Varieties of Monastic Experience in Byzantium

Alice-Mary Talbot’s Varieties of Monastic Experience in Byzantium, 800-1453 provides a long-overdue introductory study of eastern Byzantine monasticism. It is a rare academic text that provides both an excellent synopsis of the subject—in this case, the rooted and liminal spaces of Byzantine monastics—and a detailed but highly accessible introduction to the subject. While Talbot’s objective was to produce a “typological overview” of Byzantine monastic experience rather that an “overall survey” (ix), the book nevertheless functions as a type of survey. Drawing from her vast knowledge of the source materials, she provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the extensive range of opportunities available to Byzantine Christians as they deliberated about entering urban or rural monastic life, alone or with companions.

As noted, Talbot’s study is built on her extensive experience with and knowledge of the source materials from the period under study, primarily consisting of Byzantine saints’ lives (vitae), monastic foundation documents (typika), monastic archives, acts of the Patriarchate, and—to a lesser extent—architecture and archaeological remains. The first chapter highlights male monastic life by using three cases studies to illustrate the vast spectrum of opportunities available to those living in religious communities or along the edges of them. In the urban Studios monastery embedded in Constantinople, in the remote Great Lavra on rugged Mount Athos, and finally culminating in the idiorhythmic patterns established at the Monastery of the Theotokos Evergetis, Byzantine monastic life is revealed and affirmed as a fundamental feature of the eastern Roman Empire, drawing community and individual alike into its orbit.

With fewer resources available for studying female solitaries and female communal monastic life, and with evidence often sourced from texts written by men about women, Talbot’s second chapter addresses female counterparts to men by examining the lives of three nuns, all named “Theodora.” Through these three figures, Talbot underscores the pressures of widowhood (63-64), the complexities of vocational consent (64-65), the challenges of familial ties (65-66), and inequalities between nuns that arose when aristocratic ladies entered religious life and were granted concessions to accommodate for their pre-monastic lifestyles (66-68)—the most common example of idiorhythmic activity. Talbot’s comparative analysis of male and female monasteries reveals similarities in foundation documents, architecture, and schema. However, the available evidence identifies distinctions in population size, monastery locations, views about the site of monasteries (largely urban for female convents), views towards enclosure, education, literary output, relationships with clergy and staff, and monastic stability with respect to being rooted in one place.

With the first half of Talbot’s study neatly divided between an analysis of male and female monasteries, the final two chapters address hermitic monastic practices—with their own unique patterns—and alternative methods of monastic life. The second half of the book clearly lays out how Byzantine monastic life was distinct from Latin modes of monastic life with respect to rules and a rooted existence. More specifically, chapter 3 addresses hermitic life and chapter 4 explores aspects of Byzantine monasticism that defy categorization. Talbot neatly organizes the modes of hermitic life that affirm the radical freedoms available to Byzantine monastics. Ranging from entirely self-sufficient to small gatherings of solitaries, Byzantine hermits and hermitesses were united in their need for the basic elements of survival, including food, shelter, clean water, and warmth, as well as the work of a hermit, prayer. Her final chapter addresses the materials that we do have concerning monastic recluses such as pillar saints—who were virtually unknown in the west (147) —and other daring figures in monastic history, such as holy fools, wandering monks, and female transvestite nuns.

No other scholar possesses greater facility with the foundation documents and hagiography of Byzantine Christianity than Talbot. She has provided readers with a comprehensive overview of the spectrum of Christian experiences and opportunities in the middle centuries and twilight of the Byzantine Empire.

Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen is an associate professor of Early and Medieval Christian History at Pacific Lutheran University.

Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen

Date Of Review:

April 26, 2023