|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
John Cassian (360-435 CE) started his monastic career in Bethlehem.
He later traveled to the Egyptian desert, living there as a monk,
meeting the venerated Desert Fathers, and learning from them for
about fifteen years. Much later, he would go to the region of Gaul
to help establish a monastery there by writing monastic manuals,
the Institutes and the Conferences. These seminal writings
represent the first known attempt to bring the idealized monastic
traditions from Egypt, long understood to be the cradle of
monasticism, to the West. In his Institutes, Cassian comments that
“a monk ought by all means to flee from women and bishops”
(Inst. 11.18). An odd comment from a monk, apparently casting
bishops as adversaries rather than models for the Christian life.
This book argues that Cassian, in both the Institutes and the
Conferences, advocated for a separation between monastics and the
institutional Church. In Cassian’s writings and the larger corpus
of monastic writings from his era, monks never referred to early
Church fathers such as Irenaeus or Tertullian as authorities;
instead, they cited quotes and stories exclusively from earlier,
venerated monks. In that sense, monastic discourse such as
Cassian’s formed a closed discursive system, consciously
excluding the hierarchical institutional Church. Furthermore,
Cassian argues for a separate monastic authority based not on
apostolic succession but on apostolic praxis, the notion that
monastic practices such as prayer and asceticism can be traced back
to the primitive church. This study of Cassian’s writings is
supplemented with Michel Foucault’s analysis of the creation of
subjects to examine Cassian’s formation of a specifically
Egyptian form of monastic subjectivity for his audience, the monks
of Gaul. Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power and pastoral
power are also employed to demonstrate the effect Cassian’s
rhetoric would have upon his direct audience, as well as many other
monks throughout history.
John Cassian (360-435 CE) started his monastic career in Bethlehem.
He later traveled to the Egyptian desert, living there as a monk,
meeting the venerated Desert Fathers, and learning from them for
about fifteen years. Much later, he would go to the region of Gaul
to help establish a monastery there by writing monastic manuals,
the Institutes and the Conferences. These seminal writings
represent the first known attempt to bring the idealized monastic
traditions from Egypt, long understood to be the cradle of
monasticism, to the West. In his Institutes, Cassian comments that
“a monk ought by all means to flee from women and bishops”
(Inst. 11.18). An odd comment from a monk, apparently casting
bishops as adversaries rather than models for the Christian life.
This book argues that Cassian, in both the Institutes and the
Conferences, advocated for a separation between monastics and the
institutional Church. In Cassian’s writings and the larger corpus
of monastic writings from his era, monks never referred to early
Church fathers such as Irenaeus or Tertullian as authorities;
instead, they cited quotes and stories exclusively from earlier,
venerated monks. In that sense, monastic discourse such as
Cassian’s formed a closed discursive system, consciously
excluding the hierarchical institutional Church. Furthermore,
Cassian argues for a separate monastic authority based not on
apostolic succession but on apostolic praxis, the notion that
monastic practices such as prayer and asceticism can be traced back
to the primitive church. This study of Cassian’s writings is
supplemented with Michel Foucault’s analysis of the creation of
subjects to examine Cassian’s formation of a specifically
Egyptian form of monastic subjectivity for his audience, the monks
of Gaul. Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power and pastoral
power are also employed to demonstrate the effect Cassian’s
rhetoric would have upon his direct audience, as well as many other
monks throughout history.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|