Monks and Monastic Communities in the Eastern Mediterranean
This page aims to bring various aspects of ancient monasticism closer to the community of scholars and wider audience as well.
In 2016 we have started a research
program devoted to monks and monastic communities in the Eastern
Mediterranean from the fourth until eight centuries AD, funded by the
National Science Centre, grant no. 2015/18/A/HS3/00485.
The emergence of the monastic movement in
the fourth century was also the birth of a new spiritual, social and
economic power which soon was to become one of the key elements of late
antique culture and history. Rejecting values and pleasures cherished by
the society, monks and monastic communities sought to set the example
of an austere life devoted to God’s service. The monastic milieu, deeply
immersed in biblical culture, developed remarkable patterns of
communication and transmission of tradition, which found their
expression in literary works and everyday writing. Monks transformed the
space they lived in by creating unique types of habitat; some of them
shaped the environment anew while others entered into a dialogue with
the remains of the past. As the monastic movement grew and developed, it
became inevitably entangled in ‘worldly affairs’ it tried so hard to
escape. The institutional Church with its bishops, the State with the
emperor and an army of officials and, last but not least, the nuanced,
layered and sometimes fickle society all influenced the monastic
movement and were, in their turn, influenced by it.
What remains behind is a mass of
sources–architectural monuments, historical narratives, religious
writings, legal regulations, letters and documents–which tell us how
monks and their communities lived, thought, prayed, worked and made
business. We would not dare to dream of gathering and analysing them
all; instead, the task we set ourselves is much more modest. In our
project, we take a close look at monastic communities of the
fourth–eight century Eastern Mediterranean (Constantinople, Syria,
Palestine, Egypt), trying to understand various aspects of their
functioning, from the very birth of monasticism in the fourth century to
the period during and immediately after the Arab conquest
(seventh–eighth century).
This website collects information on our team, research plans and obtained results. Please, feel welcome to explore!
- Ewa Wipszycka-Bravo, ‘Loca haereticorum ad Alessandria dalla metà del V alla metà del VII secolo’
- Ewa Wipszycka-Bravo, ‘Quand’è che lavoro e carità cominciarono a far parte della vita dei monaci egiziani?
- Izdebski A., ‘Kanony z Nisibis’, U schyłku starożytności. Studia Źródłoznawcze 13 (2014), pp. 101-132.
- Izdebski A.,
‘Cultural contacts between the superpowers of Late Antiquity: the
Syriac School of Nisibis and the transmission of Greek educational
experience to the Persian Empire’, [in:] A. Izdebski i D. Jasiński
(ed.), Cultures in Motion. Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, Kraków 2014, pp. 187-206.
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