When Latin Christians of late antiquity thought of religious giving, they went back to what for them was the beginning—to the words of Jesus. The words of Jesus to a rich young man encapsulated the whole notion of the transfer of “treasure” from earth to heaven: “And Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven’” (Matt. 19:21; cf. Mark 10:21, Luke 18:22, MEV). Jesus repeated this challenge to his disciples: “Sell your possessions and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys” (Luke 12:33).l
This notion was also current in Jewish circles. The Jerusalem Talmud of the late fourth century contains a story about King Monobazos, the Jewish king of Adiabene on the Euphrates. He was said to have spent his fortune on providing food for the poor in Jerusalem. His infuriated relatives accused him of living up to his name, which was derived from the word bazaz—“to plunder.” Monobazos was plundering the earthly inheritance of his family. He answered them at length: “My fathers laid up treasure for below, but I have laid up treasures for above. They laid up treasures in a place over which the hand of man may prevail; I in a place over which no hand can prevail. . . . My fathers laid up treasures for others, I for myself. [For] my fathers laid up treasures useful in this world, I for the world to come.”
The commands of Jesus and the story of King Monobazos urged or described heroic acts of renunciation and generosity. By the third century AD, however, in both Judaism and Christianity, the gesture of giving had become miniaturized, as it were. One did not have to perform feats of heroic self-sacrifice or charity to place treasure in heaven. Small gifts would do. But the notion of the transfer of treasure to heaven by acts of mercy retained its otherworldly shimmer. Cyprian, for instance, treated the steady, low-profile flow of alms to the poor as a form of thésaurisation in heaven on the same footing as the renunciation of all wealth that Jesus had urged on the rich young man.
