Shenoute of Atripe and the Uses of Poverty: Rural Patronage, by Ariel G. Lopez

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By Ariel G. Lopez

Shenoute of Atripe: stern abbot, loquacious preacher, buyer of the terrible and scourge of pagans in fifth-century Egypt. This booklet reports his a number of Coptic writings and reveals them to be an important literary resource for the research of society, economic system and faith in overdue vintage Egypt. the problems and issues Shenoute grappled with every day, Ariel Lopez argues, weren't neighborhood difficulties, certain to at least one small nook of the traditional global. relatively, they're the most important to reading past due antiquity as a old period—rural patronage, non secular intolerance, the Christian care of the bad and the neighborhood effect of the overdue Roman kingdom. His little identified writings supply us not just with an extraordinary chance to work out the lifetime of a holy guy as he himself observed it, but additionally with a privileged window into his international. Lopez brings Shenoute to prominence as witness of and player within the significant adjustments of his time.

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Additional info for Shenoute of Atripe and the Uses of Poverty: Rural Patronage, Religious Conflict, and Monasticism in Late Antique Egypt

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Particularly so when a rich literary documentation originating in Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor is available for comparison. There is, as a matter of fact, no better introduction to Shenoute’s world than the famous speeches of Libanius of Antioch—although from a point of view diametrically opposed to that of Shenoute. And there are no better historical parallels for his role in society than the archimandrites of fifth-century Syria and Constantinople, many of whom were his exact contemporaries.

The second, economic antithesis will be analyzed in chapters 2 and 3, the center of this book. Shenoute’s own monastery was the ultimate example of the generous love of the poor. Its welfare activities and its miraculous wealth will be analyzed in chapter 2. It will be shown that his discourse of endless abundance and generosity legitimized—in terms reminiscent of a “Christian euergetism”—the receipt of unprecedented amounts of lay gifts. Furthermore, Shenoute’s tireless denunciation of the violence of the rich—who loved wealth more than their own souls and oppressed the poor without mercy—will be discussed in chapter 3.

They are all certainly liars—he claims—but they have good reasons to resent his formidable presence: As for those of you (people of Panopolis) who will hide behind what you accuse me of having done, you are hateful and hostile to me. , if you are Christians), truly you are worthy of the curse and you will not escape denying yourselves before the angels of God. For you have lied before Him when you set unlawful words against me in documents. For it is unlawful for you to have written them [but] it is even more unlawful against the crown of your head.

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