Shenoute of Atripe and the Uses of Poverty. Ariel G. Lopez
possession of certain moral qualities by the speaker. We have seen that Shenoute never tires of enumerating his own virtues when speaking to the authorities. It was these virtues that gave him the right to criticize and advise the powerful and his enemies. His personal life was presented as a blazon of essential truths that served as a guideline for his audience. Above all, it was crucial to give proofs of personal courage. A parrhēsiastēs is courageous because his criticism of the powerful is dangerous to himself. This courage proves his sincerity. Shenoute liked to emphasize that his tireless denunciations often provoked outrage among his audience. His “panegyric” on Flavianus, for example, has a curious excursus in which he tells the governor about the reaction of another magistrate to this straight talk. Apparently, Shenoute had spoken on behalf of the poor preaching justice and charity only too blatantly. The result:
A friend from your province (i.e., Flavianus’s country of origin) who came to us, not only did he not like my speech, but he [even] accused me to the governor. But I did not say anything that is not in the scriptures, in particular in the Psalms. That nothing may be hidden from you, I will tell you how he lied against us and what we wrote to him.
Then Shenoute quotes, in the middle of his speech, his extensive “letter to Bakanos and those who are with him, against his accusations,” of which the following extracts give a good idea:99
I have to tell you the truth: I grieve for you exceedingly. For what cause, I will not say—God will judge us both. About the accusation that you have made against me in the law-court, lying: I don’t care. I don’t flee from the laws. Only God’s court has anything to do with me and I have nothing to confess. When you go up to the final judgment, we will see whether we came up to this hill (i.e., Shenoute’s monastery) to “gather men to fight each other on account of the villages” and whether “I gave them bread” (these are the real accusations of Bakanos against Shenoute). You lie; you slander the places of God (i.e., the monasteries). Who will trust you? If we had wanted to practice (gumnaze) the laws against the things you said, you would have not avoided their refutation. You have come to Egypt to lose your soul for nothing. This is not the moment to add numerous biblical quotations.
The victims of Shenoute’s courage are therefore not only to be found in Panopolis; they are even among the “friends” who visit him. Only Flavianus’s extraordinary friendship had prevented him from becoming furious at such supposedly incendiary criticisms:
For unless you were wise and unless love supported every thing and every word which a friend will tell his true friends in Christ, you would hate me when I tell you these things. … Don’t blame me because I tell you the truth. … Oh magistrates, do not listen to my manner of speaking and become furious!100
The typical setting for the display of parrhēsia in the classical world was a dialogue between ruler and parrhēsiastēs, what Foucault has called the “parrhesiastic game.”101 In this, too, Shenoute’s interaction with the authorities recalls classical traditions. He is always taking the questions of his audience and answering them in such a forceful way that he hurts the questioners’ pride. His discourses to the military governors who visited the monastery, for example, portray them as coming with the intention of holding an innocent, polite conversation with the holy man, a “stereotyped linking of stereotypes.”102 They ask safely irrelevant questions about the size of the sky in comparison to the earth; they question the prevalence of certain practices among the Christians of Egypt (why do Egyptians take communion with a full stomach?); they complain about the situation of the church or the power of the devil.103 Like a true spiritual guide, Shenoute responds by placing the questioners themselves in question. “The real question is less what is being talked about than who is doing the talking.”104 Governors—he claims—should not use the devil as an excuse for their own faults nor should they waste his time with inappropriate questions:
For a military governor asked me when he came to us: “Is the sky the same size as the world?” I answered him: “Your horse seems by all means stronger than many. Mount it, spur it on, go up [to the sky!], check it, and come back! … Go up and you will find out the measure of sky and earth and come back, so that not only you know but so that you also tell us!” …
You see, he was asking for things that are not fitting that I might not talk to him about what is fitting.105
Such harsh dismissals were in store for magistrates who inquired after things that were none of their business. The proper questions for a military governor to ask—Shenoute insisted—were those about his own duties as a magistrate:
If I talk with the soldier about the duties of a monk and with the monk about those of a soldier, what will the soldier do with the things of a monk and the monk with those of the soldier?
This is a point that Shenoute needed to make time and again. It is well known that Eastern Christianity tended, like Theravada Buddhism, to develop a two-tiered morality. While upholding the supremacy of renunciatory, otherworldly orientations and values, it tended to isolate them and segregate them from day-to-day life.106 Enshrined at the very apex of the hierarchy of cultural orientations, the values embodied by a holy man like Shenoute could be revered, but their scope kept at bay. Such a double standard threatened to render Shenoute’s parrhēsia on behalf of the “poor” harmless and ineffective. Military commanders, for example, thought that they could come to the monastery to talk about otherworldly things only to go back to their mundane concerns feeling reassured that sinlessness was demanded only from the “perfect.”
Hence Shenoute’s firm refusal to be thus “domesticated.” This refusal went so far as to deny altogether the validity of a double ethic. Despite their obvious differences, he insisted, the life of a monk and the life of worldly authorities have similar ethical imperatives. Not everyone needs to be “perfect” like a monk—faithful marriage, for example, is a valid alternative—but everyone needs to try. No one should let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Above all, everyone needs to avoid the false hope that salvation will be somehow guaranteed by the prayers of the perfect:
I have not forgotten what a friend said while you listened: “It is [only] monks who are supposed to fast. Truly they are the ones [who should fast] because of their hope in heaven.” But as he has spoken idly, amusing himself, I will also tell him, without shame: he needs to fast more [than we do]. … Who should fast [more]: the righteous monk, who lives with little and inadequate food, or you, who eat calves and drink wine and other goods of every different kind? … When the monk fasts, does he fast on your behalf? When you act as a judge, you do not judge on his behalf, do you? Let each do his best to find God’s mercy.107
Truly all Christians have the same one God, and everyone has the same one piety according to his capacity.108
If the authorities wished to harbor any hope for salvation, therefore, they had better take Shenoute’s parrhēsia seriously. For his criticisms were no joke. His “friends” the military commanders, for example, were told in no uncertain terms that they were not living up to their obligations. The military authorities often rob soldiers and workers of their salary; all they want is money. The common soldier only asks for his annona (i.e., his wage and provisions), and they try to kill him. The soldiers, on the other hand, plunder “villages, cities, houses, roads, boats, vineyards, fields, threshing floors, epoikia, monasteries, and even the offerings that are brought to the places of God.” They threaten and beat up anyone who complains. “They despoil those on whose behalf they claim to fight. Their lawlessness is just like that of the barbarians.” “They do not think whether it is right to take—let us not say plunder—and inhabit the houses of people who are not their enemies.”109 This was the proper kind of conversation between a holy man and the military authorities, not empty talk about the size of the sky. The reason—Shenoute argued—that the emperor and good governors listened to him and not to his “violent” enemies was that, as a bearer of parrhēsia, he invariably said the truth, and the truth was not nice. They might get furious at his words, but they would get the truth from no one else.
Yet Shenoute’s criticisms, I would like to stress, are seldom original. His complaints are highly reminiscent of those of many late antique bishops, rhetors, historians,