Coptica 15, 2016

Athanasius’s Fighting Spirit Doubled in Shenoute 75 Behooves Christians . 18 Shenoute brings Athanasius into his writings largely in order to make contrasts, with Athanasius always representing the right side, namely, Shenoute’s side. In three of these works, Shenoute uses Athanasius to champion asceticism and to maintain monastic discipline and practice within his community. In the other three works, most likely written during the troubled episcopacy of Dioscorus (444-451), Shenoute channels Athanasius contra mundum . I will focus on the latter. I Am Amazed is one of these works; it contains Shenoute’s most extensive references to Athanasius. 19 Shenoute may have written I Am Amazed in response to an issue raised for him by Archbishop Dioscorus. The bishop wrote to Shenoute to ask him to translate into Coptic and to distribute a memorandum instructing the local bishops to convene a gathering of priests and monks in Šmin (Panopolis, later Akhmim) to warn them not to associate in any way with a priest expelled from a monastery near Šmin for being Origenist. Furthermore, since Dioscorus had heard that 17 In this discourse, Shenoute quotes a poem in praise of virginity, introducing it as the word of “the good man Archbishop Athanasius.” Shenoute’s discourse is part of White Monastery codex DD. See Emmel, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus , vol. 1, CSCO 599, Subsidia 111, pages 368 and 399; and 2: 688. On the original attributed to Athanasius, see (First) Letter to Virgins , in David Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 289-291; Louis-Théophile Lefort, S. Athanase: Lettres festales et pastorales en copte , CSCO 150, Scriptores coptici 19, page 106; and Lefort, “Athanase, Ambroise et Chenoute ‘Sur la virginité’,” Le Muséon 48 (1935): 2. Shenoute quotes from the Coptic translation. 18 This discourse, found in White Monastery codex HD, pages 207-210, is part of Shenoute’s Discourses 8 . See Emmel, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus , 1: 96, 280, and 449; and 2:668-669. In it Shenoute quotes from an unidentified work that he attributes to “the man of God, Apa Athanasius, the Archbishop,” in which virgins are forbidden to keep vigils at the graves of deceased sisters. See Lefort, S. Athanase: Lettres Festales et Pastorales en Copte , CSCO 150, Scriptores coptici 19, page 108 (#2); and CSCO 151, Scriptores coptici 20, page 86. See also David Brakke, “The Authenticity of the Ascetic Athanasiana,” Orientalia n.s. 63.2 (1994): 38-39. 19 The full English text is in Selected Discourses of Shenoute the Great , 54-82. See also Stephen J Davis, Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt , Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 62-63; Janet Timbie, “Reading and Rereading Shenoute’s I Am Amazed : More Information on Nestorius and Others,” in The World of Early Egyptian Christianity: Language, Literature, and Social Context. Essays in Honor of David W. Johnson , edited by James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie, CUA Studies in Early Christianity (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2007), 63; Tito Orlandi, “A Catechesis against Apocryphal Texts by Shenute and the Gnostic Texts of Nag Hammadi,” Harvard Theological Review 75.1 (1982):85-95; Orlandi, Shenute contra origenistas: Testo con introduzione e traduzione , Unione accademica nazionale: Corpus dei manoscritti copti letterari (Rome: C.I.M., 1985); Hans-Joachim Cristea, Schenute von Atripe. Contra Origenistas: Edition des koptischen Textes mit annotierter Übersetzung und Indizes einschliesslich einer Übersetzung des 16. Osterfestbriefs des Theophilus in der Fassung des Hieronymus (ep. 96) , Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 60 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); and Emmel, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus , 2: 646-648 and 794-799. University of America, 2010), pages 43-44 (Coptic) and 141-142 (English); and Emmel, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus , 2:651-652 and 836-840.