OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/28/2020, SPi The Oxford Handbook of C H R I S T I A N M O NA S T IC I S M OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/28/2020, SPi The Oxford Handbook of CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM Edited by BERNICE M. KACZYNSKI Advisory Editor THOMAS SULLIVAN, OSB 1 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/28/2020, SPi 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2020 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. 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Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/28/2020, SPi Preface To leave the world in order to seek salvation, to consecrate oneself to God, and to find a way of life that sustains such aims—these are impulses that have been shared by count­ less men and women over the centuries. Monasticism has a very long history, and it has existed in many forms. It is to be found in Christianity, and in Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and other religious traditions as well. The subject of this Handbook is Christian monas­ ticism, which is itself a complex and variegated case. The Christian experience of monasticism is fluid, for it has evolved differently in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican traditions, and its evolution continues in the contemporary ecumenical movement known as ‘new monasticism’. It is the intention of this book to bring together, for the first time in one volume, the multiple strands of Christian monastic practice. It is a further hope that, by presenting a broad range of approaches to the subject, the book will embolden readers to move beyond their accustomed disciplinary boundaries and to consider new possibilities and new ways of thinking about monasticism. Titles in the Oxford Handbooks Series are not meant to be encyclopedias; nor are they meant to be seen primarily as useful collections of information. A Handbook, as the publisher remarks, is intended to serve ‘as a dis cip­ line map’. It surveys a field, it indicates debates and controversies, and it points to areas that are likely to repay further research. The forty­four essays in the volume span a period of nearly two thousand years— from late ancient times, through the medieval and early modern eras, on to the present—and, in fact, to the future, for some contributors have reflected on what might lie ahead. The book’s organization is for the most part chronological, and it is expansive. Its purpose is not, however, to construct a narrative history, but rather to attempt to bal­ ance some essential historical coverage with examples of what is significant and mean­ ingful in current discussions of monasticism. The tendency of medievalists, for instance, to approach their work from a multidisciplinary perspective is instructive. Contributors have come from a variety of backgrounds, and they have addressed their topics in dis­ tinctive ways; readers of this book will note differences in outlook as well as method. We must remember, too, that monasticism is a site both of lived experience and of academic enquiry, a circumstance that gives this project a deeper resonance than might otherwise be the case. A number of contributors belong to monastic and religious orders, and their descriptions of religious life are at times especially eloquent. Most readers will probably see the Handbook, at least initially, as a place to investi­ gate one or two topics that are of particular interest to them. Few will open it with the intention of reading from beginning to end. Yet for me, in the course of planning the OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/28/2020, SPi vi preface book and seeing it through to publication, it was the full array of topics that, increas­ ingly, held my attention. I have found the contemplation of these broad vistas—of his­ torical time, of geographical space—to be enormously appealing. There are recurring themes: for instance, the tension between an ideal of contemplative withdrawal from the world and the necessity of living in it; the formation of life in a community; subse­ quent demands for reform and their aftermath; an inclination to recover the monastic practices of an earlier age. Then there is the perennial question: what does it mean to be a monk, to be a nun? The chapters in the book are perhaps best understood as a series of loosely linked epi­ sodes, forming a long chain of enquiry, and allowing for multiple points of view. Their very diversity challenges the notion that it might be possible to construct, for the history of monasticism, a narrative of continuous and orderly development. The teleological paradigms once so prevalent in monastic historiography are now falling out of fashion. These chapters suggest a more complex and far more interesting state of affairs. In the particularity of their detail, they remind us that historical realities were often more con­ tingent than we might at first suppose. That is why, if we take the essays one at a time, they seem to complicate our understanding of Christian monasticism. On the other hand, if we put them all together, we may find that what they describe is a deep­rooted human experience, familiar in some ways and remote in others, but animated always by men and women pursuing—and seeking to define—a common vocation. Many people have shared in the making of this Handbook, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge them. The colleagues who contributed their essays represent a range of constituencies. Some are well­known senior scholars, while others are promising begin­ ners, still at relatively early stages in their careers. They include members of Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Anglican, and ‘new monastic’ religious communities. They come from a number of countries: Canada, the United States, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Israel. I thank them all for their excellent work, and for the good grace with which they met the ups and downs that attend any such collaborative undertaking. Thomas Sullivan, OSB, served as Advisory Editor, and I am immensely grateful to him. He brought to the project both scholarly acumen and a profound appreciation of contemporary monastic life, and without him the book could not have achieved its present form. At Oxford University Press, I thank Tom Perridge, Senior Commissioning Editor, who encouraged and guided the work from its outset. I am much indebted to three anonymous reviewers, whose constructive interventions early on helped to improve the book’s overall shape and design. I have been fortunate, too, in working with Karen Raith, Rebecca Stubbs, Marilyn Inglis, Venkatesan Thulasiraman, and others at the press, who have seen the project through to completion. It is, finally, with the greatest affection that I thank my family, and most especially my late husband, Richard Everett Morton, who was at my side for nearly all of this long endeavour. Bernice M. Kaczynski Hamilton, Ontario OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/28/2020, SPi Contents Preface v List of Illustrations xi List of Abbreviations xiii List of Contributors xvii 1. Introduction: Towards a New Monastic History 1 Bernice M. Kaczynski PART I ASCETICISM AND MONASTICISM IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY 2. Asceticism before Monasticism: What the First Monks Owed to the Early Christian Churches 19 Richard Finn, OP 3. Holy Men and Women of the Desert 35 David Brakke 4. The Architecture of the Ascetic Body 51 Lynda L. Coon 5. The Literature of Early Eastern Monasticism 66 Brouria Bitton­Ashkelony 6. The Literature of Early Western Monasticism 85 Columba Stewart, OSB 7. Archaeological Evidence for the Study of Early Monasticism 101 Stephen J. Davis OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/28/2020, SPi viii contents PART II EASTERN MEDIEVAL MONASTICISM AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCHES 8. Spirituality and Prayer in the Eastern Traditions 123 Andrew Louth 9. Monasticism in the Byzantine Empire 138 Peter Hatlie 10. Monasteries, Society, Economy, and the State in the Byzantine Empire 155 Kostis Smyrlis 11. Monasticism in the Oriental Orthodox Churches 168 Samuel Rubenson 12. The Archaeology of Monastic Households 185 Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom PART III A. WESTERN MEDIEVAL MONASTICISM: FORMS OF MONASTIC AND RELIGIOUS LIFE 13. Monasticism in Early Ireland 207 Westley Follett 14. The Benedictines 218 Scott G. Bruce 15. The Cistercians 232 Anne E. Lester 16. The Military Orders: Templars and Hospitallers 248 Jochen Burgtorf 17. The Early Mendicants 264 Frances Andrews 18. Religious Women: Secular Canonesses and Beguines 285 Sigrid Hirbodian 19. Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages 300 Kathryne Beebe OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/28/2020, SPi contents ix PART III B. WESTERN MEDIEVAL MONASTICISM: APPROACHES TO MONASTIC LIFE AND CULTURE 20. Prayer 317 Rachel Fulton Brown 21. Musical and Liturgical Practice 333 James Grier 22. Monastic Art, Sacred Space, and the Mediation of Religious Experience 349 Thomas E. A. Dale 23. Monastic Narrative Practices 372 Katherine Allen Smith 24. Friendship, Family, and Community 388 Julian P. Haseldine 25. Sickness and Healing 403 Peregrine Horden 26. Landscape, Land Use, and the Environment 418 Richard Oram PART IV EUROPE AND THE WIDER WORLD: FROM THE EARLY MODERN ERA TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 27. The Dissolution of the Monasteries: England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales 437 James G. Clark 28. Monasticism in Early Modern France 452 Daniel­Odon Hurel 29. Monasticism in Early Modern Germany 462 Edeltraud Klueting T.OCarm 30. Monasticism in Early Modern Italy and Spain 471 Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt