Monastic Discipline Research Articles

Monastic Unrest on the Border of Carolingian Italy: The Strange Case of Abbot Poto of San Vincenzo al Volturno

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the Carolingian conquest of the Italian peninsula, a commission was held in Rome to judge the case of Poto, Abbot of San Vincenzo al Volturno, who was accused of infidelitas for refusing to pray for Charlemagne’s safety. The papal inquiry reveals the existence of two factions within the monastic community, each of them likely following a different approach to monastic discipline. However, regional politics soon overlapped with internal strife, as the group led by Ambrogio Autpert was supported by Duke Hildeprando of Spoleto and the other led by Poto was supported by Pope Adrian I. This article analyses this episode of monastic unrest by focusing on the opportunities that political uncertainty opened for public authorities in an unsettled border area. It also aims to challenge the ethnic framework (assuming a Lombard faction opposed to a Frankish faction) which historiography has traditionally applied when interpreting Poto’s act of disobedience.

Predestination and Monastic Discipline: Gregory the Great’s Synthesis of Augustine and John Cassian on Grace

Predestination and Monastic Discipline: Gregory the Great’s Synthesis of Augustine and John Cassian on Grace

The historical significance of the formation of Buddhist schools during the Sui and Tang Dynasties

ABSTRACT The formation of Buddhist schools during the Sui and Tang Dynasties is the most significant achievement in the Sinification of Buddhism and holds profound significance in the history of civilization. This article takes ‘Fulfilling the Threefold Training’ as the core of the sectarian concept and explores the Sui and Tang Dynasty Buddhist schools within the three major dimensions of truth, sanctity and daily life. It discusses various elements such as the Division of the Buddha’s teaching, Dependent Arising, meditative contemplation, patriarchal tradition and monastic discipline. The formation of Buddhist schools was based on a methodology of inheritance, interpretation and innovation, representing a civilization exchange of ‘difference and unity.’ Simultaneously, the formation of these schools signifies the central role of Mahāyāna Buddhism in China, contrasting with the peripheral position of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India, presenting a mutual civilizational learning of ‘periphery and center.’

Editorial: Gender Asymmetry and Nuns’ Agency in the Asian Buddhist Traditions

Looking at early Indian Buddhist texts and inscriptions, we can generally find gender pairing within the terminology deployed, a situation which is replicated in many texts related to monastic discipline (Vinaya) and in teachings addressed by the Buddha to either his male or female disciples (Skilling 2001) [...]

Taiwanese Nuns and Education Issues in Contemporary Taiwan

In this article, I discuss the Buddhist educational profile of nuns in contemporary Taiwan by introducing the development of monastic education for women. Taiwanese women’s mass ordination created a Buddhist renaissance after postwar Taiwan, a national ordination system based on monastic discipline, as well as the revival of monastic education. Both ordination and monastic education are very strong institutional settings for women’s monastic identity. Its findings, firstly, shed light on how the increased opportunities for women’s education in Taiwanese Buddhism have continuously attracted young female university students. Secondly, these so-called scholarly nuns come to Buddhist academies as students and eventually become instructors. These scholarly nuns elevate the standards of their Buddhist academies and use their original academic specializations to expand the educational curriculum of their school. The role of scholarly nuns in contemporary Taiwan exemplifies that Buddhism provides educational resources for women, as educational resources enhance women’s engagement in Buddhism.

Demonic Machinations and Cognitive Mechanisms: Cognitive Insights into Early Monastic Demonology

This contribution aims to gain new insight into early monastic demonology by situating the relationship between monks and demons in the context of the monastic discipline of attention (προσοχή, νῆψις), as it was practiced by the desert fathers and their followers. For late antique Christian monks, the effort to train and purify attention had both a psychological and a demonic aspect: the effort to focus attention on the thought of God was simultaneously an attempt to resist demonic influences that pulled attention in other directions. This contribution examines the monastic attempt to train attention and resist demonic distraction from a joint historical and cognitive viewpoint. It draws on cognitive research of attention to shed light on the challenges involved in this attempt as well as on its beneficial potential and self-formative role.

Regulating Passions: Emotional Discipline in Early Mediaeval Monastic Rules

Early mediaeval monastic rules not only provided outlines for organising communities, behavioural norms and disciplinary measures but also aimed at controlling, repressing and fostering emotions. They developed distinct strategies of emotional discipline based on different notions of the nature of emotions and their impact on the pursuit of salvation. I compare the emotional disciplines of three monastic rules: the Rule of Benedict, which became the guiding norm of mediaeval monastic life; Caesarius of Arles' Rule for Nuns, the oldest monastic rule written for a female community; and the Regula cuiusdam ad virgines, which responded to Benedict's and Caesarius' rules. Benedict's emotional discipline centered on instilling fear and love. His Rule focused on repressing emotions that were harmful to the community and on fostering the motivation to submit to monastic discipline. Caesarius is primarily concerned with a permanent spatial separation from the outside world and expected that enclosure and submission to the Rule made negative emotions irrelevant. The author of the Regula cuiusdam ad virgines considered emotions, rather than acts, the ultimate benchmark for attaining salvation and developed a disciplinary program that combined elements of Caesarius' and Benedict's rules with an elaborate system of incitement, surveillance and constant disclosure of one's innermost feelings.

Reform und Reformation: Geschichte der deutschen Reformkongregation der Augustinereremiten (1432–1539) by Wolfgang Günter

Reviewed by: Reform und Reformation: Geschichte der deutschen Reformkongregation der Augustinereremiten (1432–1539) by Wolfgang Günter Louis J. Reith Reform und Reformation: Geschichte der deutschen Reformkongregation der Augustinereremiten (1432–1539). By Wolfgang Günter. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2018. 605 pp. Wolfgang Günter, a professor of early modern European history at Freiburg University, deserves our gratitude for his labor of love, a monograph that traces the origins of the unified Augustinian Order in Europe in 1256, follows its century-long period of decline, and documents the birth of a German Reform Congregation centered in Saxony. Beginning with a small group of reform-minded German Augustinians, the Congregation (network of Augustinian friaries) began to reform their monasteries and restore monastic discipline even before the Council of Basel in 1432 gave formal papal approval for monastic reforms. Reformation historians will note that from 1506 the Congregation's most prominent member was Martin Luther, who left the Order in 1525 and subsequently married. The Congregation itself survived until the death of the fiercely Catholic Duke George of Ducal Saxony in 1539. His Lutheran successor then shuttered the monasteries and introduced the Lutheran Reformation that sounded the death knell for the Reform Congregation. The author visited 28 archives for manuscript evidence, and he includes a 97-page appendix containing 44 separate documents in German, French, and Latin. Through his careful archival research, we observe the friars struggle to enact monastic reforms through several layers of ecclesiastical superiors, church councils, and popes, not to forget frequent interventions by territorial princes. Unexpected gaps in the documentation reveal just how difficult it was for the author to undertake his research. An introductory chapter devoted [End Page 191] to primary sources speaks about a document called the "Nuremberg Anonymous" (covering the Congregation's history from 1458 to 1467) which Günter discovered in the Nuremberg city library. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the text, attributed to an anonymous nineteenth-century "parchment thief," a librarian who tore out entire sections of the fragile manuscript (22). Rooting out monastic vices proved to be a Herculean task. Contrary to popular belief, the most virulent vice that resisted reform was not sexuality but inability to keep the Augustinian vow of poverty. Brothers who possessed inheritances, fields, vineyards, sheep, cattle, or goats were using the profits for their own needs. Still others lived outside the monastery, served prelates or princes, or pursued academic careers at universities (with the encouragement of their superiors). Another popular belief argues that it was the Protestant Reformation that first enabled territorial princes (the Landesherren) to exercise authority over religious institutions. But Günter provides abundant evidence that princely authority over the monasteries had begun already in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and "a majority of the most powerful princes had already achieved this goal in the course of the fifteenth century, or else the Reformation would not have been possible" (81). A major portion of the book is devoted to the careers of two exceptional vicar-generals of the German Reform Congregation, Andreas Proles (1429–1503) and Johann von Staupitz (1460–1524). Proles was renowned as a reformer, but also as an authoritarian reformer who did not hesitate to involve the local prince in the reforming process. Staupitz, who was descended from an ancient Saxon family of Czech origin (ze Stupic), was Proles' polar opposite. When Elector Frederick the Wise opened his new university in 1502, he invited Staupitz and a dozen of his Tübingen University colleagues to anchor Wittenberg's nascent faculty. In 1503, Staupitz succeeded Proles as vicar-general of the German Reform Congregation. He promoted biblical studies and sent Augustinian friars from his Wittenberg monastery to study at the local university. One of these student friars was none other than Martin Luther, whom [End Page 192] Staupitz soon enlisted to accompany him on visitation trips to monasteries in need of reform. When Luther first published his 95 Theses, it was Staupitz who rose to defend him, followed by Elector Frederick the Wise. But Staupitz feared that Luther was going too far in his condemnation of papal abuses, and his own abiding loyalty to the papacy led him to break with Luther's...

Пять стадий религиозной практики в философии ранней йогачары

Ascending by the stages of religious practice according to Mahāyāna teaching, an adept finally achieves the enlightenment and leaves the wheel of deaths and rebirths. The first stage of the practice according to "The Compendium of Mahāyāna" by Asanga (4th century) is the stage of accumulation. On this stage, an adept follows the rules of monastic discipline improving his moral virtues. His aim on this stage is to make morality natural for him, when moral behavior does not demand special from him. The second stage is the preparatory one, and here the adept proceeds to the meditative practice based on his moral achievements, gradually eradicating afflictions that obstruct enlightenment. On the third stage, the stage of seeing he intuitively comprehends the essence of four Noble truths. On the fourth stage, the stage of cultivation he finally eradicates afflictions remaining in his consciousness after the third stage. The last, fifth stage of conclusion leads him to enlightenment and nirvā a. But there is a paradox in the religious ideology of Mahāyāna. The religious ideal of Mahāyāna is the bodhisattva, or the person who voluntarily renounce to enter into nirvā a for the sake of other sentient beings whom he vowed to save from sa sāra. But if a person enters into nirvā a he cannot already save other beings. Therefore if a person seeks to realize the religious ideal of Mahāyāna he cannot go through this way till the end and must stop "on the threshold of enlightenment" retaining some minimum of unwholesome dharmas in his consciousness. For solving this problem Mahāyāna thinkers introduced the notion of "unestablished nirvā a" (aprati hita-nirvā a) or the state of enlightenment that does not exclude being in sa sāra and allowing bodhisattva to preach Dharma and to lead all sentient beings to the liberation from the wheel of rebirths.

On Reading Buddhist Vinaya: Feminist History, Hermeneutics, and Translating Women’s Bodies

AbstractBuddhist monastic law codes (vinaya) are rich sources for writing the history of the early nuns’ community. If we hope to encounter these ascetic women of long ago as full real people, however, we must apply an intentional, transparent, critically informed, and sometimes interstitial reading strategy, not a theoretically naïve historiography cloaked in philological rigor. Confronting head on the issue of what the vinaya actually can tell us about the early nuns’ community, this essay offers a survey of hermeneutical approaches in vinaya studies. It articulates a revised approach based on accepted strategies within vinaya studies enhanced by innovations in the fields of religious studies, gender studies, historical linguistics, comparative law, and dharmaśāstra studies. It also analyzes several vinaya passages based on this revised approach, including a text legislating the nuns’ use of what appears to be an ancient tampon when they are menstruating. Finally, it offers observations about the possible relationship between nuns’ vinayas as texts and the realia of the early nuns’ community. These observations include the possibility that the ancient Buddhist nunnery was a place where monastic women exercised certain types of agency as practitioners, interpreters, and even authors of monastic discipline, despite their oft-mentioned subordination to the male community.

The collective body: Legacies of monastic discipline in the post-Soviet prison

The emergence of the prisoner subject is an element of local practices, including how health is governed. Yet, disciplinary practices have been overlooked in research on health in post-Soviet prisons. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 40 male prisoners in Kyrgyzstan, this article performs a genealogical analysis by applying models of subjectivity from Christian monasticism to understand how a healthy body emerges through the contingent governing relations of the post-Soviet prison. An apparatus of “collective self-governance” produces bodies that extend the self to the collective and blur the boundaries between physical and moral health. Here, unlike in the West, the idealization of an autonomous subject is inimical to agency and, by extension, health. Rather, a healthy body is produced through a healing process that rests on submission to the collective, with the threat of exile imminent. In such settings, health interventions aimed at the individual are unlikely to succeed without a consideration of collective healing practices.

An Aristotelian Interpretation of Bojo Jinul and an Enhanced Moral Grounding

This paper explores the eclecticism of Bojo Jinul (1158–1210 CE), who is arguably the most influential historic figure in establishing and developing the Buddhist monastic institution of Korea. As a great harmonizer of the conflicting Buddhist trends in the late Goryeo period, Jinul not only shaped the foundation of the traditional monastic discipline balanced between theory and practice but also made Korean Buddhist thoughts known to a larger part of East Asia. I revisit the eclecticism of Bojo Jinul on harmonizing the two conflicting understandings of enlightenment represented by Seon (Cha’n) and Gyo (Hwaeom study) schools: the former stressing sudden enlightenment by sitting mediation and oral transmission of dharma and the latter stressing gradual cultivation by the formal training of textual and doctrinal understanding specifically on the Hwaeom Sutra. Utilizing the metaphysics of Aristotle, I confirm the logical validity of his eclecticism and address some of its moral implications.

Zhuhong’s Communal Rules for the Late Ming Nunnery Filiality and Righteousness Unobstructed

AbstractThis article presents a single detailed case study of communal life at a small private Buddhist nunnery governed by strict rules and inhabited by religiously active nuns. The first half of this article focuses on why the nunnery was constructed, how it was funded, where it was built, its architectural design, and its residents. The second half examines the daily ritual activities of the nuns, their education, disciplinary procedures, fundraising, and community relations. In bringing to life how the culture of monastic discipline shaped the daily rhythms of these nuns’ lives, this article further sheds light not only on monastic culture in Hangzhou at the end of the Ming, but also demonstrates the contrast between that culture and other Buddhist and contemporary religious competitors in the surrounding religious landscape. In so doing, this article shifts our attention from the study of hagiography to the broader context of female monastic culture exhibited in the genres of communal rules (guiyue) and vinaya texts.

ADMINISTARTIVE AUTHORITY OF PROTOHEGUMENS OF SVYATOPOKROVSKA PROVINCE (1743 – 1780 рр.): HISTORICAL AND LEGAL ASPECTS

The Purpose of the Research – is to determine the main directions of the administrative authority of the protohegumens. The methodology of the research is based on the analytical and synthetic criticism of the documentation, which was made by the protohegumens at the Provincial office of Pochayiv Lavra and during the field meetings of the provincial consulate. The comparison of the copies of the encyclical letters, which were included into the entrance books documentation of the local monastic chanceries, has been made in order to establish the impartiality of the presented information on the condition of the original document absence. The scientific novelty of the work is the use in the scientific circulation of the entire non-applied corps of the monastic documentation: the visits protocols, the reform decrees, the disciplinary affairs of the monasticism, the encyclical letters of the protohegumen of Svyatopokrovska Province of the Order of Saint Basil the Great. Conclusions. The historical circumstances of the monastic administrative unit formation –Svyatopokrovska Province of the Order of Saint Basil the Great has been revealed. The evolution of the monastic legislation of the united Rus Order of Saint Basil the Great has been traced. The main provisions of the Constitution of the Order of Saint Basil the Great concerning the definition of the administrative work of the protohegumen’s institution have been analyzed. The main directions of the protohegumen’s activity of the province have been defined: the visitation of the monasteries, the monastic discipline, the appointment of the priests, the convocation of the provincial consuls, creating the provincial archives, writing the messages, making the warnings, the orders, the reformation decrees.

Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources ed. by C. Pierce Salguero

Reviewed by: Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources ed. by C. Pierce Salguero Natasha Heller C. Pierce Salguero, ed. Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. xxxvi, 689 pp. US$150 (hb). ISBN 9780231179942 Unquestionably Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources is a work of major importance for the English-language study of Buddhism. With translations from Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Tibetan sources (with a smaller number from Mongolian, Thai, and Vietnamese texts) in a variety of genres, this anthology provides a panoramic view of the interaction between Buddhism, healing, and medicine. Scholars of Buddhism will want to read (and purchase for their libraries, both personal and institutional) this volume to better acquaint themselves with these traditions, and to use in teaching, although the price may preclude assigning the entire book to undergraduates. But what might scholars of Chinese religions gain from Buddhism and Medicine? Quite a lot, as it turns out: 27 out of 62 chapters are on Chinese sources, divided between translated sources and those termed “domestic.” This means that roughly forty percent of the book concerns China, and given that the total page count is over 600 pages, the China portion is hefty enough to be a book on its own. My review here will focus on the chapters dealing with Chinese language sources. Even offering a one-sentence summary of each chapter would be tedious reading—there are simply too many—so I have chosen to comment more thematically. My failure to mention any one chapter should not be taken as a judgment on that chapter; I found all of them to be highly readable and erudite, and all of them offered fresh insights into Chinese Buddhism. Reading Buddhism and Medicine for the Chinese sources means jumping across the thematic divisions of the anthology. These are: Doctrinal Considerations, Healing and Monastic Discipline, Buddhist Healers, Healing Rites, Meditation as Cure and Illness, Hybridity in Buddhist Healing, and Buddhism and the Medical Traditions. Readers can refer to the appendix, “Geographical Table of Contents,” for lists of texts by language, although this is usually apparent from the chapter titles and translators. Not surprisingly, most of the “China (Translation)” chapters are in the earlier part of the book, and most of the “China (Domestic)” chapters fall in the later sections. Translation itself is foregrounded in several chapters: Anālayo, in chapter 2, places together discourses translated from Pāli, Tibetan, and Chinese on the “healing potential of mental qualities that in the Buddhist traditions are known as the awakening factors” (p. 12). Marcus Bingenheimer, in chapter 17, offers translations of two sūtras on healing that were produced in China six hundred years apart; the first is part of collection translated around 400 c.e. and the second was translated by Dānapāla (Ch. Shihu 施護, fl. 980–1017). Looking at them together “shows how certain categories and details changed in the interim” (p. 164). The passages from these two sutras align the Four Noble Truths with the four skills of the physician, and make plain the comparison of the Buddha to a perfectly adept physician. In chapter 4, Salguero gives us side-by-side translations of a key passage on medicine from the Sūtra of Golden Light as translated by Dharmakṣema (385–433) and Yijing 義淨 (635–713).1 This allows us to see how Yijing’s training in medicine at Nālānda influences his translation, which is “much more detailed in its summary of Indian medical thought and contains a broader selection of medical ideas” (p. 31). We encounter Yijing again in chapter 16, in which [End Page 112] Christoph Kleine translates sections from his Record of the Inner Law Sent Home from the Southern Seas concerning health-related practices in Indian monasteries. The monastery is naturally an important site for Buddhist medical practice. Chapter 13 provides rules concerning medicine from the vinaya of the Mahīśāsaka School, preserved in Chinese and translated by Salguero; in chapter 14, J.E.E. Pettit translates sections from the Emended Commentary on Monastic Practices from the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya by Daoxuan 道宣 (596–667) concerning...

A Comparative Study of the Buddhist Approach to Organizational Behaviour Based on the Canonical Sources

Organizational Behavior (OB) is one of the hot topics discussed in modern management and recognized as one of the most important factors for success of any organization. The interface between the behavior of individuals and the organization is known as the OB and it is the field of study devoted to understanding, explaining and ultimately improving the attitude and behavior of individuals and groups in organizations. In this connection the researcher has developed an OB model based on contemporary management thoughts. The aim of the research is to study the concepts relating to organizational behavior and compare Buddhist approach to organizational behavior based on canonical sources. The Buddhist teaching did not much focus on presenting very complex theories on human behavior like contemporary Western scholars who have developed various theories and models to interpret human behavior. Nevertheless the Buddhist doctrine was of more practical nature which addressed all the issues of human behavior of both laymen and disciples. The existence of the order of Saṅgha which is considered to be the oldest democratic organization in the world for more than 2500 years shows the soundness of the organization structure and the philosophy on which it was built. When studying the monastic order and the monastic discipline in depth one could understand the management skills of the Buddha and how He had applied Buddhist teachings in managing the monastic order. Thus the Buddhist approach to Organizational Behavior is well elaborated in the Vinayapiṭaka. Similarly the Buddhist teaching was focused on wellbeing of the family and the behavior of individuals. Sigālovādasutta alone can be considered as one of the most significant discourses for guiding the behavior of laymen. Similarly Parābava and Maṅgala are a few of the many suttas addressed almost all the issues one would come across in the family. As most of the economic activities are family based, behavior of the individuals and their traits such as attitudes, values, ethics and emotions had much impact on the economy and the society at large during that period. There are many discourses in the Suttapiṭaka which had clearly defined ways and means to change the behavior of individuals and disciplined them with firm changes in individual traits. It is interesting to note that some of the issues addressed by the United Nations to safeguard human rights had been identified and addressed through the pañcasīla and solutions for the most of the Sustainable Development Goals presented under ‘the 2030 Agenda’ too had been provided by the Buddha 2500 years ago. When studying the Canonical sources especially the Suttapiṭaka and Vinayapiṭaka with a view to compare the Buddhist perspective on organizational behavior against the contemporary management thoughts, it is evident that the Buddhist approach results in a permanent improvement in human behavior and the organization.Keywords: Contemporary Management, Organizational Behavior, Individual Traits, Monastic Order, Canonical Sources

Reform und Reformation. Geschichte der deutschen Reformkongregation der Augustinereremiten (1432-1539) by Wolfgang Günter

Reviewed by: Reform und Reformation. Geschichte der deutschen Reformkongregation der Augustinereremiten (1432-1539) by Wolfgang Günter Franz Posset Reform und Reformation. Geschichte der deutschen Reformkongregation der Augustinereremiten (1432-1539). By Wolfgang Günter. [Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, Band 168.] (Münster: Aschendorff. 2018. Pp. 605. €78,00. ISBN 978-3-402-11601-2.) The starting point of the book is the year 1432; its endpoint the year 1539. In between, we find the hundred years of history of a group of religious men who are known as the friars of the German Reform Congregation of the Order of St. Augustine, a mendicant order, to which Martin Luther belonged. Why these dates? They mark the time between the Council of Basel, which lasted from 1431 to 1449, and the time of the termination of the last friaries of the reformed Augustinians in Saxony by its territorial lord who in 1539 officially introduced the Lutheran Reformation in his realm. [End Page 712] Prior to the Council of Basel a small reform congregation of Augustinians had formed in Saxony. In their reform efforts with respect to upholding monastic discipline (also called "observance"), they had to struggle with their superiors (provincials) and had to seek help from the Council, pope, and also political leaders. Under their long-serving vicar general, the authoritarian Andreas Proles (1429–1503), the reform congregation gained more than regional significance. Under the other vicar general, Johann von Staupitz (who, however, died in 1524 as the abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Salzburg), the reform congregation finally ended in the estuary of the Reformation in German-speaking lands since its most prominent member then was Martin Luther (1483–1546), who had entered the Order in 1505 and who left the Order and got married in 1525. Wolfgang Günter is profoundly familiar with the respective historical studies by his colleagues, the German scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, Theodor Kolde (1850–1913), Winfried Hümpfner, O.S.A. (1889–1962), Adalbero Kunzelmann, O.S.A. (1898–1975), Hans Schneider (*1941), Manfred Schulze (*1945), Hellmut Zschoch (*1957), and Ralph Weinbrenner (*1962). Their works are included in Günter's short review of the history of research on the subject (pp. 11–18). One could argue that the contributions of other scholars who focus on the same subject, such as Rudolph Arbesmann, O.S.A. (1895–1982), Adolar Zumkeller, O.S.A. (1915–2011), Heiko A. Oberman (1930–2001), Lothar Graf zu Dohna (*1924), or Richard Wetzel (*1936), should also be included in that review. Their works are, indeed, acknowledged, used, and listed in the bibliography. The author's own starting point was influenced by the new source material that he was able to uncover in various archives—to the effect that Kolde's interpretation, which was influential for so many decades, may now appear outdated. Günter offers a revised view of the observant (reform) congregation, now within its international networking and its good connections to the headquarters of the order in Rome. With Staupitz's leading role on the eve of and during the early Reformation, the reform congregation of the Augustinians had become a factor in European history (p. 18). Scholars who expected to learn of Günter's opinion concerning the theological connections between Staupitz and Luther or between the Augustinian Order and the Reformation will be a bit disappointed because the author has explicitly refrained from investigating them. Any definite answers are not to be expected from present-day research due to what the author calls an on-going "moratorium" in this regard. The author does not enter into a discussion of the characterization of Staupitz as found in my The Front-Runner of the Catholic Reformation (2003). Günter is reluctant to enter into discussions on theological issues. The great strength of his monumental study is the author's meticulous work directly from the sources, although the source material with respect to the spirituality (Innenleben) of the Reform Congregation is very scarce. Günter includes an appendix of forty-four legal documents which comprise about one hundred pages (pp. 437–533); [End Page 713] they mirror the quarrels among the Augustinians in German lands—"quarrels" of which...

The Byzantine Politics of Byzantine Mysticism

The Byzantine Politics of Byzantine Mysticism

Epiphanius of Cyprus: A Cultural Biography of Late Antiquity by Andrew S. Jacobs, and: Epiphanius of Cyprus: Imagining an Orthodox World by Young Richard Kim

Reviewed by: Epiphanius of Cyprus: A Cultural Biography of Late Antiquity by Andrew S. Jacobs, and: Epiphanius of Cyprus: Imagining an Orthodox World by Young Richard Kim Robin Darling Young, Jon F. Dechow, David Maldonado Rivera, Andrew S. Jacobs, and Young Richard Kim Andrew S. Jacobs, Epiphanius of Cyprus: A Cultural Biography of Late Antiquity. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016. xiv + 335; $95.00. Young Richard Kim, Epiphanius of Cyprus: Imagining an Orthodox World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Xvi + 278; $85.00. Introduction by Robin Darling Young Blessed with a steely temperament and a remarkably long life for his own era, Epiphanius of Salamis (310/20-403), monk, bishop, author and controversialist, was a man whose vast ambition was disproportionate to his moderate learning. Epiphanius came from a wealthy family in Palestine and made the most of imperial toleration for Christianity, expanding his power and influence not only by cannily associating with ambitious Christian leaders, but also—and with great labor—by assembling a book (The Panarion) cataloging heresies for the increasingly prominent church. The fourth century saw the defeat of one major heresy, with imperial assistance, and the birth of others; Epiphanius presciently had written an outline of orthodoxy, the Ancoratus, and he stuck to leadership and diplomacy, avoiding the perils of philosophy. Both Kim's and Jacobs' book are thorough, polished and intriguing accounts of a man whom most historians of the later Roman Empire, and historians of Christianity, have found odious. Both take a biographical approach to the man, and follow Epiphanius in his career; both express some wonder at his success and at the reactions to him—they remark on the cultural differences between Epiphanius and his more learned contemporary writers; and both accord him the same grudging recognition that he has received from earlier historians, pious or not. Kim, trained as a classicist, bases his understanding of Epiphanius upon his deep familiarity with the text of the Panarion, a translation of which he had earlier published. He reviews Epiphanius' life as a thoroughly [End Page 528] monastic one; reviews the proto-orthodoxy of the Panarion, and treats it as a work of history rooted in a particular knowledge of Judaism. Epiphanius early recognized the importance of monastic discipline, orthodox faith, and the city of Jerusalem within the newly-Christian Holy Land. Epiphanius developed the episcopal power he had been granted; as an old man he travelled with Jerome to Rome to exercise their mutual influence, and was defeated only by the superior machinations of Theophilus of Alexandria—a successor to the bishop Epiphanius admired most, Athanasius. Jacobs takes a different approach to Epiphanius. A historian of Christianity, he employs theory to perform cultural analyses of Epiphanius' life and works as represented in literary remains, continually placing the resulting portraits of Epiphanius in juxtaposition to contemporary understanding of the topics he has chosen. Placing the ancient figure and his writings in conversation with postmodern literary studies, he considers Epiphanius under five categories: celebrity studies; conversion; scripture; salvation; and "afterlives"—two hagiographical treatments of Epiphanius, one from the fifth and one from the early twentieth centuries. Using these literary-analytical tools, Jacobs notes the way in which Epiphanius turns his celebrity into power. Jacobs asserts that celebrity is different from fame, a well-known ancient quality, in its improvisational, collective and somewhat accidental or fortuitous quality; for Epiphanius, his ambition and priesthood coincided with historical circumstances he might not have foreseen, but without which he never would have become a star. As a scripture scholar, Epiphanius was not a philosopher or a textual critic in his exegesis; rather, he employed an aesthetics of antiquarianism. His construal of salvation, he—like the even longer-lived Shenoute of Atripe—centered on the human body, unlike the followers of Origen, with their thinly-veiled neoplatonist metaphysic. Finally, Epiphanius might unknowingly provide contemporary historians with a certain salvation. Writes Jacobs: "It may be that, at the end of the day, remembering Epiphanius will allow us not only to bring historiographic nuance to the field of late antiquity, but ethical nuance to our own considerations of the past, and the present." Both Kim...

A Different Buddhist Revival: The Promotion of Vinaya (jielü 戒律) in Republican China

The aim of this exploratory study is to provide an outline of the Vinaya renewal in China in the first half of the twentieth century, and to point to its meanings and effects in the context of the Buddhist revival of the Republican period. Based on a preliminary investigation of monastic codes compiled by four influential Buddhist leaders in the 1930s and 1940s, my paper draws attention to their endeavor to promote Chinese monastic discipline in practice and in discourse. I argue that, during the Republican period, Chinese Vinaya represented the benchmark for both molding religious regeneration and setting the limit for Buddhist institutional innovation. The promotion of Vinaya was a long-standing, indigenous, pattern for the revitalization of the Buddhist tradition, and it also played a fundamental role in the modern evolution of Chinese Buddhism by helping the monastic community strengthen its religious authority and political legitimation. I hope to show that a deeper analysis of this phenomenon may in the future help balance current visions on Chinese modernism, dominated by Western categories, theories and dichotomies related to modernity and secularism.