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  • Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe
  • Andrew Crislip
Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe. By Caroline T. Schroeder. [Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2007. Pp. viii, 237. $79.95.) ISBN 978-0 812-23990-4.

In Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe, a revision of her 2002 Duke University dissertation, Caroline T. Schroeder untangles a number of "bodies" at play in the writings of Shenoute of Atripe (ca. 346/347–465), leader of several monastic congregations near the modern Egyptian city of Sohag. These bodies include Shenoute's discursive construction [End Page 768] of the individual bodies of his fellow monks, their interrelation with the "social body" of his congregation, the interplay of these two bodies with a third body—Shenoute's newly constructed church, and Shenoute's theology of bodily resurrection.

Schroeder examines "the problems and potentials of embodiment" in four chapters by arguing that Shenoute promoted "an ideology of the monastic life centered on the discipline of the body," and "that this ideology lies at the heart of Shenoute's theology, his asceticism, and his style of monastic leadership" (p. 3). In case this seems tautological, Schroeder works on the basis of Michel Foucault's expansive formulation of askesis: "the training of the self by the self" (p. 3). Here as elsewhere, Foucault is treated as authoritative.

After an introduction (pp. 1–23), Schroeder presents Shenoute's rise to prominence in his community through a close reading of the two fragmentarily preserved letters in Shenoute's Canon 1 (pp. 24–53). Schroeder argues that Shenoute conceives of sin as a polluting agent communicable from person to person. Thus the moral purity of the community is at stake in the bodily discipline of every individual. Her reading effectively shows how such an ideology of the polluting nature of sin could have helped Shenoute justify his rise to power and deposition of the congregation's previous leader. The chapter would have benefited by the inclusion of a translation of the as yet untranslated letters (or choice selections) as an appendix.

In chapter 2 (pp. 54–89) Schroeder looks at select ritual practices reflected in several of Shenoute's Canons. Of special importance to Schroeder is that Shenoute's disciplinary language of purity and pollution distinguishes him from other contemporary Egyptian writers. In fact, Schroeder argues," [T]hey articulate a monastic subjectivity particular to the Shenoutean community" (p. 67). Given the differences in genre and preservation among Shenoute's Canons and the Rules of Pachomius, and the occasional parallels in purity/pollution language between them (p. 70), a quantitative analysis, controlling for the genre and size of the corpora, would have made Schroeder's impressionistic analysis more convincing. Schroeder ends the chapter by effectively demonstrating how Shenoute links his own illness (described in Canon 9) with the spiritual pestilence plaguing his community (which could be further explored by examining Shenoute's more extensive reflections in Canons 6 and 8).

In chapter 3 (pp. 90–125) Schroeder examines the construction of a third monastic body, again connected with the bodies of the individual monks and the "social body"of the congregation:Shenoute's church, built under the supervision of Shenoute himself and still standing at Deir Anba Shenouda's monastery near Sohag. Here as in chapter 1, Schroeder shows how Shenoute employs Pauline metaphor (here the body as a temple of God) to enforce monastic discipline in his community. She also compares Shenoute's theological elaboration of the building with parallels in the Pachomian Paralipomena and Paulinus of Nola. [End Page 769]

In chapter 4 (pp.126–57) Schroeder turns to the body of Christ and the resurrection body of believers. As in other chapters, Schroeder shows that Shenoute was no intellectually isolated provincial, but was actively engaged in the theological controversies of the day, here adhering to Alexandrian orthodoxy. Schroeder makes much of Shenoute's conflation of the categories pagans, heretics, and Jews. This could have benefited from comparison with Shenoute's contemporaries. So Epiphanius of Salamis (365–403) includes Jewish sects, "barbarians," and pagan philosophies alongside Christian heresies in his Panarion.

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