Author: Andrea Sterk Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674044010 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
Although an ascetic ideal of leadership had both classical and biblical roots, it found particularly fertile soil in the monastic fervor of the fourth through sixth centuries. Church officials were increasingly recruited from monastic communities, and the monk-bishop became the dominant model of ecclesiastical leadership in the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium. In an interesting paradox, Andrea Sterk explains that "from the world-rejecting monasteries and desert hermitages of the east came many of the most powerful leaders in the church and civil society as a whole." Sterk explores the social, political, intellectual, and theological grounding for this development. Focusing on four foundational figures--Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom--she traces the emergence of a new ideal of ecclesiastical leadership: the merging of ascetic and episcopal authority embodied in the monk-bishop. She also studies church histories, legislation, and popular ascetic and hagiographical literature to show how the ideal spread and why it eventually triumphed. The image of a monastic bishop became the convention in the Christian east. Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church brings new understanding of asceticism, leadership, and the church in late antiquity. Table of Contents: Introduction I. Basil of Caesarea and the Emergence of an Ideal 1. Monks and Bishops in the Christian East from 325 to 375 2. Asceticism and Leadership in the Thought of Basil of Caesarea 3. Reframing and Reforming the Episcopate: Basil's Direct Influence II The Development of an Ideal 4. Gregory of Nyssa: On Basil, Moses, and Episcopal Office 5. Gregory of Nazianzus: Ascetic Life and Episcopal Office in Tension 6. John Chrysostom: The Model Monk-Bishop in Spite of Himself III The Triumph of an Ideal 7. From Nuisances to Episcopal Ideals: Civil and Ecclesiastical Legislation 8. Normalizing the Model: The Fifth-Century Church Histories 9. The Broadening Appeal: Monastic and Hagiographical Literature Epilogue: The Legacy of the Monk-Bishop in the Byzantine World Abbreviations Notes Frequently Cited Works Index
Author: Bruria Bitton-Ashkelony Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520241916 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 269
Book Description
Annotation A study of the response (political and theological) of early Christian intellectuals to the widespread practice of pilgrimage to holy places in Palestine.
Author: Susan Ashbrook Harvey Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0191556610 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies responds to and celebrates the explosion of research in this inter-disciplinary field over recent decades. As a one-volume reference work, it provides an introduction to the academic study of early Christianity (c. 100-600 AD) and examines the vast geographical area impacted by the early church, in western and eastern late antiquity. It is thematically arranged to encompass history, literature, thought, practices, and material culture. It contains authoritative and up-to-date surveys of current thinking and research in the various sub-specialties of early Christian studies, written by leading figures in the discipline. The essays orientate readers to a given topic, as well as to the trajectory of research developments over the past 30-50 years within the scholarship itself. Guidance for future research is also given. Each essay points the reader towards relevant forms of extant evidence (texts, documents, or examples of material culture), as well as to the appropriate research tools available for the area. This volume will be useful to advanced undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as to specialists in any area who wish to consult a brief review of the 'state of the question' in a particular area or sub-specialty of early Christian studies, especially one different from their own.
Author: Anna M. Silvas Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191569275 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 540
Book Description
The Asketikon of St Basil the Great comprises a new English translation and studies which re-examine the emergence of monasticism in Asia Minor. The Regula Basilii, translated by Rufinus from Basil's Small Asketikon, is closely compared with the Greek text of the longer edition, as a means to tracing the development of ideas. Silvas concludes that the antecedents of the monastic community of the Great Asketikon are best sought not in some kind of sub-orthodox modus vivendi of male and female ascetics living together and increasingly curbed by an emerging neo-Nicene orthodoxy less favourable to women ('homoiousian asceticism'), but in the local domestic ascetic movement in Anatolia as typified in the developments at Annisa under the leadership of Makrina.
Author: Michael A.G. Haykin Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004312943 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
The Spirit of God examines the use of 1 and 2 Corinthians by two fourth-century Greek Christian authors, Athanasius and Basil of Caesarea, especially as it relates to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The controversy over the nature and status of the Spirit during the latter half of the fourth century is detailed in order to place in context the examination of the way in which the theological concerns of Athanasius and Basil shaped their pneumatological interpretation of the Corinthian correspondence. This examination will be of value to patristic scholars interested in the way that Scripture was employed in the fourth century to hammer out doctrine.
Author: JONATHAN L. ZECHER Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198854137 Category : Languages : en Pages : 394
Book Description
What expectations did the women and men living in early monastic communities carry into relationships of obedience and advice? What did they hope to achieve through confession and discipline? To explore these questions, this study shows how several early Christian writers applied the logic, knowledge, and practices of Galenic medicine to develop their own practices of spiritual direction. Evagrius reads dream images as diagnostic indicators of the soul's state. John Cassian crafts a nosology of the soul using lists of passions while diagnosing the causes of wet dreams. Basil of Caesarea pits the spiritual director against the physician in a competition over diagnostic expertise. John Climacus crafts pathologies of passions through demonic family trees, while equipping his spiritual director with a physician's toolkit and imagining the monastic space as a vast clinic. These different appropriations of medical logic and metaphors not only show us the thought-world of late antique monasticism, but they would also have decisive consequences for generations of Christian subjects who would learn to see themselves as sick or well, patients or healers, within monastic communities.
Author: Frances M. Young Publisher: SCM Press ISBN: 0334047994 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 417
Book Description
Created as a companion guide to a Patristics textbook, From Nicaea to Chalcedon surveys a variety of writings to have occurred during one of the most significant periods in the formation of the Church, from 265-466. It does not aim to cover the subject as a textbook would, but aims to delve deeper into some of the characters who were involved with the Church or the Councils during this period. Beginning with Eusebius of Caesarea and the first council of the Church at Nicaea, and ending with Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who is thought to have changed his view of Christology after the watershed Council of Chalcedon, this unique text surveys some of the most influential characters to have shaped Church history and the formation of doctrine. Surveying a mixture of significant literary figures, laymen, bishops and heretics this book presents biographical, literary-critical and theological information about each. They are chosen either because they are important to the history of doctrine, or because new material about them has thrown light upon their work, or because they will broaden the reader's understanding of the culture and history of the period or of live issues in the church at the time. Structured in five parts, each part deals with a period of time and a sequence of characters, so the book is easily followed in chronological order. Added to this, is the double bibliography, which in this edition is fully updated. Bibliography A details those texts in English of the original texts of antiquity, whilst Bibliography B provides details of publications in English, French and German which have appeared since 1960-2004 on or about the characters discussed in the body of the text.