Ariel López has written an important new study situating the monastic leader Shenoute in the context of rural patronage in late antique Egypt. Though less well known than his predecessor Pachomius, Shenoute also directed a large community of monks (both men and women) in Upper Egypt. His literary Nachlass, now being comprehensively edited under the direction of Stephen Emmel, is the most substantial of any Coptic author, and includes works addressed primarily to his congregation (the Canons); speeches, many of which were delivered at his monastic church and attended by non-monks (the Discourses); and Letters written to ecclesiastic and governmental dignitaries.

This extensive (if often lamentably fragmentary) evidence is skilfully explored by L. as a provincial test case for the competition over rural patronage between late antique élites, particularly as it relates to the rôle of the holy man and the evolving Christian relationship to wealth. L.'s placing of Shenoute's floruit in 420–460 is conservative, but his close attention to the fifth-century context is illuminating. He makes an early analogy with Syrian holy men (4), and the numerous productive comparisons with ascetic communities across the Mediterranean world represent a major strength of this study.

Ch. 1, ‘Loyal Opposition’, describes Shenoute's construction of ‘the poor’ as a designation for both the voluntary poor (monks) and the involuntary poor, whom L. identifies as ‘rural workers, small landowners, and the tenants of large landowners’ (44). In opposition to the poor stand ‘the violent’, represented above all by the ‘cryptopagan’ Gesios, a powerful landowner based in Panopolis who often features in Shenoute's writings. L. shows how Shenoute aligns with the Roman state, and against local magnates, in demonstrating parrhesia on behalf of the poor.

Ch. 2, ‘A Miraculous Economy’, explores donations to the White Monastery on the one hand, and on the other Shenoute's care for the poor, such as distributing bread and providing care for refugees. L. offers an insightful analysis of how Shenoute's ‘rhetoric of disinterestedness’ presents his community's accumulated wealth as divine ‘blessings’ rather than gifts by lay patrons, a move that ‘helped to diffuse the inevitable danger inherent in those nonreciprocated gifts actually donated by the rich and powerful’ (69). For his part, the archimandrite practised a Christianized form of euergetism, in a rural rather than civic environment. While this is a strong chapter, L. does not really consider the possibility that monasteries were themselves capable of substantial economic production, for which there is the same anecdotal literary evidence, as well as numerous relevant papyri from Bawit (though from the eighth century). Moreover, the Canons suggest that the property renounced by members of Shenoute's monastic federation upon joining it was also a source of wealth.

Ch. 3, ‘Rural Patronage: Holy and Unholy’, explores Shenoute's competition with his archenemy Gesios to become the patron of residents on the great agricultural estates around Panopolis. L. draws upon several major studies of the sixth-century papyrus archive of the Apion family from Oxyrhynchus, which present conflicting interpretations of the development of large rural estates in Late Antiquity. He identifies a ‘maximalist approach’ (for example, Banaji, Sarris) and a ‘minimalist approach’ (Bagnall, Hickey, Mazza) to the increasing economic and societal importance of these estates between the fourth and sixth centuries; L. does not explicitly side with either, but argues that Shenoute is a ‘bridge’ between these two eras, demonstrating the importance of large estates already in the fifth century. Gesios represents one such estate owner, employing numerous wage-labourers living on epoikia (settlements) in his property, whom Shenoute attempts to make his clients.

Ch. 4, ‘The Limits of Intolerance’, further explores Shenoute's conflict with Gesios, the ‘Egyptian Libanius’, and, more generally, paganism in the city of Panopolis and the surrounding region. L. begins with a description of the attack on the temple of Pan's consort Triphe in the village of Atripe, arguing convincingly that Shenoute's emphasis on the poor in his recounting the attack is a way to justify such ‘holy violence’. Additional attacks by Shenoute and his associates, including one at the home of Gesios himself, had to be defended before imperial officials. The zealous monk found himself having breached the ‘limits of intolerance’, encountering resistance from ‘a society reluctant to accept threats to the delicate religious consensus that had emerged from the conflicts of the late fourth century’ (109).

In the Conclusion, L. revisits his arguments for placing Shenoute's career in the context of the fifth-century competition for rural patronage. Appendix A proposes an alternative chronology of Shenoute's career, rejecting Emmel's dating of his birth to 346/347, and death at the shockingly advanced age of 118; the question remains controversial, but is of little consequence for L.'s arguments. Appendix B is a very brief overview of the sources for Shenoute's life, namely his own writings and later biographical traditions. Finally, the Abbreviations include a useful enumerated list of Shenoute's extant Letters.

L. sometimes generalizes too much, such as the claim that ‘true literature — that is, the use of language as an art — was with very few exceptions Greek literature’, which is accompanied by an inadequate, single-paragraph comparison of Coptic and Syriac (13). Shenoute's writings were carefully copied and read alongside biblical literature by trained scribes for centuries after his death; as rhetorically sophisticated works with calculated effects, they are certainly works of literary art. Nor does L. apply his analysis of patronage and care of the poor to Shenoute's authority over his own disciples, despite significant common themes: for example, some monks accuse him of doing ‘violence’ to them, the same charge he makes against Gesios. In short, Shenoute's leadership over a large monastic community was itself a complex form of patronage. But these remarks do not detract from the strength of L.'s work, which represents an important advance in situating Shenoute more firmly in the social and economic history of Late Antiquity, and will also serve as a useful introduction to this figure for late Romanists, especially those without Coptic.