“Christian Revolution” in the Attitude to Physical Labour and Its Reflection in Early Medieval Latin Hagiography

Abstract

In Christianity a positive assessment of physical labour is derived from a positive assessment of the poor (pauperes, πτωχoí). It devalued the ancient ideas about poverty, work and «estates» (ordines) and gave historians and theologians a reason to talk about the «Christian revolution» — spiritual, legal, institutional (E. Troeltsch). In monasteries and among the higher clergy (episcopate) physical labour (labor manuum) was considered primarily as a means of asceticism, helping to develop the main quality of the Christian — humility (humilitas), but in hagiography it was rather a literary fiction. The first results of the «Christian revolution» in the attitude to physical labour were noticeable not earlier than the 11th century, when the idea of society as a functional cooperation of the three «classes» was formed, each of which in its own way works for others (oratores, bellatores, laboratores), and when a so-called movement of voluntary poverty, focused on physical labour and charity, arose.