Discipline and punishment in 7th century Visigothic monasticism: The contrast between Isidore’s and Fructuosus’ rules (original) (raw)
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'Discipline, Compassion and Monastic Ideals of Community, c. 950-1250'
Journal of Medieval History, 2009
This essay examines the intersections of discipline, compassion and community in a selection of monastic texts from the late tenth through to the mid-thirteenth centuries, focusing on disciplinary rituals involving punitive flogging or flagellation. Although members of all of the major religious orders viewed flogging as a necessary method of correction needing little or no justification, as evidenced by customaries, letters, and even miracle collections, few scholars have examined the role of this practice in the shaping of monastic culture. This essay suggests that disciplinary rituals served a number of related functions within coenobitic monasticism: they reinforced hierarchies within communities, tested individuals' mastery of the virtues of humility and obedience, expressed superiors' compassion and love for their subordinates, and reminded penitents and spectators alike of Christ's bodily suffering. These conclusions are further supported by a close reading of Peter the Venerable's vita of the Cluniac prior Matthew of Albano, a text which depicts disciplinary violence as a synthetic element of monastic life, as well as a ritual means of promoting the spiritual growth of individuals and entire communities.
Sacris Erudiri, 2019
This article shows the impact of clerical ordinations of monks on monastic communities of the late antique Latin West. Its first part demonstrates how the clerical hierarchy introduced by monk-presbyters and monk-deacons challenged the purely monastic power structure – based, above all, on the abbot’s supreme authority. It turns then to three organizers of monastic life active in the sixth century – Eugendus of Jura, Aurelian of Arles, and Benedict of Nursia – who, each in his own way, ensured that the appointment of monks to clerical ranks would leave the monastery’s hierarchy intact – or even reinforce it. In conclusion, it is argued that the problems provoked by monastic clergy were alleviated by the strict separation of monastic and ecclesiastical hierarchies, which is demonstrated particularly in the Benedict’s of Nursia Rule. This, in turn, contributed to the steady process of the clericalization of Western monasticism.
4. Christian Monasticism. — Expansion of Monasticism
Lectures CM407 - Christian Monasticism Lecturer: Rev. Prof. Ugo-Maria Er. Dio Blackfriars The history of monasticism is one of the strangest problems in the history of the world. For monasticism ranks among the most powerful influences which have shaped the destinies of Christendom and of civilisation; and the attempt to analyse it is more than usually difficult, because the good and the evil in it, are blended together almost inextricably. To those who contemplate it from a distance, wrapped in a romantic haze of glory, it may appear a sublime and heroic effort after superhuman excellence. To others, approaching it more closely and examining it more dispassionately, it seems essentially faulty in principle, though accidentally productive of good results at certain times and under certain conditions. They regard the blemishes, which from the first marred the beauty of its heavenward aspirations, as well as the more glaring vices of its later phases, as inseparable from its very being. To them it is not so much a thing excellent in itself, though sometimes perverted, as a radical mistake from the first, though provoked into existence by circumstances; not an aiming too high, but an aiming in the wrong direction. By declaring “war against nature,” to use the phrase of one of its panegyrists, it is, in their eyes, virtually “fighting against God.” In their judgment it degrades man into a machine. In their estimation the monk shunning the conflict with the world is not simply deserting his post, but courting temptations of another kind quite as perilous to his well-being. In brief, far from being an integral and essential part of Christianity, it is in their estimation a morbid excrescence. What proportion of truth is in each of these conflicting theories, a careful study of the facts, so far as they can be ascertained from history, may help to determine.
Victoria Zimmerl-Panagl, Lukas J. Dorfbauer, and Clemens Weidmann (eds.), Edition und Erforschung lateinischer patristischer Texte. 150 Jahre CSEL. Festschrift für Kurt Smolak zum 70. Geburtstag, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2014, pp. 191-224., 2014
This article provides a close reading of the monastic rules of Bishop Caesarius of Arles and his successor Aurelianus. Aurelianus died in 551, less than ten years after Caesarius. His Rule, which exists in two versions for a male and a female community, was largely inspired by Caesarius’ Rules. Nevertheless, subtle changes, re-arrangements and semantic shifts indicate that both bishops had a fundamentally different notion of the role, function and theological basis of monastic life. Caesarius’ Rules can still be seen as products of the world of Late Antiquity; Aureluans’ Rules are in many regards ‘early medieval’. A comparison of the male and female version of Aurelianus’ Rule shows that only the smaller part of the alterations and omissions in the female version are motivated by gender differences. Most of them can be explained by the different legal status of his foundations. Aurelianus pursued a profoundly non-gendered monastic ideal, which was, however, deeply inspired by Caesarius female monastic model.
In his eighteenth conference John Cassian seems to describe the origin of monasticism as a «reform» movement in reaction to the growing laxity of the church, a reform that he places, however, close to the apostolic age. His phrase, «they gradually separated themselves from the crowds of believers» in its context of a description of the growing laxity of the early church seems to suggest that the early monks were the true church over against the crowds of believers. Cassian was primarily a theologian rather than a historian. Nevertheless this passage raises very interesting questions both of history and historiography as well as questions of theology and ideology. This article seeks to examine the questions of history and historiography as well as those of theology and ideology.
Arthur Lovejoy, the founder of the discipline of the «history of ideas,» observed in the first number of the Journal of the History of Ideas, «ideas are the most migratory things in the world. A preconception, category, postulate, dialectical motive, pregnant metaphor or analogy, ‘sacred word,’ mood of thought or explicit doctrine, which makes its first appearance on the scene in one of the conventionally distinguished provinces of history (most often, perhaps, in philosophy) may, and frequently does, cross over into a dozen others». The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which key concepts, particularly from the field of philosophy, crossed over and mutated in the early monastic literature.
6. Christian Monasticism - The Benedictine Rule.
Lectures CM407 - Christian Monasticism Lecturer: Rev. Prof. Ugo-Maria Er. Dio Blackfriars The history of monasticism is one of the strangest problems in the history of the world. For monasticism ranks among the most powerful influences which have shaped the destinies of Christendom and of civilisation; and the attempt to analyse it is more than usually difficult, because the good and the evil in it, are blended together almost inextricably. To those who contemplate it from a distance, wrapped in a romantic haze of glory, it may appear a sublime and heroic effort after superhuman excellence. To others, approaching it more closely and examining it more dispassionately, it seems essentially faulty in principle, though accidentally productive of good results at certain times and under certain conditions. They regard the blemishes, which from the first marred the beauty of its heavenward aspirations, as well as the more glaring vices of its later phases, as inseparable from its very being. To them it is not so much a thing excellent in itself, though sometimes perverted, as a radical mistake from the first, though provoked into existence by circumstances; not an aiming too high, but an aiming in the wrong direction. By declaring “war against nature,” to use the phrase of one of its panegyrists, it is, in their eyes, virtually “fighting against God.” In their judgment it degrades man into a machine. In their estimation the monk shunning the conflict with the world is not simply deserting his post, but courting temptations of another kind quite as perilous to his well-being. In brief, far from being an integral and essential part of Christianity, it is in their estimation a morbid excrescence. What proportion of truth is in each of these conflicting theories, a careful study of the facts, so far as they can be ascertained from history, may help to determine.