This fascinating book, the fruit of a conference held at Lund University, studies late ancient Christian monasteries as centres of education. It reconsiders monastic pedagogical strategies, school texts and literary culture in relation to their Greco-Roman counterparts. Its chapters focus on how monastic institutions transmitted Greek and Roman classical philosophy and literature. In monastic circles, teachers taught their students reading, writing and rhetoric, while they pursued the life of virtue through the exercise of ascetic discipline. The book argues for a dynamic continuity between emergent monastic movements and the practices and contours of Greco-Roman paideia and philosophical schools.

Lillian I. Larsen and Samuel Rubenson have edited this book meticulously. Its contributors come from subfields that include papyrology, material culture and literature, and they examine sources from Latin, Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Coptic. Some authors investigate inscriptions, notes on ostraca, papyri, or philosophical traditions; others analyse the monastic material itself, asking how these products came from ‘a society steeped in Classical paideia’ (3). The book contains five parts: I ‘The Language of Education’; II ‘Elementary Education and Literacy’; III ‘Grammar and Rhetoric’; IV ‘Philosophy’; V ‘Manuscript and Literary Production’. Through studying what and how monks learned, we see the transmission and refashioning of classical paideia in its Christian ascetic form.

In ch. 1 ‘Early Monasticism and the Concept of a “School”’, Rubenson presents an overview of the terminologies and vocabulary of early monastic movements. He shows that monasteries were a type of school from the outset, focusing on leisure and withdrawal from society for the sake of learning. Like philosophical schools, monasteries stressed physical and mental exercises that emphasised repetition and imitation as students strived to progress in the moral and spiritual life. In ch. 2 ‘Translating Paideia: Education in the Greek and Latin Versions of the Life of Antony’, Peter Gemeinhardt studies Evagrius of Antioch's translation of the Life of Antony into Latin. Gemeinhardt's study reveals how translators of hagiographies constructed a vocabulary to express concepts of Christian piety. The elegant translation of Evagrius of Antioch suggests that he rendered the Life of Antony to stress the moral formation of his well-educated Latin-speaking audience. In ch. 3 ‘Paideia, Piety, and Power: Emperors and Monks in Socrates’ Church History’, Andreas Westergren problematises the portrayal of the uneducated monk. He argues that we must read Socrates’ characterisations of empire and monastery through the lens of paideia and power; he shows how Socrates idealised a society in which an educated elite ruled. Socrates applied that model to the monastic life too, which retained classes of both simple and educated monks.

In ch. 4 ‘The Educational and Cultural Background of Egyptian Monks’, Roger Bagnall studies several examples of letters from monastic papyri collections. His analysis of handwriting, format and writing styles suggests that most Egyptian monks had an education like that of mid-level bureaucrats (although there were exceptions like Shenoute). Larsen's contribution in ch. 5 ‘“Excavating the Excavations” of Early Monastic Education’ surveys the form and content of school texts from monastic circles. Like students from the Greco-Roman world, students in monastic contexts rehearsed and memorised the alphabet and text passages. Eventually biblical texts of the Psalms and Christian exemplars of the apostles replaced classical precursors. In ch. 6, Anastasia Maravela examines ‘Homer and Menandri Sententiae in Upper Egyptian Monastic Settings’. She focuses on educational texts (ostraca) of the Monastery of Epiphanius. Monks used the verses of Homer and the sayings of Menander to train scribes in both writing practices and the life of virtue.

Ch. 7 features a compelling study by Blossom Stefaniw on the ‘The School of Didymus the Blind in Light of the Tura Find’. Stefaniw analyses the Tura Papyri and the lesson transcripts that they contain. She argues that Didymus the Blind was not an instructor of the catechumenate but rather a Christian grammarian who ‘used the same methods and introduced the same subject matter of any grammarian of his day’ (159). Didymus’ topics included work for both advanced and remedial students. It was the teacher who was the ‘focal point of the course of study’ rather than the institutional school (169). Ellen Muhlberger, in ch. 8 ‘Affecting Rhetoric: The Adoption of Ethopoeia in Evagrius of Pontus’ Ascetic Program’, studies Evagrius’ Paraeneticus and Protrepticus. She shows how these texts illustrate that Evagrius taught a form of ethopoeia (an exercise from classical rhetoric) to help monks meet the challenges of ascetic practices. In ch. 9 ‘Classical Education in Sixth-Century Coptic Monasticism’, Mark Sheridan focuses on a Coptic author from upper Egypt: Rufus of Shotep. Sheridan shows how the homilies of Rufus reveal a highly literate bilingual bishop who incorporated forms from classical Greek rhetoric into a Coptic homiletic idiom.

Henrik Rydell Johnsén, in ch. 10, discusses the portrait of the uneducated monk: ‘The Virtue of Being Uneducated: Attitudes towards Classical Paideia in Early Monasticism and Ancient Philosophy’. He argues that emphasis on the practice of virtue and scepticism towards certain forms of education are themes that monastic texts share with those of the Cynics and Epicureans. Arthur Urbano, in ch. 11 ‘Plato Between School and Cell: Biography and Competition in the Fifth-Century Philosophical Field’, studies fifth-century biographies (Theodoret's Religious History and Marinus of Neapolis’ Proclus). Urbano shows that biography was a field of cultural competition: biographers linked their founders and heroes to a Platonic past to claim that tradition for their own. Daniele Pevarello, in ch. 12, discusses ‘Pythagorean Traditions in Early Christian Asceticism’. Pevarello demonstrates that the Sentences of Sextus, a second-century Christian compilation of Neopythagorean maxims, exemplifies the refashioning of Classical paideia. Neopythagorean wisdom traditions lived on in different forms as they circulated in Christian ascetic communities.

Britt Dahlman, in ch. 13 ‘Textual Fluidity and Authorial Revision’, explores the circulation of texts in their draft and revised forms. Taking the texts of Palladius and Cassian as case studies, she examines the different drafts, expansions, revisions, abbreviations and translations of their works and shows the importance of attending to the fluidity of late ancient literary culture. Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott discuss ‘Production, Distribution and Ownership of Books in the Monasteries of Upper Egypt’ in ch. 14. They demonstrate that the colophons of the Nag Hammadi codices (which monks produced) reveal a robust culture of book production and exchange. Jason Zaborowski's contribution in ch. 15 ‘Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: Approaching Arabic Recensions of the Apophthegmata Patrum’ explores how the study of the translation of the Apophthegmata Patrum into Arabic is a lens for understanding the monastic education of Arabic-speaking Christians. He notes that the Arabic translations of the AP show how Christians living in the Islamic world repackaged Christian wisdom ‘in Qur'anic idioms and concepts’ (327).

Overall, the book's chapters are sophisticated, well-researched, original and compelling. Thoughtfully written and rooted in primary sources, this book makes a vital contribution to late ancient monastic studies as well as the history of education in the ancient world.