Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Monasticism

In "Dark Age Bodies" Lynda L. Coon reconstructs the gender ideology of monastic masculinity through an investigation of early medieval readings of the body. Focusing on the Carolingian era, Coon evaluates the ritual and liturgical performances of monastic bodies within the imaginative landscapes of same-sex ascetic communities in northern Europe. She demonstrates how the priestly body plays a significant role in shaping major aspects of Carolingian history, such as the revival of classicism, movements for clerical reform, and church-state relations. In the political realm, Carolingian...

Religious travelers were a common sight in the Mediterranean world during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In fact, as Maribel Dietz finds in Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims, this formative period in the history of Christianity witnessed an explosion of travel, as both men and women took to the roads, seeking spiritual meaning in a life of itinerancy.

Much of this early Christian religious travel was not focused on a particular holy place, as in the pilgrimage of later centuries to Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago de Compostela. Rather, the inspiration was more...

An Encomium on Saint Anthony by John of Schmun a letter to the Disciples of Antony by Serapion of Thmuis

Instrumental in the conversion of many, including St. Augustine, The Life of Antony provided the model saint's life and constitutes, in the words of patristics scholar Johannes Quasten, 'the most important document of early monasticism.' Here is one volume are translations of the text in the Greek written by Athanasius (from the new critical edition of G. J. M. Bartelink) and in the Coptic, the language Antony himself spoke. Two short contemporary coptic texts further manifest the...

Like Bernard of Clairvaux, whose last act was to leave his cloister to mediate 'successfully 'between two nobles and prevent bloodshed, Thomas Merton found in the monastic life of prayer a source of strength, empathy, and understanding. To understand Merton, one must first know him as a Prophet of Monastic renewal.

John Eudes Bamberger entered Gethsemani Abbey in 1950, having earned an MD from the University of Cincinnati the previous year and done his internship at Georgetown University Hospital. A student of Thomas Merton from 1952-1955, he worked with Merton, after his...

The role of monastic institutions in society during the Central Middle Ages has been much debated in medieval studies. Some scholars saw monasticism as the principal motivator of economic, social, intellectual, and "spiritual" progress in human society, while others regarded monastic ideology as fundamentally antisocial and oriented toward itself.

These debates remained pertinent until the final decades of the twentieth century, but seem to have lost some of their relevance to the present-day scholar. Today monasticism is studied as a social entity that needed interactions with...

Praying with Benedict explores the spirituality of the monastic tradition and draws out the essence of a way of praying that embraces the whole of the Christian's life.

Korneel Vermeiren begins by examining the spirituality of the early monastic tradition from the fourth to the sixth centuries. He looks at the central place of prayer in the Rule of St Benedict and the tradition of continuous prayer, exploring the teaching of such formative figures as Basil the Great. He then reflects on the Benedictine precept: 'nothing is to be preferred to the work of God'.

Praying...

The fifth prior of the Grande Chartreuse, Guigo I was esteemed as 'a prior worthy of eternal fame', a prudent man and immensely erudite in both secular and sacred studies. His personal reflections on Holy Scripture take the form of a spiritual journey in which he blends theology and personal experience, daily practicality and ascetic insight, in a way both typical of twelfth-century reformed monasticism and uniquely carthusian.

In these homilies Matthew Kelty speaks to his brothers in community, challenging them 'to remove from their Vision what is false and fraudulent, artificial and contrived'. This is the task not only of monks but of all Christians seeking God.

The author shows how to die to sin and live for God, and the primary sources of our spiritual nourishment in the Eucharist and prayer, until the consummation of our adoption in Christ Jesus in the...