Shenoute of Atripe (348–465) was the most important Egyptian monastic leader in late antiquity. He developed a formalized discipline with which he governed three monasteries (two for men, one for women) located in the village of Atripe, across the Nile River from the city Panopolis (modern Akhmim). Thanks to Shenoute’s leadership, these monastic complexes, collectively known as the White Monastery Federation, played a major role in the social, political, economic, and religious lives of people in the region (Christians and non-Christians alike) and would become the hub of Christian literary culture in Egypt well into the Arab period. Shenoute himself occasionally preached public sermons in his native Coptic tongue to large crowds consisting of monastics, clergy members, lay people, government officials, military professionals, and other local luminaries. In those moments, Shenoute repeatedly defined the moral contours of the Christian community by stridently and repeatedly lambasting any zdepravity he believed present among his hearers, such as exploitation of the poor by rich landowners, adultery, violation of monastic vows, theft, cultic veneration of pagan gods, and Origenist and eventually Chalcedonian heresy.