Moines et communautés monastiques en Égypte (IVe-VIIIe siècles) (review)

No scholar of early Christian monasticism or late antique Egypt should be without this book. The culmination of Ewa Wipszycka's life's research, it provides indispensable analyses of most aspects of Egyptian monasticism prior to the Arab conquest. Wipszycka has edited and reworked her previous publications, adding new material and reorganizing prior work, to produce a new, stand-alone monograph. Only a couple of earlier essays appear unrevised.

The first two chapters on literature and documentary evidence (papyri, ostraca, and inscriptions) introduce the book's textual sources and their limitations. The book then proceeds topically, with chapters on geography, Antony, terminology, monastic leadership, social history, monastic populations, clergy in monasteries, economics, women, and dangers inherent to monastic life. This last chapter addresses common hardships as well as specific historical events, such as incursions by the "Blemmyes," "barbarians," and others. The back matter contains indices for sources, historical names, ethnic or tribal groups, place names, and modern scholars.

Wipszycka's greatest contributions are in the fields of papyrology and archaeology. Her expertise in documentary sources has led to rich examinations of monastic vocabulary. Chapter Two, on documentary sources, provides an excellent introduction to collections that might be unfamiliar to researchers who typically rely on historical and literary sources. The chapters on geography and monastic populations utilize research from recent archaeological surveys and provide information about famous sites, such as Nitria and Scetis, as well as communities less well known to North American scholars, such as the monastery of Naqlun. She also provides details on the monastic settlements in the Theban region. Maps and photographs illustrate the book throughout. Wipszycka's somewhat positivist methodologies and career-long skepticism of literature as a source for history are on display as well. Due to the volume's size, I will probe in depth only the chapters on Antony and women's asceticism.

The author begins Chapter Four on Antony and his vita by addressing Athanasius's reliability as a historical source, opening with two framing questions: "(a) Quelle est la valeur de la Vie d'Antoine en tant que source, si l'on veut connaître le monachisme égyptien tel qu'il était dans la réalité, dans le monde réel, et non pas dans le monde de la narration? (b) Quels étaient les critères d'après lesquels Athanase a fait sa sélection parmi les faits qu'il conaissait? Pourquoi a-t-il omis certains épisodes de la vie du saint et pourquoi en a-t-il inventé d'autres?" (227). Such attention to historical "facts" serves Wipszycka well in identifying key "events" in monastic literature (such as conversion stories of famous monks to asceticism) as literary topoi with tenuous holds on historical reality. However, scholars interested in these documents as literature and theology, and particularly in their religious, political, and ideological issues, will need to go elsewhere for analysis. Instead, Wipszycka spends time determining where Antony's hermitage existed and how Athanasius fictionalized the account of correspondence between Antony and Constantine (V. Anton. 81). Another section strives to determine the historicity of the account of Antony's ministry to persecuted Christians in mines outside of Alexandria (V. Anton. 46); she concludes that Athanasius has embellished the story. She also investigates the question of when monks began to be regarded as a group of people apart from the general population. Such a distinction, she argues, is a later projection back onto the sources. This chapter also addresses the debate over the authorship of letters attributed to Antony, evaluating Samuel Rubenson's arguments that the famous monk likely wrote the letters, and that they evince an Origenist theology (Letters of St. Antony [1995]). Wipszycka finds merit in Rubenson's hypothesis but not in his proof. This section systematically attempts to demonstrate that the other sources about Antony testify to his ignorance of Greek language and philosophy (235-37). In...