Between the Bishops and the Monks
Between the Bishops and the Monks

Summary/Abstract: This study gathers information on the subject of the bishops’ representatives, whose special task was to supervise monastic communities in late antiquity. The information concerning these representatives comes from different countries of the Greek Mediterranean; we do not know if they were appointed everywhere. Justinian (Novel 133) determined their competences, but his regulation likely related to the Church of Constantinople. The reason why the present author decided to study this institution was the publication of a previously unknown document in the form of a letter from a sizeable dossier preserved on ostracas, originating from the Monastery of Apa Ezekiel in the nome of Hermonthis (the Thebaid). The author of the letter (O. Lips. Copt. II 10) introduces himself as the 'father of all monks of the whole oikoumene’. The scholar who published the text, Frederic Krueger, is convinced that it was not the oikoumene but only the Thebaid; in his opinion, the competences of this clergyman involved not just disciplinary supervision of the monks’ behaviour, but also the management of the communities’ economic affairs. The present author disputes Krueger’s thesis, arguing for another model of how the economy of the 'monastic deserts' of Western Thebes and Hermonthis functioned.

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