Can you, must you for your own safety, keep a slave if you are an ascetic and renounce all your possessions?

A truly interesting and very well-written article has appeared in Early Medieval History this month. Fortunately it is open-access. The article is T. Dailey & Justin Piggott, “Ascetics, slaves, and necessity in Late Antiquity: renouncing all wealth, but for a single slave”, Early Medieval Europe 34 (2026); https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70055 It can be found online here. Unfortunately the page numbers do not seem to be given on the website. Here’s the abstract: Slave owners in Late Antiquity viewed the possession of at least one slave to be a necessity and a defining mark that distinguished the dignified social classes from the poor. Ascetics who shared this perspective faced a choice when renouncing all worldly possessions in pursuit of spiritual perfection, one not merely about luxury, but also about status and perhaps even survival. Hagiographic literature and monastic rules reveal that the embrace of the ascetic life, in eremitic and coenobitic contexts alike, was often assumed to…