Bread in the Desert: The Politics and Practicalities of Food in Early Egyptian Monasticism

Benjamin Hansen

doi:10.1017/s0009640721001499

Abstract

AbstractThe Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers) offer a compelling literary perspective on the daily lives of early Egyptian monastics. The routine necessities of food and drink played a distinct part in the physical and spiritual survival of these novel monastic communities. When, what, and how much a monk ate could cause celebration or scandal. Every meal was likewise a test. This study has two purposes. First, it situates the Sayings's many references to bread, salt, oil, and fruit within the dietary possibilities of late antique Egypt. Second, and more broadly, this study highlights the place of eating (or not eating) as it relates to particular monastic notions of spiritual wellbeing. Meals were always an arena for acts of heroic asceticism, but they also served as highly charged communal confrontations, a dizzying back and forth of hospitality received or rejected, of honor and shame played out in alimentary paradoxes. In this, the Sayings bear witness to the spiritual politics of eating within Egyptian monastic culture and provide insight into the formation of late antique religious identities, betraying fundamental tensions inherent in other forms of Christian literature.

Highlights

The Apophthegmata Patrum The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, known more formally as the Apophthegmata Patrum, stand alongside texts such as the Life of Antony as the oldest layer of monastic literature in the Christian tradition
Samuel Rubenson offers a recent summary of the twentieth-century historiography related to these Sayings in “The Formation and Reformations of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” in Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia, ed
We might suggest that this fact only serves to highlight the intimate bond between early Egyptian and early Palestinian monasticism, a bond of continuity incarnate in the endless stream of pilgrims, ascetics, and authors who moved through the porous border zone of Sinai

Summary

Introduction

The Apophthegmata Patrum The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, known more formally as the Apophthegmata Patrum, stand alongside texts such as the Life of Antony as the oldest layer of monastic literature in the Christian tradition. Samuel Rubenson offers a recent summary of the twentieth-century historiography related to these Sayings in “The Formation and Reformations of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” in Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia, ed. We might suggest that this fact only serves to highlight the intimate bond between early Egyptian and early Palestinian monasticism, a bond of continuity incarnate in the endless stream of pilgrims, ascetics, and authors who moved through the porous border zone of Sinai.14 Contemporary texts such as Palladius’s Lausiac History (fifth century CE) and later texts such as John Moschus’s Spiritual Meadow (seventh century CE). Rapp has made a persuasive argument to read the Sayings as a continuation of the classical chreiai, a compilation of a subject’s words and deeds presented, above all, for repetition by means of imitation.18 As it stands, much of the collection strikes modern readers with its humane and intuitive psychological insight. The place of food in the Sayings provides a unique and illuminating entrance into these tensions and allows us to listen in on a formative argument in the history of Christian religious life

Eating in Egypt

Eating

An Argument in the Desert