Children and Family in Late Antique Egyptian Monasticism

This is the first book-length study of children in one of the birthplaces of early Christian monasticism, Egypt. Although comprised of men and women who had renounced sex and family, the monasteries of late antiquity raised children, educated them, and expected them to carry on their monastic lineage and legacies into the future. Children within monasteries existed in a liminal space, simultaneously vulnerable to the whims and abuses of adults and also cherished as potential future monastic prodigies. Caroline T. Schroeder examines diverse sources - letters, rules, saints' lives, art, and documentary evidence - to probe these paradoxes. In doing so, she demonstrates how early Egyptian monasteries provided an intergenerational continuity of social, cultural, and economic capital while also contesting the traditional family's claims to these forms of social continuity. Cover 1 Half-title page 3 Title page 5 Copyright page 6 Dedication 7 Contents 9 List of Figures 11 Acknowledgments 12 List of Abbreviations 14 Introduction 17 Part I Finding Children 33 Chapter 1 Documenting the Undocumented: Children in the Earliest Egyptian Monasteries 35 Chapter 2 The Language of Childhood 66 Part II Representations 83 Chapter 3 Homoeroticism, Children, and the Making of Monks 85 Chapter 4 Child Sacrifice: From Familial Renunciation to Jephthah’s Lost Daughter 100 Chapter 5 Monastic Family Values: The Healing of Children 128 Part III A Social History 141 Chapter 6 Making New Monks: Children’s Education, Discipline, and Ascetic Formation 143 Chapter 7 Breaking Rules and Telling Tales: Daily Life for Monastic Children 161 Chapter 8 The Ties That Bind: Emotional and Social Bonds between Parents and Children 176 Conclusion: Monastic Genealogies 207 Bibliography 236 Index of Ancient Sources 263 Index of Names and Subjects 266 "In the 300s, Christians in Egypt and all over the Roman Empire came to the Nile Valley and outlying deserts to become monks, men as well as women. The rhetoric of this movement emphasized a retreat into the wilderness, a retreat away from the city, family, and property - everything one had. Perhaps the most famous passage in monastic hagiography evokes this renunciation of family. Athanasius, author of the Life of Antony, declared that so many people had come to Egypt to become monks that the desert had transformed into a well-populated community:"-- Provided by publisher