1 - Alms and ascetes, round stones and masons: avarice in the early church

Summary

THE DEADLY SIN TRADITION: AVARICE AND THE WANING OF ESCHATOLOGICAL EXPECTATIONS

The third vision in the Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome for the young Christian community there during the early part of the second century, is an allegory of the ideal construction of the church, and it may serve as a guide in examining the responses to greed in early Christian literature. Hermas is shown angels erecting a tower of stones which fit together perfectly; these stones, he is later told by a woman who is herself another personified image of the church, are the ecclesiastical officials, martyrs, the righteous, and recent converts who form the solid core of the building. He also observes other stones found unsuitable for the masonry, though not rejected outright, and they include round, white rocks. To his ingenuous request for their allegoresis, Lady Church responds: they are the wealthy whose commerce interferes with their faith when persecution threatens. They will remain unfit for construction until they have been squared off, until their excess wealth has been hewn away. The situation presented by this allegory is in a number of ways an important point of departure for the history of avarice: first, it is decidedly not the possession of money in itself to which the lady objects, but to a spiritual danger, apostasy, which may be its result.