Month: November 2024

Experiences of teaching Dutch primary school children about time and going to school in the Roman world

What was it like to be a Roman schoolchild? A few months ago, the project team designed an interactive tutorial about the life of Roman schoolboy and the ways of knowing time in the Roman world for school children aged 9-12. From June one, we (research assistant Kevin Hoogeveen and student assistant Hugo Oostdijk) have practiced and perfected the tutorial in primary schools in Bussum, Amstelveen and Rotterdam. In this blogpost, we share our experiences.

The goal of the lesson was to teach children about the ways in which Romans used and experienced time. A child’s morning routine and school day served as an example. We hoped that, by the end of the class, children knew more about:

1. how Romans measured time;
2. how the rhythm of people differed depending on their place in society (wealth, class, gender, being enslaved, etc.); and
3. inequality in the Roman world in general. Many children did not go to school at all, people could be enslaved and women were considered inferior to men.

For each school group, we started off with a small introduction into the Roman world with a lot of input from the children themselves. Caesar and Cleopatra were the best-known celebrities. Some were even familiar with the concept of Roman imperialism. Pointing out the fact that the Roman empire included modern-day Turkey and large parts of North Africa, and stretched all the way to Britain and Rumania, visibly fostered a sense of involvement and enhanced engagement in classes with a relatively diverse demographic.

Next, we turned our attention to a fourth-century colloquium text which describes the day of a Roman schoolboy, from the moment he gets up until the end of his school day when the teacher accidentally sends the children home early, in the conviction that the next day was going to be holiday. The text was originally designed for children who were practicing the colloquial use of Latin and Greek. Because it is written from the point of view of the child itself, it is easy for children to relate to the Roman schoolchild and compare their day with his.

The children also acted out the colloquium texts. This created an opportunity to discuss the questions related to the text that the children answered earlier, but the little plays wre above all a fun way for them to reflect better on what happened in the story and also on how the lives of characters in the text had different rhythms.

In two more practical blocks of the class, the children learnt how to make a rudimentary sundial. We took them outside to see how the gnomon’s shadow moved throughout the day like that of a modern clock.

Hugo: “I had no prior experience with teaching in any way, let alone groups of young children. I learned a lot throughout so this project was probably more educational for me than for any of the children we encountered, but I really liked to try to enthuse children for the discipline that we all feel so enthusiastic about. Aside from the general challenges of getting some of the children to listen and actively partake (the intensity of which also differed per school) the try-outs of the lesson presented us with an opportunity to run into some more specific challenges that allowed us to finetune the end product. A great example is the sundial experiment for which we planned to go outside until we had to teach a class in the pouring rain, which forced us to come up with an alternative approach for those (many) days that it rains in the Netherlands.

The most challenging aspect however, was the fact that we were developing this lesson in a way that it could be taught by a primary school teacher, and they usually don’t have such an extensive knowledge of the Roman world as people working in the ancient history department of a university. It felt nice but problematic at the same time when teachers after class complemented us on how we could answer the questions of children about a plethora of different subjects concerning the Roman world, because this is exactly what a normal teacher would not be able to do. By writing an introduction document for the teacher and an extensive step by step plan of the lesson we hope to have overcome this challenge as much as possible and I think the end product has turned out to be indeed both accessible as well as educational.”

Kevin: “Until now, I had only been a teacher at Sunday school. Teaching Roman history to children at this young age was a whole new experience to me. I thoroughly enjoyed their enthusiasm and found joy in stating that the history of the Roman empire is a shared history of many people of diverse backgrounds. The sundial demonstration proved to be most interesting element of the class, followed by the short plays with the colloquium text as script. I hope Hugo, I and the rest of the project team will prove to have been able to share our knowledge with as diverse a public as possible by developing a class suitable for use in all primary schools.”

Kevin Hoogeveen and Hugo Oostdijk

The teaching material (in Dutch) is found here.

For those interested in the origin of monastic routines, Bentley Layton’s book The Canons of Our Fathers: Monastic Rules of Shenoute (Oxford, 2014) is highly recommended. It presents the first edition of a very early collection of monastic rules written in Coptic, 595 entries in total. These rules were not transmitted as a group, but abbot Shenoute of Atripe (ca. 347-465) and his successor Besa quoted them in their writings, and Layton carefully collected these quotes.

In ca. 385, Shenoute, the most prolific author in Coptic in late antiquity, became the supreme leader of a monastic federation on the west bank of the Nile, at the edge of the desert near the ancient village of Atripe and the modern city of Sohag [see the YMAP-South map]. According to Layton, the federation was founded when Pcol, the founder of a monastery (in ca. 360), and Pshoi, the leader of an eremitic community that transformed into a monastery, decided to link their congregations. Pcol, who also founded a third monastery for women in the village of Atripe, became the first archimandrite (superior abbot) of all three congregations and male and female ascetics associated with them, while remaining the abbot of the main monastery. His successor Ebonh combined the two offices as well, but Shenoute, who lived as a hermit after leaving the main monastery, only succeeded Ebonh as archimandrite of the federation, while two abbots and an abbess directed the monasteries. In the course of time, the communities have been referred to by various names:

1. The central monastery for men was later called the Monastery of St Shenoute, but is best known by its modern name, the ‘White Monastery’, as the monumental church was built of white limestone. The church is still in use today.
2. Similarly, the northern monastery for men is officially named the Monastery of St Pshoi, but often called the ‘Red Monastery’, on account of the red limestone used in the church building. The church is still in use today and admired for its polychrome decoration.
3. Themonastery in the village, a cloistered community for women, no longer exists today, but has been excavated by Yale University.

These communities could include small children and youths, who participated in the daily monastic routine as much as possible like the adults. Each monastery comprised an unspecified number of houses, where monks or nuns slept and attended communal activities, including prayer and handwork sessions and instructional meetings.

In his nine-volume work called Canons, which is largely preserved and meticulously reconstructed, and in some fragmentary writings, Shenoute quoted monastic rules (nos. 1-581) written by himself or by Pcol. The latter also appears to have revised and supplemented the rules of Pachomius (ca. 292-347), who was the first monastic leader to define monastic rules (from 329 onward). Just as Shenoute added new rules in the course of time in response to practical situations, his successor Besa discussed a number of supplementary rules in two of his works (nos. 582-595). These rules do not discuss the weekly and daily schedules systematically – as these were self-evident to the monks, the most basic routines are least likely to be preserved. But all the information together does enable us to get a detailed impression of the routines in the monastic federation (see the table).

In each monastery the Eucharist was celebrated twice a week, on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Both services were mandatory, unless someone was seriously ill or instructed to stay behind. After the Saturday mass, the monks and nuns went to sleep and got up hours before dawn for the collective prayer. During the winter, when the hours were shorter than in summer, the time to get up was 3 hours before sunrise, to ensure that the siblings recited 51 prayer units. Children attended the collective prayer as well, but they were allowed to sleep during the event. At dawn, the superiors of the three monasteries gave catechesis, after which the Eucharist took place early in the morning. During the rest of Sunday, nobody was allowed to do difficult tasks, and only easy or urgent tasks were acceptable.

On other days than Sunday, the monks and nuns got up 1,5-2 hours before sunrise. The daily prayer schedule consisted of collective prayer before dawn and in the evening, either in the churches or other communal spaces, and prayer sessions in the houses: after waking up (not noted by Layton, but implied in rule no. 169), at the first hour (dawn), at the fifth hour or the sixth (noon) at the latest, and at the ninth hour (ca. 3 PM) or the tenth at the latest. During the collective meetings, the monks and nuns usually prayed twelve rounds, while being engaged in handiwork: the monks plaited reeds, the nuns worked with wool. However, during the colder months, they prayed six rounds in the evening and did not have to work, out of concern for those who were tired of fasting or working outside, so that they could eat their bread in peace. The prayer sessions in the houses included 18 units, or 24 units in summer. Layton previously thought that they were occasions for handiwork as well, but later indicated that this was perhaps not the case (compare Layton 2007 and 2014, p. 72).

Each change of activity was signaled by the striking of wooden instruments. Except on Sunday, the monks and nuns worked in the morning and afternoon. The daily meal was normally served in the refectory at noon (once a week it was cooked), and extra bread was distributed for those who needed to eat in the evening, which they could do in private at the time for reading. The rules do not clarify whether the daily meal was postponed to the evening on the two fast days, i.e. Wednesday and Friday, and at which moment of these days the superiors of each monastery and the house leaders gave catechesis.

Reading Layton’s edition of the rules and combining details scattered throughout the collection strongly improved my understanding of how daily life in the monastic federation was organized, especially with regard to the moments reserved for prayer, work or a combination of both. As disciplined life in the cenobitic communities may have been, especially in view Shenoute’s reputation as a very strict monastic leader, the rules show room for variation depending on the season and moderation for the sake of child monks, the weary, and the sick.

Renate Dekker

Table: monastic schedule

Further reading

On the rules

Layton, B. 2007, ‘Rules, Patterns, and the Exercise of Power in Shenoute’s Monastery: The Problem of World Replacement and Identity Maintenance’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 15.1, 45-73 [on the organization of space, time and offices in the monastic federation].

Layton, B. 2014, The Canons of Our Fathers: Monastic Rules of Shenoute, Oxford: Oxford University Press [edition of the preserved monastic canons compiled by Shenoute].

On Shenoute

Behlmer, H. 2022, ‘Shenoute: Update’, Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia, available online at https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cce/id/2178/rec/1.

Bell, D.N. 1983, The Life of Shenoute, by Besa, Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications.

Brakke, D., and A. Crislip 2015, Selected Discourses of Shenoute The Great: Community, Theology, and Social Conflict in Late Antique Egypt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gabra, G., and H.N. Takla (eds) 2008, Christianity and Monasticism in Upper Egypt, vol. 1: Akhmim and Sohag, Cairo: AUC Press [on Shenoute and the monastic federation].

On the monasteries

Bolman, E.S. 2016, The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt, New Haven–London: Yale University Press [on the church decoration in the ‘northern monastery’].

CCP Staff 2020, ‘’Elizabeth Bolman Interview: The Red Monastery Church. A Multi-Decade Project Brings a 5^th C. Coptic Church in Egypt back to Vivid Life, Cultural Property News, available at https://culturalpropertynews.org/elizabeth-s-bolman-interview-the-red-monastery-church/.

Yale Monastic Archaeological Project South (YMAP-South), ‘The History and Goals of the Project’, available online at Yale Egyptology, with links to the sub projects ‘Shenoute and the History of the Monastic Federation’, ‘The White Monastery’, and ‘The Women’s Monastery near Atripe’.