Social, cultural, theological, and economic presentations of children offer important clues to understanding the development of Christianity and society in Late Antiquity. This volume brings together studies of a diverse collection of sources - patristic texts, apocrypha, medicinal treatises, hagiography, pseudepigrapha, papyri, and more - illuminating how children mediated the relationship between Christian thought and Late Antique society. The contributors address the existence of children's culture, medicine and healing of children, disability and deformed children, the economic condition...

This volume contains a critical edition and translation of the Coptic texts on Abraham of Farshut, the last Coptic orthodox archimandrite of the Pachomian federation in Upper Egypt. While past studies have focused on the origins and early years of this, the first communal monastic movement, James E. Goehring turns to its final days and ultimate demise in the sixth century reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. He examines the literary nature of the texts, their role in the making of a saint, and the historical events that they reveal. Miracle stories and tendentious accounts give way to...