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 Half-title page Title page Copyright page Dedication Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction Part I Finding Children Chapter 1 Documenting the Undocumented: Children in the Earliest Egyptian Monasteries Chapter 2 The Language of Childhood Part II Representations Chapter 3 Homoeroticism, Children, and the Making of Monks Chapter 4 Child Sacrifice: From Familial Renunciation to Jephthah’s Lost Daughter Chapter 5 Monastic Family Values: The Healing of Children Part III A Social History Chapter 6 Making New Monks: Children’s Education, Discipline, and Ascetic Formation Chapter 7 Breaking Rules and Telling Tales: Daily Life for Monastic Children Chapter 8 The Ties That Bind: Emotional and Social Bonds between Parents and Children Conclusion: Monastic Genealogies Bibliography Index of Ancient Sources Index of Names and Subjects "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