Treasure in Heaven by Brown Peter R.;

Author:Brown, Peter R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Image and Reality in Late Roman Egypt: Modern Approaches

The widespread crystallization of a classic image of the monks of Egypt ensured that the realities of Egyptian monasticism, “on the ground” as it were, quietly sank from view. They were pushed to one side by a pervasive need to present the monks in terms of a highly stylized representation that canceled out, at every point, rival images of the true monk that were prevalent in other Christian regions.

It does not come as a surprise, therefore, that those who study the monastic movement in Egypt tend to be divided into two camps. On the one hand, those who study the evidence of the papyri and of the monastic archaeology of Egypt are acutely aware of the hiatus between monastic self-presentation in written texts and the realities of monastic life. In the severe words of Roger Bagnall: “Here, if ever, [when faced by such texts] ‘hermeneutical suspicion’ will be warranted.”27

Some of the very best studies of late Roman Egypt and of the place of monasticism in Egyptian society have come from this critical tradition. For such scholars, ideologically motivated sources like Athanasius’s Life of Anthony and Palladius’s Lausiac History are fair game. Papyrologists pride themselves—and often with good reason—on being able to demystify the monks. They stress the difference between “an ideal picture, réalité narrative, and . . . réalité vécue”—the real, day-to-day life of Egyptian monasticism.28 For such scholars, the canonical sources for the monastic movement offer only misleading stereotypes. These stereotypes are of little use “if one wishes to understand Egyptian monasticism as it was in the real world.”29 In the blunt words of Ewa Wipszycka, the doyenne of the study of the social and economic role of the Christian church in Egypt: “Patrologists and historians of monasticism know nothing about ancient economy.”30

Furthermore, a lively tradition of literary criticism has come to be applied to the study of early Christian texts. In this tradition—to use the words of Susannah Elm—it is “the author who emerges as full blooded.”31 What holds the attention of scholars are the literary devices by which authors of the classics of early Egyptian monasticism constructed their image of the monks of Egypt. This literary play ensured that the idea of the Egyptian desert and of its industrious monastic inhabitants arrived “packaged and fetishized”32 on the shores of western Europe and elsewhere. Whether these literary texts referred in any way to a reality “on the ground,” or were simply reflections of the talents of their authors—and, one must add, of the literary acumen of those who now interpret them—is treated as being of secondary importance.

These two developments have effectively overshadowed the study of the monks of Egypt. It seems as if “text” and “reality” have drifted further apart than ever before. It is time to attempt to bring the two traditions a little closer together. I would like to ask, inevitably very briefly, what it was in the context of Egypt itself that accounted for the weight of this particular image among the monks of Egypt.

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