Monasticism in Arid and Semi-Arid Landscapes in Late Antiquity: Between Holiness and Economy (original) (raw)
Related papers
This book situates discussions of Christian monasticism in Egypt and Palestine within the socioeconomic world of the long Late Antiquity, from the golden age of monasticism into and well beyond the Arab conquest (fifth to tenth century). Its thirteen chapters present new research into the rich corpus of textual sources and archaeological remains and move beyond traditional studies that have treated monastic communities as religious entities in physical seclusion from society. The volume brings together scholars working across traditional boundaries of subject and geography and explores a diverse range of topics from the production of food and wine to networks of scribes, patronage, and monastic visitation. As such, it paints a vivid picture of busy monastic lives dependent on and led in tandem with the non-monastic world.
The Literature of Early Eastern Monasticism
The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism
The chapter examines a variety of late antique monastic sources written in Greek, Syriac, and Coptic—hagiographies, canons, letters, and pedagogical treatises. It interrogates ways of reading these sources in order to reconstruct the historical development of monastic settlements in Palestine, Cappadocia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. It argues that the monastic texts do not clearly reflect the world that produced them, and it identifies a number of obstacles for historians that are embedded in the texts upon which we must rely. The discussion emphasizes the function of the perceptions, metaphors, symbols, images, and memories contained in the sources, thereby revealing late antique cultural and rhetorical trends and reflecting many aspects of Eastern monastic culture.
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 2014
In this essay I set out to offer a new interpretation of rural monasticism in Late Antiquity. The commonsensical understanding of the monk is of a holy man who played a key role in shaping the rural landscapes of Late Antique Levant. I want to suggest a distinction between the holy man, usually presented as a living saint in hagiographic literature, and the monk, who was a product of rural society and an integral part of the human landscape in the countryside. As a result, I offer a fresh look at monasticism as an organic component of the rural landscape and at the rural monk as a domestic villager rather than a revered role model for society.
"Early Egyptian Monasticism: Ideals and Reality, or: The Shaping of the Monastic Ideal."
Egyptian monasticism began and spread as a movement of popular piety, but successive generations of theologians attempted to give it inner theological coherence and consistency. Although we may find some clues in the early monastic terminology and even if we can engage in well-founded speculation, we shall never know what inspired or motivated the many thousands who took up the monastic life in Egypt at the end of the third century and the early fourth century to do so. They did not leave behind any written testimony. Our literary sources such as the Life of Antony and the Lives of Pachomius and his successors come later and they are clearly aimed at creating an ideal of the monastic life, an ideal that owes much, to be sure, to the earlier philosophical and spiritual tradition concerning the possibility of spiritual progress.
Paradise Found - The desert as metaphor and experience in early monasticism
Nearly forty years have passed since the appearance of Derwas Chitty's fundamental study entitled 'The Desert a City' 1 on the beginnings of Christian monasticism in Egypt and Palestine. Chitty's titular expression is borrowed from the famous descripition of Athanasius' hagiographical work, the Vita Antonii, where the bishop presents the Saint's effect on his environment. 'The deserthe writes -soon became populated as if it were a city'. 2 However idealized this presentation of Anthony and his circle may be, the crucial role of the desert in the history of ascetical movements can hardly be overestimated. The 'desert' or 'wilderness' (η έρηµος) is not only a place where one is able to find shelter from the outer world and all its earthly cares, but also, since Biblical times, a par excellence territory of the encountering with God, and therefore a source of theology and deep mystical experience. Thus the desert can be perceived in many ways: not only as city -that is, community, as Athanasius refers to it -, but it can also be seen as church, tomb, scripture or hell, which is full of affliction and demons, and as Paradise, the dwelling-place of saints and angels. The desert also has its own theology, which differs from that ofthe cities. In comparison, the former seems more practical, more personal and less theoretical. Usually it expresses itself not in elongated treatises and homilies, but in short stories or letters often gathered in handbooks; and it is indisputably mystical with a paradox mysticism that seems to focus more on the human person rather than the secrets of the ineffable godhead. Excellent studies were composed on the history and thought of early Christian monasticism, that shed new light on the beginnings of theology and asceticism; however, the following essay has for itself a more modest purpose -only to trace the importance of the actual place where this kind of theology and practice was born. For the desert usually appears as a somewhat monochrome background for the events that took place therein, as if it were the schematic and conventional background of the central figures of an icon. A closer look, however, may reveal that this backround is actually a significant component, if notthe protagonist in the history of ascetical thought.
Economic growth and monastic built environment in Christian Galilee in Late Antiquity
The economic growth in the Levant in Late Antiquity is readily apparent in the surge of newly developed rural settlements, throughout the region. Part and parcel of the prosperity of rural life is the conspicuous transformation of the religious built environment (cultural landscape) in the shape of private churches, martyria, and especially monasteries found in the east Mediterranean countryside. To date, the correlation between the economic growth and changes in the cultural landscapes are still predominantly an uncharted and unexplained terrain. In this paper, we argue for a phenomenology of these changes as a way to better understand the nature of the flourishing of monasticism and its unique character therein. We examine the growth of rural economy in Late Antiquity and its relation to the broad spread of religious edifices not, as mutually exclusive processes but rather as interdependent. We suggest that the changes of religious landscape were the outcome of local economic processes (bottom-up), no less than the result of ecclesiastical or imperial initiative (top-down). By introducing local and regional factors, we will focus on the place monasticism in the rural fabric of Christian Galilee in Late Antiquity. We will show how local wealth is reflected in monastic buildings within the village and in its surroundings. These buildings—apart from commemorating local and regional martyrs—contributed to the increasing agricultural manufacturing of the village. Above all, we argue that monastic settlements inside villages and around them, which mostly were also initiated by local magnates, had a crucial effect not only on the faith of the humble rural believers, but also on their economic performances. By cultivating arable lands and joining forces with the tiller men in the villages, monks increased significantly the profitability of agricultural production and contributed to the economic prosperity of the region.