ABSTRACT

Although Historia Monachorum in Aegypto was for a long time discarded as a reliable historical source, we could use this text as a useful collection of important pieces of information (“untouched” by later interpolations) regarding the monastic movement in Central Egypt. This area, albeit important for local Coptic Christianity, is rather neglected in the bigger picture of the history of monasticism and the evolution of Christian religiosity in Late Antiquity. Some reports about a group around a certain Pityrion could probably refer to the recently excavated monastic site of Gebel Naqlun in the area of Medinet-el-Fayum. More important is the description of special features of the monastic movement in this area, like organized distribution of alms to the needy. This practice (which can be corroborated through other sources) was associated with possession of a spiritual gift and the revival of the Jerusalem primitive church community. Later on (at the end of the 4^th c.) this socially orientated ascetic piety was transformed to an introversive and individual spiritual excercise especially under the infl uence of philosophical speculation about the meaning of ascetical life, such as the work of Evagrius Ponticus.