Children at the Early Christian Monastery of Shenoute in Egypt

FAIN: FT-58870-11

Caroline T. Schroeder
University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA 95211-0110)

Although it is well-known that children lived in Medieval and Byzantine monasteries and convents were teeming with children, little is known about the the status of children in the earliest period of the history of Christian asceticism and monasticism. This project will examine children, one of the birthplaces of Christian monasticism, late antique Egypt. Sources are the Coptic texts of Shenoute and Besa, leaders of one of the most important early Egyptian monasteries, the White Monastery, during the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. Although these texts comprise our most important set of contemporaneous sources for early Egyptian monasticism, they remain understudied, because most of the documents have not been translated into a modern language and many are still unpublished. My work will culminate in two essays, which will form two chapters of my forthcoming book, Monks and Their Children: The Ascetic Child in Late Antique Christianity.