Monastic Studies

In contrast to contemporaneous Byzantine and Egyptian textual accounts, little is known about medieval Nubian monastic diets. Femur samples from 30 monks interred at Ghazali monastery (occupied ca. 680–1,275 CE), Sudan were examined for δ13Ccol and δ15N. δ13C averaged ‐ 17.0‰ ± 1.0‰ (range: −14.7‰ to −19.0‰); δ15N averaged 11.3‰ ± 1.1‰ (range: 7.5‰ to 13.4‰), suggesting primarily mixed C3/C4 diets with variable animal protein consumption. Such data, the first from Nubian monastic contexts, bring forth questions about expected versus actual monastic diets, as well as access to foodstuffs and dietary variation over time, as the diets of the monks were not entirely uniform.

The current paper investigates the prevalence and aetiology of proximal femur fractures in two temporally distinctive groups of medieval Christian Nubia: the monastic community (ca. late 7th to half of 13th c. AD) and a later group of post‐monastic, intrusive interments (ca. 13th c. AD) from Cemetery 2 at Ghazali, northern Sudan. Four cases of proximal femur fractures were identified macroscopically among the skeletal remains of 86 adult individuals, and subjected to detailed investigation of underlying aetiology due to the unusual demographic characteristics of the individuals. The proximal femora were subjected to radiographic examination and classification of trauma using the AO/Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA) system and the prevalence of fractures was calculated. Among the 77 adult individuals examined from the Monastic Phase of Cemetery 2, three cases of hip fractures were identified, a prevalence of 3.9%, while only one was identified among the nine Post‐Monastic individuals, which accounts for 11.1% of the total sample. All of the recognized fractures belong to the extracapsular type. Analysis of the mechanisms of fracture in the four studied individuals from Ghazali, despite the relatively young age of male individuals, does not exclude osteoporotic background resulting in stress‐induced fragility trauma. Considering the demographic profile of the deceased and observed co‐morbidities, it is concluded that sustained fractures were the result of high‐impact injuries connected with demanding physical activity in the harsh Bayuda desert environment.

Christian funerary sites in the area of medieval Nubian kingdoms are characterised by enormous variability, both in terms of the layout of whole burial grounds, as well as the sole appearance of individual burial units. The goal of research conducted within the framework of this thesis was the investigation of this variability in order to uncover the social identities of the deceased buried at the cemeteries of Ghazali in northern Sudan. The core of the site is a medieval monastery dated from the 7th to the 13th centuries AD. The funerary sphere of Ghazali is composed of four burial grounds (Cemeteries 1-4), belonging to both monastic and local lay populations. The differences between populations were investigated using spatial distribution of architectural features, as well as isotopic analyses of diet and mobility. Resources accessibility draws an economic divide between entire groups of various adaptations and modes of living and thus becomes a correlate of status. Meanwhile, much more pronounced internal diversity of the monastic Cemetery 2 suggests that the status in medieval Nubia was proclaimed through economic means. Wealth entailed privilege, which was then expressed through the location of burial in tandem with its architectural elaborateness. In effect, vertical ranking was demonstrated in funerary realm through one’s relationship to religion.

Esta comunicacion es una aproximacion al tema de vida conventual femenina novohispana, particularmentede la orden dominica de mujeres y la arquitectura, a partir del ejemplo de una celda particular.Existieron dos categorias en los conventos de monjas novohispanas, los de descalzas y los de calzadas; en lasprimeras era una vida de austeridad, en comunidad se realizaban varias actividades como rezar, comer y dormir; mientras que en los de calzadas algunas religiosas tenian la posibilidad de hacer sus actividades demanera privada o en la tambien llamada “vida particular”, en una celda o casa construida por sus padres ofamiliares intramuros; como sucedio en el convento de monjas dominicas de Nuestra Senora de la Salud dePatzcuaro con la celda de la religiosa michoacana que nos ocupa.Maria Anna de Pimentel, –ya profesa y se nombro Ana Maria de Nuestra Senora de la Salud– fue hija del acaudalado comerciante Jose Andres de Pimentel, quien le fabrico una celda al interior del convento a man...

The article deals with the medieval manuscript library of the former house of the Canons Regular of St Augustine in Prague-Karlov. The text presents extant sources: apart from the manuscripts themselves, some of which contain ownership and donation records, there is in particular a medieval list of Karlov manuscripts, made by the abbot Procopius in 1380, and a record of the donation of a large number of codices given to the library by Jan, the parish priest of Dobešov and Černovice, in 1395. The article further analyses them and describes the history of this library on their basis. The core of the study is a description of the surviving part of the library, from which twenty-five manuscripts have been identified. It summarises the physical characteristics of the codices, their dating, provenance, and language classification. Most attention is given to a detailed thematic categorization of the library’s contents.

During the 20th Century, the Taizé Community created a unique liturgical tradition, combining Byzantine and Latin liturgical elements with Protestant background worship. The combination of these liturgical elements concurred with the rediscovery of the old Tradition of the Church and with the entrance of a considerable number of Catholic brothers into the Taizé community. The high point of this reconsidered Tradition is the introduction of the weekly Sunday Eucharist using the Taizé liturgical order. Nonetheless, the Community maintains a Eucharistic discipline and tries to avoid intercommunion. The combination of different traditional liturgical elements on a traditional Protestant base under the supervision of the community’s founder, Br. Roger, aroused great interest among both theologians and simple believers during the time.

Egyptian monasticism began and spread as a movement of popular piety, but successive generations of theologians attempted to give it inner theological coherence and consistency. Although we may find some clues in the early monastic terminology and even if we can engage in well-founded speculation, we shall never know what inspired or motivated the many thousands who took up the monastic life in Egypt at the end of the third century and the early fourth century to do so. They did not leave behind any written testimony. Our literary sources such as the Life of Antony and the Lives of Pachomius and his successors come later and they are clearly aimed at creating an ideal of the monastic life, an ideal that owes much, to be sure, to the earlier philosophical and spiritual tradition concerning the possibility of spiritual progress.

Studies of the ecclesiastical reform of the eleventh century have often highlighted conflict between reforming monks and simoniac clerics. This was especially true in the urban contexts of Milan and Florence, cities that played a leading role, at the time, in the history of Italian religious life. Through the presentation of an exemplary case study, this paper shows how around an important Florentine monastery, an episcopal foundation, the conflict between ‘conservatives’ and reformers did not obliterate the genesis and permanence of long-term devotional and cultural traditions. Although these traditions emerged in a context of conflict, they were able to overcome it and develop into a new and enduring form of religiosity that lasted from the Romanesque period to the Early Renaissance.

The abbey of Conques and its dominant church dedicated to St Foy are today one of the most prominent examples of the harmonic relationship between medieval sacred architecture and nature. This article considers the medieval landscape of Conques from an environmental-historical perspective by analyzing early medieval writings about the abbey. It focuses on early descriptions, which often contain literary, hagiographical topoi depicting ideal, symbolic, or imagined landscapes – sometimes, however, also partially reflecting reality. These descriptions serve, with caution, to investigate the local environment, its transformation, and its effect on the early history of the monastery. In addition, the article delves into the eleventh-century Liber miraculorum sanctae Fidis to investigate strategies that the monastic community used to control St Foy's estates not only close to the abbey but also in the wider region. Analysis reveals the environment conditions, their impact on the history, and ways in which the monastic community sacralized the landscape through real processions and miracle stories to control it.

Vers l’any 880, el comte Guifré el Pelós va promoure la fundació dels monestirs de Santa Maria de Ripoll i Sant Joan de les Abadesses; dues generacions més tard, el seu net Guifré II de Besalú va fer el mateix amb el de Sant Pere de Camprodon. Per quin motiu es van fundar tres cenobis en una regió tan petita com és el Ripollès? Quin impacte tingueren sobre el paisatge preexistent? Per què van evolucionar de manera desigual? A Poder, religió i territori s’estudien els orígens d’aquests tres monestirs des d’una perspectiva de conjunt innovadora que permet donar resposta a totes aquestes preguntes i moltes altres. Al mateix temps, s’hi planteja una profunda reflexió sobre com van contribuir a estructurar el Ripollès en els àmbits social, polític, econòmic i religiós al llarg de l’Alta Edat Mitjana. Finalment, s’hi analitzen les estretes relacions que establiren amb el poder comtal, encarnat en terres ripolleses pel Casal de Barcelona, ja que en ben pocs territoris es veu amb tanta claredat la interacció entre ambdues institucions.

Se pretende ofrecer una visión global de la división administrativa de la provincia de Palencia en el siglo XVIII, cuántas fueron sus jurisdicciones, qué poblaciones las compusieron y quiénes fueron sus titulares, qué prerrogativas ejercieron sobre ellas y de qué oficios se compuso la administración jurisdiccional y local de cada territorio, así como una aproximación al origen de estas prerrogativas. Para responder a dichas cuestiones nos serviremos de Catastro de Ensenada, especialmente útil para este fin en la provincia palentina. Sirviéndonos del primer censo castellano que contabiliza los habitantes de cada lugar, el Censo de Aranda, se ofrece una valoración cuantitativa de los señoríos y jurisdicciones que formaban la provincia.

Albrecht Diem and Claudia Rapp, ‘The Monastic Laboratory: Perspectives of Research in Late Antique and Early Medieval Monasticism’, in: Alison Beach and Isabelle Cochelin (eds.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020, pp. 19-39. Please contact me if you are interested in this text: adiem@maxwell.syr.edu This chapter provides a roadmap for new approaches to the history of early medieval monasticism (or rather of monasticisms) beyond the traditional narrative that starts in the Egyptian desert and culminates in the Carolingian monastic reforms in the West or the foundation of the Great Lavra in the East. Instead of assuming that the late antique world created a largely stable monastic ideal revolving around a dichotomy of eremitic and coenobitic monasticism and the imperative of a vita regularis, monasticism should be viewed as a long-term experiment to shape ideal religious communities. These communities faced the challenge to develop a theological basis that did not cross doctrinal boundaries and to shape internal structures, disciplinary systems and economic models that allowed them to function perpetually and to gain them a place and role within the changing societal structures of the late antique and post-Roman world. The result of these experiments was a broad diversity of often competing forms of communal life. Most sources establish a rhetoric of harmony, uniformity and organic development that conceals frictions and conflicts among monastic communities and between monasteries and the surrounding world. This means that our sources need to be read against the grain, identifying their agency in creating invented traditions and master narratives still powerful today and using them for a rigorous “archaeology of concepts”. Such an approach opens the ‘monastic laboratory’ to interdisciplinary approaches and invites various disciplines outside of history and theology to explore the monastic experiment.

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.

Le problème du salut personnel et collectif, crucial pour tous les chrétiens, entraîne l'émergence d'individus et de groupes sociaux réputés particulièrement aptes à faire leur propre salut et à oeuvrer pour celui des autres. Partant de cette donnée fondamentale, le présent ouvrage examine la tension entre les ambitions spirituelles et les contraintes individuelles, communautaires et institutionnelles des moines, des chanoines réguliers et des frères mendiants, dans le cadre du Moyen Âge hispanique. Trois modalités d'accès au salut sont mises en évidence : la conversion, c'est-à-dire le choix d'entrer en religion et la continuelle transformation individuelle qu'il suppose ; la médiation, fondée sur la prière et sur la liturgie ; le soin des âmes enfin, lié à l'engagement pastoral.

Publication of ten Coptic ostraca by a group of Egyptian students under the direction of the authors. They include three devotional exercises, four letters, two legal texts and one accounting document. They originate, except for one or two, from the Theban region.