"This book forms part of the Evergetis Project which aims to investigate all surviving texts associated with the Monastery of the Theotokos Evergetis founded in 1049 near Constantinople. A book-length introduction sets out the historical significance of the house for the develop…
In early medieval Europe, monasticism constituted a significant force in society because the prayers of the religious on behalf of others featured as powerful currency. The study of this phenomenon is at once full of potential and peril, rightly drawing attention to the wider so…
This work explores how monasteries fulfilled their particular duty of intercessory prayer in the early Middle Ages. Focusing on the period of Carolingian Church reform, it analyses spiritual goals to which Frankish monastic life aspired and considers how these found reflection i…
"Shenoute of Atripe led the White Monastery, a community of several thousand male and female Coptic monks in Upper Egypt, between approximately 395 and 465 C.E. His letters, sermons, and treatises - one of the most detailed bodies of writing to survive from any early monastery -…
An in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery in Upper Egypt in the fifth century, using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, letters, and material culture.
Regarded as one of the three hierarchs or pillars of orthodoxy along with Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, Basil is a key figure in the formative process of Christianity in the fourth century. While his role in establishing Trinitarian terminology, as well as his functi…
"In the late fourth century, tales began to circulate of 'anthropomorphites' dwelling in the Egyptian desert -- uneducated monks who crudely believed God to have a body. This characterization was accepted until the nineteenth-century discovery of "The Life of Apa Aphou of Pemdje…
This volume forges a new conversation about the diversity of Christianities in the medieval eastern Mediterranean, centered on the history of practice, looking at liturgy, performance, prayer, poetry, and the material culture of worship. It studies prayer and worship in the vari…
The Greek Historia Monachorum was one of the most widely read and disseminated Greek hagiographic texts during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. To this day it remains, alongside Athanasius' Life of Antony, one of the core primary sources for fourth-century Egyptian monasticis…
