Scenes of Clerical Life: Clergy in Sixth-Century Aphrodito
Scenes of Clerical Life: Clergy in Sixth-Century Aphrodito

Summary/Abstract: Clerics are among the best-represented groups in the sixth-century documentary dossier of the village of Aphrodito. All of their attestations in the Aphrodito papyri show them in extra-ecclesiastical contexts. The present article discusses the various roles in which members of the clergy emerge in the texts and aims to sketch a socioeconomic profile of clerics as a group. Our reading of the documents reveals the diversity of economic statuses and social positions among the Aphroditan clergy, and their functions as trusted members of the society. The documents indicate that there was no essential difference between laypersons and clerics in any of the documented spheres of everyday activity, and that the clergy were fully integrated into Aphrodito’s rural society.

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