Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery

This title depicts the lives of female monks within a monastery located in upper Egypt in the period 385-464 CE. During this period the monastery was headed by a monk named Shenoute – 12 of his letters to the women under his care survive. Despite various technical textual difficulties, the author is able to use the letters to reconstruct a series of quarrels and events in the life of the White Monastery and to discern some of the key patterns in the participants’ relationships to one another within the world as they perceived it. She begins by describing the monks’ daily routine and discovers that the monastery’s culture was based on uniformity, in both material goods and emotional support, for all the monks, regardless of background. She then goes on to investigate the female monks’ relationship with Shenoute, specifically how he constructed and exerted his authority in these conditions, and the degree to which the women accepted it.