Monasticism

A third religious movement leaving a deep mark on Coptic literature, located inside Christianity and not outside, like Manichaeism and Gnosticism, is monasticism. Its name refers to its essential behavioral characteristic, namely ‘‘alone,’’ monos in Greek. Monks are people who want to be left alone. To achieve this, they actively seclude themselves from others. Even when they live together in groups in monasteries, rules are put in place to ensure great privacy. The seclusion is designed to serve a purpose. In the case of monasticism, the purpose is spiritual. The belief is that more privacy facilitates prayer and overall contemplation of the divine, for one’s own possible benefit and that of all mankind.

It is widely accepted that the worldwide movement of Christian monasticism as we know it originated in Egypt. Even if antecedents have been identified at an earlier date in Egypt and elsewhere, and, even if monasticism may have risen to prominence elsewhere at the same time or soon after, the degree to which monasticism took flight in the third and fourth centuries in Egypt is noteworthy. Egypt is rightly engraved in historical memory as the cradle of monasticism. What is more, Egyptians spoke Coptic when monasticism was born. Accordingly, it comes as no surprise that monastic thought is a key component of a literature that is as Christian as Coptic literature. Presumably, most of earliest Christian monastic thought found expression in the Coptic language in the land of Egypt.

Two main stages are commonly distinguished in the history of earliest monasticism. The first is eremitic monasticism, from Greek eremos, ‘‘desert.’’ The second is cenobitic monasticism. Both have made an incisive mark on Coptic literature. Monasticism began when certain individuals retreated into the desert to lead a life of solitude and contemplation. The geography of Egypt made such an enterprise relatively easy at the outset. The desert climate was not that intolerable, the stony surface easily walkable, and ancient tombs offered cool habitats within a short distance of the fertile valley where food and water abounded. However, as time went by, the need for showing ever more serious commitment required withdrawing deeper and deeper into the desert, ever further away from civilization. For example, south of Alexandria and west of Cairo, recluses successively retreated first to the desert at Nitria near the Nile, then deeper into the wild to Kellia, and finally even further away from the inhabited world to the salt desert of the Wadi Natrun. The recluses in question are also called hermits, which, like the adjective ‘‘eremitic,’’ is derived from Greek for ‘‘desert.’’ Sometimes hermits lived in groups close to one another and arranged to meet on certain occasions. Such a community is now mostly called by its Byzantine Greek name a laura. Hermits did not write lengthy treatises or follow detailed written rules. Instead, valuable lessons were transmitted in short narrative tableaux. Many of these stories have survived in several ancient languages and are known as the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Apophthegmata Patrum in Latin. Remarkably, only one manuscript of the Apophthegmata is preserved in the Coptic version (Chaine 1960), the language in which the Sayings must have been first uttered by the monks. Perhaps, even the Coptic version is a translation of the Greek. While the Sayings were first uttered in Coptic, the first systematic compilation could have been in Greek.

Monasticism of the cenobitic variety, from Greek koinos bios, ‘‘communal Hfe,’’ is monasticism as we know it. It developed from eremitic monasticism as recluses sought to live in a close-knit community, guided by well-established rules. Three names stand out: Anthony, Pachomius, and Shenoute. Anthony made the transition from eremitic to cenobitic monasticism and is generally regarded as the founder of the latter. The Life of Anthony, written by Athanasius in Greek, which is also preserved in a Coptic version, is one the most influential literary works of all time. For completeness’ sake, Harnack’s opinion is also worth citing that ‘‘it is maybe the most disastrous book that has ever been written. No work has had a more stultifying influence on Egypt, West Asia, and Europe... It is mainly responsible for the entry of demons, miracles and ghosts in the church’’ (Harnack 1913: 81 n. 2).

The second personality, Pachomius, served in the Roman army and presumably drew some inspiration from that experience in writing the first monastic rule. His writings are also preserved in Coptic. Among monasteries of the Pachomian tradition is the huge White Monastery near Sohag in Middle Egypt. Shenoute became its abbot in the later fourth century and held that position for decades. He is probably Coptic literature’s most prolific and most significant native author, but remarkably there is no reference to him whatsoever outside the confines of Coptic literature. It is as J. Leipoldt once wrote: ‘‘to the Coptic church Shenoute means everything, but to the rest of the world nothing.’’

One way in which monasticism made a crucial contribution to Coptic literature is that most Coptic literary texts owe their survival to having been part of a monastery library (Orlandi 1970: 60-64). Three monasteries that have yielded many manuscripts are the White Monastery, the Monastery of Saint Makarios in the Wadi Natrun, and the Monastery of St. Michael in the Western Fayum. In general, in Coptic Egypt as in Medieval Europe, literature and culture were transmitted mainly in monasteries.