A Parting of the Ways: Wealth, Working and Poverty in Early Christian Monasticism

About

Imagine you are living in 290 and not in 2009. Guess what people were heatedly discussing in those days? It was a pressing economic issue: the financial support of monks. Some insisted that monks should work for a living, and others thought they should be supported by the alms of other Christians. It was a raging debate that involved crucial economic and religious issues, and many of today's Western attitudes toward wealth and poverty are derived directly from the outcome of that debate. Historian Peter Brown, winner of the 2008 Kluge Prize, discussed the topic in a lecture titled "A Parting of the Ways: Wealth, Working and Poverty in Early Christian Monasticism." Brown, the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University, talked about the different ways in which early Christian monks supported themselves. The issue was a hot topic throughout Egypt and the Christian Middle East between 250 and 400. The decisions reached in different regions - regarding whether monks should work or beg - crystallized differing attitudes toward work and society as a whole.

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Library of Congress, in Library of Congress: talks and concerts

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Rights statement at the Library of Congress, as the Library of Congress states it.

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Library of Congress

Language

English

Country

United States

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