included acts of forgiveness. Later in this same letter, for example, Shenoute urged some female monks to be forgiving of one another, in order to mitigate disputes and maintain the harmony of the monastery.°! Similarly, in the crisis over Gossip (Crisis 5), he wrote to a monk that she was to be forgiven one last time; she was at the same time punished by the male elder, apparently either by a demotion to living at the gatehouse instead of one of the women’s houses, or by a beating to be administered at the gatehouse.” Another time, in the crisis over The Beatings of the Women (Crisis 4), as described earlier, he absolved a monk named Tapolle from being beaten.® Thus, while beatings and expulsion were frequent, Shenoute was not so rigid that he could not allow forgiveness as another means to keep monks on the path to salvation.

62 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery , Yet, despite the death of the monk and his own pronouncements in favor of forgiveness as a hallmark of monastic life, Shenoute, in this crisis, emphasized the repetition of transgression as a reason to engage in corporal punishment and expulsion.” _ He warned that it was even worse to promise not to sin again and then still commit , the sin: “Those who return swiftly to the sin which they renounced are impure before ~ God. And they are all the more impure if they desire to return to the sin which they. renounced and they commit it again after promising not to do it, or not to return to — it.”© For the repetition of sins, he used a colorful biblical image: “The dog is impure in your eyes if he returns to his vomit and eats it right away without delay. But he is even more impure if he returns to it and eats it after it putrefies, and stinks and has

worms in it.”°° Moreover, he looked to God for support of punishment over forgiveness. He maintained that the beatings were God’s answer to repeated disobedience to _ the way of life God had already revealed to the monks, through Shenoute: “It is God | who causes or ordains that I do everything in your community in a disturbing, angry, wrathful manner, throwing impudent people down as though I were a wrestler, to

punish them.”®’ Shenoute also answered the objection that in favoring punishment, , he, as archimandrite, was acting without God: “Aren’t you forced to admit as a result

of the ransom that you have obtained by these actions or tortures that I have not dared to do any deed or say anything in your community without [the participation

| of] God—from a blow of the rod to a rebuke or curses or, otherwise, scraping with my , hand or foot?” He argued for God’s role in these actions in order to defend hisown authority in carrying them out, which had then caused controversy in the mon_astery.© As archimandrite, Shenoute had the authority to use corporal punishment, but the level of resistance and argument suggests that his power was not fully estab-

lished to do so, or at least not to the extent he used the beatings. a | | In addition, in another crisis (9), Shenoute had to defend an apparently excessive use of expulsion. The unity of the monastery, and the shared responsibility for trans-

gressions, meant there was the possibility that the presence of wrongdoers could divert other monks away from the right path; the “bitterness” of the sins would rob sweet things of their sweetness.”° Shenoute believed that God’s anger was not always limited to the sinners themselves but could encompass the community that tolerated them. Obedient monks could lose their salvation if they did not punish wrongdoers: “For just as a judgment and blood and even mourning are upon me whenever I become alienated from you, beloved, so also there is a judgment and blood upon me whenever I make myself a companion to those who do, or who will do, pestilent deeds

among us.””! Shenoute justified expulsions based on this theological argument, as Pa- | ~ chomius had done.” Shenoute’s leadership never lost sight of its ultimate goal, salvation for as many as possible. It was the essence of communal living that the actions of an individual affected not only her salvation but also those around her. — ‘The second new aspect of Shenoute’s discourse was a need to distinguish between himself and God in acting as head of the monastery. Although Shenoute routinely ar~ gued that God was the instigator of the actions Shenoute undertook, there were times when Shenoute mitigated this alliance to create a distance between God and himself. —

The need for this distinction was especially acute in the crisis over charges of Exces- , , sive Leadership (Crisis 9), where one element of his excessiveness was apparently his extreme rhetoric making God the actor for deeds Shenoute performed. Shenoute de-

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power 63

fended his leadership by distinguishing between what the monks should do for him, and what could be done by God later. Shenoute did not allow deeds to be kept concealed from him, because eventually all deeds would be called into account by God. However, unlike God, Shenoute could not know about unreported deeds: Truly, if the ones who do, or will do pestilent things within these congregations escape me so that I do not behave towards them as befits their deeds (for I cannot behave in this

way, because [ cannot know the secrets of their evils which they do in the dark)... [God] uncovered the secrets of the congregations, since the congregations were not able to hide from God, though they could hide from people.”

Shenoute was still the judge over the women in the current time but not so much that he was indistinguishable from God. Shenoute argued that, even though monks might be able to hide their transgressions from him to avoid expulsion, God would eventually uncover these deeds: “But if our sins, though hidden from people, are obvious to God, then he will uncover, through many methods and many manners, our abominations and our pollutions and every false thing which we do, or will do, in these con-

, eregations at that time.”’* Shenoute was careful to claim that he did not have access to secret knowledge because he could not be perceived as claiming to be divine: “Let them be cursed in the eyes of God and humankind, because they have said, ‘I know which ones of us are sinning’—a thing which I never said, not even about others.”” Shenoute had authority over the women, and the power to force them to confess their sins, but, in his hierarchy, his was not as great as the authority and power God would have. Moreover, his punishments now were less than the punishment such actions would receive from God: “Then what will people do to you, if they catch you in your abominations, or what can they bring upon you more than that which God will do to you, or that which he will bring upon you, whether now you are impure people (along

with the one through whom you do all impurities, Satan) or holy brethren (along with the one through whom they do every righteous thing and every holy thing, Jesus).””6 God then was the final judge, but Shenoute claimed to be best able of all the monks to know what was necessary to do in this life to earn God’s favorable judgment when the time came. Confusion as to whether Shenoute attributed divine characteristics, such as omniscience, to himself could have arisen because there are points in his discourse when he seems to claim to know when people are sinning, even if others did not. For example, when he describes the transgressions of the ten women mentioned in Canon 4, in most cases he knows the woman’s error because it was reported to him. In two cases, however, Shenoute merely notes, “And I know what deed caused the beatings to be given to her.””? Confusion also could have arisen because Shenoute often argued for no distinction between himself and God in the exercise of the more controversial disciplinary actions of corporal punishment and expulsion. Shenoute’s discourse extended his authority beyond dominion over the monks’ lives to include their very bodies because those bodies were connected to God: “You are sufficient, you who destroy the work of God’s hands, which means your bodies, by pollutions and every abominable thing.””* In the letter responding to the crisis, Jealousy among the Women (Crisis 7),

Shenoute claimed that it was not he who expelled monks from the community, but rather God: “Oh, what a great grief! Indeed, what a great pain! That God cast forth

64 — Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery from his congregations the ones who were caught doing abominations among us.”” - According to Shenoute’s argument, God protected the purity of his community by

expelling those who polluted it, especially through their disagreements with Shenoute. Those who were of a single mind with Shenoute were able to resist “the anger and the pain which God brings, or which he will bring, upon those whom he expels, or will expel, from the community at every appropriate time because of their pollutions and their thefts and their disobedience and all their other evils.”°° At _ times, Shenoute admitted that it was he who expelled monks, but he declared that he did so only to protect the rest of the monks from the anger of God and to secure their “benefit,” that is, their salvation: “So for this reason I am hastening to pursue doers of pestilent deeds at that time, to cast them forth now from our community so that we might escape his (God’s) anger and we might receive benefit.”*! Shenoute both de-. scribed God as, and apparently believed God was, an active member of the monastic community, whose actions were those which Shenoute merely carried out. So too it is clear that several of Shenoute’s defenses of corporal punishment as

appropriate (earlier) depended on God being the instigator of the punishment. Nowhere is this more clear than in his defense in the Death of the Male Monk (Crisis 6), in which he claims that it was not he who beat the monk but God. When Shenoute defended himself against the accusation of excessive beating, he turned it into a defense of God: “God was not angry with him, nor did he kill him, because he had done wrong or sinned more than the rest of us, or lied more than any among you, but because the days of his life were complete. If God killed him in anger, then why did he not kill us who have sinned more than |he]?”®* Not only did Shenoute portray himself as at least acting in concert with God, if not actually as a puppet performing actions controlled by God, but he also claimed that his authority over corporal punishment was exclusive because of his exclusive knowledge. Others were not allowed to mete out corporal punishment because others did not, in Shenoute’s opinion, have the same relationship with God as he had, and so could not be certain that they were

acting correctly: — |

I do not permit any person in the community (or indeed other people in other places) , to strike people in my name, or based on the essence of the instructions which are in the | Rule that was written for us, lest one of us do difficult deeds within the community judiciously and as a command from God, but another, or others, seek to do them without

~ counsel or command from God.

The central tenet of Shenoute’s leadership was that he always acted with God, either | carrying out God’s will or revealing God’s commands. This correspondence between

~ Shenoute and God was also his justification for expelling monks who had not cor-

rected their behavior even after being beaten for their transgressions. | Shenoute had a further defense of his actions in beating and expelling monks, namely that he had to obey God’s will for the monastery, even when he found his own actions unseemly. This defense differed from his others in that it emphasized difference and disparity between God and Shenoute, rather than alliance. Asa result, it al-

| lowed him to portray himself as suffering in his obedience to God. Shenoute often

claimed that he was reluctant to mete out corporal punishment, describing these _ | beatings as “difficult deeds.” He only ordered them through obedience to God;

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power 65

“Moreover it is he [God] who causes or ordains that I be satisfied doing these deeds in

this manner and that I entreat the most high to give mea little patience and gentleness through the prayers of everyone who is in the community, whether male or female, who desires peace and goodness for their poor wretched brother [Shenoute].”* Although Shenoute did want to carry out these deeds, he did not blame God for having to do so but faulted the errant monks themselves: “For still another sin of yours is upon you: that you compel me to speak words and to do deeds contrary to my will.”® Shenoute laid blame for his harsh deeds on the monks’ wrongful actions and represented himself as being tested by God to make sure that Shenoute was an effective leader who guarded his monks’ salvation: “Just so if | am impelled by those who do, or did, improper things in the community to do difficult deeds, and moreover God tested me to see if I would do them, then woe to me if I did not do them! And if I do not do them, how is it that I can continue [as leader]?”*° In Shenoute’s presentation, one motivation for the monks to obey Shenoute was to relieve him of the burden of harsh

| leadership.*

In Shenoute’s self-portrayal, his obedience enhanced his authority in two ways: that the object of his obedience was God, and that his obedience made him an example for his monks to follow. Just as Shenoute was obedient to God, even in difficult deeds, so the monks should obey God’s spokesperson, no matter how difficult. At the same time that his obedience led to his identification with the monks, his description also supported his power by making him a model for the monks. Shenoute obeyed God, as he would obey neither civic powers nor the pleas of the monks in his care: “A king along with his soldiers would not be able to force me to do difficult deeds among you if God has not commanded me to do all of them. Therefore a multitude will not be able to force me to do them. If I obey you rather than the will of God, so as not to do them or to do them, sweetness will turn to bitterness, peace to enmity, love to hate, and intelligence to ignorance.”*® Shenoute justified the monks’ suffering through

beatings by comparing it to the suffering that God brought upon all humanity, monks | and laypeople, when angered.®? However, his own suffering was even greater. He ar-

gued that, because he needed to be obedient to God by carrying out the “difficult deeds,” he was in fact suffering in his leadership and so deserved more pity than those

who were to be beaten: “And if you pity yourself and others because I do difficult deeds in the community so many times, then have pity on me since God has commanded me, who said I stood in your midst so that I was fatigued on every side and weary to my bones.””° The monks had brought the beatings upon themselves through their own actions, whereas Shenoute was suffering only because he was fulfilling God’s will. His power over the monks led to his greater suffering by comparison, which in turn proved that he was able to be the leader the monks needed to guide them to salvation. In these later crises, Shenoute repeated the controlling image of his status as prophet for his rhetoric of dominance. However, for more controversial topics such as corporal punishment and expulsion, he had to modulate his claims to power, to argue for a “power-to,” for the right to carry out his actions, rather than just a “powerover”, merely an assertion to that right. His self-presentation in these cases was not limited to his claims to power over the monks but also identified him as a monk himself, in need of obeying God’s will even over and against his own. He identified with

66 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

the suffering such disciplinary actions created by describing the suffering he underwent to carry them out. This one aspect of Shenoute’s suffering allowed him to connect with the monks on an experiential level, even while supporting his authority. Shenoute’s overall rhetoric of suffering is more complex, however, because as head of the monastery he suffered in a number of ways. Not all these ways were meant to help him identify with the monks in order to quell controversy, but all combined humility

with authority. 7

Shenoute’s Rhetoric of Suffering There are three ways Shenoute presented himself as suffering, and all are rhetorically connected to his claims for ultimate authority in the monastery: through the renunciation of power to identify with the monks, through descriptions of the monastery as a suffering body, and by identifying himself as a suffering servant, in the same lineage as the prophets, apostles, and saints from the past. We have already seen examples of the first type, when Shenoute’s suffering resulted from obedience to a higher author-

ity. Similarly, Shenoute often referred to himself in his letters to women as their “wretched brother,” their “least brother,” or a “wretched servant.”’! These phrases suggest a renunciation of the office of head of the monastery in favor of a position equal to that of the women (that he is their brother rather than their father) and the accompanying description as wretched affirms his suffering and his lowly state. These self-references are a form of rejection of authority; Shenoute appeals to his similar sta-

tus, rather than to his institutional authority, as the justification for his commandments to the women. As often is the case in monasticism, his renunciation leads to greater expressions of power.”” This self-representation worked to enhance his power,

since it identified him as the greatest embodiment of the ascetic values of humility and renunciation, even as it provided means of connection with others who shared those values. The other two ways Shenoute’s rhetoric of suffering functioned— through the tropes of a suffering body and a suffering servant—have, however, less to do with identification and more to do with establishing authority. The Suffering Body

Shenoute’s presentation of the monastery, its functioning, and the results of transgression repeatedly used the image of the body. We saw in the monastic oath (chapter 1) that the body symbolized the monastic community; its purity reflected the community’s purity, and it was the focus of punishment for transgression. Shenoute also described the monastery as a single body, a controlling metaphor that united the monks together into mutual accountability. This trope, not unique to Shenoute, has its Christian roots in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. There Paul, as Dale Martin has argued, uses the tropes common to a speech of reconciliation, including likening the polis (or Christian community or, here, Christian monastery) to the body and describing any discord in that community in terms of disease.?? So too, Shenoute described the result of transgressions of the monastic rules in terms of illness, though there are points in Shenoute’s rhetoric when it is unclear whether the resulting ill

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power 67

ness is “merely” a metaphor or an actual illness. Since the individual’s body was also part of the monastic body, individual illness could spread. Once the monastic body was afflicted with (metaphorical) illness, there were two possible consequences: the community could be healed through proper penance or Shenoute’s body itself was afflicted with illness, which again seems to be just as “real” as metaphorical. In his descriptions, Shenoute made his own body the reflection of the community as a whole. Once again, Shenoute’s suffering, previously a result of fulfilling God’s commands, but here as a result of illness, derived from being head of the monastery. The monks’ individual illnesses were a result of their own wrongdoing; Shenoute’s was an innocent suffering on behalf of the wrongdoing of others. Just as other Christian leaders, starting with Paul, saw the Church as one unified body, so Shenoute regarded his monastery. The monks were not simply a community but members of one body, of which Christ was also a part: “We and you are limbs to our companions and we form a single body in our Lord Jesus Christ.”°* As scholars have shown in the case of | Corinthians, the trope of the body was common in letters urging concord and reconciliation.” Its appearance in Shenoute’s letters, which are similar in genre and ideology to 1 Corinthians, is unsurprising yet has a particular function arising from the circumstances of this Christian community of the White Monastery. Shenoute presented his physically divided communities, male and female, with the controlling metaphor of a single body in order to unite the disparate monks. Implicit in his corporeal metaphor was that a body only has one head; so like-

, wise the White Monastery was to have only one supreme authority. In his corporeal metaphors, Shenoute also used the Pauline idea that different members of the community could have different functions, but all be parts of the same body and hence united. He required that the monks always be of a single mind, or a single heart, with him, again a Pauline trope borrowed from the standard rhetoric for

homonoia: “We, meaning those who are of one mind with me and I with them, whether male or female, will fight against the anger and the pain that God brings, or will bring, upon those whom he throws out of the community.”*° Moreover, Shenoute

maintained that only through being of a single heart with one another could the monks be certain that Jesus would be willing to join his heart with theirs.°’ Being of a single mind and heart meant, to Shenoute, a complete absence of conflict and complete obedience to his rules and his instructions. He used body imagery to describe disobedience to these rules as well. The single body could become infected by illness, or transgression, from any one of its parts; as a united corporate being, every part was at the mercy of the others. Here Shenoute’s use of body imagery and illness as a metaphor becomes quite complex. As the single body, the monastery needed to be healed of the transgressions of its member. However, the monks’ bodies also became symbols of the monastery was a whole; Shenoute described them as affected with illness that represented a community gone awry.’ The difference in Shenoute’s descriptions of bodily illness depended on whose transgressions had caused the illness, one’s

| own or those of others. The monks’ “illness” was an indication of their own transgressions. Shenoute addressed the transgressors as a people suffering from an illness but unwilling to seek healing: “The person who lies about this illness, hiding it in himself, as it also moves against him, as it wounds him, and moreover as it ingests things which are harmful to

_ 68 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery him, does not lie to human beings, but to God, and gathers his destruction unto his own self.””? In addition to the monks’ own bodies, the monastic body could also be described as suffering illness because of the transgressions of its members. The metaphor of disease implied that the monastery was a single body because it coulddescribe the communal threat of one monk’s sin; illness was transmutable throughout the body of the monastery. It also suggested that there were methods of healing. To _ heal the body of its illness, physical penance was meted out in the form of corporal punishment of the transgressors. Physical suffering was necessary as a “healing” of the “body,” that is, of the monastery, from “illness,” that is, transgressions. In other words,

the beatings were enactments of the metaphors that defined the monastic life: “Therefore, since we are truly a single body, we ought to instruct our companions by scoldings and blows, not maliciously and with hatred, nor with the authority and arrogance of proud and boastful tyrants, as others have done, but with a love of God toward our companions, let us instruct each of us, whether male or female.”! Suffering, in turn, was the component that was essential to the cleansing process; thus it was essential to salvation. If the transgressors continued in their illness they had to be expelled because of the danger of the spread of their corruption spreading throughout the rest of the body. Although the suffering here described was not Shenoute’s,

his discourse makes clear that suffering was the element necessary to keep the monastery pure. It follows that whoever suffers the most would, in the context of this discourse, be the most pure and so be the logical choice to be head of the monastery.

| Not only was illness a trope for the transgressions in the community, but Shenoute | presented instances of illness, even his own, as God’s punishment of the monk’s body , for some error.'°! Shenoute threatened the monks who ate too much that illness would result from their transgression.!© He also made frequent references to (apparently real) sickness that he was suffering, a rhetorical device that had become increasing common in the discourse of the previous centuries.! When Shenoute de-

scribed the “wretched fleshes” of his body undergoing illness, or described the necessity of his suffering, he was ascribing to himself the same representations that hagiographers made ample use of in their descriptions of the physical illness of the bodies of the saints.!°* That this is a self-presentation, much like Perpetua’s accounts of her sickness and sufferings as the source of her power two centuries earlier, only

highlights the strength of the discourse in Shenoute’s and the monks’ selfunderstanding.'!® Moreover, Shenoute associated his own body’s suffering with the dysfunction of the larger community. In the midst of describing a continuing conflict

between groups of women, and the continued alienation of one group of female monks, Shenoute writes, “Oh, this great illness which I came upon, or which has come upon me! Jesus, Jesus, son of the exalted God, take this illness from my body, or from the body [i.e., the monastery].”!°° The monks needed to lend their support

| to Shenoute and implicitly support his power to fight the illness that he, and the - monastery, were suffering.! It is part of Shenoute’s discourse of monastic power that _ his body represents the community of the monastery. When conflicts occur, he must

- undergo the corresponding suffering, as represented by his illness. If unchecked, the | illness caused by other monks attacked Shenoute himself: “Oh, my physical body and

my wretched flesh, which has come upon this illness, or rather which this illness en- , tered and descended upon and which is so fearful because it is also spreading to the

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power 69

limbs which are pure of it [i-e., illness].”!°° Shenoute’s suffering in this illness was not due to his own transgressions, but rather was on behalf of others. In so representing his illness, Shenoute linked his leadership and his suffering into one.

The Suffering Servant

Shenoute’s rhetoric of suffering depicted him as the greatest monk of the monastery. Not only did he undergo a level of suffering in illness that the rest of the monks did not, but his service to the monastery, in the form of his leadership, also caused him suffering. Here, however, Shenoute describes an emotional suffering, rather than a physical suffering of illness. We have already seen one portion of Shenoute’s selfpresentation as a suffering servant: the suffering he endured by obeying God’s requirements of corporal punishment and expulsion to maintain a pure community. This aspect of Shenoute’s rhetoric of suffering served a paradoxical purpose of both identification with the monks and support for his authority as head monk. Other portraits of his own suffering served less to identify with his fellow monks and more to prove his superiority over the other monks, who did not suffer as he did. On these occasions, Shenoute’s suffering was a result of his monastic service as guide to salvation: because he knew the true path, he was pained when others veered from it. Shenoute was in these descriptions a suffering servant, cast in the mold of others of God’s agents who had also suffered in their service to God. Late antiquity was a time when the holy person was increasingly a model for other Christians. Shenoute’s rhetoric proposed a view of history “as containing a sequence of exemplars.”'® Throughout Shenoute’s discourse, Christ, the prophets, apostles, and all the saints provide a pattern for a life that led to blessings from God.!!° These people had accepted suffering as part of their obedience to God and they lived as servants to God and to humanity.''! For his definition of the nature of monastic life, Shenoute emphasized these two characteristics of suffering and service: “What is the pattern that the prophets and apostles provide, but to beg to suffer with others even unto death? And in all these things they give thanks to the Lord.”!!? Another part of the suffering was the willingness to be a servant to one’s companions: “But let us be servants to one another, like Jesus, who took the form of a servant for us, and like Paul, the servant of Jesus, and like all the apostles and prophets who were servants to the Lord and his Christ, according to the Scriptures.”'!? For both qualities, Christ’s taking the form of a servant and his suffering on the cross provided the inspiration: “And so we remember the sufferings of all the saints, and we consider how our Lord Jesus despised shame as he remained steadfast on the cross for all our salvation, because he is our savior, our Lord and our father.”'!* The pattern that Christ set was discernible in the lives of figures from the Hebrew Scriptures—the prophets—and was imitated by Jesus’s followers, the apostles. Shenoute states explicitly that these people provided a pattern for the life of the monks: Which wise brothers will not follow the pattern of their faithful brethren who are superior in rank to them? This means: which wise people will not wish to do the works which their ancestors who are in heaven did; this means God and our Lord Jesus? Moreover, they follow the pattern of the prophets and the pattern of Paul, and all the apostles who

— 70 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery oO said, “Follow our pattern, our ordinances, our faith, our patience, our love, our endurance, our persecutions, our sufferings”; then also, “We gave ourselves to you as a pattern [to follow]”; and also, “Receive, my brethren, the pattern of the suffering and pa-

tience of the prophets.”!° i

ity in Christianity. — _

Shenoute used these figures as exemplars because of their already-established author-

In addition to being models, Shenoute made the figures of the prophets and apostles “our ancient ancestors.” This lineage created channels of authority leading from

the ancestors to their proper successors.!!° Since Shenoute created a portrait in which | he clearly mimicked the behavior of the models he claimed as ancestors, he created a genealogy that granted him the authority of the prophets and apostles. I will explore in more detail in chapter 7 Shenoute’s use of familial language to shape monastic

identity. Here it is sufficient to note two examples in which he makes implicit connections between the model ancestors and himself. First, in his justification for corporal punishment, he imagines that the biblical fathers beat their children, although — it was not recorded in the Scriptures.!!” In another argument, Shenoute appeals to ac~ counts of holy people in Scripture in favor of his assertion that monks should love all Christians, not simply one’s kin: “So that truly we shall be like the sons of Abraham and the sons of all our ancient ancestors, whom the Lord blessed because they not only loved their own sons and daughters and all their relatives, but they also loved , everyone who believed in God and who guarded God’s commandments.”!!®

~ Shenoute also created a link between himself and the ancestors by stressing ac- , | tions within his leadership that made him seem like the ancestors. The suffering and humility that these holy figures exemplified were recurring characteristics in Shenoute’s descriptions of his leadership of the women. By describing himself in terms similar to those that he used to describe the monastic role models, Shenoute implicitly argued for his own status as exemplar as well. Shenoute employed a rhetoric of ~ both humility and pain to establish his authority as a suffering servant. One engendered the other: because Shenoute was in the service of God as head of the monastery, he suffered; and his suffering for other monks showed his authority as head of the monastery, a position Shenoute, on these occasions, was careful not to portray as -_- powerful, but as servitude. In the arguments he used in the letters of the Initial Crisis,

he provided descriptions of his own suffering to prove his commitment to the , women’s salvation; likewise, his perception of the women’s lack of suffering suggested to him their lack of concern about their salvation. His position is not of leader, how-

ever, but of “wretched brother”: These things I say weeping, even as I have wept many times before and still do now. ... our little brother, the scribe, is troubled and he too weeps, because he sees me weep, as

my tears flow over my cheeks and [fall] down upon the ground. . . . but I tell you that I, , | your wretched brother, am sick at heart, and I have pity on you. But you are not sick at , heart over what you have done, nor do you pity yourselves, o wretched ones. . . . I tell you | often weep until I can no longer, because [am so sick at heart.

| He used this same rhetorical strategy elsewhere as well: “If I am pained (for I am pained, and there are others who are pained with me, because of the people who did | diabolical deeds within the community) . . .”.!"° The women’s transgressions did not

Shenoute’s Discourse of Monastic Power 7!

just cause him pain. They also forced him to speak to them harshly, which caused him still more pain: “Now, if you have been depressed because I said these things to you, know yourselves that it was in much anguish that | said them.”"”! His pain was greater than the women’s, again placing him above them in this ascetic contest. After hearing his letters, the female monks could not fail to notice the similarities between authoritative biblical heroes and their leader’s own suffering. In the conflict over Excessive Leadership (9), he expressed his suffering to humble himself before the two seamstresses who had been hurt by the cloak’s condition: My heart is crushed and it was crushed on account of the pain which evidently showed in your faces—you the elder and Tapolle—as though you had been struck. For you are at a loss and you were at a loss, very painfully; you are mourning and you have mourned; and your hearts are disturbed about something that is both clear to you and hidden from

you. |” ,

By expressing his wretchedness and his willingness to endure it, Shenoute presented himself to his audience of female monks as if he were a prophet of old. Shenoute’s appeals to the similarities between himself and figures of unquestionable biblical authority allowed him to appropriate the authority of his models. His rhetoric gave him the qualifications that were necessary to be the head of the monastery: he followed the pattern set by Paul, the prophets and apostles, and even Christ. Also noteworthy is Shenoute’s self-professed claim for placement among biblical figures, rather than a patient assumption that it would be assigned to him by posterity. The rhetoric of the suffering servant, based on the model of Christ and the apostles, pervaded monastic literature and created a source of authority for monastic leaders. Shenoute’s use of a rhetoric of suffering, both in body and as a servant, created that part of his discourse of monastic power that supported his “power-to”; that is, his

own suffering was meant to convince his followers that he had the ability to transform them into saved beings. It was not sufficient in monastic leadership simply to have dominion, even based on knowledge of salvation, but one also had to have the ability to be a monk, according to accepted definitions of monasticism, in order to be a persuasive leader. Shenoute portrayed his monastic ability in his depictions of the sufferings he underwent.

Conclusion The monastery was supposed to be a divinely led community, devoted to a life of obedient suffering in order to achieve salvation. Shenoute argued that he should have total authority in both the male and female communities because only he had access to God’s revelations about the deeds necessary for salvation. Shenoute based his claims on a variety of arguments, all of which were designed to convince his followers that he was like an Old Testament prophet: inspired and guided by God, totally obedient,

accepting of suffering, humble and yet authoritative in his leadership. Moreover, Shenoute’s extension of his authority to include the women’s community was an innovation that altered the structure of the monastery. His presentation of his authority, then, in part was a defense of the changes he was making.

a 72 — Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

The question that arises from examination of Shenoute’s frequent claims is whether the women accepted his authority, and if not, how were they able to resist?

_ What sources of power might they have had outside the authority structures that ren- , , dered them subservient to Shenoute? The answer lies in the physical makeup of the monastery. The concept of the monastery as one united body was in conflict with the physical separation of the men’s and women’s communities; although Shenoute tried — to bridge the distance through monastic theology and the use of male elders as en-

-voys, the reality of his power rested on the women’s cooperation. The space between | them awarded power to the women, despite Shenoute’s attempts to the contrary. Finally, Shenoute ordered the women’s compliance to his commandments not only out of concern for his own authority but for the sake of the monks’ salvation. One imagines that the monks were as concerned with their own salvation as was Shenoute; —

chapter 4. | | a , |

_ however, they were not as compliant with Shenoute’s vision of the monastic life, nor as accepting of his authority, as he would have liked. Their resistance is the subject of

Acceptance and Resistance The Women’s Power

Shenoute’s arguments throughout his letters to the women were not stated in a vacuum but in response to specific situations in the women’s communities, including the reaction of some women to his leadership and the decisions he made. These reactions can be divided into the general categories of resistance and acceptance, and each provided various groups of women in their community with the opportunity to create their own power. Again, the difference between power and authority has heuristic value for understanding Shenoute’s descriptions of the women’s actions. Shenoute determined the authority women had in their various ranks as part of the overall authority structures of the monastery: there was a female elder who oversaw the community; there were a number of “elders” who were of senior rank; there were “mothers” of the various houses; and there were junior monks. Each rank oversaw the rank(s) below them. All the women were subject to Shenoute’s authority, either in

the form of his person or letters or in the proxy form of the male envoy sent by Shenoute. Yet beyond this authority, some women could use a variety of means to create their own power: separation from Shenoute, secrecy from him, and outright re-

bellion, along with male monks, characterize the opportunities available to them. The male envoy(s) from Shenoute gain an important role in these structures since he (they) represent(s) Shenoute’s attempt to limit the women’s access to the power created by their separation from him. Yet most discussion of the male envoy’s relationship to the female community will be left for chapter 5, since it engages with the specifically gendered aspects of the authority structures of the White Monastery. Here his role will be described, but without gender analysis. Evidence for cases of resistance to Shenoute’s authority is often limited to rejection by two (at times overlapping) groups: leaders in the female community and those 73

74 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery a female monks with kin in the male community.! These women’s opposition ranged from simple noncompliance, to more active disobedience, to occasional rebellion. Noncompliance entailed their refusal to follow Shenoute’s solutions to their conflicts, whereas disobedience entailed direct action to limit Shenoute’s authority in their community by countering his power with their own. This disobedience, more than noncompliance, suggests that the women valued and protected their own authority. _ While we cannot access the women’s motivation in the sources we have, Shenoute’s descriptions of their actions suggest a desire on their part to maintain the status quo of Shenoute’s predecessors, when the women had greater control in their community without interference by the male head of the monastery. Rebellion, however, seems to have occurred only when at least some women joined with male monks in questioning Shenoute’s decisions and his authority and so shows the limits of the role of gender in analyses of resistance and acceptance. The two occasions rebellion is recorded in the letters to women occur when the whole community, both male and fe-

male, seems to be the audience of the letter. Thus, on these occasions, the women must have joined a monastery-wide rebellion, based on issues affecting both male and female monks, rather than seceding their female community from the monastery. Despite the number and severity of the Initial Crisis and later conflicts, overall the women accepted the administrative authority of Shenoute’s position as head of the

monastery and at times used his authority to gain power in their internal struggles. Whichever group of female monks, or at times an individual monk, Shenoute favored in a conflict had an advantage over their opponents within the female community. However, it remains questionable whether this type of acceptance implies that the women also accepted Shenoute’s own portrayal of his power and his relationship with God (as outlined in chapter 3). That the women came to understand that Shenoute was going to be a constant presence in their lives, for example, does not necessarily mean they accepted all his actions as God-driven. For a model of a monk who chose to describe Shenoute much as Shenoute described himself, we may look to Besa, Shenoute’s successor as head of the White Monastery and author of his hagiography.

| A Model of Acceptance: Besa’s Life of Shenoute > Besa’s Life of Shenoute provides two types of evidence that add to our knowledge of the —

development of Egyptian monasticism.’ It supplies historical information about Shenoute’s life, such as when he joined the monastery, that Pcol was his uncle, that he attended the Council of Ephesus in 431, and so forth.* However, as a hagiography,

it also provides insight into the way Shenoute was perceived by his nearcontemporaries in late antiquity. It presents a “narrative world” that reflects the cul-

ture of the time, rather than just providing information about the historical person , who is its subject.* For the overall purposes of this study, both types of information are

useful. The “real Shenoute” was the person who wrote the letters to the female monks, and who determined much of their life. At the same time, our only access to the “real Shenoute”—through his own constructed discourse of who he is—is necessarily suspect. We are fortunate, then, that Shenoute’s immediate successor wrote the hagiography, rather than a much later, or even a non-monastic, figure. As a result, we

Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power 75

letters. ,

have access to the way his monks, such as Besa and others, might have viewed him, a view that, albeit hagiographical, expands the self-presentation of Shenoute’s own Besa’s account of Shenoute’s leadership emphasizes many of the same qualities that Shenoute used to describe himself in his letters to women, and thus it provides an. effective bridge between my investigation of Shenoute’s self-portrayal and the women’s response to his leadership. In particular, Besa portrays Shenoute as having a close and trusted relationship with God, which granted him special status in the human world. He presents Shenoute as the perfect monk and as the perfect monastic leader owing to his ability to show his followers the true path through his example, his instruction, and his “great and incredible signs, just like those of the holy prophets and apostles of the Lord.”® The similarity between Besa’s description and Shenoute’s

self-presentation during the course of his leadership attests to the success of Shenoute’s rhetoric. His hagiography therefore serves as a model of acceptance of that presentation that provides a needed balance to the other genre of evidence: letters addressing periods of conflict, which focus on resistance rather than acceptance. According to Besa, Shenoute’s relationship with God began early in life and was the reason he joined the White Monastery. Besa portrays the seven-year-old Shenoute as a boy with mystical powers that led his parents to place him in the care of his uncle Pcol.® It is noteworthy that Besa, as narrator, did not present the young Shenoute’s abilities as strange or surprising, but merely as signs of his life’s destiny. The Life does not give details about Shenoute’s life as monk before his appointment as head of

the monastery, or the process of that appointment. Rather, the author assumes that Shenoute’s mystical abilities showed to all people the divine authority that was necessary for him to be head of the White Monastery, and this assumption shapes the hagiography accordingly. Besa’s descriptions of events during Shenoute’s leadership likewise serve to underscore his belief in Shenoute’s divinely ordained authority. Most notably, he gives accounts of Shenoute’s frequent conversations with the prophets, saints, apostles, and Jesus himself that are meant to inform the audience of Shenoute’s close relationship with them. Besa does not know, nor does he think that it is of consequence, whether the conversations happened as visions or in the flesh.’ He intends only to suggest that Shenoute had the same status as those with whom he conversed, with the possible exception of Jesus, one of his conversants. Besa makes clear that the conversations bestowed special authority on Shenoute by describing his own failure ever to see Jesus and only once being allowed to hear him.’ Since Besa believed that Shenoute’s au-

thority had a divine source, he does not express any wonder in his descriptions of Shenoute’s conversations with other holy figures to whom Shenoute was, at least in Besa’s eyes, similar. In Besa’s narrative world, there is no need for explicit assertion that Shenoute’s mystical conversations, and especially his ease in having them, sig-

nifies his divinely granted authority. , One aspect of Shenoute’s leadership that is most troubling to modern Western readers is its severity, in his rhetoric and in his extensive use of corporal punishment. Even in antiquity the monks were somewhat ambivalent about the extent of corporal punishment in the White Monastery. Besa, however, shows no concern about excessive severity in his accounts of sentences Shenoute handed to penitents. Most of

76 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery | Shenoute’s advice to sinners—to follow an ascetic life as penance, to seek God’s forgiveness, and so forth—was not unusually harsh in comparison to other contemporary ascetic leaders. For example, Shenoute advises a man seeking forgiveness for a ~ murder to follow a strict ascetic life; the narrative then describes him as gaining both forgiveness and salvation.? This man’s sentence may be lighter than the one in the following story because he does not recall his crime. Those stories that strike modern readers as unusual, even in comparison to contemporary accounts, did not necessarily seem unusual to Besa. One story, for example, tells of a man who had committed a murder and came to Shenoute for advice about

how to repent his crime: , And my righteous father, the prophet Apa Shenoute, said to him: “Do not stay in this place, but arise quickly and go into the city of Smin, where you will find the duke.'° He has come south down the river and is being greeted by his people. Some thieves who robbed an eminent man of the city of Smin will be handed over to him and he will be , incensed with them. You too must go and join the thieves, and they will say to the duke: ‘He is here with us.’ The duke will ask you: ‘Is it true?’ Say to him: ‘It is true,’ and he will therefore kill you with the others. You will then enter into the eternal life of God.” [16] The man left immediately and did just as the holy [Apa Shenoute] had told him, and the duke cut off his head with the rest of the thieves. In this way the mercy of God came upon him, just as my father told us."

The use of capital punishment for criminals was not unusual in antiquity, but here it was Shenoute who served as judge and sentencer of the murderer. Besa seems unconcerned with the severity of the sentence and emphasizes Shenoute’s authority over the man and his ability to lead him to salvation. While the Life lacks any account of monastic beatings, or of any monk’s death at Shenoute’s hands, Besa’s narrative world seems indifferent to a high level of violence as the source of sin and as a path to sal-

vation. , ,

Besa presents uniform praise and little analysis of Shenoute’s leadership. He does, however, provide hints that not all aspects of Shenoute’s leadership were met with his followers’ acceptance and enthusiasm. In one narrative, Besa makes passing mention of the possibility that Shenoute’s expectations of the monks could encounter some ambivalence, though he does not make clear whether the ambivalence was his own or that of others: “Once upon a time a brother erred in a matter—as a person, because

God alone is without sin—and our father Apa Shenoute threw him from the monastery in accordance with the canons.”!” Besa does not question Shenoute’s expulsion of the monk, yet his parenthetical comment reminds his audience of the lim-

its that human beings can achieve. This reminder may be a subtle judgment of Shenoute’s high expectations. Likewise, in several other stories Besa describes the monks as “grumbling” in a neutral enough tone to suggest that the monks had cause for complaint about Shenoute’s requirements of them. In each of these narratives, however, Shenoute is able to resolve the conflict and silence the monks’ grumblings, usually through recourse to some mystical ability.’ In Besa’s account, Shenoute thus convinces the monks both of his authority and of their need to follow him, since he

had their interests at heart all along.

Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power //

Like Shenoute’s conversations with prophets and apostles and his mystical abilities, Besa’s description of Shenoute as the perfect monk also indicates the legitimacy of his authority in the monastery. Shenoute, in Besa’s representation, had himself achieved the high level of asceticism that characterized his rule of life in the monastery.'* He had the character of a true ascetic. He was in a position of authority yet had true humility. He was severe towards wrongdoers yet had compassion for them and for the poor and disenfranchised.'* Shenoute is portrayed like other ascetic figures of his day, in his abilities and his extremes.'® For Besa, Shenoute’s “severity” is a

manifestation of his commitment and his strength, both of which were necessary qualities for a leader in Egypt in an unstable time—economically, religiously, and socially. Moreover, Besa accepts Shenoute’s own portrayal of himself as a leader who had personal contact with God, who gave him authority and guided him in his leadership; who was so much like a prophet that he conversed with biblical prophets; and whose decisions, even harsh ones, were to be followed since they would lead to salvation for all, even for the gravest sinners. Thus Besa portrays Shenoute in much the same manner as Shenoute portrayed himself when he defended his leadership to the women in the monastery. Whether the women also accepted this portrayal remains in question.

Hierarchy in the Women’s Community , In the White Monastery, there were three positions of leadership within the women’s community, just as there were in the male community: elder, mother (father), and house second.!”? Shenoute oversaw the women in their positions, and, since the authority structures were designed to uphold his supremacy as head of the monastery, his commands to these leaders in the female community reflect an expectation that

| they would participate as his subordinates and his champion to the other monks. That the female leaders at times used their positions of authority to create their own power, and promote their own definition of monasticism against Shenoute’s, is more a reflection of the fluidity of authority structures than a result of gender divisions. In addition, these female leaders had periods of conflict with each other, and with their underlings in the female community. Authority issues in the women’s community had as much to do with internal power struggles with each other as they did with struggles with Shenoute. Shenoute often located these internal conflicts in fleshly issues, such as personality differences and jealousy, but for the most part he did not locate them in gender, in terms of inherent female flaws (those occasions when he did use a misogynist rhetoric appear in chapter 5). Of the three positions of leadership, Shenoute does not mention that of house second in any of the surviving portions of his letters to the women." In contrast, he mentions the other two, female elder and mother, several times throughout the letters, especially the female elder. Shenoute’s use of the term “female elder” in reference to the female community is vague; at times he uses it in the plural (where the term loses its grammatical gender, since in Coptic the plural is gender-neutral), but more often in the singular.!? It seems that there were many women who held the rank, and the accompanying authority, of elder, but only one served as head of the female community,

78 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

whose title was indicated by the singular definite feminine article: “the female elder.” ~ For example, Shenoute only refers to one female elder in his codification of the rules for the monastery. Also, when he refers to the female elder in his letters, he never gives her name, thus suggesting that all listeners would know who was meant by the

simple title.2° Chronology presents another interpretative difficulty. Given that Shenoute never gives the proper name of the female elder, and assuming that these letters span.a long period of time, it is possible that not all references to the elder refer to the same woman. So when Tachom was arguing with “the female elder” in the Initial Crisis, that may not be the same -woman she assisted in the beatings mentioned in The Beatings of Women (Crisis 4). Likewise, the female elder and Tapolle were fight-

ing at one point, yet at another (either earlier or later) they were united in receiving © Shenoute’s defense of the care of his clothing. While such evidence is complicated by the lack of dates for the letters, it is still evident that there were changes in the relationships among the leaders of the women’s community on a seemingly regular basis. The women leaders had some power, apart from Shenoute and his (male)

envoys, to influence the lives of the female monks in their separate community. It is not surprising that there would be power struggles among them, some recorded by Shenoute and others surely not recorded and so lost. What is important for our understanding of the independent relationships among them is that at times these women resolved their own difficulties apart from Shenoute’s knowledge or control, while at other times they used Shenoute’s opinion to lend weight to their side in a

power struggle. ae a ,

The female elder’s primary duty to Shenoute was, like the male elder, to act as a messenger.”! She was to visit Shenoute, send female envoys, and report to him about the state of the women’s community; she could also send letters to Shenoute, though other women could as well.’? Her visits and letters can be seen, as] argue laterin this chapter, as a sign of her submission to Shenoute’s expansion of his authority into the women’s community. Yet I will also explore evidence of her refusal to submit entirely, her ability to follow her own judgment on occasion. The next highest position in the women’s community was the head of one of the individual houses, or mother. The mothers were apparently responsible for correcting the monks in their houses, only turning to higher authorities when the situation remained irresolvable. For example, the monk who wrote to Shenoute requesting a transfer had claimed that she could not get along with her current mother, Maria. Shenoute did not approve the transfer, which would have been to a house run by Theodora.” He refused in part because he did not think there was a legitimate reason for the transfer: “What is the thing which the good mother, Maria, did violently so that you want a transfer?”** If the monk could not avoid conflict with her current mother, Maria, he argued, what reason was there to suppose she would be at peace in Theodora’s house?”> The position of mother, like that of elder, was meant to help the monastery function in accordance with the ideal outlined in the monastic rule. In reality, the women who held these positions formed better relationships with some monks in their care, worse ones with others. Shenoute locates these differences in the flesh, as simply personality conflicts, and therefore as illegitimate influences on the monastic experience. While Shenoute supported Maria and Theodora in their positions as mother, one letter records a different type of evidence where Shenoute threatened the position of

Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power 79

a mother, Tachom. Tachom stepped out of the established authority structures first by arguing with Shenoute and then by refusing to accept one of Shenoute’s envoys. Her actions led Shenoute to question whether she was qualified to hold her leadership post: “If you do not admit that the man whom I sent you has the same authority as myself . . . then you have separated yourself from us.””° Shenoute’s authority structure

granted power from the top down: his approval gave the women their authority. These leaders would only continue to have legitimate authority, in Shenoute’s view, if they continued to be subservient to him as head of the monastery. At the same time, Shenoute’s letter implicitly acknowledges that while Tachom might be acting inappropriately for her position of authority, her support among the female monks gave

her the power to do so. |

Overall, then, Shenoute suggested that the most important quality of all the female leaders, just as for the male leaders, was complete agreement with Shenoute. On several occasions, Shenoute describes those who pleased him, or those with whom he wants to establish an alliance, in terms of their union with him. For example, “I and all those who wish my peace, that is, those who are of a single mind with me and me with them, whether male or female” describes those monks who fight against the transgressors in the monastery.”’ Later in this letter, Shenoute uses the same language to describe the female community as he wishes it were, should they be able to resolve their conflict: “You, the elder, and Tapolle, and the mothers who are with you and all those who are in agreement both with you and with us.”’® The female leaders had power within their own community, but in Shenoute’s view they still had a responsibility to uphold Shenoute’s authority, both by submitting to it themselves and by extending it over the monks in their care. It is the disparity between Shenoute’s ideal-

ized expectations and the reality that existed among the women that served as the

basis for many other conflicts. “It’s either you or I”: Acceptance and Resistance Shenoute’s leadership of the women had a rocky start. Although (as I will argue in chapters 5 and 8) only some women objected to Shenoute’s initial extension of his authority, the adversity of that period, evident in Shenoute’s description, reappears as a common theme to connect his accounts of the later periods of conflict, no matter who was (were) his opponent(s). I will begin, then, by returning to the Initial Crisis after Shenoute’s appointment, when he altered the relationship between the head of the monastery and the women’s community. As we have seen, whatever the situation was under Shenoute’s predecessors, the relationship between the two communities had apparently not included the presence of a male overseer in the female community, nor is there any record of regular communication between Shenoute’s predecessors and the women. Under Shenoute’s predecessors the women seem to have had a relationship with the male community that they found acceptable.”? Shenoute’s ageressive tactics in trying to extend his authority over the female community, in contrast, caused contention between them. He describes his three visits in terms of the “affliction which came upon us as | was talking to you.” During his second visit, Shenoute expelled some monks for transgressing the monastic rule, and he warned

80 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery , that any future transgressions would also result in expulsions. He speaks of the great suffering he endured because he visited the women, staying all night, even though he

was sick. The implication was that the pain he suffered on account of their transegressions was worse than the pain caused by his exacerbated illness. It also seems clear

that the women were not only sinning, but also arguing with Shenoute throughout these visits, a point he makes explicit in his description of his third visit: “And you yourselves spoke to us your own words, because of the temptation which came upon us and the afflictions which lay hold of us greatly because of our sins.” Shenoute apparently thought these arguments had been resolved through the oath that he and the women swore during his second visit, to uphold the monastic rules.

: _ Subsequent events, however, including some female monks’ questioning of Shenoute’s motivations in coming to see them and his legitimacy as a leader in their community, showed otherwise. As a result, Shenoute regarded himself as exiled from the female community and his future visits seem to have differed from these earlier ones. He now led the women from a distance, through letters and envoys rather than through frequent visits. As is often the case in Shenoute’s correspondence, the final resolution to the Initial Crisis is not mentioned. Rather the end of the letters simply outlines Shenoute’s re-iteration of the new authority structures that required the women’s submission to Shenoute and his envoys (as I noted earlier, chapter 5 discusses gender in these authority structures). Since this is apparently the end of this period of controversy, one can assume that the women eventually accepted Shenoute’s expanded definition of the authority of the archimandrite. Indeed, one cansee |

made. | aspects of that acceptance, most often during conflicts that occurred among the

women and required an outside arbitrator. Times of resistance, occasioned by particular issues and events, however, remained a problem throughout Shenoute’s tenure; that is, even though there seems to have been general acceptance of Shenoute’s authority as head of the women’s community, there continued to be debates about the extent of power that authority granted in response to particular decisions Shenoute

, _ Acceptance |

Since Shenoute wrote his letters to the female community in response to conflicts and crises, only rarely did he mention any acceptance of his authority. Given, however, that Shenoute ruled the monastery for more than seventy years, the ten individual crises do not seem particularly numerous, even though some were serious and long-

lasting. There were two different issues at stake in the women’s acceptance of Shenoute’s leadership: first, the question of the validity of his institutional role in making decisions in the female community, and second, whether the women trusted his decisions and thought they were appropriate to the monastic life. The second question, in short, was whether Shenoute was an adequate moral and religious leader. For

the first question, institutional authority, the evidence suggests that the women accepted it, for the most part, but they did not seek Shenoute’s involvement unless it suited their purposes as part of an internal power struggle. Evidence of acceptance of Shenoute’s religious leadership, that is, acceptance that he carried out divine will, can only be inferred from the continuation of Shenoute’s leadership. Were Shenoute’s de-

Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power 8]

cisions wholly inadequate, one assumes there would have been greater rebellion, as witnessed in other forms of monasticism.° How any woman viewed his claims to divine guidance remains unknown, given the loss of the women’s own voices. Perhaps the best example of acknowledgment of Shenoute’s institutional authority over the female community comes from the female monk’s Request for a Transfer (Crisis 8). Shenoute regarded the woman’s request as resulting from his authority as the father of the community: “You sent word to us, honoring the fatherhood.”?! In making her request directly to him, the monk appealed to Shenoute’s authority over her female superiors. Moreover, her request assumes that, if Shenoute granted the

, transfer, he would have the power to force the female elder and mothers to obey his decision, even if it differed from theirs. That an individual monk, among the many hundreds in the monastery, contacted Shenoute for help is also noteworthy. Such a circumstance suggests that Shenoute was available as an outside arbitrator not only to the female leaders, but also to any monk who felt the need for his help. His availability created connections, which were prominent in solitary monasticism, within the larger, more impersonal communal setting.*” The monk’s request, then, indicates that Shenoute was considered to be the supreme institutional authority in the White Monastery to whom a female monk could appeal and thus circumvent her immediate

superiors. |

On another occasion (Crisis 3), part of the female community accepted

Shenoute’s authority when a female monk had refused a promotion, leading to controversy about the duties inherent in the monastic life. Some women had reported

this refusal to Shenoute; although the language of their report (as quoted by Shenoute) is neutral, evidence of conflict throughout the letter suggests that some women had objected to her refusal and so appealed to Shenoute’s authority as head of the monastery to lend weight to their condemnation of her.*? This conflict shows two views that the women had of Shenoute’s authority and power in their community. One view, held by at least the monk in question and possibly by her supporters, was that the women were in charge of their own community, including their own determinations of their ability to serve in leadership capacities; the woman who refused promotion did so to her female companions (superiors?) without apparent concern for Shenoute.** The other group of women in the conflict accepted that Shenoute’s authority extended into the women’s community and that he had a role in their internal conflicts; moreover, their report, like the monk’s request above, assumes Shenoute had the power to force the monks to his position. The monk, or monks, who held the former position seem to have also argued against a life of monastic labor and service, and for one of contemplation. These monks did not challenge Shenoute’s authority by advocating his dismissal as head, but they questioned his power by rebelling against his definition of the monastic life, and his desire, voiced as

commandments, that the women follow only his definition. Hence, as opposed to other conflicts we will examine below, at least some women asked for Shenoute’s intervention in this conflict. Shenoute not only responded with the letter but he also sent the male elder, vested with the authority to make a judgment in the conflict and end the quarrel. Similarly, the female leaders showed that they accepted Shenoute’s institutional

authority over their community on those occasions when they complied with

82 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

Shenoute’s requests to report transgressions in their community to him so that he could determine what punishments were necessary. Shenoute described the women’s transgressions for which they were being punished as being “written to us earlier.” Thus the women, in accordance with Shenoute’s expectations, participated in the authority structures that connected them to the male community. For the most part, however, even in their acceptance of him, the female leaders attempted to make Shenoute a distant authority. He was to be available to them as a last resort, rather than involved in every decision, or even most decisions in the community. Indeed, as we shall see, the women created their own power in this changed relationship with | their male head by reporting when and what they wanted. Even on the two occasions noted earlier when the women treated Shenoute as a higher authority, they did so because he was an outsider: it was his very distance from the situation, as well as his position of archimandrite, which gave him the ability to arbitrate their disputes.*° On occasions when Shenoute initiated his actions as an arbitrator in the female community, the women were apparently much mote reluctant to follow his instructions (or — at least appeared so to Shenoute). It is clear in the Initial Crisis that Shenoute saw the

space between the two communities as an obstacle to the type of leadership he desired, resulting first in his visits and then in his letters. This space remained an issue , throughout the rest of his tenure. Various female leaders seem to have taken advantage of this obstacle. They used and protected the space between the female and male communities since it gave them access to power, even if Shenoute treated it as an illicit power. Its illegitimacy was not rooted in the women’s gender (yet) but rather in

its wrong place in the authority structures as Shenoute had constructed them. | | Resistance: The Use of Space The authority structures of the White Monastery that Shenoute set in place were meant, for the women, to overcome the physical separation of the women’s and men’s

communities. Although never explicitly stated, Shenoute’s arguments reflect an awareness that the space was filled, as it were, with female autonomy, which hindered his vision of his own superior leadership. Despite the women’s eventual acceptance of Shenoute’s changes in the authority structures of the monastery at the beginning

of his tenure, they remained able to use the space to protect their own power. Shenoute’s long and furious arguments in favor of his authority over corporal punishment, for example, indicate that the women were undertaking corporal punishment on their own authority, something Shenoute did not allow even the men to do in his absence.*’ Five other examples show the further use of space by women. Some letters record occasions when the women were not heeding advice, or even instructions, Shenoute had already offered either in his letters or through his envoys. As a result, the women acted according to their own judgment, rather than following

~ Shenoute’s dictates designed to foster a harmonious environment. In one of these cases, however, the actions of one woman, Tapolle, suggest acceptance of Shenoute’s judgment, but largely because it served her interest. Likewise, the last example contains descriptions of both acceptance and rejection of Shenoute’s judgments. Nevertheless, an important difference moves these examples from the “acceptance” category to “resistance”: whereas in the earlier examples at least some women requested

Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power 83

Shenoute’s involvement, in these instances Shenoute intervened, declared one group correct, and that group advocated acceptance of his decision. Their acceptance, therefore, suggests more a self-serving interest than institutional acceptance of Shenoute’s definition of his position as archimandrite. A good example of the limits of Shenoute’s power due to his separation from the female community comes from Tachom’s refusal to receive Shenoute’s envoy, mentioned earlier. Her action separated her, and her community, from Shenoute’s power over them.’*® Shenoute acknowledged that a power struggle was at the heart of his conflict with Tachom when he explicitly denied hierarchical titles in his salutation. In addition, Shenoute adopted a humble tone in parts of the letter that suggests that he was making a gesture of equality; rather than blame Tachom, he diverted responsibility for the conflict onto miscommunication.” Shenoute’s deference shows his awareness that his conflict with Tachom was substantial, jeopardizing the access to the women’s community that was necessary for his authority. At the same time, he continued to exert his authority by claiming that it was Tachom’s duty to apologize to him, even though they had both made mistakes in the situation.*! Shenoute not only advised Tachom to receive the male envoy but needed her to do so in order to maintain the authority structures that Shenoute had established, including Tachom’s own place in those authority structures: “And if the man whom we sent is not your father according to rank (and he is [your father] according to divine ordination) then you are not a mother!”** Tachom had the power to separate herself and her followers from Shenoute, and Shenoute’s only recourse was to his “legitimate” authority structures, which he presented as the correct means to salvation. In short, Tachom’s defiance is the clearest example of female resistance to Shenoute’s authority and creation of her own power. She used the space that separated her from Shenoute in order to create a authority structure different from his. While Tachom protected the space between Shenoute and the women in a physical sense, the female elder and Tapolle protected a different type of territory: the work the women did for the monastic community.*? When Shenoute complained about the methods the women used to make his garments, and those of the rest of the

male monks, he suggested that he could send measurements to the women, or visit to | have measurements taken, so that the garments fit better: “Either | will have them take measurements or | will give measurements to the ones who made them. But | must try them out! I absolutely will not put them on or wear them with the shoulders being as narrow as they previously were.”*+ His arguments anticipate that the female elder and Tapolle, both of whom he mentions explicitly, will resist his plan. Since Shenoute’s request for visits could be seen as claiming the authority to dictate to the women how to make garments and how to do their weaving, their resistance would be to another attempt by Shenoute to overcome the physical separation of their communities. Like the resistance to Shenoute’s initial visits, the women’s refusal to accede to Shenoute’s request was again an effort to maintain their monastic life as it had been, and to resist changes that would result in less control. Shenoute did get to dictate the measurements and decorations at least for his own clothing, however, as was evident in the other conflict over clothing (Excessive Leadership [Crisis 9]), when he had to defend his treatment of a particular cloak. The fact that the cloak in question had been a beautiful cloak, made according to Shenoute’s

84 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

own specifications, worsened the accusation of his alleged neglect of it.#* By visiting and confronting him, the women placed Shenoute in a position subordinate to them. ‘They were the weavers and seamstresses who produced his clothing, while he was merely the recipient. Shenoute’s humble response reflects his defensive position: “My heart is crushed and it was crushed on account of the pain which evidently showed in your faces—you, the elder and Tapolle—as though you had been struck. For you are at a loss and you were at a loss, very painfully.“ It is noteworthy that Shenoute ad-

| dressed these two women as a pair who would unite in protesting his treatment of their services, since these two appear in another letter in which Shenoute describes _

avery different relationship to his authority. | Although at times the female monks complied with Shenoute’s authority, they also often ignored his attempts to mediate their conflicts. Such was the case, as we have seen, when Shenoute intervened, through the male elder, in a conflict between

the female elder and the monk, Tapolle. That the elder reported the conflict to Shenoute two months before suggests that she complied with his institutional authority. At the same time, she also judged for herself the helpfulness of Shenoute’s advice. Shenoute warned the elder that, even though Tapolle had been disobedient to her, she was being even more disobedient in defying Shenoute’s solution for forgive-

ness: “Indeed, will you be able to endure the judgment of God since you are being overbearing to your sister once and for all because the Evil One has corruptly turned -

your heart against your companions?” Clearly, the female elder had not found a “Shenoute’s earlier exhortations to be adequate for the situation and so the conflict , had continued. In addition, the female elder had refused to take an oath in the presence of the male elders who had been sent to settle the conflict. Tapolle did take this oath and so seems more accepting of the men’s authority. Yet her acceptance may well have stemmed from her desire to appear to be in the right (especially since Shenoute saw her as in the wrong by starting the conflict with her gossip), and as a means to continue the conflict. If so, she was successful in that Shenoute now blamed the elder

for her stubbornness in continuing the conflict.*® Tapolle was not completely ab- | solved, however, since she was now in trouble for attacking the female elder for her

lack of forgiveness. | | | ne _ Shenoute was aware both that Tapolle and the female elder had not obeyed his ad-

vice and that they remained hostile to one another. He reiterated his directions and explained why it was beneficial for the situation in a lengthy discussion of the need _ for forgiveness among all the parties in question: the elder, Tapolle, and him. All have

| hindered one another, apparently in their ability to be a mutually supportive community united for everyone’s salvation: “If she has hindered you, you also have hin- — dered me. And if you hindered me, then I and you and everyone who is not willing to forgive their neighbor because they gossiped about them have hindered God so that. he does not forgive us our sins.” All need to be reconciled to one another so that God will reconcile with them and forgive them: “If you [the female elder] do not join your heart to hers [Tapolle’s], how do you know that Jesus will join your heart to his? Or will he? Forgive your sister and tolerate your companions in the fear of the Lord and

| you will be perfected by your deeds so that you might be criticized on the day when every hardship will withdraw from us.”4? Some of his frustration in not being able to

Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power 85

settle this conflict stemmed from his belief that his instructions would lead the monks to salvation. By disregarding his instructions, the elder endangered her salvation as well as those under her and she undermined Shenoute’s power as the sole guide to salvation. The women who did not accept Shenoute’s instructions as the necessary solution to their conflict thus called into question not simply his authority as head of the monastery, but the moral authority that he claimed as part of that position.*° Even though Shenoute’s instructions were based on the rules that governed the monastery as a united group, the women were sufficiently independent not to feel compelled to obey him.*! Descriptions of such conflicts as these provide evidence for the women’s relationship with Shenoute beyond the definition of authority structures. Neither rebellious nor passive, the female elder chose to follow her own course, even when it ran counter to Shenoute and his envoy’s wishes. As noted in chapter 2, the picture of Tapolle is more confused, perhaps due to Senoute’s own confusion or lack of knowledge about her motivations and actions. But at the least she was disobedient and perhaps even spiteful toward her female superior, and manipulative of the male authorities who tried to settle the conflict. In another conflict among the women (Crisis 7), one whose details have been lost but which was based on “jealousy,” Shenoute again had to readdress a situation since an earlier judgment had not succeeded in reconciling the women. Although the male leaders had already met with the female community to render judgment of the conflicting parties, the group of women who had “lost” were reluctant to accept their decision. Instead, Shenoute describes these women as “laughing and mocking” the letter in which he gave his decision.” In contrast, the group of women who had received Shenoute’s favor accepted his authority, perhaps since they had won the conflict, and thus received a favorable description as being properly grieved over its continuation. The group of women who were prolonging the conflict, like the female elder, resisted Shenoute’s attempts to quell the argument that would, in effect, have silenced their position. In addition, the women’s resistance worsened this conflict; rather than remaining an argument internal to the women’s community, it expanded to include adversity between these women and the male authorities. This conflict, then, stands in contrast to that over the monk’s refusal of promotion, where some women requested

Shenoute’s presence in order to lend weight to their position. Here it is unclear whether Shenoute and his male envoys were ever asked to participate and, even so, their position did not sufficiently bolster the women with whom they agreed to end the conflict. Given the women’s ability to resist Shenoute’s solutions to their con-flicts, one wonders what might have happened if Shenoute had granted the monk her request for a transfer and had written to the mothers involved informing them of his decision. Would the mothers have felt compelled to follow his order, if they disagreed? To what extent could Shenoute, who lived outside the female community, enforce his decisions and control the women’s behavior through envoys and letters? That is, even after Shenoute becomes a more active leader in the women’s community, what power did he actually have?

In many of these cases, the women who were able to defy Shenoute were in positions of authority. The conflicts were disputes between two groups of leaders—

Shenoute with his male envoys versus the female leaders—for control over the

86 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery | | female community. Whether the women were consciously limiting Shenoute’s involvement in their community, and thus consciously wanting to forge their own independence, remains unknowable given that our evidence is from Shenoute’s perspective. Since, however, their resistance succeeded in limiting his power, it is likely that a desire to maintain their independence was part of their motivation, while the other part seems to lie in a sincere belief that Shenoute’s demands on their monastic life were unreasonable and unnecessary.” In various conflicts the women sought to deny that Shenoute had the authority to make decisions for their community, ei| ther through his letters or through the male envoy, and they acted in ways that limited his power to use his authority. The women’s actions re-enforced the boundary inherent in the space between their community and Shenoute, and so between their _

authority to shape their own monastic experience and Shenoute’s desire to co-opt

that authority; that is, their actions maintained the physical separation, and the |

course. — , | | |

consequences of that separation, that Shenoute sought to alleviate through his dis-

Resistance: The Use of Secrecy , — Since the women could protect their physical separation in these ways, and hence preserve their authority, Shenoute had to place the women under surveillance. This , surveillance began asa result of the Initial Crisis, when Shenoute’s own visits caused such controversy. Yet it is notable that the surveillance was not physical, with

, Shenoute actually able to observe the women; rather, his surveillance was accomplished through commands for constant reports and apparently frequent visits from some male elders. This information was essential to Shenoute’s ability to make decisions for the women. Secrecy among the women, then, constituted one of the great-

, est threats to Shenoute’s rule and another source of their own power.”* Shenoute at- | ~ tempted to persuade the women that they should prefer acquiescence to resistance to his surveillance: “Now, if you want your mind to be at ease in your community, then | set my mind at ease in our community by telling me frankly about everything that

| may happen in your community.”*° If the women chose to resolve conflicts on their own, as the female elder did, or to determine punishments of transgressors without ~ Shenoute’s advice, in effect they made their community independent from Shenoute, as he himself made clear in his constant worrying about it: “Now, if your unity with us only extends that far [keeping {te} pace Young], then you have no love for us in our community like that which we have for you in your community. And since you will not tell us what is in your heart just as we tell you what is in our heart, and you will not tell us the things that happen in your community just as we tell you everything that happens in our community, then God help you! You must bear responsibility for

everything!”®* Independence, then, meant also accountability for the transgression and error the women would undoubtedly fall into without Shenoute’s leadership. | Shenoute’s attempts to discourage secrecy among the female monks rhetorically functioned to gain mote information from the women, by claiming to know there was ~ more to be told. Yet they also reflect an actual need to counter the concealment that the women could use to limit Shenoute’s institutional authority.

Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power 87

The tension between Shenoute and the women over the issue of full disclosure was

exacerbated by Shenoute’s distrust of the women. Part of the distrust is evident in Shenoute’s need to send the envoys to check on the women; part is evident in his frequent accusations that the women were not being truthful. When communication broke down between the women and Shenoute’s envoys, Shenoute’s only recourse was to request more letters from the women. In doing so, Shenoute often claimed to know that the women had not reported all events, especially transgressions, to him. In the Initial Crisis, he asked the women why they had not related all the deeds in their community to him.*’ In a later crisis, he accused the women, “To this day you still have not written to us a truthful report after [the elder] departed from you.” How could Shenoute know that the women had still not been forthcoming, since his only source of information was the female leaders themselves? The only other possibility was that he gained knowledge through gossip or informers. Since these means were outside his authority structures, he could not acknowledge it as a legitimate source of information. By pretending to know that they still had secrets, Shenoute

tried to force the leaders, and so the whole female community, to further confession. , Shenoute did not just claim that there was more activity than he had been told, but that he also knew about specific unreported transgressions. In the list of women who were to be beaten, more than one of their transgressions was only described as “and I know what deed caused the beatings to be given to her.”*? Shenoute used similar tactics in the crisis over Excessive Leadership (9) when the monks were concealing transgressions from him: “The one who sympathizes with sinners, saying .. . ‘If he [Shenoute] knows that evil-doers secretly exist within the congregations, then why does he not know about me, and why does he not know that this one, or those, are doing abominations?” Shenoute’s point was that he had access to knowledge about actions people tried to hide and that the only surprise was that not all “secret sinners” had yet been exposed. The monks again seem to have been divided into two groups, those who helped their companions hide transgressions and those who informed on transgressors, apparently not through official reports but in some way that Shenoute did not, perhaps could not, endorse. Shenoute’s concerns about secrecy therefore arose from actual instances of concealment among the women and was not just a rhetorical “trick” to make sure all was reported. Moreover, his concerns were not just about his own authority, but the purity of the community. We can recall that, in the crisis under his successor, Ebonh, which caused Shenoute to remove himself from the monastery, one reason for his withdrawal was that the monk and his immediate superior hid the sin the monk had committed. This secrecy meant, to Shenoute, that he risked pollution by sins. Any time the head of the monastery, be it Ebonh, Shenoute or someone else, did not know about sin, he could not purify the community from sin’s pollution, thus endangering the salvation of all. Secrecy was not a gender-specific action in the White Monastery; both men and women successfully hid misdeeds from Shenoute, as they had from his predecessors. Secrecy among the women, however, highlighted the separateness of their community, based not on Shenoute’s self-removal (as from the male community), but on the women’s vender. This separation, then, as we shall see in chapter 5, inherently gendered their secrecy.

88 — Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

Resistance and Rebellion ee ~ Up to this point, most of the power struggles between Shenoute and the women have

involved female leaders who sought to preserve their own authority against Shen, oute’s attempts to have a more active role in their community than his predecessors had. During two crises (Death of the Male Monk [6] and Excessive Leadership [9]), how-

~ ever, Shenoute faced not simply resistance from individual leaders but from the female community as a whole, and, moreover, united with monks in the male commu-

nity. These conflicts were not about who had the right to make decisions for the | women but were group reactions to decisions Shenoute had made. The male and female monks’ resistance focused on the specific claims Shenoute made as part of his , discourse of monastic power and suggest that his standing as the “correct representa-

| tive or embodiment of the deity” was in dispute and occasionally in jeopardy.®! The monks questioned whether Shenoute’s actions were appropriate for a religious leader because, in their view, his actions were excessive. Shenoute faced strong resistance, and in some cases rebellion, in the monastery on three controversial topics: corporal punishment, expulsion, and his claim to have an exclusive relationship with God.” These conflicts, then, occasioned the most serious questioning of Shenoute’s own representations of his power, that is, of his justifications for acting as he did. Beyond the question of who was to decide corporal punishment, the monks, male and female, questioned the appropriateness of the extent of Shenoute’s use of corporal punishment after a male monk died while being beaten by Shenoute. We can re-

call that Shenoute knew that some monks thought that the man’s death wasa direct result of the beating: “I know that many among you will say, ‘He has killed him vio-

lently before the end of his life.”"® These monks also began to question whether corporal punishment was an appropriate response to transgression in the community. Even if it were, they were certain that Shenoute too often resorted to such punishment. In effect, the monks, including the women, were not simply questioning — Shenoute’s authority to determine beatings but were challenging the character of his leadership. They suggested that his leadership, based on beatings, needed to be al-

tered for him to have power as a religious leader for their community. , | Another aspect of Shenoute’s leadership that the monks, including some women, — thought was liable to be excessive was his practice of expulsion. Shenoute rejected

the possibility, which the monks must have voiced along with their objections to the , beatings, that sinners could be allowed to remain in the community rather than be~ ing expelled. It is not clear why the monks were objecting to expulsion during the crisis over the death of a male monk (Crisis 6), but we can see an overall crisis of lead-

, ership stemming from this event. Likewise, in the equally serious conflict recorded in My Heart Is Crushed, several aspects of Shenoute’s leadership were open to charges of excess.©> As his seamstresses, the women found his ill-treatment of his clothes, fol-

lowed by complaints and demands for new ones, to be overbearing. Both men and women thought that his decision to alienate himself from the monastery for seven months, including not celebrating Easter with them, was an immoderate display of anger. Most important to the controversy, however, was his two-month purge of the community through expulsions. The objections to expulsion, evident in Shenoute’s

lengthy and detailed defenses, suggest that there were monks who argued for more ,

Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power 89

avenues of redemption for transgressors before corporal punishment and expulsion were invoked. In short, these monks seem to have thought that Shenoute was too hasty in his recourse to the harsher punishments.® The monks also questioned the validity of Shenoute’s assessment of the “pollutions” and “abominations” that led to these expulsions. At the heart of the debate in this conflict between Shenoute and his followers, then, lay their evaluation of the extent of power that characterized Shenoute’s leadership, a debate that was somewhat cyclical in nature. The monks judged Shenoute’s actions as excessive, to which Shenoute had an excessive, authoritarian response, which in turn seems to have caused more anger and resentment among the monks. Their perception of Shenoute’s authoritarianism arose from two parts of Shenoute’s own discourse: (1) his claim to know about unreported deeds, as we saw earlier; (2) his claim that his relationship with God, and the knowledge that it entailed, was exclusive to him. For his part, Shenoute acknowledged that on this occasion the monks were correct to characterize his words as excessive but he blamed the monks themselves for compelling him to be immoderate. Shenoute asserted that those who wronefully claimed God’s allegiance, and who would destroy the monks’ hope for salvation, forced him into strong statements: “[i]f these words are too much for a person like me to say, (and I admit that they are).”°” At the same time, Shenoute defended some of his statements as inspired by God, and therefore to be excused for any excess they contained.®* He also claimed that excess was appropriate if strong words and actions were necessary for proper leadership, that is, a leadership that God approved: “Indeed, did I not speak to you my bitter saying, which is indeed greatly excessive, ‘Either God listens to your prayer, or God listens to my prayer,’ or, ‘It’s either you or D [that is, whom God will favor].”°? These statements carried with them the implica-

tion that God would listen to Shenoute and the threat that Shenoute’s opponents would be ignored. God would act this way, moreover, even though Shenoute was being excessive, since Shenoute’s actions resulted from coercion and not choice. In this particular crisis , the monks did not object to Shenoute’s authority as head of the monastery but to his definition of monasticism and his description of his leadership and his relationship with God.’? We can recall from the narrative of this conflict in chapter 2 that some opponents not only questioned Shenoute’s actions but also questioned whether or not Shenoute should be replaced as head of the monastery. They had a list of counter-arguments to Shenoute’s defense of his style of leadership: that some monks should be allowed to hide their deeds and that not all of Shenoute’s commandments were based in truth.”! One opponent started to use the same language as Shenoute and to perform actions as if he or she were a prophet.” In other words, this opponent claimed to have the type of relationship with God that Shenoute reserved for himself. The monk did not merely suggest that Shenoute should alter his decisions and actions as head of the monastery to something the monks deemed more suitable. Rather, the monk suggested that Shenoute himself should be replaced. The rebellion called into question

not only the exclusivity of Shenoute’s relationship with God but the validity of Shenoute’s claims to that relationship. The length of the conflict, the number of expulsions, the number of issues at stake, and the extreme rhetoric in Shenoute’s response, all make this conflict the most serious of those mentioned in the letters. Once

90 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

again, the resolution of this crisis is lost. Since we know Shenoute was never ousted

before he died, we can only assume that he withstood this crisis as he did all others.

Conclusion: Détente The women’s acceptance and resistance of Shenoute’s institutional authority focused on appropriate ways for Shenoute to be involved in conflicts and decision-making in the women’s community. The evidence from Shenoute’s letters to the female community indicates a tension between the type of authority Shenoute expected and the

level of authority to which the women were willing to submit. Shenoute wanted supreme authority and knowledge of every conflict and wrongdoing. The women’s actions suggest they wanted to decide the degree of Shenoute’s involvement. He could

, arbitrate their problems only when they chose to relate the details of the conflict to him. Shenoute’s expectations were based on his vision of the perfect monastery: God’s community of peaceful inhabitants who lived like angels in heaven. In this image there is one supreme leader (God/Shenoute) and followers (angels/monks), whose peace (salvation) depends on their obedience to that leader. We do not know the women’s expectations of life in the White Monastery, but we do know (from ‘Shenoute) when they objected to Shenoute’s implementation of his vision, and we _ can reconstruct a reasonable scenario as to why. It is noteworthy, however, that the monks did not desert the monastery or secede their houses from the monastic system. Thus, the authority structures within the community were elastic enough to allow for a certain level of dissent. Even as Shenoute and the women struggled over the institutional boundaries and the nature of the monastic life, the monastery held together

as one united, if not uniform, community, striving for salvation. |

The only question that remains from all these situations concerns the actual instances of disobedience themselves. Were transgressions simply the result of what might be called random human error, or are they evidence of willful rejection of Shenoute’s expectations of the women’s behavior? In nearly every conflict recorded, transgressions of some type were the reason for Shenoute’s letter. These transgressions ranged from the specific sins listed for the women who were to be beaten, to vague “nollutions,” “abominations,” and “prostitutions of the heart,” to those known only to Shenoute.” It is possible that some women chose not to obey certain rules owing toa belief that they were not bound by those rules. Such was the case when the monk

refused to undertake the monastic service commanded of her. It seems more likely : that most transgressions arose from simple fallibility and the complications of several

hundred, or thousand, people living together in one community (albeit in separate houses). These transgressions in and of themselves do not imply resistance to Shenoute’s authority, either as archimandrite or as a self-proclaimed prophet. As much as Shenoute sought the ideal of complete harmony, even he realized that this ideal was not realistic in a human setting. Indeed, Shenoute only presented the ideal as a goal; in actual cases of disagreement, he was more lenient. The widespread evidence for his forgiveness, partly obscured by the nature of the sources, indicates that he did not view the women’s misdeeds as threats to his leadership but to the perfection of the

community. , |

Acceptance and Resistance: The Women’s Power 9]

In most cases, it was not the actual act of disobedience that caused a controversy but the ensuing theoretical debate about some general aspect of monasticism. Some women usually escalated the crisis, from Shenoute’s perspective, by not accepting Shenoute’s solution to their original conflict. For example, again, the appointment of the monk, who then refused her promotion, was meant to fill the vacancy caused by the death of another monk; it was not an adequate solution because of the subsequent problems that arose from it, leading to discussion of more profound questions about the nature and obligations of the monastic life; the monk’s request for a transfer led , Shenoute to expound on the proper role of interpersonal relationships and their effect on monastic life. The male monk’s death led to a defense of corporal punishment, and a dispute about a cloak led to a defense of expulsion. These cases also incorporated a defense of the validity of Shenoute’s relationship with God.” The question central to all the conflicts was not the role of disobedience, or even the women’s willingness to obey Shenoute’s authority, but the question of what constituted the monastic life, or, in other words, what was necessary in this life to gain the next. Shenoute’s letters to the women present them as people actively shaping their own lives as monks, even while accepting Shenoute’s leadership as head of the monastery.

The basic functions of the White Monastery depended on their acceptance of Shenoute’s authority, but its vitality necessitated their willingness to cooperate in, and be committed to, a relationship with him. The picture that Shenoute provides of these female monks is different from any other known from the formative period of Epyptian monasticism; neither passive nor reclusive, they were engaged with their vocation, with their community, and with their male leader. Shenoute’s letters are even more remarkable because they record the experiences of women who may have been from a less wealthy class than most other records of independent ascetic women from late antiquity.”* The female leaders had a strong commitment to guiding their monks and, although not always in keeping with Shenoute’s expectations, they did continue to support the monastery as an institution in which women could strive for salvation. The struggles over authority that characterized Shenoute’s tenure as leader of the female community resulted not in a divided community but one that grew in size and strength throughout his leadership. The narratives that one can extract from Shenoute’s correspondence show that the women lived multifaceted, varied lives (not the uniform generic experience outlined in the rules) but still sought to create a supportive community in which they could seek salvation; that is, their internal diversity created conflict but did not undermine their spiritual commitment to the monastery—something Shenoute seemed to fear.

“They too are Our Brethren” Gender in the White Monastery |

Having examined Shenoute’s presentation of his authority, and the evidence of some women’s reactions to that authority, I can now ask questions about the role of gender in both presentation and reaction. To what extent did gender affect Shenoute’s un-

derstanding of his authority over the women? To what extent did the women believe | that his teachings about the monastic life were not just erroneous but erroneous for

them as women? It must be noted at the outset that, given the nature of the sources, | individual voices among the female community can only rarely be distinguished. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that some resistance, or even great resistance, meant that the women in the White Monastery shared some self-definition as “woman.” My goal in this chapter is to examine constructions of gender in Shenoute’s monasticism, and echoes of those constructions in what we know of the women’s various responses. It is important not to assume that since these letters have the female

community as their audience, Shenoute therefore crafted “female-oriented” arguments. That these letters refer mostly to situations the women faced does not in and of itself mean that these letters would be inherently different than those Shenoute » wrote to a predominantly male audience. Rather, we must see where Shenoute ex_ plicitly tried to elide gender and where he incorporated gender into his monasticism. Because of his valorization of the spirit over the flesh as part of his creation of a _ salvific community, Shenoute believed in, and wanted to create, a universal monasticism that was unhindered by the flesh, that is, by gender and by kinship. The flesh for Shenoute, as for Paul, indicated that realm that existed in opposition to God.! | Since the monastery was to be like God and his angels, it would need to eliminate the flesh—not the body, but those elements that introduced difference and thus disrupted his ideal monasticism. As a result, his arguments include what I call a “rheto— 92

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 93

ric of unity,” which comprises points when he deliberately equates men and women in his descriptions of proper monasticism. This rhetoric had implications in the real lives of the monks, that is, in how ascetic practice and monastic discipline shaped

their daily lives. Thus, I will explore changes that seem to have occurred in the women’s lives as a result of Shenoute’s attempts at unifying the monastery under his leadership. Although I have already laid out the changes in the women’s authority, | will here examine the role of gender in those changes and will then focus specifically on the consequences for women’s fasting and corporal punishment. This rhetoric of unity and the changes in the women’s community that resulted from Shenoute’s desire for unity existed in a monastery of two separate communities, male and female. Thus there was an inherent tension between his emphasis on unity, leading to uniformity, and the reality of enforced separation, especially one based on gender and thus emphasizing this aspect of the flesh. Despite Shenoute’s valorization of spirit over the flesh, and his attempts to live out that valorization in this world in preparation for the next, there were limits to his ability to do so. These limits include those he recognized, those the women recognized, and those that are evident to our modern eyes. Just as there are points when Shenoute argued against the influence of gender in monasticism, so too he explicitly and implicitly called on gender as a justiftcation for his decisions regarding the female community. A “rhetoric of difference” accompanied his “rhetoric of unity.” So too gender affected monastic practices, but here the picture becomes more complicated since both Shenoute and “the women” argued that gender affected the women’s lives, but in differing ways. Shenoute’s presentations argued first for a universal monasticism but then made accommodations for the flesh, that is, for gender. These accommodations encompassed, in his view, the proper role of gender in monasticism; his gendered monasticism is one in which spirit properly disciplines flesh (gender). For Shenoute, the women’s desires for gender in monasticism were, in contrast, examples of how, when allowed to rule, the flesh could lead astray.

“Whether Male or Female”: Universal Monasticism _ In his instructions to the monks, both men and women, Shenoute proclaimed a universal monasticism, which corresponded to a universal self. This monasticism derived from ascetic practices that disciplined the body, such as fasting, sexual renunciation, and corporal punishment. Thus the angelic life of harmony that Shenoute sought for his monastery depended in part on both men and women following these proper ascetic practices. These would create the new self that, unlike most embodied selves, would lack the fleshly differences that lead to conflict. The flesh, here gender, would be properly disciplined by the spirit, and the community would be “like God and his angels in heaven.” Under Shenoute’s leadership, then, the women’s lives as members of the White Monastery underwent profound changes. Since Shenoute sought for these changes to result in a universal monastic experience for both men and women, we can regard this monasticism as genderless. He did not seek to eradicate the monks’ sexual difference, but to create a monasticism that did not allow for distinction between male and female monks. At the same time, as we shall see in the second part of this chapter, even Shenoute’s genderless monasticism was inherently gendered

94 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

since he engaged with gender as a divisive issue and sought to eradicate the effects of

gender by placing it in its proper place. | In order to achieve this universal monasticism in practice, Shenoute had to create an ideology that would persuade the monks, especially the female monks, that this monasticism was the best means to salvation and that his leadership was essential to achieving it. Shenoute’s discourse of monastic power supported this ideology; his power was linked to his relationship with God, not to his status as a man, and thus was equally necessary for men and women. Shenoute’s desire to be head of one united monastery meant that the male and female communities needed to be joined. He did not opt, as we have seen, to join them physically but to join them metaphysically, through his leadership and his discourse that validated that leadership. Now we need to examine the evidence for gender within that discourse of monastic power to see the place of gender within his monastic ideology. His rules for the monastery express his ideal: a set of ascetic expectations that transcended gender, that was applicable to all monks, whether male or female. This same ideal is the basis of much of his instruction in the letters. Although Shenoute at times supported his authority over the women by deriding their gender, more often he justified his actions by claiming that he wanted monks “in our (male) community and in your (female) community” to lead identical lives.’ His program of a genderless monasticism, therefore, served the purpose of his discourse of monastic power in that it was a clear justification for his expansion of male authority over the female community. His authority did not lay in his maleness, but in his position as head of the monastery, both male and female communities. The unity of the monastery was essential to that definition. At the same time, his rhetoric explicitly engaged with gender as a pertinent issue. Moreover, his attempts to merge the monastic experience of the male and female communities resulted in the imposition of a stricter ascetic standard than the women seem to have had under self-rule. Two controversial issues arose: that the women now received less food from the male community, and that they became subject to corporal punishment like the men. The women’s resistance to these two issues both serves

as our evidence that there were changes and indicates the failure of Shenoute’s uni- | versalism. Many of the women seem to have had particular expectations of the monastic life which ran counter to Shenoute’s. Whether their expectations also 7 stems from a self-understanding as “woman” remains unknown and unknowable; but Shenoute’s presentations of their expectations portrays the women as either weak or less committed to the asceticism of the monastic life than they should be, in his view. This picture of ascetic women differs markedly from the typical portrayal in hagiographical sources, of women’s great devotion to an asceticism beyond the usual abil- — ities of their gender. The difference should not be overemphasized, however, since in each case the author’s agenda guides the portrayals, in their various extremes, more

, so than does any historical reality. In Shenoute’s letters, “reading for gender” in his explanations of the changes he was making means seeing both where Shenoute used language directed at the women to present his monasticism as “natural” and where he used language directed at the monks, male and female, to efface the effects of gender. This reconstruction is therefore much more speculative than more traditional his- torical reconstructions, but it allows gender to emerge from Shenoute’s letters in all

its complexity. | oe

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 95

The Rhetoric of Unity

Two areas of Shenoute’s discourse contribute to his efforts to unite the men and women into a single monastic experience, even while maintaining gender difference. Although it is not necessarily a systematic effort of Shenoute’s, I call this his rhetoric of unity. One part encompasses the examples and tropes, usually biblical, Shenoute used to present his definition of monasticism to the women. These models portrayed a monasticism that both sexes could follow. The sex of the model, either a male or female apostle, did not have to adhere to the sex of the recipient. Female monks could follow male models and vice versa. The second area of his rhetoric of unity comprises two phrases, “whether male or female” and “in our community and in your community,” which appear frequently throughout Shenoute’s writings. Shenoute’s monastic rules most clearly express his effort to define a single monasticism regardless of gender, since they routinely address all monks “whether male or female” and “whether a man in our community, or a woman in your community.” Shenoute also uses both these phrases in his letters to both female and male monks. He uses the first phrase to argue for uniformity in all aspects of monastic life for all monks “whether male or female.” His admonitions and instructions along these lines suggest that the male community, as led by his predecessors, had a monastic standard to which he was now assimilating the women.* Presumably his own experience made the male community Shenoute’s model for monasticism. Yet Shenoute did not define monasticism as in-

herently male, and so his rhetoric of unity lacks an ideology of male superiority. Rather, his view that the monastery was a “single body” meant to him that the women were “brethren” just like the men. Indeed Shenoute often used brethren (CNny) as a term to address the female community. The second phrase from the rules, or variations of it, seems to have been the basis for his arguments of reciprocity. This reciprocity kept the sexes united in a “genderless” monasticism even as it maintained gender difference by incorporating separation of the sexes.

Shenoute’s rhetoric of unity was part of the means by which he persuaded the monks, female and male, to follow his monasticism, and to accept his exercise of power. It was a subset of his discourse of monastic power, a subset that focused on gen-

der. We can recall that his attempt to expand his authority had as its greatest obstacle the space that separated the two communities and that his discourse of monastic power was the means to validating his authority, and establishing his power, over that space. His rhetoric of unity tried to pull together the two communities by nullifying the gender difference that the space represented. It did so by emphasizing similarity over difference. Shenoute’s rhetoric of unity was his positive portrayal of the commonality of the monastic life for all people, their shared ability to overcome the limitations of embodiment, in order to live in a new society “like God and his angels in heaven.” The figures Shenoute used to describe the monastic life formed part of his rhetoric of unity. Since he argued that the male and female monks should adhere to the same monastic standard, he could use the same pattern of the suffering servant to define the monastic life for both male and female monks.’ We have seen that Shenoute used scriptural exemplars to describe the perfect monastic life, while simultaneously promoting his own authority by implicitly associating himself with his exemplars.

| 96 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery How he used these paradigmatic figures in the letters reinforces his program of genderless monasticism. Sometimes he provided the women with male models, at other times he used both male and female examples.° He emphasized that it was the nature of the lives of the exemplars that made them models for all monks, whether male or

female. Gender did not, in Shenoute’s opinion, affect either the models or the women’s ability to follow them. Shenoute’s models of suffering servants were mostly men: prophets, saints, and apostles, especially Paul: “In what have the prophets and the apostles been servants of the Lord and his Christ except that they chose to receive sufferings and other things and they died for the name of Jesus?”” The most perfect example was, of course, “our Lord Jesus.”® Shenoute presents these models, although ‘male, to the women as examples they were able to follow. Shenoute did, however, occasionally balance the predominantly male list of exemplars by adding female models, such as “the women of old” who “also are a holy pattern.”® Even so, he did not

present these models as different from their male counterparts. Rather they were proof that the ability to accept sufferings, the essential nature of the monastic life, was a genderless quality:

But the Lord blessed many of our ancestors down to the present day, both men and , women, because they were very willing to suffer along with others, with God’s help. Some of these ancestors include our ancient ancestors and the prophets and apostles, who were “father” to a great many people with God’s help; and Deborah, who was judge , and mother in Israel; and Odolla [Hulda], the prophet whom Josiah, the righteous

king ...and Anna, the daughter of Phanuuel.'° ,

Shenoute’s expectation that the women could, and should, imitate the same models as the men did (and presumably vice versa) was part of his effort to unite the monastic experience of the two communities. His occasional mention of female figures did not advocate a particular form of female monasticism but underscored that both male and female monks could emulate the monasticism he proposed. Shenoute’s use, in one of his letters, of the first of the creation stories in Genesis _ can also be seen as part of his rhetoric of unity. This creation story, in Shenoute’s telling, portrays Jesus, in his role in creation, as a servant to God and so makes Jesus the model of servitude for the monks.!! He relied on Genesis 1:26—27, in which God creates male and female together, rather than Genesis 2:17—25, where God creates

the female out of the male.'!? Thus, Shenoute omitted “the peculiar position of women in relation to the story of Creation . . . not made in the image of God but only in that of man” which male Christian leaders often used to justify the regulation of

| women’s lives.'? The first version in Genesis 1:26-27, in contrast, can be used to emphasize woman’s equal status in creation and thus it served the purpose of Shenoute’s argument: that both women and men needed to become servants just as the Creator was a servant when he made the world.!4 That Shenoute chose this particular version for his argument, however, need not imply that he did not also accept the subordinate position of women implicit in the second version of the creation story. For Shenoute, the two positions of woman in the two creation myths, as equal on the one hand and as secondary on the other, were not contradictory but coexistent,!° which also provides the reason that Shenoute could simultaneously attempt to convince the women that they were “brethren” like the male monks and still treat them as women, that is,

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 97

as weaker beings inherently different from men (pp. 106-18). These tropes, then, fit with Shenoute’s creation of an ideology which supported his exercise of power, not only over the women but the community as a whole. The women’s subjugation to Shenoute’s authority resulted from their inclusion into the monastery, and so into this ideology. Of the two phrases, “whether male or female” and “in our community and in your

community,” Shenoute uses the first with regularity in two of the thirteen “letters to women.” As with its usage in the rules, the phrase presents Shenoute’s argument for uniformity in all aspects of monastic life, for all the monks. These two letters, one recording the crisis about the Death of the Male Monk (Crisis 6) and the other about the accusations of Shenoute’s Excessive Leadership (Crisis 9), differ from the other eleven in significant ways. The other letters address conflicts that were confined to the women’s community; even when the conflict was with Shenoute, or the male envoy, it concerned the men’s relationship with the women’s community.!® These two letters, while seemingly written to just the women, respond to crises that were affecting the entire monastery, both male and female communities. It is unclear whether Shenoute wrote the same letter about the conflict to both men and women, and used the same language to describe the larger conflict, and then simply appended sections that concerned the women in particular. For example, in one letter, Shenoute writes first (the beginning is missing) about hoarding food in the monastery, the effects of expulsion, and defensively of his actions in the death of the male monk, all issues that affect both men and women. He ends the letter, however, by addressing the female elder and Tapolle, insisting that they end their long-standing feud. In the second letter, Shenoute begins with an address to the female elder and Tapolle about their distress over his ruined cloak but then turns to larger monastic issues: the extensive pollution of the monastery and his attempts to purify it through extensive expulsion.

, Since the issues in these crisis affected both communities, we can assume he also wrote letters, or gave sermons, to the male monks. One question, which at the moment remains unanswered, is whether the male monks would have heard these same letters, including the portions concerning problems in the female community. Since these letters were included in the Canons, we know that the entire monastery was the audience after the fact. The original audience, however, is unknown. In any case, the recurrence of the phrase “whether male or female” allows Shenoute to emphasize the universality of his rule, of the occurrence of sin, and of the ability of both genders to overcome sin. Shenoute was using the phrase to acknowledge the extent of the crisis and to advocate the women’s submission to his authority along with the men’s. What is important about this phrase is that Shenoute does not elide gender by addressing the community with some other phrase, such as “all of you” or simply “you brethren.” Rather, he repeatedly uses a phrase that incorporates both male and female monks as male and female. If Shenoute were addressing only the female community, one could read this phrase as encouraging the female monks to adhere to a monasticism already practiced in the male community. Since it is far more likely that both female and male monks heard these letters, Shenoute’s rhetoric advocated a universal monasticism to a mixed gender audience. He wanted carnality, expressed in gender, disciplined by the spirituality of monastic life. Moreover, since these occasions focused on sin or er-

98 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery ror, which Shenoute located in the flesh, a rhetoric of unity effacing gender (and thus flesh, the source of error) was useful to his discourse. What is unknown, and largely unrecoverable, is how the women, as its audience, would have experienced this rhet-

— Oric. | - , :

In the crisis about the male monk’s death (Crisis 6), Shenoute used the phrase “whether male or female” most often to stress the unity of the monastery in the face of resistance to his leadership. He aimed his arguments at the dissenters, who in-

cluded both men and women; no gender role is apparent in support of or resistance to Shenoute in these instances. In the crisis, Shenoute emphasized the unity of the com-

munity even with the diversity of gender and rank among its members: “The junior , -male monks and the junior female monks, every person, whether male or female, are entrusted to you, the congregation.”!? He also advocated that what should join the monks into a community was concern for their leader, which was manifested in their

obedience to him: “I entreat the exalted one with prayers that he give me a little patience and gentleness to everyone who is in the congregation, whether male or | female, who desires peace and good for their poor wretched brother [Shenoute].”!® Finally, he used the image of “single-heartedness” to express this unity through obedience: “These are single-hearted, who guard the words of God and the laws of their fathers in the community, whether male or female.”!? Shenoute’s language suggests that both male and female monks were allied in their concerns about, and resistance to, Shenoute’s leadership. His response was to emphasize unity as central to the mon-

astery, both male and female communities, apparently believing that with unity

would come proper monasticism. | | In the crisis over Excessive Leadership (Crisis 9), Shenoute seemed less sure about

his ability to unite the monastery in the face of rebellion. Again the monks were di- | vided, not between men and women, but between loyal followers and recalcitrant monks. Both male and female monks were among the sinners who were, for Shen~ oute, at the heart of the problem: “Is this not sufficient, on the subject of the things we, whether male or female, did among these congregations until now?”?° Women as well as men were sources of “illness” that threatened the whole body of the ~ monastery: “Indeed, you did not listen, or you (pl.) did not listen, you, the ones who hide upon this illness in them, whether male or female, until the destructions andthe | disturbances and other afflictions come upon you.”’! Further, both women and men of every rank had been among the sinners from the start of this crisis, which was addressed in an earlier letter: “Since I say to him in other letters, which were written to all of you about those who do, or those who did also now, the pestilent and abominable deeds within you, whether male or female, either superior or young.”** Because

of the threat that the sinners held for others, both women and men had to be expelled | from the community, including those who had apparently been forgiven earlier: “And also now it will happen that others will be alienated from his congregations on account of these deeds, these pestilent deeds, which we, whether male or female, have not reproved there until now.”?? Women and men were among the “reprovers” and | women and men were among the expelled. Since pollution and purity did not distin-

guish between the genders, Shenoute would not either. OO So too, both women and men were among those monks whom Shenoute deemed capable of overcoming sin. These monks were apparently listening to Shenoute’s ad-

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 99

monitions and agreeing with his instructions, thus siding with Shenoute in this crisis: “We were not ashamed that we, whether male or female, ceased from these abominations, pollution upon pollution, abomination upon abomination, theft upon theft, every deceitful thing upon every deceitful thing.”’* The phrase “whether male or female” in these letters makes clear that Shenoute did not limit his rhetoric of unity to theoretical descriptions of monasticism, but also directed it to the reality of monastic life within the White Monastery: women as well as men were sinners, and so women should be expected to adhere to the same monastic expectations, in terms of ascetic practice and suitable punishment, as were the men. His rhetoric of unity, therefore, contains hints about the way the women’s monastic experience changed as a result of their inclusion in the genderless monasticism that Shenoute professed.

Just as Shenoute used the phrase “whether male or female” to unite the monks without regard to gender, so too with the phrase “in your community and in our community” he tried to unify monastic practice. Again, the emphasis was on uniformity, without regard to gender: “For many times we in our community have had a change of heart about you [women] because you were performing acts of contrition in your community, and many times you in your community have had a change of heart because we were performing acts of contrition greatly among ourselves.”’> This phrase is found most often in three crises, the Initial Crisis, A Monk Refuses Promotion (Crisis 3), and The Beatings of the Women (Crisis 4). Each of these crises involved situations to which Shenoute responded by emphasizing reciprocity between the male and

female communities. The Initial Crisis, with its emphasis on the inclusion of the women’s community into the male-run monastery, required Shenoute to emphasize similarity, and thus implied equality, between the two communities. Shenoute’s emphasis on the definition of the monastic life as suffering service, after a female monk refused her promotion, was a universal definition that gained strength from comparison of the female community with the male. Thus Shenoute argues that “just as” suffering service exists in the male community, so too it must in the female.”° In the third case, Shenoute argued for the legitimacy of beating women based on the need for a reciprocal relationship between the female and male communities. In all three cases, then, Shenoute relied on a universal monasticism, but one in which the monks in their separate communities acted in similar ways in order to show the connection between them. Thus, even as the phrase suggests the “genderlessness” of the monastic practice “in your community and in our community,” it reinscribed the sexual difference that separated the two communities, making one “ours” and the other “yours.” This phrase addressed the structure of the monastery—two separate but equal communities that worked in coordination—whereas the former phrase addressed definitions of proper monastic discipline. What the rhetoric regarding reciprocity masks, however, is the way that systematic asymmetry could enter the reciprocal relationship, and yet still be supported by Shenoute’s ideology of uniformity. Shenoute’s efforts to amalgamate the women into the larger monastic community as brethren and his use of male exemplars for their edification were subtly, but significantly, different from the usual Christian arguments that ascetic women needed to be “like aman” and therefore not like women.” Shenoute did not claim to use a male standard to construct his monasticism and to require the female monks to become like men to be monks. Indeed, he insisted that the gender difference be maintained

100 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

and that this difference be properly disciplined by his monasticism, which was a uni-

versal standard to which he expected the women as well as the men to adhere. Both women and men were to become “brethren” (we would say “monks” but Shenoute does not). Although Shenoute used a rhetoric of unity in his letters more sparingly than in the rules, it is still clear that his endeavors to unite the two communities were

not simply efforts to expand his authority, but to eradicate any differences that gender was bringing to the monastic experience; his concern centered on the monks, “whether male or female,” “in our community and in your community,” having the same monastic experience to reach the same salvation. Although Shenoute was perhaps consciously structuring his arguments to efface gender, his discourse also includes moments when he reverted to using gendered stereotypes to argue for the women’s submission to his authority; he, and the women, may have been less aware of these moments, since they are consistent with the dominant ideology of late an~ tique Christianity. To accept Shenoute’s rhetoric of unity without also noting his use of a rhetoric of difference, however, would be to accept Shenoute on his own terms. Before turning to this complementary aspect of his discourse of monastic power, we need to examine evidence of Shenoute’s attempts to make the women’s monastic life

uniform with the men’s. | -

The Women’s Monastic Life ee Shenoute’s rhetoric was meant to persuade the women to accept his universal monasticism, which carried with it certain changes in their monastic life. These changes are difficult to determine since we lack any detailed description of life in the women’s community under Shenoute’s predecessors and also clear comparisons to life in the men’s community, even under Shenoute. It is my goal to see how Shenoute tried to create a universal monasticism in practice in the women’s community, in the context

, of those crises where Shenoute is not addressing both communities but is clearly cor- | , recting, or chastising, the women’s practices or errors. Here examining gender be- | comes complex. Since Shenoute was trying to create a monasticism for the women that would be “universal,” he avoided using gender in his arguments; yet the reasons for his changes were gendered, namely, his need for a separate female community subordinated not just to Shenoute but to the male elder who visited the women as a proxy for Shenoute. Thus, in creating a “universal” monasticism, Shenoute created inherently asymmetrical authority structures as well. The second part of this chapter investigates how Shenoute maintained the separation of the communities; here my focus is on his creation of reciprocity within the separation of the two communities. Shenoute’s uniform ascetic program was not limited to the requirement that each monk received the same food and clothing and followed the same schedule of work and prayer.”8 It also ensured that no monk received leniency for any physical charac-

teristic that could be perceived as deviant. One rule, for example, outlawed monks , giving portions of their food to other monks who were lame or blind.’ The frequency of Shenoute’s assertions that there should be one expectation of all monks “whether male or female” foregrounds gender as the most important of those characteristics

that could be used to argue for special treatment rather than uniformity. Since -Shenoute inherited some of his rules from his predecessors, it is possible that the for-

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 10]

mulas of inclusion that appear in the rules were not his innovation.*° Shenoute’s predecessors’ lack of contact with the women, however, suggest that they had little control over, and little concern about, the women’s adherence to the rules. Shenoute provided a contrast, as we have seen, in his aggressive efforts to have the monasticism practiced by the women be the same as that of the men. The changes that resulted from these efforts at achieving a universal monasticism are what I am exploring in this section; however, as will become clear, much of the evidence for these changes results from their controversial nature. That is, Shenoute’s arguments derive from a resistance, or even rejection, among at least some of the women to the changes he was making. This context creates an unavoidable tension in examining the evidence between Shenoute’s universalist ideal and the gendered reality. This section looks at the former, examining points when contention arose because Shenoute was apparently making the women’s life conform with his monastic standard. Shenoute’s plan to create his monasticism depended, as I have argued, on uniting the female community with the male under his leadership. His leadership was thus

the source of the proper monasticism, an ideology that his discourse of monastic power supported, with his rhetoric of unity creating a subset of arguments that engaged with gender in its attempts to efface its importance. This change in leadership | style seems to have affected specific areas of life for the women: corporal punishment,

fasting, and teaching. These three areas of monastic practice show the effects of Shenoute’s desire, evident in his rhetoric of unity, to create reciprocity between the two separate communities. In these areas the women were supposed to obey Shenoute not because they were women, but because they were monks, like the men. Here my reconstruction of the effects of Shenoute’s leadership is necessarily speculative. There

. are hints throughout the letters that resistance to Shenoute’s role in these matters was in part resistance to changes he was making. Below I suggest scenarios that explain these various clues. Furthermore, it is certainly possible, and seems likely, that male monks also had objections to corporal punishment, excessive fasting, and possibly teaching authority. The lack of a clear misogynist element in Shenoute’s arguments to the women suggests he might have made generic, gender-neutral claims about the importance of these elements to the monastic life. This uniformity is what makes his monasticism universal, or here “genderless”; what genders these same changes is the necessity that the women, unlike the men, obey Shenoute’s authority even as represented by men other than Shenoute. Shenoute focused on the practice, which was supposed to be the same for both men and women, but ignored any asymmetry in achieving the uniformity of monastic discipline. The clearest and best example comes from corporal punishment. We have seen that Shenoute claimed the authority to mete out punishments in the women’s community. He may have claimed this authority early in his tenure, since there are hints

from the letters of the Initial Crisis that corporal punishment was meted out to women. At one point, Shenoute tells the women who had made sexual accusations against him that he is innocent “not only because I have commanded you, but also with blows and blame and begging and a great many other things which are not at all suitable for me to do.”*! Since there was no contact between the men and women eatlier in the history of the White Monastery, we can presume that Shenoute’s role as punisher would be an innovation. The question that needs to be addressed is whether

Oo 102 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery , the women resisted not simply Shenoute’s role in determining such punishment but also objected to corporal punishment in principle as inappropriate for women. Much of the evidence can be explained simply in terms of a struggle over authority. In this scenario, the female leaders wanted to determine corporal punishment, rather than

Shenoute, but they were not opposed to the use of corporal punishment in the women’s community, that is, of their female underlings. However, several of Shen- | - oute’s arguments suggest that some of the women were opposed, at least in part, to

a corporal punishment for women at all, apparently because it was not a suitable pun- |

_ ishment for their gender. , |

Again, Shenoute’s desire to unify the monastic experience of men and women inspired his efforts to include women in monastic beatings. Just as there was to be reciprocity in the monastic experience of the two communities in ascetic standards, so too corporal punishment was inflicted on the whole monastery. Corporal punishment

was a method of monastic instruction, and any women who have transgressed the monastic rules “will have to receive their instruction by blows, for they too are our brethren, just like our brothers are over here in our community.”*? This argument sug- , gests that at least some women were claiming that they did not have to suffer corpo~ ral punishment because their separate female community implied a status different from the men’s. This example gives insight into other examples of the women’s resistance to corporal punishment, which are recorded in the same letter. Shenoute’s arguments for authority over the beatings of women suggest that some women’s resistance was rooted not just in aversion to subordination, but to the spread of this type

, of punishment, via Shenoute’s expansion of his authority, into their community: “And if you report to us regarding those who contradict you disobediently, or regarding any other evil, we shall be responsible for them to chastise them and have them be instructed in all knowledge, just as you have been hearing about what we have ~ been doing over here in our community.”* At the same time, the letter fragment begins with Shenoute’s complaints that the women have undertaken beatings without seeking his input. Part of the crisis over Beatings of Women, then, was administrative:

who had the authority to determine corporal punishment? The crisis in this case ~ stemmed from Shenoute’s opposition to a situation in the female community: the women were deciding the extent of their own corporal punishment, without consulting Shenoute.*# Shenoute’s condemnation makes clear that even the men in the male community did not use corporal punishment on their own authority. He comments about the male monks that “they know from God that there is a great injury and great condemnation on everyone in our community who will do anything for themselves on their own by their own authority without the male elder.”35 While the © conflict may have been limited to control over corporal punishment, it may equally likely have included the women’s attempts to assume control of the beatings as a way to regulate or eradicate this form of punishment in their community.

Another form of resistance to corporal punishment, or at least to beatings by Shenoute, was the women’s reluctance to report their companions’ wrongdoing, both ~ in the Initial Crisis and later in Shenoute’s leadership. Near the end of the Initial Crisis, Shenoute wrote to the women: “You did not write to us about her. Are we gover-

| nors or merciless soldiers because we seek the salvation of your souls?” Although the context for this vague rhetorical question is lost,’ Shenoute later uses a similar one _

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 103

in reference to corporal punishment, specifically in his defense after the death of the male monk: “Pray, is it not written in the letter, or do you not remember from the beginning that I said a great many times, crying out in great pain and reproach, sitting in your midst when we gathered together, ‘O God! O God! O fathers who begat me! , What are these sorts of deeds to me? Am I a soldier? Am I a governor? I am a servant. I am a shepherd.””’* Furthermore, Shenoute’s later instructions for the method of applying beatings suggest that the women were reluctant to carry out his punishments. His elaborate stipulations make clear the women’s opposition to (male-controlled) corporal punishment within their community.*? In addition, Shenoute’s repeated arguments for reciprocity between the two communities foregrounds gender as the divisive issue in introducing corporal punishment for the women.*° Other parts of Shenoute’s arguments for corporal punishment of the women also suggest he had to create gender uniformity against claims that gender should affect beatings. For example, when he described his assumption that biblical figures beat their offspring, he did not use the generic “children,” but the more particular “sons and daughters,” specifically including a female example.*! Because gender was already, in this letter, an issue in questioning the appropriateness of beatings, Shenoute seems to have anticipated that the women would think a male model, just “sons,” would not apply to them as female monks. Rather than respond to the female monks as women, Shenoute chose to use a universal argument, similar to one he could use to male monks. Shenoute’s rhetoric of describing the monastery as a “single body” also defended the inclusion of women in corporal punishment. The women’s acts of disobedience, Shenoute argued, no longer affected only their community; they pol-

luted the whole body.*? Beatings were, as we have seen, the enactment of the metaphor of cleansing the polluted body. The female monks’ corporal punishment was necessary not only for their own salvation, then, but for the good of the whole monastery: “Since we are truly a single body, we ought to instruct one another by scoldings and blows ... whether male or female.” Shenoute’s extension of corporal punishment into the women’s community was therefore based on his belief in a genderless monasticism as the best path to salvation. Just as both male and female monks were to follow patterns of the suffering servant, so too both male and female monks were to share the same suffering in repenting their sins and cleansing their bodies. Gender was a consideration, however, in the severity of the punishments. The men received blows from a strap, and on other places on their body, such as the hand and thigh; they also received strong enough blows to throw them to the ground.#4 The women, however, received anywhere from ten to forty blows with a rod to the soles of their feet.*? One reason for the difference was that the women would have had to be clothed for their beatings, since the male elder was present. However, the difference in the severity of beatings is also an indication of tension between Shenoute’s desire to make identical the male and female monastic experience as monks and his own cultural assumption that women were weaker: they were to be beaten, but as women they were not to be beaten as severely as the men. Two other areas where Shenoute altered the women’s monastic experience were his ascetic demand regarding their fasting and teaching authority in the female community. Here the evidence is more fragmentary than that for corporal punishment. It is clear there was resistance to beatings, but it is less evident why. For fasting, the rea-

104 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

sons for the women’s complaints are also uncertain. For teaching, the situation is even murkier and only the slimmest suggestions are possible. During the Initial Crisis, there were three separate conflicts about food: the first arose from the division between monks without kin in the monastery and those with kin (chapter 8); the second arose from stealing food from the storehouses (chapter 2); and the third resulted from unequal distribution of food due to the favoritism of the food server (chapter 2). Although all three conflicts were confined to the women’s community, gender does not play a clear role in Shenoute’s (fragmentary) advice to |

correct these situations. In this same crisis (about halfway through the surviving record), Shenoute responds to a complaint from the women about their inadequate supply of goods, most likely food, from the men. Shenoute defended the ascetic demands he made of the women but also promised that, if their “bodily needs” were truly

being neglected, he would instruct the male elder to give them more provisions: “Even though it was right to despise your concerns for bodily needs, nevertheless | will order the male elder and all your brethren to take care of you in everything so that you will not find a word of complaint.” These “bodily needs” must refer to food since that was the main material need the men provided. Here Shenoute exercised control over the female community with the goal of enforcing a monastic standard that he saw as proper. Although he does not say it is the same as the men’s, we can presume, from his concerns about reciprocity between the two communities, that it was at least the equivalent. It would be nice to know the exact amounts allowed for “bodily needs,” and if the women were allowed more given their “weaker” gender, but at this point such evidence is not available. Rather, it is clear that Shenoute saw his own leadership as the source of proper uniform monasticism. This evidence suggests that some of the other conflicts, especially the theft from the storehouses, may have resulted from an unwillingness, or inability, to adhere to Shenoute’s standards for fasting. Indeed, he made strenuous arguments regarding the

benefits of fasting in response to these lapses: a The ones whose portion does not satisfy them reveal that they are adorned by them [their bellies], as their faces fell. When their portion satisfies them, they reveal that they make their flesh zealous and that they give glory to God. Those who are not satisfied by

their portion reveal that their god is their bellies and that their glory is their shame. - When their portion satisfies them, they reveal truly that God is their God and that their

glory is in their self-control. Those who steal from the portion of their brethren reveal , that they are uncontrollable, as they prepare for themselves scourges, as it is written.”

Shenoute’s arguments, with calls to “conquer their bellies” to “make their flesh zealous” through “self-control,” echo many similar arguments made by other Christian leaders in the fourth century.*® As I have mentioned, however, Shenoute did not use | arguments based on gender to chastise the women. Any weakness they experienced in fasting was not, in the surviving record, explained or criticized in gendered terms.

Rather, the evidence suggests that Shenoute was merely concerned to have the women adhere to the “universal” monastic life, including proper levels of fasting.

After the Initial Crisis, the women continued to complain about the amount of provisions Shenoute had sent to them. In the letter about Beatings of Women (4), Shenoute again told the women that he would speak to the male elder about meet-

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 105

ing their material requirements: “Now concerning your bodily needs, [the brethren] shall not forget to take care of them for you except in ignorance .. . but you are to understand that you are wretched souls when you . . . [the text breaks off].”*? Since this passage immediately follows Shenoute’s praise of the male elder’s wisdom in his relationships with the women, the elder’s ignorance about the women’s material needs is jarring.°° The elder knew which women had committed transgressions but did not know how much food the women needed or thought they needed. The discrepancy is explicable if we suppose that the male elder was relying on fixed ascetic standards to allocate foodstuffs to the women. That amount of food, however, was not enough to satisfy the women; stealing, hoarding, and other conflicts over food resulted. For example, since Shenoute’s reply to the women’s complaint comes just after the list of women to be beaten, it is worth noting that two of the ten women were to be punished for stealing.*! The women’s voices are, unfortunately, lost to us; we do not know how they themselves worded their complaints. Did they suggest Shenoute’s fasting levels were too high and thus inappropriate for them as women, as at least some women seem to have suggested in response to corporal punishment? Rather than present their gender as weaker, did they stress the need for their spiritual independence, in determining their own ascetic lives? All we can surmise from Shenoute’s assurance to the women that he would increase their food supply is that he was persuaded that the women did need more food than he had allowed. He seems about to comment further on the validity of the women’s complaints when the manuscript unfortunately breaks off. It is obvious that to maintain a uniform monastic experience, Shenoute would need to control teaching of Scripture, the basis of the monastic life and of the monastic rules, in both the men’s and women’s communities. In order to have this control in the women’s community, however, he had, as we have seen, to change the archimandrite’s relationship with the women’s community. The women may have had control over their teaching earlier, either making decisions themselves or at least being able to follow a variety of (male) teachers, one of whom may have been Apa Pshoi of the nearby Red Monastery. The evidence suggests that Shenoute established his authority, in favor of the women’s, to teach or to appoint teachers in the female community as one means to prevent the wrong type of monasticism. This wrong monasticism could arise from misinterpreting the Scriptures, from weakness like laziness and arrogance, but also from the women making decisions based on what they believed to be appropriate to their lives, without consulting a male authority. One purpose of the male leaders’ visits and Shenoute’s letters was to provide correct instruction about Scripture and the monastic life. At the end of the Initial Crisis, Shenoute’s final remarks suggest that the women now had to rely on his instructions, both those

he had already sent and also later ones. He declares to the women that “if you are , wise” they should be able to lead a monastic life based on his “lesser” sayings that they have, but assures them he will send more, apparently to clarify of his expectations of

them. Another example from an earlier point in this same crisis suggests that Shenoute believed the women could not listen to words from Scripture (as preached by him) when they were in conflict with him.* In addition, one of the women listed among those to be beaten in the later crisis about authority and corporal punishment, had made the claim, “I teach others.”** She was also among those assigned a harsher

106 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery , punishment.® Further, in his interventions in the conflict between the female elder and Tapolle, Shenoute makes sarcastic references to the “usefulness” (that is, its ability to lead to salvation) of his instructions versus the women’s. I think it unlikely that either the female elder or Tapolle rejected Shenoute’s advice as useless to them as female monks, especially since they were also rejecting each other’s.>” Nevertheless,

it becomes clear that Shenoute’s concern is not just that the women were in conflict, but that they were not following his teaching authority.°* Shenoute took control of

community. , | | |

, women’s monastic education, then, for a variety of reasons, all stemming at least in part from his desire to enforce uniformity between the two genders, each in its own The major problem in Shenoute’s attempts to create a universal monasticism in practice is implicit in these descriptions of argument over corporal punishment, fast-

ing, and instruction. It depended not just on the women’s submission to Shenoute’s authority, like the men, but on their submission to the male elders and envoys, who. came over to carry out Shenoute’s commands. While Shenoute did not use gender in his rhetoric in a misogynistic way, his rhetoric of unity masks the effects of subordi-

nation in the women’s lives. Shenoute’s “universal monasticism” was thus basedona systemic asymmetry that was essential to his exercise of power. Central to his claims

_ for a genderless monasticism was his stipulation that as members of the White Monastery, the women were to have uniformity with their male counterparts. All -_were brethren, all were parts of the single body of the monastery, and all were to live under the same rules and suffer the same type of punishments. Uniformity, however, does not mean equality, and body images in antiquity were used to promote diversity

within unity, and the hierarchy that diversity could generate. In order to run the women’s community, to establish standards for fasting and to inflict corporal punish-

ment, Shenoute had to rely on inherently unequal, rather than uniform, authority structures. Thus, the separation of the female community from the male made a gendered monasticism central to the women’s monastic experience. Their resistance, es-

, pecially to the male elder, resulted from the discrepancy between Shenoute’s claims | about their status in the White Monastery and their experience. The inherent asymmetry of the monastery introduced relations of power, not just between the female monks and Shenoute, but between the female senior monks and the male elders. As

with his attempts to unite the communities, Shenoute needed an ideology to justify , ~ the women’s lack of power, and the men’s right to power. A rhetoric of difference was necessary to justify the lack of uniformity at higher levels of leadership in the female community, as compared with their male counterparts. This rhetoric of difference, and the structural asymmetry in the monastery, are the subjects to which I will now

, turn. , a a

, “In Accord with the Rules of Divinity”: Gendered Monasticism Both in his rhetoric and in practice, Shenoute relied on “strategies of containment” to create aspects of monasticism that were particular to the female monks as women. _ His appeals to biblical models and narratives, which we saw in his rhetoric of unity, relied on the belief that models in the past were superior to envisioning anew anddif-

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 107

ferent future. Because Shenoute was grounded in the past and looked to it for proper

gender relations, the “realized eschatology” of living “like God and his angels in heaven” without concern for male and female did not extend to the social structure of the monastery; that is, it did not physically combine the two separate communities. One might explain away the fact that Shenoute did not unite male and female in practice by noting that he was a product of his culture or by pointing out that many Christian (male) leaders, from Paul to many of Shenoute’s contemporaries, distinguished between what would be the case in the next life and what still needed to be required while one occupied this body, in this world. Nevertheless, these observations do not eradicate the importance of gender to Shenoute’s monastery and his ideology. Fourth-century Christian theologians debated whether gender, that is, sexual difference located in the body, was essential to the self, and an intrinsic part of it, or whether it was something linked to the body but separate from the soul. Linked to this debate was the question whether or not gender, as manifested in male and female bodies, would be part of the resurrection body. Both the issue of the self and of the bodily resurrection were also important to ascetic practices. Several scholars have

surveyed the Christian leaders who praised ascetic women for overcoming theit “weaker” natures, or who expected less of ascetic women than ascetic men.© These issues—of gender, the body, asceticism, and resurrection—coalesce in the Origenist controversy, through which we can place Shenoute in his cultural and intellectual context.

In the controversy over Origen’s teachings, the opponents to Origenism condemned, among other beliefs, the argument that gender was a human construct that affected only the body. One of the greatest antagonists to Origen’s ideas was Jerome. Although Jerome used the image of an ascetic woman being “now a man” in at least one letter, he was opposed to the extension of that rhetoric to allow women positions of leadership equal to those of men either in Christianity or in secular society.°! Jerome also held that gender, that is, the differences between men and women, was so inherent to the self it they would continue in the afterlife.’ Asceticism, in Jerome’s view, was meant to imitate in this life the self that would exist in the kingdom of heaven. For leaders such as Jerome, asceticism reinforced the social structure of gender, even while his rhetoric occasionally likened women to men. Jerome’s view of the ascetic self corresponded to his position in the Origenist controversy. He opposed the view of the resurrection as genderless and instead maintained, as Peter Brown summarizes, “that it was absurd to expect, as Origen and Rufinus seemed to imply, that women were creatures destined to be divested forever of the sexual characteristics that separated them from ‘us’ males.”®* In a letter to Paula, Jerome argues against a

, strawman Origenist with language that makes clear the importance of gender to the controversy: “If the woman shall not rise again as a woman nor the man as a man, there will be no resurrection of the dead. For sex has its members and the members make up the whole body. But if there shall be no sex and no members, what will become of the resurrection of the body, which cannot exist without sex and members?”® Moreover, to legitimize a gendered asceticism, it was necessary to view women as the “other”; Jerome’s misogynist rhetoric was therefore integral to his view of asceticism, gender and the self.® It was a rhetoric that distanced male from female to keep the difference between men and women clear and distinct.

| 108 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery , , Like Jerome, Shenoute also opposed Origenism, or at least agreed with the antiOrigenists’ view of the retention of gender in the afterlife.©’ Since asceticism and gender were issues of the Origenist controversy, Shenoute’s position implies that he might have followed the school that saw gender as central to both asceticism and the afterlife. And indeed, in a conflict with the women, he states explicitly that the afterlife is “the place where male is not separated from female,” by which he does not mean a unification of the two genders into a third, unknown gender but that gender, still existent, would not require the separation it does in this life.°* Yet he argued for a monasticism that appealed to a universal self, unhindered by divisive “fleshly” issues. He believed that the essential elements of monasticism could be expressed in a series of expectations that anyone could follow. The logical implication of a genderless monasticism was that men and women should live together without noticing each other’s gender differences. Shenoute, however, did not accept that logical conclusion for two reasons: first, like other Christian ascetics, he believed in the sexual danger that would result in male/female contact and, second, he believed that part of the renunciation of the flesh that characterized monasticism was renunciation of one’s kin. Kin of separate sexes, therefore, had to live apart in order to avoid temptation to emotional attachment, just as men and women in danger of temptation to sexual attachment had to. Thus the first step in creating an inherently gendered monasticism was an insistence on the separation of the male and female communities. This separation, however, could nevertheless be overcome (theoretically) if the head of the monastery managed to treat women and men the same. Shenoute is notable among Christian leaders of his time for the degree to which he succeeded in doing so, especially as I noted in his avoidance of misogynistic rhetoric. He believed that both genders were vulnerable to error and in need of his guidance in order to achieve salvation. Yet points in Shenoute’s rhetoric when he called upon cultural assumptions about women to justify his exercise of power over them, the position of the male elder and envoys as the women’s superiors, and the existence of special rules secluding and confining the women within the monastery itself all argue that Shenoute was just as

hindered by his own flesh as he required his monks not to be. That is, Shenoute viewed the female monks as women as well as monks, despite his own efforts to universalize his monastic expectations. Moreover, the contradiction and tensions between Shenoute’s genderless and gendered monasticism, despite their coexistence,

, are not merely a modern scholarly construct: his letters provide evidence that there were occasions when his attempts at affecting a coexistence of these two ideals con-

fused the female monks themselves. _ |

The Rhetoric of Difference: The Cultural Gender Boundary

Both types of evidence for universal monasticism, the rules for all monks and Shenoute’s rhetoric of unity, have their counterparts in gendered monasticism, that is, in a monasticism designed for the female monks as women. Within the universal monastic Rule were rules just for female monks, which focused especially on limiting their contact with their male brethren and with the non-monastic world; these rules — I discuss at the end of this chapter. The rhetorical counterpart was his appeals to cul-

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 109

tural assumptions about women, which he used to validate the women’s submission to his external male authority. This rhetoric focused on perceived inherently female weaknesses that made them different and “other” than men, and so created a cultural gender boundary that legitimated the existence of the physical gender boundary within the monastery. Just as there were occasions when Shenoute appealed to a universal monasticism, so too there were points when he called upon a “natural” gender difference to support his insistence on the women’s subordination, not just to him, but to his entire authority structure. The female monks thus had a monastic experience different from the men’s not only because they lived in a separate community, but also because their male leader treated them simultaneously as genderless monks (“brethren”) and as members of the cultural category “woman.”© Shenoute treated as “natural” the division of the two communities, and he presented a God-given hierarchy that would allow these two separate communities to unite under his leadership. Rank-and-file monks, male and female, were subordinate to their immediate (same-gender) superiors. But the female leaders—the female

, elder, elders, and senior female monks——were subordinated to their male counterparts: the male elder and envoys, who in turn answered only to Shenoute. Shenoute’s leadership thus created the very thing he also sought to avoid: a monasticism shaped by gender. Shenoute did not object to his own gendered monasticism for two reasons: first, because it did not, in his view, undermine ascetic practice as the road to salvation; and second, since in these instances he was controlling the role gender would play, this form of gendered monasticism supported his power as much as genderless monasticism did. Both Shenoute’s rhetoric of unity and his rhetoric of difference, then, supported his own power. His rhetoric of unity, with its implications of equal reciprocity and egalitarianism, masked the reality of the women’s submission to his authority and their subordination to male envoys as a result. The calls for unity explained his own ultimate power over all the monks, including the women, while the emphasis on gender difference explained why the female community should accept the asymmetrical power relations that limited their own authority and expanded that

of the men. Most of the time Shenoute tries to elide gender and so does not acknowledge its existence except in efforts to unite male and female in common practice. Yet if we “read for gender” in his letters, we can see that tropes common in early Christian literature, such as woman’s need for male guidance, her susceptibility to the Devil, and her passionate nature all inform Shenoute’s discourse, especially on occasions when some of the female leaders have stepped out of their proper place.’° On these occasions, Shenoute betrays gender’s effect on his ideology and his monasticism, with proper spheres for each gender. Reading for gender brings forth Shenoute’s thetoric of difference, which supported those spheres and existed alongside his rhetoric of unity.

| At the beginning of his leadership, despite his visits, calls for reports, and the oath he and the women took, Shenoute seems to have allowed the women to continue to run their own community.’! The women’s failure to resolve their internal strife, however, required their subjugation to male authorities.” At this time, Shenoute defended his taking control by asserting that the women needed his leadership for their salvation; however, as was typical for him, he did not draw attention to gender dif-

110 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

ference in making this claim. Later in his tenure, however, Shenoute began to argue that the women needed to accept male authority in their community as part of “the divine order.” He contended that it was not God’s plan for women to make their own decisions: “But take care, wretches, lest—since you have rejected submission to your brethren, so that they do not rule you by their instruction and by their teaching in your community, [which would be proper] according to the eternal rules of divinity.” Shenoute wanted the women’s submission because, in his view, male guidance guarded against women’s susceptibility to error and thus to God’s condemnation: If they did “cast off their submission”, then “you rather submit in your community to many masters which are the demons and every evil thing and God becomes angry with you and brings upon you a wrathful condemnation.”” Elizabeth Clark has argued that, in other forms of late antique monasticism, male monks were also encouraged not to rely “on [their] own judgment rather than on that of someone older and wiser” because “self-reliance is a main mechanism by which the Devil is given op-

portunity for attack.”’* In the case of Shenoute’s female community, it was not enough for the younger female monks to rely on the female elder and her advisors. Shenoute’s call for the female leaders’ submission assumed that they were less capable

than their male counterparts, an assumption that coexisted with his position, expounded in the same letter, that the female monks were “brethren” just like the men in the male community. His claim that women had to submit to male authority because they were women legitimated the gender separation by intensifying the difference between male and female even as it paradoxically ensured him the authority to enact his genderless monastic standards in the female community. Shenoute also sought to legitimize male guidance of the female community by reminding women of their susceptibility to the Devil. While Shenoute may well have chastised errant male monks with similar rhetoric, association with the Devil had particular meaning for a female audience. Early Christian thought used Eve’s gender to explain her vulnerability to the serpent (equated with the Devil in early Christian theology) and her ensuing error. Eve then served as the pretext for continued suspicion of women. Christian women in late antiquity still bore, as women, the responsibility for Eve’s mistake.’ Shenoute claimed that if the female monks did not follow male authority they would then follow the Devil’s. In his arguments, earlier, for female submission to male authority in accord with a divine plan, Shenoute specifically invokes “demons and every evil thing” as the alternative source of authority for the women. Similarly, when the women were disobedient or rebellious against male authority, the male leaders were quick to accuse the women of being under the Devil’s influence. Shenoute reports that when Tapolle and the female elder did not allow the male elder to mediate their conflict, the male elder complained to Shenoute that the women. “pass all their time taking counsel from the Devil.”’® Shenoute agreed with his envoy’s assessment and urged the female elder in particular to break her silence

and make peace with her rival. In his disagreement with Tachom, Shenoute also claimed that it was her susceptibility to the Devil that led her to act in ways that he deemed inappropriate to her leadership position. He blamed his own misunderstand_ ing of Tachom on God: “And I am amazed that a great many times God has confused your language in your community and in our community.””” Yet he blamed her stub-

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 11]

born continuation of the conflict on her consorting with Satan.’* By associating the women with the Devil, Shenoute also created an implicit contrast between them and him, given his self-proclaimed association with God. The disparity between Shenoute’s alliance with God and his threat of the women’s susceptibility to the Devil lent further validity to his leadership and to suspicion of the women’s ability to govern themselves. Likewise, in the late antique construction of “woman,” part of her susceptibility to the Devil was rooted in her passionate and less rational nature. Only the rational person could contemplate God, and conversely the passionate were vulnerable to the Devil. It is not surprising, therefore, to find Shenoute linking the women’s susceptibility to the Devil with a sexualized nature. Moreover, their passionate natures contributed to their deviant status since reason was considered to be a masculine quality. Shenoute warned the women that God’s plan for the monastery required separation of the sexes and that the women obey God rather than the Devil: “And all of you in your community, just as it is not your custom to show your faces to men boldly or to speak with them, so do not show your hearts to a hostile demonic devil, nor speak with them at all. Speak among yourselves and to God, day or night.””? Moreover, Shenoute continued his letter with the recurrent image of prostitution to express the errors of those who refuse to follow the Lord.®° Shenoute drew on the practice of gender separation and seclusion to explain the reason why they should also be separate from the Devil.®! Just as the women were not to be near men because of the danger of sexual intercourse, so Shenoute used a sexual image to explain their susceptibility to the Devil. Moreover, this rhetoric also legitimates the women’s seclusion as just as necessary as their separation from the Devil. His choice of this image shows his construction of gender within a self-consciously universal monasticism.* His rhetoric incorporates an assumption about female monks that was a primary reason for the separation: women were enslaved to their passions. Their transgressions, therefore, sexual or not, were best described in language suitable to their sexual nature. These examples, at first glance, do not seem to have the weight to counter the ubiquity of Shenoute’s rhetoric of unity, with his constant claims of equating the two communities. Shenoute made few explicit statements to the women that his view of the divine order required female submission to male authority. Nevertheless, these few times are important. They betray a gendered monasticism that in turn sheds light on other points when Shenoute called on gendered tropes to support his position. A view of women as inferior was implicit in his portrayal of women as weak, prone to evil, and passionate rather than rational. In addition, these examples all stem from portions of letters that had a definitively female audience. They suggest that, while the ubiquity of Shenoute’s rhetoric of unity created a dominant ideology of universalism and egalitarianism, the asymmetry that it hides was more evident, both to the women and Shenoute, than the majority of evidence would allow.®? Reading for gender allows the complexity to become apparent that Shenoute tried to efface. His rules and rhetoric resulted in two forms of monasticism in the White Monastery, one in which the female monks were “brethren” and the other in which they were “woman.” We have seen the structures of unity creating a genderless ascetic practice for the “brethren” and now can examine the specifics of the power relations of those authority structures.

112 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

Seclusion and Separation: The Physical Gender Boundary Shenoute’s anxiety that the women have a monastic experience parallel to the men’s resulted from their living beyond his direct control, in ways different from the men from whom he also lived apart. Rather than self-exile, the women lived in a community whose separateness was intricately linked to their gender. In order to see gender in their authority relationship with Shenoute, we need to return to the Initial Crisis and examine what happened when Shenoute began to visit the women’s community. The fragment describing these visits begins in the midst of Shenoute’s explanation of his perception of the visits, the events that transpired during them, and the consequences of those visits at the point he was writing the letter.8* What survives are the descriptions of his tearing his cloak, the expulsion of some (apparently female) monks

during his second visit, and him and the women taking the oath in the third. _ Shenoute provides a general description of all the visits when he denies that a desire to see the women motivated his visits, a denial that he follows with his claims to virginity.8> Shenoute then defends himself against a “judgment” of the women, proclaiming his innocence.* Further, he extends his innocence to a variety of other men including: his two predecessors; Apa Pshoi (from the Red Monastery); other male leaders such as Papnoute and another Shenoute; and finally some male monks, whom he calls “your menfolk, your brothers, your sons” and then all the men in the male community “from the least to the greatest.” Almost as an afterthought, he also includes any of the women who were not participating in the accusations against him.

These divisions are important since they inscribe the various populations of the monastery, which are defined by a mixture of criteria: rank, gender, biological relationship, and alliance with Shenoute. Moreover, the divisions explain that not all the female monks were united in their opposition to Shenoute, but Shenoute claimed all men wete united in their support of him (and hence united in maintaining his inno-

cence). ,

The rest of Shenoute’s arguments lend insight into these female monks’ “judgment” of Shenoute, and the identity of the complainers: female monks with male relatives in the monastery were questioning the appropriateness of Shenoute’s visits and, by implication, of his active leadership of the female community.®” After his de-

scription of the innocent monks, Shenoute points out the results of the women’s (false) accusation and condemnation: that they have transgressed the divinely given monastic rule, set by Shenoute, and so they will not have Shenoute standing by their side at Judgment Day. Rather, Shenoute will be standing at Jesus’ side, participating in the women’s condemnation. Next, Shenoute describes his own banishment from the female community. He explains that this bodily exile also meant that his soul and spirit were separate from the women and that, as a direct result, God, Jesus and his Holy Spirit were also unwilling to reside with the women. Finally, Shenoute describes his great grief over the situation as it is at the time of writing this letter. He fears for the women’s salvation; that the women (not all, but those accusing him) were not upset about the situation showed their indifference to their own salvation. Shenoute’s rhetoric in this section of his argument attests to the historical situation of the women’s complaints. Clearly the women’s judgment had constituted a questioning of his visits, and even a suggestion that these should cease, thus radically

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 113

altering the type of leadership Shenoute sought. Shenoute responded not only by explaining to the women why such refusal would have dire consequences for them; he also constructed his institutional power over the female monks, as we have seen, in

terms of his knowledge, specifically his divinely revealed knowledge of how the monks must live in order to receive salvation at Judgment Day. Further, it is clear from Shenoute’s arguments that the women making this judgment wanted the freedom to visit the men’s communities, as Shenoute was visiting theirs, in order to see their male relatives. Indeed, these women, as a result of Shenoute’s visits, had already taken it

upon themselves to begin visiting their male relatives. In his objections to the women’s visits, Shenoute had to explain why he was allowing change in one area— the male leader’s visiting the female community—but not allowing it in another-— the female relatives leaving their community to visit the male. With his visits, Shenoute sought to transform the space of the White Monastery from a fragmented space, with little contact between the male leader and the female community, into a unified space. One way to achieve this unity would have been to allow a freedom of movement between the male and female communities as members of this one space. Instead Shenoute allowed his movements into the female space, accompanied by various male elders and leaders, but still confined the female monks in their own space. His defense for secluding the women within their community rested on the women’s motivations for visiting their relatives, not on the women’s need for seclusion: “Altogether I see you now, whenever you spend a single month without seeing them, you then are upset about them and you wonder because you have not seen them.”°* In contrast, Shenoute claimed that he visited the women as an authority figure, not as a man and not because he wised to see them. It was this difference in motivation that made his visits legitimate within the space of the monastery. Moreover, Shenoute treated this division as “natural” because it was based on gender. When Shenoute expressed his objections to the women’s visits to the male community, he had to make a general defense of his policy of separation and the gender segregation it created. As he pointed out several times in short succession, separation in this life would allow reunion in the next; failure to keep the sexes pure from one another would lead to eternal separation.®? The women who were transgressing the gender boundary by visiting their male kin risked, according to Shenoute, losing their salvation. Although Shenoute restates several times his argument that division was necessary for salvation, he does not explicitly state the reason. Rather, he presents the separation as a fact of monastic life and warns against its violation for the sake of being able to join with one’s kin in the next life: “And I had thought that you would make the feast of life together, you, your sons, brothers, and menfolk, but now instead I tell you that many of us shall be estranged from their own and their fathers, and their brothers.”’° Shenoute’s arguments are all based on the assumption that the women’s movements are causing the problem. In this way, Shenoute introduced gender relations into the monastic space he had created. Part of the problem, to be sure, had to do with the biological relationships between the monks; but it was the women who were to be confined to their community, whereas, as we will see in chapter 8, the men

were allowed to travel to the women. The response of the women (with kin) to Shenoute’s asymmetrical authority structures allows us to see at least some response to his gender constructions within his ideology. These women’s (and perhaps some

114 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

silent others’) actual experience of Shenoute’s leadership diverged from his presentation of it. They did not view him, as head of the monastery, as a genderless authority figure, but as a man, an outsider in their female community. It is not surprising that these women did not know how to understand his visits in the Initial Crisis and misinterpreted them. The combination of a male leader visiting their community with frequency, staying all night, and tearing his clothes could certainly lead to confusion, especially since these visits were also an innovation. Moreover, the women’s response illustrates that the physical boundary between the male and female communities was gendered—not just because Shenoute was apart from the women, as he was from the men, but because he controlled contact between the two communities, often through allowing male movement to the female community but not vice versa. The women who were objecting seem to have thought his visits signaled a change in the policies established by his predecessors, a change not simply of authority or monastic standards but also of the gender boundary in the monastery. As we have seen, they had had no visits between the two communities, either from male leaders or between relatives. Since Shenoute had initiated regular contact between the two communities and since he pursued a monasticism that was applicable to all monks

“whether male or female,” these women seem to have believed that gender was no | longer the basis for separation of the communities. They did not seem to think the two communities would merge physically into one compound of buildings, but that the restrictions on their movements within monastic space had been lifted, specifically the prohibition against their visiting their male relatives. What had been a clear division of gender was now murky, as Shenoute sought to redefine the monastic space. As a result of this controversy over his visits, Shenoute set up the system of accountability that I have described as asymmetrical. What is intriguing about the monastic space is the issue of where gender was, and was not, a factor. Shenoute cre- | ated a monastery in which each monk had a proper place determined by a combination of rank and gender. Women in general were to be confined to their sphere (in their community), but when the female leaders were called upon to have a public (that is, administrative) role, they could legitimately leave that space. All the women within the female community were accountable to one another, but then the whole community was subordinated to the male elder. While the female elder had signifi~ cant authority compared to other women, in the overall structure of the monastery she was subservient not only to Shenoute but also to the male elder. In direct contrast was the male elder, who during his visits carried with him all the authority vested in him by Shenoute to determine the women’s activities.°! Shenoute makes clear in the , Initial Crisis that, although he still met regularly with the male community, letters (carried by the male elder) were his main form of communication with the women: “And previously, we were speaking with our companions with us, through God, in our gathering, or we were writing to you, in your own community, on account of our sal-

vation together.””’ Furthermore, although Shenoute required reports about behavior, | mainly transgressions, from both the male and female community, in the women’s case these reports had to be made to Shenoute through the male elder.?? During later conflicts, then, the male elder became the focus of the female leaders’ discontent about their circumscribed power.

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 115

Some of the various conflicts with the male elder were specifically between him and female leaders, suggesting a power struggle between those of higher rank, while other arguments show rank-and-file female monks resisting outside male authority. The variety of rank suggests that, while there was no monolithic reaction on the part of the women, the male elder’s authority was problematic to many female monks. While the female leaders sent their accounts to Shenoute without any complaint (that has survived), they were hostile to the male elder’s presence in their community and his interrogations of them. Part of the crisis over Beatings of the Women (4) was that the women, presumably the female leaders, had successfully concealed events from the male elder during his visits, and he responded angrily to their secrecy.** After hearing of the women’s secrecy, Shenoute then sent the elder again, bearing a warning of a possible visit from Shenoute himself.?® Another, more serious part of the crisis, however, was the question of authority over these beatings. Shenoute, we can recall, maintained that, as head of the monastery, only he had the right to decide the beatings to be inflicted. Despite these claims to exclusive rights, Shenoute invested one other man with limited authority over beatings: the male elder who met with the women to carry out their punishments. This notable exception highlights the tension between Shenoute, the male leaders, and the women, in terms of distribution of authority over the women’s community. When Shenoute gave his detailed instructions to the women about the method of carrying out the beatings, he made it clear that the female leaders were to hold the transgressors down, while the male elder delivered the blows on the soles of their feet. This image illustrates the complex relationships. The female leaders were to participate in the beatings, thus signifying their acceptance of the authority structures, but theirs was a passive role. The male elder delivered the actual blows, an action that Shenoute often attributed to God, when referring to his own reluctance to beat the monks. The women’s resistance to corporal punishment, then, was not simply a resistance to Shenoute’s uniform “universal” monasticism, but also a resistance to the asymmetrical power that was necessary to achieve uniform monastic practices. Shenoute often had to chastise the women for speaking against the male elder. In one case, a female monk of unknown rank was warned not to talk back when the male elder carried out her punishment.” Just as the female leaders could be seen as protecting their underlings from male control and male punishment of their bodies, so too the female monks sought to protect their bodies from male control, either in the form of demotion or, more likely, beatings. In addition, Shenoute warned against resistance to the male elder’s instructions, carried on Shenoute’s behalf. He concluded one letter by warning Tapolle and the female elder specifically, but including all female monks by implication, not to argue with the elder, “saying, ‘Yes, yes. No, no.’””””

Shenoute seems to expect, or at least wish for, the women to accept the men’s decisions and directions in silent obedience. The reality has clearly differed. While we cannot know for certain the women’s opinions, nor their self-understandings, the text is clear in describing their hostility. The male elder was equally hostile to the women and made his own accusations against them, which in turn did nothing to encourage communication: “Was not the male elder correct when he said angrily, ‘You pass all your time taking counsel from the Devil’?”?* The female leaders were now more antagonistic to the male elders who came to visit than they were to the distant

116 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

Shenoute, in part because these men had the same rank as many of them yet were given control over the women’s monastic experience. Moreover, the women’s hostility was similar to their reaction to Shenoute’s initial visits; in addition to the question of rank, then, the women resisted, and perhaps resented, the men’s attempts to

chastise and correct them, no matter which man was the visitor. , The most extreme example of a female leader’s hostility to a male envoy from Shenoute occurred when Tachom refused to accept a male envoy into her community. Here the conflict was inherently gendered, since Shenoute had to rely on male envoys as a source of communication with the female community (whereas he had more direct communication with the male community). Further, once again Tachom’s actions in creating her own power were connected to a desire to protect physically the female monks under her care. Corporal punishment affected both Tachom’s life in the monastery and her role as a leader.?? She may have herself received a beating, prior to her refusal to accept the envoy. Shenoute had, according to his description, gone to the women’s community earlier and punished them “with a certain pun-

ishment,” apparently meaning that he had beaten them.!°° By protecting her authority in her community, Tachom also protected her monks from Shenoute’s physical punishment; both acts of resistance led Shenoute to judge her leadership as inappropriate. Further, in Shenoute’s instructions for how to beat the women, he specified Tachom as the monk responsible for helping the female elder hold the women down, as the male leader administered the blows.!°! Although we cannot be sure of the chronology of these two conflicts, it may be that Tachom was forced to partici-

pate in, and so acquiesce to, male control over corporal punishment, as discipline for

resisting male control earlier. ,

Incidents that involved Tachom, Tapolle, and the female elder, as well as general resistance to male authority in the female community, especially with regard to cor-

- poral punishment, encapsulate gender as a central issue in negotiating authority among the leaders of the White Monastery. But we need to place these specific conflicts within the larger role of gender in the monastery, which can be inferred from a variety of special monastic rules for the women. These rules provide broader evidence of Shenoute’s suspicion of women and of an inherent inequality within his universal monasticism. Moreover, the rules show how Shenoute used a household structure as a model for the monastery, but one in which the men’s community was the public, ac-

cessible portion of the house and the female community the private, inaccessible por- | tion.' These rules, for the most part, controlled the women’s movements, forbade exposure to the non-monastic world, and limited their contact with male monks (in addition to male relatives). Thus, unlike the asceticism wealthy Christian women practiced elsewhere, women’s sexual renunciation in the White Monastery did not

lead to greater freedom of movement.!” -_

The rules concerning the women’s seclusion fall into two categories: regulations about their own movements and guidelines for proper behavior when male monks visited the female community. The men were not secluded; their work—gathering palm branches, working in the fields, and so forth—allowed them to leave the monastery. The women, on the other hand, seem to have been primarily involved in two areas of work: cloth and garment production and the services necessary for the day-to-day running of the community, such as food distribution. Both types of work

“They too are Our Brethren: Gender in the White Monastery 117

kept them confined within their community.’ The rules provide for the travel of male monks while the women were not even allowed to speak to visitors to their community. Nor were they supposed to leave their community, even to perform charitable works in the surrounding village for men or women: “No woman in your community shall go to visit a sick person in any place, whether among strangers or in the village around you, whether male or female, whether a relative of yours or a stranger.”!© This rule’s point is to confine the women to their monastic community. The female monks were not credited with the ability to adhere to the monastic rules, including but not limited to sexual renunciation, if they were allowed the freedom to move between the monastery and its secular environs. Moreover, any exceptions required approval from the male elder; thus not even the female leaders were trusted to maintain their own discipline outside the monastery’s confines nor to ensure the discipline of the other

female monks under their care.! The women were not only forbidden contact with anyone from the secular world, but also, as we have seen, from their male monastic brethren, relatives and nonrelatives alike. The women were banned from attending the funerals of their female companions since male monks would also be present;!©’ excepted were the female elder, and senior female monks, who were permitted to follow the male monks at a distance.!°° Sometimes certain male monks had to visit the women’s community, such as when the male elder and his companions made regular but brief visits. Shenoute did not regulate these visits since he must have trusted the elders not to be tempted

into sexual impropriety. Moreover, their agenda—settling conflicts among the women, cartying out Shenoute’s instructions, getting more information about the women’s activities, disciplining the women, and so forth—served Shenoute’s goal of a united administration in the monastery, and thus he did not consider these visits to be violations of the gender separation. There was also contact between the two communities when the female leaders visited Shenoute in the male community.’ Just as the rules separating the two communities did not pertain to visits that contributed to the merging of the female community under Shenoute’s control, so too the usual rules

confining the female monks to their community were suspended in situations that Shenoute deemed appropriate. In this case, the women’s movements were not an indication of freedom; they were allowed to visit only Shenoute and only because their visits were vital to his leadership of their community. The rules still controlled these women’s movements and confined them to the White Monastery. Shenoute also had strict rules about visits made by male monks (of rank lower than the elders) when they delivered food or needed to repair the women’s buildings.!!° In the latter case, the visits could last several days and so required detailed regulations stipulating how the men ought to eat and sleep in the female community. Shenoute allowed them to sleep there, but they were forbidden from eating with the women, or even accepting food they served. Instead, food was delivered from the male community to the male monks separately.'!! The provision against eating together, a com-

munal activity, stands in stark contrast to Shenoute’s language of unity, of all the monks being brethren of a “single body.” While it is understandable in the context of late antiquity that Shenoute did not want men and women to live together in one monastery, it is intriguing that the male and female monks were not allowed to eat together when it was convenient to do so. Shenoute’s concern can be explained as part

118 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

of the general anxiety among Christian leaders in late antiquity about the intimacy that could arise among ascetics who lived together. Athanasius and John Chrysostom, among others, provide long arguments against the practice of spiritual marriage, male and female ascetics sharing a household but renouncing sexual intercourse. The consensus held that the constant contact inevitable in such a living arrangement would destroy even the strongest commitment to sexual purity.!'* Eating together was a public means of proclaiming a shared household, as opposed to private sexual activity; sharing meals, moreover, created an intimacy that was the basis for physical intimacy.''? The male monks’ sleeping under the same roof as the women did not lead to the same familiarity as did a shared meal; were the men to eat with the women, it could “naturally” lead to sharing beds as well.'“ There were, then, a variety of ways the women’s separation from the men and their

stricter seclusion made their monastic experience different from the men’s, and of these the most important (or at least the one that appears most frequently in the surviving fragments) was the women’s subordination to a male elder as the means of Shenoute’s authority. The need for the women’s separation and seclusion from all men, monks or not, finds its justification in Shenoute’s rhetoric of difference: points when he subscribed to common cultural assumptions about women’s weaker, passionate natures and their consequential need for protection against (sexual) temptation. These moments show where Shenoute thought sexual difference was “natural” and so still needed to be part of the embodied ascetic experience, rather than something that could be disciplined in favor of a universal monasticism. His rhetoric of difference contributed to the “natural” inclination to confine women, a “strategy of containment” that was, as Elizabeth Clark has shown, part of the ideology of gender in late antique Christianity.!!° The women were, on the one hand, participants in the

community “like God and his angels in heaven.” Yet unlike that future paradise, where the sexes would, in Shenoute’s view, be united, in this earthly version, the sexes continued to be separated. The women’s community was part of the monastic space but it was female space. This difference created an inherent conflict between Shenoute’s rhetoric of unity, and the monasticism that he thought should result, and the actuality of the women’s subordination. What remains uncertain is to what extent either Shenoute or any of the women in the monastery were aware of this tension. What can be said is that at some points during Shenoute’s leadership, some women, usually leaders of the female community, objected to his rules governing their monastic experience. The reasons for their objections, however, must remain in the

realm of hypothesis, since their voices are lost. , Conclusion

The crux of the conflict about gender is simple: Shenoute’s ideology promoted: a monasticism for all “whether male or female” that was the basis for the community’s status as an earthly version of paradise. But, unlike paradise, where the sexes would be united, in the White Monastery the women had to live in their own community, with strict rules governing their separation and seclusion. As a separate community, the women were subject not just to Shenoute but to a male authority structure that

“They too are Our Brethren”: Gender in the White Monastery 119

was asymmetrical in its power and gender relations. Shenoute’s rhetoric has many examples of his attempts to unify the monastic experience of his follows, to maintain gender (sexual difference) but subordinate it to their status as monks. Likewise, on the surface, his leadership of the women’s community, including their corporal pun-

ishment, fasting, and teaching, had as its ostensible goal the creation of a similar monasticism for them that would lead them to the same salvation as the men could expect. In this respect, Shenoute was egalitarian: the women did not need his leadership because they were women (that is, because, they were weaker, more passionate, more sexualized than the men) but because they, like the men, did not share in the same relationship with God as Shenoute had. Yet Shenoute’s rhetoric also betrays, even in these surviving fragments, moments of difference, of calling upon cultural constructions of “woman” that legitimized his “strategy of containment” for their community. And, as noted, this containment subordinated the women to the male elder, a subordination to which they clearly objected. What remains to be investigated is the controlling metaphor that allowed Shenoute to include the women as “brethren” yet create a restricted space for them within the monastery: the family.

6|

Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity

Gender and its proper place in monasticism are conflicted issues in Shenoute’s writings much as they were in the writings of other early Christian leaders, especially ascetics. Many male theologians presented what, to modern eyes, seem like contradictions between treating women as human, with a genderless spirit or soul, and treating women as weak, passionate creatures controlled by their bodies. And what of the paradox of Jerome’s misogynist rhetoric and his long friendship with, and deep admiration for, Paula?! In this chapter I will use two means to place my arguments about the role of gender in the White Monastery in the context of gender in early and late antique Christianity. First, I will explore the connection between gender and the position of women in monasticism and so will compare Shenoute’s monasticism with other forms of monasticism in the late antique Mediterranean world. But, as many scholars have noted in recent years, the terms women and gender are not synonymous. In order to explore more fully the role of gender (and not just women) in both the White Monastery and late antique Christianity, I will then examine the particular anxiety caused by eunuchs, by which I mean not just men who were castrated but specifically men who chose to be castrated as a form of asceticism. Such men were patt of Christian circles from as early as the second century, although their practice was largely frowned upon by Shenoute’s day. One reason for its demise was the same as for its appeal: the lack of gender categorization for a eunuch called into question the relationship between the body and gender. The eunuch points out the fallacy of understanding gender as biologically, and not socially, constructed. In one letter to the women (one of the ones that I argue may well have been addressed to the entire com-

munity), Shenoute referred to his commandment that eunuchs be expelled from the White Monastery. His condemnation of the eunuchs invokes many typical Christian 120

Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity 121

arguments, stemming from earlier controversies. Moreover, his discomfort clearly arises from the ambiguity of the gender of a mutilated body, an ambiguity that undermines the careful balancing of gender paradoxes on which Shenoute’s monasticism depended.

Shenoute’s Monasticism in Context Other monasteries and ascetic movements in the Mediterranean world of late antiquity also included both men and women. Some forms of asceticism in the second and third centuries permitted friendships between men and women, friendships that crossed the gender boundary in Greco-Roman society.’ By late antiquity, however, the standard monastic practice was to separate men and women.’ Shenoute’s division of the male and female monks was not unusual, nor would it have been surprising to those who joined the monastery. However, Shenoute’s simultaneous efforts to unite the monastery and to subsume the women’s administration under his control was unusual and made his vision of monasticism an alternative in fourth- and fifth-century Christianity. Most sources for other types of monasticism (with the notable exception of Pachomian monasticism) present monastic women as having authority over theit own communities despite having some sort of association with a male authority. In addition, women’s power seems to have depended on their separation from the male monasteries (and thus from a male authority). Part of their power lies in the ability to decide what contact was allowed between men and women; that is, part of their power lay in controlling the gender boundary. The variety of late antique monastic structures provides different responses to the question of gender and authority in each type of monasticism. At the same time, they furnish the context necessary for understanding the relationship between men and women in the authority structures of the White Monastery and draw attention to the unique aspects of Shenoute’s leadership of the women. Elsewhere in Egypt

Female ascetics have a long but poorly recorded history in the development of Christianity.* The details of the rise and development of female asceticism in Egypt remain a matter of debate.> Anthony’s reference to the house of ascetic women with whom he left his sister when he departed for the desert is often cited as one of the earliest references to female ascetics living together, despite concerns about the historicity of this reference.® It is not surprising that ascetic women had to live as a group, since in Roman society, including Egypt, their options were limited. Most unmarried women could only reasonably expect to live with their parents or with other women. Our best records for women’s living arrangements in Egypt come from the papyri, especially those of the census records. Of the various household-types represented in the cen-

sus, women living alone or with other women occur rarely.’ A good example of women living together comes from the well-known papyri of correspondence of Didyme and the sisters.? These women lived in their own community and apparently engaged in commerce to support it.”

122 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

In the urban setting of Alexandria, there were women who had taken a vow of virt-

ginity and who had various living arrangements. As part of his “ascetic program” Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria from 328 to 73, created a “discipline of virgins within the church.”!° In doing so he specifically rejected two possible domestic arrangements for ascetic women: living in a house with an ascetic man, and setting up an independent household. He proposed instead that women should live either with their families or in a community of women.!! Athanasius’s purpose was to “endorse patterns of living and devotion that would minimize contact with men.” The main element of his program was to define female ascetics as “brides of Christ” and also define the proper behavior for such a bride.’ Part of this proper behavior was seclusion, through which Athanasius could control the women and utilize them for his own po-

litical reasons:'* Women were also, of course, separated in the White Monastery. However, in the community of female ascetics that Athanasius envisioned, the | women “lived under the guidance of an elder mother, assisted by several elder sisters, who had to be honored like the Lord himself, not as human beings, and obeyed without murmuring.”!5 Shenoute, in contrast, warned the female monks to obey the male elder without murmuring, “Yes, yes, no, no.”!° The difference between Shenoute’s

and Athanasius’s descriptions marks the difference in the authority structures for each female community. Like Athanasius, Shenoute sought to make female monasticism a discipline within a larger, male-run hierarchy. Unlike him, Shenoute viewed the women as “brethren” rather than as “brides of Christ.” That is, Shenoute saw the women not as a separate group needing to be defined by gendered marriage rules but an “equal” part of the larger whole. Athanasius made the female ascetic movement part of the church and thus under control of the episcopate. Likewise Shenoute made

the female community part of the monastery as a whole, and thus under the control , of the archimandrite. But Athanasius allocated more authority to the female elder in charge of the community of virgins than was accorded the female elder in the White Monastery, where Shenoute wanted a greater role, through the activity of the male elder, in the decision-making of the female community in his monastery. '” Many men in late antique Egypt sought to avoid contact with women by leaving the cities for the desert.!® However, women came to the desert not only to visit their male relatives and to seek spiritual advice and healing, but also to be desert monastics themselves.'” The sayings of a few of these women—Sarah, Syncleticaand Theodora—survive but make up only a small portion of the desert monastic literature as a whole.”° There are, of course, methodological concerns about assuming these sayings represent a “female” point of view, since we are not certain of the transmission or au-

— thorship of the sayings and since we cannot burden the women with an essentialist femininity. Nevertheless, we can examine the sayings for what the authors, female or male, may have been trying to convey about female desert hermits. These women

sought seclusion of their own initiative, rather than having it foisted upon them. Moreover, they often sought it not only to protect themselves from their own sexual —

- desire, but also from a claimed (or forced by male sources) need to protect those men , who might feel desire for them.?! The women bore the responsibility both for mastering their own sexual passions and also for secluding themselves so that they did not | inadvertently tempt men.?? Women in the desert who did not hide their female bodies from male sight, or in male clothing, were subject to suspicion and “rigorous test-

Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity 123

ing.”?? Some authors of sayings, however, used desert mothers to suggest that the male monks in their midst should no longer be able to discern the difference between men

and women. One such saying has a desert mother rebuke a male monk who has crossed the road to avoid them: “If you were a perfect monk, you would not have seen us as women.”** The desert mothers argued that they had female bodies but male natures; that is, that their sex was female but their gender male. Sarah “also said to the brethren, ‘It is ] who am aman, you who are women.” The desert in Egypt provided

a place where men sought to be free of the conflicts between the sexes. However, women, too, chose to go to the desert, a place some viewed as free from the constraints of gender, that is, of the automatic association of characteristics based on sexual difference. Even so, cultural assumptions about gender lingered in the women’s claim to be living as men, not to be “neither male nor female.” The desert fathers were reluctant to have contact with women, to admit women’s ability to be monastics, and to allow monasticism to have an effect on gender. The desert mothers’ sayings, too, reflect some of these hesitations and thus the women sought to be rid of their gender and its negative connotations. A third type of asceticism found in fourth-century Egypt was regular communal

monasticism, for which the traditional figure is Pachomius.”° Like Anthony, Pachomius reportedly also had to make provisions for his sister and so he created a separate female community as part of his male monastic system.’’ This type of monasti-

cism is most similar to the White Monastery in terms of structure, including the gendered structure of authority. As with the White Monastery, the Pachomian system required both men and women to follow the same rules—with the exception that only men were obliged to wear a hairshirt—and ordered the monks to live in separate communities. So, too, the women were not allowed to travel outside their com-

, munity. The male monks were permitted to visit their female relatives, especially for economic reasons, but the rule’s wording allows for visits of any sort.”® Unfortunately,

Pachomius’s letters do not record his responses to activities and situations in the female community, as Shenoute’s do for the White Monastery, and we thus do not have the means to reconstruct any experiences of the women.”? The female monks under Pachomius had a male elder for supervision, as in the White Monastery, but, as Susanna Elm has pointed out, there are “very few insights into the actual relationship

| between Pachomius, the ‘mother’ of the female community, and the supervising father.”>° Pachomius may well have sought the same level of control over the women as Shenoute, or he may have had a laissez-faire relationship like that of Shenoute’s predecessors. Palestine

Contemporary with Shenoute’s monastery were those of Palestine, which also housed both male and female monks. Despite the rhetorical character of the sources associated with these monasteries, and the authors’ lack of interest in what we consider history, certain details are evident. Wealthy ascetic women founded several of the monasteries for men and women in Palestine. The patroness allowed men to run their male community, so that they were not subject to female rule, but kept the female

community independent under her leadership.*! These female monasteries were

124 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

therefore more independent than female communities in the dual monasteries of Egypt and did not have an official male overseer. The administrative separation did not always require so strict a gender separation as we saw in the White Monastery. In Paula’s monastery, the women were able to join the men for Psalms and prayers, a practice forbidden in the White Monastery under Shenoute.” Still, the female leaders sought to limit contact with men to prayers and meals.*? Separation was still cen-

tral, but it was under the control of both male and female leaders. oe The evidence describing women’s lives survives mainly in letters from male leaders to the female communities.** These letters express the same ideal of a uniform monastic experience as Shenoute’s, but only for uniformity among the women. Both the male authors and the female leaders seem unconcerned with imitating a brother (male) monastery. These correspondences also record sources of conflict among the women which resemble those in the White Monastery: class differences, laziness,

anger, and jealousy over distribution of material goods were all divisive issues. There | were power struggles among the female leaders.3° The male writers who gave these accounts were at times dissatisfied with what they regarded as the women’s lax ascetic

standards (like Shenoute), but there is no indication that they had the authority to change those standards.*° These female monks had monastic rules similar to those in the White Monastery, but their leaders had a greater freedom to exercise their power in enforcing the rules, rather than having them enforced.*’ Unfortunately, we know little more than these basic facts of female leadership in the women’s monasteries, since the sources are more concerned with displaying the humility of these women than describing in detail their authority, and how they ran their monasteries.*® In terms of education, the situation of the women in the White Monastery (where the evidence is severely fragmented) had similarities to, and differences from, that of

wealthy ascetic women who formed elite networks of patronage to run their own monasteries and pursue their own religious education. Paula, and both Melania the Elder and the Younger, all received praise for their memorization of the Scriptures, and for their facility with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.*? This praise came from their male teachers, who also acknowledged that some women could ask questions of interpretation that even they themselves were not able to answer. That the men regarded the women as intelligent and dedicated to their studies, however, did not lead

them to conclude that the women did not need male teachers and interpreters. Shenoute never expresses his opinion of the female monks’ intelligence, but he shares

the view that in all cases women were in need of male guidance in interpretations of Scripture.*? The men who taught these women were also concerned about the women’s liability to heresy, from which their intelligence did not protect them. Melania the Younger, for example, was subject to special scrutiny because of her grandmother’s association with Origenism.*! The control Shenoute forced on the women, who had not had visits from male teachers prior to his tenure, was consistent with the cultural view of women that was coming to be dominant in late antique Christianity. Despite some similarities in details of life, Shenoute’s letters have a decidedly different tone from those describing the Palestinian monasteries, a tone that shows the difference in the relationships between their respective author and audience.* For the monks in Palestine, the letters are most often merely descriptive; any instructions are usually not directed to the women as a group but were within the context of the

Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity 125

authotr’s personal relationship with the female leader. Shenoute’s letters provide more instruction and often address the community as a whole. The male letter-writers in Palestine present the women as autonomous authorities in their monasteries and express no interest in visiting the women’s community for any reason. In addition, the letters praise the Palestinian female leaders as wise and effective, able to quell trouble and lead all their monks to spiritual fulfillment—a different picture from the rebellious, argumentative female elder and senior female monks in the White Monastery that Shenoute describes. The main difference in the two systems that these two collections show is Shenoute’s desire to have a more active role in the leadership of the female community than men like Jerome and Rufinus wanted. The latter men relied on their personal relationships with the female monastic leaders (Paula and Melania the Elder) to shape the monasticism practiced in those communities; they were thus less concerned with creating clear authority structures than Shenoute was.

North Africa A situation similar to that of the White Monastery survives from North Africa, where a group of female monks wrote to request Augustine’s help to settle a conflict that had arisen during a transfer of leadership following the death of a former leader.” Dissatisfaction with the new female head had nearly led the monks under her care to riot; they now requested Augustine to visit their community and remove her. Augustine claimed that it was their desire for a more lenient form of monastic life, which would undermine discipline in the community, that led to the monks’ dissatisfaction, not the new head’s leadership. The response of these North African monks to their new female head was much like that of the female monks’ response to Shenoute’s new

leadership: suspicion and resistance to changes. That the new head in the North African monastery was female did not diminish the female monks’ suspicion and resistance, nor did Augustine’s gender and distance from the community invalidate his leadership and authority. Such evidence indicates that there was not a uniform female response to male authority, nor did automatic bonds of sisterhood exist among female monks. This evidence supports to the view that some of the women’s internal conflicts, such as the crisis over the refusal of promotion, may have included debate and disagreement about how to view and respond to Shenoute’s authority; the female leaders may have been more resistant than monks of lesser rank, as when a female monk wrote her request for a transfer to Shenoute, prioritizing his authority over that of her female superiors. Like Shenoute, Augustine was distressed by the conflict; also like Shenoute, he based his response to the women on general monastic principles and not misogynistic prejudice. Unlike Shenoute, who used his own visits as threats to discipline the women, Augustine refused to visit the community; he argued that their riots might grow all the worse in his presence. Moreover, Augustine urged the women to police one another in running their community, and required witnesses to prove transgressions so that “whispering campaigns” be avoided.** Likewise, Shenoute had asked for mutual accountability among the women in order to enforce discipline and obedience to his rule. On at least two occasions he disciplined monks for spreading gossip.” The difference lay in the degree of control each male outsider sought in leading the

126 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

women’s community. Although Augustine sent the same type of directive letter as Shenoute, he appears to have been reluctant to become involved in the women’s

quarrels. Shenoute, as we have seen, had the opposite approach in his leadership of ,

the female monks under his care. ,

This brief survey suggests some of the similarities and differences between the gen-

der-based authority structures of other monasteries in the Mediterranean world of late antiquity and those of the White Monastery. All of the parallel cases from North Africa and Palestine we have examined indicate that administrative distance and the female autonomy it allowed was the norm everywhere except in Egypt, in the Pachomian monastic system and the White Monastery. It was not unusual for a group of ascetic women to live together, and to be subjected to an outside, distant male authority figure. Indeed gender division was a “customary separation.”4”? Shenoute’s attempts to be involved actively in a female community were what made the women’s lives in the White Monastery unusual. Of course, some amount of difference can be attributed to the difference in the nature of the sources, as I have noted. Despite these differences, there is seemingly agreement on the question of the relationship between gender, asceticism, and the self: women were capable of living the ascetic life, but it did not change their place in the current hierarchy of men over women, achange that would only occur with the next life, where sexual difference would still exist but not necessarily result in the gender definitions of this world. But this level of similarity arises from mutual concerns among male late antique theologians regarding the place

of ‘woman’ within a religious system that also insisted on the worth of the soul. Theresa Shaw has argued that men in this period looked to the soul as the point of similarity between men and women but still allowed for differences between them as a result of embodiment.*® Shenoute’s letters provide additional evidence for female monasticism that both agrees with larger theological issues and adds unique new examples of one writer in one particular monastery.

Virgins and Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven : The White Monastery, I have argued, contained an essential paradox, more apparent _ to us than to Shenoute, between the egalitarianism of his universal monasticism and the gendered hierarchy he imposed on the women as a subordinate community of the monastery. A particular ascetic practice in early Christianity called into question the binary categories of male/female. Ascetic men in early Christianity occasionally castrated themselves in order to guard against engaging in illicit sexual intercourse.” The evidence suggests that such a practice was, if not common at least well known, in second- and third-century Christianity, especially in Egypt (particularly Alexan-

dria). By the late fourth century, castration as an ascetic practice had been condemned by orthodox Christianity. Eunuchs were not properly either gender, since they effaced the sexual difference of the body, and their sexual ambiguity called into © , question the essentialism of gender in the construction of self. Shenoute’s objections to the practice of castration among his male monks were based on Christian doctrine and implicitly on the threat a eunuch posed to the monastic structure. The White

Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity 127

Monastery was unable to tolerate the presence of people whose existence questioned the gendered foundations of the community. Shenoute ordered men who had castrated themselves to be expelled immediately, even if they were still bleeding from their wound and in danger of dying. His strictness reflects the strength of his concern that the presence of eunuchs would cast doubt on the necessity of gender segregation in the monastery: Therefore I am instructing you also about the following matter: If you again catch any people within your community doing the foolish deed of cutting off their male organ so that they might live in purity, you must place them on a bed, since they are polluted by the blood of their wound, and take them out to the road, just as we said to do, when we gathered together to listen, and they will be an example or a symbol to everyone who passes by. If you wish, for God’s sake, you may give them into the custody of their relatives so that they might not die in our environs. But if they do not have relatives, take them to a populated place and leave them there. Only do not allow them to dwell in your community.”°

The ambiguity of the eunuchs’ gender arose both from their social function and from the cultural view of what determined masculinity and femininity. The household in antiquity was divided along gender lines, though more so in Greece than in Rome.”! Eunuchs served as servants to elite women, since they were men whom the husbands could be sure would not father an illegitimate child. They bridged the male and female spheres that divided and defined Roman society. They could enter the private realm of the female portion of the household but could also serve in the public political realm of the empire.*’ Likewise in early Christianity, eunuchs, according to the accounts of early Christian writers, could be companions to female virgins. Eunuchs’ social function, then, was to allow men, or at least nonwomen, into the female sphere without the threat of illicit sexual intercourse and pregnancy. Sexually, they were liminal figures who crossed the boundary between male and female spaces, a transgression apparent in their very bodies as well. Eunuchs could live in the female sphere because it was assumed their sexual ability was lost with their castration. W. Stevenson has pointed out examples in nonChristian writers that question this lack of sexual ability.°? A few Christian writers also warned female virgins not to trust eunuchs since they remained sexually capable and, lacking the threat of impregnation, could act licentiously. One such author, Basil of Ancyra, wrote: Since he did not trust himself to overpower licentiousness, he cut off the member with which he performs the act of lust. Or rather, persuading himself that when possible he will act licentiously, he stripped the instrument of its licentiousness that he might not seem to be licentious in his body. In fact he was entirely licentious and lustful and constantly gratified his lust. He calls out for castration, but it is in service of his incontinence. We might say that those castrated become more licentious. They are unable to master themselves but are afraid of being caught in lust. Thus, so that they who are slaves to pleasure may act out as lustfully as they please, they cut off the hindrance of their lust without wishing any hindrance to their continuing enjoyment of lust. And so they en-

gage freely and licentiously in intercourse.”

128 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

This result of castration, sterility but virility, was well enough known in antiquity to encourage general suspicion of eunuchs as a sexual threat. In Palestine, Paula warned her female monks to be wary of eunuchs for similar reasons.*’ Paula’s description categorized the eunuchs as men since contact with them raised the possibility of causing

gossip about the continence of her female monks. , Whether the eunuch was a man, woman, or some third gender was a matter of debate in non-Christian Roman culture. Late Republican and Augustan poets, such as Catullus and Ovid, presented a suspicious view of eunuchs in their description of the myth of Attis and of the cultic practices of the Galli priests.°° In both poems, Attis and the priests have lost their masculinity to the point of being called female by the authors. In the second century, the view of the eunuch was even more ambiguous, as Lucian demonstrates in his work The Eunuch. He noted the eunuch’s physical characteristics, such as the lack of the beard and a high voice, made him seem no longer male and eventually classed him as “neither man nor woman but something composite, hybrid, and monstrous, alien to human nature.”*’ Moreover, the characteristics of this third gender include shame and cowardice, which are “natural to them.”°® The eunuch who appears as a character in Lucian’s dialogue, however, claims that his gender, while perhaps not male, is at least superior to women. He builds this hierarchy by claiming that eunuchs must be allowed to practice philosophy since even women do.” The suspicion and anxiety created by the sexually ambiguous nature of eunuchs was strong enough to make castration illegal in second-century Egypt.© Even so, some, including doctors, held more tolerant views of castration. The essential element of masculinity, the ability to understand the divine through reason, was thought | to depend on pneuma, which was present in semen.*' With decreased sexual intercourse, more semen was retained and so enhanced one’s masculinity. Thus Galen argued that castration “would be the answer for those who wished to abstain from sexual contact, if vigor and virility were not removed along with the testicles.”© The medical texts, then, rendered a positive view of castration as the ultimate means to achieve sexual continence and to improve a man’s relationship to the divine.® So too Rouselle has argued that non-Christian men did not undergo castration to renounce sexual desire and activity but they “deliberately and scientifically renounced their fertility by ritually removing their testicles.”°* The eunuch, therefore, could be regarded — as less than a man, because his lack of masculine characteristics made him seem unmanly, or quite the opposite, as more masculine through his retention of sperm. These two different views of the gender of the eunuch also allowed for the eunuch’s body to stand as a symbol for competing views of the body in asceticism in the second to fourth centuries. If the eunuch was a third gender, then symbolically he represented an asexuality, set apart from society. For those who argued for the heightened masculinity of the eunuch, he stood as an enhancement of the cultural values of the society. Both these symbols were potentially useful to a Christian audience. For ascetically minded Christians, the link between male asceticism and status as a “eunuch” was in the sayings of Jesus. In Christian Scripture Jesus describes three types of eunuchs: “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can” (Mt. 19:12, NRSV). Just as there were two different views of the gender of the

Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity 129

eunuch, so too there were two different readings of this passage, one literal and one allegorical. Each of these alternatives implied a different cultural meaning. The literal eunuch altered his body to create a new state of being in this world, beyond the male/female, while the metaphorical eunuch used his renunciation to reiterate his gender: his masculinity stemmed from his self-control. His control of his passions embodied not only the ideals of the philosopher, but the pattern of Jesus Christ. His body remains male and thus symbolizes a gendered society in which human will is central.°° On the other hand, the literal eunuch was perceived as not having selfcontrol, since his was involuntary. Thus, symbolically, he was not exhibiting the masculinity of sexual asceticism but was constrained, like a woman.” Yet precisely the literal eunuch’s questioning of the traditional gendered social structures was the basis for his symbolism: he was a powerful symbol of the pre-fall (and future paradise) asexuality that was the goal of much late antique asceticism. The literal interpretation of Mt. 19:12 presented a problem for mainstream Christianity not just because of widespread reluctance to undergo castration but also because the literal eunuch had no gender. Castration was wrong because the result, a eunuch’s body, suggested that gender was a transitory state. It was this view of the body, and of the effect of asceticism on gender, that later Christians, such as Jerome and Shenoute, rejected. The problem arose, as the Acts of John shows, from the belief that the body should be altered, rather than the desires. After having been converted to a life of chastity by John, a young man cuts off his testicles and throws them, as “the pattern and cause of all this,” at the feet of his lover; rather than praising this man, however, John remarks, “The one who tempted you . . . has also made you take off the unruly (members) as if it were a virtuous act. But you should not have destroyed the place (of your temptation) but the thought which showed its temper through those members.” This literal eunuch, therefore, although possible evidence for this ascetic practice, also provides evidence for the opposite view: the valorization of the metaphorical “eunuch,” based on self-discipline, over the literal. Men who followed both a literal and a metaphorical interpretation of Mt. 19:12 lived in Egypt during the first four centuries of Christianity, according to evidence from the works of Justin Martyr, Basilides, Clement, Origen, and Shenoute.”? There is limited evidence for Christians who interpreted Mt. 19:12 literally and who also thought a literal eunuch was a positive symbol of enhanced masculinity, despite R. P. C. Hanson’s argument that castration was “a known and on the whole approved custom in the Christian Church in Origen’s time.”’! These men were the historical “losers” and so receive little affirmation in the primarily orthodox literature that survives. What we do have, however, is informative. Justin Martyr cites as an example of Christian morality a young man in Alexandria who sought permission to undergo castration and, having been denied it, continued to live in continence.”?’ Chadwick notes that “it is striking that Justin seems to have seen nothing blameworthy or foolish in the young man’s actions but rather regarded his enthusiasm as having an apologetic value calculated to impress pagan readers with the high tone of Christian morality.” Justin’s comment is the only positive view of a literal eunuch from antiquity. Most other positive uses are metaphorical, as discussed later, and literal eunuchs are elsewhere only portrayed in the negative. Even Origen, a man who was himself later rumored, in the history by Eusebius, to have followed a literal interpretation and cas-

130 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

trated himself at the age of eighteen, wrote against a literal interpretation of the passage in his Commentary on Matthew.’* As a eunuch, Origen would have, as Peter Brown puts it, “dared to shift the massive boundary between the sexes. He had opted out of being male. ... He was a walking lesson in the indeterminacy of the body.”” Scholars have debated the historicity of Eusebius’s tale, and the implications for reading Origen’s commentary.” Whether or not Origen did castrate himself is of less consequence here, however, and more important are the portraits he creates of literal and

metaphorical eunuchs. ,

Origen refutes those who interpreted any portion of Mt. 19:12 literally, whether eunuchs by birth, by the hand of others, or by their own hand, and proposed instead an allegorical meaning of all three types of eunuch. He makes clear in his commentary that he is addressing men who have castrated themselves as part of their sexual asceticism: “[w]e would not have spent so much time refuting the opinion .. . if we ~ had not seen men of such daring.””’ In other words, men in third-century Alexandria had opted for castration, based on a literal reading of Mt. 19:12, and who undertook this course not just to follow the Scriptures but to live a life of sexual purity and enhanced masculinity in terms of virtue if not in terms of body. Origen’s description also supports Brown’s of the eunuch as a “walking lesson in the indeterminacy of the body.” Although Origen “omits discussion of what a man experiences” after castration (apparently sexually), he describes the missing facial hair and what, due to the movement of heat in the body, “he would suffer or what headaches and fainting spells there would be when some of this matter reaches the governing mind and disturbs the imagination with strange fantasies.”’® Origen thus suggests the existence of a group of male ascetics who underwent castration as the highest form of sexual purity, relying on the symbol of the eunuch’s body as an asexual separation from society. So too evidence from fourth-century Christianity arguing against the practice of voluntary cas-

tration indicates a continuation of this practice.” | Yet Origen himself, along with other major Christian writers, preferred to use the term eunuch as a metaphor for the celibate man, relying on an allegorical reading of Mt. 19:12. Athenagoras contrasts Christians with their opponents in sexual terms: “{T|hese adulterers and pederasts defame the eunuchs and the once married.” Tertullian’s references to “voluntary eunuchs” are more ambiguous, but I would argue most likely metaphorical.®° This image was a powerful statement of the man’s sexual renunciation and his alienation from social structures; its power lay in the revulsion the eunuch caused in Roman society, a society from which ascetic Christians wanted to distance themselves. Moreover, the metaphorical eunuch emphasized his masculinity through his self-control; he reinforced the distinction between male and female and so fortified gender rather than eradicated it.8' The difference between the two interpretations of Mt. 19:12 was in the understanding of the relationship between the body, gender, and the self. Changes in the body, specifically in the genitalia, either did

or did not constitute a corresponding change in one’s gender, which in turn either did |

or did not lead to a change in the self. |

To return to the White Monastery: Shenoute opposed the presence of eunuchs because of his concern that his monastery not seem to support what was, by this point in Christian history, an outlawed practice: “Only do not allow them to dwell in your community so that you might not be considered another sort of heresy because of

Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity 13]

crooked people who are a hindrance to you by this deed. It is a disgrace that people obey it and it is an abomination to the Scriptures.”®’ Shenoute most likely supported the condemnation of castration since eunuchs inevitably created problems for any who regarded gender as essential to humanity, both in this life and the next. He therefore also was concerned that the eunuch’s presence, as a “walking lesson in the indeterminacy of the body,” would call into question the strong boundary between the male and female bodies in the White Monastery. His argument called upon all the cultural revulsion against the eunuch, who has “cut off his male organ,” who was “polluted by the blood of his wound.” He wants them to be expelled as an “example or a symbol to passers-by” of the consequence of such an act: expulsion and thus damnation. He acted against their presence as a symbol of the indeterminacy of the body within the monastery. A community such as the White Monastery could not tolerate those whose bodies suggested that gender was not the basis of defining the self but rather changeable and potentially unnecessary. As in orthodox Christianity, Shenoute, although repulsed by literal eunuchs, used the metaphor of the eunuch to create a distinction between those who chose the monastic way of life and those who still live in the outside world. The eunuch as a trope does not emphasize the gender boundary within the monastery, but the boundary between the monastery and the society the monks had left. Shenoute refers to those men and women of the White Monastery who “have not had children, or who renounced those they did have, along with their numerous material possessions because they wished to follow the worthy path that they were called to, who are indeed eunuchs and virgins—-and this means you, brethren.”*? As metaphorical eunuchs, these monks “are eunuchs who do not have children through intercourse but instead are ‘fathers’ to many children of God.”*+ Moreover, Shenoute’s use, on this occasion, of one metaphor, eunuchs, for men and another, virgins, for women suggests that he subscribed to the view that sexual abstinence reinforced gender distinction rather than eradicating it; thus he had two different metaphors for the two different genders, rather than one shared by both.*’ However, on another occasion, Shenoute referred to some rebellious monks, both male and female, as “false virgins”: “You false virgins, either male or female within us, those who will do abominations within these coneregations continually.”®° One could speculate that on this latter occasion the men’s disobedience led to their demotion from a male-based metaphor (eunuch) to a female-based one (virgin); demotion was a punishment for transgression and on this occasion Shenoute was describing men (and women) who were rebelling against his authority (a transgression). Shenoute’s view of gender, asceticism and monasticism, then, is as complex in his use of metaphor as it was in his treatment of the female monks. Shenoute’s expulsion of the eunuchs from the White Monastery provides further

evidence that his asceticism made gender central to the body and to the self. Shenoute maintained that such separation was necessary in this life for the two sexes to be able to gather together, still as men and women but without sexual tension, in the next. The eunuch’s body raised the question of whether or not gender was essen-

tial to the self and whether or not it would continue in the next life. In effect, the body of a eunuch threatened the very foundation of the structure of the White Monastery. The eunuchs can be compared to the biological kin, who also created ten-

, 132 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery sion with their presence in the monastic community. The difference between — Shenoute’s toleration of biological kin and the expulsion of eunuchs lay in the social structure each recalled. Although problematic, the kin at least recalled the family, the model for community formation in the White Monastery. Eunuchs, in contrast, exemplified the eradication of gender, which the community of the White Monastery

could not accept or tolerate under Shenoute’s leadership. — , Conclusion ~ Women and gender are two interrelated, yet distinct, topics. One way to understand Shenoute’s definitions of women’s place in his monastery, and so his constructions of gendered monasticism, is to compare it with other forms of female monasticism in late antiquity. This comparison suggests that Shenoute’s particular form of monasti-

, cism, with men and women united under one male leader, was unusual. Yet his paradoxes about women and gender were less so. More than one (male) Christian writer tried to support women in their search for salvation through asceticism and yet could still present “woman” as a negative trope throughout his works.®’ Recognition of these paradoxes, and the tensions between positive ideals and misogynist negatives, seems to have eluded many of these writers. In this, Shenoute is no exception but rather provides further evidence for the interplay between ascetic theory and ascetic practice, especially as it concerns the gender of the ascetic. The situation of the eunuch in the White Monastery serves as further example. Shenoute agrees with much | of mainstream Christianity in his horror at bodily mutilation and misinterpretation of Scripture. Yet, since his monasticism existed for all monks “whether male or female,” thus retaining gender, and was not a monasticism that recognized “neither male nor female”, suggesting a repression of sexual difference, eunuchs, who were neither male nor female, could not be categorized into his monasticism. Nor could they be safely placed in their proper space, as could women and men. Eunuchs had to be expelled from the White Monastery because their bodily presence undermined the

structural basis of the monastery, and, by doing so, could potentially unravel

| Shenoute’s careful weaving of egalitarian and hierarchical monastic threads. , |

f Women’s Role in the Monastic Family The Intersection of Power and Gender

At first glance, it may seem simplistic to say that the White Monastery had the family as its model for the structure of the community and for relationships between, and among, the monks. Not only was familial language ubiquitous in early Christianity from its very beginnings and especially within the later monastic movement, but also, as Brent Shaw has noted, in late antiquity “the family was the unit of social and economic production and reproduction.”! The family, then, would seem to have been Shenoute’s “natural” or “inevitable” choice as a means to form the community of the White Monastery. Yet as recent scholarship, especially on gender, has shown us it is precisely when something seems “natural” or “inevitable” that historians should pause and ask how this “inevitable” choice supports the author’s ideology.’ Asking this question about family language in Shenoute’s letters illuminates the constructedness of the family. Since constructing the monastery as a family removes it from any biological basis, it undermines the notion that the family is an essentially organic unit. Family (which I will define more precisely later) is a place in Shenoute’s writings where authority and gender intersect to support his larger ideology of an egalitarian rhetoric, even while creating asymmetrical, and now obviously patriarchal, authority structures alongside his apparent egalitarianism. Shenoute used family to try to reconcile, successfully and not, elements of his monasticism that may seem paradoxical to us. Furthermore, by creating a monastic family, Shenoute incorporated gender relations in the monastery, by replicating the gender relations of the nonmonastic household within his new community. By examining Shenoute’s structuring of the monastery as a family, we will revisit topics and anecdotes from previous chapters, but from a new perspective that integrates the previous two. While we have investigated

133

134 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

‘structures of authority through Shenoute’s claims to power and through constructions of gender, we can now add the family as a third type of authority structure.

Like gender, family was a carnal aspect of life that Shenoute tried to transform as

part of the monastic life he promoted: a community “like God and his angels in heaven.” Family life, in the monastery, was a point where spirit was supposed to discipline flesh, not just by renouncing former biological ties in favor of spiritual allegiances but also by shaping the new spiritual family to be like, yet unlike, the biological family. Shenoute regarded the biological family as linked to God as he makes

, clear in a sermon to an audience of monks and laity: “But we dwell with Jesus and his ~ angels, not only in his church, his (holy) places and every place where people gather,

, but also in our houses—we ourselves and our children, parents and siblings.”’ Thus, he could draw upon these divine associations to sanctify the mundane functions of the monastery. Shenoute echoes Roman ideals of domestic harmony in his descriptions of the perfect spiritual family yet promoted an ideology that the monastery, unlike the biological family, could attain this ideal thanks to its salvific values. The monastery had unavoidable differences from the biological family, which allowed Shenoute to demand greater domestic harmony from the salvific family of the ~ monastery. Disciplining the flesh within the monastery removed the carnal aspect of the biological family and so mitigated conflict located in carnality. Such a perspective, however, does not recognize the inherent carnality of the

| tropes Shenoute relied upon. As we shall see, Shenoute used powerful physical im~ ages of parenthood, of infertility, of childbirth, and of childhood yet then claimed to

be innocent of the carnal implications. He tried to control the meaning and spiritual | function of the familial imagery he employed, but contradictions emerged between his two competing paradigms: the otherworldy set of values of God and his angels in ,

heaven and the values of this world, located in the household.4 Women in the monastery in particular proved to be a litmus test of the limitations of God’s community on earth, the central model for Shenoute’s monasticism. They were thus in a po-

sition to call attention to contradictions in Shenoute’s ideology (if they were aware |

of them, which is difficult if not impossible to determine). | , | Before I continue with this investigation, it is clearly necessary to define the term

family especially since, as is often noted, ancient terms such as familia do not mean the | same thing as the modern term family, that is, a nuclear family consisting of parents and child(ren).* People in late antiquity could, as Brent Shaw has shown in the case of Augustine, have strong nuclear family experiences but nevertheless this was not what they meant by the term family.° Rather, family indicated the extensive network of relationships, all based in the household but not all biological—slaves, servants, freedmen and women, remote kin, and the patron-client system all contributed to this social structure. Shenoute himself rarely uses either of the Coptic terms for family which themselves appear most often in Coptic translations of Greek texts, such as the Bible.’ Instead, familial language in Shenoute’s letters to female monks means his use of familial terms (brother, sister, father, mother, children) and of familial imagery (birth, infertility, family members in struggle). Recent scholarship can aid in defining | what I mean when I call the White Monastery a family. One of the largest debates in _

family studies, as both Suzanne Dixon and Halvor Moxnes have pointed out, ad- —

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 135

dresses the question whether the family is an organic unit or a social construct.® Since I am investigating specifically the creation of a new family in the monastic community, the treatments of the family as a “construct” with assigned meanings is immediately applicable. At the same time, while I do not agree with the essentialism of the

family, its integration into ancient society and it predominant role suggest that the power of this imagery in Shenoute’s writings is attributable to its seeming “naturalness” to him and his followers. That is, while historians and sociologists may be able to analyze the family, to people in antiquity the power of the family was its apparent inevitability.’ —

I have used the word family here throughout but must also take note of two connected terms: household and kinship. Baldly put, household studies tend to focus on the economic function of the family, whereas family studies look at the relationships among its members.!° For the family in antiquity, these two terms often are used in-

, terchangeably since the household provided the means of running the extended family. While I will use mainly family, this choice is meant to avoid confusion about the monastery (a physically divided community) as a household (implying a united physical structure). Household in my investigation generally refers to non-monastic households, and other uses will be explicitly defined. Finally, kinship is a broader term, used

mostly in anthropological studies, to designate affiliations beyond the family, or household, that are central to a society, such as tribes or clans. It is used less often in the study of the ancient family, but I tend to use it to designate monastic terms such as brother and sister as kinship terms and to define the relationship among monks (as either biological kinship or monastic, that is, spiritual kinship). Thus, my usage differs from the technical anthropological meaning of this term. The White Monastery was a family in several ways: first, some of the monks were actual biological kin who joined the monastery together. Second, Shenoute used familial language to express the social construction of the monastery and of the relationships between the monks. Finally, the monastery replaced the functions of the biological family in terms of providing basic economic and emotional support. My investigation is divided into three parts, two in this chapter and one in the next; the first examines the familial language Shenoute used in order to understand how the family shaped the practice of monasticism and supported his authority, both over the monastery as a whole and over the female community in particular. Second, I will investigate how the monastery replaced the family in terms of function, through comparison with the function of the family as expressed in the private letters recorded in Egyptian papyri. Third, in chapter 8 | will examine the experiences of biological kin within the monastery family. While Shenoute’s familial language describes the ideal he sought, evidence from both the non-monastic and monastic families shows quatrels over food, clothing, shelter, and jealousies between members. Although Shenoute succeeded in creating a monastic family, he failed to transform it into the spiritual embodiment of domestic harmony that, for him, would properly characterize a salvific community.

a 136 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery , Family Language Family language is so ubiquitous in Shenoute’s letters, to say nothing of Christian writings in general, that its very universality threatens to mask its importance to Shenoute’s leadership of the White Monastery. That Shenoute and the monks used kinship terms to address one another is not surprising.!! Yet the meanings Shenoute ~ assigned to these terms are important. Some meanings simply reflected rank. In other cases, however, Shenoute used family imagery to define monasticism, the proper role of corporal punishment, or the right view of his authority.'* At such points, Shenoute’s family language functioned much like Paul’s. Paul, like Shenoute, used family language to “develop and communicate a Christian theology as well as constructing a church community with a certain kind of leadership and certain patterns of interactions between its members.”!? Shenoute’s concern with flesh and spirit mimics Paul’s.

Both authors use fictive kinship to define the values of their group against those of outsiders.!* For both, family imagery was the main means to create a group identity fora community that, in each case, fit Mary Douglas’s “high group/strong grid” criteria (recall chapter 1, p. 25). Both thus use family imagery to fortify the boundaries for their group, with a strong sense of social identity within it, and a clear hierarchy for it.!5 Further, both had to confront the ramifications of using such language in the presence of actual biological families.!° Neither author, moreover, had a consistent system for employing family language but tended to choose terms that suited his argument at the moment."’ Finally, in both cases, family language provides a point of intersection between egalitarian rhetoric, with implications for relationships within the community, and hierarchical structures.'® Shenoute, in his mimicry of Paul, implies that he may have been deliberating writing letters using not only Pauline exegesis but also Pauline imagery and rhetoric to create a monasticism that was itself the

spiritual child of Paul’s teachings. |

Throughout the letters we can see echoes of both the “rhetoric of difference” and “rhetoric of unity” in Shenoute’s family language, thus expanding our examples of

this gender language with those that combine gender and family. Whether the women were “daughters” just like “sons,” or whether they were their own separate portion of the family, depended, as it did with gender, on whether Shenoute was arguing for unity within one monastic family, or for a specific place for women within that family. The family model allowed Shenoute to forge relationships between the male and female community, but it also allowed the women to create their own relationships as part of smaller (separated) family in their own community.

Abraham, Our Father: Monasticism Defined , , In the letter that records the crisis resulting from the monk’s refusal of promotion _ (Crisis 3), Shenoute used family language in several ways: first, he created a spiritual

| - genealogy between biblical figures from the past (the prophets and apostles) and the | monks of the White Monastery. Within that genealogy, he called upon the monks’ role both as children of these past figures, who should imitate them, and also as parents, who needed to undertake “parenting,” that is, caring and nurturing of their fellow monks. Shenoute begins with parenthood language as a way to define monasti-

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 137

cism as a life of endurance and suffering, both of which occur through God’s agency and lead to salvation. Monasticism, in short, becomes the new parenthood in which

parents gain many spiritual children but without sexual intercourse. At the same time, all the monks are children of Abraham, which places them in lineage from revered forebears, the prophets and apostles, but also submits them, as children, to Shenoute’s authority. These two seemingly paradoxical images, parents who are also children, work together for Shenoute to support his definition of monasticism and his authority. Shenoute begins the letter by recalling images of biblical couples who prayed to God for release from their infertility: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel. Even though Shenoute includes the pain of both husband and wife in his

description, he seems to concentrate his audience’s attention on the role of the women. In each case he dwells on the wife’s behavior in seeking children and then acting of behalf of those children, an emphasis that echoes the biblical accounts themselves. Once Isaac was born, Sarah “spoke boldly with the knowledge of God” in having Hagar and Ishmael exiled. Isaac blessed Jacob rather than Esau, making Esau Jacob’s servant, “by the design of Rebecca.” Rachel “grieved and found fault with Jacob in her ignorance, because of the abundance of [her] pain, [saying] ‘Give me children or I will die.’ And Jacob, who was discouraged, said to her, ‘Am I myself the Lord who robs the fruit from you[r womb]?”!? The prominence of the women is unmistakable, setting the stage for Shenoute’s emphasis on the female monks, even while including the male monks in his description of proper monasticism. A lacuna interrupts Shenoute’s list and the record begins again with Shenoute’s words, “Therefore .. .”. The implication is that he is now drawing a conclusion from his description of these couples (as well as other missing biblical couples), a description that rests on the suffering their childless state caused.”? Therefore, says Shenoute, it is wrong for both male and female monks to refuse to behave as proper monks, doing “assigned monastic duties” or “any other kind of good work” and “taking care of people who live with them.” These services were the “children” of monastic parent-

hood. In addition, although Shenoute addressed first male monks and then female monks separately, he assigned them the same duties. He distinguished, however, between the analogies. The male monks were “foolish or blind” by refusing to do their monastic chores; female monks were “stupid and wickedly stubborn” not simply in their refusal but also because, in becoming monks, they had chosen “to give up childbearing with God’s agency yet still argumentatively and ignorantly” refused their new labor”! In other words, in describing their error, Shenoute stressed the women’s renunciation of childbearing but overlooked the men’s analogous renunciation, namely, of siting children. Such a distinction must surely have had an impact on an audience of women, some of whom had renounced childbearing, some who might have suffered from infertility, others who left their children, and still others whose children were with them in the monastery. Moreover, Shenoute then made an explicit connection between the biological mothers of old and the proper duties of their monastic counterparts, a connection missing in his description of the male monks: Given that women who sleep with their husbands usually are willing to have children,

and given that holy women of old (such as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Anna and the

138 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery mother of the prophet Sampson, and Elizabeth, the mother of John, who was filled with the holy spirit from the time he was in his mother’s womb) called out to the Lord, pray-

ing and beseeching that he not make them pass their lives without bearing children, then monks in your [female] community will be greatly disgraced if, since they chose to spend their lives without child-bearing and without husbands, they [nevertheless] renounce [taking care of| people who, through God’s agency, live with them.” —

Here Shenoute’s logic is unmistakable: if women used to undertake having children as part of parenthood, and were pained by being infertile, then female monks needed to be willing to undertake their monastic service. Shenoute invoked the image of parenthood to define monasticism, using as the shared characteristics the suffering and endurance each required and the role of God’s agency. Monastic parenthood and bi- , ological parenthood both had duties attached to them. A third choice, monasticism without duties (and as an escape from having children), was not viable for either gen-

der, but Shenoute’s language stresses its inappropriateness for women. | By creating continuity between the biblical biological model parents and the monks in his day, moreover, Shenoute created a spiritual lineage that made the monks “children of Abraham.” This lineage had both good and bad parents in its past,

and by implication in the day of Shenoute, and each group included both men and women. God “despised” both men and women among “our ancestors” because they did not endure having children “through God’s agency” but rather were controlled by sloth and arrogance. Although the description of bad parents, and their descendent monks, includes both men and women, Shenoute then, as with the infertile couples, examines the particular role of women, adding, “As a result [of their sloth and arrogance|, the Lord shut the womb of their souls as if they were barren, and made their instruction dry up like empty breasts, so that these women not continue to teach others any further through God’s agency.” Shenoute then balanced his description of these bad parents and monks with one of good parents, whom “the Lord blessed,” and

listed these ancestors including “Deborah, who was judge and mother in Israel; and , Odolla (Hulda)... and Anna, the daughter of Panuuel.””? The special mention of these women by name (as compared to the more anonymous “our ancient fathers and the prophets and apostles,” which described the men) serves as an analogue to the fo-

cus on women earlier. oe ,

In the next section of arguments, Shenoute examines more specifically the monks who were refusing their monastic chores, and the reasons they did so. At the very end of this explanation, the function of Shenoute’s family language becomes apparent. He redefines monasticism as parenthood to unite the monks as “parents” who needed to take care of each other, over and against the divisions that were currently leading them to neglect one another: “Therefore, brethren, let each one of us not be a burden to our neighbor due to the alienation which exists among us in the divisions of our hearts toward our companions so that we, in our wisdom, are forced to not take care of our companions.”’4 (We can suppose that his reference to wisdom is merely sarcastic.) Evidence for these divisions come from two distinct, yet interrelated, points

in Shenoute’s argument. First, Shenoute disagreed with an interpretation, being spread about the monastery, of Isaiah 56:6, “The Lord will give eunuchs and virgins choice rank and a reputation better than sons and daughters.” This (wrong) inter-

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 139

pretation would allow some monks, who claimed the status of eunuchs and virgins, to claim that sexual renunciation was sufficient for monasticism. While Shenoute valorizes spirit over flesh, he imposes limits on that valorization. Although the monks were eunuchs and virgins, it was inappropriate for male monks in our community and female ones in yours, to choose to renounce those — who live with them, and not take care of them, claiming, “We are pleasing to God,” or,

“These people and others are not our concern”; and in their stubbornness they use as proof the saying of the prophet, interpreting it to fit their heart’s desire, and their own laziness, saying, ‘The Lord will give eunuchs and virgins the kingdom of heaven”; and so they renounce others, and do not take care of them.”

That is, the lack of biological kin, either through celibacy or leaving one’s family, did not in and of itself constitute monasticism. Rather, monastic duties, especially those of caring for one another, comprised the toil and suffering that was the essence of monasticism. Two different groups, whom Shenoute called “parents with children” and “eunuchs and virgins,” held this misinterpretation. To correct this misunderstanding of Scripture, Shenoute made his second argument: he defined eunuchs and virgins as parents, and thus as having obligations to take care of other monks, who, although potentially parents themselves, are also the children who need to be cared for: “But people who have not had children, or who renounced those they did have . . . these people are eunuchs, who do not have chil-

dren through intercourse, but instead are ‘fathers’ to many children of God.”6 Shenoute presents this monastic parenthood, moreover, in contrast with the “parents who have children,” whom he describes as “a father or a mother, who have children and grandchildren and numerous possessions but whom affairs of the world make incapable of caring for their children and all the other things of life, [who] must therefore care for their children through God’s agency, and all kinds of righteous works.”?’ While it is not entirely certain that the “parents who have children” were also monks, it seems most likely, since Shenoute then describes the proper place of these people in the monastic hierarchy: “And we should note that people like these are incapable of being subordinate to their relatives, so instead they are subordinate to strangers with God’s help.””® The divisions in the community, which led to the neglect, seem to have arisen from the distinction between these “parents with children” monks and the “eunuchs and virgins” monks. The “eunuchs and virgins” monks apparently were placing themselves in a category different from those monks who still had their children with them in the monastery, and thus absenting themselves of any responsibility for the second group. Moreover, the parents with children seem to have agreed with this division. Shenoute’s family language defining monasticism as parenthood effaced these biological distinctions. He used family language to rob family relationships of their carnality and replaced that carnality with spirituality; that is, he removed the possibility for error that could arise from ‘fleshly” familial relationships. At this point in the letter, Shenoute discontinues his use of family language, focusing instead on the importance of labor and service as components of monasticism. Within these arguments, however, he makes clear that monastic rank was not to mimic the economic rank that existed outside the monastery: “Therefore let us not

140 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery _

say blasphemously, “Those who rule us are our masters and we are beneath them like | servants.’ Those who rule us are not over us, but we are over them and they are beneath us; indeed. they are our servants because they take care of us, with God’s help, in everything.””? Within the monastic family, then, the normal hierarchical order of master over servant, or slave, has been reversed. Such a reversal is in keeping with

Shenoute’s redefinition of the family in his idealized monastic setting. , At the end of the letter, he returns to the lineage he created between the models ©

, of monasticism—the biblical biological parents—and the monks, but now, rather than emphasizing the monks’ similar role as parent, he turns to their status as the children of their ancestors, the prophets and apostles, especially Abraham. Here Shen-

oute recalls not only the beginning of this letter, “Abraham, our father,” but also Paul’s letter to the Galatians, in which Paul defines the spiritual lineage of Abraham. _ By creating a link between Paul’s and his claims to Abraham, Shenoute implies that

the monks are the right recipients of Paul’s message.

As earlier, Shenoute creates two lines of descent from Abraham, but now rather than bad and good parents among the ancestors, he depicts sinful and pure children among them. The sinful children “cause grief to our ancient ancestors;” they force God to become angry and destroy them; their parents “remove themselves from the sinful children.” The just children bring joy; they allow God to “restrain his anger from ancient tribes because of the just children among them”; their parents do not flee from them, but remain with them “all the days of their lives.” In each group there are recognizable descendants: the “false prophets,” the “deceivers,” and the “decep- _

tive priests” on the one hand and the “prophets of the Lord God,” Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel on the other. While the latter group are clearly the descendants of Abraham, Shenoute warns that even sinners among Abraham’s descendants will be punished. It is not enough, in other words, to be in the right lineage but one must “live by the truth, and speak the truth, because the truth is in them.” In order to be sure that one was performing proper deeds, and living in truth, Shenoute suggested

confession to, and reliance on, him: |

Therefore do not lie about evil deeds that you did in the darkness so that we do not belong to Satan, in whom no truth exists . . . [L]et us not be deceitful falsely, and conceal our sins from our companions because that causes disturbances in every community... [T]he wonder occurs whenever we follow the pattern set by our fathers, the prophets and apostles and we teach our companions not to sin in the presence of God; and even if, by a mistake, we ignorantly act wickedly, then we share blame with our companions so that we repent, so the Lord can pour his blessing on us mercifully and patiently.°

His familial language contributes to the ideology of power that has been predominant | in Shenoute’s letters. Here that ideology is linked to the ideal of domestic harmony, —

echoing other fourth-century theologians like Augustine, who believed that harmony would result from strong leadership.*! Family imagery in this letter, then, united

the monks under Shenoute’s leadership, either in his capacity to define monastic practice or in his demands for full disclosure of, and mutual accountability for, sins in

the monastery. oe

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 14]

Canon 4: Corporal Punishment and the Family Shenoute also uses family language to unite the monks in their submission to corporal punishment, but in this case he uses family language to address specifically the inclusion of women. I noted, in my discussion of this letter in chapter 5, that Shenoute includes the women as “brethren” in order to justify their submission, as women, to beatings, and moreover, to beatings decided upon and inflicted by the male leaders. Here it is important to examine the familial dynamic in making this claim. By using the language of “siblinghood” rather than gender-specific brother/sister language, Shenoute effaces any gender hierarchy of the family in favor of a proclaimed egalitarianism. So too scholars have noted Paul’s use of familial language as a means to an egalitarian rhetoric even within an asymmetrical structure like the household.*” Because there were authority structures in the monastery that mimicked the gender hierarchy of the household, however, the women “brethren” could not control the cor-

poral punishment in their own community but had to obey the paterfamilias, Shenoute, since, as he puts it, “I know the punishment which is proper to be done to you all.”?3 Family language gave Shenoute the context to make the claims about authority and gender that have already been examined. Family language played a further role in this letter, however, in that Shenoute

apparently had to argue for the appropriateness of corporal punishment in the monastery at all, in addition to its application to the women. As in Abraham, Our Father, Shenoute uses the image of childhood to argue that the monks, both male and female and both with and without kin in the monastery, submit to his will. As a final point in arguing for the women’s submission to the male elder’s proxy authority for

determining transgressions and their proper punishment, Shenoute threatened to visit the women himself, since they were not living up to their reputation as “God’s children”: “I will come to you— if Iam in the body—so that I may do things that are not fitting to you in the opinion of the people who will hear, from those who praise you on the outside when they call you ‘God’s children.’ ... Indeed, do children of God or angels or just people practice deceit through every kind of wicked thing?” Having established that the monastery was recognized as a family, as “God’s children,” Shenoute then explored what the proper punishment of children was. Shenoute’s familial imagery, specifically of the monks as children, as support of corporal punishment is striking because it is most uncertain that there was precedent for the beating of children, either biblically or in the cultural context of the RomanEgyptian family. Shenoute himself does not explicitly acknowledge the latter component since, of course, it would make little difference to the salvific community of the monastery what “the world” did. Nevertheless, for his metaphor to work, there

needed to be some cultural acceptance of the beating of children (shared by the monks), for how else could his claim that as “God’s children” the monks should be beaten have persuasive force?® The evidence for corporal punishment of children in antiquity is mixed at best. Shaw argues for violence as part of the childhood, or rather boyhood, experience, both at home and at school, using the case of Augustine in fourth-century North Africa as an example.* It is, of course, questionable whether a North African example would apply to Egypt, even contemporaneously.*’ Saller argues that fathers did not flog their sons (as opposed to slaves) but that such a view

142 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

-overinterprets the use of power by the paterfamilias; at the same time, he acknowledges the striking of children, especially at younger ages, as a form of discipline or in- , struction.*® Shenoute himself, earlier in this same letter, allowed that “boys and girls” _ in the monastery were not beaten. Here his use of familial terminology must refer to actual children, and not junior monks, since elsewhere he mentions that “your little boy [that is, junior monk]” can be beaten.*? Moreover, these children are probably young, and not adult, children, both of whom seemed to have lived in the monastery. _ Shenoute seems not to argue for beating of the former, but to allow beating of the lat- | ter. These examples suggest that using child imagery to argue for corporal punishment of the monks would not have been an immediately obvious choice, nor necessarily

one that would make sense to his audience. ,

Although Shenoute does not address, in this letter, the problem of whether children were beaten in non-monastic families, he does acknowledge the second prob-

lem, that on the whole Scripture does not offer much justification for beating children.*° Since he typically turns to the Bible for justification of his decisions, here he notes that God, “being the father of all of us and our Lord Jesus,” had declared, “The | one who spares his rod hates his sons and daughters” (Prov. 13:24).*! Shenoute thus

attributed permission to beat children to God, particularly to God’s role as a father. Moreover, Shenoute’s inclusion of the specific “sons and daughters” rather than a generic “children,” in the context of arguing for corporal punishment for all, illustrates his concern that the women understand their inclusion in this biblical passage. _ Despite the pertinence of this proverb, Shenoute, as we saw in Abraham Our Father, preferred to use the prophet and apostles as models for monastic behavior, acting in the way Shenoute urged his monks to act. Yet, as Shenoute himself acknowledged, there are no biblical narratives of one of these men beating his children: | — “Truly, we are not unaware that we have not found it written that the holy prophets and apostles chastised some with rods.” Shenoute countered this omission by imagining that, even so, these men must have beaten their children, biological and spiritual, when they erred: “But we believe that if they had had sons and daughters whom they begat according to the flesh, or rather spiritual sons and daughters [lit., “according to God”], who heeded them, we believe that they would have flogged them and the others with rods whenever they were disobedient.”* That is, Shenoute imagined these fathers behaving toward their children as he himself behaved toward his monks,

, in order to have biblical families provide an (imaginary) model for the monastic familial structures. He made explicit the familial aspect of his invented narrative by first calling upon the prophets as the monks’ fathers, and second by examining both bio-

, logical and spiritual relations to these fathers: “We believe also that our ancient fa~ thers—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the others—instructed [that is, with blows] their sons and daughters whom they begat according to the flesh. Now, if others of spiritual descent had obeyed them, they would not have persisted in flogging them with rods whenever they transgressed the Lord’s commandments.”# One wonders,

3 while reading these convoluted arguments, why Shenoute chose familial imagery that would not obviously support his arguments. Was he limited by the outsiders’ view

of the monks as “God’s children”? Was the familial metaphor so essentialto monastic life that Shenoute thought he had to explain corporal punishment in those terms? The answer seems to lie, again, in one specific reason for the letter: Shenoute’s list of

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 143

ten women who were to be beaten for various transgressions and his instructions for how these beatings were to be carried out. Shenoute, as we shall see in chapter 8, seems to defend the beatings of some of these women to their (male) relatives by subsuming all monks, biological and monastic kin, under one familial structure that allowed for patriarchal domination of children in the name of familial harmony. Canon 6: Birthing Imagery to Define the Community Shenoute did not use just familial terms but also familial processes, in this case birth, to illustrate the monastery as a family. As with the infertility examples in Abraham, his use of a birthing image must have had profound meaning for a female audience, some of whom would have given birth and some of whom renounced it. Moreover, Shenoute’s image depends on a double birth, of twins, where one lives but one dies. His depiction of a stillborn child, in a time when infant morality rates were high, must have been a deliberate attempt on his part to force his (female) audience to see their error of their ways. This imagery occurs during Shenoute’s discussion of Jealousy among the Women (Crisis 7) within the women’s community. The number of metaphots he used complicates his description; the conflict was a “flame of the fire” that was burning in the women’s community,“ and he presented the metaphor of the birth in the form of a parable, which the male leaders told to the female monks: Indeed, is it not those who came to see the flame of the fire which burns within you who said, “In the morning we will render judgment against this woman” just as | said previously in this letter, and is it not they who said, “In the morning, we will judge the community”; is it not they who said to you about these matters, “Some people came from a woman in the evening, and they were upset because she bore two children, one alive and the other she found, or rather it was delivered, dead.” I wrote the same thing in the previous letter which was read privately within the community ... Among the ones who came to listen in the place where they read it, some were weeping and others were mocking, or being crooked, or sneering and they did not rend their hearts. For it is they who are the originators of the sin, as the phrase goes.”

The people whom Shenoute described as witnessing the double birth were the men who had come to judge the dispute. The woman giving birth stood for the female monastic community, and the two infants represented the two groups within the women’s community: the living child represented the good monks, who were properly grieved about the dispute, and the dead child the bad ones, who were dismissive of it. Shenoute’s family imagery in all three letters demonstrates the vitality of this trope for the community: it was the means of expressing relationships between the monks and of creating allegiance to the community. It was a metaphor that gave meaning and comprehension to the relatively new social institution of the monastery, especially one that had biologically unrelated men and women living as members of the same organization. Moreover, by using familial language, Shenoute could define monastic relationships as egalitarian and symmetrical, or hierarchical and asymmetrical. Through the fluidity of familial language, therefore, Shenoute created a specific place for women, and confined them to that place, even while claiming to promote a monasticism that did not recognize gender. Familial language and imagery were the

144 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

the female monks. , |

means to reconciling what appeared to be paradoxical positions in his leadership of

| The Formation of the Monastic Family It would not have been odd in antiquity to suggest that a group of people, some of | whom were biologically related and some of whom were not, constituted a “family” since, as I have mentioned, this word indicated a household arrangement extending beyond the nuclear family, and even beyond biological kinship, to encompass all members of the group. Studies of household arrangements in Egypt, moreover, point to families sharing the same residence: children living with parents even after marriage, and several siblings, along with spouses and children, living together after their parents’ deaths.*° Even the gender division in the monastery may not have seemed too strange, since scholars have also noted the gender division of household and household work in antiquity, a division that also carries into the monastic family and provides further evidence for similarities between the monastery, now particularly _ the women’s community within the monastery, and the family. Shenoute’s monastic family, then, might seem to fit within these norms, and, as we shall see, at times the monks of the White Monastery did act like family members. What would have been different in the salvific atmosphere of the monastery was the way family members attempted to circumvent rank, for instance, as Shenoute’s claim that the rulers in the monastery were in fact the ruled. For another example, while slaves were considered part of the household, there were at least legal differences between slaves and sons.* But Shenoute did not want the monastic family to be identical to the non-monastic family; he wanted it to transcend that norm and be a “perfect” family that upheld its own particular values and lived without conflict. It is this tension, between Shenoute’s expectations of a perfect family and the monks’ behavior resembling that of a regular family, that is the focus of the rest of this chapter. Also important to this tension, however, is that Shenoute tried to transform the hierarchy of the non-monastic family in some ways but in others maintained the status quo, using the familial model to transpose familial hierarchies of parent over child and male over female into the

monastic family. | | ,

Since the family was the basis for the community of the monastery, it would be useful to compare the latter to what we know of the family in late antiquity, which itself has been the subject of an increasing amount of scholarship in recent years.*® An immediate problem with this approach, however, is the applicability of this scholarship beyond the particular circumstances analyzed, especially its relevance to a late antique Egyptian family.*® Cicero’s letters to his family during his exile, for example, provide evidence for a Roman family’s strong emotional bonds and expectations of kin during a time of crisis.°° That Cicero had these attitudes toward his family, however, cannot be taken to indicate that his emotions were common to his peers, much less to other families many miles away in Upper Egypt, though in both cases we might sus-

pect his attitudes were often shared. Likewise, the dislocation involved in welldocumented instances of divorce does not necessarily attest to a pattern of personal response in Roman families to divorce.*!

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Despite these limitations, insights from family scholarship prove helpful in understanding how the monastery was a family. Scholars take a number of different approaches to analyzing the basis for familial relations within the late antique family.” Within these Roman, or even Roman-Egyptian, families, familial support, or pietas, was encoded in their value system.** Pietas here does not just mean filial loyalty but

| the reciprocal arrangement of parents supporting children and then, in their old age, being supported by those children. Kin were those people one could rely upon for food, clothing, shelter, and emotional support, especially in times of difficulty. For women in Egypt in particular, kin took on added importance after marriage since they could serve as her ally should troubles arise.*4 Despite this arrangement, a woman who had to rely on her “distant male relatives . . . was a pitiful creature.”*» Moreover, these expectations of kin support, which I will explore in detail later in this chapter, were tied to the Roman ideal of domestic harmony. Peace was achieved through the power

of the paterfamilias, and part of that power, both in the non-monastic and in the monastic family, was to ensure proper distribution of goods. Yet, as Suzanne Dixon has

observed, families could often be defined not by just by support but by competition over that support.*° Jealousy and resentment, therefore, are evidence of family life, especially when these emotions are attached to material and emotional support within a determined group. The monastic family then, as we shall see, mimicked a family not just in its structures, with its paterfamilias, Shenoute, urging peace, but also in that Shenoute had to ensure the proper distribution of goods for domestic peace, over and against “familial” squabbles about material support among the monks. The ideal of domestic harmony, for Shenoute, was effused with a new soteriological meaning and thus with greater urgency in the monastery. Unequal distribution was not simply a family fight but undermined the transformation of the household into the society of “God and his angels in heaven.” Moreover, the extensive number of papyri that survive in Egypt shed light on various aspects of family life: the census returns, marriage contracts, divorce decrees, wills, and legal battles over inheritances all have contributed to the picture of the Roman Egyptian family.°’ These sources are often seen as a counterbalance to the upperclass, literary sources of Cicero and others. While it is likely that many of the papyri,

, especially private letters, still stem from a more educated class and not the “masses,” the papyri provide two types of evidence that are useful for comparison with Shenoute’s monastery: demography, from the census returns, and private letters. Demography is useful because it provides information not just about life expectancy, fertility, and marriage patterns, which all provide the social context for the people who would have entered the monastery, but also about household structure: who lived with whom in what sort of relationships.** These descriptions in particular create the sense that the monastery, as a household of various members, related and unrelated, would have been a powerful image in late antique Egypt. In addition, the private letters furnish a body of literature contemporaneous with Shenoute which can provide comparative material for his letters. The private letters have been the basis of much scholarship on the role of the household in the Egyptian economy and, most important for my study, the status of women in the family.*? These letters and the picture they create of household and family life provide important parallels with Shenoute’s letters, in terms of shared topics, language, and concerns. Yet

146 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

there are necessary caveats in using these letters. First, any study based on the papyri cannot claim to be definitive, since as Pomeroy points out, “all the papyri from Roman Egypt will not be published in our lifetimes.” Rather, she notes, observations and tentative conclusions can be made based on the material now available but with open minds to the future.©° So too Roger Bagnall has described various methodological pitfalls in using the papyri, especially for those not trained in papyrology.®! Finally, and most importantly, a danger lies in the kinship terminology that appears in the letters. It has long been recognized by papyrologists that this terminology cannot be taken literally. Not only did husbands and wives address each other as “brother” and “sister,” but so too “father,” “mother,” “son,” and “daughter” could be used for more dis-

tant kin (like uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins, and so forth) and for close friends, with no kinship ties whatsoever. It would be erroneous, then, to use “private” letters with kinship terms as “family” letters comparative to the monastic “family” letters Shenoute wrote to his monks, if by “family” we meant a clear biological relationship among the letter writer(s) and recipient(s). Yet it is precisely because the kinship terminology in the letters in the papyri has such a wide range of meaning that they can profitably be compared to Shenoute’s letters: both the private letters and Shenoute’s letters indicate topics of communication and concern between people, biologically related or not, close enough to call themselves “family.” Throughout my examination, then, I will use kinship terms with this double intent: a brother writing to his sister will be described as such, even though it may be a husband writing to a

wife, or some other relationship. = ,

With all these methodological caveats in mind, the private letters between family members provide a model for people’s expectations of material and emotional support from their kin. The family was an economic unit that saw to the material survival of its members. A letter from a mother who complained about another person alienating her son shows how material support was indicative of family connection. As proof

of her role as mother, she wrote, “When his father died, I paid on his behalf 1,300 drachmae and expended on clothes for him 60 drachmae.”® Kin wrote reminding their family of their economic needs, with the expectation that the family would help them: “So exert yourself, brother, and send me the veil and the linen cloak and the blanket I spoke to you about. You know my humble circumstances—that I need the things.”® Family members, then, expected their kin to provide them with food and, in the letters especially, clothing. Garments could be either purchased or homemade, but men were only involved in the former means. Concern about relatives’ health was predominant in formulaic salutations and conclusions; even if this evidence were unreliable as an attestation of kin feeling, reports on illnesses, or requests for reports, were also the subject of many letters. The kin’s anxiety over one another's health, as well as worry during any breakdown of communication, grant us access to a side of life missing from the usual, more literary sources from antiquity.

Shenoute’s letters are, of course, literary constructions and not documentary works, but they nevertheless contain elements similar to those found in the private letters, particularly when Shenoute complains about his garments to the female monks who made them. Moreover, in these letters he links material and emotional support and membership in the community, a link that creates the familial basis of the monastery. He warns against conflict among the monks, pointing out that they

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 147

are unnecessary since all the monks are well provided for, spiritually and materially: “We afflict one another vainly, since no one among us lacks anything, from teachings and sayings down to garments and food.”°* The model that the private letters provide is the basis for understanding how conflicts over food, clothing, expulsion, and emotional bonds made the White Monastery like a family. Shenoute succeeded in creating kin-like bonds among the monks, but these bonds more often resulted in the behaving like a non-monastic family than the ideal family Shenoute sought. Food

The family assumed responsibility for feeding its members, even when kin were sep-

arated. Many letters preserved in the papyri record requests for food from kin, or thanks for that received. One man wrote to his sister, “Send your cloak and the jar of pickled fish and two cotylae of good oil.”©? Another man also wrote to his sister, “If you have made any cakes, send them to me, as | shall return in another month.” In general, requests for food, and explanations of its need, affirm the writers’ assumption that their requests would be fulfilled based on the familial relationship, which is not, however, inherently gendered. There is no definitive gender pattern in the instances food appears in the letters; female relatives both requested and sent food, and male relatives both sent and received it. Here a difference may have existed between a typical household and the circumstances brought about by kin separation. Within the household, Sarah Pomeroy has argued, the wife was “in charge of the kitchen.”® It is noteworthy, in comparing the White Monastery with the typical household structure, that in the White Monastery men were in charge of baking the bread and raising the vegetables, whereas the women seem to have been confined, in terms of pro-

duction, to cloth and garment production. In the monastic family, therefore, men assumed responsibility to feed the monks but some female monks assumed that responsibility once the food arrived in their community. In the monastic family, it was not just the provision of food but the act of eating as a proup that fostered a communal identity as family members. Mealtimes were important for the formation of kinship in the family because “the fundamental implication of coresidency [a characteristic of the family] is common consumption. Members of the family eat the same food at the same table.”°* Mealtimes in the women’s community are the central communal activity recorded in the letters. Shenoute wrote to the women about mealtimes because the problems that were occurring at them were disrupting the familial bond that was the basis of membership in the White Monastery. There were two types of problems with mealtimes: among the women, conflicts arose because not all women were eating the “same food.” Conflicts between the women and Shenoute resulted in their not eating at the “same table” even when the Opportunity arose to do so. Since the monastic family lacked the biological element of a kinship bond, the other means of creating that bond, the provision of necessary goods, was that much more important. The intensity and frequency of the conflicts over food attest to the centrality of

food in uniting the community. We can recall that during the crisis early in Shenoute’s career, both the unequal distribution of food, based on the food server’s favoritism for various monks, and stealing, from others and from the storehouses, frac-

148 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

tured the women’s community.” The former, favoritism, disrupted the formation of an ideal familial community, where all members of the family ate “the same food at the same table,” because the inequality in food distribution indicated a similar inequality in emotional bonds. For Shenoute, this familial requirement of equality had a literal interpretation in the monastic family: “same food” did not mean “equivalent” but “identical.” Shenoute indicates this meaning, and the connection between food and the cohesion of the community, when he writes, “And to my eyes, greatly impure are they who reach out to select the greater portion, whether bread, or any other thing to eat, in order to put it into the hand of this particular woman.”” In addition, Shenoute made clear that the woman’s motivation in favoring some monks over others was based on “fleshly desire.” Although Shenoute’s language here (though not in his previous description of the relationship) is identical to that used to indicate a homoerotic relationship, it seems that such a relationship did not already exist but that one woman (the server) was trying to initiate it.’ Shenoute here may have used this language both as a rebuke of the woman’s motives, and as a sexual metaphor for the carnal error of unequal distribution of food. Shenoute locates the error of the food distribution in the flesh, in carnality. The food server’s actions therefore had two effects: on. the one hand, her use of the means available to her—food—to express her favoritism made the monastery like a family. Access to material goods was one of the defining elements of the family and here the monks’ access depended on monastic re-

lationships. On the other hand, her actions disrupted the transformation of the model of the non-monastic family into an ideal family. Not only was the server acting on homoerotic feelings and so some monks were receiving more food, but also the monks who were not receiving as much food were upset about the situation; they went

“weeping and groaning” to their houses after the meal.” , Unlike favoritism, Shenoute does not record (in the surviving thirteen fragments) “weeping and groaning” among the women resulting from stealing among the monks. Rather, on occasions when stealing took place, Shenoute himself expressed dismay

both because it disrupted his authority and it led to another transgression, lying. Moreover, monks stole both for themselves and for others; in the latter case, Shenoute presented stealing as he did favoritism: evidence of (erroneous) stronger ties among some monks. Rather than simply indicating love between two monks, however, the evidence for stealing suggests protection for those monks who were unable to meet the standards of fasting for the community. So, again, stealing food indicates a familial bond (used to help kin) even as the basic requirement for an ideal family, equality, was undermined. Of the numerous examples for stealing, the one which illustrates this dynamic best comes from the record of the crisis over The Death of a Male Monk (6). Shenoute had to warn the monks of the motivations of, and consequences for, those who stole food (for themselves or for others): I wish and urge you to judge and discern in this matter whether it is people who are lazy, either physically or spiritually, who usually eat more. If you understand that it is healthy people who usually eat more (except for those who control their eating through abstinence on account of the Lord), then know also why those among you who say, “We eat here. We eat there. We eat this. We eat that,” why they steal, or give to others stealthily and deceitfully all the time, and yet they are not satisfied. How could they be satis-

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 149

fied, robbing, stealing, taking things secretly, being joined to insatiability which burns like a fire before the uncontrollable?”

The problem with these monks was that they were not exhibiting the control “on account of the Lord” which the monastic life required. Here the concern is not, as it was with regard to favoritism and as it will be with regard to biological kin, resentment and envy on the part of the obedient monks, who are eating the proper, lesser amount of food. Rather it is about the lack of discipline on the part of the monks in question, since discipline was the means of transforming the family into a spiritual, salvific community. These monks were acting like a biological family and were expecting food to satisfy them, even if it meant stealing that food. In the new monastic family, however, the carnal aspect of the family, here hunger and the desire to protect one another, was to be disciplined by the spirit; these monks were erring in the monastic family by continuing to value the carnal over the spiritual. Moreover, these monks (female and male, most likely) were resisting Shenoute’s authority, on behalf of both themselves and others, and they were expressing that resistance in the familial context of food. Shenoute questioned whether or not this use of food indicated the love the monks thought it did: “Indeed, do you love your neighbors or your relatives if you stealthily give them things to eat?”’* The love the monks were displaying was carnal, and so needed to be rooted out just as much as the more obvious “fleshly” homoerotic love in the example above. In short, there seems to have been a disagreement about the proper use of food to express love for one another, whether giving food or with-

holding food was a greater indicator of love.

Some of these examples of stealing and favoritism are limited to the female community (in the Initial Crisis) and others seem to have affected the male as well as the female community; as in the private letters, the distribution of food was not always a gendered issue. Food, however, entered into the relationship between Shenoute and the female monks in a gendered way on certain occasions when it seems that Shenoute refused to eat with the women, in order to show his alienation from them as a community. One of these examples affects the monastery as a whole. During the crisis over Excessive Leadership (Crisis 9), Shenoute refused to celebrate Easter with the congregations because doing so would have exposed his (pure) body to the pollutions of a sinful, disobedient and unrepentant community: “Therefore [ cannot avoid saying this other bitter and excessive thing, which is this: ‘Not only will I spend this Easter with you and in your community, like a stranger, but I will also spend the other days of my life taking care of my life like a stranger,’ as I already said in other letters

written to you about those who do, and have done also now, these pestilent and abominable deeds among you, whether male or female, whether superior or inferior.”” On this occasion, when Shenoute said he would be “like a stranger” to the monastery, he used the occasion not just of a meal, but a ritual meal of extreme liturgical importance to make his point. Here, while Shenoute expressed his alienation from the community through food, particularly its rejection, an ecclesiastical setting better describes his actions; what is at stake is not simply a meal but a liturgical event. On an occasion in the Initial Crisis, Shenoute described the pain he suffered when he “sat in that place” to eat and drink. Admittedly, the fragment is so sketchy that the

150 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

exact circumstances are unclear. Nevertheless, the association between eating (in a communal way) and alienation stands. Since “to refuse commensality is .. . to refuse the meal as symbol of familial bond,”’° Shenoute’s actions disrupted the same bonds between the monks, including the women, and him that he argued should not be disrupted within the female community by their own actions with regard to food. That is, the women’s stealing and favoritism disrupted their eating the “same food,” which Shenoute judged illegitimate. His refusal to share meals with them disrupted their eating at the “same table,” but Shenoute presented his actions as a legitimate means of expressing his alienation from the monks. Just as the women’s arguments over food and access to it made them seem like a family, if not the ideal family Shenoute sought, so too his use of mealtimes to act out his anger against the women functioned in much

the same way. Oo

Finally, during the argument about ill-fitting garments in the crisis over Jealousy among the Women (Crisis 7), Shenoute ended his argument for sending measurements to the female monks by comparing the interdependence between food and clothing in the monastery: “If there is no mystery in all the sayings which you hear, or all those which are written to your community, then I am senseless since up to now I do not eat bread from your hand or from your bread. But instead I wear garments from your

community, or from among your garments, never accepting any garments from strangers, down to the present.” ” This relationship, in which Shenoute depends on the women not for food but for clothing, suggests a familial dynamic. Were he to eat with the women (“from your hand”), he would be making himself subservient to them as a food recipient, but he does not. Rather, he seems to be in control of that family good. The women, however, were in charge of his clothing, and they could use that control to create their own power within the monastic family, the subject to which

we will now turn. |

| Clothing The private letters in the papyri often include appeals for clothing to be purchased or made and then sent to the letter writer. It is open to debate whether there is a gender pattern in the letters associating women with clothing: men wrote both to other men and women about clothing, and women both requested and received clothing.”8 Yet it does seem that most of the discussions between men about clothing involve the purchasing of it; if the subject is making a garment, and therefore at home, a woman is most likely the producer of the garment. A good example is a letter from a father to his son, in which he writes, “If ] can buy a cloak for you privately, I will send it at once, if not, | will have it made for you at home” and thus presumably by female members of his household, either kin or servants; he continues later, “A pattern of the color of the dress that is being made is enclosed in this letter; give it to Nicanor to look at, in order that, if he likes it he may write to us, for it has not yet been given out. We are going to use the local purple.”” This father writes about clothing in a way that suggests that he has control over the process, but that he is not involved in the actual production. Often, however, the letters show female kin being in charge, and thus in control, of garments being sent to their kin, male and female alike.®° A sister reports to her

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 151

brother, “Your mother made you the cotton tunic. We are looking for someone reliable to send it.”8! One wife wrote to her husband both that she had received some clothing and that she was in the process of making his: “I also received from Sials a mattress and two white tunics and a leopard-pattern (?) garment . . . on the day itself I received the linen tunic only ... and, look, 1am weaving your cloak.”®? A woman writes to her mother, grandmothers and sisters, reporting that some garments have been finished (“cut from the loom”) and will be sent shortly.22 Women commonly provided for female kin, both older and younger. A woman writes to her mother, “Receive, my lady, from the seamstress the saffron clothes of your daughter, a tunic and ...a tunic for Heraclammon.”** Daughters were also recipients of clothing, but in this example the daughter has provided the cloth for the garment she was requesting: “To my lady mother and my lord brother .. . I sent to you. . . two ounces of purple wool from Berenice in order that you make, please, the frocks and two veils.”®

Even if they did not make the clothing, women were often the overseers of the pro- | cess within the household. One woman discussed the technical details of making the clothing, such as amount of material, cost, and weaving, but it is unclear why she thought this report was necessary for the recipient (whose relationship to her is not stated).8° The color and pattern of the clothing was frequently specified, as we saw in the example earlier. Some cloaks were purple, which was expensive, while some, which were also particularly valued, were white. Overall, the letters suggest that expectations about provisions for clothing, including specific desired details, were usually addressed to female relatives. This gender division in domestic work could be seen as an example of male power, since men seem to have been assigning the women their alloted tasks; yet it also allowed the women to subvert that power by giving them the opportunity to control material goods within the family. Occasionally, a letter from a male relative shows his dependency because of his lack of control. A man complained to his sister, “You have sent me no word about the clothes, either by letter or by message.”®? Another reminded both his mother and sister about his previous complaint, which apparently went unanswered, “To my lady

mother and my lady sister... And indeed I wrote to you in my letter that I am naked.”8* Even if the female kin were simply in charge of having it made (usually within the household), she still controlled the process and distribution of the final product. In one letter, a man seems to try to assert his power in the situation by warning his sister: “You will do well to have my white tunic made quickly in order that I may find it if | come to you... | wish to know how you are hurrying on the making of it... [Ble careful to have my tunic made properly and let them put good measure into it and be generous with the coloring.”®? Despite these words, it was still his sister who could use her cooperation, or lack thereof, to assert herself in her relationship with her brother. We do not, of course, know whether or not his sister did use her control over garments this way. But the possibility that she could creates a power dynamic in familial relations, and we will see how this same control is mimicked in the famil-

ial relations of the monastery. | The familial assumption was that clothing would be provided as requested, and that the women would provide them. Thus, although the distinction between public production of textiles and private familial production is not yet clear in the economy of Egypt, ideologically women were linked with weaving and garment production.

152 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery —

The correspondence between women and clothing in the papyri reinforces other descriptions of women and domestic work in antiquity and so genders the work of gar- |

~ ment production, which in turn agrees with the general link in antiquity between women and wool-working, a point that G. Clark notes in her study of women in late

antiquity and that M. Peskowitz explores in detail in her study of Roman Judaism.” By gendering this ordinary part of life, a situation arose in which it would seem “natural” for the female monks to continue this work within the monastic family and so

allow Shenoute to include the gender relations of the household within universal | monasticism without seeing the paradox it created. Unlike other monastic practices, work was divided along gender lines: garment work was “women’s work” and growing food, baking bread, and maintaining the community’s buildings was “men’s work.”

The division of communities, which Shenoute argued for as a natural part of monas- | ticism, now became more “normal,” since it reflected the natural division of labor according to gender. This inclusion of gender relations and power relations within the monastic family reflects the limitations of Shenoute’s attempts to have the monastic

model. , |

family transcend, through its disciplining of the flesh, the carnality of the family Conflicts over clothing within the monastery rarely were internal to the female

community (the one example is discussed in chapter 8). There is no record of stealing clothing, perhaps because it was a less urgent necessity than food or perhaps because there was less opportunity. Rather clothing is the center of discussion two times,

in thirteen fragments, when Shenoute discusses a difficulty between him and the women making his clothes, usually represented by the female elder and the monk Tapolle. I have already discussed how these women seem to have been protecting their authority in their community by being able to continue to control their work (chapter 4). What remains to be seen is how their actions mimic that of a family, in that the female monks were regulated to a female role yet used that constriction asa __ source of power. Their control over a material good needed by the men, including Shenoute, is analogous to their use of space: an aspect of monasticism that betrayed

their inferiority could also be used to protect their own authority and selfdetermination. As with the issues of space, we do not have proof that the women had the conscious goal of protection, but we can look at the evidence as it exists for what it suggests about the role of gender in the monastic family. In the White Monastery, we have information that we specifically lacked in the papyri: the papyri showed us an association between women and garments and hinted that some men were at a disadvantage in relying on female kin for clothing. The letters from the White Monastery show the same ideological connection between women and garment production, and here it is unmistakable that the women used the gendered work to assert: ~ their authority in the asymmetrical authority structures of the monastery. Moreover, their subversion of Shenoute’s power in dictating their work illuminates the intersection of authority and gender in the family. The gender division of work in the monastic family imported the gendered carnal family into Shenoute’s universal spiritual

family. |

In both Shenoute’s descriptions of the conflict over clothing—one concerning illfitting clothing and the other concerning the disrepair of an old cloak and the unacceptability of its replacement—his dependency on the women making the clothing

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 153

shapes his presentations; his account of his position at times echoes those of the men who wrote letters to their female relatives describing their plights. In the first conflict,

for example, Shenoute was put in a defensive position, of needing to explain why, having already requested alterations, he was still not satisfied with the garment. He suggested that perhaps the garments had been made improperly but admitted, if no errors could be found, then he was in the wrong: “But if per chance there are no faults in their weaving, and if none be found when the weavers examine them, then I was wrong to approve the cut of the shoulders of the garments that I wear, because they are broad, indeed, they are wider than my own shoulders and those who made them should not be blamed.” °! Shenoute apparently felt the need to defend his role in asking for alterations: “Perhaps I was flustered before today. I never asked for the shoulders to be opened and widened on grounds of being too narrow. If therefore they widened the garments on my account, or if I caused them to widen them, well, then, on my account I will have them made more narrow.” Also indicative of his defensiveness is his attempt to remove the focus from his own personal garment, and accuse the women of making ill-fitting garments for all the male monks (which again assumes an ideology of women producing garments for men). He claimed that under the current practice, many men only wore the cloaks “out of dire necessity .. . then the next day or two days later or after several days they put them away, ashamed lest other monks laugh at them.””’ Rather than continue this practice, Shenoute sought, as we have seen, to have measurements sent to the women and to have fittings for his own garments. Shenoute, however, anticipated that some women might object to his plan of sending over measurements for his garments (and possibly for the rest of the men’s as well). He countered these expected objections by appealing to the familial relationship he and the women had, which is signified by their providing him clothing. Unlike food, which he did receive from “strangers,” Shenoute, as noted earlier (p. 150), wore garments provided by the women and never from “strangers.”°* Clothing, then, creates the familial relationship. Moreover, Shenoute then made this familial relationship the basis for their monastic relationship: Indeed, do you not realize that if Ido not clothe myself with clothes from your community, you will be carefree and will not have to figure out the type of color or length and breadth and the decorations of garments? And if, unrelated to the present matter, it were possible to have others make the garments for the monks, indeed, it might happen that some companions persuade me to clothe myself from their community.”

Shenoute addressed the “real” conflict over clothing, but also used “garment” and “measurement” as metaphors for the women’s proper monastic behavior: obedience to him and fulfilling their role in the work of the monastic family. Without this work, the women would be “carefree,” rather than engaged in profitable labor, that is, work that would lead to salvation. Shenoute implied that if the relationship over clothing broke down, the women risked of losing him as a leader, and so would lose the leader

with the ability to guide them safely to salvation. |

The second instance is similar: Shenoute was again in a dependent and defensive position and he again used the conflict over clothing, which was confined to the women, as an analogy to accusations of his excessive leadership current in the entire

154 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

monastery. Since this time only his cloak was a problem, and not those of the rest of the male monks, he was on shakier ground in his complaints. To recall the details, Shenoute’s cloak had fallen into disrepair and he had requested a replacement. At the time of writing the letter, two events had taken place: first, the original cloak had been found hidden in a storeroom and questions about Shenoute’s truthfulness in reporting it as moth-eaten were raised; and second, Shenoute had complaints about the replacement cloak and so was requesting a third cloak. It was this last request, for the third cloak, that the female monks seem to have called “excessive,” a word Shenoute then used to examine the monks’ complaints about his excessive use of expulsion, his

monks. a

| excessive insistence on confessing sins to keep the community unpolluted, and his excessive protection of his own bodily purity, leading him to refuse to meet with the

_ Shenoute’s defensiveness regarding his cloak is apparent. He vigorously defended his claim that it was moth-eaten, apparently against those who thought he was lying. He professed a complete lack of concern that it had now been found and he claimed that, once it was moth-eaten, he had wanted nothing more to do with it and so put it

in the storeroom: |

It was not that | commanded that people not find it in the place where I put it (until the time came for me to tell you what I am going to do with it) and I am amazed to say that

people did find it in that place. For they learned that [I] knew that they had found it hid- , den in a mixture of choice, beautiful things and necessary, useful things and perishable,

useless things. And they did not say to me, “We have found it,” or, “What are you doing with it there?” Nor, for my part, did I ask them as they were finding it since I was not in-terested in it from the day when I knew about the moth damage in it.”°

~ Moreover, his complaints about the replacement garment also seem unusual, coming from a monastic leader. First, he writes, “I was not pleased with it, nor did I approve of, this linen cloak you made for me—not equal to the one that I said the moth de-

stroyed.”?” It was also too heavy, and the tassels were not set on it properly so that it was not the right type of garment. His criticisms here again echo some of the detailed instructions for clothing we saw earlier in the papyri. Finally, Shenoute presented his request for a new cloak as being “a compensation and I might clothe myself with it as -arepayment.”®8 That is, he called upon his position as head of the monastery in order

to have the authority to make the request he was making; he tried to counter the , women’s actual power, located in their control over garment production, with his in-

stitutional authority. Again, the mode of the argument, clothing, transforms this power struggle into a familial struggle: the women held the familial position for women in their culture and, in the face of conflict, Shenoute, as the male head of the household, asserted his privileges over access to the material goods. Finally, since this conflict is linked to the time Shenoute refused to celebrate Easter with the monks, including the women, we can see that Shenoute tried to counter the women’s power, over clothing, with his own, over communal meals, just as he did in the conflict over ill-fitting garments. This interconnection between different types of material support and the emotional bonds of the monastery is also evident in the last material good the monastic household provided: shelter.

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 155

Shelter

Shelter was not a common issue in the private letters in the papyri. Rather, the times of separation necessitated detailed instructions about economics: running the family business, paying and collecting rents, instructions not to sell items before the letter writer returned, reports of transactions the writer was sent to carry out, instructions for the registration for the census, and so forth. On occasion, women were entrusted with the business matters of the family, supporting the common observation of the relative independence of women in Roman Egypt.” This economic part of life is not recorded in Shenoute’s letters to the women. To the extent that the White Monastery was a local business or a source of goods for outsiders in the surrounding area, that aspect of monastic life seems to have been run by the men. It is possible that the women sold their cloth or garments to help support their community, as we have evidence other groups of women living together in Egypt did.'°° However, if the women had at some time engaged in these business practices, it seems most likely that Shenoute would either have ended it (keeping the goods for the monastery) or taken over control of it, since he placed a premium on the seclusion of the women in their commu-

nity, as we saw in chapter 5. |

In the thirteen letters to women, the best parallel to the family as a economic unit, managing its resources, lies in the shelter the monastery provided and which it could

revoke through expulsion. Shelter was tied to the economic function of the monastery. Just as non-monastic families could disinherit a member, thus placing in doubt the financial future, or even survival, of the disinherited, so too Shenoute, as head of the monastery, could expel members. Moreover, the means of expulsion included the removal of the clothing that the monastery had provided: “Just as we tore the cloaks, having broken off the girdles of those who had sinned among us, as if they were soldiers, for they sinned against their king, Jesus, so we pursued them and sent them away from us.”!°' There are no exact statistics on the frequency of either disinheritance or expulsion, but one can note that some monks, at least, found expulsion a too common punishment in the monastery. Expulsion also, of course, disrupted the very emotional ties that Shenoute sought to create as part of the formation of the monastic family, just as being disinherited called into question the emotional ties with the family. Thus, just as food and clothing would be used to express familial connection or (incorrect) stronger bonds with some monks, expulsion provoked an emotional response from those remaining behind in the monastery. One of the reasons expulsion was controversial in the monastery, therefore, was the juxtaposition between Shenoute’s entreaties to the monks to treat each other as kin and the alienation that expulsion created. Expulsions, and apparent resistance to them, date from early in Shenoute’s leadership of the women.!** Shenoute does not comment on the effects of the expulsions in the surviving record of the Initial Crisis, but he does in the crisis that stemmed from the Death of a Male Monk (Crisis 6). There Shenoute chastised the monks for their concern for those who had been expelled by pointing out the expellees’ sins: “Indeed, are you very grieved that thieves or deceitful people who do abominations leave the community?!” The expulsions

disrupted not only the bonds the monks had forged with one another within the

156 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

community but also Shenoute’s relationship with the community. The monks were protective of one another, as family members would be, but this allegiance was dis-

ruptive to their allegiance to the head of the monastery. We can recall that in the crisis over Excessive Leadership (Crisis 9) not only had Shenoute been expelling people

| from the monastery for two months, but he had also refused to meet with the monks for the past seven because of their resistance to his expulsions, which led, in succession, to their tolerance of transgressions, the continued pollution of the community, and the danger that pollution posed to Shenoute’s pure body should he remain among the monks.'™ Despite Shenoute’s exhortations, the emotions that expulsions created,

grief at the loss of one’s companions, anger at the leader who expelled them, and pos- , sibly also confusion about whether expulsion was truly necessary, remained divisive for the monastic community, particularly because Shenoute and many monks seem to have had disparate views of what emotional support the monastery should provide,

and how that emotional support should be expressed. |

| Emotional Support Emotional support is a complex topic for the White Monastery and not one, as | noted in chapter 1, that is easy for historians to measure. There are two main ways to understand emotional support in the White Monastery. The first follows the methodology of the sections thus far: an examination of parallels of evidence for emotional support in the private letters and in Shenoute’s letters. These parallels will show that those aspects of the letter that indicate Shenoute’s desire for control also seem to have expressed the desire for mutual emotional support between the women and him. This approach, then, examines Shenoute and the female monks on equal terms, as both needing and giving emotional support. The second method looks at Shenoute’s attempts at controlling emotions between the monks, as in the earlier example of expulsions. Shenoute divided emotions between good emotions, those that were con-

ducive to harmony and uniformity in the monastery and thus led to salvation, and bad emotions, those that disrupted harmony and uniformity in the monastery and so endangered salvation. We have seen his concern about the latter when manifested in unequal distribution of material goods. There were also other occasions, usually conflicts between monks, that led him to articulate further the proper emotional fabric

of the monastery. , |

The private letters in the Egyptian papyri contain emotional statements rarely expressed in other genres of literature that survive from antiquity.!© Of the various emotional expressions, the two that will be the most helpful for understanding Shenoute’s

letters are requests for reports about health and expressions of anxiety caused by a breakdown in communication between kin. For the first, it is true that many of the statements of concern for the recipients’ health are formulaic; every letter begins and ends with customary wishes and prayers for good health. Nevertheless the statements represent a real anxiety in the ancient world. As Roger Bagnall notes, “A modern reader might be tempted to dismiss as so much polite formula the phrases like, ‘above

all else, I pray for your health’ . . . but that would be quite wrong.”!°° Family members | who were separated worried about illness and had to rely on gossip to learn of their

kin’s conditions: “A year to-day I have been away from you and all the time you have

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 157

not thought it proper to give me tidings about yourself or your brother Horion, how he is; for I love him greatly. Have you produced us a male child? . . . Tell me now about anything here that you want.”!©’ Letters provided the means of reporting activity that eased the pain of separation and uncertainty among family members. As aresult, family members suffered acute anxiety when contact ceased. Kin often

wrote requesting a reply, or reminding the recipients that no word had been sent for some time. With no other form of communication in the ancient world, the lack of interaction by letter led to fears of numerous dire possibilities, including death: “T wonder why up to the present day you have sent me not a single letter.”!°° And, “For many days now I’ve not had a letter from you and I ask you to tell me why. . . I pray above all that you are well.”'© Kin also wrote to report on how the family was getting along, providing evidence that domestic harmony was a family concern: “Do not be anxious about us, for there is nothing the matter with us and we are in harmony with each other.”!!° Families also experienced disruption, either through conflict of various members or through disobedience. A father wrote to his daughter, chastising her for defiance: “What I have written to you to do is one thing, what you have done is another... I shall hold you responsible.” Despite the father’s anger and warning to his daughter, he nevertheless closed, “I pray for (your) health.”''! Letters also recorded reassurances of love, and despair about the loss of love, between spouses.!!? For

the most part, this category focuses on the anxiety that came from separation from loved ones, the need for reassurance that all was well, and the desire to correct behavior that was causing conflict among family members. Discussion of feelings do not often enter historical analysis, since explicit accounts of people’s feelings, especially with regard to intimate family members, rarely survive from antiquity.'!? In the case of the papyri, however, these letters attest to feelings and emotions even across the expanse of centuries and differing cultures. Shenoute’s letters to the female monks echo these aspects of emotional family life from the papyri: he expects and hopes that the women share his concerns about his health, and he is frequently anxious when he thinks the women have not communicated fully with him the details of life in their community. I have examined both these

topics for what they tell us about Shenoute’s self-understanding as head of the monastery. But to limit their meaning to issues of authority would be to do injustice to the complexity of the rhetoric. These appeals for communication and for support during illness make the best sense if they are also meant to create a emotional bond between the letter writer and audience. Both Shenoute’s reports to the women of his own illnesses and his use of illness as a metaphor presume that the monks cared about each other’s health in the same way kin did. Shenoute reported his periods of illness when he needed the women’s sympathy for his position in various conflicts.!™ Shenoute’s ill health provided him and the women with opportunities to act like family members in both expecting to receive concern, and in turn expressing it, especially through the medium of material goods. The women were able to care for Shenoute in his illness by making a cloak for him: Shenoute spoke of “the garments which they made to my specifications during the illness which [ came upon and which came upon me.”'!5 Or he felt neglected when they were unable to meet his needs: “Not excepting the fact that I already said that I would not distress you any further about the garments to clothe myself with, since God did not desire to relieve me from my ill-

, 158 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery ness.”!!6 In addition, the women were anxious about him or performed night vigils on his account.'!” IIIness produced anxiety and concern among the women, just as it did

in the non-monastic population, and they responded as kin would: with prayer and material support which, since they were women, was in the form of clothing. Shenoute’s use of illness as a metaphor for wrongdoing was not just part of his discourse of monastic power; rather it also called upon the model of the family as the basis

, for monastic identity. His familial metaphor depended on the monks’ concern for one another like kin during illness. Its representation of mutual responsibility presup-

posed common concern for each other’s health. — So too Shenoute’s requests for full reports from the women can be understoodina

familial context. His desire to correct behavior stemmed from his view that such behavior endangered the salvific health of monastic kin since conflict was an “illness,”

a common metaphor in Shenoute’s letters. His requests then, can be understood not , only as stemming from his desire for control but also from his concern for the women’s | well-being. In the monastic family, that anxiety was expressed as worry about salva-

, tion. Moreover, this link between salvation and emotional support allowed Shenoute ~ to view emotional bonds between the monks as another area of monastic life in need of rules and control. Shenoute encouraged the monks to love and support one another not because of the intrinsic value of those emotions, but because of their role in leading monks to salvation. As with material support, Shenoute was concerned

| about uniformity, that there not be stronger emotional bonds among some monks. - than among others. By using familial language and creating a monastic family, Shenoute could draw on cultural ideals of domestic harmony to argue that the supe- | rior monastic family should be able to live together, all loving each other as part of

their love for God and, further, providing uniform material support in keeping with |

this emotional ideal. ,

-Shenoute thus divided emotions into two categories, good and bad. Good emotions were those that he believed led to salvation, bad were those that hindered it. Like a good father in a biological family, he used two methods of parenting to lead the

monks to the good emotions: an authoritative approach and a loving approach.'!® Shenoute had to guard against the errors of some monks leading others onto the path

of wrong emotion: OS ; - | ~ Do not let the people who fall away from virginity and righteousness and deeds of right- _

eousness within these congregations at any time offend you in your virginity or your , righteous deeds, O you pure brethren. Since they will not be envious of you in your endurance and your purity and your righteousness and your righteous deeds, do not envy

them in their pollutions and their lies and their false deeds.'!9 | Rather than envy and competition, Shenoute promoted peace among the monks, as | well as obedience from the erring monks.!2° Love also was a good emotion, and one

that recurs throughout Shenoute’s instructions, since it was through love that har- , mony was to be attained. In the non-monastic family, love for one’s kin was part of the emotional support the family provided. In the monastic family, true love was love

for God; this love was then reflected in the monks’ following of God’s command- | ments: “Who loves God forever without keeping his commandments and his sayings? ‘He who loves me,’ he said, ‘will keep my sayings.’ Who says ‘I love God’ but is pol-

Women’s Role in the Monastic Family: The Intersection of Power and Gender 159

luted or is a thief or is disobedient, or acts against love by transgressing everything?!

Shenoute was quite insistent that the monks love God. On one occasion, he explained the success of his leadership: “Perhaps you honor me, or shower me with great glory, because I often force, even violently, some of you to love God and his commandments and to hate pollutions, disobedience, and every evil thing.”!”? In addition to loving God, the monks were to love one another, in order to achieve a community with domestic harmony. As an ideal family, the monastery was supposed to be better

able to achieve that harmony through obedience and through the expulsion of disruptive emotions; love guarded against hate, which led to strife and envy; equal love for all monks guarded against favoritism, which led to conflict. Shenoute directed the monks towards love, because love fostered forgiveness and tolerance, not quarrels.'”’ Therefore, Shenoute could conclude that jealousy and conflict were signs that the monks were not fulfilling their familial duty of love for God and each other. There seems to have been debate, however, about which actions were consistent with love and which were not. For example, we saw above that Shenoute described some monks as justifying giving hoarded food to others on the basis of love: because they loved their companions, they did not want them to leave the monastery (and jeopardize their salvation). Shenoute, on the other hand, saw salvation being jeopardized by the transgression of hoarding. So too he warned the monks that they could not be relied upon to determine corporal punishment for their companions, because they had a wrong understanding about what constituted loving actions: Moreover, whenever someone makes a covenanted promise to the community that he will not do such-and-such a thing in the community, since this is the desire of the community, but afterwards he changes his mind and he does the thing he promised not to do, you in the community will not be angry with him because you do not wish to be. Whenever God himself counsels me to do difficult deeds in the community again or for a second time, what will you do to him? He is your brother, or your junior companion. Senseless one! Will you be able to take a rod and censure him?!”*

Emotional support in the monastic family, like material support, was to be provided only in amounts thought adequate to help the monks along on the path to salvation.

Conclusion Investigating Shenoute’s use of familial language and the monastery’s function as a family articulates Shenoute’s ideology: his familial language supports his power and it legitimates his simultaneous expectations of the women as monks and his treatment of them as women. Although the monastery was based on a familial model, the necessity of the separation of the sexes altered familial relationships. The monastic family had similarities to the non-monastic family, but these were not to include the commingling of the sexes, even relatives, which would recall the inherent sexuality of the secular household. While the whole monastery was “cut off” from the world, albeit still engaged in preaching and commerce, this did not lead to privatization of the monastery, and hence increased power for women within a private realm.'”° Creation of a monastic household validated the seclusion of women into their own separate,

160 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

and subordinate, sphere within the space of the monastery; moreover, the creation of women’s monastic work further supported this gender separation. Shenoute’s construction of the monastery as a family was the means by which he was able to combine egalitarian rhetoric and patriarchal structures. Through defining monastic space as a household, Shenoute was able to include gender within a “genderless” system. Through examining space and family relations we can see the codification of gender relations Shenoute effaces in his rhetoric of unity. Power and gender relations, which seemed paradoxical in previous chapters, converge in familial rela-

tions. Here it becomes clear how Shenoute could both define the women as “brethren” with the same set of monastic requirements and yet also define them as mothers, sisters, and daughters within the monastic family, and thus mimic the asymmetry of the patriarchal household in the authority structures of the monastery. Family, as the title of the chapter suggests, allows us to see the intersection of authority and gender in the monastery, in terms of Shenoute’s leadership of the female monks.

° “According to the Flesh” Biological Kin in the White Monastery

If the monastery (both as a whole and the women’s community in particular) was defined as a family, and functioned like a family, what happened when biological family members joined this nonbiological family? This question is not unique to the White Monastery, or the women in the White Monastery. The common ideology promoted in monastic literature is, as Elizabeth Clark has examined, an antifamilial tendency, that is, an attempt to denigrate biological bonds in favor of monastic (familial) bonds. One excellent example from her study is that of a man who, out of obedience to his monastic superior, was willing to throw his child into a river, unaware that the child would be saved downstream by fellowmonks.! The point of that story, of course, was to encourage people choosing the monastic life to have allegiance and loyalty to the monastery, and the authority structures in it, over “natural” allegiance to kin. One would expect, in the context of such a predominant ideology, to find Shenoute also urging biological kin, men and women, in the monastery to forego their “fleshly” ties, and, indeed, he did. One would also expect that the gender divisions in the monastery would have particular effects on biological kin. The monastery was like a family except that male and female “kin” (monastic and biological) were to be separated, a separation that went farther than the male/female division of upper-class Roman house-

holds. Again, the evidence from Shenoute’s letters support this expectation of a different experience, resulting from the gender division, for biological kin in the monastery, however much that differentiation countered Shenoute’s desire for a uniform monastic experience for all. The total picture of monastic life for biological kin, however, is more complex than these two straightforward expectations. I have argued that Shenoute sought domestic peace by defining the family, a carnal image, in spiritual terms. Thus, the perfect family had to be noncarnal, free from 161

162 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

flesh, and so protected from flesh as a source of error. Biological kin brought literal , ~ carnality into the monastery, and Shenoute had to reconcile that carnality with the

familial tropes he used to define the monastery. Shenoute had to strive to teach bio- 7 logical kin how to act like kin not just to their kin, but to all the monks. Biological allegiance was not so much destroyed as it was supposed to be equated with monastic bonds in general. At the same time, Shenoute had to teach the monastic kin to treat the biological kin as monastic brethren, and not as a separate party. Yet Shenoute - himself frequently treated the biological kin as a special group within the monastery in expected and unexpected ways. Not surprisingly, he called attention to their fleshly _ ties when those ties were, in his view, a source of transgression or conflict. In these _

cases, the kin monks were acting much like the non-kin monks discussed in chapter —

7: love and concern resulted in taking material care of one another. The monks with kin were dangerous, however, because their inequality stemmed from actual, and not metaphorical, carnality. Moreover, their actual carnality could remind the monks of the carnality of the familial metaphor, which Shenoute tried to efface. A more surprising emphasis on biological ties appears in relation to the separation ©

| of the sexes in the monastery. Several times in his letters to the female community, Shenoute used biological relationships to manipulate the female monks into compliance with his claims to authority. Thus, examination of biological kin in the | monastery as a whole reveals, just as examination of monastic kinship did, an intersection of authority and gender: the gender division of the monastery created special tests for the biological kin, female and male, and meeting the emotional needs of kin by allowing them to see each other provided Shenoute with an opportunity to affirm

his own power. , | . | Biological Kin

| Other forms of monasticism in late antique Egypt had to contend with the division — of the monks’ loyalty between their new community and their family. Pachomius and his successors struggled with the issue, and their divergent answers suggest that a leader’s position depended on his point in the development of the institution. In the

, earlier period of Pachomian monasticism, under its founder, monks were allowed to continue their relationships with their biological families after they had joined the monastery. The male monks could go to the women’s community if they had relatives , there, but they had certain restrictions: “Let us speak also about the monastery of the virgins: No one shall go to visit them unless he has there a mother, sister, or daughter, some relative or cousins, or the mother of his own children . . . [They shall be accompanied by a man of proven age and life.” The reasons these visits were allowed

were both specific, “if some paternal inheritance was due them,” and open to inter- | , pretation, “for any evident reason . . . if there is some obvious reason.” It is unclear whether men were allowed to visit their female relatives simply because they desired to see them. However, after the monastic system became more structured, the position of Pachomius’s eventual successor, Theodore, became more rigid, at least according to his hagiography (the rules do not seem to have changed). Theodore re— fused to meet with his mother when she same to see him, even though she had a letter

“According to the Flesh”: Biological Kin in the White Monastery 163

from a bishop requiring him to meet with her. He authorized his inflexibility by a literal interpretation of Luke 14:26, thus arguing that true followers of Christ had to renounce their families completely.’ It would be simplistic to suggest that all Egyptian monasticism progressed from more lenient to more strict attitudes toward including biological families in the life of the monastery. Yet the tension between the bonds of the biological family and the expectation of their renunciation in the monastic family continued, not only in Egypt but elsewhere.* Given this commonality, it is reasonable to expect a rigid rejection of continued contact with biological kin within

, the monastery on the part of Shenoute who, like Theodore, was a third-generation leader of the institution. A point of comparison appeats when Shenoute also used Luke 14:26 to praise the monks who had renounced their families, thus following the word of God.*® But one should also expect that there would have been a variety of views among his followers, some of whom might have agreed with complete renunciation of relatives and others who saw familial support as necessary to helping each other to salvation. Kinship Language

The very fact that Shenoute’s kinship language can refer to both biological and monastic family demonstrates the complexity of familial relationships in the White Monastery. In Shenoute’s definitions of the monastic family, discussed in chapter 7, it is obvious that some need for those definitions arose from the tension between biological and monastic kin. In his response to Crisis 3: A Monk Refuses Promotion, Shenoute defined all monks as parents in order to quell division between two groups, monks with kin and monks without; and for Crisis 4: The Beatings of Women, he argued that biblical fathers beat both spiritual and biological children to justify his beating of both monks related and unrelated to other monks. He presumed the presence of biological kin in his audience in nearly all his discussions of family. The kinship terms discussed in chapter 7 most likely refer to monastic, and not biological, relationships because they lack the technical phrase Shenoute used to designate biological kin: KATA Caps, Shenoute called relatives among the monks “those who belong to you according to the flesh [KATA Caps].” For the most part, Shenoute used this phrase when he wanted to emphasize the role biological kinship had in a particular conflict, as | implied in discussions of familial language in chapter 7 and as will be clear in the discussion of evidence for biological kin below. The importance of this phrase is twofold: it confirms that biological kin lived in the monastery, and Shenoute’s use of it reflects a divided community, a division to which Shenoute contributed. In sev-

eral conflicts, Shenoute separated his audience into two groups—those monks who were monastic companions to one another and those who were related by blood— and so emphasized the coexistence of two distinct populations within the monastery. Problems arise, however, because Shenoute does not always use the phrase when referring to biological kin. The examples in chapter 7 describe those occasions when the phrase is lacking and also, I argue, refer to monastic kin. In this chapter I wish to concentrate on examples that include the indicator “kKaTa Caps” and those where the phrase is missing but I would argue nevertheless biological kin were meant. The ambiguity of these latter examples necessitates, in each case, a clear methodology for

, 164 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery interpreting Shenoute’s meaning in his use of familial language. One example comes

from the list of women who were to be beaten. ° We can recall that the need forthese women’s beatings most likely led Shenoute to use familial language in defending the appropriateness of corporal punishment (chapter 7). These women were, with one exception, identified by their relationship to a relative: “Therefore, Thesnoe, Apa Hermef’s daughter . . . the sister of Apa Psyros . . . Tsophia, the sister of the recent Elder... Tjenvictor, the sister of John the younger . . . Taese, the sister of the younger Pshai. . . Takous, who is called Rebecca . . . Tsophia, the sister of Zachariah . . . and Tapolle, her sister... Tsophia, Joseph’s sister . . . Tsanso, the sister of Apa Hllo.”” It

is possible that Shenoute was referring to monastic relationships between these monks, but that seems unlikely for two reasons: first, familial language tended to be

~ general, whereby all monks were brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers, to one another rather than to a particular person. Second, if these were particular monastic ~ relationships, that would indicate some type of teacher/disciple relationship between

a senior man (father/brother) and a junior woman (sister). We have no evidence from this period that men were Apas to women, and | would find surprising such a gender mix in a monastic setting. This gender mix, on the other hand, makes perfect sense with a biological interpretation, where the women are identified by their male relatives. The interpretation of Shenoute’s formulas as referring to biological kin also explains why Takous has no kinship tie listed; she may have had none (possibly a freed slave), or at least none that were known to the community. Thus, she was the Takous

“who is called Rebecca.”

- This interpretation, that Takous did not have a male relative known to the community, raises the question of whether or not the other male relatives were all members of the monastery. The women’s identification by their relationship to male relatives could be explained by the Roman practice of patronymics.® It is also possible, however, that these male relatives served as convenient referents because they were known to the monastic community through their own membership in it. In the three cases where the male relative was identified as an “Apa,” there seems to be little ambiguity.? Three of the other eight men have the designation “younger,” a common phrase in the White Monastery to designate a person’s “monastic age,” that is, how long they had been a monk.!° Only two of the men, Zachariah and Joseph, have no monastic terminology connected to their names. Of the ten women listed, then, only one does not have a male relative attached to her name, three are associated with Apas, another three with men who seem to be junior monks, and three remain am-

biguous. While it is impossible to extrapolate from this isolated example that as few as 30, and as much as 90, percent of the (possibly) 1800 female monks had relativesin the men’s community, the kinship language does suggest that relatives joined monas-

teries with great frequency, and that it is possible that monks with kin comprised a ,

majority of the population within the White Monastery. | , The Egyptian cultural context provides another possible explanation of this use of

kinship language. Papyri from Roman and late antique Egypt show that it was com- , mon for sibling language to be used for spouses, so that, as discussed in chapter 7, Egyptologists for this time period are reluctant to treat any kinship language as necessarily biological.!' It is possible that certain of Shenoute’s references in this list were to former spouses. While sibling terminology for spouses may have been less common

“According to the Flesh”: Biological Kin in the White Monastery 165

in the later Christian period, the use of such language to refer to a previously conjugal relationship is consistent with an ascetic setting.'!” The evidence is by no means conclusive, yet it is possible that Shenoute’s references to siblings could include monks who had been married. Thus, the most persuasive interpretation of this list is that Shenoute used biological relationships to identify the female monks who were to be beaten, with the clarification that “biological relationships” include former spouses, as well as parents, children, and siblings. Familial imagery not only created a basis for monastic relationships but could show the superiority of life in the monastery over biological family life, as is evident in a particular moral fable Shenoute told to the community. Shenoute’s story is about a man whose mother had gone blind and insane. He begins the story as a means of explaining the (bad) blindness of his followers, and his own (good) blindness to any teaching other than his own: What would I do, or what can I do, except these things? I do not see any other option except that I teach according to what I believe from the Scriptures. ... Who is the witness of these words or this deed except God? No one sees or knows. Another way of saying this is this: Some people announced to a man, “Your mother has lost her mind, and a mist or some covering is over her eyes; but those who see her do not realize that she

cannot see because her eyes are open; but she cannot see.” , The son went to her aid and decided to take her to a place of healing.'* During their journey, however, he was also put in charge of his blind brother. Unable to take care of the demands of both blind relatives, the man deserted his brother in order to get his mother to help. When he then returned to look for his brother, he was unable to

| find him and thus succeeded in aiding only one of the two relatives: But his brother became violent and so got loose from his brother’s hand, because his other hand was holding on to his mother. And the brother fled away from him, far away, having fled with all his strength, groping in dark places. And the brother got away because he was not able to run after him since his mother held him back. And the brother did not hear him calling out, “Return to me,” and he did not return. So the man walked along with his mother until he came to the place where she could be healed. He left her there and then he returned, disheartened, looking for his brother. And after he had remained, looking for him with all his might, even searching out the dark places, he could not find him.!°

In this story, the inability to care for one’s kin led to emotional stress, as is especially evident in the description of the man’s “disheartened” search for his deserted brother. Moreover, the emotional bonds themselves were the source of grief, made apparent in the son’s response to his mother’s condition: “He went to his mother, who had borne him, to the place where she was, and he saw her in her two-fold condition: madness and blindness. And he sat down and cried before her.”!® The allegorical meaning of the parable suggests the necessity of leading (blind) sinners to a monastery, a place where they can receive salvation (healing).'’ The story had the added implication that the monastery was a better place for the blind than

| the biological family. Shenoute’s story implied that people were not always able to care for their kin, and to respond to their needs. The story thus asserted the superiority of the extended monastic family over the limited resources, both material and

166 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

emotional, of the biological family. The man’s inability to care for both his relatives would have been averted if he had people to rely on other than kin. Indeed in this story, the man’s brother is brought to him by someone else who then deserts him, leaving him with the burden of both blind relatives: Andas he was walking with his mother, another man came along. Now furthermore, the brother of the man who was leading and supporting his mother was blind. This other

‘man gave over the blind brother into the first man’s hands and then went away and hid. , And when the first man saw that the other had hidden or gone away, and saw that neither of the two remained with him, neither the person who told him his mother was insane nor the one who entrusted his blind brother to him, he traveled on, groaning, along ~ the road on which he had begun his journey, with his mother, who had borne him, fol-

lowing near behind him.'8 Bn ,

At the same time, this story also had a moral for the monastic kin, but in their case a mixed one. Just as Shenoute warned biological kin about relying only on their kin, so ~ too he encouraged monastic kin in their choice to renounce their biological ties. They did not share the same emotional stress as the man in this story. They were not, however, to desert the biological kin, as this man was deserted, leaving him to suffer on his own. Although the man burdened by his biological family is the focus of this story, a variety of evidence for tension between monks with kin and monks without

suggests that Shenoute’s fable contained various meanings. |

, | Material Conflict The monks with kin, not surprisingly, treated their kin with favoritism when it came to material possessions, in direct contrast to Shenoute’s instructions. While disputes among the monks indicated the kin-like bond between them (chapter 7), fights between monks with and without kin divided the community because of the advantage that the monks with relatives in the monastery seemed to enjoy. One of the first

recorded conflicts pertained to kin and the support they were giving each other. This , support also showed the validity of Shenoute’s concerns about achieving domestic harmony. Unequal food distribution between kin resulted in resentment and conflict, ~and the monks’ carnal status, as kin, was the focus of that resentment. After joining the monastery these relatives added to the number of people who needed provisions; thus the monks without kin had more competition for the materials that the monastery provided and seem to have perceived the monks with kin as constituting a special threat. This perception of the monks with kin—that they were protective of the material interest of their family members rather than of their fellow monks—

caused jealousy among the others. OS |

As described in the narrative in chapter 2, Shenoute became aware of this problem early in his tenure as archimandrite, when he had to outline in detail his expec- — tations of the uniformity of support all monks should receive, regardless of diversity of gender, monastic rank, or family allegiance: “Whether a male elder or a senior fe-

male monk, whether a junior male monk or a junior female monk, whether blood rel-_ , atives, or strangers, or orphans who do not have kin among us; and I say to you that you shall give them either a cloak, or a garment, or sheep-hide or something to eat,

“According to the Flesh”: Biological Kin in the White Monastery 167

or any other material possession at all.”!? Despite this variety of possible reasons for unequal distribution, Shenoute (after a two-page lacuna where other issues may have been explored) turns his attention specifically to the question of biological kin, who were apparently receiving different sorts of material goods in greater abundance than were their non-kin monastic brethren. Although there was a medley of material goods at the heart of this conflict, food in particular remained a continual source of conflict later in the Initial Crisis, and beyond it. When monks later hoarded food for others, both monastic kin and biological kin were involved in this transgression.”° Shenoute’s explicit inclusion of the relatives, however, indicates his recognition of the implications of the biological ties in this situation. Shenoute’s objections here were twofold: he objected to the monks’ inability to follow the monastery’s food requirements and to the allegiances among some monks, including biological kin, that created unequal relationships (reflected in the food practices), He ascribes to the monks who hoarded food the argument that they were concerned that the other monks who were having difficulty not leave the monastery and lose their salvation. The monks may have been particularly anxious to save their relatives’ souls so that they might spend eternity with them, as well as, or

perhaps even rather than, other monks. Shenoute answered that the monks were losing the benefit of their calling in the monastery, namely, attaining salvation.’! The monks were asking their relatives not to talk about their hoarded food because other monks would find out and also expect extra food.?? The families who joined the White Monastery together did not “renounce” their kin by leaving them, but they

were required to “renounce” their kin by treating their kin as they did all other monks.’’ By continuing to provide their kin with familial support, in the form of food, within the monastery, the monks indicated that their dedication was not solely to the monastery; as a result, they were divisive to the monastic family Shenoute advocated. While Shenoute clearly objected to the monks’ actions, what was the response of other monks? Not surprisingly, Shenoute describes them as resentful. In the Initial Crisis, Shenoute seems to have become aware of the problem of unequal distribution because of the consequential problem of unrest among the non-kin monks. He reported that some monks were “whispering off to the side” saying, “It is the one who has kin in this place who is cared for, or who will be cared for.”** Although here it is unclear whether Shenoute thought these monks were jealous of the care or scornful of the extra care the kin needed, the former seems more likely on other occasions. In addition, throughout his definitions of the monastic family in the examples I set forth in chapter 7, Shenoute was aware of the diverse family backgrounds of his audience and that these arguments would consequently have different meaning for the various groups, those with biological kin in the monastery and those who had left their biological families, parents or children, to join. In one of those examples, from Crisis 3 (A Monk Refuses Promotion), we saw Shenoute’s anxiety that the presence of biological kin were leading other monks to say, “They are not our concern.” This “concern” seems to mean providing access to material support, partly because material support is what kin and non-kin argued about on other occasions and partly because in this particular context Shenoute addressed the role of the biological family in providing material support. In this conflict, monks were turning their back on fellow monks, based on the assumption that biological kin would care for each other (as they were

168 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

in the Initial Crisis) and non-kin monks would care for each other. These two groups, however, would not care for the other, and it was this separation to which Shenoute objected. It is therefore not insignificant that Shenoute began the letter invoking the pain of being (involuntarily) childless and that he now asked “eunuchs and virgins” who had either not had children or left their children to be “parents” to other monks, including the biological children of other monks. The familial language was necessary not simply to define monasticism, but to overcome a serious material conflict

arising from fleshly differences. | There were paradoxical consequences to the unequal distribution of provisions resulting from corporeal bonds, including those of kinship. The monks who were supposed to be better ascetics were nevertheless, according to Shenoute’s description, complaining about their material disadvantage or seeking to redress their disadvantage. They ignored monks with kin in order to stabilize their own access to resources. In the Initial Crisis, as noted earlier, Shenoute described the monks who did not benefit from favoritism in the distribution of food as going “weeping and groaning” to their houses after the meal.” In this situation as well as others discussed earlier, relatives, or those with some attachment of the flesh, were the cause of envy and strife. The monks with relatives were the losers in the “ascetic competition” but nevertheless caused resentment among the winners.”° These monks were more ascetic both because they received less material support and because they suffered greater emotional loss when they renounced their families. They did not, however, accept their lesser lot stoically, as one would expect in a hagiographical account of monastic life. Rather, they complained to Shenoute about the actions of the monks with kin, actions that Shenoute sought to correct. They apparently also resented the very fact that some monks were allowed to join the monastery along with their relatives, rather than having to suffer as did the monks who had left their kin. Thus, not just the actions but

the very presence of relatives in the monastery proved disruptive to the harmony Shenoute sought for his ideal family. The resulting actions of both kin and nonkin undermined the unity of the monastery. In some ways, these disruptions were similar to those the monks caused when they treated their companions like kin; the crucial difference is that the monks without kin were expressing their spiritual kinship

bond (metaphorical carnality) even when they erred through stealing or favoritism, whereas the monks with kin were still loyal to their biological bonds (actual carnality). Yet what is striking about these examples is that often Shenoute’s anger was not limited to, or even in some cases mainly directed at, the kin. Rather, he admonished those who treated the kin as a separate and special group within the monastery, that is, the non-kin monks. The kin erred in taking special care of each other, but Shenoute apparently also thought the monks without kin had a responsibility to ignore kin bonds as much as the kin did. Thus, for example, the non-kin should have had “concern” for the monks who were biological kin. So too we can recall that he argued against anyone, kin or non-kin, claiming that “virgins and eunuchs” had a spe-

cial status. Kin allegiances were not just to be renounced; all monks were to act as if biological kinship no longer existed. The carnality of the family, either real or metaphorical, needed to be effaced in response to the need to create a community of “realized eschatology.” While biological kin carried the burden of renouncing ties

“According to the Flesh”: Biological Kin in the White Monastery 169

with those who resided with them in the monastery, the responsibility did not just lay with them. For, as Shenoute recognized, if the biological kin were not taken care of as if they were simply monastic kin, they would continue to rely on their relatives,

and the monastery would continue to be two families in conflict, rather than one united community. Emotional Conflict

Shenoute sought both to avoid conflict among the kin and to subsume the biological family within the monastic. The monks with biological kin in the monastery suffered from sources of stress that, while shared by other monks, were again defined by their biological relationship. Thus, while both corporal punishment and expulsion were, as I have shown, controversial for all monks, Shenoute called special attention to the affect of these punishments on biological kin in the monastery. In addition, separation was an issue that was not relevant for the non-kin but had special meaning for the biological kin. Within each community, male and female, monks were to be separated from their kin so that their old family order did not affect their new monastic rank.?? The separation of relatives also eroded their former relationship and helped to create new bonds with unrelated monks. Furthermore, the gender division of the monastery kept male and female relatives secluded in their own communities. Separation of the sexes, however, differed from corporal punishment and expulsion be-

cause Shenoute met this emotional need and allowed visits, although most likely because doing so supported his authority structures. Once again, then, Shenoute’s ideologies of power and gender intersect in the family, but here in the actual family, not just the metaphorical family of the monastery. We can begin by recalling that Shenoute used familial imagery to justify the beating of spiritual and biological sons and daughters, an image that presented difficulty since he lacked any scriptural descriptions of biblical figures beating their children. Once again, as with the hoarding of food, the conflict affected all the monks, but those with biological kin merited special mention.”* | noted in chapter 7 that the lack of evidence for beating children within families made this metaphor problematic for defending the corporal punishment of spiritual sons and daughters, but this point holds even greater weight for actual biological children in the monastery. Paradoxically, it seems that the reason Shenoute used familial imagery was to defend the beatings of several of the women on the list of ten transgressors, women who had biological relatives in the monastery (see earlier in this chapter and chapter 7). That their beatings might be objectionable to their kin we can discern not just from scholarship (which only addresses the beating of boys, never of girls) but from a sermon Shenoute

preached to refugee families living in the monastery. He advocated, despite objec- | tions, corporal punishment within the non-monastic biological family. Shenoute argued that parental love consisted of doing whatever was necessary to lead your child to salvation, even including “smear|[ing] the flesh and blood of ignorant sons and daughters and siblings on the rod.””? So too Shenoute defined the monastery as a salvific family where familial relationships must be defined in terms of the community’s goal of salvation for all. Analogy linked the two families, although here Shenoute was less concerned with arguing for the superiority of the spiritual family.

170 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

Rather, he united all children, male and female, biological and spiritual, under one appropriate monastic instruction, namely, corporal punishment. Moreover, his use of familial language in his letters illustrates his efforts to impose a patriarchal hierarchy on the women (locating the authority for beatings in the “father”) even while using an egalitarian rhetoric, where all the monks, as “God’s children,” were “brethren” to one another. As with other issues of gender in Shenoute’s rhetoric, this paradox may not have been evident to Shenoute, since it is a paradox that informs Christian so-

cial structures from its inception. That these male relatives may have been objecting, or that the women might have expected them to, is further indicated near the end of the fragment, where Shenoute wrote, “we and the elders, along with your sons, your fathers, your brothers, and all your relatives, and all the brothers who pray for this.”3° Here the actual meanings of these kinship terms is open to interpretation. The question is, do the sons, brothers, fathers, and relatives all describe blood relations, while “we and the elders . . . and all the brothers who pray for this” describes the male monks who were not relatives? Or, alternatively, do the sons, brothers, and fathers include both biological and spiritual kin?! Or is it possible that the “sons, brothers, and fathers” are only in a monastic relationship to the female monks, and all male relatives are included under “all your relatives”? Would Shenoute have referred to junior male monks as the women’s “sons,” just as he referred to junior female monks as the female elder’s “daughter”? At any rate, Shenoute’s catalogue was meant to describe the male community as a whole in order to argue that all male monks, including the women’s relatives, agreed with -Shenoute’s position of subordinating the women to male control of corporal punish- — ment. This example illustrates Shenoute’s tendency to treat biological kin as a special group within the monastery. It also shows, however, the particular circumstance of biological kin: Shenoute used the separation of male and female kin to render the women more vulnerable to his authority, since a possible source of protection was

removed. - ,

As with corporal punishment, expulsion caused a specific response on the part of the biological kin who remained in the monastery. These monks were protecting their blood relatives, not just spiritual kin, and thus placing their biological alle-

giances above their monastic ones. Thus, whereas Shenoute’s objections to non-kin’s support of one another meant objecting to the monastic familial bonds he also advocated, he has a clearer reason to object to the reactions of biological kin: they were placing their biological ties above their spiritual ones. The best and clearest example of biological kin resenting the expulsion of their kin comes from My Heart Is Crushed, the letter responding to accusations of excessive leadership including a purge that lasted several months. Shenoute specifically cautioned the monks: © Also, do not let people among us in these congregations at any time be timid in their en-durance because of sons or daughters or a brother or sisters or mothers or any other blood relatives of theirs being thrown out of the holy places of God because of pestilent deeds. Let your love display to God that you love him more than sons or daughters or brothers or sisters or fathers or mothers and more than the world and all those who are in it. Is this not sufficient on the subject of the things we, whether male or female, have done

among these congregations until now?”

“According to the Flesh”: Biological Kin in the White Monastery 171

Shenoute’s instruction in this conflict was clear: the monks with kin were to show greater allegiance to the monastery, and thus to God, than to their own family members. The monks could not contest expulsions based on the relationship with the expelled but were to accept the expulsions in light of the transgressions the expelled had committed. These two lists of relatives, however, are subtly different; one is specific in its references to family members, whereas the other is general. In the list of the monks who were thrown out, there is “a brother,” whereas in the second list, that category is in the plural. There are no fathers among the expelled, but they are listed among the kin who are to be loved less than God. These differences suggest the first list indicates those monks who actually were expelled, while the second is a general list of any relatives, used to make the rhetorical distinction between spiritual ties (God) and biological ones (relatives).*? Moreover, the overall context in this letter of “extreme” measures of Shenoute’s leadership suggest that these monks viewed the

expulsion of their kin as another example of Shenoute’s harshness. The final issue that elicited an emotional conflict was separation of the sexes, which affected biological kin in a way it did not monastic kin. All the monks were expected to embrace the ascetic values of the community, even if those values had not been their motivation to join. The monks who had kin in the monastery, then, had to suffer the emotional strain of renouncing the emotional bonds with people who still lived in their midst. These biological family members still fulfilled the two major requirements for a family: blood-relation and co-residence.** Shenoute was not

the first head of the White Monastery who required biological kin within the monastery to renounce their families as if they had left them upon joining the monastic community.’ In order to effect this renunciation, Shenoute enforced his predecessor’s practice of separation of kin. Female monks had female kin within the monastery as well, who may have been separated from them in different houses.*® These women, however, would still have been able to see each other, especially at communal mealtimes.*’ With regard to the women’s male relatives, however, Shenoute enforced separation by refusing to allow the women to visit the male community, which we can recall resulted in a main conflict of the Initial Crisis. Once again, however, Shenoute used ambiguous language whose meaning depends on the reconstruction of the historical situation (chapter 5) and on the assumption that Shenoute used rhetoric that was most compelling for that situation. In order to illustrate the result of their damnation in such a way that the women who

were objecting to his leadership would be moved to become obedient to him, Shenoute described the separation of sexes in this world: this separation was necessary for the sexes to be reunited in the next life. But, he warned, mistakes could lead to losing salvation and so lead to eternal separation of the sexes. That is, if the women erred they would lose the goal of their current separation—-reunion—and instead be separated forever, which would be far worse than the current separation. And since he was addressing the women who challenged his authority, he talked about their separation from the men they cared about, which is to say, their separation from male relatives who lived in the male community of the monastery: “For if you will not enjoy your sons, your brothers, your menfolk, and all your people, then why did you remove yourselves from those who are among your kin?”

172 — Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

— It had already been clear in Shenoute’s description of the guilty (“you”) and the innocent (Shenoute, his predecessors, Papnoute and another Shenoute, all the male monks, and some of the female monks) in the monastery that not all the women were

_ making this “accusation” or “condemnation” against Shenoute, but only some. Shenoute’s imagery reveals who the guilty women were. It follows from his choice of

this description of damnation that these female monks desired to see their male relatives, a desire Shenoute regarded as a natural one among others to be resisted and endured in the monastic life. Indeed he points out that he resisted and endured his own desire to visit the men: “But if I, this wretched one, spends a single week without having seen your sons and your brothers and your menfolk and all those who are with us" ,

together, I am expecting them like a brother who has not seen his brothers for a year.”*? It further indicates, however, that the women were leaving their community to go visit their male relatives. This action Shenoute regarded as a major monastic transgression. Monks were supposed to suffer from their separation, and any relief from that suffering endangered their reunion as part of the salvation they were seek- | ing in the next life: “But I thought that you would make the feast of life together, you, your sons, brothers, and menfolk. But now I say to you that there are many among us who will be strangers to their relatives, to their fathers and their brothers. . . . This means you.”*° I have already argued that Shenoute’s crossing the gender boundary to impose his authority over the female community suggested to some female monks

that the gender boundary was no longer part of a “unified” monastic space. This (erroneous) perception of their freedom would explain why the women would now visit their male relatives, a practice that had been forbidden under Shenoute’s predecessors. To counter this perception, Shenoute had to present separation of the sexes as a “natural” part of monastic life to uphold his twin ideologies of power and gender. The monks with kin (barring any existence of spouses) did not need to be separated by sex in order to avoid sexual tension, as was the case for the rest of the monks. But their separation fit with the common Christian ascetic ideology of an antibiological family position for those joining a monastery. Shenoute drew upon that ideology in naturalizing the separation of the sexes, including kin. The exceptions when kin were allowed to see one another interrupted this naturalization. Despite his insistence that the female monks with kin were to suffer from the dis- _ tress of their separation from their male relatives, Shenoute found a way to have the ~ biological kin visit each other through administrative visits, as becomes immediately obvious as the letter continues. By using male relatives as part of the male envoys’ system of supervision of the female community, Shenoute both met the emotional needs of the biological kin (without admitting compromise) and used the relatives to sup~ port his subordination of the female community. These women were mote likely to accept the envoy system Shenoute was developing at this point in his leadership if

one result was visits with their loved ones: , —

, Is it your heart’s desire to see us [in the afterlife] just as we wish to see you? Then why do you not pay attention to my instruction which I told you with my own mouth, as you all listened, “Do not hide anything in your community from us, but communicate it to us that we may judge it either by means of your elders appointed for you or through all your

relatives who are about to come to you.””*! ,

“According to the Flesh”: Biological Kin in the White Monastery 173

Given the terms of this particular controversy, it is most striking that Shenoute used male relatives among these envoys. He again reminded the women, however, that they risked eternal separation from those very relatives (at whom they would be directly looking as the letter was read) should they refuse his leadership: Why do you refrain from telling us what goes on in your community? Is it not inseparable from the fact that it is not woven into your spirit to look upon your sons, your brothers, your menfolk, your fathers and all your relatives in our community, when we are all together in the place where male is not separated from female?4?

Shenoute’s accommodations of the kin’s desire to see one another had two conditions: visits were allowed only in men’s official capacity as envoys and the men could go only if the women were going to engage in full disclosure of life in their community

to their leader, Shenoute. Both these conditions served to subordinate the women and indicate how the asymmetry of Shenoute’s authority structures was possible within the familial model. The family, then, both metaphorical and actual, was a place where gender and authority intersected. Shenoute, his desire for uniformity notwithstanding, treated the monks in terms of three categories: rank, gender, and presence of biological kin in the monastery. In this case, the female monks who visited their relatives had stepped out of their proper place; while we might think that their male relatives were polluted by the women’s visits, it was exactly this pollution which Shenoute sought to contain in his earlier description of who was innocent. Furthermore, I have argued, these same male relatives were not out of their proper place when they went to the female community as envoys. Female monks of a certain rank were also allowed to go to the male community to discuss conflicts and problems, signaling further their participation in Shenoute’s authority structures. Rank, gender, and familial, monastic or biological,

allegiance, then, all create the “reality” of life in the monastery, in contrast to Shenoute’s ideal. Nowhere is the intersection and interrelation of these three categories more obvious than in the case of the monk Tachom. Shenoute Writes to Tachom: Power Relations, Gender Relations, and Family Relations Tachom’s experience, much of which we have already seen (chapters 2, 4, and 5), was not typical of female monks in the White Monastery. Indeed her particularity is im-

portant: her rank as mother allowed her to resist the male envoy whom Shenoute sent, after her apparent beating, and to protect the female monks under her care from beatings; that resistance, and her prominence, in turn may have led to her enforced

role in other beatings of female monks. And in this particular conflict, when Shenoute and Tachom had been out of contact with each other for some time, Tachom’s biological relationship with the envoy whom Shenoute sent also contributed to the historical situation. In his letter, the entirety of Shenoute’s complaints were expressed in familial terms. He signaled his alienation from Tachom at the beginning of the letter, by denying any familial relationship between them: “This is Shenoute who writes to Tachom as a barbarian to a barbarian, and not like a father to a mother, not like a brother in

, 174 Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery the presence of a sister.” The fragment ends with his attempt to revoke her status as a female leader, as a “mother.” In the midst of his argument, however, comes the crux

of the matter, Tachom’s refusal to accept Shenoute’s envoy. Her refusal shocked 7 Shenoute not simply because she defied his authority, but also because she refused ~ to acknowledge her familial bond with the envoy, her brother. Shenoute chastised Tachom for her actions, then, both as a monk and as a biological sister: And if the man whom we sent is not your father according to rank (and he is [your father] according to divine ordination), then you are not a mother; if you do not admit — that the man whom I sent you has the same authority as myself (especially since he is

physically your brother), then you have separated yourself from us.

Once again, Shenoute’s technical term “KATA Caps” (“physically,” your brother) appealed explicitly to their biological relationship. Tachom had a duty to receive the envoy not only because he was her monastic superior, but also because he was her blood brother. Yet Shenoute also made clear that in both the monastic and biological relationships, Tachom’s brother was her superior (and for once the brother of a named woman is anonymous, and not vice versa). She was a monastic mother, but as a monastic father he was greater; they were siblings but as a brother, she should yield ~ to him. Shenoute granted her brother the same status as himself, even as he threatened her status as “mother.” In terms of gender, then, there was a hierarchy between the two, but Shenoute here did not weigh the spiritual relationship over the biologi-

| cal. Both their monastic and their biological bonds were the means by which Shenoute hoped to persuade Tachom to relent. His appeal stands in direct contradiction to his instructions elsewhere to ignore biological relationships in favor of , membership to the monastery. Shenoute’s usual anticarnal stance is here softened by his greater need to bring Tachom, and her community, back under his control within |

the monastery. — | , ,

Shenoute’s metaphorical familial language, and at times the actual biological fa-

milial relationships, constructed the social definitions of the community of the | monastery. But with that language, or family, Shenoute was able to define the relationships as egalitarian and therefore symmetrical, or as hierarchical and therefore asymmetrical, Through the fluidity of language and the patriarchal structure of the | family, Shenoute created a place for women and confined them to that place, even

, while promoting a monasticism that did not include “fleshly” divisions such as gen- | der and biological allegiance to family. Shenoute, as I have argued throughout, located error in the flesh, either actual or symbolic, and he regarded differences arising

from the flesh as suspect. Gender was an aspect of embodiment that, Shenoute a warned, was to be properly disciplined so that women and men could live in their | bodies as “brethren” monks, that is, not renouncing or denying their gender but also ; not allowing it to determine their ascetic lives. So too the biological kin created special challenges in Shenoute’s monasticism. Despite this link between flesh and error,

though, Shenoute included carnality, trope or actuality, familial or gender, in the monastery. He did so under his conditions and ultimately it is this decision-making process that characterizes Shenoute’s monastic leadership. _

Notes

Introduction 1. The name White Monastery is modern, referring to the walls of the church building (which are white, as opposed to the red walls of another nearby monastery). Shenoute seems to have called the monastery simply “the congregations.” Archaeologists now tend to call it the “Monastery of Apa Shenoute.” For a discussion of the use of the two names in scholarship, see Stephen Emmel, “Shenoute’s Literary Corpus” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1993), 17, esp. non. 31 and 32. 2. There is no agreement on the precise dates for events in Shenoute’s life. Janet Timbie follows Leipoldt’s view (Johannes Leipoldt, Schenute von Atripe und die Entstehung des national digyptischen Christentums TU, vol. 25.1 [Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1903], 42-47) that “Shenoute

entered the monastery around 370 and took control after the death of Pgol in 388. He accompanied Cyril to Ephesus in 431... [and died] in 451” (“The State of Research on the Career of Shenoute of Atripe,” in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity, ed. Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring |Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986], 260). Scholars now date his death later, in 466, following J. F Bethune-Baker, “The Date of the Death of Nestorius: Shenoute, Zacharias, Evagrius,” JThS 9 (1908): 601-2. Emmel has revised these dates somewhat, based on “evidence from his own writings or from those of his immediate successor” (Emmel, “Corpus” 10), suggesting that Shenoute was born in 346/47, entered the monastery around the age of nine, became its head a bit earlier than Leipoldt suggests, and was aged 118 at the time of his death in

465 (9-11). 3. Leipoldt cites the Arabic Life of Shenoute (Va 331) for this number (Leipoldt, Schenute 93). He also gives several reasons for accepting this number as accurate: (1) in comparison to the numbers of refugees from the foreign invasions, 4,000 seems a small enough portion of the population to be acceptable; (2) the physical layout of the monastic communities is extensive enough to accommodate 4,000 monks. Since, however, the Arabic biography is not a fully reli175

oo 176 Notes to Pages 3-4 able source for hard numbers, | refer to the amounts of monks with more vague terms (“several hundreds,” “thousands”) and do not build any arguments on the presence of 4,000 monks. At the same time, it is noteworthy that, even if these numbers are exaggerated, the exaggerations

- still provide for a significant female presence, 45 percent of the monastic population. , 4. As Peter Brown argues in Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Em-

pire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 140. 5. In Power, Brown focuses on Shenoute’s role as a civic patron, as does Bowman, although

he also discusses Shenoute’s relationship with the survival of pagan practices in the area (Alan K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs, 332BC—AD 642 [Berkeley: University of California ,

, Press, 1986], 51, 192, 196). Bagnall’s description of Shenoute is one of the few that considers his role as monastic leader, though his real concern is the character of local Egyptian peasantry: “Shenoute had serious problems controlling [his monks]... . Egyptian peasants were famously given to resisting authority through sullen avoidance and passive denial of demands placed on

them” (Roger Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], 302). The most notable exception to Shenoute’s usual neglect in studies of monasticism is , Elm’s recent work on female monasticism in Asia Minor and Egypt (Susanna Elm, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994], 296—_

, 310). Another recent exception is Cloke’s inclusion of one of Shenoute’s letters in his analysis , of the spiritual power of female ascetics in late antiquity (Gillian Cloke, “This Female Man of , God”: Women and Patristic Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age, AD 350-450 [New York: Routledge, 1995], 202~3). Shenoute’s writings are usually only studied by Coptologists because to

date his importance lies in the complexity of his language. ,

oe 6. Brown, Power 140. a

7. According to Besa’s description, these acts of charity were also occasionally accompanied by miracles. See Besa, Life of Shenoute, trans. David Bell (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, — , 1983), 138-43, 144—50. Reference is to sections of the work, not page numbers. 8. Besa, Life 89-90, 107-8, 135-37. See also Timbie, “State of Research” 265.

9, Timbie (“State of Research” 265) notes many of these roles and suggests that further re- , search is necessary on all these roles Shenoute had in the monastery and the secular community.

10. Bowman, Egypt After the Pharaohs 192. See also Basa Life 83~84, 125—27 and David

, Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1998), 77-82. , , , 11. Not Because a Fox Barks. The Coptic text is available in Emile Chassinat, Le quatrigme livre des entretiens et épitres de Shenouti, MIFAO vol. 23 (Cairo: Institut frangais d’archéologie orientale, 1911). A translation is available in English in John W. B. Barns, “Shenoute as a Historical Source,” in Actes du X* congrés international de papyrologues: Varsovie-Cracovie 3-9 septembre 1961, ed. Jgzef Wolski (Wroclaw, Warsaw, and Krakow: Zaklad narodowy Imienia Ossolinskich Wydawnictwo Polskie; Akademii Nauk, 1964). He has translated the passage about _

Shenoute’s attack on the governor’s house without reference to urination, however. Instead he ,

So calls them “filthy concoctions.” But cf. A Coptic Dictionary ad. loc. _ | 12. See Brown, Power 140—41, for a portrayal of Shenoute as civic patron; see also David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 20813, for Anthony as spiritual patron; Besa makes Shenoute’s deeds more a spiritual patronage by

| associating charity, hospitality, and so forth with Shenoute’s mystic abilities. , 13. In addition to traveling with Cyril, Shenoute had contact with Timothy I, Theophilus, Dioscurus, and “probably also Timothy II” in Alexandria (Emmel, “Corpus” 4—5). One ripe

- area of research is the relationship between Shenoute and the ecclesiastical authorities in - Egypt. It is clear that Shenoute supported Alexandrian theology in the various disputes of the ,

fourth and fifth century, but beyond that not much is known. ,

Notes to Pages 4-5 177 14. Emmel, “Corpus” 2. 15. See Emmel, “Corpus” 14—15. 16. These monks have only returned to the White Monastery in recent years as part of the Coptic Orthodox Church’s effort to repopulate its historical spaces. Thanks to Caroline T. Schroeder for this description from her travels to the White Monastery, July 1999. 17. Stephen Emmel (“Corpus” 104) has reconstructed the transmission and structure of the Canons and Discourses. The name “Canon” derives from the appellation in the manuscripts themselves; “Discourse” is Emmel’s preferred translation but others use the Greek “Logoi” to refer to these collections. My work is based entirely on letters from the Canons. My corpus of thirteen letters depends on Emmel’s reconstruction, most notably Canon 2. Emmel assigns English titles to Shenoute’s works, based on the incipit of the complete text. I have used these in some of my citations. Works whose incipit is lost must be referred to in other ways. 18. Emmel’s dissertation reconstructs all of the manuscripts in order and so reconstructs the literary corpus they record. I could not have written this study without his reconstruction, and I have relied on it throughout my work. 19. Leipoldt (annotated by Crum) published several volumes of Shenoute’s works, but without access to all the manuscripts he could not create a critical edition (Johannes Leipoldt with W. E. Crum, Sinuthii Archimandritae Vita et Opera Omnia, 3 vols. [Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1906-13], henceforth cited as Leipoldt, Opera; the accompanying Latin translation is by H. Weissman, Sinuthii Archimandritae Vita et Opera Omnia [Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1931-36]). Amélineau also published Shenoute’s works, but his transcriptions are not always accurate and his translations are imperfect (E. Amélineau, Oeuvres de Schenoudi: Texte copte et traduction francaise, 2 vols. [Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1907-14]), Recently Dwight Young has edited a volume of Coptic texts in diplomatic transcriptions with English translation (Young, ed., Coptic Manuscripts from the White Monastery: Works of Shenoute, 2 vols. [Vienna: Briider Hollinek, 1993]). Throughout this study, I have used my revisions of the translations in volume | of this edition (volume 2 is a collection of plates, and so all my references are to volume 1). The amount of revision varies from slight to heavy. All citations will be noted “Y.rev.” without indication of the level of revision. In addition, all citations of Young will have two references to page(s): the first refers to the Coptic text, the second to Young’s translation, which follows the text. There are also scattered publications of smaller pieces of Shenoute’s corpus. These manuscripts were not recovered all at once but in spurts by a variety of travelers and scholars (see Emmel, “Corpus” 15-31, for a history of the recovery of Shenoute’s writings in the West). As a result, they are dispersed in libraries throughout the world, with the Bibliothéque

nationale having the largest single collection. (Emmel, ibid.: 25-26, surveys the libraries throughout the world that hold Shenoute manuscripts [p. 29 for the collection in Paris]). 20. Timbie, “State of Research” 259. For a discussion about the role of Shenoute in future studies of Coptic literature, which depends on the future of textual work, see Tito Orlandi, “The Future of Studies in Coptic Biblical and Ecclesiastical Literature,” in The Future of Coptic Studies, ed. R. McL. Wilson (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 143-63. Recently, Coptic scholars have begun working to create a “normalization” of the manuscript tradition. See Stephen Emmel, “Editing Shenute: Problems and Prospects,” Sprachen und Kulturen des Christlichen Orients 6.2 (1999): 109-13. 21. Deborah Valenze posed this question to me and I am grateful for her insight. 22. Throughout this study I will use the term monk to refer to either men or women in the White Monastery, though when gender is important | will clarify which I mean. I use the term this way for two reasons: first, Shenoute did not use a particular term for women, distinguishing them and their monastic lives from the male counterparts. For me to impose the term nun or even sister, then, would be anachronistic. Second, this lack of a particularly female term is not limited to Shenoute. Although Athanasius, among others, was fond of the term “bride of

178 Notes to Pages 5—8 Christ” to describe female virgins in an urban environment, for the most part female terminology for women in communal monasticism is lacking, as Terry Wilfong has also argued (Wilfong, “‘The Women of Jéme’: Women’s Roles in a Coptic Town in Late Antique Egypt” [PhD.

diss., University of Chicago, 1994], 110). 7

23. Emmel, “Corpus” 876. 24. E. Clark, “Devil’s Gateway and Bride of Christ: Women in the Early Christian World,” in Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity, Studies in Women and

, Religion, 20 (Lewiston: E. Mellen, 1986), 23. | | 25. Later citations use only the manuscript page numbers. — ,

26. This sentence refers to ZE 63/64 and 67/68, the first fragments of the four letters that record the Initial Crisis. See chapter 2 for more details about these fragments and the informa-

tion they provide. © ,

27. During my fellowship at Harvard Divinity School, I was fortunate enough to participate in a graduate seminar for the New Testament program led by Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza entitled “Rhetoric and Historiography.” Although we did not discuss Shenoute or monasticism in particular, I am grateful to her, the other faculty, and the students for their many discussions —

during this seminar. a

28. The second phrase is E. Schiissler Fiorenza’s, in her “Rhetorical Situation and Historical Reconstruction in 1 Corinthians,” New Test. Stud. 33 (1987): 389. Earlier she notes, “Letters are a direct response to a specific historical-political situation and problem . . . The situa~ tion controls the rhetorical response in the same sense that the question controls the answer”

(387), — ,

29, Presumably Shenoute’s original audience would know the situation, and thus not need it reiterated. However, Shenoute collected these letters into the Canons, to be read for theedification of the entire monastery, even after institutional memory of a particular conflict may have faded. We can presume, therefore, that Shenoute saw the main purpose of these letters as

“history” of the monastery. , ,

- monastic teachings that evolved from the historical situations, and was less interested in the 30. Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), xiv. 31. For scholarship on authority in Paul, Elisabeth A. Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse

, of Power (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991) has been most helpful; for feminist meth- , ods of rhetorical criticism, there are several works of Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, especially “Rhetorical Situation” and Antoinette Clark Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets:A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); Dale Martin’s The Corinthian Body was invaluable for his corrections about how to think about the body in antiquity, and for his insights into the “body politic” of Paul, a concept that Shenoute seems to share, or mimic. For more on Shenoute’s concepts of the body, see the forthcoming dissertation by Caroline Schroeder (Duke University). Finally, recent scholarship on familial language in Paul, collected in Halvor Moxnes, Constructing the Early Christian Family (London: Routledge, 1997)

will appear at several points in the notes to chapters 7 and 8, along with Stephen J. Joubert, “Managing the Household: Paul as paterfamilias of the Christian household group in Corinth,” in Philip E Esler, ed., Modelling Early Christianity: Social Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its context (London: Routledge, 1995), 213-23. 32. See E. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Prince-

ton: Princeton University Press, 1999). |

(Elm, Virgins 300 n. 47). a , 33. Elm has noted that “Shenoute’s language is not always as precise as we would like”

34. Castelli, Imitating Paul. oe

35. Liz James, ed. Women, Men, And Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium (New York: Routledge, 1997), xvi-xvii.

Notes to Pages 8-15 179 36. Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) has been especially helpful for my formulation of this thesis. Note, for example, the similarity between my thesis and his description of Paul’s goal: “Paul was motivated by a Hellenistic desire for the One, which among other things produced an ideal of universal human essence, beyond difference and hierarchy” (7). Thanks are also due to Susan Shapiro for her many conversations on this point. 37. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1: 26. 38. Teresa Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 164 and 180. 39. Shaw, Burden 203.

1. Daily Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 1. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:26. 2. Leipoldt’s monograph (1903) provides a useful schematic description of monastic life under Shenoute, with sections on “Work,” “Dress,” “Food,” “Death,” “The Sick,” and so forth. His work is the basis for much of this chapter, along with Karl Kuhn’s (1956) similar treatment of Shenoute’s successor Besa, and Susanna Elm’s (1994) description of women’s life under Shenoute’s leadership, which itself depends on Leipoldt. Unfortunately, Leipoldt’s study is dated. Future study of all of Shenoute’s monastic rules has been made possible by Stephen Emmel’s recent (1993) reconstruction of Shenoute’s works and is an urgent necessity. The notes in this chapter are complicated and require some explanation. I have read the various rules that

Leipoldt used to write his monograph. However, my citation system for those rules and Leipoldt’s differ since I use the publication information and Leipoldt uses abbreviations for the manuscripts (see Leipoldt, Schenute 2-3, for an explanation of his abbreviations). In my notes, therefore, I include the following information: where the rule is now published, what abbreviation Leipoldt used in his monograph to cite the rule, and on what page of his monograph the rule is cited. There are several cases where Leipoldt’s note seems to be incorrect. In those cases, I have cited only the rule | used as evidence. It should also be noted that Shenoute repeats some rules frequently; | have confined my quotations to illustrative examples. 3. This description is, of course, based on the legends of the origins of monasticism. For a good evaluation of those legends, see James E. Goehring, “The Origins of Monasticism,” in H. W. Attridge and G. Hata, eds., Eusebius, Christianity and Judaism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992) 235—55. For a description of the varieties of monasticism beyond the traditional orthodox version of its development, see Goehring, “Monastic Diversity and Ideological Boundaries in Fourth-Century Christian Egypt,” JECS 5.1 (1997): 61-83. 4. Philip Rousseau, “Spiritual Authority of the Monk-Bishop: Eastern Elements on Some Western Hagiography of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries,” JTAS 22 (1971): 394. 5. Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of aCommunity in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) 101. 6. “A further step of some importance was the insistence of superiors that they be consulted in advance, as it were, and not merely informed of problems which disciples had recognized, analyzed and grappled with for some time alone” (Rousseau, Ascetics 53). 7. Graham Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 30. The theme of obedience recurs throughout Gould’s study of the monk-disciple relationship, but see especially 52—58. 8. Rousseau, Pachomius 98-99. 9. Russeau points out, “We know already how mistaken it would be to depend on the Rules to describe the structure of authority in Pachomian communities” (Pachomius 105-6). 10. Rousseau, Pachomius 95-97.

, 180 Notes to Pages 15-17 11. For the fear of God, and thus a reluctance to judge others, among the solitary monks, see Gould, Desert 89-91. We shall see in chapter 2 that Shenoute differs from the solitary

monks on this issue. , | ,

86). -

12. Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Ox-

ford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 51-55. ,

~ 13. Rousseau, Ascetics 52. , 14. Rousseau, Ascetics 52~—53.

15. Rousseau argues there was (Ascetics 37), whereas Gould argues against this (Desert 82-

16. Gould, Desert 58; cf. also 34. 17. For the purpose of the teaching relationship in solitary monasticism, see Gould, Desert ch. 2, esp. 27-36. For the use of the rule in Pachomian monasticism, see Rousseau, Ascetics 45. , {8. According to Gould, “These virtues of obedience and submission were, as we have already seen, regarded as good in themselves in determining the disciple’s capacity to make progress in the monastic life; their importance was no doubt reinforced by belief in the inspiration of the abba’s words, even though this belief emerges at comparatively few points, and

even with some reticence, in the texts of the Sayings” (Desert 41). 19. This is the main point of Brakke, as he summarizes in Athanasius 16. See also Elm, Vir-

gins ch. 11, for a discussion similar issues. , 20. Brakke, Athanasius 261.

21. For the role of the exemplar in late antiquity, see Brakke, Athanasius 261: For Athana-

| — 22. Brakke, Athanasius 120. . , sius’s program of formation of the self, see ibid.: 245.

23. See Map 9, “The Monasteries of the Upper Sa’id,” The Coptic Encyclopedia, vol. 8. To measure the distance from Cairo, one needs also to consult maps 7 and 8. | 24, See appendix 3, “The Nomes,” in Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity 333-35, for a list of the nomes. His appendix 2, “Money,” is also helpful for an introduction to basic facts of life in fourth-century Egypt. _ 25. There has been some excavation of the church building. See Peter Grossman, “Onthe __

, Recently Excavated Monastic Buildings in Dayr Anba Shinuda: Archaeological Report,” Bulletin de la Société d’ Archéologie Copte 30 (1991): 53-64. A good drawing can be found in vol. 8:

767-68 of The Coptic Encyclopedia. See also 8: 768-69 for a discussion of art and architecture. These sites, however, represent only the male community and not the female community that

lay “in the village” (discussed later), oe -

26. Leipoldt, Schenute 92-93. He also cites both Alfred J. Butler, The Ancient Coptic

church building. :

Churches (Oxford: Clarendon, 1884), 351-59, and J. Grafton Milne, A History of Egypt under Roman Rule (Chicago: Ares, 1898), 101, 104, 156, 157, for descriptions and pictures of the

27. See Roger Bagnall, Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History (New York: Routledge, 1995), 3-4, for a good discussion of the changes in the agricultural landscape in modern Egypt

, and the limitations it places on the historical imagination of late antique Egypt. , — 28. Most follow Leipoldt on this account (Leipoldt, Schenute 99). See also Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Viadimir’s Seminary Press, 1966), 22, 25—26, for his de-

scription of the Pachomian system. For a more detailed discussion, see Rousseau, Pachomius,

ch. 3, “Forming the Community,” and 4, “The Day’s Routine.” , 29. Ewa Wipszycka has recently challenged Jerome’s assertion that the monks were divided , among the houses by profession. A more detailed examination of the rule material from the

White Monastery would be necessary to verify whether her arguments pertain there also

[1996]: 167-210). | Oo | oo

(Wipszycka, “Contribution a Etude de l’Economie de la Congrégation Pachémienne,” JJP 26

Notes to Page 18 18] 30. Elm, Virgins 304. I discuss this further at pp. 25-26. 31. This is Leipoldt’s opinion about Shenoute’s goal (Leipoldt, Schenute 129-30). However, Leipoldt also gives a negative assessment of the worship services, saying that they lacked the religious feeling moderns would want (130). Elsewhere he calls Shenoute’s monastic life “unchristian” (144), and Shenoute’s spirituality “Christless.” See also Besa, Life 19-22. Bell agrees with this assessment but argues that it was not atypical of the state of Christianity in Egypt at this time. 32. Leipoldt, Schenute 98. Compare p. 24 in this book for further discussion of the cell system. 33. “In the season when a fire is burned in the wintertime, at the hour of rising in the morning, an hour and a half or even a couple of hours before daylight, they will pray four sets of prayer, six rounds per set, so that on account of human greatness or weakness no one might afflict his neighbor. And if they get up too early on some day by mistake, they will pray five sets, six rounds per set” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:53). 34. “Whenever a man in our community, or a woman, is at any time found working, before the gong has been rung for the first set of prayer at dawn, they will be reprimanded unless the father of these holy places has ordered them to do so; so also likewise the female elder in the village” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:81). 35, Leipoldt cites Sz 528 (Leipoldt, Opera 4:109) for this description, but the text is not as detailed as his description (Schenute 130): “As a general rule, the brethren will do everything

, as follows, when they are assembled together in groups of twenty, thirty, fifty or more, or even all of them together. They shall first pray one set of prayers before they have begun work, and when they are going to stop they shall pray one set. This will take place every day, even if they are reaping reeds.” The description of the monks bending and rising occurs in the description of the prayer service (Leipoldt, Opera 4:67) and is probably implied by the description of sets of prayers. The evidence for Leipoldt’s description of the sounding of a metal plate as a signal to pray is from 4:81, but this is not in the text he cited. 36. Leipoldt uses the following for his assertion: “From our father’s fathers, and from the beginning of time until now, every profit and every advantage and every righteousness inquiries according to the Scripture” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:165 = Sp 3:29, on Leipoldt, Schenute 130); the Coptic text is corrupt. 37. “And when they are about to celebrate mass on any occasion—morning, evening, or the eve of Sunday—whenever the first man has finished reading, the one who is appointed to read after him will stand in the area of the pulpit during the last round of prayer when the first man stops reading so as to be ready. When he descends [from the pulpit], this other will ascend immediately after they have prayed so as not to interrupt things, as has happened” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:155—56 = Sp 3:23 [Leipoldt, Schenute 130). See Besa, Life 99, n. 27, for Bell’s summary of worship services in the White Monastery. 38. Leipoldt, Opera 4:62—3 = Sp 4:136 and Sbm 168. See also chapter 5, pp. 116-18. 39, Seen. 50 for the time of the meal. 40. The women’s work is difficult to assess; some women made clothing, but whether all

women did is not certain, nor is it certain that they made enough clothing for the whole monastery. See n. 66. 41. Gillian Clark, Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 103, notes that “[wloolwork was easy to integrate into the ascetic lifestyle. Women of all classes learned to make fabric.” She also suggests that weaving cloth was a female counterpart to male basket-weaving in that it left the mind free for prayer. The evidence should also be kept in mind that in Egypt boys took part in linen production (Keith Bradley, Discovering the Roman Family: Studies in Roman Social History [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991], 107). Linen production was not a household chore in Egypt but one of the region’s most

, 182 Notes to Pages 18-19 valuable industries, not limited to female workers. Thus, while all Egyptian women would have known how to weave, so may have many Egyptian men, especially among the poor. ~ 42. “No man who ever enters these congregations to be a monk shall say, ‘The work I did in my own house is what I will perform here, or do here,’ unless he is ordered to do so” (Leipoldt,

Opera 4:163 = Sp 3:27-29 [Schenute 125]).

43. “When any ordained person ever enters these congregations to be a monk, whether priest or deacon, they shall be submissive just like all the brethren, obeying the personnel of the house to which they are assigned in every task that is commanded to them. And as for the schedule [?] of the Eucharist: obviously, it is they who will take precedence in the rota [?| which the father of these congregations will at any time establish for the celebration of the Eucharist” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:165 = Sp 3:29 [Schenute 112 and 132]). It should be noted that in his hagiography, Besa claims that Shenoute himself was a priest, though he gives no account of Shen-

oute’s ordination (Life 89). - , a

44, Leipoldt gives a similar list (Leipoldt, Schenute 125). See also Leipoldt, Opera 4:54 (= Sbm 168), 4:109 (= Sz 528). _ 45. Bell emphasizes the centrality of the monastery for the surrounding culture to support

his contention that expulsion of monks had serious implications for their survival. Both , Leipoldt and Kuhn are interested in the economic functioning of the monastery (Leipoldt, Schenute 136-37, and Karl Kuhn, “A Fifth-Century Abbot” JTAS, 2d ser., 5 [1954]:36—48, 174—

87; 6 [1955]: 35-48). Kuhn, in contrast to Bell, argues that the monastery under Besa was not economically self-sufficient. Leipoldt points out that goods produced in the monastery were sold to villagers in the area; money was accepted for payment as well as other goods, such as the -

massive amount of wheat needed to support the many monks as well as poor who came seek- , ing bread. Even so, both donations and the work of the monks were necessary for the monastery

to survive; he also outlines the fathers’ duties as businessmen for the monastery. , | 46. Leipoldt, Opera 4:42 = Sp 1:79 but Schenute 127-28 cites Sbm 200.

47, Leipoldt, Schenute 116. See also Elm, Virgins 302-3, and n. 57. Several accounts in , Besa’s Life of Shenoute also make clear that the monks, presumably all men unless noted other-

wise, were in charge of grinding the flour, baking the bread, and distributing it to the poor. © Compare ibid.: 20, 27-28, 29 and 138-43. Bell argues that bread baking in the monastery was infrequent (see Leipoldt, Opera 4:54). A rule notes that monks cooked once a week, but since bread is not specified, this is most likely a reference to the vegetable supplement, especially — since a discussion of suspicious herbs follows: “The ordinance for food which is to be cooked for all the community is: once a week. And all the vegetables which they think may be rotten and unfit to cook and eat shall be shown to the elder before being thrown out” (Leopoldt, Opera

4:54), , | , -

— 48. Leipoldt, Schenute 117. The rule reads: “They shall neither take away nor increase nor add to any menu items that our fathers appointed for our tables where we eat our food: they | , shall not change them from the way they are, by giving oil with the pickled fish, or with the salt or the charlock or with anything else whatsoever on our refectory tables, with the sole ex-

ception of in the infirmaries” (Opera 4:55 = Sbm 168). , 49. For not using wine, Leipoldt points out the rule that forbids wine to anyone but the ,

| 1973)). Be , sick: “No one shall eat anything like this in any place with the sole exception of in the infirmary, since if they want some wine, they will want other things too” (Sz 382). Here I have used , the Zoega text (Georg Zoega, Catalogus Codicum Copticorum Manu Scriptorum Qui in Museo — Borgiano Velitris Adservantur [Rome,1810. Reprt. Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, For limiting the use of all material goods, including water: “We who are wretched, make ourselves poor, we are hungry, we thirst, we tolerate many sufferings. We say that we do these things for God, even as far as our poor clothes and our diets, not drinking water often enough

Notes to Page 19 183 to satisfy, not drinking wine or eating flesh, and abstaining from many other things “ (Leipolde, Opera 4:23 = Sz 417 [Schenute 117]).

For mixing bread with vinegar, the following rule pertains to food allotments for the “brethren in the village,” that is, the women: “And the vinegar will be mixed here for the brethren who are in the village and sent to them from time to time just as it is mixed for those here. Thus they will eat with their companions the choice things and those which are not choice” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:88 = Sz 525). So too the women had to rely on the men’s community for wine for the Eucharist: “And the wine for the Eucharist will be mixed here and sent

there for the eternal Eucharist” (ibid.: 4:88 = Sz 525). , 50. “And it [the fast] is complete at the ninth hour [i-e., 3 P.M.]” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:92 = Sz 525 |[Schenute 117—18]).

51. See chapter 2, pp. 35-36. 52. W. E. Crum, Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British

Museum, 1905), 85a = Sbm 201 (Leipoldt, Schenute 117-18). This text is of uncertain attribution, according to Emmel, “Corpus” 1221. There are numerous other rules against secretive, or extra, eating, even among the sources Leipoldt used: “If some among us, whether junior male monks or junior female monks, or male or female elders, should, God forbid, eat twice in one day the elder shall hold them to the ordinance requiring them to eat at the time in which he said for the server to serve them food” (Leipoldt, Opera 4: 53-54 = Sbm 168). Although the citation is from Leipoldt’s editions of Shenoute’s works, he does not use this rule in his monograph as evidence in his discussion of sharing food. 53. For the condemnation of sharing, see n. 84. The prohibition against sharing with relatives read as follows: “If a man among us, or a woman, is ever found to be taking from their portion and giving to their biological sons or daughters, or their brothers or their sisters or if a father takes from his son or a mother from her daughter, or any other relatives of theirs take from any other man or woman at all, they shall be expelled from these holy places” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:81= Sbm 169). Again, Leipoldt does not use this rule in his monograph. See also ibid.: 4:106, as a parallel.

54. Crum 84b = Sbm 201. 55. Leipoldt, Opera 4:70. 56. So Leipoldt notes (Schenute 119). 57. According to Leipoldt, (Schenute 119). This is opposed to a wooden board, which Bell describes (Besa, Life 95n.13). 58. “Whenever they sound the gong to summon [monks] to the refectory, no person among us shall tarry and not go to the meal, even if they are performing the two or three day fast or are protracting it for a whole week. If there are one, two or three people [still inside] they shall not

lock the outer door of the house against them until the brethren in that house come out, or even if they are more, as many as five or ten. So, too, if there are four or five or more who have not gone to the meal, it is wrong to lock [the door] lest someone take offense” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:103 = Sz 526 [Schenute 119]). 59. Leipoldt, Opera 4:91= Sp 3:5 (Leipoldt, Schenute 132). How Leipoldt drew his conclusions and description from this text remains obscure to me.

60. “No one among us shall remain behind and not attend the gathering at the hour of prayer, unless the elder has urgently assigned him a task. In the same way, no one among us shall

be late at the hour when we celebrate the Eucharist, nor shall any remain behind and not attend, unless ordered by the male elder in our community, or by the female elder in your community” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:66). 61. Leipoldt does not mention these, but Shenoute refers to the female monks performing night vigils with special attention to his health (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:154) and he includes night vigils in his description of monastic life (see my ch. 2).

184 Notes to Pages 19-21 62. Kuhn, “Fifth Century Abbott” 186. In the letters to women, Shenoute makes references to teachings about the Scriptures, both his own and others,’ but these do not tell us anything about the structure of the lessons; rather, they point out that teaching was a source of authority, and thus another aspect of monastic life to be controlled. 63. Leipoldt, Schenute 132; the evidence is from the Life. Cf. Besa Life 72n.71. This prac-

tice is opposed to the twice-a-week celebration in the Pachomian system. , 64. Leipoldt, Schenute 132 (Opera 4:91-92 = Sp 3:5). He also wonders whether the Eucharist replaced the daily meal, though there is not evidence that it was substantial enough to do so. 65. The rule regarding funerals for female monks suggests than only priests or deacons of the monastery were allowed to celebrate the funeral: “None of the foreign priests or deacons shall enter the community to bury a woman who has died, except for the priests of the village where the female community is, and the deacons or a reader brought along with them to read” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:62). It seems that either presbyters or deacons could celebrate the Eucharist as well (4:165-66). For the separation of the sexes during funerals, see ibid. 4:62-63. 66. Leipoldt, Schenute 125 discusses men’s work, for which he cites Opera 4:42 = Sp 1:79

and Sa 278. He discusses the women’s work in one sentence in the section on clothing (Leipoldt, Schenute 115, repeated by Elm, Virgins 302). His source for his assertion that the women were in charge of clothing production for the monastery is the first two pages of a letter to women called My Heart Is Crushed, which begins with Shenoute’s defense of the mistreatment of a garment the women made for him. Leipoldt, as he himself notes, makes a broad conclusion from this bit of evidence through comparison to the women in the Pachomian. monastery. Other evidence from the letters to women, notably the last part of a letter fragment published in Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:150-58, supports Leipoldt’s conclusion that women’s work was confined to garment production. The role of women’s work, and the significance of their being assigned cloth and garment production, is discussed in chapter 7. . 67. Such questions future studies of Shenoute as a monastic leader should answer, if the sources provide the evidence. 68. “Therefore those among us, whether male or female, who want God, the Lord Jesus, to bless them and put his spirit upon them, as it is written, and who want him to guard them through his angels until they have perfected their endurance and go to him, shall guard all the sayings which our fathers commanded to us... telling us about the word of the Lord with all their might and with all their soul, wanting for us to receive eternal life” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:65). 69, For renouncing possessions, the rule reads: “And all who shall come to us to be a monk, whether male or female, shall first renounce all the possessions that they have into the hands of the monastic stewardship, from the moment they are at the gate-house of the Lord’s communities. One month—or two, or three at most—after they have entered, they shall list [or renounce?] in writing their ownership of all the things that they have brought with them, in accordance with our fathers’ ordinances. In this way no one who wishes to renounce their ascetic life in our community will afflict those who come” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:71). Leipoldt discusses the role of the oath and other aspects of joining the monastery, Schenute 106-13. Presumably the monks’ written renunciation did not have to be in favor of the monastery, as Kuhn

has argued for Shenoute’s successor, Besa (Kuhn, “Fifth-Century Abbott” 176). , 70. Leipoldt, Opera 3:20. Leipoldt discusses the oath, in Schenute 108-10.

, 71. The focus on the body as the symbol of the purity or pollution of the community fits with scholars’ analyses of other groups of early Christians, many of whom use Mary Douglas’s work as the basis of their analyses. See Ross Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Denise Kimber Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria amd the Rhetoric

of Legitimacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) esp. In.2.

72. Nearly every scholar who has written about the White Monastery accounts for the large numbers of monks in part, in terms of economic pressures leading to monastic vocation.

Notes to Pages 21--22 185 See Leipoldt, Schenute 111-12. One of the clearest pieces of evidence—both of economic motivation and its place in the monastery—is mentioned in a letter to the female community, Abraham, Our Father. 73. Chitty, Desert 22. 74. Since transgressions were pollutions, one might expect Shenoute to use the language of pollution, sexual imagery for example, to describe the transgressions even if they were not sexual sins. His language is a rhetorical reinforcement of the defiling aspect of disobedience to the rule. For the use of wan in Besa’s works, see also Kuhn, “Fifth Century Abbott” 184. In both cases, such language would also recall the oath, in which the monks promised not to “defile” or “pollute” (xwom) their bodies in any way. 75. Leipoldt provides this overview of sins based on all his reading of Shenoute’s works but does not give specific sources (Leipoldt, Schenute 147). The first three, stealing, lying (espe-

cially to hide sins), and slander often caused conflict among the women, and between the women’s community and Shenoute. 76. In her review Timbie notes, “From the beginning, scholars who have commented on Shenoute’s monastic activities have compared him unfavorably with Pachomius” (Timbie,

“State” 264). ,

77. “His punishments were often well deserved: monks and nuns stole everything they could lay their hands on, called each other ‘nasty’ names such as ‘crooked nose’ and caused trouble in a multitude of ways” (Elm, Virgins 304). 78. Leipoldt, Schenute 147-48. He notes that Shenoute’s rule created an unfavorable climate in the monastery, resulting in the high valuation of material goods that were so severely denied to them. On p. 123, he notes that it is surprising there is not more sickness among the monks given their long hours of exhausting labor and their insufficient eating. Orlandi faults Leipoldt’s study for overemphasizing the severity of his rule (Orlandi, “Coptic Literature” 65). Indeed, Leipoldt does not seem to take into account the rules for extra eating and the responsibilities of the elder to control over-work and over-asceticism, even though these texts were available to him. 79. “Egyptian peasants were famously given to resisting authority through sullen avoidance and passive denial of demands placed on them. Transforming their relationship to authority, even to one freely chosen, must have been an extraordinary challenge” (Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity 302). H. I. Bell, in discussing the position of the peasants under foreign rule, also comments, “So far as the Egyptians were concerned, this last factor [cooperation] was probably never forthcoming. Individual Egyptians may conceivably have welcomed the new regime with enthusiasm .. . but the reaction of the peasantry as a whole, especially in Upper Egypt, seems to have been one, at best of passive acquiescence, at worst of sullen resentment” (H. I. Bell, Egypt, from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948], 55). 80. Besa, Life 21. 81. Veilleux, “Preface” x—xiii in Besa, Life. 82. As opposed to Leipoldt’s suggestion that the monks were unaware of the harshness of life before entering, disappointed upon discovering it, and yet apparently trapped (Leipoldt, Schenute 112).

83. My argument here differs from Veilleux’s. He argues that the best explanation for such large numbers of people following Shenoute is their need for security during a time of instability. My argument focuses less on the monks’ motivations and more on the resources that the monastery provided. Cf. Veilleux, “Preface” in Besa, Life. 84. The rules focus on equality of quantity, defined as “giving food to people in any fashion from one’s portion, whether relatives of theirs, or strangers, whether poor or orphans or sick, or lame or blind, or any other person at all. Upon those who dare to do this within these congre-

186 Notes to Pages 22—23 gations at any time Jesus will pour his curses and his anger, not his blessings and his mercy, as they suppose. These are the practices of people who refuse to submit to the law of the community” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:87). For a discussion of equality of quality, of “choice” versus “lesser” types of food, see ibid.: Leipoldt, Opera 4:87—88 = Sz 524 (Schenute 116). 85. “In their goodness, our fathers condescended to permit us to be given a few bits of bread outside the refectory not only because of our weakness but that so no one of us should be deceived by a theft or a robbery” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:56—57). 86. “No one among us, whether male or female, including the ones who rule over these congregations at any time shall set apart their bread, or their clothing, or shall eat alone in private outside the place where all the brethren eat their bread” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:104 = Sz 527

[Schenute 117]). , |

87. “As for men who have worked strenuously doing chores—either reaping rushes, or plucking palm-leaves, or gathering date-palm fibers, or grinding grain or baking at the time of bread making—in short every chore in which they might labor beyond their ability, [the elder] is the one who will determine when they are in need and will order them to eat a little and drink a cup of water” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:54). “Whenever the elder sees someone who has suffered in the ascetic way of life, or indeed in any other thing, for the sake of God, and he compels them to eat, he is responsible for his deed” (ibid.: Opera 4:60). ~ 88. “And whenever people become sick among us, whether male or female, and need to eat in the infirmary and ask for a little oil for the salted fish or the salt or the charlock or any dish of this sort, it shall be given to them in the amount which is ordained and they shall not pass beyond that to excess” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:55). This list follows the list of things usually for-— bidden to the monks; cf. n. 48. The leniency for the sick monks is noted by Leipoldt first on page 120 but also throughout the section on the sick (Schenute 120-24). 89. Leipoldt, Opera 4:85—86 = Sbm 200 (Schenute 123). Leipoldt notes this as part of his emphasis on the meager amount of food allowed to the monks. It should be noted that he does not take into account the rules allowing for additional eating, although they are recorded in the material he used. 90. “And whenever a man in our community, or a woman in your community, vows not to eat or not to drink for two or three or four days, or more, for the sake of God, and certain others adjure them and compel them to eat, those latter are committing sin. And these others who compelled them will not elude evil; for those who said, ‘We will eat on the day when we said that we would eat’ and then they did not eat are better in the eyes of God than the ones who said, ‘We will not eat on the day which we said we would not eat’ and then they do eat” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:59-60). See also ibid.: Opera 4:80-81= Sbm 169, which is identical to Sz 525 (cited on Leipoldt, Schenute 119); this passage also discusses the elder’s role in not hinder-

ing fasting. oo ,

- 91. The Lenten fast of forty days is described at Leipoldt, Opera 4:58: “During the forty days of Lenten fast, absolutely no person among us shall get possession of bread, whether male or female, whether a senior person, or junior, until having completed all of it from the first week until the beginning of Easter.” See also Kuhn, “Fifth Century Abbott” 186. That elderly monks were exempt: “A man, whenever he becomes very old, or a woman, whenever she becomes very old, among us, shall not be made beyond their own desire to perform two-day fasts, even in Lent and even in Holy Week” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:84 = Sbm 169 [Schenute 120]).

92. See ch. 2, pp. 35-36. , ,

93. Such cases in the women’s community are discussed in chs. 2, 5, and 7. 94. Leipoldt bases this claim on the following passage: “Pray, have you forgotten the pol— lutions and the abominations and the stolen booty from the possessions of the altar and the theft from all quarters and the sin we found among you?” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:68 = Sz 396

[Leipoldt, Schenute 148]). ,

Notes to Page 24 187 95. “Therefore the one who will eat his bread according to the canons laid down for us, let him eat it righteously so that it shall not become a sin for him, but rather so that the saying which is written shall say to him, “The one who eats, eats for the Lord.’ For he thanks God” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:78= Sp 5:91 [Leipoldt, Schenute 119]). 96. “No one among us shall despise a dish that he is about to eat or that his heart does not desire, while all the brethren eat it” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:85 = Sp 5:41 [Schenute 117]). 97. Leipoldt, Schenute 123-24. He cites Sp 3:40 but that reference must be incorrect. The relevant passage seems to be Leipoldt, Opera 3:110-11, but this is nowhere cited in Leipoldt’s monograph. 98. Leipoldt cites a parable for the former claim to obedience (Leipoldt, Schenute 124), while the latter seems to be his opinion (125). 99. “All persons who enter these congregations at any time to be monks, whether male or female, shall not clothe themselves, either with a covering (npn) or a cloak (pawn) or anything else from their own belonging brought from outside. This is so that there may be uniformity in everything and that ignorant people may not be inhabited by covetousness for a beautiful garment (gRCca), or a covering (mpud@), or a cloak (pawn), or anything like this, and so that none shall say that anything is their own possession. All who persevere to the end in our community, whether male or female, have all things that belong to us as common property. Those who give up their perseverance at any point and leave us, or who are expelled because of the wicked deeds they did in our community, shall own nothing of this from that time on. Let them be beggars” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:166 = Sp 3:29; Schenute 114). However, Leipoldt argues they were allowed to bring some pieces of material with them into the monastery

(Schenute 114).

100. So Leipoldt, Schenute 114, asserts, citing Leipoldt, Opera 4:104 = Sz 527. 101. Leipoldt notes both Sp 5:76 and 2:13 (Schenute 114). The former text is of doubtful attribution according to Emmel (Emmel, “Corpus” 1217). The latter, Amélineau, Oeuvres 2:313, reads: “Who among us will say, ‘I was not at leisure?’ Tell me: did the weight of this age’s deeds and the many earthly matters weigh heavy upon us? Was any among us rich and another poor, so that | say, or rather he says, ‘The suffering of poverty and the laziness[?| of wealth weigh heavy upon us?’ Tell me, do we not all have uniformity in everything, in food, in clothing, in

all bodily needs?” , ,

102. Chitty, Desert 22, gives the description of the physical layout of a Pachomian

monastery, which most argue Pcol and Shenoute used as a model. 103. James Goehring has argued that desert withdrawal was more a literary device for describing the monks’ renunciation than an actual movement into the remote desert (Goehring, “Withdrawing from the Desert: Pachomius and the Development of Village Monasticism in Upper Egypt,” HTR 89:3 [1996]: 267-85). 104. Leipoldt, Schenute 92-93 and 95-97. The location of the women’s community was taken by Leipoldt to be in the village. The rule material often refers to the “village,” saying that some tule should also be followed by “those in the village.” It also occasionally refers to the “female elder who is in the village” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:81), on at least one occasion to the “con-

eregation which is in the village” (Opera 4:107), and on another to the “community of the brethren which is in the village” (where “brethren” can mean female monks; see ch. 5, p. 00) (4:69). As Elm points out (Virgins, 302), there may have been two communities of women, one in the village and one not, given a reference to two different mothers she cites (Leipoldt, Opera 4:108). At the same time, however, mother is a loose term in the women’s community and does not mean (as in modern convents) the overseer of the community, for which position the elder was used (see ch. 4, pp. 77-78). Since there has not been any significant archaeological excavation of the remains of the White Monastery other than the church building and since the

, location of the women’s community(s) separate from the men’s is most likely lost to us,

188 Notes to Pages 24—25 | Shenoute’s elliptic phrases remain a mystery for the time being. Elm, Virgins 290, notes that Pachomius also built the female community for his monastic system closer to the village; cf. 299, for the phrase “monastic compound” to describe Shenoute’s monastery and for her discussion

of the problem of locating the women’s community.

105. Elm, Virgins 303. . ,

, 106. “No man or woman shall live alone, according to what is written for all of us, whether lame or blind, or any person at all” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:157 = Sp 3:25 [Schenute 98]). 107. Leipoldt expresses this opinion to explain why Shenoute’s living arrangments differed | from Pachomius’s system, which did allow living alone (Schenute 98). However, Chitty argues that “at least in Palladius’ day” there were three monks to a cell in the Pachomian system, due to the number of monks who had joined (Chitty, Desert 22). While the section that Leipoldt cited makes no explicit reference to the cell-mates as policing their companions, elsewhere Shenoute’s rule does advocate reporting transgressions to one’s superior.

108. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity 226. _ {09. For the more dated view, see Jean-Michel Carrié, “UEgypte au IV© Siécle: Fiscalité, Economie, Société” Proceedings of the XVI International Congress of Papyrology (Chico, 1981): 431-46. Roger Bagnall argues against an economic crisis, however.

110. “At exactly the same period, however, when farmers might have expected to make their own way, unrestrained by their neighbors they found themselves thrown back upon each other by the increased weight of taxation, which rested on the village as a whole” (Peter

, Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978], 84f). For the exemption of the White Monastery from taxation, see Brown, Power and Persuasion 141. Brown does not give evidence for his assertion that “the more tangible miracle of anim- | perial tax exemption for the lands of the White Monastery soon followed.” In contrast, the Pa~ chomian monasteries of the same period have records of tax receipts, but these monasteries may have been using more valuable land closer to the village than the male community of the

White Monastery was (Goehring, “Withdrawing “ 284). , 111. Leipoldt, Schenute 112. As has been mentioned, all scholarship on life in the White Monastery mentions the monks’ economic motivations for joining the monastery. 112. Leipoldt writes that just as the White Monastery looked like a fortress from the outside, so the monks’ lives were “militaristically regulated” within (Schenute 98). However, fol- ,

, lowing Butler, he has mistakenly assumed that the church building that still stands was the monastery building during Shenoute’s time. His description of the relationship between Shenoute’s regulations and the surviving architecture are therefore suspect (see Butler, Ancient Coptic Churches 1:351—59). Leipoldt’s disapproval about the extent and the control of , Shenoute’s monastic code has influenced later studies of Shenoute’s leadership. Elm serves as an example, but she has made some noteworthy corrections. Bell writes that there was “no part of the running of the monastery and no action of any monk that was beneath his attention” _ (Besa, Life 9). In contrast, Kuhn notes that “of the actual rules governing daily life in the monasteries, little can be learned from Besa’s writings.” There is some information about rules

for the sick and for eating (Kuhn, “Fifth-Century Abbot” 183). , 113. “Cursed is the one who practices deceit among us secretly saying, ‘They have not brought any accusation against me for what I do in private.’ All these curses will come upon them, man and woman alike” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:170 = Sp 5:14). Other evidence provided by Leipoldt includes the reporting of transgressions (Opera 4:159-60 = Sp 3:26), an uncertain Shenoute text (Sp 2:49) and the need for two or three witnesses when monks reported the transgressions of others (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:98 = Sp 1:52). Cf. Leipoldt, Schenute 140-41. 114. Veilleux notes the security that a community like Shenoute’s could provide but then claims that it is false: “In a massively insecure society, the strongly structured form of monasti— cism at the White Monastery and the very strong personality of the ‘prophet’ Shenoute (forso

Notes to Pages 25—27 189 he is called) provided thousands of Egyptian fellahin with the dose of security they needed to quiet their existential and religious anguish” (A. Veilleux, preface to Besa, Life x). 115. The focus on this boundary, the use of the body to represent it and Shenoute’s concern about hierarchy all suggest that the White Monastery would be a “high erid, high group” society in Mary Douglas’s theory of the composition of societies (Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology |New York: Pantheon, 1970], 54-64, 59-60 for diagrams). This understanding of the symbolic universe of Shenoute and his monks indirectly informs my analysis. 116. The word for “defile, pollute,” xwon, recurs frequently in both Shenoute and Besa’s works as a description for unspecified transgressions; it may have served as a reminder of the oath. See Kuhn, “Fifth Century Abbott” 184. 117. Douglas, Natural Symbols 65-81. 118. Leipoldt, Schenute 145. Leipoldt does not cite Shenoute’s rule aimed at regulating the emotional response to expulsion of, or desertion by, other monks: “Let no kind person who fears God among us, whether male or female, be pained because of people who flee from these congregations, or who are thrown out, so long as I live” (Opera 4:104). 119. The discussion that follows is based on evidence that occurs throughout Shenoute’s letters to the female community, all of which will be discussed and cited in later chapters.

120. Masturbation would also have been forbidden. It is not yet known whether Shenoute’s position on nocturnal emissions has survived in either the rules or in his letters.

, 121. My analysis here is informed by ideas in Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978). 122. The positions of authority had titles, most often “elder” and “house-person” (which

Leipoldt calls “house-leader”), but people in authority were often called just “father” or “mother.” Thus, a woman called “mother” could have held a variety of positions of authority, but if called “the elder,” only one. These terms are further complicated by the fact that monks of more senior rank were usually refered to as the “elder” monks. Elm’s general description of the hierarchy leaves out the mothers of the houses and the overlap between both the elders and the house-leaders who served as additional mothers: “The female community followed the same organizational principles as the male ones. It was guided by a ‘mater et anus’ or ‘mother and elder (thllo),’ who was, in turn, assisted by a ‘second’ and a committee of elder sisters.” See chapter 4, pp. 77—79 for further discussion. — 123. “According to the ordinances laid down for us, whoever witnesses a deed within these congregations at any time shall speak to no one ever at all but the people of the house and especially the rulers of these holy places. This is to ensure that no disturbance may exist among the brethren. The fathers of the houses do not ever hide anything from the governors of these congregations. They shall observe this rule also in the village. Whenever the mothers who are in authority in that place shall have certain knowledge of any deed, they shall write to [the fathers] about it, and send [the letter] to them to see what it is appropriate to do. If their answer is pleasing to God, then the blood [of the sinners] will be upon themselves and their sentence

| will rest upon the house leaders and those appointed alongside them and all who give an account to God for all the souls who have ever been entrusted to them, whether male or female, within these holy places” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:159-60 = both Sp 3:4 and 3:26 [idem, Schenute —

127). See also Schenute 135. 124. “Twelve times a year the elder will make his monthly visitation of all the houses of the community. He will examine all the cells in each house, every window and every vessel in which the portions allotted to them are received, in order to ascertain whether they have more than what is specified in the rules, or whether someone has done a wicked deed by taking any item into his cell beyond the rule laid down. The same rule will apply in our small community to the north. The father there will act in the same way, as well as those appointed by him. He shall inform the elder of every wicked thing which he finds in his community—pollutions,

190 ~~ Notes to Pages 27-28 , , thefts, small amounts of bread above what is allotted found among the monk’s possessions, or any other thing at all like this. He shall not hide any wicked deed at all from him. The female elder shall do the same” (Leipoldt, Opera 4: 58 = Sbm 168 [Schenute 138]). 125. A rule outlines the order of the hierarchy in the monastery: “After the father . . . is his second... and all the others whom he has acquired as counselors. . . . God will cross-examine these two about everything . . . so also [God] will cross-examine every house-person and their seconds... so also he will cross-examine the mother of the congregation and the one who comes after her, her second, and all the others who are in agreement with them” (Leipoldet, , Opera 4:44). This rule seems to be the basis for Elm’s description (n. 122 here), but as with most

of the rules, the reality was more complicated. | ,

126. See chapter 5, pp. 116-18, for a discussion of rules secluding the women. — 127. “Whenever there is an occasion for brethren to go to a place where there are people, _ the brethren shall walk in a group. And whenever someone gets outside of the group, the rest

will wait. for their companions until they are gathered together again. Afterwards they shall walk to the place where they are going” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:158 = Sp 3:25 [Schenute 146]). Female monks were not allowed to leave the monastery, as will be discussed in chapter 5. 128. “Whenever the brethren of our community go for a day to the small community and the brethren who are in the small community come for a day to our community, or if they go

south to the community of brethren which is in the village to bury a woman who has died, it is , very good not to speak much on the roads but to meditate until they arrive at our community

or the small community” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:69). , 129. “No physician among us shall heal an outsider, not even for wages but also not free of _ charge... .. All the more, cursed is anyone who might treat a woman outsider, or treat the genitalia of a man in the environs of the congregation, or anywhere else” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:16061 = Sp 3:26 [Schenute 146]). An interesting side-note here is that Shenoute makes the same rule for women who were doctors as well: “Just as it happens among us, so also it shall be for the ones in the village. No female doctors within these congregations at any time shall behave in

this way” (Leipoldt, Opera 4:161). ae a: a 7

— 130. Leipoldt (Schenute 141) cites Opera 4:46 (= Sp 1:87), where this is at least true for the monks who worked in the areas of service to other monks. It also seems that female monks who were caught in transgression could be sent back to the gatehouse, where novices lived. 131. Leipoldt, Schenute 140. While not discussing corporal punishment, Rousseau also argues for more impersonal relationships in communal monasticism, as compared to the close teacher-disciple relationship that characterized solitary monasticism (Rousseau, Ascetics 33). Shenoute does express pain and concern about his use of corporal punishment, however, even _ though he ultimately defends it as appropriate (see my chapter 2).

132. Amélineau, Oeuvres 2:310. In his defense of his authority to determine corporal pun- , ishment, in Canon 4, Shenoute repeatedly uses the word nataeyew to refer to the beatings. For him, the beatings are the instructions through which one learns to imitate the life of the

saints. See chapter 3. : , 133. This discrepancy was noted earlier in examining the various views of life within the

White Monastery. It is especially Shenoute’s use of corporal punishment that leads modern .

scholars to denigrate his leadership in comparison to Pachomius’s. , | 134. Both Leipoldt (Schenute 141-43) and Elm (Virgins 305) quote this text at length. 135. Leipoldt notes that Shenoute’s blows to the men tossed them to the ground; thus the men were not sitting on the ground, having their feet beaten as the women did (Leipoldt, ~ Schenute 143). He also notes the death of a monk (cf. chapter 2). For the former description,

see Sz 380 and for the latter, see Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:37-73.

136. Young, Manuscripts 96 (109). , ,

Notes to Pages 25-32 19] 137. “She has perpetrated iniquities by degenerate conduct and also she has stolen. . . . She talks back and without cause quarrels hardheartedly with her instructor and with many (others) and she has slapped the female elder or hit her on the head. ... She is immature in understanding and knowledge. . . . She hastens to Tsansno with friendship and a carnal desire . . . whose mouth has learned to speak lies and hollow words . . . [she] who says, ‘I teach others’” (Young, Manuscripts 103—5 [112-13]). Elm also provides a translation (Virgins 305). 138. Some of the rules address concerns about the spread of ideas among the monks. There was a rule that controlled the reading of unfamiliar books (Leipoldt, Opera 4:72). 139. Besa, Life 10-11. Bell’s point, however, may be accurate for those monks who joined the monastery under economic distress. 140. Kuhn, “Fifth Century Abbott” 178. Desertion also happened under Shenoute, as the rule outlawing continued concern for deserters shows (Leipoldt, Opera 4:104). See also Schenute 110.

141. Kuhn, “Fifth Century Abbott” 176. 142. Leipoldt, Schenute 144. 143. Leipoldt argues this (Schenute 144-45). Cf. Opera 4:104 = Sz 527. This seems to be more the case than Elm’s claim that expulsion was “effective”; the monks may have feared expulsion, but any penalty that caused the amount of disruption expulsion did is not “effective.”

144. Leipoldt, Opera 3:193-94 (= Sp 1:5) but such language recurs frequently in Shenoute’s letters; in the sources for this study, it is especially frequent in My Heart Is Crushed. 145. Incontrast with Leipoldt’s assessment that it was “unchristian” (Leipoldt, Schenute 144).

2. Women’s Life in the White Monastery under Shenoute 1. We know from the last page of Canon 2 (YC 176) that there were five letters in the canon. Emmel concludes his summaries of Canon 1 (802—14) and Canon 2 (814-23), “In any case, Canons | and 2 together contain a collection of letters from early in Shenoute’s career, marking a series of major crises in the ethical development of the monastery as it grew after Pcol’s death” (Emmel, “Corpus” 823). In a letter fragment in Canon 2, Shenoute refers to his two predecessors, one of whom has died recently (Karl Kuhn, Letters and Sermons of Besa, CSCO vol. 157 [Louvain: Imprimerie orientaliste 1956], 117-18). An early dating of these letters is supported not only by Emmel’s reconstruction but also by the nature of the crisis that they reflect, which is of a type that is more likely to occur at the beginning of a leader’s tenure. For the letters of Canon 2, Emmel has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that certain fragments previously attributed to Besa should in fact be attributed to Shenoute; they are contained in Kuhn, Letters 117-26, 131, 132—33 (frags. 36, 37, 42, 43; Emmel, “Corpus” 133-39 and 802-17).

2. In several of the nine letters, Shenoute refers to a previous letter that he wrote to the women about the crisis. It seems that Shenoute did not include these other letters in his canons, although it is possible that he is referring to a letter fragment for which we do not have the title. 3. These narratives will show the interest I have in issues of power, gender, and kinship, and should be suggestive to the reader. They will also serve as the basis for the later analysis and therefore will necessarily repeat throughout those chapters. 4. Elisabeth Schtissler Fiorenza, “Rhetorical Situation and Historical Reconstruction in | Corinthians” New Test. Stud. 33 (1987): 386-403 provides an example of the type of methodology that is necessary for how I intend to read these letters. 5. The corpus of thirteen letters | have used throughout this study is based on their assignment as letters to women by both Leipoldt and Emmel. My corpus, which is based on Emmel’s

192 Notes to Pages 32-33 dissertation and consultation with him, is a more conservative list than Leipoldt’s. Yet I anticipate that, as more of Shenoute’s works are published and translated, more addresses to female monks will be found throughout the Canons and will enhance my description. See, for example, Dwight W. Young, “Five Leaves from a Copy of Shenute’s Third Canon” Muséon 113 (2000): 284, n. 99. See Emmel, “Corpus” 1239 for Leipoldt’s list, “Briefe an die Nonnen.” I discuss cases of uncertainty about the audience in footnotes. 6. Fora more detailed discussion of the surviving fragments of Canon 2 and their relationship with one another, see Emmel, “Corpus” 814-23. The four letters that discuss this crisis are recorded by five different manuscripts. I refer to the manuscript pages by the letter names Emmel has assigned to them: XC, XL, YC, YD, and ZE. 7. L argue that all the letters relate to a single crisis for three reasons. First, Emmel has argued that Shenoute organized these letters himself, thereby suggesting that he had some rationale for their grouping (Emmel, “Corpus” 793). Second, Shenoute refers to events of the crisis throughout the letters, thus connecting them into a cohesive group. Third, my exegesis of the letters suggest that they all address a period in which one major issue, Shenoute’s estab-

lishment of his authority, was central. 8. Ebonh’s tenure is lost to history. Most scholars believe that Shenoute’s predecessor was his uncle, Pcol. Emmel has argued, however, that Shenoute was the third rather than the second archimandrite of the White Monastery. His argument is based on evidence from Canon 1, which he summarizes on 802-14, esp. 811-12. Ebonh is the hypothetical name that Emmel assigns to Shenoute’s predecessor. 9. GITE OYIGITE GITE OYTIPHW EITE OYWAXP NECOOY EITE OYONAAY NOYWM EITE

SEAAAY NONAY MTHPY (ZE 63: ii.23-26). At this point the manuscript becomes damaged but

this seems to be the end of the list. 10, elre 6Y2AAO IE CITE GYNOS NCIING TE GITE GYMHPE HM ME ElITE GYWEEPE WHM TE CITE GXENKATACAPS NTETYHTN NE CITE CIENWMMO NE H 2ENOPPANOC EMN-

TOYPWMG MMAY OPAL NOHTNH (ZE 63: ii.2-15). The terms wupe wim and weepe wun are here

monastery.

used as monastic terms for monks who were either still novitiates or newer members of the 11. GTETNXIWOA NNEN[T]O GROA HMXOECIC GCTETNXW MMOC INIENKACKC NCAOCYCA

NXIOYE ENGTNEPHY X6 NETEOYNTYUPWNE MMAY IMMEMA NTOC METOYU! MANECPOOYY H

NTOY METOYNA! MEqpooyw (ZE 68: i. 7-21). Although Shenoute does not talk about the monks who do not have kin, the implication of this statement is clear. The ones who are whispering are whispering about the monks who have kin, which only makes sense if the whisper-

ers do not have kin in the monastery.

12. GTRETIAL MMppASAY NOWB GXWN NIOYO GNCKH NHTN AN G2PAl ETPE{N}TNPTASAY

NONAY NIOYO NOOING YATNTHYTN XWPIC NETKH NHTN Eopai (ZE 64: i.12—22). Shenoute’s

use of KH Gapat is the clue that this section may be discussing rules for the monastery. See D. W. Young, “‘Precept’: A Study in Coptic Terminology” (Or 33 (1969): 505-19). Young uses this verb as the basis for his examination of the variety of words for “precept,” all of which are the direct object of this verb. 13. AAAA GL MPOOYU) NTOCU NNETNEPHY INOCY2OTE MNOYCTWT XEKAC EPEMXOEIC

CHOY GPWTH NGAYZANG HMOTH 9B NIN NAraoeon (ZE 63: i. 6-15). It is important to note

conflict. ,

the philological connection between this quote and the one above, in n. 11. The phrase «1 mpooyy is the main verb of both sections and thus points to the issue that was the basis of the

14. opsi font satin oariituyty ntotn (ZE 64: i.L0-12). Literally, “among us our-

selves or among you yourselves.” These phrases denote the male (“us”) versus the female (“you”) community and they occur frequently throughout Shenoute’s letters to the women. There is no easy translation for them, especially as they often make complex sentences even

Notes to Pages 33-34 193 more burdensome. 1D. Young translates “in our domain” or “jurisdiction,” a phrase that I think suggests that the women had more control in their “jurisdiction” than Shenoute desired. 15. errenmetpacNoc GENTAUEl Gopal EXwN Eixw MMOC NHTN (ZE 68: ii.7-12). 16. In XC 219: ii. 20-21 there is a “great sickness” upon Shenoute; in XC 219: ii. 22-25,

he “walks on my feet because of the great pain in me.” 17. “And after we did these things, and others, among you, we came and we went during the night after dawn had passed. Once again we came to you for a third time, while a great sickness was upon us; and I came on foot, because of the pain in my heart. And when we spent all night, we did not speak many words from Scripture to you.” (Ayw Nal MNIENKOOYE ATepNAAY DATNTHYTN AYW ANGEL GROA ANBUOK ONTEYWH ETMMAY AYW NTEPEXTOOYE OYEING

MAAIN ON ANGLWAPWTN MIME2MOMNT NCOM ECPE0YNOG NWNE DIXON AYW NEINOOWE ME OINNAOYEPHTE ETRENIEMKAD ETOMMAINT AYO NTEPNPTEYWH THPC GNXW NHTN NOENMH-

He AN Nwaxe GROA ONNErpadH [XC 219: ii.L0-30]). Shenoute here switches between we and I; the we could either be a plural self-reference, which is not uncommon in Shenoute’s rhetoric, or could include the male elders who accompanied Shenoute on some of these visits. 18. These two men ate included in Shenoute’s later defense of his visits: “Shenoute also and Papnoute are innocent of your blood” (Kuhn, Letters 117 [114]). Throughout this study, | have used my revisions of the translations in Karl Kuhn’s edition. The amount of revision varies from slight to extensive. All citations will be noted “K. rev.” without indication of the level of revision. Throughout my notes, Kuhn references are first to the page of the volume of Coptic text and second to the page of the volume of English translations. 19. “Who among our fathers from the beginning came to you (pl.), commanding to you an oath from the Lord? Or on which day did our first father, who has [died], come to you, speaking with you in person as a witness to you? Or which time did he ever come, speaking to you concerning these things? Or our other reverend father [come], the one who has recently [died], except about this thing only, that he come and appoint the eucharist, and he then left and went away without having seen you” (Kuhn, Letters 117-118 [113]). K. rev. 20. Examples of tearing clothing as a gesture of grief and frustration come from both the Old Testament (see Job 1:20 for one example) and the New (see Acts 13). It was also a common gesture of mourning in antiquity. 21. Gié GTREOY SE ANON ENNAMWOD AN NNENVOITE EG2Pal GCONNENNORE GROA XE

MriNews6Nson enwo Mmenount (XC 219: i. 3-9). 22. NTEPEOYE! MMWTN XOOC Ndi XE S9POK GkKTIW2 NNEVOITE (XC 219: i.12-16).,

23. Kubn, Letters 117 (113). K. rev. It is at this point that he includes Papnoute and Shenoute, as well as other male monks, in his defense. 24. AYW ANOK AINOY6C GMATE IMMAQHT ONOYNOG NOpPrH XGOY MONON XE ACXEMAI

SAAA XENTOC 290WC ON NEMETECWME Gpoc Me GTPpECNwW? NIECOHT ENEOCYN6OM NE AYW NECIOITE AN AYW TTXOEIC COOYN XENCARHA XEAdAIT CO GTRETINA MIMXOGIC NEINAPNGECIGITE NMOSE CH[ TIE Gopai oiwwe (XC 219: i.16—32),

25. Kuhn, Letters 118 (114). K. rev. 26. Kuhn, Letters 131 (124). K. rev. 27. Kuhn, Letters 124 (119). K. rev. 28. Kuhn, Letters 125 (120). K. rev. 29. Elm argues that there was a male elder who resided permanently among the women. However, the evidence Elm uses for her generalization is based more on Shenoute’s ideal, which seems to have grown out of these early controversies, rather than on the evidence for the struggles over that ideal (Elm, Virgins 302-3).

30. When Shenoute outlines the rules about women’s movement in the monastery in Canon 5, he indicates that some of the rules continue the practice of his predecessors. “No woman among you shall, at any time, come to us in order to visit their blood relatives even if

4:61), , 194 Notes to Pages 34—35

they are sick or have died. Women shall not be permitted to come to visit them or go to their people, as they could formerly, until our first father undertook to prevent any of you from visiting any blood relatives of yours when sick, or to come and see their kin” (Leipoldt, Opera

31. Shenoute’s description, “your children and your brethren and your menfolk and all ,

your relatives,” is from Kuhn, Letters 121-22 (117). For a complete list from this section of

Canon 2, see chapter 8, pp. 171-73. a

32. See Kuhn, Letters 121-22 (117).

33. Although not as compelling an explanation, the possibility that Shenoute is merely rejecting a request for visits does exist. One might well imagine the women writing to Shenoute, arguing, “Since you’ve visited us, we assume we may also visit the men’s community.” Upon hearing that they were not allowed this, one woman might have answered, “Well, then, why is Shenoute visiting us? And why did he tear his cloak?” and thus the conflict grew. However,

while I think that the two issues of visitation—the women’s to the men’s community and Shenoute’s to the women’s—were in conflict, [ think it more likely that the women simply took it upon themselves to visit the men, to which Shenoute objected. 34. Kuhn, Letters 122 (117). K. rev. |

35. Kuhn, Letters 122 (117). K. rev. |

36. Kuhn, Letters 122 (117-18). K. rev. Another issue is whether the men were allowed to visit the women. Having read through Emmel’s summaries of all the Canons, there is no indication that an equivalent letter exists. However, Shenoute may well have spoken to the men personally more easily than the women. In the Pachomian monastic system, there was a rule against the men visiting the women’s monastery, except in the case of blood relatives. “Let us speak also about the monastery of virgins: No one shall go to visit them unless he has there a mother, sister, or daughter, some relatives or cousins, or the mother of his own children.” If they do visit, “they shall be accompanied by a man of proven age and life” (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia [Cistercian Studies, vol. 45 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980)]

2:166—-67). See chapter 8 for more on relatives within the monastery. , 37. Kuhn, Letters 123 (118). K. rev. 38. tne GYEXE aYP20YO EpwTN INOYMETANOGIA MN OYMNTMANITHY AYW MERIN GTHNWA AN HONG Epwue ETEANOK Te (XC 253: i. 8-15), 39, STPAXNOOC E2Pai 9xMOYTPAMEZA GOYWM H ECW... AYW Tal TE BE EGWAIOYWM MMOGIK AYW NTACW HMMOOY GAICOOY GONOOC Eopai oMMMA ETHMAY (XC 253: ii. 1-17).

The context here is obscure because this is one of the more badly damaged of the manuscripts; however, it is certain that he is addressing the female community. His reference to a separate eating area thus seems to suggest an alienation from that community, but this remains open to interpretation.

40. “For we are wretched people before the Lord whenever we think about our sins. But | say these things to you so that we might repent. For there is one who pities us (who is God) and there is one who has compassion on us (who is the Lord Jesus)” (rap ANON 2ENTAAAITIMPOC HNGNTO GROA MMXOGIC ENWANNEGCYE GROA GENENNORG AAA GIXW NHTH NNALXEKAC EN-

enenxoeic ic me [XC 254:i1.4-17]),

ENETANC 2WC GOYHNETNA 2APON ETEMNOYTE ME AYW 2WC COYANETMANITHY QAPON

41. ayw EMune Tai TE NTACEL EXI ETPECCOYTNTOOT C GBOA ETPEOYUWT B NTOOTE

GPOC GHATE DNNETCUWT Fi ayw ETpEt NAC NMMETO NNOS EMATE AYW ETPZOYO EMUNE AG TAI TE NTACEL EX! ETPECCOYTNTOOT’ CS GROA EMETSOXE AYW ETIETCOKR ETPECTAAC

Gopal ETOOTE NTA Nee WNERINN (YD 193: i.8—-31). Since reclining while eating was a prac-

tice in antiquity, it might be that the “stretching” here refers to that. However, reclining seems to have been on the decline by late antiquity and it is questionable whether women engaged in this practice. For further discussion on reclining, see Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, “Triclin-—

Notes to Pages 35-36 195 ium and Stibaldium,” in Dining in a Classical Context, ed. William J. Slater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 121-48. For discussion about reclining, women and sexual advances, see Alan Booth, “The Age for Reclining and Its Attendant Perils,” in Slater, Dining in a Classical Context, 105-20.

42. “This you served again after you found her” (mai hrarethikaaqy eopai NKECOM Nreprern6nte [YD 194: i. 26-31]). We know from Shenoute’s rules that all monks were required to attend the daily meal, even if they were fasting. Thus, it seems unlikely that this provision refers to finding a woman who had not attended the meal, but rather finding her somewhere among the women who were gathered together. 43. AYW 2VOTAN GCUANGEL EX! N6ITAL ETEPENETNOYOWW 20WC ETETNCOOYTN GPOC

nmnero NnNo6 (YD 194: i.19-26).

44. T6Ix NTAl GTOYMEeYE Epoc xe nroc Te (YD 193: ii.29-194:i.1). 45. “And on the other hand you take the lesser and smaller portion in order to hand it to the one you do not feel desire for” (ayw NreTiqt AG oMwWU MNET6OXB AYW METCORR GTPETETHTAAY GIPAl ENSLX NTAl ETEPENETHOYwWY 210MC aN [YD 194: i.10-19]). 46, EpETOYE! TOYE! NO6SNES NTETITOY[WC] ETETNMOYWOY HMWTN EXNNETNEPHY INOYNNTpPEqraare NNeTrNnepny (YD 191: i.8—-17). 47. NTATAN TE ETETNME MNOC ONNETNHOY WW NCAPRIKON SAAA ETAL NTOY TE ETETHNOCTE MMOC ETREXE TAMATIH XHK GROA AN OMMETNHOHT ONTETNMNTpE Ct (YD 194: i.31-

ii.12). It is noteworthy that here Shenoute changed from the more simple “desire” to the more particular “fleshly desire,” a phrase used to indicate homoerotic attachment, at this point in his argument. See Terry Wilfong, “‘Friendship and Physical Desire’: The Discourse of Female Homoeroticism in Fifth-Century CE Egypt,” in Lisa Auanger and Nancy Rabinowitz, eds., Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World (Austin, Tx.: University of Texas Press, forthcoming, March 2002) for further discussion of homoeroticism in female Egyptian monasticism, including Shenoute. 438, ayW TALTE OG EMAPETAT BWK GXOYN GNECHT ECPINE AYW ECAWAXOM GPWTH Tat AG 2WWC ETPECROK GIOYHN GHECHT ECPAWE AYW ECCMOY GPWTN INOYMNTHETWOY EIT

(YD 194: ii.12-26). There is room for interpretation in Shenoute’s vague use of “this one” without further qualifications. The woman who is weeping and sighing is doing so either because she has not had enough to eat, or because she is the object of these wrongful feelings and benefits. The woman who is rejoicing could be doing so because she is forced into greater asceticism through her smaller portion or she could be, wrongly to Shenoute, thankful for her good standing. The only indication one has is the adverb describing the “rejoicing and blessing,” oNoYNNTHEtTMoyetr. While this could indicate that the blessings will not result in a more favored status (and thus more food), it is more likely that the blessings are useless because of their wrongful origin. 49, “The theft from the portion of your companions and the theft from every vessel in the place where something was usually found” (mxioye GROA INTTO NNETNEPHY MAIIXIOYEe GROA OMONAAY NIM OMIMIMA GTEMay2e Goyon NonTy [YD 191: i.25—ii.1]).

50. This point perhaps borders on an argument from silence. However, it is noteworthy that in this section of Canon 2 Shenoute addresses both thievery and the favoritism in food distribution. Only in the latter case does he also address the damage to the relationships among the women. Since maintaining harmony was of such importance to Shenoute, one might reasonably expect him also to attack the problems among the women caused by stealing. His failure to do so suggests that no such problems existed. 51. nerenneneynepoc pwwe Gpooy CEOYON? GROA XENEYNOYTE ME XHVOY AY GPENGYEOOY MMNEYWME NETEPENEYNEPOC pwwWE GPOOY CEOYONI GROA NANG XE NOYTGE ME MNOYTE AYW EGPEMEGYEOOY INTEYEPKPATEIA NAl ETXIOYE EBOA ONNTO NN GYCNUY CEOYOHN2D GROA XGXENATAMNAITE NE (YD 192: i.3—25). He also uses a reference to

196 Notes to Pages 36-37 , , Scripture, “The ones who are not satisfied by their portion reveal that their gods are their bellies and that their glory is in their shame. When their portion satisfies them, they reveal truly that God is their God and that their glory is in their self-control.” The biblical reference is to

Phillipians 3:19. , ;

52. This threat is implied in the language Shenoute uses to describe what will happen if he visits the women: “It will happen as when someone cuts off and digs up the root of a fruitless tree in the midst of an abundant wheat field and the evil tree will fall down since it was destroying everything abundant in its environs” (Ayw CNAWWrE NOE NOYA EQUWWT AYW EKUBOARA NTNOYNE NOYWHN NATKAPHOC 2pai INTNHHTE NOYEWW2E EUYPHT NIMC ENANOYOY

[YD 200: ii.1-20]). | |

EMATE AYW NIE EIPai NSINMHN GEOOY NUTAKO NNETMMEGQKWTE THPOY ETNANOYOY

53, We saw his threat of expulsions as a result of these visits in the description in n. 52. He , also expelled people in earlier visits, which seems to be the sense of “Therefore I tell you that if | come to you again it will not be like my first visit or like the time I wrote to you so that these people might be alienated from you” (eTRenMai txw MMOC NHTN XE EIWANEL WMAPWTN NCNAMWME AN NOG NOP H NOE MMICOM NTANTNNOOY NHTN ETPENAi pyMMo epwTtn [YD

201: ii. 13—23]). ,

54. “If you are very straight in the presence of the Lord, and it is I who am crooked be-

fore him, then let God listen to your prayers, in your community” (exe NTWTN AE TETNCOYTON EMATE NMENTO GROA MMXOGEGIC GANOK AG HETCSOOYS NNAPPAC ELE MAPEM-

-NOYTE CUOTH ENETNWAHA 2dTETHYTN [YD 205: i.6-17]). 55. MH ANPASSY NOWR YOAWC AXNTETNONWMH MH NTOTN AN ME NTATETNTNNOOYN ETPETETHAQEPATTHYTH KATANETHTwWYM (YC 175: i.19-27). 56. TIOAKO... EUMOKI NOHT ETREOE NTACNAY EPWTN ETETNAYNE! G2PAi EXWOY AYW TAi TE G66 ENTAY6W EGMAVOY ETRENCONC NNIAAOT ETTHY NHTN 2VATETHYTN (YD 202:

i.1-12). | ,

57. The elder who is pained in the previous note is male. However, whether or not “the elders” are all men, or both men and women, remains ambiguous in Coptic.

58. As evidenced by Shenoute’s use of 1 Cor.1:12. |

ii.2—-6). . } |

, 59. NTATETNTOY NAY NACOY ETPEYWWME NHTN NIMIVAA (YC 175: ii. 6-9). 60. Hh EMXE NTETNACI MPOOYY AN NNAi NIM NTO [METNACI POOYW 2d4pwWTN (YC 175:

61. ENE MMNS6OM ON MNOTH {Me} NEINASNapike EpwTNan tte (YC 175: ii.9-13).

, 62. “You, Tachom, tell me through your father and your brother why you are not in agreement with the female elder. Behold, I will send them to you. If you (pl.) do agree with your companions lovingly, then forgive these [words] because I have sinned against you (pl.) and I , troubled you by my words” (AayW NTO TAXWM MATAMOT EROA XITNMOYELWT MNTIOYCON XE i GTREOY NTETNCOYTON AN MNOAAW GICOHHTE TNATNNOOYCE NE GIYXE TETNTHT XE

} NOHT MNNETNEPHY INOYNE GIEKW Nai GBOA xe dIPNORE EPWTN dAiP2ICE NHTN ON-

nawaxe [YD 206: i.2-19]). a 63. “You (pl.) must perfect your love towards your companions so that all people might walk uprightly. If you (pl.) will become an evil leaven, then who is it who will become a good leaven? If you (pl.) and your companions walk crookedly, then who is it (f.) among you who will walk in

equality with her neighbor?’ (eTpeTETNXWK GROA NTETNAPATIH G2OYN ENETNEPHY XEKAC GPEMAAOC THPG NOOWE EHNOYCOOYTH EWMXE TETNAMWNE NOYOAR EQIOOY Gie NIM METNAMWME NOYOSAB GNANOYC GC\XE TETNAMOOWE INOYSWOY6 MNNGTNEPHY GIe NIM TETNANOOWE INOYMWWW NNTET 21TOYWC 2ATETHYTH [YD 206: ii.6—-30]).

64. . ef NAWSM6OM . G2dl ANWAXE THPOY ETOMMADHT OYA OYA AAAA EMWNE

| NTETHIENCAKE CYTETNAGING GMXWK XITHIENKOYI (YC 176: ii. 4-12). , 65. The suriving fragment is published in Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:17.

Notes to Pages 37-40 197

66. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:17. , 67. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:17. 68. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:17. 69. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:17. 70. The source is a letter entitled Abraham Our Father, preserved in Canon 3. Most of the letter is published in Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:18-35. The last eight manuscript pages were unpublished when I wrote my dissertation and during much of the revision process (Emmel, “Corpus” 826). They have recently been published (Young, “Five Leaves”). I have altered some of my translations to take into account corrections from Young, to whom | am grateful for personal correspondence on this matter. | have removed the Coptic from my notes, since the text is now available, but kept the references to the manuscript letters (YA) assigned by Emmel and used by Young. It is believed that this letter is addressed only to the female community based on its subject matter and the fact that Shenoute’s language addresses not the monastery as a

whole, but only “your [female] community.” , 71. YA 553: i.31-ii.15.

72. YA 553: i.15-24. ,

73. YA 553: iit. L8-YA 554: ii.14. 74. In Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:17—20 the list includes Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel. Later he includes other mother figures such as “Anna and the mother of the prophet Samson, and Eliz-

abeth, the mother of John” (1:20—21). 75. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:20. There is a lacuna between the list of biblical women and this conclusion, but given Shenoute’s rhetoric style it seems most likely that the examples of the biblical women at least contributed to the conclusion. 76. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:20. 77. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:24. Also, P.Oxy. 16:1895 is a contract of adoption from a widow who was unable to continue to support her daughter. It is a sixth-century document, a bit later than our time period, but gives a good example of the type of adjustments families made to eco-

nomic hardship. ,

78. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:24. 79. For the first point: “Therefore let no one in our community or in your community pour forth the gift of the Lord so as to avoid caring for others who had taken up residence with them with God’s help” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:31). 80. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:32. — 8&1. Only a fragment of this letter is preserved (Canon 4); the beginning and the end are lost and there is a lacuna in the middle of the fragment. Text and translation are in Young, Manuscripts 91-113. Only part of the fragment is translated in Leipoldt, Schenute 142f, with English by Elm, Virgins 305. The letter fragment is addressed unambiguously and exclusively to the female community, based on subject matter. 82. Portions of this letter, published and translated by Leipoldt, serve as the basis for both his and Elm’s analysis of the relationships between Shenoute and the women. Thus, Elm

notes, “[clontroversies, strife, at times open rebellion, were part of life in the White Monastery. Maintaining control over his numerous followers was one of Shenoute’s main concerns” (Elm, Virgins 304); and “However, precisely these two issues—Shenoute’s insistence on being always informed as well as the fact that he alone, and in his absence, the elder father, had ultimate control over disciplinary matters—caused the greatest rifts” (306). Elm is right in this general assessment. It is my purpose here, however, to explore the dynamics of authority and power struggles further, as Elm herself suggests is necessary (309). In addition, Elm believes that the male elder lived among the women. I am less certain, since it is clear that at least one male elder made periodic visits to the women, although it is unclear how long these visits lasted.

198 Notes to Pages 40-42

tic audience.

83. Young, Manuscripts 94-95 (109). Y. rev. Shenoute here uses a term that is rare in -Sahidic, aaoy wun, rather than the more common «Hpe wun, because he has already coopted the latter term as part of his monastic terminology. Use of it here would confuse to his monas84. Young, Manuscripts 95 (109) and 106-07 (113). Y. rev. The theme of the male elder’s authority repeats several times: “Therefore, nothing exists to prevent him now from acting in

accordance with what pleases God when he comes to you—-whether they are those upon whom he wishes to impose punishment when they are alone in their cells or those whom he , wishes to punish at the gatehouse, or those whom he wishes to strike so that he may deal them blows according to that which they deserve” (95—96 [109]). Y. rev. Also, “Now, if he wishes to add to [the amount of] these blows, he is responsible; it is a good thing that he will do. Moreover, if he wishes to subtract from them, he is the one who knows [what to do]. If he wishes to expel someone, he is responsible” (106 [113]). Y. rev. 85. The two apparent exceptions seem to be a sarcastic utterance, described below. 86. Young, Manuscripts 94-96 (109). Y. rev.

87. “I can see no other teaching or message to tell you but that which is clear tomy mind:

if God wishes, I am about to come to you” (Young, Manuscripts 98 [110]). Y. rev. , — 88. Young, Manuscripts 95 (109). Y. rev. ,

89, Young, Manuscripts 106-7 (113). Y. rev. —

— 90. Young, Manuscripts 92 (108). Y. rev. Also, “Now if you hide any evil deed in your com-

munity from us from today forward, we will have a great hostility toward you in our hearts. And , we will spend all our time caring for our companions as strangers, either we or you... . Now if you tell us every evil deed that will happen in your community from today forward, we will have a great peace in our hearts toward you. And we will spend all our time, we and you, caring for

, our companions as brethren and as fellow-companions to our neighbors, we and you” (Young,

Manuscripts 96-97 [110]). Y. rev. _

91. Young, Manuscripts 92-93 (108). Y. rev.

92. Young, Manuscripts 92 (108). Y. rev. ,

93. Young, Manuscripts 100-101 (111). Y. rev. , 94. Young, Manuscripts 97 (110). Y. rev. 95. Young, Manuscripts 102 (112). Y. rev.

96. Young, Manuscripts 103—4 (112). Y. rev.

97. Young, Manuscripts 92 (108). Y. rev. | | 98. Young, Manuscripts 92 (108 nn. 412 and 414). Y. rev. I believe this entire section of Shenoute’s transfer of power from him to the women is sarcastic rather than a real transfer, in

light of all the arguments that followit. ,

~99. “The male elder shall do all these [beatings] with his [own] hands on the bottom of the ,

[women’s] feet as they are made to sit on the ground, and as the female elder and Tachom and other senior women assist him by holding them for him, and as the other female elders, who are there with them also assisting him, hold rods over their feet for him until he ceases chastising them, as I have also done formerly. And he will tell me about any who oppose him in anything when he comes to me” (Young, Manuscripts 105—6 [113]). Y. rev. See Elm, Virgins 306 for

her analysis of this evidence. , ,

100. “She has perpetrated iniquities by degenerate conduct and also she has stolen: thirty blows. ... She has stolen some things: twenty blows. ... She talks back and without cause quarrels hardheartedly with her instructor and with many [others] and she has slapped the female elder or hit her on the head: twenty blows. ... She is immature in understanding and knowledge: fifteen blows. ... She hastens to Tsansno with friendship and a carnal desire: fifteen blows . . . [she] whose mouth has learned to speak lies and hollow words: fifteen blows . . .

, [she] who says, ‘I teach others: forty blows with a rod, because at times she hastened to her

Notes to Pages 42-45 199 neighbor in friendship and at times she also lied’” (Young, Manuscripts 103-5 [112—13]). Elm also provides a translation (Virgins 305). Elm explores the “interesting hierarchy” of the sins of the women: “Clearly, lying, the failure to make appropriate disclosures, attempts to teach others and general disobedience were the most threatening offenses and thus punished hardest, the penalties surpassing even those for stealing and sexual desire for other sisters” (Elm, Virgins

305-6), 101. Tapolle’s sister, Tsophia, was given ten blows, a lighter sentence, but her transgression was not made explicit: “And I know for what deed they will be given to her. And her sister, Tapolle, they should be given to her too but because of God and the worry on her mind we forgive her this time” (Young, Manuscripts 104. Y. rev). Elm suggests in her translation that Tapolle is also forgiven because she was too fat to bear the beating: “Because I know that she is very fat and round and could not tolerate [the beatings] well” (Elm, Virgins 305). Young, however, takes the singular feminine pronoun in reference to the garment Tapolle wore and supports his translation with references to other garment metaphors in Shenoute’s letters (Young, Manuscripts 113 and n. 491). Also, the last sentence describing Tapolle’s transgression makes less sense with Elm’s translation: “For it is heavy and very wide. And if you are clever, you ought to understand that breadth and thickness.” For the Coptic, see Young, Manuscripts 104—5. 102. Young, Manuscripts 104—5 (112-13). Y. rev. He notes that “in a friendship” suggests that it was a sexual advance. 103. See Terry Wilfong forthcoming, which discusses this evidence for female homoeroti-

cism. and its implications at length. , 104. A short fragment, the first of four preserved in Canon 6, published in part by Amélineau (Oeuvres 2:309-11) but without the final page of the fragment (Emmel, “Corpus” 833). The letter fragment is unambiguously addressed to the female community only, based on subject matter. 105. Amélineau, Oeuvres 2:309. 106. Amélineau, Oeuvres 2:310. 107. “But let me hear that you have murmured, or talked back in any way and the male elder will send you to the gate-house to receive your penalty!” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 2:310). The text may be corrupt in this passage, as Amélineau has noted. 108. Amélineau, Oeuvres 2:311. 109. This is the longest of the fragments, published by Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:37-73 (Emmel, “Corpus” 835). This letter fragment perhaps addresses not just the female community. The ending, which describes the quarrel between the female elder and Tapolle at length, clearly addresses these two women and the female community their conflict was affecting. It is certain that the earlier section addressed at least the female community but may have included the male community as well. It is included in this study because the issues Shenoute raised did affect the women, albeit not exclusively. {10. “Do you indeed love your neighbors or your relatives if you stealthily give them things to eat?” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:57). 111. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:57. 112. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:58. 113. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:57-58. 114. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:56—57.

115. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:49. 116. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:43. 117. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:44. Note his correction. 118. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:44. 119. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:71. 120. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:69.

200 Notes to Pages 45—46 121. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:68. 122. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:68.

123. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:69-—70. | 124. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:69. See also 1:72. Shenoute made the latter statement about Tapolle in the midst of a lengthy section appealing to the elder to put aside her anger and her refusal to be reconciled to Tapolle (1:71-73). 125. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:68. 126. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:68. 127. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:71. 128. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:69. 129. “Do I not consider the things she babbled against you to be sins?” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:70).

130. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:72.

131. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:68-69. | 132. Shenoute gives a lengthy discussion of the need for forgiveness among all the parties in question—the elder, Tapolle, and him. All have hindered one another, apparently in their ability to be a mutually supportive community united for everyone’s salvation: “If she has hindered you, you also have hindered me. And if you hindered me, then I and you and everyone who is not willing to forgive their neighbor because they gossiped about them have hindered God so that he does not forgive us our sins.” All need to be reconciled to one another so that God will reconcile with them and forgive them: “If you do not join your heart to hers, how do you know that Jesus will join your heart to his? Or will he? Forgive your sister and tolerate your companions in the fear of the Lord and you will be perfected by your deeds so that you might be criticized on the day when every hardship will withdraw from us” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:71-72).

133. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:73. ,

134. The fragment which lacks both beginning and end, is published by Amélineau,

Oeuvres 1:150-58 (Emmel, “Corpus” 835-36). 135. Shenoute uses the image of fire to describe the conflict that has sparked and spread throughout the women’s community: “Until you quench the great flame which burns in the jealousy of the one whom you call your enemy” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:151). 136. “If you did not pay attention in order to know the measurement of the breadth and height, and the composition, of the fire which burned among your community in those days, because you did not come out from the treasury or the house with its locked doors to see it since it was not of concern to you to watch it. Others came from their distant cells and they saw it, but not completely, but they measured the breadth and the height of its flame in order for it not

to become of concern to them” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:151). , 137. Shenoute suggests that he has quoted comments by the male leaders who had visited the women earlier in this letter and in a previous letter: “Indeed, those who came to see the flame of the fire which burns in your community, are they not these people who have said, ‘In the morning we will pass judgment upon [the community],’ just as I said previously in this letter? ... just as the one who spoke with her wrote in the first letter which was read privately in your community” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:152). 138. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:152. 139. “O this great illness which I came upon, or which came upon me! Jesus, Jesus, son of the exalted God, take this illness from my body, or the body, so that the afflicted who are anxious about me and who perform night vigils on my account might rest” (Amélineau, Oeuvres

1:154). a

140. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:154. 141. “If lam pained (and I am pained and there are others pained along with me because of those who do devilish deeds in your community), moreover I am greatly in agreement, and

Notes to Pages 46-47 201 there are others in agreement with me, because of those who do angelic deeds in your community” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:155). 142. “But if per chance there are no faults in their weaving, and if none be found when the weavers examine them, then I was wrong to approve the cut of the shoulders of the garments that I wear, because they are broad, indeed, they are wider than my own shoulders and those who made them should not be blamed” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:155—56). 143. “Well, then, on my account I will have them made more narrow” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:156). 144. “Either I will have them take measurements or | will give measurements to the ones who made them. But I must try them out! | absolutely will not put them on or wear them with the shoulders being as narrow as they previously were” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:156). 145. “Otherwise, from the beginning certain other monks put away certain garments and do not wear them. Or else they wear them today out of dire necessity, because they are at a loss and then the next day or two days later or after several days they put them away, ashamed lest other monks laugh at them” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:156—-57). 146. It should be noted that the women appear only to have refused visits for taking measurements, not visits altogether. Their refusal is implied in Shenoute’s strenuous arguments for the visits, apparently against their objections. 147. “If there is no mystery in all the sayings which you hear, or all those which are written to your community, then | am senseless since up to now | do not eat bread from your hand or from your bread. But instead I wear garments from your community, or from among your garments, never accepting any garments from strangers, down to the present. But I eat bread [received| from strangers. Truly, if 1 do not clothe myself with garments from your community, how will I know their measurements? Or how will I measure them? Indeed, do you not realize that if I do not clothe myself with clothes from your community, you will be carefree and will not have to figure out the type of color or length and breadth and the decorations of garments? And if, unrelated to the present matter, it were possible to have others make the garments for the monks, indeed, it might happen that some companions persuade me to clothe myself from their community, knowing that this is the desire of their companion. Even if this does not happen, the time will come when | will put them away” (Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:157-58). 148. Amélineau, Oeuvres 1:158. 149. This fragment, called People Have Not Understood, is published in parts. The first folio is published by W. Pleyte and P. A. A. Boeser, “Epitre,” in Manuscrits coptes du musée d’Antiquités des Pays-Bas a Leide (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1897), 409-11, to be read with von Lemm’s comments (Oscar von Lemm, “Koptische Miscellen XXVI: Zur leidener Handschrift Insinger No. 89,” BASURSS, 6th ser., 2: 55-60 [1908]). The next three folios are published by Henri

folio. |

Munier, Manuscrits coptes, CGC Nos. 9201-9304 (Cairo: Imprimérie de l'Institut francais d’archéologie orientale, 1916), 70-75. A missing corner of the first folio remains unpublished. My thanks are due to Stephen Emmel for sharing his transcription of the reconstructed first

150. “Just [as you] afflicted [your (?) soul] and the souls of others until they made it possible for you to enter the place where you are now |i.e. the monastery], | also fear that you will afflict us until you leave it!” (XF frg. la). The translation is Emmel’s (Emmel, “Corpus” 837). 151. This letter, called My Heart Is Crushed, is 62 pages in length and is largely unpublished. Recently, four pages (XO 63/64 and 79/80), which are in Paris while the rest of the manuscript is in Cairo, were published (Dwight W. Young, “Additional Fragments of Shenute’s

Eighth Canon” APF 44 (1998): 47-68). I have kept my translations as they were, but cite Young’s article for comparison. In addition, I have removed the Coptic from my notes for these four pages of XO, but kept the XO references, assigned by Emmel. Young has published a translation of XO 63/64 in a second article, “Pages from a Copy of Shenute’s Eighth Canon,” Orien-

. 202 Notes to Page 47 talia 67 (1998): 64-84. It is standard to consider this letter as a letter to women for the same reason that the long fragment, in n. 109 here, is: it has a direct address to the female elder and Tapolle. Like the previous fragment, however, this address forms only a portion of the letter. There seems to be a shift in subject and most of the letter, while definitely directed toward women, may address both the male and female communities, “the congregations.” 152. “As for the former cloak which I had requested from you so that I could clothe myself with it...I liked its color and its decoration, and others commented on its beauty” (XO 63: ii.8—25).,

153. “The moth ate it, infested it and made it full of holes. . . . | want to keep it because of its choice colors but I am ashamed of its ruinous condition. But most of all, I will be greatly ashamed to wear it lest any of the others should say something to me afterward, observing that the moth has eaten it” (XO 63:ii. 32-64:i.24). Shenoute’s defensiveness about the condition of the cloak suggests that, despite his protestations to the contrary, he bore some responsibility for its condition. One possibility is that he did not clean it properly, thus either allowing it to become ruined or open to moth damage. For a description of cleaning techniques in antiquity, see Bentley Layton, “The Soul as a Dirty Garment,” Muséon 91 (1978): 155-69. 154. “It was not that I commanded that people not find it in the place where | put it (until the time came for me to tell you what I am going to do with it) and I am amazed to say that people did find it in that place. For they learned that [I] knew that they had found it hidden in a mixture of choice, beautiful things and necessary, useful things and perishable, useless things. And they did not say to me, ‘We have found it,’ or ‘What are you doing with it there? Nor, for my part, did I ask them as they were finding it since I was not interested in it from the day when I knew about the moth damage in it” (ENANOYOY NNTMHTE NIENKENKA GYNAPIENXPIA GYPWAY AYW NTHHTE NIENKENKA NCECNONT AN OYAEG NCENAPWMAY . NOY2WB [AN] AYW

MMOYXOOC Ndi XEANIE EpOoy H XE EKPOY NAc| MMAY OYAE ANOK 2W MMLXNOYOY OMMTPEYIXG Gpoy EGMELAH MAOCYWW WOOT AN NOHTU EXWC XINMME2ZOOY NTAICOYN

MTAKO NEOOAG HonTY [XO 64: ii. 10-65: i.23]). The Coptic provided is from the unpublished

XO 65, and begins at ‘beautiful things.’ 155. “Since you care about the truth, how can you say that the moth did not damage it?”

(XO 64: ii.24-31). ,

156. “Otherwise I was not pleased with, nor did I approve of, this linen cloak which you

made for me—not equal to the one that I said the moth destroyed” ([e]MMON NEipaMwn N[QNnc}] NTATET[NTAIMIOYM NAT H CpM@dy[AN] MMENT[AIXOJOC ETRH[HTC] XEX0OOAE TAKOU

MM[iP]ANAT HMM TwWT ON NofHT] exw [XO 65: ii.22-66:. i-1]). , 157. “Therefore, I did not speak freely so that I could go into a crowd wearing it. But you will ask me why and what fault does it have? First of all, it is heavy on me. For, instead of attaching fringe to it, or [setting] its tassels so that they will be spread apart, or so that when they get twisted or untwisted over time they will be entwined with the fringe, you have braided upon it like a tunic or a cloak” (ETREMai pw MrinappHClaze MMOT ETpanapare NTMHTEe NoOyMH- , HYG GUCOOAE MMOT AAAA TETNAXOOC Nal XEETREOY H XE OY ON NCPaAMa NETNINTY (WOPTI MEN XE CVQOPH 21xwi XE EIMA NTETNKW NNEYTWWTE 21M0WCU H NEUAOOY XEKAC

EYWANMAMOY [H] NCEROAOY [E]BOA MNN[CA] 9ENCHY INC]JEMone [EY]OAM MNN[AOJOY

GA[TETINIOAKC [EX]MU NEE [NJOYWTHN [H] oyTIPHY [XO 66: i.1-30]). Leipoldt makes a dis-

tinction among the Coptic terms for various articles of clothing (Leipoldt, Schenute 115-16). Shenoute’s discussion of tassels and possibly knots is comprehensible in the context of the making of clothing, especially hemming, in antiquity. Two articles that give useful and clear descriptions of this process are H. Granger-Taylor, “Weaving Clothes to Shape in the Ancient World: The Tunic and Toga of the Arringatore,” Textile History 13 (1982), 3~25 and Elisabeth Crowfoot, “A Romano-Egyptian Dress of the First Century B.c.?” Textile History 20 (1989), 123-28.

Notes to Pages 47-48 203 158. “For if you will make a cloak for me, construct it for me completely fringed and totally decorated according to the specifications that I gave you, just like those of the tunic, so that I might wear it as a compensation and I might cover myself with it as a repayment. If these words are too much for a person like me to say to you (and I admit that they are), then know how excessive these profanities are that we have committed or are doing now in God’s holy places, namely, the congregations” (eMwne ETETNATAMLO NAi NOYPWN CMNTG Nai EGXHK GROA NNGUTMOWTE ECIKOCME! ONQWK NIM IMM’ NTAITAAC, NHTN NOG ON AMATEWMTHN XE ELGTAAC WUWWT EYXIKBA YW GINASOOAET NMAPMON CYTWWRE GYXE YENTIAPANMING {NE} NEIWAXE ETPEOCYPWME NTAIE XOOY VENMAPAMIL CAP NE CINE SE DWWY XE VENTIAPATIOJI

NOYHP NE NEINNTACGBHC NTANAAY H ETNEIPE MMOOY ON TENOY Opal YNMMA ETOYAAR

Mnnoy[re] negqoynarwrn [XO 68: ii.3 1-69: ii. 4]). 159. “So too, impure people who do false things hidden from the congregation should not think that they will escape the revenge of the curse which is upon [them], or which will be upon [them]” (Nrelwe on MmpTPEXeGNpWNE NaAkrxeaApTOC EYEelpe HOGNORHYE NKPOY Nown erTCYNAPWrH MECYE GPROA EMXIKBA MMCAVOY ETILXWOY H ETNAEL Gopal exwoy [XO 76: ii. 14—27]).

160. nM& Me Mai NTAYKW NOYXPOM 2ApAT ETHKAAT GEL NHTN GIOYN ONNGXOOY NTAIXOOC NHTN XE AW ME AYW XE WAVOYN EGTENOY