Christian Monasticism Research Articles

Sexuality, Angelification, and Divine Indwelling: A Contemporary Ethic of Early Christian Asceticism

AbstractThe monastic movement originated among laity who recognized within themselves the potential to embody the Christian gospel. That a practice so central to early Christians and their Scriptural understanding would undergo such a decline contemporarily gives pause for reconsideration. This article posits that the kind of asceticism at the core of Christian monasticism maintains relevance as a transformative Christian practice in the contemporary world, as well. The argument draws on a tripartite model of spirituality in accord with Gregory of Nyssa’s notion of epektasis. This suggests asceticism’s contemporary appropriation as an ethic of Christian spiritual development oriented toward perpetual ascent. Asceticism will be analyzed as a form of spiritual struggle; that is, physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual exertion aiming to progress in knowledge, similitude, and intimacy with Jesus Christ, for God and for others. The three stages of this ethic of Christian spiritual growth – 1) detachment from fleshly passions, 2) strengthening of the soul, and 3) union with God – find parallels in the three themes at the core of asceticism: sexuality, angelification, and divine indwelling. Situating asceticism within a framework of spiritual struggle creates an opportunity to recover and re‐envision a well‐established Christian practice in a contemporary context.

Conversion and Self-Transformation in Christian Monasticism: A Cognitive Perspective.

Religious conversion involves changes in the convert's way of thinking and behaving. This paper focuses on the unique form that this transformative process took within the Christian monastic movement in late antiquity. Treating monastic conversion as a gradual process in which the convert is an active participant, it examines the ways in which monastic converts were able to intentionally promote such a change and influence its direction. This study draws on research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience on the cognitive underpinnings of self-transformation in order to reconstruct from the literary sources of Near Eastern monasticism the strategies and training methods that late antique monks employed in order to facilitate and sustain the transformation implicated in conversion.

E. Hisamatsu, Spirituality of the Early Greek Fathers：Emergence of Eastern Christian Monasticism and Mysticism

E. Hisamatsu, <i>Spirituality of the Early Greek Fathers：Emergence of Eastern Christian Monasticism and Mysticism</i>

The Beguine Option: A Persistent Past and a Promising Future of Christian Monasticism

Since Herbert Grundmann’s 1935 Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, interest in the Beguines has grown significantly. Yet we have struggled whether to call Beguines “religious” or not. My conviction is that the Beguines are one manifestation of an impulse found throughout Christian history to live a form of life that resembles Christian monasticism without founding institutions of religious life. It is this range of less institutional yet seriously committed forms of life that I am here calling the “Beguine Option.” In my essay, I will sketch this “Beguine Option” in its varied expressions through Christian history. Having presented something of the persistent past of the Beguine Option, I will then present an introduction to forms of life exhibited in many of the expressions of what some have called “new monasticism” today, highlighting the similarities between movements in the past and new monastic movements in the present. Finally, I will suggest that the Christian Church would do well to foster the development of such communities in the future as I believe these forms of life hold much promise for manifesting and advancing the kingdom of God in our midst in a postmodern world.

Languages of Love: The Formative Power of Religious Language

How we are to understand the formative and informative processes of language? At one level, language is understood as a medium for communicating knowledge through propositions that form or represent cognitive understanding and so can be defined as informative. The concern of this article is to explore the scope of this notion of linguistic and conceptual informing and to consider what it overlooks. I argue that straightforwardly propositional, descriptive and cognitive accounts of language leave out a great deal that properly belongs to language, namely the poetic, aesthetic and affective. I consider the distinction between the propositional statement and the poetic utterance initially through a discussion of the cognitive and affective modes of understanding. The argument explores a number of contexts in which language is primarily affective and formative, from Yoga Sutras to medieval Christian monasticism, in order to consider the varieties of affective and formative language. I argue that forms of devotional speech intended to form the person (the soul of the practitioner) are significantly affective as well as cognitive, forming the speaker in ways that are seldom considered in the context of more rationalist views of language. I then explore how a more poetic, aesthetic or affective kind of language can be seen shaping, or re-orienting desire. Finally, I argue that the theological understanding of negation (apophatic theology) can be helpfully applied to both the negation of our cognitive understanding (of God), as well as our desire (for God2) and show the educational significance through considerations of formation.

The ‘Greening’ of Christian Monasticism and the Future of Monastic Landscapes in North America

Christian monasticism has an ancient land-based foundation. The desert fathers and later reform movements appealed to the land for sustenance, spiritual metaphor, and as a marker of authentic monastic identity. Contemporary Roman Catholic monastics with this history in mind, have actively engaged environmental discourse in ways that draw from their respective monastic lineages, a process sociologist Stephen Ellingson calls ‘bridging’. Though this study is of limited scope, this bridging between monastic lineages and environmental discourse could cautiously be identified with the broader phenomenon of the ‘greening’ of Christianity. Looking to the future, while the footprint of North American monastic communities is quite small, and their numbers are slowly declining, a variety of conservation-minded management schemes implemented since the 1990s by some communities suggests that the impact will remain for many decades to come.

Living toto corde: Monastic Vows and the Knowledge of God

Monastic vows have been a source of religious controversy at least since the Reformation. Today, new monastic movements recover many elements of the tradition (e.g., community life and prayer, material solidarity and poverty), but vows—understood as a lifelong or binding commitment to obedience, stability and conversion to the monastic way of life—do not appear to capture much enthusiasm. Even the Benedictine tradition in the Catholic Church appears, at least in certain regions, to struggle to attract young men and women to give themselves away through vows. In this context, I ask whether vows should belong to the “future of Christian monasticisms”. I will look at Anselm of Canterbury for inspiration regarding their meaning. For him, monastic vows enact the “total” gift of self or the “total” belonging to God. I will suggest, following Anselm, that such vows enable an existential commitment that is in a unique way morally and intellectually enlivening, and that such vows should remain an element in any future monasticism wanting to stand in continuity with the “Christian monasticism” of the past. During my conclusion, I acknowledge that our imagination regarding the concrete forms the total gift could take may develop.

Rediscovering Monasticism through Art

Looking at modern monasticism and its role in society one can see how traditional monastic concepts or values find their new forms. On the other hand, art and artists willingly, though not always consciously, use or refer to some monastic themes. In this paper, on the base of texts of some authors open to the dialogue between monasticism and art, a reading of monasticism in the key of art is proposed, exclusively in reference to the Christian monasticism. Given its present cultural and social context, the thesis of this paper is that through the rediscovering of monasticism through art, one can and should refresh and save it in a more and more secularized society, what may be also a perspective of a new role of monasticism in the modern world.

Mining multiple sources of historical data: The example of a standardized dataset of medieval monasteries and convents in France

Abstract. In this paper, we present a dataset of medieval monasteries and convents on the territory of today’s France and discuss the workflow of its integration. Spatial historical data are usually dispersed and stored in various forms – encyclopedias and catalogues, websites, online databases, and printed maps. In order to cope with this heterogeneity and proceed to computational analysis, we have devised a method that includes the creation of a data model, data mining from sources, data transformation, geocoding, editing, and conflicts solving. The resulting dataset is probably the most comprehensive collection of records on medieval monasteries within the borders of today’s France. It can be used for understanding the spatial patterns of medieval Christian monasticism and the implantation of the official Church infrastructure, as well as the relation between this official infrastructure and phenomena covered in other datasets. We open this dataset, as well as scripts for mining, to the public (https://github.com/adammertel/dissinet.monasteries) and provide a map tool to visualize, filter, and download the records (http://hde.geogr.muni.cz/monasteries).

New Monasticism: An Answer to the Contemporary Challenges of Catholic Monasticism?

New Monasticism has been interpreted by its protagonists as an answer to the challenges of the future of Christian monasticism. New Monastic Communities can be defined as groups of people (at least some of whom have taken religious vows) living together permanently and possessing two main characteristics: (1) born in the wake of Vatican Council II, they are renewing monastic life by emphasising the most innovative and disruptive aspects they can find in the Council’s theology; and (2) they do not belong to pre-existing orders or congregations—although they freely adapt their Rules of Life. New Monastic Communities developed and multiplied in the decades during which, in Western European countries and North America, there was a significant drop in the number of priests, brothers and sisters. Based on our empirical research in a new monastic community—the Fraternity of Jerusalem (a foundation in Poland)—we addressed the following: Why are New Monastic Communities thriving? Are they really counteracting the decline of monasticism? What characteristics distinguish them from traditional communities? We will show how they renew monastic life by emphasising and radicalising the most innovative and disruptive theological aspects identified in Vatican Council II.

Forming “Mediators and Instruments of Grace”: The Emerging Role of Monastics in Teaching Contemplative Ambiguity and Practice to the Laity

Drawing from long-term ethnographic research with a global network of contemplative Christians, this paper discusses an emerging teaching role for North American monasteries as the numbers of avowed religious decline. Since the Trappist community of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, first developed the Christian meditation technique called Centering Prayer in the 1970s, monks and nuns have increasingly become teachers, models, and stabilizers of non-monastic practitioners who attempt to transform their ways of being and thinking towards monastic-inspired sensibilities. Their guidance includes the use of face-to-face, literary, and virtual means to teach methods of contemplative intersubjectivity and a commitment to lives based on service, hospitality, and humility, as well as on study and formalized rites. The paper focuses on non-monastics’ strong attraction to monastic teachings on ambiguity as a source of creativity and wonder in uncertain times, as practiced through a combination of cataphatic and apophatic ritual, including Centering Prayer. The number of monastic postulants continues to falter, yet a much larger, “non-gathered” community of non-monastic oblates and neo-monastic contemplatives has grown increasingly reliant on monastics to help provide alternatives. The rising interdependence of monastics and non-monastics may become the basis of a transformation of Christian monasticism and a new concept of religious community.

Christian and Muslim gnosis of the medieval age

The authors of the article present a comparative philosophical analysis of the epistemological concepts of the Greek Byzantine Holy Fathers and the Arab-Islamic thinkers of the Middle Ages. Using the prime sources, the authors consider the elaborated traditions and practices of theosophy, united by the uplifting and transforming personal-mystical ascension to the Creator. The God-knowing process is presented as a way of self-cognition and self-development, as a spiritual-moral (deifying) rise and as a special religious-ecstatic individual unity with God. In this special context, attention is paid to the epistemological principles of the religious, mystical teaching of Sufism of the Islamic Golden Age and the Christian monasticism of the early ages of Christianity. These principles help to understand how sacred informationis transmitted to society and allow us to establish the interaction of people of different ethnic cultures and religions on the basis of common values and moral norms. The authors scrutinize the Al-Ghazali’s concept of the “soul vision” of the Creator in Sufism (Fana), and the Symeon the New Theologian’s concept of achieving the unity with God through the perception of the Uncreated Light. The authors adhere to the theoretical position that it is religious gnosis based on philosophical and anthropological ideas that make it possible to talk about the closeness of Christianity and Islam and partially overcome the stereotypes established in social science about the contradiction between these religions.

The Byzantine Tradition of Dying with Christ in Monastic Ascesis in Comparison to the Stages of Grieving According to E. Kübler-Ross: an Attempt of Interdisciplinary Approach

Журнал «Вопросы теологии» — международный академический журнал по теологии. Журнал ориентирован на развитие всех направлений и областей, входящих в исследовательскую отрасль «Теология», прежде всего в том варианте, в каком она развивается в светских вузах и научно-исследовательских структурах, а также в духовных академиях.

From Acolyte toṢaḥābī?: Christian Monks as Symbols of Early Confessional Fluidity in the Conversion Story of Salmān al-Fārisī

AbstractThis paper will examine the narrative of Salmān al-Fārisī/”the Persian” and his conversion to Islam, as recounted in the eighth-centurySīraof Ibn Isḥāq, as a lens into the laudatory interpretation of Christian monasticism by early Muslims. This account of Salmān al-Fārisī (d. 656 CE), an originalCompanion(ṣaḥābī) of the Prophet Muḥammad, vividly describes his rejection of his Zoroastrian heritage, his initial embrace of Christianity, and his departure from his homeland of Isfahan in search of a deeper understanding of the Christian faith. This quest leads the young Persian on a great arc across the Near East into Iraq, Asia Minor, and Syria, during which he studies under various Christian monks and serves as their acolyte. Upon each master’s death, Salmān is directed toward another mystical authority, on a passage that parallels the “monastic sojourns” of late antique Christian literature. At the conclusion of the narrative a monk sends Salmān to seek out a “new Prophet who has arisen among the Arabs.” The monks, therefore, appear to be interpreted as “proto-Muslims,” as links in a chain leading to enlightenment, regardless of their confessional distinction. This narrative could then suggest that pietistic concerns, shared between these communities, superseded specific doctrinal boundaries in the highly fluid and malleable religious culture of the late antique and early Islamic Near East.

Between Christian Monasticism and Islamic ribāṭ in Ifrīqiya

Ribāṭ is one of the prevalent sets of fortified constructions in the Islamic world. The North African coastal frontiers contain various fortifications, erected over earlier Christian sites and close to the ruins of earlier Christian monasteries. A “traditionalist” opinion maintains that these ribāṭs were monasteries or convents for ascetic warriors, among which Monastir (al-Munastīr) is believed to be the oldest in Ifrīqiya. A “revisionist” opinion describes these sites as fortifications with no ascetic purpose, functioning as places of refuge or as trading posts. Both positions cannot be fully accepted, because the case of the ribāṭ Monastir shows how the endowments linked to the ribāṭs in this geographic area merged both the ascetic and defensive purposes. It will be argued that one purpose does not rule out the other, because both seem to have been two distinct coexisting aspects of the same multifaceted institution.

Terapeuci – żydowscy prekursorzy monastycyzmu chrześcijańskiego w De vita contemplativa Filona z Aleksandrii

The article analyzes the most important aspects of the life of therapists, the Jewish precursors of Christian monasticism. The author advocates the datation of the De vita contemplativa for the years 40-41 of the first century and presents arguments for the authorship of Philo. Then he emphasizes the apologetic nature of the text and its content. The author is in favor of the hypothesis that therapists were not essenes, but a separate group of ascetics in Judaism of the 1st century AD. He is not convinced by the hypothesis that the Philo’s treaty is a literary fiction and the presentation of an ideal community. Too many details in the text contradict this opinion and even indicate that Philo himself knew the life of therapists from autopsy. Direct influence of therapists on Christian monastic life is impossible to demonstrate, while indirect influence manifests itself in the following elements poor clothing, modest meals: bread, salt and water, devoting little attention to the needs of the body - only as much as necessary for life, getting rid of ownership by giving it to the closest relatives, praying at sunrise, praying with hands raised to heaven, practicing allegorical exegesis of the Old Testament, living in continence. In the case of cenobites: common life under the direction of the superior, shared meals, common prayers, houses divided into a residential part and a monastery as a place of prayer.

The Monasteries Founded by the Thirteen Syrian Fathers in Iberia

A new step in the history of Christian monasticism in eastern Georgia is associated with thirteen Syrian monks, led by John, who came to Iberia (K‘art‘li) in the mid-sixth century C.E. They were the bearers of a Syrian tradition that implied the combination of an heroic ascetic endeavor and an apostolic mission. They came as spiritual heirs of St. Nino, a Cappadocian virgin who converted Georgia to Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century. Their vitae were first composed by a certain hagiographer named John-Martyrius, but this work does not survive. In the tenth century, the head of the Georgian Church and the distinguished ecclesiastical writer Arsenius II (955–980) depicted their lives and deeds based on different oral and written sources. Later, other unknown authors also wrote additional hagiographical works about these Syrian ascetics. At the beginning of their ascetic and ecclesiastical careers, the thirteen Syrian monks settled on Zedazeni mountain with their spiritual supervisor, John. John later sent them to different corners of the Iberian kingdom in opposition to paganism and Zoroastrianism. They founded monasteries and became influential religious leaders during the second half of the sixth century. Through their vitae, composed by Arsenius and other unknown authors, it is possible to trace the process of transforming the small ascetic communities established by Syrian monks into great feudal organizations. These monasteries had an important impact on the Georgian social and cultural landscape during the Middle Ages.

Angustia y acedia como patología en el monacato medieval, manifestaciones y recursos curativos

Las patologías espirituales y psíquicas propias de los ámbitos monásticos medievales poseían una sintomatología común que se manifestaba en la angustia frente a la propia existencia y que se conoció como acedia. La respuesta terapéutica de los monjes medievales frente a esta situación pasa, entre otros, a través de ciertas variantes litúrgicas, entendida ésta como representación terapéutica y como palabra curadora, herederas ambas de la curatio verbi propia de los monjes del desierto egipcio. Se trata, en definitiva, de la capacidad performativa de la liturgia. En este trabajo me propongo presentar los elementos más significativos de la acedia dentro del monacato cristiano y analizar tres textos litúrgicos como instancia terapéutica de esta afección.

Book Review: Ascetic Culture: Essays in Honor of Philip Rousseau

Ascetic Culture: Essays Honor of Philip Rousseau. Edited by Blake Leyerle and Robin Darling Young. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. xiii + 414 pp. $68.00 (cloth).Festschrifts can be like a pillowcase filled with Halloween candy: some treats you can't wait to eat, some are okay, and some you hand off to or trade with your younger sibling. The editors of this volume honoring Philip Rousseau, who has been writing on late antique asceticism and wider-ranging topics for forty-five years and whose curiosity is insatiable and his industry steady (p. 4), have supplied several generations of scholars not only with pillowcases but with plenty of treasured goodies. The editors and contributors to Ascetic Culture offer essays admiration and gratitude for many ways which his distinctive scholarly vision has shaped our field and his exemplary, generous friendship has supported our common Ufe (p. 8). The essays gathered here are wide-ranging both time and place and methodology; for scholars field of early Christian asceticism, book concludes with fascinating fieldwork essays on Adolf Hamack and Paleontological Layer of Church History by Claudia Rapp and From East to West: Christianity, Asceticism, and Nineteenth-Century Protestant Professors America by Elizabeth A. Clark.Ascetic Culture is divided into four sections. The first, Books as Guides, explores circulation of written texts and Egyptian monastic reading programs (p. 5), including essays on Pachomius, Antony, and Athanasius. Part II, Disciplines and Arenas, looks at the topic of disciplinary culture a variety of ascetic contexts (p. 5), such as early Byzantine monasticism and pious household of Macrina. In Part III, Landscapes (with Figures), essayists consider imaginary landscapes and ascetic self-fashioning (p. 6) early Christian Egypt, sermons of John Chrysostom, and writings of Evagrius of Pontus. The final two essays mentioned above Part IV, Founding Field, conclude volume. Taken together, editors conclude their summary of books contents, these essays bear witness to vitality of ascetic culture late antiquity (p. 7). Here by necessity I will focus on only a few of pieces that, their quests and questions they raise, may interest readers of this journal.The Life of Antony Egypt by Malcolm Choat, found Part I, raises several longstanding concerns about scholarly field of early Christian monasticism. Choat accepts that the purpose of Life [is] to establish orderly hierarchies leading toward ecclesiastical authority (p. 51). A reader who is not an adept field, and perhaps even one who is, could conclude here that Athanasius had no interest at all spirituality or inner life of his famous monk. The context of a work, of course, is vitally important for our understanding of text; as saying has it, text without context is pretext. For example, essay that follows Choat's, Apologetics of Asceticism: The Life of Antony and Its Political Context, Samuel Rubenson concludes by placing Life in shared intellectual culture of emerging monasticism, neo-Pythagorean revival, and Alexandrian theological and philosophical tradition (p. …

Book Review: Great Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History

Designed to be comprehensive in its scope, this set covers major religious events from remote prehistory (ca. 60,000 BC) to the highly contemporaneous (AD 2014). Taken together, the editors have done an admirable job in choosing topics to cover and in compiling a highly readable, informative, and thought-provoking compilation. The first volume covers the period of prehistory to AD 600 and includes entries for topics as diverse as the first burials that indicate a belief in an afterlife found in Shanidar Cave, Iraq (ca. 60,000 BC), the discovery of the oldest human-made place of worship at Göbekli Tepe in modern Turkey (tenth millennium BC), the ritual use of alcohol (ca. third millennium BC), the founding of Buddhism (sixth to fourth centuries BC), the Roman conquest of Judaea in 63 BC, the conversion of Saul (Saint Paul) in AD 34, the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, and the papacy of Gregory the Great (reigned AD 590–604). Volume 2 covers from AD 600 to 1450, thus encompassing the Middle Ages in the West, the rise of Islam in the Middle East, the growth of Christian monasticism, the crusades, the development of the first universities in Europe, and the lives of Joan of Arc and Jan Hus. The final volume covers from 1450 to the present, starting with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks and ending with the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) in 2014.