No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Monastic Economics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2024
Extract
Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
It would be too much to claim that legislators would find in the monastic codes and histories of the early centuries adequate guidance for their post-war planning. Yet no student of early monachism can fail to admire the practical economic value of much of the history and teaching which make his sources.
The Egyptian monks, both hermits and cenobites, though often supported by alms, probably came as near as the monks of any time or place to adequately self-supporting manual labour. When Palladius visited Nitria, he found that no one was allowed to be idle (not even a guest, as perhaps he learnt from personal experience), and no one was in need. Yet the monks’ liturgical duties were held in high esteem, and those who were qualified had opportunity for intellectual culture. Self-support was not direct, for Nitria throve upon the weaving industry.
The same author describes in much greater detail an inspection which he made of the working departments in one of the Pachomian monasteries. After enumerating smiths, carpenters, camel-drivers and fullers, he says that every craft was practised, so that the monks supported both themselves and the convents of nuns. They kept pigs—but the portions of pork granted to sick and aged monks scandalized later generations and the passage disappeared from many MSS. of the history. In a final list of monastic crafts, agriculture and husbandry hold the first place.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1943 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Writing in Pax, Winter, 1941, I used this chapter of the Lausiac History, and having no opportunity of consulting the Greek original edited by Dom Cuth‐bert Butler, I used Anan‐Isho's Syriac recension as rendered by Dr. Wallis Budge. Having since seen the Greek, 1 find it necessary to make two corrections: (1) The monastery visited was not Tabenna, but Panopolis or Akhmim; (2) Whereas I said that Palladius did not mention agriculture, he does, in fact, mention it fust and with emphasis.
2 These three stories are taken from a life written in Greek in the fifth century, adding to the original Greek life certain elements drawn from Coptic sources. It has been published by the Bollandists under the title Paralipomena de S. Pachomio, and a version of it under the title Asceticon is found in Syriac MSS. at the British Museum. It is acknowledged that it contains a legendary element. The stories told above are not particularly suspect. But even if their historical value be questioned, they were contained in oral tradition, and certainly express the ideals of the generation which succeeded the founder.
You have
Access