This book introduces a beautiful fourth-century Coptic discourse on love and self-control in its first English translation. The text's heading attributes it to Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, but this attribution is questionable. Exploring issues of authorship and context, this book locates the origins of On Love and Self-Control in the Upper Egyptian Pachomian monastic community of the mid-fourth century. It then traces the various uses of On Love and Self-Control to the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, when the single surviving manuscript was copied as part of an anthology at the Monastery of St. Shenoute of Atripe. A partial reconstruction of this now dismembered codex is provided.
"In this excellent book of meticulous scholarship, Carolyn Schneider restores a neglected Coptic text to its original context in early Egyptian monasticism. Schneider persuasively argues that On Love and Self-Control originated within the Pachomian monastic community, probably during the turmoil that followed Pachomius's death in 346, and that the leader Horsiesios could have been its author. She
David Brakke, Joe R. Engle Chair in the History of Christianity and Professor of History,
