The High Medieval Era · c. 963-1300 · Athos, Constantinople
Athonite & Comnenian Byzantine Monasticism
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About This Movement
In 963 the monk Athanasios, with the backing of a Byzantine emperor, founded the Great Lavra on the mountainous peninsula of Athos in northern Greece, and the loose scatter of hermits already living there began to take the shape it has kept ever since. A self-governing federation of monasteries, each running on a written charter, a typikon, in which its founder set down exactly what the house was for, down to the diet, the liturgy and the charity. In Constantinople in the same period Symeon the New Theologian preached to his monks that God can be known directly and consciously, in experienced light, and was pushed out of his monastery for pressing the claim so hard. Between them the Athonite houses and the capital's monasteries carried the disciplines of interior prayer that the following century would gather up and name hesychasm.
Sources
- Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents (ed. Thomas & Constantinides Hero, Dumbarton Oaks, 5 vols, 2000; free online) (primary) — The founders' typika are complete in English: Athanasios's Great Lavra documents, the Evergetis typikon, Pantokrator, and more - legislation, liturgy, diet, and charity in lived detail.
- Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses (trans. deCatanzaro, Classics of Western Spirituality, 1980) (primary) — Catecheses actually preached to his monks — formation as it was delivered, and the era's boldest claim of direct experience of God. One nuance worth naming: Symeon's own writing comes from Constantinople, representing the 'Comnenian' half of this tradition rather than Mount Athos itself.
- Symeon the New Theologian, Hymns / Divine Eros (trans. Daniel Griggs, SVS Press, 2010) (primary) — The same claim in first-person poetry.
- Holy Men of Mount Athos (ed./trans. Greenfield & Talbot, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 2016) (primary) — Lives of the mountain's founders incl. Athanasios of Athos - Athonite hagiography in facing-page translation.
- Rosemary Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 843-1118 (CUP, 1995) (secondary) — Standard study of the monastic world's social ecosystem: patrons, property, holy men.
- Cambridge History of Christianity vol. 5, ch. 4 'The rise of hesychasm' (Krausmuller); cf. ch. 3 'The culture of lay piety in medieval Byzantium' (Gerstel & Talbot) (reference)