St. Shenoute

• St. Shenoute, next to St. Pachomius, was the most important representative of Egyptian cenobitism.
• He was an Abbot of the famous White Monastery of Atripe in the desert of Thebes for more than 65 years (383-451 or 466).

OF ATRIPE

• St. Shenoute is the most outstanding Christian writer in Coptic.
• According to Besa, he left a great number of letters and sermons, most of the former -

He governed over 2200 monks and 1800 nuns, as St. Besa his disciple and successor informs us.

• He is called “Archimandrite,” i.e. “the Head of Anchorites,” for he used to practice the eremitic life from time to time, and encouraged some of his monks to withdraw to the desert after a few years of cenobitic life, without completely severing connections with the monastery.
• St. Shenoute was born in Shenlala, a village near Akhmim in Upper Egypt. Before he was ten years old, his righteous parents asked their shepherds to teach him how to take care of the sheep and sent him back home before nightfall. The boy used to give his food to some shepherds and spend all his day in fasting, then he returned with one of the shepherds halfway home. Then his father discovered that he left with the shepherds early everyday but he returned late at night, he followed him secretly to see him standing near a well in the road praying for a long time. The next day he accompanied his son not to the shepherds but to his uncle Pegol, founder of the White Monastery.
• In the White Monastery, St. Shenoute’s father asked Abbot Pegol to bless the boy, but the abbot held the boy’s hand, put it on his head, saying, “I am in need of this boy’s blessing for he is a chosen vessel of Christ who will serve Him faithfully all his life.”
• In 371, St. Shenoute entered the monastery and in 383, he succeeded his uncle Pegol as abbot of the White Monastery, setting out a very firm order of monasticism.
• St. Shenoute lived in one of the most critical times in Egyptian history, when a great gulf was created between the Egyptian and Byzantine people. The Egyptian peasants lived almost as slaves, worked hard to the advantage of the Byzantine tyrant rulers or the aristocratic class.
• In spite of his great zeal to practice the eremitic life he had taken himself over to plead for the oppressed in the courts,and