Christian Piety in Late Antiquity

Abstract

What is the most virtuous form of Christian life and the best path to perfection? And what is the best form of social organization and context to achieve this? This chapter addresses these questions by bringing together three different sets of sources for Egypt and Palestine in the fourth to seventh centuries: normative monastic treatises on the desirable and undesirable ways to achieve spiritual perfection, hagiographical narratives that praise the “hidden sanctity” of laypeople, and descriptive historical sources (including papyri) regarding the activities of pious lay groups (spoudaioi, philoponoi). Taken together, these sources reveal that the charitable activities of laypeople played a sufficiently large role in late antique society to challenge the sense of spiritual superiority that began to prevail in monastic circles.

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