David Brakke: Materiality and Patristic Authorship: The Codices of Shenoute’s Discourses

How does a human being become a “Father of the Church,” materially embodied in books on library shelves devoted to Migne, Sources Chrétiennes, or simply “BR”?  As scholars work now to make Shenoute the Great (347-465) such a “Father,” this paper examines the earliest efforts to make him such – the compilation of selected works of the monk into large volumes of “discourses” (logoi).  Examination of surviving manuscript fragments, including their colophons, marginal annotations, layouts, and decorations, may help us to see what kind of author early medieval monastic editors sought to create and how later monks used these works and understood their authority.