6세기 가자 수도원의 가난 담론

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article is designed to underscore the significance of The Correspondence of Barsnuphius and John of Gaza in the study of poverty and wealth in the later Roman empire, to stress the role of “Holy Persons” in social changes from classical civic model of society to medieval model of society, and to demonstrate the reality and plausibility of hagiographic descriptions in Late Antiquity. Poverty discourses found in The Corresondence did not lie just in the level of rhetorics, but reflect actual attitudes, lives and practices related to the poor and Christian almsgiving at that time. This article collaborates that the monastic leaders in Gaza in the sixth century possessed a totally different view of the poor and poverty from that of the classical civic model of society, that they taught monks, clergy and lay people to regard the poor as equal and even as Christ himself. The remaining issue is to examine how far this concept of the poor went back and how geographically widely diffused it was, which will require further research.