Chapter 5 - Monastic Family Values

Summary

Monastic culture often represents children as problems, as barriers to the ascetic endeavor. We might be tempted to conclude that early Egyptian monks had no “family values” – that they were anti-family. Yet the literature of family (and child) renunciation exists alongside numerous literary accounts of monks healing sick children. This chapter argues that such accounts constitute a thread in Egyptian monasticism that construed children as symbolizing the future, as representatives of familial and cultural legacies. Early Egyptian monasticism shared this understanding of children and family with the larger Roman world. Monasteries, in their care for sick or demonically possessed children, acted as agents in the support and continuation of traditional families as well as the health of children. Thus, monasteries – communities of celibate ascetics – guaranteed the regeneration of Christian families.