Monks at Work

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WHAT IS A MONK’S JOB?

For many early monastic leaders and ascetic theorists, the job of a Christian monk was the self-work of ascetic disciplines: fasting, prayer, sexual renunciation, obedience, and voluntary poverty. Undertaken alone or in community, these ascetic (i.e., self-denying) “labors” enabled monks to develop the virtues of humility, spiritual insight, and freedom from material ties.

Actual physical labor could also be an ascetic discipline: a physically difficult, demeaning, or tedious manual task that purifies the spirit by humbling the body. Giving every member of the monastic community the same humble task, like weaving flax ropes or mats, also promoted the desired sense of equality, erasing status differences among monks or pride in individual accomplishments.

The problem with this ascetic theory of work is that it assumes an upper-class ancient Roman perspective on manual labor and craft production. Such views, however, might not have been shared by monks of working-class origin or living in remote parts of the Roman Empire. Furthermore, the ideals of poverty, simplicity, and withdrawal from society that are promoted in early Christian monastic literature seem to be contradicted by contemporary archaeological and papyrological evidence.

The truth is that the archaeology of early monastic sites attests to skilled craft production (e.g., oil, ceramics, textiles, metal objects, books), and everyday documents reveal economic activity at Egyptian monasteries as early as the fourth century C.E. How can we integrate these historical sources to create a more comprehensive picture of the early monastic experience?¹

One interesting case study emerges from a monastery that was not well known outside Egypt at the time, but which remains highly significant in the Egyptian (Coptic) Christian tradition: The White Monastery and its most famous abbot (apa), Shenoute of Atripe (347–465).² Named for its enormous white stone church, the White Monastery was the largest in a federation of three monastic communities founded around 360 C.E. in southern Egypt. In its heyday, between the fifth and seventh 021 centuries C.E., the monastery contained 550–700 monks in a walled compound just across the Nile from the ancient city of Panopolis (modern-day Akhmim).

Shenoute was the federation’s third leader, from about 385 to 465. He was also one of the most prolific authors writing in his native Coptic Egyptian. In addition to his major building projects (including the monumental church), Shenoute left behind nine books of monastic instruction, known as the Canons, and eight books of sermons delivered to non-monastic audiences, known as the Discourses. Rather than being a formal collection of rules, the Canons contain sermons and letters, in which Shenoute responds to current situations in the monastic community.

In Shenoute’s writings, we see how monastic ideals about work were put into practice. Additional insight comes from analyzing production at the White Monastery, where archaeologists of the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project South have excavated a food production complex. They have identified crushing basins for oil production, eight ovens for baking bread, and built-in heated vessels for hot water or cooking. Shenoute refers to other workshops in the monastery without specifying their products. The White Monastery has an extensive water system of wells, pulleys, pipes, vats, and drains that appears to have supplied the needs of several types of production, such as building materials, pottery, and textiles. All these production activities were carried out by the local community of monks.

In the absence of any writing from ordinary members of Shenoute’s community, we don’t know precisely how they felt about their work. But studies of the sociology of work environments can provide some helpful models. Roman economic historian Miko Flohr identifies four levels of social interaction in workshops: relationships among members of the working group, relationships with clients or customers, relationships with supervisors and superiors, and relationships with the urban community or neighborhood.³ The spatial layout of the workshop determined possibilities for communication 022 and relationships among these groups. The relationship each worker had with the finished product also affected his or her connection to the job. As a result, each workshop had a unique social environment which in turn shaped the workers’ sense of occupational identity.

A careful reading of Shenoute’s Canons suggests some social effects of labor organization at the White Monastery. In addition to the shared daily routine of prayer and assembly, monks could receive specialized work assignments in workshops, fields or gardens, and service areas, such as the infirmary, kitchen, refectory, or storerooms. These tasks might have been assigned on a temporary or rotating basis. Shenoute tells new monks not to expect that they will do the same kind of work that they did in their previous, secular lives. On the other hand, monks could learn a new craft within the monastic workshops, suggesting an apprenticeship model where prior expertise might have been valuable.

There were no official hierarchies of work assignment at the monastery, other than the institutional hierarchy of the monastic leadership. However, the very existence of specialized jobs tends to create social situations that are not always compatible with the ascetic ideals of equality, humility, and obedience. We see these tensions expressed in Shenoute’s comments on relationships among the working group, supervisors, internal monastic “customers,” and the local secular community.

Shenoute describes informal hierarchies and social tensions among monks as a working group in terms of scorn, envy, and pride. Monks with management positions are told not to “scorn” the “little work” of weaving ropes. Some monks apparently “despise their neighbors” by insulting them with occupational slurs, including “Shoemaker,” “Tailor,” or “Despicable, dumb slave.” Shenoute reminds such monks that Scripture never criticizes slaves and servants as such, but frequently condemns the quarrelsome and disobedient.

On the other hand, some jobs may have inspired envy or extra initiative on the part of an enthusiastic worker, and Shenoute tries to flatten these inequalities as well. No monk is allowed to transfer from one workshop to another, if he does so “in contention and quarrelling, wishing to despise his neighbor out of envy because of the honor that he has through the job that he does” (Layton #548). People with the capacity to work faster than others were exhorted to keep themselves to the pace of slower coworkers. A more skilled worker was not allowed to help a weaker or less skilled one, except in case of emergency or special permission. In these cases, working less was presented as a personal act of ascetic humility.

Of course, when reading the Canons, we are viewing the entire work environment through the eyes of its highly authoritarian supervisor. Specialized tasks created opportunities for monks to act independently, often through the freedom of movement outside the daily routine that the job allowed. Shenoute warns, for instance, that no one should use his job as an excuse to avoid the common assembly.

Physical distancing could also prove advantageous to workers. The associated women’s monastery, a mere 2 miles away, was mostly off-limits to male visitors—even to Shenoute, who communicated with them via letters. The women, however, were responsible for producing clothing for the whole community, and three dyeing workshops have been identified at the site. This spatial separation sometimes led to conflict, as when Shenoute claims they did not make the items to his specification. But strict gender segregation gave the women a certain amount of freedom to manage their own affairs.

The White Monastery had a strong culture of surveillance to go along with its emphasis on obedience. Shenoute encouraged reporting on any misdeeds observed among one’s fellow monks. Even the monumental church, towering over the central work area, stood as a silent reminder that God was always watching.

Food service in the centrally located cooking areas received particularly close scrutiny as a daily transaction with serious social consequences. Those involved were instructed to come and go in the main street, not “behind the walls of the houses” where their activities would be less visible. Cooks needed to follow the established recipes and quantities without deviation for personal taste. Food servers should not give bigger or better portions to their friends or relatives. Casual complaints about the food were disregarded as a matter of individual opinion, but if 20 or 30 “faithful great men” said that the food was salty or burnt, the cooking may be discussed and inspected for quality control.

When we look at products like food and clothes made for internal use, we see the monks relating to each other as “customers” as well as coworkers. Shenoute identifies the social tensions in this context as arising from favoritism, complaining, and, again, pride. Shenoute also worries that service workers could become too proud of their essential role in providing for the material needs of the community. In his work Then Am I Not Obliged, Shenoute accuses workers with administrative or service roles of “saying or thinking in their boastful hearts that everything [the community] needs for the body becomes available thanks to them.”⁴ These monks, he continues, “despise” the sacrificial work of Jesus when they take credit for their work instead of relying on God’s provision.

The White Monastery also produced items for sale to outsiders. Shenoute mentions that “gold, bronze, baskets, sacks, books, or any other product” could be commissioned, sold, or traded for raw materials, such as grain or wool (Layton #267). The Canons contain little economic data but possess much general guidance on how these transactions should be conducted. Shenoute is primarily concerned that the monastery maintain a good reputation in the wider community for quality of production and fair economic dealings. For example, when monks are learning a new craft, the items may not be sold “until they are of good quality,” so that “those to whom we sell them shall not despise the name of God on our account.” A lesser-quality product may be sold (for an appropriate price), as long as the buyer knows that it comes from “the siblings who are learning” (Layton #316). In this scenario, skilled work was valued, but the associated honor or dishonor did not accrue to the individual worker—the reputation of the monastery as a whole was at stake. 023 Indeed, a disgruntled customer would “despise” the very name of God.

Individual workers were cut off from the customer and the point of sale, since all economic transactions were conducted at the gatehouse, by Shenoute himself or his delegates. Explicitly, this policy was intended to prevent monks from pursuing individual economic gain. It had a corollary effect of separating the worker from the finished product in a way that tends to discourage his or her personal satisfaction in the completed task.

In sum, Abbot Shenoute’s strategies of control over the working environment and workforce (the monks) show that he was conscious of the possibilities of the monastery as a communicative landscape centered on labor. Some of his regulations may seem like inefficient economic choices, but the “real” product of monastic labor—from the perspective of ascetic theologians, such as Shenoute—is the person of the monk him- or herself: humble, obedient, and spiritually focused.

The social experiment of monasticism faced many challenges in the lived experience of monks, for whom the tangible realities of manual work may have formed their own sense of identity. Such attitudes as pride—in a skilled job well done, in the camaraderie of one’s immediate working group, or in the contribution one could make to the well-being of the community—could and did coexist with the institutional narrative of humility and obedience.

WHAT IS A MONK’S JOB? For many early monastic leaders and ascetic theorists, the job of a Christian monk was the self-work of ascetic disciplines: fasting, prayer, sexual renunciation, obedience, and voluntary poverty. Undertaken alone or in community, these ascetic (i.e., self-denying) “labors” enabled monks to develop the virtues of humility, spiritual insight, and freedom from material ties. Actual physical labor could also be an ascetic discipline: a physically difficult, demeaning, or tedious manual task that purifies the spirit by humbling the body. Giving every member of the monastic community the same humble task, like weaving flax ropes or […]