Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe by Caroline T. S

Description: Monastic Bodies by Caroline T. Schroeder An in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery in Upper Egypt in the fifth century, using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, letters, and material culture. FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Shenoute of Atripe led the White Monastery, a community of several thousand male and female Coptic monks in Upper Egypt, between approximately 395 and 465 C.E. Shenoutes letters, sermons, and treatises-one of the most detailed bodies of writing to survive from any early monastery-provide an unparalleled resource for the study of early Christian monasticism and asceticism.In Monastic Bodies, Caroline Schroeder offers an in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, and material culture. Schroeder details Shenoutes arduous disciplinary code and philosophical structure, including the belief that individual sin corrupted not only the individual body but the entire "corporate body" of the community. Thus the purity of the community ultimately depended upon the integrity of each individual monk.Shenoutes ascetic discourse focused on purity of the body, but he categorized as impure not only activities such as sex but any disobedience and other more general transgressions. Shenoute emphasized the important practices of discipline, or askesis, in achieving this purity. Contextualizing Shenoute within the wider debates about asceticism, sexuality, and heresy that characterized late antiquity, Schroeder compares his views on bodily discipline, monastic punishments, the resurrection of the body, the incarnation of Christ, and monastic authority with those of figures such as Cyril of Alexandria, Paulinus of Nola, and Pachomius. Author Biography Caroline T. Schroeder teaches at the University of the Pacific. Table of Contents Introduction: Shenoute in the Landscape of Early Christian AsceticismChapter 1. Bodily Discipline and Monastic Authority: Shenoutes Earliest Letters to the MonasteryChapter 2. The Ritualization of the Monastic Body: Shenoutes RulesChapter 3. The Church Building as Symbol of Ascetic RenunciationChapter 4. Defending the Sanctity of the Body: Shenoute on the ResurrectionConclusionNotesList of AbbreviationsBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments Review "Caroline Schroeder presents the first analysis of the ascetic ideology of one of the most important figures in early Egyptian monasticism, Shenoute of Atripe."--David Brakke, Indiana University Promotional An in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery in Upper Egypt in the fifth century, using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, letters, and material culture. Long Description Shenoute of Atripe led the White Monastery, a community of several thousand male and female Coptic monks in Upper Egypt, between approximately 395 and 465 C.E. Shenoutes letters, sermons, and treatises--one of the most detailed bodies of writing to survive from any early monastery--provide an unparalleled resource for the study of early Christian monasticism and asceticism.In "Monastic Bodies," Caroline Schroeder offers an in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, and material culture. Schroeder details Shenoutes arduous disciplinary code and philosophical structure, including the belief that individual sin corrupted not only the individual body but the entire "corporate body" of the community. Thus, the purity of the community ultimately depended upon the integrity of each individual monk.Shenoutes ascetic discourse focused on purity of the body, but he categorized as impure not only activities such as sex but any disobedience and other more general transgressions. Shenoute emphasized the important practices of discipline, or askesis, in achieving this purity. Contextualizing Shenoute within the wider debates about asceticism, sexuality, and heresy that characterized late antiquity, Schroeder compares his views on bodily discipline, monastic punishments, the resurrection of the body, the incarnation of Christ, and monastic authority with those of figures such as Cyril of Alexandria, Paulinus of Nola, and Pachomius. Review Quote "This remarkable study focuses on the leadership style . . . developed by Shenoute of Atripe, the third leader of the elaborate complexes for men and women monastics established in the mid-fourth century in Upper Egypt."--Journal of Religion Promotional "Headline" An in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery in Upper Egypt in the fifth century, using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, letters, and material culture. Excerpt from Book Introduction: Shenoute of Atripe in the Landscape of Early Christian Asceticism In the early 380s, in a monastery in Upper Egypt, a young monk named Shenoute stormed out of the monastic residence. Deciding to live as a hermit in the nearby desert, he accused his spiritual father of allowing acts of impiety and impurity to proceed unchallenged in the monastery. One might expect that this story would end with the monk receiving a harsh punishment or a humiliating reprimand in order to serve as an example of the dangers of youthful pride to other potentially brash ascetics. Instead, he became the next spiritual leader of that community, succeeding the very person whom he had criticized openly before his colleagues. Indeed, he would become a central figure in late antique Egyptian Christianity, earning the lofty title of "archimandrite" in honor of his monastic leadership. He would also be revered as one of the Coptic Orthodox Churchs most important saints. How this monk came to lead that monastic community, and how he developed a sophisticated ideology of the ascetic life is the subject of this book. Over the course of a long career as a monastic father, Shenoute used his skills as an author and an orator to carve out a space for himself on the early Christian landscape, a landscape dominated during his lifetime by such theological heavyweights as Jerome and Augustine. Shenoute--the leader of a community of possibly thousands of male and female monks and author of at least seventeen volumes of texts--is best known in modern historiography for his attendance and influence at the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431, his destruction of "pagan" religious sites in Egypt, and his significant contributions to the development of the Coptic language and literature. Yet, as Stephen Emmel has so aptly noted, Shenoute himself identified as, "first and foremost, a monk." He was born in the mid-fourth century, and in about 371, he joined a monastery located outside of the town of Atripe, which is now the modern city of Sohag. Atripe sat on the West bank of the Nile River, across from ancient Panopolis, now the modern city of Akhmim. The site of the ancient monastery is frequently called the White Monastery by some scholars and tourists in reference to the towering white walls of the church building that remain standing there. The name "White Monastery" distinguishes it from the other late antique monastery a few kilometers away, Deir Anba Bishoi, which is called the "Red Monastery" because of the reddish tint to the stones of its church building. Archaeologists and contemporary Coptic Orthodox Christians now call the White Monastery Deir Anba Shenouda, or Father Shenoutes Monastery, after its most famous spiritual leader. Shenoute became the third father of this community around 385, not long after his public dispute with the second father. During Shenoutes tenure, the "monastery" actually consisted of at least three monastic "partners" housing potentially thousands of monks, both male and female. The site known as the White Monastery functioned as the headquarters, but another smaller mens residence existed, as did a womens residence to the south. Shenoute writes of the entire monastic community at times in the singular, as the congregation (tsunagwgh), or in the plural, as the congregations (Nsunagwgh). He remained the leader of this large institution until his death in approximately 465. Recent scholarship has turned its attention to Shenoutes identity and activities as a monk, and thus also to the importance of his writings for understanding the many worlds constructed and inhabited by early Christian ascetics. My work explores the contours of the ascetic space that Shenoute created for himself and his monks by outlining an ideology of the monastic life centered on the discipline of the body. I argue that this ideology lies at the heart of Shenoutes theology, his asceticism, and his style of monastic leadership. I ask how Shenoutes constantly evolving ideology of the communal ascetic life relates to the production of theologies, ascetic practices, and a Christian subjectivity distinctive to his monastery. The Monasticism of Shenoute of Atripe In his ideology of the communal ascetic life, Shenoute envisions the monastery as one corporate body in which the individual monks (both male and female) are its members. These two bodies--the individual monastic body and the corporate monastic body--have parallel natures, such that the salvation of each and every monk, whether male or female, depends on the salvation of the community as a whole. Likewise, the salvation of the community rests on the spiritual status of each of its members. Central to this relationship between the corporate and individual bodies is Shenoutes notion of sin as polluting, and his related advocacy of bodily discipline as the means to combat the defilement of sin. Shenoutes ascetic discourse foregrounds purity of the body, and he categorizes as defiling not only traditionally polluting activities (such as sex) but disobedience and transgressions more generally. Sin pollutes the body of any monk who violates his or her ascetic vow or the monastic rule, and this sin will spread throughout the monastery, corrupting and defiling the corporate monastic body and thus threatening the salvation of other members of the community. Shenoute thus paints a portrait of two monastic bodies whose fates are irrevocably tied together either by the impurities of sin or by the virtues of discipline: the individual monastic body (namely, the monk), and the corporate monastic body. The purity of the corporate body depends upon the purity of the individual monastic body. At the heart of the relationship between monk and community lie the important practices of discipline or askesis. Askesis is "the training of the self by the self," usually through renunciatory practices. For the individual monk, this training constitutes the discipline of the body through chastity, fasting, prayer, and obedience to the monastic rule. For the community, ascetic discipline is comprised of unified submission to the will of God, the communitys leader, the monastic rule, and the "orthodox" Christian tradition. The practices of ascetic discipline are both redemptive and theologically productive in Shenoutes writings. Through the language and rituals of ascetic discipline, Shenoute constructs his vision of the relationship between the monastery and God. As Rebecca Krawiec has observed, Shenoutes concern for bodily purity is embedded within the very monastic oath monks were required to take upon entering the community: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; I will not steal; I will not bear false witness; I 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 I 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.Protecting the body from pollution takes pride of place in this oath as the first in a litany of transgressions to avoid. Remarkably, Shenoute does not define what constitutes bodily defilement. Is this a subtle allusion to sexual behavior? or to breaking a fast? Rather than attempting to circumscribe Shenoutes ambiguity, I propose instead that this ambiguity plays an important role in Shenoutes ideology of the monastic life. All sin is defiling--to both body and soul. Moreover, as the oath indicates, a monks purity (or impurity) will determine the fate of his resurrected body and soul on judgment day. As I explain in Chapter 4, it is with respect to theological concerns such as the resurrection that Shenoutes ascetic sensibility (predicated on the discipline of the body) bleeds into his understanding of Christian identity more broadly. Despite the prevalence of pollution language in his discourse, Shenoute nonetheless fiercely defends the sanctity of the human body according to "orthodox" Christian theology. Because the body is holy and will some day be resurrected, monks, and even lay people, must protect its purity. Shenoutes faith in Gods embodiment, as enacted in Jesus Christs incarnation and bodily resurrection, is manifestly tied to his faith in the salvation of his monks through bodily discipline. By no means is Shenoute unique in Egyptian monasticism for his attention to bodily purity. A monk named Theodore, who joined the network of Pachomian monasteries in Upper Egypt, is reported to have said upon his conversion, "If the Lord leads me on the way that I may become a Christian, then I will also become a monk, and I will keep my body without stain until the day when the Lord shall visit me." Nor am I the first scholar to comment on Shenoutes particular attention to bodily purity. Krawiec, also pointing to the connection between the social body and the individual body in Shenoutes writings, has described bodily purity as "the main symbol for purity in the community." Yet the role of bodily purity in Shenoutes discourse deserves continued attention. As I argue in Chapter 2, purity and pollution language characterize his writings to a greater degree than they do the texts from the more famous monasteries founded by Pachomius. Moreover, as I maintain throughout, the discourse of purity is central to his formulation of the nature of salvation as well as to his own political aspirations. For Shenoute, the body is the site of redemptive transformation. It is also the site for theological development, social control, and the construction of Christian identity. In The Body and Society , Peter Brown writes of the relationship between Clement Details ISBN0812239903 Author Caroline T. Schroeder Short Title MONASTIC BODIES Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press Series Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion Language English ISBN-10 0812239903 ISBN-13 9780812239904 Media Book Format Hardcover Year 2007 Imprint University of Pennsylvania Press Place of Publication Pennsylvania Country of Publication United States Birth 1971 Subtitle Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe DOI 10.1604/9780812239904 UK Release Date 2007-04-03 AU Release Date 2007-04-03 NZ Release Date 2007-04-03 US Release Date 2007-04-03 Pages 248 Publication Date 2007-04-03 Alternative 9780812203387 DEWEY 271.0092 Illustrations 5 illus. Audience Tertiary & Higher Education We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:126660243;

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