This chapter seeks to address a big question: how were ideas of poverty transformed by the church in late antiquity? In approaching this question it also asks how this church was itself able to come to terms with its own teachings on poverty in the light of its own ever-increasing wealth and splendour. This in turn leads us to consider how Christian writers, often themselves bishops, the princes of the church, represented both poverty and splendour. In this way I hope to provide something of a new take on the well-trodden subject of Patristic debates on poverty, particularly by focusing on questions of aesthetics and representation, through examining discourses regarding church decoration and its relationship to poverty and charity.

At the heart of the discussion is a slightly contrived conceit: the comparing and contrasting of two texts which give accounts of what I have admittedly loosely described as ‘parties for the poor’. These two texts provide interesting takes on early Christian approaches to poverty and wealth. While both the events depicted within the texts and their historical status differ, this juxtaposition nonetheless provides a striking introduction to the complex web of ideas and ideologies to be found in late antique Christian texts. In the course of my discussion I shall be considering what might be considered both ‘representation’ and ‘reality’, remaining alert to the power of metaphor and allegory while trying to avoid the problem of the occlusion of the late antique poor themselves.