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.
Author(s): Caroline T. Schroeder
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 248
City: Cambridge
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
