Monastic Economies in Late Antique Egypt and Palestine by Louise Blanke

Monastic Economies in Late Antique Egypt and Palestine by Louise Blanke

This book situates discussions of Christian monasticism in Egypt and Palestine within the socio-economic world of the long Late Antiquity, from the golden age of monasticism into and well beyond the Arab conquest (fifth to tenth century). Its thirteen chapters present new research into the rich corpus of textual sources and archaeological remains and move beyond traditional studies that have treated monastic communities as religious entities in physical seclusion from society. The volume brings together scholars working across traditional boundaries of subject and geography and explores a diverse range of topics from the production of food and wine to networks of scribes, patronage, and monastic visitation. As such, it paints a vivid picture of busy monastic lives dependent on and led in tandem with the non-monastic world.

'This remarkable and important book offers a valuable and necessary deepening of our understanding of early Christian monasticism by turning our attention again and again to the social-material-economic dimensions of that worldThe exacting and painstaking scholarship found throughout this book reveals how much we can learn by taking seriously the eloquence of the hidden, the obscure, and the minute: papyri, pottery shards, barely legible inscriptions, paleobotanical evidence, the ghostly presence of ancient waterways, and so much more. It is hard not to marvel at the imaginative reach required to build an entire world out of this fragmentary evidence and to appreciate the immense effort undertaken to do so.' Doug Christie, Cistercian Studies Quarterly

LOUISE BLANKE is Lecturer in Late Antique Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. She has authored An Archaeology of Egyptian Monasticism: Settlement, Economy, and Daily Life at the White Monastery Federation (2019) and has directed archaeological projects and participated in fieldwork at sites in Egypt, Denmark, Jordan, and Qatar. JENNIFER CROMWELL is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research interests lie in the study of village and monastic life in late antique and early Islamic Egypt. She is the author of Recording Village Life: A Coptic Scribe in Early Islamic Egypt (2017).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781009278942
ISBN 10	1009278940
Title	Monastic Economies in Late Antique Egypt and Palestine
Author	Louise Blanke
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2025-04-17
Number of pages	414
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.