Joanna Wegner’s Monastic Communities is a rich volume that addresses several interrelated topics. In the grand scheme, Communities is a contribution to ongoing efforts to gain a wholistic understanding of monasticism. While noting and occasionally defusing tensions between monastic ideals and worldly affairs, Wegner (correctly) rejects the dichotomy that would cleave a monasticism focused on God from another concerned with worldly affairs – the subject matter of this book. (8, 123) Here, she aims to connect monasteries to the world and the world to monasteries. My redundancy is intentional as the available sources limit a scholar’s ability to study this reciprocal relationship based on evidence from a single monastery or dossier. Hence, the need to fill in the gaps, as it were, and to prudently interpret the available evidence. Wegner succeeds on that front by forwarding a compelling analysis based on the interactions of various “institutions,” that is, monasteries (10, 13), with secular elites, hired hands, delegates, villagers, and village leaders. Throughout the study, Wegner highlights the abundance of diversity and what might be idiosyncratic tendencies in the interactions she details (16, 177).

The study is based on papyrological evidence, largely from 400 to 800 AD, though literary sources, especially those from Pachomian and Shenoutian monasteries, also play a role. On that front, Wegner maintains that the papyrological record is not necessarily inconsistent with the literary evidence (6) and that “papyri can and should be used in order to understand rather than undermine literary narratives” (19). That is certainly the case in Communities, though the study also stands out for documenting aspects that are seldom narrated in Egyptian monastic literature, such as the founding of monasteries by laymen and the lay administration of monasteries and monastery-owned properties.

Chapter 1 focuses on monastic interactions with elites, particularly the powerful Apions and their estate. The chapter notes that while Egyptian elites provided gifts and offered favorable terms to monasteries in commercial transactions, they seldom gifted land outright, in contrast to what is documented in many other provinces. Much of Chapter One is paradigmatic of the entire study in demonstrating a high degree of diversity in monastic interactions with elites and their estates – though such interactions were typically deferential. Notably, the harsh and divisive confessional rhetoric of post-Chalcedonian literature – in both pro- and anti-Chalcedonian narratives – hardly leaves a trace in documentary sources (222, 272). Even recorded disagreements (99–101) had nothing to do with religion.

Chapter 2 focuses on Dioskoros of Aphrodito and related dossiers to discern the nature of monastic interactions in rural settings. It demonstrates that monasteries experienced the same challenges and attempts at exploitation faced by other landowners. The chapter also reveals a subsidiary theme of the volume: the tensions that emerge between monastic idealism that would have monks abandon the world and all possessions and what was often the reality of the matter. Namely, that many monks retained possessions, gave out loans, borrowed money, and leased land (77–80, 88; also see chap. 4). Moreover, the volume highlights the important roles laymen played in seeing to the administrative and material needs of various monasteries (here, Dioskoros and his father Apollos [100–105]).

Chapter 3 shifts the focus to the village-like monastery at Bawit, which was comprised of modest dwellings that housed small clusters of monks, with the church being the heart of the community. Here, the well-documented collection of aparche is discussed, as are a host of decentralized economic interactions between monks, lay intermediaries, and villagers. Notable in this chapter is the monastic ownership of hard assets and the high degree of autonomy monks could exercise, which would have been impossible in the monasteries of Pachomius or Shenoute. Herein lies an outstanding trait of this volume. It documents a wide spectrum of the lived experiences that constitute “Egyptian monasticism,” expanding our understanding of the monastic life beyond piety-centered hagiography and the limited models that survive in modern monasticism in the Christian east. Moreover (though admittedly this is beyond the intentions of the volume), in demonstrating this bewildering diversity of monastic interactions with “the world,” the study hints at a radical diversity in the perceptions and understandings of the monastic calling and vocation in late antique and early Islamic Egypt.

Chapter 4 focuses on the roles of monks and monasteries within the spiritual and temporal realms as property and landowners, benefactors attending to the needy, and as spiritual intercessors. Chapter Five focuses on monastic relations with mechanisms of power, authority, and concepts of patronage, particularly in relation to the Shenoutian and Pachomian monasteries, which are viewed as exceptional (264–265). Setting the stage were statements (based on Roger Rémondon’s work) that monastic philanthropic efforts did not bring about meaningful change, and that monasteries, being part of “vertical hierarchies,” could not protect the oppressed from their oppressors. There is much to discuss on that front; in many ways, these assessments strike me as modernist and arguably anachronistic. This is not the place to delve deeply into these issues; suffice it to say that the pre-modern world never envisioned a “War on Poverty,” but rather focused on providing immediate relief to the needy. Moreover, even the modern War on Poverty has been anything but successful. At any rate, many individuals and groups certainly benefited from monastic charity (e.g., 163, 264, 308) even though poverty as such was not eradicated. Finally, the chapter notes that individuals financially indebted to monasteries often paid off their loans through manual labor or service.

Overall, this is a very successful volume that forward conclusions based on a judicious reading of a sizable papyrological corpus. It adds context, depth, and complexity to many types of monastic interactions with the world, both with institutions and the laity, the details of which are routinely lacking or quickly glossed over in narrative and hagiographic sources.