14 the context of monastic culture.4 More generally, the inquiry may contribute to our view of possible responses to mobility in the history of humankind. In the field of Byzantine Studies, but not unique to this field, we come across descriptions of how ‘the Byzantine’ would have perceived mobility.5 The present study is itself not free of the urge to classify and categorise, which will inevitably somewhat simplify the past in order to make sense of the endless complexity of humans interacting with their environments. This study will search for patterns in an attempt to reconstruct particular discourses that may have been prevailing among particular societal groups. However, by examining one type of text (saints’ Lives), focussing on one type of movers (monks), written in the same political entity (Eastern Roman Empire), in the same language (Greek) at approximately the same time (ninth- early tenth century), the inquiry provides an opportunity to ask: between such comparable sources, and even within one text, do we still observe diversity? Or do we indeed see the same discourses and the same ideals reflected in these texts? And if so, what does that mean? These questions may thus invite us to examine whether we can observe a diversity of discourses on mobility. This effort may therefore balance a monolithic view of past perceptions and contribute to our understanding of the complexity of human societies. In sum, the main research question of this study is (how) can we learn about perceptions of monastic mobility by studying hagiography? Hagiography is chosen as the main focus for studying perceptions because the genre represents the richest body of narrative texts surviving for the period. A few hagiographical texts represent frequent-travelling monks. Since scholars have long perceived a tension between mobility and immobility in Byzantine monasticism, monks are a particularly interesting social group of movers.6 Studying perceptions as reflected in a literary genre inevitably needs to deal with representation. Therefore, this study also seeks to address a consecutive question: how did hagiographers represent monastic mobility and to what end? Mobility The Eastern Roman Empire, especially the middle-Byzantine period, has traditionally been characterised as witnessing low levels of mobility combined with a pervasive negative attitude towards travel.7 People would have valued immobility as an ideal and in practice. No one would deny that individuals travelled, but they would have been exceptions.8 This view of the past is perhaps reflective of a more general focus on the importance of places, rather 4 The middle-Byzantine period refers broadly to ninth to twelfth centuries. In this thesis, the focus lies on the ninth and early tenth centuries. 5 See pp. 14-18. 6 See the discussion below in the section ‘mobility’ of this introduction, and chapter 1. 7 The view that (long-distance) travel declined in the middle-Byzantine period compared to earlier and later periods is current in studies on the topic, e.g., in Karpozilos and Kazhdan (1991); Kislinger (1997); Lilie (2009); Kislinger (2011). For studies that emphasise negative Byzantine attitudes towards mobility, see footnotes 19 and 21. 8 Ralph-Johannes Lilie, for example, expressed that ‘die Byzantiner in ihrer Gesamtheit kein mobiles Volk waren, was wohl auch für das Mittelalter als Epoche überhaupt gilt’. Lilie (2009), p. 32.
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