This second volume by Graham Loud focuses on two key centres of the south Italian church in the central Middle Ages. The first section concentrates on the 'golden age' of the abbey of Montecassino, during the 11th and 12th centuries, when it was at the height of its influence and three of its monks became popes. The studies seek to place the abbey in its context, examining its relations with the papacy, Byzantium, and the local nobility. The second part deals with Benevento and the abbey of St Sophia, and looks at its development and administration, as well as the tensions that arose from its position as a papal enclave within the Kingdom of Sicily. Based on extensive archival research, the volume as a whole presents a fresh and original insight into the society of southern Italy from the coming of the Normans to its conquest by Charles of Anjou.

This well-written, well-researched reference source brings together monastic life with particular attention to three traditions: Buddhist, Eastern Christian, and Western Christian."--"Outstanding Reference Sources," American Libraries, May 2001.

There is no published account of the history of religious women in England before the Norman Conquest. Yet, female saints and abbesses, such as Hild of Whitby or Edith of Wilton, are among the most celebrated women recorded in Anglo-Saxon sources and their stories are of popular interest. This book offers the first general and critical assessment of female religious communities in early medieval England. It transforms our understanding of the different modes of religious vocation and institutional provision and thereby gives early medieval women's history a new foundation.

In Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity, Paul C. Dilley explores the personal practices and group rituals through which the thoughts of monastic disciples were monitored and trained to purify the mind and help them achieve salvation. Dilley draws widely on the interdisciplinary field of cognitive studies, especially anthropology, in his analysis of key monastic 'cognitive disciplines', such as meditation on scripture, the fear of God, and prayer. In addition, various rituals distinctive to communal monasticism, including entrance procedures, the commemoration of founders, and collective repentance, are given their first extended analysis. Participants engaged in 'heart-work' on their thoughts and emotions, which were understood to reflect the community's spiritual state. This book will be of interest to scholars of early Christianity and the ancient world more generally for its detailed description of communal monastic culture and its innovative methodology.

This book focuses on the beginnings of the Military Orders and their heyday at the time of the Crusades, dealing with topics such as medieval hospital care, warfare in Lithuania, welfare in a large medieval town, the Reformation in Switzerland and 17th-century European diplomacy.

Best known today as a fine composer, the twelfth-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen was also a religious leader and visionary, a poet, naturalist and writer of medical treatises. Despite her cloistered life she had strong, often controversial views on sex, love and marriage too - a woman astonishing in her own age, whose book of apocalyptic visions, Scivias, would alone have been enough to ensure her lasting fame. In this classic and highly praised biography - first published by Headline in 2001 - distinguished writer and journalist, Fiona Maddocks, draws on Hildegard's prolific writings to paint a portrait of her extraordinary life against the turbulent medieval background of crusade and schism, scientific discovery and cultural revolution. The great intellectual gifts and forceful character that emerge make her as fascinating as any figure in the Middle Ages. More than 800 years after her death, Pope Benedict XVI has made Hildegard a Saint and a Doctor of the Church (one of only four women). Fiona Maddocks has provided a short new preface to cover these tributes to an extraordinary and exceptional woman.

The papers in this volume derive from the 28th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held for the Society for the promotion of Byzantine Studies at the Univesity of Birmingham in March 1994. Virtually from the time of their first foundation, the monastic communities of Mt Athos assumed a central position in the world of Orthodox Christianity. The spiritual, and political and economic influence of the Holy Mountain soon transcended the boundaries of the Byzantine empire within which it lay, to take on a supra-national importance and become one of the pillars of Orthodoxy after the fall of the empire. For the historian, the significance of Mt Athos is enhanced by the fact that its archives contain the most substanial body of Byzantine documentation to have survived the Middle Ages, and its libraries, treasuries and buildings have preserved much that has elsewhere been lost. These archives are now largely edited, and investigation of the art and archaeology is yielding substantial evidence. The papers in this volume, by an international set of scholars, embody the fruits of this research. Starting from Athos itself, they embrace the whole phenomenon of Byzantine monasticism, dealing with questions of asceticism, authority, community, economy, enlightenment, fortification, hesychasm, liturgy, manuscripts, music, patronage, scandal, spirituality, and women (to take an alphabetical sample). Together these papers provide a coherent and immediate view of scholarship in the field.

Many of the leading figures of the Reformation and many of their most able opponents came from among the ranks of the Franciscan Order. This Order became the focus of attack in a pamphlet war waged against it in 1523 by converts to the Reformation. These criticisms were based on arguments by Luther in his Judgement on Monastic Vows, and the pamphlets provided an important channel for these views. Luther's arguments were also reinforced by criticisms of the mendicant orders drawn from medieval polemical and satirical literature. The campaign of 1523 brought together both Reformation and pre-Reformation anticlerical themes. In this book Geoffrey Dipple looks at the perception of the Franciscan order in the 15th and 16th centuries, placing the attacks firmly in the context of late medieval inter-clerical rivalries. He looks particularly at the anticlerical polemics of one of the primary participants - Johann Eberlin von GA1/4nzburg - the most vocal of the Franciscan's critics.

Enlightened Monks investigates the social, cultural, philosophical, and theological challenges the German Benedictines had to face between 1740 and 1803, and how the Enlightenment process influenced the self-understanding and lifestyle of these religious communities. It had an impact on their forms of communication, their transfer of knowledge, their relationships to worldly authorities and to the academic world, and also their theology and philosophy. The multifaceted achievements of enlightened monks, which included a strong belief in individual freedom, tolerance, human rights, and non-violence, show that monasticism was on the way to becoming fully integrated into the Enlightenment. Ulrich L. Lehner refutes the widespread assumption that monks were reactionary enemies of Enlightenment ideas. On the contrary, he demonstrates that many Benedictines implemented the new ideas of the time into their own systems of thought. This revisionist account contributes to a better understanding not only of monastic culture in Central Europe, but also of Catholic religious culture in general.

The history of Christian literature took a new turn in the 8th century when monks in the monasteries of Palestine began to write theology and saints' lives in Arabic; they also instituted a veritable programme for translating the Bible and other Christian texts from Greek (and Syriac) into the language of the Qur'an, the lingua franca of the Islamic caliphate. This is the subject of the present volume. Two key factors leading to this change, as Professor Griffith indicates, were that the confrontation with the developing theology of Islam created a direct need for apologetics to face this new religious challenge in its own language; and, second, simply that as the memory of Byzantine power waned, so too did the knowledge of Greek. Issues of particular interest in this apologetic literature are those of the freedom of the will, a key topic in the controversies between Melkites and Muslims, and of the legitimacy of icon veneration, a subject of great contemporary concern at the time of Iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire. L'histoire de la litterature chretienne a pris un nouveau tournant au 8 siecle lorsque les religieux des monasteres de Palestine commencerent A ecrire la theologie et la vie des saints en arabe. De mAme, ils instituerent un veritable programme de traduction de la Bible et autres textes chretiens du grec (et du syriaque) en langue corannique, la lingua franca du califat islamique. Tel est l'objet du present recueil. Deux facteurs determinants ayant conduit A ce changement, comme l'indique le professeur Griffith, etaient, en premier lieu, la confrontation avec une theologie islamique croissante, qui creait un besoin pressant pour les apologetiques de faire face A ce nouveau defi religieux dans la langue propre A celui-ci; en second lieu, au fur et A mesure que s'estompait la memoire du pourvoir byzantin, il en allait de mAme pour la connaissance que l'on avait de la langue grecque. Ces textes traitent de q

In the history of Christian thought, St Bonaventure stands out as the pre-eminent Franciscan philosopher of the 13th century and as a key figure in the development of the spiritual theology of the Church. The four studies which constitute this volume present detailed investigations into some of the principal sources from which Bonaventure drew his inspiration, from Antiquity through to St Bernard in the century before his own. Proceeding from a careful analysis of the quotations he makes from these sources, the studies make clear the precise extent and nature of their importance in Bonaventure's own thought, and the manner in which he selected ideas and used them to serve his own purposes. The first two pieces focus on the influence exerted by the Pseudo-Dionysius, in particular as concerns his notion of hierarchy; this became a central and fertile theme in the work of the Franciscan. Father Bougerol shows how Bonaventure interpreted and developed it, in the process transforming it into a meditation on the relationship between man and God. This emphasis also emerges in the third study, on his attitude towards Aristotle, which demonstrates Bonaventure's deliberate progress towards the elaboration of his spiritual theology.

Originally published in 1913, this book presents a detailed study of St Basil the Great and his monasticism. The main focus of the text is on Basil's ascetic writings, but information is provided on the surrounding historical context and the framework of early monasticism. Preceding the publication of this volume, there had been no detailed account of the ascetic writings and their significance for the development of early Christianity. The appendix section includes a table of dates and bibliography. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in St Basil, monasticism and asceticism.

Winner, Conference on the History of Women Religious (CHWR) Distinguished Book Award Winner, 2014 Catholic Book Award in History presented by the Catholic Press Association For many Americans, nuns and sisters are the face of the Catholic Church. Far more visible than priests, Catholic women religious teach at schools, found hospitals, offer food to the poor, and minister to those in need. Their work has shaped the American Catholic Church throughout its history. Yet despite their high profile, a concise history of American Catholic sisters and nuns has yet to be published. In Called to Serve, Margaret M. McGuinness provides the reader with an overview of the history of Catholic women religious in American life, from the colonial period to the present. The early years of religious life in the United States found women religious in immigrant communities and on the frontier, teaching, nursing, and caring for marginalized groups. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, the role of women religious began to change. They have fewer members than ever, and their population is aging rapidly. And the method of their ministry is changing as well: rather than merely feeding and clothing the poor, religious sisters are now working to address the social structures that contribute to poverty, fighting what one nun calls "social sin." In the face of a changing world and shifting priorities, women religious must also struggle to strike a balance between the responsibilities of their faith and the limitations imposed upon them by their church. Rigorously researched and engagingly written, Called to Serve offers a compelling portrait of Catholic women religious throughout American history.

Erik Varden published The Shattering of Loneliness in 2018. Now, with the world in the throes of uncertainty and turbulence, he helps us interpret the signs of the times, convinced that the perennial experience of monks and nuns has much to teach us. The principles of monasticism have become attractive to many, awakened as we are to the importance of integrity, the pursuit of peace, asceticism as a path to freedom, hospitality and contemplative seeing. After a deeply personal introduction, Varden invites us to consider what makes a monk. He then takes us on a pilgrimage through the Church's year, drawing on Scripture, tradition and literary and religious figures of our time. Varden lets the reader discover the generous breadth and depth of a monk's outlook on life. In so doing he provides inspiration, enjoyment and enlightenment in equal measure.

At the start of the nineteenth century, the Jesuits seemed fated for oblivion. Dissolved as a religious order in 1773 by one pope, they were restored in 1814 by another, but with only six hundred aged members. Yet a century later, the Jesuits numbered seventeen thousand men and were at the vanguard of the Catholic Church's expansion around the world. In the United States especially, foreign-born Jesuits built universities and schools, aided Catholic immigrants, and served as missionaries. This book traces this nineteenth-century resurgence, showing how Jesuits nurtured a Catholic modernity through a disciplined counterculture of parishes, schools, and associations. Drawing on archival materials from three continents, American Jesuits and the World tracks Jesuits who left Europe for America and Jesuits who left the United States for missionary ventures across the Pacific. Each chapter tells the story of a revealing or controversial event, including the tarring and feathering of an exiled Swiss Jesuit in Maine, the efforts of French Jesuits in Louisiana to obtain Vatican approval of a miraculous healing, and the educational efforts of American Jesuits in Manila. These stories place the Jesuits at the center of the worldwide clash between Catholics and liberal nationalists, and reveal how the Jesuits not only revived their own order but made modern Catholicism more global. The result is a major contribution to modern global history and an invaluable examination of the meaning of religious liberty in a pluralistic age.

From the deserts of Egypt to the emergence of the great monastic orders, the story of late antique and medieval monasticism in the West used to be straightforward. But today we see the story as far 'messier' - less linear, less unified, and more historicized. In the first part of this book, the reader is introduced to the astonishing variety of forms and experiences of the monastic life, their continuous transformation, and their embedding in physical, socio-economic, and even personal settings. The second part surveys and discusses the extensive international scholarship on which the first part is built. The third part, a research tool, rounds off the volume with a carefully representative bibliography of literature and primary sources.

In this second book in her series on Benedictine spirituality, Norvene Vest brings the insights of Benedict's Rule to the world of work. A gifted interpreter of Benedict's wisdom, Vest examines with empathy and clarity the plight of men and women who wish for their work to be life-giving, a service to others, and the place where they can experience the presence of God. Vest brings Benedict's perspective to three areas of work discontent today: the stress of performance, overproduction, and acquisitiveness. To these she opposes three Benedictine principles: vocation, or being called to what we do; stewardship, or taking care of what we are given; and obedience, or serving one another. Her emphasis is on the words of Benedict's primary text and its application for people today. Each chapter concludes with extensive spiritual exercises and food for thought.

Today, as increasing numbers of people try to make sense of their lives in the face of unexpected or unlooked for change, this direct and compelling memoir by someone who has voluntarily embraced a life of radical simplicity and solitude is a real message for our times. What makes a young, Cambridge educated woman first join a religious order and then, if that were not demanding enough, seek a hermit vocation, literally on the edge of the world with only a simple hut as protection against Atlantic winds and storms? Here the author tells her story. For more than forty years Sr Verena lived a solitary life at the tip of the Lleyn Peninsula, looking out across the sea to Bardsey, Wales' island of saints, and has only recently - with increasing age - moved nearer human habitation in the parish where R S Thomas was priest. For her, this narrow straitened place became a mirror of the whole of creation and the material poverty of her life became a means to 'having nothing yet possessing all things' in the words of St Paul. Over the decades, countless people have beaten a path to her door seeking spiritual counsel and direction for their own busy lives and her account speaks directly to those who may be facing an enforced simplicity leading them into something profoundly positive and life giving.

In re-examining the Christianization of the Roman Empire and subsequent transformation of Graeco-Roman classical culture, this volume challenges conventional ways of understanding both the history of Christian monasticism and the history of education. The chapters interrogate assumptions that have framed monastic practice as pedagogically unprecedented, with few obvious precursors and/or parallels. A number explore how both teaching and practice merge classical pedagogical structures with Christian sources and traditions. Others re-situate monasticism within a longer trajectory of educational and institutional frameworks, elucidating models that remain central to the preservation of both Greek and Latin literary culture, and the skills of reading and writing. Through re-examination of archaeological evidence and critical re-reading of signature monastic texts, each documents the degree to which monastic structures emerged in close alignment with urban, literate society, and retain established affinity with classical rhetorical and philosophical school traditions.

An alternative view of the Conquest and settlement from north-east England, charting relations between the monastic community and the invading Normans. North-east England experienced the Norman Conquest rather differently from the south of the country. This account of events in Northumbria gives an important alternative view of the Conquest and settlement, distinct from the moreusual southern and court-centred evidence. A key factor in events was the monastic community of St Cuthbert in Durham, which had survived the political upheavals following the collapse of the Northumbrian kingdom under Scandinavian pressure in the ninth century. Its position thus strengthened, it occupied an influential place in the factors ranged against the Normans, who recognised in the community a powerful force for resistance. The history of the community during the Anglo-Norman period is closely examined, particularly the relationship between the new Norman bishops and the monastic cathedral chapter and their respective rights and privileges. From this detailed study, Dr Airdargues that conquest, in the north-east at least, took a different, less traumatic form from that generally assumed from the early twelfth-century description of the reformation of the church in 1083. Throughout this account of events in Durham in the years following the conquest, Dr Aird is careful also to give due emphasis to relations with the Scots kings of the later eleventh and twelfth centuries, and to the distinctive nature of medieval Northumbriaand the Haliwerfolc in particular, that region subject to the bishops of the Church. Dr WILLIAM M. AIRD is Lecturer in History, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh.

The Tales and Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum) are a key source of evidence for the practice and theory respectively of eremitic monasticism, a significant phenomenon within the early history of Christianity. The publication of this book finally ensures the availability of all three major collections which constitute the work, edited and translated into English. Richer in Tales than the 'Alphabetic' collection to which this is an appendix (both to be dated c.AD 500), the 'Anonymous' collection presented in this volume furnishes almost as much material for the study of the late antique world from which the monk sought to escape as it does for the monastic endeavour itself. More material continued to be added well into the seventh century, and so the spread and gradual evolution of monasticism are illustrated here over a period of about two and a half centuries.

This major new history of monasticism in early Anglo-Saxon England explores the history of the Church between the conversion to Christianity in the sixth century and a monastic revival in the tenth. It represents the first comprehensive revision of accepted views about monastic life in England before the Benedictine reform. Sarah Foot shows how early Anglo-Saxon religious houses were simultaneously active and contemplative, their members withdrawing from the preoccupations of contemporary aristocratic society while in a very real sense remaining part of that world. Focusing on the institution of the 'minster' (the communal religious community) and rejecting a simplistic binary division between active 'minsters' and enclosed 'monasteries', Foot argues that historians have been wrong to see minsters in the light of ideals of Benedictine monasticism. Instead, she demonstrates that Anglo-Saxon minsters reflected more of contemporary social attitudes; despite their aim for solitude, they retained close links to aristocratic German society.

In Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity, Paul C. Dilley explores the personal practices and group rituals through which the thoughts of monastic disciples were monitored and trained to purify the mind and help them achieve salvation. Dilley draws widely on the interdisciplinary field of cognitive studies, especially anthropology, in his analysis of key monastic 'cognitive disciplines', such as meditation on scripture, the fear of God, and prayer. In addition, various rituals distinctive to communal monasticism, including entrance procedures, the commemoration of founders, and collective repentance, are given their first extended analysis. Participants engaged in 'heart-work' on their thoughts and emotions, which were understood to reflect the community's spiritual state. This book will be of interest to scholars of early Christianity and the ancient world more generally for its detailed description of communal monastic culture and its innovative methodology.

Today, as never before, interest in the Knights Templar is growing exponentially, especially since The Da Vinci Code. But who were these powerful knights of the Crusades? What is fact and what is fiction? And how did they become the wealthiest multinational corporation in the medieval West? A first of its kind, Knights Templar Encyclopedia presents in convenient, readable, A-to-Z format, the fascinating history behind the most famous military religious order of the Crusades--the Knights Templar. Written by leading Templar authority and medieval historian Dr. Karen Ralls, this authoritative sourcebook of hundreds of entries features a wealth of information on the key Templar people, places, events, symbols, organization, daily life, beliefs, economic empire, trial, and more. The product of more than a decade of meticulous, scholarly research, this indispensable resource is for the general reader and specialist alike--for anyone, in fact, who is interested in the history and legacy of the powerful Knights Templar (1119-1312). Knights Templar Encyclopedia includes photos and illustrations, an extensive bibliography, a historical time line, and a list of major European Templar sites.

Essays provide evidence for the vigour and involvement of religious orders in the years immediately prior to the reformation. It continues to be assumed in some quarters that England's monasteries and mendicant convents fell into a headlong decline - pursuing high living and low morals - long before Henry VIII set out to destroy them at the Dissolution.The essays in this book add to the growing body of scholarly enquiry which challenges this view. Drawing on some of the most recent research by British and American scholars, they offer a wide-ranging reassessment of the religiousorders on the eve of the Reformation. They consider not only the condition of their communities and the character of life within them, but also their wider contribution - spiritual, intellectual and economic - to English societyat large. What emerges is the impression that the years leading up to the Dissolution were neither as dark nor as difficult for the regular religious as many earlier histories have led us to believe. It was a period of institutional and religious reform, and, for the Benedictines at least, a period of marked intellectual revival. Many religious houses also continued to enjoy close relations with the lay communities living beyond their precinct walls. Whiletheir role in the devotions of many ordinary lay folk may have diminished, they still had a significant part to play in the local economy, in education and in a wide range of social and cultural activities. Contributors:JEREMY CATTO, JAMES G. CLARK, GLYN COPPACK, CLAIRE CROSS, PETER CUNICH, VINCENT GILLESPIE, JOAN GREATEX, BARBARA HARVEY, F. DONALD LOGAN, MARILYN OLIVA, MICHAEL ROBSON, R.N. SWANSON, BENJAMIN THOMPSON.