Arts and Culture

The course is an interdisciplinary (that is, quite disparate) endeavour, co-taught by an archaeologist working on medieval western monastic sites and by an intellectual historian working on late antique, Byzantine and eastern Christian texts. As such, it can only give spotlights on: I. East - 1. the beginnings of monasticism in Egypt (3rd-4th centuries); 2. the birth of a new form of monasticism in the Holy Land (5th-6th centuries); 3. Constantinopolitan monasticism after the Iconoclast strife (10th-11th centuries); II. West - 4. early medieval Western monasticism (the Benedictines 6th-10th centuries); 5. monastic reforms in the West (Carthusians, the mendicant orders 11th-14th centuries); 6. Monasticism in Central Europe (the Pauline order, from the 13th century). Due to the different trainings of the two instructors, the two segments (early Eastern monasticism versus medieval Western monasticism) will be presented following two different methodologies. The first part will be based on textual evidence with incidental hints on eremitic, semi-eremitic, skiti- and laura-type, as well as coenobitic architecture, corresponding to the organisational structures of these types of the monastic life, while the second part will principally deal with architecture, landscape and archaeological finds, with a secondary use of textual evidence and incidental remarks on the spiritual theories accompanying and founding the new types of building activity.