The Desert of Macarius in Sketis

Wadi al-Natrun was one of three areas in the northwest Delta to quickly earn an international reputation as the center for the monastic movement. Travelers such as Evagrius, John Cassian, and Palladius provide the major portraits of this desert as they traveled to Sketis and Kellia, often becoming temporary residents.⁵⁹ Palladius describes the monastic landscape as including a variety of locations: “I visited many cities and very many villages, every cave and all the desert dwellings of monks.”⁶⁰ Since he traveled in both the Egyptian and Libyan deserts and then visited monks in Upper Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria, Rome, and Campania, Palladius offers a comparative assessment of the Egyptian desertscape as he recounts it for his reader, Bishop Lausus.⁶¹ Palladius traveled to Egypt and lived at Kellia with Evagrius, before the latter’s death in 399. When John Cassian described Egypt and the settlements of the monks, he invited his listeners to “bear in mind the character of the country in which they dwelt, how they lived in a vast desert.”⁶² As a native of Scythia, Cassian placed the unusual landscape at the center of monastic training for his community that he founded in southern Gaul and highlighted the need for isolation in a place where monks are single-minded in their spiritual pursuits. Thus, the travelogues function not as naturalist accounts but as didactic treatises for authors and their audiences, who did not have first-hand knowledge of the landscape. While the desert became a central component of monasticism throughout the Mediterranean, descriptions about the Egyptian landscape, monastic settlements, and the records of foundations were embedded in larger themes to offer spiritual edification for contemporary communities.⁶³

The importance of Sketis as a place for monastic training was both physically and rhetorically constructed through the works of visitors to the communities and later Lives written about the monks who lived in Wadi al-Natrun. The physical space of Wadi al-Natrun with its salt lakes and the importance of the desert for both physical and mental challenges provided authors with rich imagery to build a myth of the monastic desert. Wadi al-Natrun was the center of a healthy salt trade, as the materials gathered there were used in the millennia-old practice of mummification (see Fig. 34).⁶⁴ The numerous salt lakes span a length of 30 kilometers in the Western Desert. Of this trajectory, an area of roughly 8,400 hectares was modified in some form for monastic habitation, with pockets of dense habitation in at least four areas with settlements ranging from 160 to 250 hectares.⁶⁵ The belief in the efficacy of Sketis for correct teaching and monastic living was a powerful tradition that led to the rapid mythologizing of the desert.⁶⁶ Early visitors, such as Palladius and John Cassian, referred to the area as Sketis (Coptic Shihīt), but it was equally known as the “Desert of St. Macarius,” reflecting the importance of its first and most famous inhabitant and monastic founder.⁶⁷

34. Salt accumulation by one of the shores of a lake in Wadi al-Natrun, Egypt.

How did Sketis become the “Desert of Macarius?” This is a difficult story to extract from the hagiographical sources we have, but is necessary, as the attribution of a famous monastic founder to one’s community and landscape provided a sense of identity and unity for later authors.⁶⁸ David Brakke honestly states the vexing nature of the historical study of early monasticism is that “many of our literary sources are, to be blunt, not true ... few literary works come directly from Egyptian monks of the fourth and early fifth centuries.”⁶⁹ Therefore, reconstructing the story of Macarius as the founder of monasticism in Wadi al-Natrun truly is an effort in reconstructing a mosaic from bits from later traditions, possible oral histories, and much later community perceptions about Macarius. Despite this distance from the historical Macarius, it is invaluable to consider the accounts that were told about him. For “fiction may tell us as much about early monastic culture as the papyri and archaeological remains that more positivist historians value so highly.”⁷⁰ The exploration of how the desert of Sketis became “Macarius’s Desert” provides a path of inquiry that is just as informative for reconstructing perceptions of the landscape as reading letters and contracts from Late Antique monastics. In pulling together threads from a wide range of literary sources, and in one case from the letters and sermons of one founder, Shenoute, we can observe the construction of a monastic landscape through the eyes of later generations. It is a landscape that requires good stories and memorable individuals, but in the end, those accounts are not historical truths, but historical stories that lend authority to existing communities.

Macarius of Egypt, also known as Macarius the Great and a contemporary of Amoun of Nitria, was the first monk to build his monastic residence in Sketis. His biographies in the Sayings and various Coptic sources differ as to whether he was married or not. In the Sayings, Macarius lived a monastic life in a cell near a village.⁷¹ The villagers, after learning of his piety, desired to make him their priest. Macarius effectively rejected their efforts by moving to another place where he could live in peace, this time living with another ascetic. Then a woman, who had become pregnant, leveled accusations of impropriety against him. Once he was found innocent of fathering the child, he moved yet again farther away from the town. With this final encounter, Macarius went to the desert of Sketis and built his own cell.

The horizontal movement from the populated to the uninhabited land reflects a vertical movement in terms of spiritual achievement and maturity. In the early fifth century, Palladius recounts his stories of Macarius after his own sojourn through the monastic deserts of Egypt and several years living as a monk at Kellia.⁷² During his lifetime, Macarius had at least two residences in Sketis and lived there for sixty years.⁷³ One was a cell where he resided with two other monks, and the second was a cave. Macarius could retreat to the cave, which was connected to his cell by a 90-meter tunnel running underground.⁷⁴ While Macarius the Great is an important figure for the section on the monks of Sketis, the place is not yet equated with him or his first settlement. For Palladius, Sketis is the “great desert” or the “great interior desert,” and therefore is known more for its physical size and its interiority, in contrast to the other monastic settlements he visited.⁷⁵ John Cassian, similarly, associates Sketis with greatness, for it is home to the “most celebrated fathers of monasticism, the ultimate in excellence” and Macarius has only a limited appearance in the stories that Cassian tells his fellow monks.⁷⁶

The Coptic Life of Macarius, which follows the biography of the Lausiac History, details how Macarius shared his ascetic life with two disciples, one who lived with him and another who lived in a cell nearby.⁷⁷ The Coptic version also identifies Sketis as the “great desert,” which “leads each person into feast of asceticism, whether he wants it or not.”⁷⁸ To be sure, this model of apprenticeship departs from the more communal house model of several individuals living under the guidance of a house father that will be common in the Pachomian and Shenoutean communities in Upper Egypt, or the later development of dwelling places in Sketis.⁷⁹ In all the descriptions of the landscape, the desert is described as the land of monks, and we hear little about who was the “first,” except for the short entry on Macarius of Alexandria in the History of the Monks in Egypt in which he, and not Macarius the Great, is identified as “the first to build a hermitage in Sketis. This place is a waste land laying at a distance of a day’s and night’s journey from Nitria through the desert.”⁸⁰ The tradition of Macarius as the first inhabitant is mentioned only in passing in the Sayings, linked to Macarius the Great when he is described as “the only one living as an anchorite, but lower down there was another desert with several brothers.”⁸¹

By the eighth century, a slightly different story is detailed in the Coptic Life of Saint Macarius of Scetis that firmly places Macarius as the spiritual founder of desert monasticism in Wadi al-Natrun.⁸² In this vita, Macarius married against his wishes and adopted a spiritual marriage, always maintaining his purity. His only avenue to escape his marriage was to participate in the salt-mining trade in Wadi al-Natrun.⁸³ The topography mentions mountains of natron and the routes workmen used to move their camels back and forth between the salt areas and the villages. During one of his trips to the lakes, Macarius spent the night on an outcrop with other salt traders. While there, he had a dream or vision that would provide the basis for his eventual move to the desert.⁸⁴ The passage provides a vivid description of the landscape and then offers a gendered image of Macarius as a nursing mother for his spiritual children.

Later that night he found himself dreaming; a man was standing above him in a garment that cast forth lighting and was multicolored and striped, and he spoke to him, saying:

In this first identification of Sketis as Macarius’s land, God bestows the land and the promise of generations of children as a gift. The vision is a direct parallel to the promise made to Abram when he surveyed the land held by the Canaanites. Macarius does not, however, move into the desert of Sketis, but rather resides with other ascetics in cells on the edges of different towns. Eventually he adopts a cell of his own and receives a second visitation, this time from a cherub, who rebukes him for failing to respond to his earlier vision to relocate to the desert.⁸⁶

After prayer, Macarius was ready, “leaving behind everything in his cell” as a sign of his commitment to his new mission in the desert.⁸⁷ The walk took two days, which would roughly be between 48 and 95 kilometers, depending on the heat and the difficulty of the paths taken into the desert.⁸⁸ At this point the cherub asked Macarius to choose the location he would like to settle in, but he admitted that he did not recognize anything in the area. The cherub said: “See, the place lies before you; but examine it and take possession of a good site. Only, be on the watch for evil spirits and their evil ambushes.”⁸⁹ He selected a place at “the beginning of the wadi near the site where natron was extracted.”⁹⁰ In deciding to be close to the salt mines, he also made a conscious choice to be near others, the workmen and guards at the salt lakes, which would later prove to be detrimental to his solitude.

Forced to find a quieter location because of the noise of the salt mine industry, Macarius moved again – this time to a mountain cave. He went now into the desert and selected a natural rock formation for carving two caves. One served for his daily needs for plaiting baskets and the other was purely for liturgical use. His presence in the desert caused the demons to complain restlessly about his occupation of their territory. They voiced their fears that more monks might join him: “Shall we allow this man to stay here and allow the desert places on account of him to become a port and harbor for everyone in danger, and especially to become a city like heaven for those who hope for eternal life? If we allow him to remain here, multitudes will gather around him and the desert places will not be under our power.”⁹¹ The conquest of the desert places surfaces again as a central theme in the stories of monastic occupation of the landscape. The deepest fear of the demons is quickly realized as multitudes start to gather around Macarius in the desert.

The Life describes how Macarius taught the monks how to build their own dwellings. They carved caves into the rock and also used palm branches, trunks, and stalks “from the wadi” to finish off the dwellings and create a good shelter.⁹² At this point the community was made up of individual cave dwellings and the monks still fetched water from the wadi, as Macarius “had not yet dug cisterns.”⁹³ Practically speaking, the community’s building program needed to expand to accommodate both daily and spiritual needs of the residents. They built a small church together, then dug wells, and finally they needed larger dwellings.⁹⁴ As a sign of God’s pleasure with Macarius, a cherub told the saint: “The Lord has come to dwell in this place on account of you.”⁹⁵ The fact that God now dwells in the desert is directly linked to Macarius’s success in forcing the demons out of the land.

His achievements prepare him for his final relocation to an even more important area of the wadi that Macarius will bring to perfection. The Life offers yet another description of the land Macarius is directed to occupy:

Macarius’s story of movement into the desert reflects similar patterns of movements for other monks. Many began by living alone in their town or village; some are even married and secretly agreed to a “spiritual marriage” with their wives in order to practice the ascetic life. When tensions arose that threaten the privacy of the private ascetic life, many sought out a more experienced monk to serve as a mentor and guide.

In the Coptic Odes to Saints of Scetis, Macarius is described as “the great net who drew everyone into the Way of God, and put upon them the holy habit, teaching them to dwell solitary in holes of the ground.”⁹⁷ The reference to “holes in the ground” invokes the language of the faithful prophets, who resided in the harsh landscape of the desert (Heb. 11:38). Sketis evolved from the residence of a solitary monastic to become an entire region, home to four well-known and still existing monastic communities. Christian Arabic authors often referenced the region as Mizān al-qulūb, meaning the place of the “Weighing of Hearts,” a literal Arabic rendering of the Coptic Shi-hēt, as a reference to the spiritual challenges one faced while in the region. In the bulk of the Arabic literature of Christians and Muslims, however, the region is identified as Wadi al-Natrun, the most common designation today, or as Wadi Habīb. Medieval authors, such as Abu al-Makarim and al-Maqrīzī, attribute Macarius as the founder of the monastic community in Wadi al-Natrun.⁹⁸ Abu al-Makarim reports that Macarius was directed by Antony to move to Wadi al-Natrun and then many monks took up residence in Wadi al-Natrun because of Macarius’s “noble deeds.” By the fifteenth century a listing of monasteries in al-Maqrīzī’s Khitat includes a description of Wadi al-Natrun and he presents an extensive etymology. Al-Maqrīzī listed eighty-six monasteries in the desert.⁹⁹ He describes Wadi Habib as being known by a variety of names such as Wadi al-Naturn, “Desert of shihāt,” “Desert of askīt,” and Mizān al-qulūb. His settlement history recounts how the monasteries dwindled down to seven in a land where “sandy flats alternate with salt-marshes, waterless deserts, and dangerous rocks.”¹⁰⁰ The great desert of Macarius had numerous monasteries “in ruins.”¹⁰¹ The ruins would remain until the visits of Hugh Evelyn White, who also remarked on the ubiquitous nature of the “ruins” in the 1920s.

The Greek, Coptic, Syriac, and Arabic traditions relating to the settlement of Wadi al-Natrun share and enhance the importance of its salt as a purifying agent in monastic living and Macarius as a builder. The salt of Wadi al-Natrun was a “spiritual salt” and was “an explicit contrast with the salt of death” found in the inhabited world.¹⁰² The salt also became a physical representation of the theological importance of Wadi al-Natrun in the monastic imagination. By inhabiting the desert, the monks tamed the wilderness.¹⁰³ They caused the salted land to be fertile again, both physically and socially, with athletes of God. In the end, all the accounts about Macarius speak to the importance of displacing demons through settlement and occupation.

The Quiet Retreat of Amoun at Kellia

Traveling nearly forty years after the founding of Nitria and Kellia, the first long-term visitors and foreign residents at the two sites wrote accounts that were focused more on inspiring their readers or patrons than on offering an accurate recounting of the physical landscape or the monastic architecture that they lived in. Palladius lived for nine years at Kellia and Evagrius for sixteen; yet, neither writer is compelled to tell us much about the actual landscape, as they, like other monastic writers, are engaged in writing literature to inspire and encourage other monastics about how to live the ascetic life. Therefore, the story of Kellia’s foundation needs to be pieced together from fragments of diverse monastic sources with very different objectives than recounting the life of one particular founder.

The foundation story of Kellia is linked directly with the older foundation story for Mount Nitria.¹⁰⁴ Both sites were located further north of Sketis and are often described in Late Antique travelogues in terms of distance relative to or from Alexandria, the closest urban center to the two settlements.¹⁰⁵ Unlike Sketis, where a sustained monastic community preserved and expanded earlier written traditions throughout the late medieval period, the communities at Nitria and Kellia were abandoned by the eighth or ninth century, resulting in fewer sources that document how monks reproduced their community’s history. Therefore, the accounts of Palladius, Evagrius, John Cassian, and the anonymous author of the History of the Monks in Egypt provide an early record of oral traditions circulating within Egypt before the written form of the later fifth-century Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

The story begins with a man named Amoun, who left his wife after eighteen years to live in the Delta at the site of Nitria. When Palladius ventured to Nitria, it was a mountain located seventy miles from Lake Mareotis and inhabited by more than 5,000 monks, and it was Arsisius, a resident, who told him the story of the community’s origins.¹⁰⁶ Having the blessing of his wife, Amoun set out to the “inner part” of the mountain of Nitira, “for there were no monasteries there yet – and he made himself two round cells.”¹⁰⁷ The Coptic Life of Antony includes a chapter on Amoun, where he is identified as one who lived at the Toou of Nitria, and his death was known by Antony, who saw his soul ascend.¹⁰⁸ That story is the beginning of the account in the History of the Monks in Egypt for Amoun.¹⁰⁹ The area of Nitria, like Sketis, was associated with the mining of niter (potassium nitrate), a substance used in cleaning but not the same as natron.¹¹⁰ Like Macarius, Amoun sought out the remote settlements that others had inhabited, which illustrates he knew men were living in the fringes. Here in the flat desert, far from urban centers and rugged limestone cliffs, Amoun gained a following and encouraged his male colleagues to adopt both solitary and communal dwellings in the Delta.¹¹¹ The story of Kellia’s founding is not found in the sayings attributed to Amoun, but rather in the stories about Antony, reflecting his greater significance as being a companion in the establishment of the settlement along with Amoun.

In the Sayings attributed to Antony we learn that he visited Amoun one day and they discussed a growing concern surfacing at Mount Nitria – the mountain was too crowded and too noisy.¹¹² Amoun felt restless because his fellow monastics were arguing about how to live and where to live in great silence. He asked Antony: “How far from Nitria are these brothers to go before building their new dwellings?”¹¹³ The two monks set out after breakfast and walked into the desert until the sun set. They covered roughly 19 kilometers that day.¹¹⁴ As a sign that their relocation was sanctioned by God, the two monks were protected from the intensity of the sun that day. Once they had stopped for the night, they planted a cross to mark the location.¹¹⁵ Antony said that others would recognize the cross as a sign and would know that this would be a peaceful place to live, if they wished to live in such a manner.¹¹⁶ It was here that Amoun began the community later known to Evagrius, Palladius, and John Cassian (see Fig. 14).

The distance between Kellia and Nitria was enough for a day’s walk between the two communities, but also significant enough that there was a separation between the two groups. The location was in the inner desert, removed farther from paths of activity than Mount Nitria, and in a deserted area.¹¹⁷ The settlement would become known as a monastic retreat from more bustling sites, for to live here was “to live a more remote life, stripped down to the bare rudiments.”¹¹⁸ The remarkable nature of Kellia is that the settlement grew from Amoun’s desire to find solitude and to escape the crowds, but it is a later story, one that emerges perhaps in response to the growing popularity of monastic tourism in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. In the end, the site superseded that of Nitria and literally became the city in the desert that Athanasius hoped would one day develop. Archaeological evidence exists at the site for definite settlements in the fifth century, but the earliest levels do not correspond with the time of Amoun, Evagrius, or Palladius. The site’s eventual decline in the late eighth and ninth centuries would also mean a decline in monastic literature about the settlement as the built community became a part of the desert topography. Both Kellia and Sketis, as representatives of desert monasticism in Lower Egypt, convey how monastic literature was shaped within Egypt and in non-Egyptian sources. For those who transmitted the accounts of Egypt’s northern desert monasteries, the stories of foundations were of lesser importance than the lessons to be learned in hearing the words of the Desert Fathers. And despite the importance of Kellia as a location welcoming to foreign, monastic guests, it was other monastic sites, such as Sketis, that seemed to capture the imagination of monastic authors more than the location of the “Cells,” the colloquial name for the site. For Sketis, where monasticism still thrives in Wadi al-Natrun, we have a rich history to consult for later medieval perceptions of Delta monasticism. But by the ninth century, Kellia had vanished from the early medieval geography of monastic Egypt, not to be found again until 1964.

Pachomius’s Community of Village Monasteries

After the Desert Fathers of Lower Egypt, the most often referenced communities of monks of Egypt were those associated with Pachomius (292–346) and his koinonia in Upper Egypt.¹¹⁹ His place in the history of Egyptian monasticism is as central as Antony’s. Both Antony and Pachomius hold positions of authority more through the retelling of their ascetic lives as recounted and recycled by later authors and biographers than by what they actually built. James Goehring explains the difficulties surrounding Pachomius’s place as a founder:

Philip Rousseau urges for a similar corrective in the reading of monastic foundations by asserting “the formal establishment of a communal way of life did not represent a sudden lurch in a new direction.”¹²¹ For the discussion here, the story of Pachomius’s monastic foundations provides a useful case study for assessing how monastic communities looked at the desert and constructed the story of monastic settlement in Upper Egypt. But, like the narratives of the northern Delta deserts, the sources we have are deeply layered in generations of authors and redactors, consciously constructing a life of Pachomius. The authors were motivated to create history and thereby ensure the community’s identity.¹²²

Goehring has written extensively about the nature of village monasticism as a phenomenon that is more significant than scholars once believed: “Properly understood, Pachomian monasticism is not a product of the desert, but a form of village asceticism.”¹²³ The repositioning of Pachomius out of the desert and into the cultivated land is an important component of nuancing the history of Egyptian monasticism. Do the accounts of Pachomius’s reoccupation of the village share any themes with the famous accounts of the communities in the north? And in what ways do the descriptions provide a regional, Upper Egyptian story of monastic settlements?

Pachomius’s story is unique in comparison to that at the other four sites discussed in this chapter, as we do not have any substantive archaeological remains for any of the six monasteries that he built or the three other monasteries that later joined his koinonia. Given the rich literary sources surrounding Pachomius and his importance in monastic history both in Egypt and in the wider Mediterranean monastic world, the lack of physical evidence is an unfortunate lacuna in the archaeology of monastic Egypt. Physical indications of monastic settlements and the presence of monastic travelers are certainly evident in the form of Christian graffiti and dipinti in the towns and villages, in such areas as Wadi Sheikh Ali, Abydos, Naqada, and even around Pbow, where Pachomius lived.¹²⁴ The only probable physical remains associated with Pachomius are linked to a small church at Faw al-Qibli, ancient Pbow, which was excavated in the late 1970s and 1980s.¹²⁵ Working in the late 1960s, Fernand Debono interpreted some mud brick walls at Pbow as possible monastic structures, but his excavation areas have been lost and subsequent explorations in the area by Bastiaan Van Elderen, and later Peter Grossmann, did not locate Debono’s excavation areas.¹²⁶ Therefore, we do not have any extensive monastic remains available for archaeological study that would allow us to examine the physical realities in comparison with the monastic literature associated with Pachomius.

Let’s begin by looking at the numerous stories of Pachomius’s life to learn how he came to start a monastic movement that embraced the fringes but not the desert. The Life of Pachomius is preserved in several manuscripts in Coptic (Boharic and Sahidic), Greek, and Arabic.¹²⁷ The Boharic Life (also called the Great Coptic Life of Our Father Pachomius) provides the richest description of Pachomius’s movements, building methods, and the settlements. On his release from conscription, Pachomius set out to live in service to others, but he was not yet a monk, according to the Boharic Life. He arrived at his first “deserted village” called Šeneset (Gk. Chenoboskion), which had only a “few inhabitants.”¹²⁸ He walked down to a standing temple called Pmampesterposen, “the place of the baking of the bricks.”¹²⁹ God directed Pachomius to “settle down here” and he planted both a vegetable garden and palm trees so that he could provide for himself and serve some villagers with his food.¹³⁰ The location was “scorched by the intensity of the heat,” but it was not entirely abandoned, as other Christians lived there, and he was baptized in a local church.¹³¹ As a result of Pachomius’s generosity and charismatic Christian example, the population in the town began to increase, and the burden of community service caused Pachomius to spend a lot of time teaching others.¹³² After a plague ravaged the population and Pachomius tended to the sick and dying, he decided that his physical ministry was not suitable and he needed greater solitude. It was during this period of searching that Pachomius encountered Apa Palamon, a monk who lived on the outskirts of the village. Pachomius decided he would rather live with Palamon and away from the needs of the villagers. Before his departure, Pachomius entrusted the responsibility for his garden and date palm trees to an old monk. Despite Palamon’s efforts to send Pachomius away, Pachomius convinced Palamon of his will to pursue the ascetic life and trained with the older monk for three months.¹³³

The location of Palamon’s dwelling is not clear in the Lives except that it is just beyond the village of Šeneset and near or on a mountain of the desert. Palamon was considered a father and teacher for a collection of other like-minded monastics who resided in the mountain; but only Pachomius lived with Palamon.¹³⁴ Palamon and Pachomius trained their bodies by carrying baskets of sand up and down the mountain.¹³⁵ Pachomius, being younger than Palamon, also ventured into the acacia forest and the “far desert” to practice his askesis.¹³⁶ In addition to the natural environment, Pachomius also used the abandoned tombs “filled with dead [bodies]” for prayer; he was so dedicated to this practice that the ground beneath him in the tomb would be muddy because of his perspiration.¹³⁷ Others monks resided nearby on the mountain, but only Pachomius appears to have traversed the desertscape. After Palamon experienced a severe illness, Pachomius took a further step to seek independence from Palamon and pursue his own path, but away from others at Šeneset. He left the mountain, crossed the desert, and arrived at the large acacia forest by the Nile: “Led by the spirit, he covered a distance of some ten miles and came to a desert village on the river’s shore called Tabennesi.”¹³⁸ It was here that Pachomius was instructed by a heavenly voice to reside.

A description of the desert on the east bank of the Nile tells more about Pachomius’s ability to withstand difficulties than about the specific topography: “Around that mountain was a desert full of thorns where he was frequently sent to gather and carry wood. And since he was barefoot, he was sorely troubled for some time by the thorns which fixed themselves to his feet.”¹³⁹ On another walk through the desert, he ended up near the deserted village of Tabennesi (Nag’ al-Sabriyat). Here he heard from God while in prayer: “Stay here and build a monastery; for many will come to you to become monks.”¹⁴⁰ Pachomius agrees to expand his dwelling in a “deserted village” to a monastery.¹⁴¹ On his return to Palamon, Pachomius shared his account with his spiritual father. Together they built a cell at Tabennesi for Pachomius, and Palamon affirmed his ties to Pachomius as a “true son” so that they would visit each other after Pachomius remained in Tabennesi. The importance of mutual visitation was a tangible component of their relationship.¹⁴² The fact that the site is called a “deserted village” in all accounts, including the Arabic Life, suggests that Pachomius and other monks like him had found standing buildings or ruins, at the very least, and that the spaces could be repaired for habitation.¹⁴³ The ease of adding and repairing a mud brick structure would have made the processes relatively quick.

Soon afterwards Palamon died, and Pachomius returned to Šeneset to bury his teacher.¹⁴⁴ It is at this point that Pachomius was visited by his biological brother, who went north on learning of Palamon’s death to live with Pachomius. The Sahidic Life records in an abbreviated form a significant disagreement between the two brothers, and in the Boharic Life we learn that the cause stems from a difference of opinion regarding whether to expand their monastic settlement and invite others to join them. It is a rich passage in early monastic hagiography about monastic construction and attitudes toward the built environment at Tabennesi: “One day, as they were building a part of their dwelling, Pachomius wanted to extend it because of the crowds that would come to him, but John’s mind was that they should stay alone. When Pachomius saw that John was spoiling the wall they were building, he said to him, ‘Stop being foolish!’”¹⁴⁵ The tension between the two brothers is expressed in the building itself and in how well the walls were made for the expansion. John’s deliberate sabotage of the built wall reflected his displeasure with changing the two-person dwelling into one that would accommodate more monks and thus expand their settlement.

In the Sahidic Life, Pachomius’s response to the difference of opinion involves an unusual account of a brick used for prayer. It demonstrates the use of materials and their response to the spiritual devotion of Pachomius. Apparently he stood on a mud brick for discomfort in an underground cell in order to deter sleepiness. After a night of fervent prayer, the brick had dissolved because of the great volume of Pachomius’s perspiration. On a second night of prayer, necessitated by another bout of conflict with his brother, Pachomius prayed and perspired so much that the brick did not just break up but actually became a muddy pile.¹⁴⁶ This story reveals one of the rare instances of construction materials, such as mud bricks, being used in ascetic practice.¹⁴⁷ His prayers were effective, for many individuals began to visit the brothers, thereby proving Pachomius to be correct in his desire for expansion.

Individuals from the surrounding villages started to join Pachomius and build dwellings for themselves. Pachomius’s fame was not tied to just Tabennesi, and within a span of a few years Pachomius ruled over nine monastic settlements spanning a distance of more than 220 kilometers of the Nile, from Panopolis to Latopolis. Pachomius’s network was one of governance and a shared monastic rule – the koinonia. The nine monasteries that formed this network, in order from north to south, were Tse, Tkahšmin, Tsmine, Tbew, Tmoušons, Šeneset, Pbow, Tabennesi, and Phnoum. In addition to these, Pachomius also formed two communities for women, stemming from a desire to build a community where his sister could practice monasticism.¹⁴⁸ Of the nine male communities, Pachomius and his brothers built six, sometimes only building a wall around existing structures. Unlike Macarius, whose authority extended only to those immediately living around him and his successors and did not cover the entirety of the 30-km-long stretch of the natron lakes, Pachomius’s leadership spanned an extensive area of Upper Egypt. This does not mean he had jurisdiction over all the monastic communities that lay between and among the eleven communities. The accounts of those who elected to seek membership in Pachomius’s koinonia reveal the prevalence of other monastic communities in the region. Even if we look more conservatively at the concentration of the five male monasteries around Tabennesi, Pachomius was traveling in a 55,000-hectare district, often by boat.¹⁴⁹ The fact of the matter is that the area Pachomius moved into was not entirely deserted and was already home to a variety of cities and villages along the Nile banks, associated with cultivated fields and easy access for river travel.

The account of how the nine men’s monasteries came to be part of the koinonia is a complex story of building and incorporation. Tabennesi was the first Pachomian community built in a deserted village, likely meaning an area with low population and some vacant buildings that Pachomius and others could repurpose (see Fig. 35).¹⁵⁰ But then the population in Tabennesi started to increase; however, we are not told whether this is a natural increase in population after the plague or if Pachomius and his brothers were a point of attraction. He and his fellow monastics built a church for the lay community, and eventually even the monastic population increased enough that they needed their own sanctuary within the monastery. However, the “cramped” and “crowded” nature of Tabennesi forced Pachomius to pray for wisdom as to what he should do.¹⁵¹ For reasons we are not told, further expansion at Tabennesi seemed out of the question. God answered Pachomius’s request for guidance through a vision and provided a clear directive: “Go north to that deserted village lying downriver from you which is called Phbow (Pbow), and build there a monastery for yourself.”¹⁵² With this vision relating to the founding of Pbow, we have the first of the monasteries that formed Pachomius’ koinonia, as he was no longer the head of a single community, but the leader of a nascent federation.

35. Map detailing the possible location of Pachomian monastic establishments in relationship to other monastic sites in Upper Egypt.

Similar to Tabennesi, Pbow was a deserted village and presumably had some standing mud brick structures and possibly even a few inhabitants. In examining the foundation passages and how the Lives present the villages, Goehring raises the question as to the literary nature of the phrase “deserted village” and whether it is a conscious choice by the authors to describe an area that had experienced depopulation: “While the Pachomian accounts suggest a completely vacant village akin to the ghost towns of the old American West, it is possible that the label indicates nothing more than that a sufficient degree of vacancy and open space existed within the late antique villages to enable Pachomius to establish ascetic communities there.”¹⁵³ At the very least, there was vacancy in the village so that Pachomius was not challenging village or town authorities by adding settlements to the area. The deserted nature of the village may, therefore, also imply it was deserted by administrative secular authority. There seems to have been some ecclesiastical authority over the village, because the Boharic Life states that when Pachomius built the “celebration room,” he needed the permission of the bishop in order to do so.¹⁵⁴ Whatever the state of Pbow, Pachomius also built a wall for the monastery and houses for the monks. The third monastery added to the koinonia involved the addition of an already preexisting monastic community at Šeneset.¹⁵⁵ Further north, and across the river on the west bank, Apa Jonas, the leader of the monastic community at Tmoušons, asked Pachomius for affiliation with the koinonia.¹⁵⁶ With the addition of Šeneset and Tmoušons, Pachomius now had four monasteries in a 400-square-kilometer area under his leadership.

The second wave of expansion took Pachomius’s vision significantly further downriver, about 80 kilometers from Tmoušons to Tkahšmin, which is located near the city of Panopolis (Coptic Šmin).¹⁵⁷ Although it is not described as a desert village, the brothers traveled down the Nile to the site to build the monastery and dwelling places (pl. mma shope) for the monks. On completion, the community was given the name Tse. The sixth settlement to join the koinonia was facilitated by a letter from Arios, a bishop from Šmin.¹⁵⁸ The full participation of the brothers even included Pachomius, who carried the clay used for making the bricks on his back, just like the others.¹⁵⁹ The story of this construction project takes on an interesting turn when a segment of the population in Šmin regarded Pachomius’s building activities as a threat and vandalized the construction site at night, “throw[ing] down what the brothers had built up during the day.”¹⁶⁰ In the end, God instructed an angel to provide a protective barrier around the building site and wall with a ring of fire, protecting the site from further vandalism. The monastery of Tbew was the seventh monastery incorporated into the koinonia.¹⁶¹ Following the pattern of earlier existing monasteries that sought affiliation with Pachomius, Tbew was the last of the five core monasteries in the immediate 50-kilometer stretch of the Nile, running north from Tabennesi, to join the koinonia.

The last two monastic foundations are discussed in the Boharic Life, but only mentioned in passing in the Greek Life.¹⁶² Pachomius receives divine directives for the last two settlements at Tsmine, near Šmin, and Phnoum, near the mountain of Sne (Gk. Latopolis). These monasteries create the north boundary (Tsmine along with the monasteries at Šmin and Tse) and the south boundary of Pachomius’s administrative presence in Upper Egypt. Tsmine’s building program was similar to the others as he “finished it well, like all the other monasteries.”¹⁶³ It seemed important enough that he transferred Petronios from Tbew to the region of Panopolis to supervise the three monasteries located there: Tsmine, Šmin, and Tse. All three had been built under Pachomius’s hand.

The building of the monastic community at Phnoum by the mountain of Sne, 150 kilometers upriver from Pbow, was extremely far away from the heart of the koinonia. A final vision directed Pachomius to go south and organize another monastery.¹⁶⁴ The final building project was not without its problems. The author of the Boharic Life includes a brief report on the tensions between Pachomius and locals. In this case a bishop, who rightly may have seen Pachomius’s presence in his area as a challenge to his authority, organizes the protest. The erection of the monastic wall by Pachomius becomes a visual source of conflict for the inhabitants of Sne, who shared the same dislike for monastic construction as the inhabitants of Šmin. The passage demonstrates the symbolic power inherent in new boundary walls as a challenge to present authority in the region:

The final description of the ninth monastery states that Pachomius had in fact built all the others, when in reality the Lives clarify that he built only six of the nine. The other three became members either through self-election into the koinonia or by donation. The later conflicts in Šmin and Phnoum therefore highlight the sharp difference between Pachomius’s first monasteries built in the deserted villages where ecclesiastical authorities and local administration did not interfere with his efforts, perhaps owing to the lax attitude toward new building projects in Late Antique Egypt.

The foundation accounts of the village monasteries of the Pachomian koinonia provide a rich and variegated account of the many ways spaces became monastic outside of the desertscape. Despite the hagiographical tendency of these sources to commemorate Pachomius and his immediate successors, Theodore and Horsiesius, the stories provide several important components that reflect a generalized landscape of Upper Egypt. Pachomius was always commanded to build monasteries by God, and when other monastic communities desired his leadership, it was because their own leader recognized the benefits of the koinonia. The six monasteries Pachomius built included two sparsely populated villages (Tabennesi and Pbow), two cities (Šmin and Phnoum), and two areas located near the same city of Šmin (Tse and Tsmine). In the case of the three affiliated monasteries, two had very different origins: Šeneset was a loosely inhabited village like Tabennesi and Pbow, while Tbew was built on a wealthy family’s estate.

When comparing the Pachomian foundation narrative material, whose complex history includes purpose-built structures and the occupation of abandoned buildings and monasteries, with the material from Middle Egypt and the Great Desert of Sketis, two parallels appear. First, the literary traditions use visions and dreams as mechanisms for legitimizing the actions of founders and foreshadowing the success of their settlement choices. Pachomius had received the first indication of his future success on the night of his baptism with a dream. He was given a surrealist image of how God’s pleasure with him would be a blessing for those around him. As dew fell from heaven upon his head, it condensed in his right hand simultaneously, transforming into a honeycomb. This sweet sign of blessing and favor – his honeycombed right hand – fell to the ground and spread honey over the earth.¹⁶⁶ His blessedness spreads throughout the land of Egypt and beyond.

Another similarity between the monastic narrative sources is the importance of the generalized landscape and its topography with the physical markers of the monastic settlements. The deserts, caves, mountains, forests, villages, and the Nile appear as real places for monastic living. Towers, dwellings, and walls mark the texts as signs of monastics laying claim to the land. As athletes and soldiers of Christ, monks could quickly build a mud brick structure or repair a wall, which was vandalized in the night, with the end goal of fulfilling God’s vision. If they were faithful in building, God would reside in the new locations and bless the community.

The one significant difference between the village monastic settlement narratives of Pachomius and the accounts of the desert dwellings is the importance of displacing demons through habitation. In the case of Sketis and the regions around Nitria and Kellia, the natural environment was certainly inhabited, but not by bishops, villagers, or administrative officials. While we know that miners were living in the Delta, the narratives present the only real threats in the deserts as nonhuman. Demons could hide in the desert, camouflaged by the caves, quarries, and mountains. The monastic settlement then forces demons to become beings without homes as the desert and its associated areas transform into heavenly realms of angels on earth.

Village monastic narratives do not dwell on demons and their locations because people already inhabited the villages they wished to live in. The dangers were different in village monasteries: monks refusing to follow the coenobitic rule, family members who continually visit, and even bishops who tear down walls. Pachomius and his followers carved out different spaces for themselves in the towns. They remodeled abandoned buildings as others remodeled quarries. In the end, building near others who did not share the monastic goal of the ascetic life could result in significant conflict, just like the conflict with demons in the desert. In all cases, the sources do not focus on the spatial configuration of the settlements, or how monastic buildings differed from nonmonastic structures.

Apollo Builds a Monastery for Phib in Bawit

The monastic settlement of Bawit, located 310 kilometers south of Wadi al-Natrun and 250 kilometers north of Tabennesi, is in the heart of Middle Egypt, and is the site of the Monastery of Apa Apollo. In contrast to Sketis’s, whose reputation spread widely outside of Egypt to the Mediterranean world, Apollo’s community was less well known, perhaps because of its southern location and the fact that fewer foreign, Late Antique Christians traveled to it. The Monastery of Apa Apollo’s location should not, however, suggest it was small or insignificant. The central built community covered an area of 40 hectares and its walls were painted with the faces of numerous monks who may have once lived at the community in the sixth and later centuries (see Fig. 36). If the remote cliff dwellings are included in the area, the community expands to an area of 78 hectares, although not all of the land was used for building. Bawit is roughly half the size of Al-Ashmunein (Gk. Hermopolis Magna) (65 hectares), one of the largest cities in Upper Egypt for this period. This comparison illustrates that Bawit was a medium-sized town in its own right. Given Bawit’s size and significance as a major settlement in Middle Egypt, how does its foundation narrative history contribute to a history of monastic authors crafting a generalized landscape, which overshadowed the reality of the actual monastic landscape?

36. Wall painting from Chapel 56 at Bawit showing three monks: Apa Makarios, Apa Moses the Freeman, and Apa Jeremias.

The earliest account to reference Apollo as a founder is the late fourth-century History of the Monks in Egypt. The anonymous traveler who visited Egypt recounted a foundation narrative of the settlement by Apollo in the Hermopolite nome. While not the main intent of the text, the account includes the evolution of Apollo’s community from solitary dwellings to a thriving community that welcomed foreign visitors such as a pilgrim from Palestine.¹⁶⁷ The pilgrim’s report states that Apollo was a leader of 500 monks, who lived in desert hermitages at the foot of a mountain.¹⁶⁸ During Apollo’s eightieth year (385 or 388), he founded his own “great monastery” that likely was the collective term for the monastic houses.¹⁶⁹ The History of the Monks in Egypt presents an oral history of Apollo’s community, beginning with the monk’s withdrawal from the world and a forty-year sojourn in the desert. This period ended with a divine call to return to the “inhabited land” in order to assemble a group of followers.¹⁷⁰ Apollo established his dwelling in a cave at the foot of the mountain that adjoined the “settled region.”¹⁷¹ Here he lived with five other monks and his gifts as a healer attracted other ascetics who lived in hermitages around him.¹⁷² The History of the Monks in Egypt states that these individuals shared a “common life” with each other and ate at a common table.¹⁷³ As a Latin source, the topographical indicators are few: a mountain, a desert, and the inhabited land. Given the nature of the source from an oral tradition, it is difficult to use this account to establish a firm ecological history of the area. The foundation account of the monastic settlement in the region of Hermopolis and the charismatic personality of Apollo are at the heart of the story. The environmental accuracy of the description is not necessarily important to the author or his readers. The focal point is Apollo and the blessings he could offer as a living angel.¹⁷⁴

Numerous Coptic texts collected from the nome of Hermopolis speak of a topos of Apa Apollo in the Hermopolite nome. Sarah J. Clackson translated and edited several of the documentary texts from the region with the objective of attributing them to either of the monasteries of Apollo at Bawit or at Titkooh. Clackson’s reading and analysis led her to conclude that there may be other monasteries dedicated to Apollo in the area.¹⁷⁵ In most cases the documentary sources do not speak at all to the question of foundation, narrative stories, or the spatial configuration of the settlements. For this information we must turn to a later source to see how the community memorialized their founder and how the community continued to elevate Apollo as a spiritual leader whose physical dwellings exuded sacredness.

The Sahidic Coptic Life of Phib is a hagiography chronicling the life of Apollo’s closet companion Phib and their links with a settlement at Titkooh. It is a tenth-century Life and makes it clear that Apollo is the patron for a large monastic foundation for the region.¹⁷⁶ In comparing the fourth-century Latin travelogue with the later Life, Apollo’s authority has extended from a story of solitary sojourn to a more detailed history explaining why Apollo was called to return to the settled land, how he moved between the desert lands, and what the general topography of the area consisted of. The attractiveness of the ascetic lifestyle practiced by Apollo and Phib is the reason given to explain why others wished to reside with them; the landscape has little attraction, for it is Apollo and Phib whose actions within the landscape demonstrate they are worthy of admiration.¹⁷⁷

The Life of Phib begins with the partnership between Apollo and Phib pursuing the monastic life together “on the mountain (toou) of Titkooh.”¹⁷⁸ Tim Vivian observes that the Coptic use of toou can mean either a geophysical mountain or a monastic community.¹⁷⁹ If this is the case, then the reference to the mountain in the Life could carry dual meaning and therefore limit the topographical veracity of the foundation narrative. The story comes to us from Papohe, who was a younger monastic brother of the two saints. They spent a year in one location on a mountain (toou), but then traveled in all areas that were “completely mountainous, like wild beasts.”¹⁸⁰ Here the reference may echo the ideas of 2 Maccabees 5:27 in which Judas Maccabees withdrew to “a desert place, and there lived amongst wild beasts in the mountains with his company: and they continued feeding on herbs, that they might not be partakers of pollution.”¹⁸¹

After a word from the Lord, the three men elect to relocate again, this time by Tahrouj, the modern town of Dayrut. They went to a “mountain of the desert opposite a village” and “found some holes in the rock there and made some small dwellings.”¹⁸² The monastic settlement is in proximity to a village with the desert mountain cliffs nearby. The use of rock holes or caves evokes the language of the faithful in Hebrews 11, and the description makes it clear that the monastics were adapting the natural environment for habitation, just as Macarius had in Sketis. However, unlike Macarius and his survey of the land, Apollo does not seem to realize until later that the community lacks easy access to water. He asks Papohe to dig into the “earth” and see what God will provide.¹⁸³ A natural spring was eventually converted into a well for long-term use, and the presence of the water is described in the Life as a sign of God’s favor.

The men then left for a visit to a monk living in the north when they encountered other monastics living on the mountain of Titkooh. The location is specifically described as a place where “God granted his blessing for eternal life.”¹⁸⁴ A further indication of the mountain’s unique qualities is that Phib died here and the other brothers buried him on the mountain. Apollo and Papohe continued on to see Apa Pamin’s community, and then Apollo received a vision from Christ that urged him to return to Titkooh. The narrative grants Apollo authority over the community and places Phib’s body as a further sign that the place is tied physically to Apollo through his affection for Phib. Just as Macarius and Pachomius were given the land as a spiritual inheritance, so too Apollo heard: “stay there, for my Father has given it to you.”¹⁸⁵

Apollo resisted the divine invitation from Christ and eschewed the offer to be tied to the world. Christ’s response to Apollo reflects a degree of sympathy for Apollo and other monks who did not wish to be tied to a particular location. In the end, the vision concludes with an elaborate discussion of the architecture of the settlement placing Christ as the general contractor and Apollo as the subcontractor. Christ decrees: “I am with you everywhere; I will give you a great and famous name, and all the people will hear of you and will come to your site for this gift and will worship at your holy place ... See now, I have shown you everything that will happen to you in all the designs of my Father ... I will place great blessings upon your sanctuary in every way and I will have your children called the lamp-bearers of Christ.”¹⁸⁶ The holy topos is thereby a sanctified place built as a blessing both for God and for Apollo.

The importance of Apollo as a known monastic and his spiritual children born in the mountain reinforces the importance of the desert as a place of fertility and spiritual birth. The same theme of spiritual fertility appears in the Sketis with Macarius as the mother of the monastic communities in Lower Egypt. The mountain as a holy residence with fecundity appears later in the voice of the brothers who rejoice in Apollo’s arrival: “This is the mountain of the Lord, the exalted mountain, the established mountain, the fertile mountain. This is the mountain where God has wished to dwell forever. This is the house of God, the dwelling place of the righteous.”¹⁸⁷ The monks build a small church over the body of Phib, but it is not sufficient for the needs of those who will eventually come. Christ appears again and directs Apollo to build an even bigger church. In this vision, Christ actually walks the grounds of the site with Apollo, telling the monk its exact measurements. Neither the dwellings of the monks nor the settlement are described in any detail. The Life of Phib recounts only the story of two church constructions and the importance of Apollo as the community’s leader and Phib’s body as a pillar.

The Life of Phib and the History of the Monks in Egypt therefore provide a broad foundation narrative for Apollo’s community. Specific details of the unique features of the Middle Egyptian landscape are missing or entirely omitted. Apollo’s community was much further inland, not associated with earlier mining activities, and not linked to any earlier pharaonic or temporary settlements. The importance of salt for Sketis and Nitria makes the natural resource an easy object to highlight as it effortlessly resonates with biblical imagery. Another difference with the Lower Egyptian narrative tradition is that Macarius and Amoun were monastic pioneers. In the case of Apollo and Phib, they were not the first to battle desert demons – they were building on the foundation of earlier, unnamed monks in the region. The difficult work of expelling evil beings had already taken place, but the mountain was not as beautiful and fertile as it could be without the presence and leadership of Apollo. The rhetorical strategy used by the author of the Life showcases Apollo’s residency as the direct catalyst for God’s pleasure with the monastic community and his decision to reside with the monks. By following the architectural plans and vision of Christ, Apollo was granted the status as the namesake for the settlement. Apollo’s leadership at Bawit warranted his elevation in the community’s memory as a monastic builder in the late fourth century. However, his community also vanished, like Kellia, after the ninth century, not to be seen as a center of monasticism until Jean Clédat’s work in 1901.

Shenoute’s Monastic Community in Sohag

Further south in Upper Egypt and west of the modern towns of Sohag and Akhmim, a collection of monastic settlements sits on the west bank of the Nile.¹⁸⁸ In the fourth century a group of men gathered to live together in small communal monastic settlements, while another group selected more modest dwellings in the nearby escarpment. To the south, near ancient Athribis, a group of women lived together in a village monastery.¹⁸⁹ Despite the presence of the Pachomian monasteries on the east bank at Šmin, Tse, and Tsmine, the west bank communities were independent and not subject to Pachomian rule. Together the west bank monastic settlements formed a large congregation or federation (sunagōgē), whose legacy was shaped by the leadership and teachings of Shenoute of Atripe (348–465), the community’s third leader and namesake for the Monastery of Apa Shenoute (Ar. Dayr Anba Shinūdah).¹⁹⁰

The Monastery of Apa Shenoute is situated in the ancient Panopolite nome, and the capital of the nome was the city of Akhmim, located on the east bank of the Nile.¹⁹¹ Late Antique documentary evidence paints a complex Roman district that had active pagan cults and an ever-growing Christian population, very similar to the situation throughout much of late Roman Egypt.¹⁹² The closest pharaonic site to the monastic settlement is Athribis, located 2 kilometers to the south, and this would become the site for a women’s community under Shenoute’s authority.¹⁹³ Archaeological remains were visible at the site of the Monastery of Apa Shenoute in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie appointed an assistant to survey the area over a two-day period in the early twentieth century and deemed the material to be from the period of Constantine and a monastery, without any explanation for this interpretation.¹⁹⁴ Until recent excavations, the knowledge of Shenoute’s legacy was known primarily from the Life of Shenoute, his place in the Synaxarion, and early editions of some of Shenoute’s writings, totaling more than 4,000 pages. Like those of other monastic founders, Shenoute’s legacy was shaped by stories that often focused on the extreme differences in his actions from those of others, casting him as an anomalous actor in monastic history. As we will see, he shares much more with his fellow monastic leaders than once thought, and he is taking his place among other founders of Egyptian monasticism.

According to the Life of Shenoute, he entered the monastic life as a child and was instructed in asceticism by his uncle Pjol.¹⁹⁵ By his mid-thirties he assumed the role of archimandrite, or abbot, and remained as head of the diverse community for an impressive span of eighty years. During his tenure he shaped a unique communal monasticism that was entirely his own. His community was far more modest in area than the communities under Pachomian control, but this does not mean his role in Egyptian monasticism was any less significant. In fact, there are several features of Shenoute’s life and his contribution to the monastic movement that make him equally important in the development of Late Antique monasticism.

The monastery he established came to be known in medieval Egypt as al-Dayr al-Abyaḏ, or the White Monastery. The title reflects the centrality of the most recognized architectural structure at the settlement even today: a massive ashlar masonry, limestone church, measuring 37 m × 75 m (see Fig. 37).¹⁹⁶ Built by Shenoute around 455,¹⁹⁷ the church stands as a physical testament of his ability to accumulate financial resources and labor to build one of the largest monastic churches of the fifth century, similar in scale to the Pachomian church at Faw Qibli.¹⁹⁸ The church includes a trilobed sanctuary, numerous carved niches, pharaonic spolia, and figural paintings, and its exterior bears similarities to an ancient pharaonic temple.¹⁹⁹ The church is one of the best-preserved Late Antique Christian monuments, only after the church at Dayr Anba Bishay, the Monastery of Apa Bishay, and known now as Dayr al-Aẖmar, the Red Monastery, located 3 kilometers north.²⁰⁰ The Monastery of Apa Bishay was part of Shenoute’s federation, and therefore it is not surprising that the northern community built its own monumental church fifty years later and as a mirror of Shenoute’s church, but on a smaller scale.²⁰¹ After Shenoute’s church was built, it served as a continual point of reference in his writings as a tangible example for instruction for his monastic and lay audiences. Caroline Schroeder illustrates how Shenoute highlights “the building as a symbol and exemplar of ascetic purity,” thereby elevating the church as a perpetual reminder of his and God’s teachings regarding proper Christian and monastic conduct.²⁰² Given the enormous size of the structure, Shenoute also needed to contextualize the beauty of the monument within acceptable ascetic parameters.²⁰³ Shenoute justified such a magnificent display of wealth to the community, as Ariel López argues, as an “earned” blessing from God for the unquestioned “ascetic discipline” of the faithful members.²⁰⁴ The church of the White Monastery reflects both in physical form and in rhetorical strategies, within his writings, the profound impact of Shenoute on the legacy of the monastic community outside of Sohag.

37. The church of St. Shenoute at the White Monastery in Sohag, Egypt.

The community at the White Monastery offers evidence for studying the longevity of monastic occupation from Late Antiquity until the late medieval period, when the monastery was abandoned, and is currently the focus for a major archaeological study by the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project.²⁰⁵ The historical record is silent as to what factors led to the demise of the community. Sometime in the Ottoman period, Christian families built mud brick homes within the very walls of the great Late Antique church, using the very sturdy walls of the edifice as a protective enclosure for their community. The large church continued to serve the Christians in the area with at least one priest until the late twentieth century. The modern adaptive reuse of the structure was still observed by several visitors to the site until the 1980s, when mud brick homes were removed and a small community of monks was relocated to the site by Pope Shenoute III to reactivate the monastery. Today the community at the White Monastery thrives with the expansion of numerous buildings, a rising monastic community, and a popular feast day in July commemorating the life of Shenoute.

The sources for examining Shenoute and his community in the late fourth and fifth centuries are extensive and varied. We are fortunate to have fragments of more than 200 of Shenoute’s sermons and teachings and a smaller collection of his successor, Besa.²⁰⁶ Shenoute’s writings offer the largest collection of Sahidic Coptic material for the study of Late Antiquity.²⁰⁷ His writings include sermons, letters, and monastic instructions. Based on Stephen Emmel’s careful reconstruction of the highly dispersed Shenoutean fragments, we can speak of eight volumes of Discourses, which include primarily his letters and homilies, and nine volumes of the Canons, a collection that offer monastic instruction to his diverse homosocial community.²⁰⁸ In the case of his homilies, Shenoute wrote not just to a monastic community, but rather to a mixed community of lay and monastic listeners, who gathered at the church to hear his teachings. The central reason why Shenoute is not well known is that his works were not transmitted as part of the narratives of early Egyptian monasticism that were circulated in the Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean and in the Medieval Christian West. Thus the Desert Fathers of Kellia and Sketis, along with Pachomius, far overshadow the stories of Shenoute’s activities as a foundational leader for Upper Egyptian monasticism. Soon critical editions of his works will replace early twentieth century editions to bring Shenoute more into the pantheon of Egyptian monastic leaders. Scholarship on Shenoute over the last two decades has effectively illustrated his value for the study of Late Antiquity, the rise of monasticism, the value of Coptic sources for historical examination, and Shenoute’s place in the canon of monasticism.²⁰⁹

A second source for examining Shenoute’s foundation tradition is the collection of Sahidic letters and sermons by Besa (d. 474). They are far fewer in number in comparison to those of Shenoute’s, but they have been published.²¹⁰ Although Emmel identified a few of the Besa letters to be written by Shenoute, the bulk of the fragments are Besa’s and present an opportunity to assess the legacy of Shenoute’s rhetorical strategies for presenting the built environment and its landscape to his audiences.²¹¹ Akin to Shenoute’s Discourses, the majority of Besa’s writings were directed toward the monastics he supervised and in particular address violations of the community’s rules. In addition to the amazingly rich corpus of monastic intellectual and theological sources from Shenoute and Besa, a fifth-century Boharic Life of Shenoute, attributed to but not written by Besa, offers a hagiographical presentation of Shenoute that includes familiar rhetorical themes.²¹² Shenoute and Besa’s works provide a unique opportunity to examine monastic construction and the development of the foundation narrative embedded within the Life of Shenoute. Together, the sources allow us to observe the immediate construction of a tradition regarding Shenoute’s role as a builder and his prominence as a monastic leader within Upper Egypt.²¹³

Unlike the other founders, whose biographies must be reconstructed from the much later hagiographical sources, the writings of Shenoute and Besa offer near-contemporary sources for writing a biography of Shenoute.²¹⁴ Shenoute began his life as a writer around 380, in his early thirties.²¹⁵ He was still a monk at the time when incidents of severe impropriety prompted him to confront and address his superior, the archimandrite Ebonh, to pursue more effective action.²¹⁶ Shenoute was dissatisfied with how Ebonh handled violations of the monastic rule, apparently related to sexual misconduct and the stealing of food.²¹⁷ In two letters from Canon 1, Shenoute infused his language with biblical metaphors to express his intense concern for the impact of sinful actions left unchecked in the community.²¹⁸ So strong were his convictions that he imposed a permanent separation between himself and the community. He removed himself from the communal setting to a desert dwelling place – from this location, Shenoute could ensure he was far from the sin-infused community below. The desert (daie) offered a space that was free from pollution, for Shenoute believed, as Schroeder explains, that buildings could and did reflect the “purity of the monks’ bodies and souls.”²¹⁹

In his early complaints against the community and Ebonh, Shenoute leveled criticism against the archimandrite regarding building projects. Shenoute addressed the community as a whole, imploring them to recognize the misplaced priorities and urged them to replace a love for things with a love for the poor and the needy:

As a monk, Shenoute observed the community participating in construction projects and knew that the money to underwrite the project came from gifts provided by the community’s lay supporters.²²¹ He observed the need to hire laborers, the process of brick making, and the overall architectural planning involved. Not only were buildings made, but some were substantially remodeled in order to make way for new construction. Such activity, in Shenoute’s view, further reflected the damaged state of the community under Ebonh’s leadership – the archimandrite had allowed the devil’s desires to take root inside the garden and destroyed its beauty. By retreating to a desert location, Shenoute spared himself from watching and hearing the sounds of the very tangible mismanagement of God’s ideal plan.

The strong opinions evinced in Shenoute’s letters from 380 are moderated in the later writings by the 107-year-old Shenoute as he celebrates the beauty and blessings of his building projects during his leadership as archimandrite. Nearly seventy-five years had passed since he first retreated to the desert in protest. The sermons in Canon 7 reflect Shenoute’s thoughts as a leader with several decades of experience. In the first five sermons found in Canon 7 we learn of Shenoute’s building of the “Great House” (neinoč nhi), the limestone church of the White Monastery, along with additional monastic structures, houses, and washing areas.²²² In the sermon This Great House, Shenoute spoke directly of the roughly five months of construction of the church. He highlighted the speed of building as a reflection of God’s blessing on the work he carried out.²²³ Emmel has convincingly argued that the sermon marked the inauguration of the church for use.²²⁴ It is fortunate that we have both the built space and Shenoute’s reflections on that space available to assess how he presented the built environment to his audiences.

Throughout the first five sermons of Canon 7, Shenoute established his sense of place, and thus illustrates his vision of the monastic landscape that he wishes his community to adopt. He linked places to sacredness (purity or holiness); buildings, just like bodies, could become the dwelling places of God.²²⁵ Equally so, dwelling places could be inhabited either by God or the devil and thus everyone should diligently monitor one’s actions within the community.²²⁶ The idea that actions create and foster a sense of holiness nicely accords with Lefebvre’s theories that generic places are transformed into specific spaces through socially constructed beliefs. Shenoute drew on 1 Peter 2:4 and Isaiah 61:4 to invoke the language that humans are spiritual houses, made from tangible materials, just like the built environments they live in, and they can be abandoned because of neglect or sin of those living within the space: “But as for the soul, and also the body or the whole person of those who became desert (daie) and who were laid waste (šōf), it will be said about them instead of places and cities, ‘They will build up the deserted places. As for the ones who first laid waste the cities that are desert, they will renew them forever, and for generations.’”²²⁷ Building alone did not earn God’s favor; rather, it was the nature of the individuals in the building: “It is not the ornamentation of the house and the writings that are inscribed on its edifications and its beams that will reconcile us to Jesus if we destroy his members but the souls that become ornaments by purification and that are inscribed in this single commonwealth of the angels.”²²⁸ This passage illustrates Shenoute’s modified language of what the built environment could mean. Whereas once he would have seen construction as a form of misplaced priorities, as a much more experienced observer of the significance of the built environment for spiritual living, he was able to construct a church and expand his monastery to the glorification of God.

When we look at Shenoute’s successor, Besa, we see little trace or commemoration of Shenoute as the monastic architect. However, this may be due in large part to the fact that Besa’s letters and sermons are few in comparison to those of Shenoute. In a sermon addressing theft within and outside of the monastery, Besa reports on gossip that might be raised about the community’s members by saying those outside will wonder why “the people of Apa Shenoute” are acting in sinful ways.²²⁹ This is the only explicit reference to the monastic population as Shenoute’s, and thus may indicate the emerging tradition to elevate the community’s identity firmly to Shenoute as the founder.

It is therefore not surprising that the most fully developed sense of Shenoute as a builder appears in the encomium on Shenoute, the Life of Shenoute, where we can observe the development of the community’s later identification with Shenoute after his eighty years as archimandrite. The date of the composition of the Life is difficult to pin down. As Nina Lubomierski has argued, Besa, who is attributed with authorship, could not have written the Life, although some Sahidic fragments exist that suggest some form of an early hagiographic tradition existed in the century after Shenotue’s death. Later Boharic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and Arabic versions exist and offer fuller and more elaborate recounting of Shenoute’s deeds while archimandrite.²³⁰ The Life also shows the impact of Shenoute’s legacy for the subsequent generations, as it would be read on his feast day in July.

With the Life of Shenoute we can observe similar patterns of constructing the monastic landscape through those who lived and experienced the buildings associated with the community, perhaps generations after the life of Shenoute. The accounts allow us to think in comparative terms with the accounts associated with Pachomius and with Macarius. The author of the Life prepares his audience for Shenoute’s ascendancy to greatness as a monk and a builder in the opening story about his selection for the monastic life as a young boy. An angel appears to Shenoute’s uncle, Pjol, while the boy sleeps, and states: “Truly he will be a righteous and illustrious man, and after him, no-one like him will arise in any country. He will build a monastery, and to everyone who enters his place will he be a comfort and a protection; his community will endure for [all] generations.”²³¹ Shenoute’s holiness provides him with the capacity to build the monastery and to create a thriving monastic legacy. In the next scene, Shenoute hears that he will become “archimandrite of the whole world,” further solidifying his future as a leader for the community and a role model for all monastic communities.²³²

Two other stories from the Life relate specifically to Shenoute’s building projects and the two most prominent Late Antique features at the site of the White Monastery still visible today: a red brick well and the limestone church of Shenoute. The first story recounts Shenoute’s authority over the natural environment and building materials. After workmen began digging the well, part of it fell onto the workmen. Given the depth of excavation needed, the incident warranted Shenoute’s attention and he was summoned immediately to the scene. On his arrival, he pierced the wall of the well with a palm branch and a tree sprouted and helped stabilize the well; “[f]rom that day to this, the well has never moved again.”²³³ The story follows an account of piercing in which Shenoute created a hole in a rock for a ship mooring. The rock, like the well, was also still visible at the site as a sign of Shenoute’s miraculous interactions with the natural world – he could pierce rock with his bare fingers and he could stabilize the walls of a great well by planting a palm branch. Together the stories fuse Shenoute to the physical artifacts of the monastery and its identity – a theme that occurs again and again in hagiographical sources.

The construction account of the White Monastery’s church occurs shortly after the recounting of the pierced rock and unmoved well. The narrative begins with a familiar setting between Christ the architect and a monastic contractor. Christ gave a clear directive to Shenoute: “Arise, and measure out the church and the foundation of the monastery, and build a sanctuary in my name and yours.”²³⁴ The church and monastery are not Shenoute’s glory alone but also Christ’s, for together they will share in the blessings of the building project. Shenoute also receives his divine endorsement as the founder of the monastery, despite the fact that he had two predecessors, Pjol and Ebonh. However, Shenoute did not have the resources to undertake such a large campaign. Christ directed the archimandrite to go to his “dwelling-place in the desert” and pick up anything along the way, as it will help fund the building project. The author of the Life, perhaps anticipating that his monastic audience would know that Antony had a similar encounter along a desert path in which he needed to resist the devil’s snares, has Christ reassure Shenoute that it is not the “devil’s doing” but rather Christ’s and he will provide the means to “build the church and the monastery in accordance with [his] will.”²³⁵ After a night of prayer in the inner desert, Shenoute walked back to the monastery and found a container with gold or some other item that would help underwrite the expense for the church construction.²³⁶ The story concludes with a further reminder to the audience that Christ and Shenoute worked together to plan the church and the monastery: “They went off together and laid out the foundation of the sanctuary. My father then arranged for the workmen and craftsmen, the stonemasons and the carpenters. They worked on the church, and with the Lord helping them in all that they did with everything they needed, they completed it.”²³⁷ Shenoute fulfilled the prophecy that he would build a great monastery and church with divine assistance, much as Apollo was directed at Bawit.

By the mid-sixth century, Shenoute’s place as a monastic founder was well established in Egyptian monastic writing, as exhibited in the Panegyric of Abraham of Farshut. Abraham would be the “last Coptic orthodox (non-Chalcedonian) archimandrite” before the federation’s demise.²³⁸ In the Panegyric, Abraham is positioned as a “good son”²³⁹ following the laws and guidance of his “holy fathers of the federation (koinōnia):” Apa Pachomius, Apa Petronius, and Apa Shenoute of the “mountain” (toou) of Atripe.²⁴⁰ The inclusion of Shenoute was not insignificant, but deeply intentional, for “after the demise of the Pachomian federation during the middle of the sixth century,” writes James Goehring, “the federation of Shenoute filled its place in the history of Upper Egyptian Coptic orthodox coenobitic monasticism.”²⁴¹ The hagiographical tradition points toward a need within the history of Upper Egyptian monasticism to lay claim to Shenoute. The laws that he and Pachomius established formed a foundation that Abraham was compelled to follow and maintain.²⁴² In describing “our ancient fathers and forefathers, that is, Apa Pachomius and Apa Shenoute and Apa Petronius and Apa Horsiesius, the fathers of the world,” the author of the Panegyric was not merely grafting Shenoute into a Pachomian legacy, but rather offering an institutional history of the region that did not differentiate between “Pachomian” and “Shenoutean” monasticism.²⁴³ While Pachomius’s community vanished, the two male monasteries of Shenoute’s federation continued for at least another 600 years. The author of the Panegyric contributed to the crafting of an Upper Egyptian landscape with two equally significant founders: Pachomius and Shenoute.