36 Chapter 1 1.1 Introduction No one would deny that Eastern Roman monks travelled. However, scholars have often referred to a tension between monastic mobility and an ideal of stability. The prescription that monks should stay within the same monastery and not leave it is known in the scholarly literature as stabilitas loci. This prescription is mostly associated with Benedict of Nursia (c. 480 – c.547), who introduced stability as one of the three vows that monks would have to take before entering a monastery.108 Scholars have pointed out that monks in the Eastern Roman Empire were freer to move than their western counterparts.109 Nonetheless, even Byzantine monastic travel is usually framed in relation to an ideal of stability. Byzantine monks have been described to travel ‘regardless of the ideal of stabilitas loci’,110 and to have ignored or adapted the rules.111 Saints were not any monks, so the idea of travelling monastic saints might sound paradoxical: how could the embodiments of a perfect Christian life be presented as frequent travellers, if this was contrary to monastic and societal ideals and legislation? The representation of travel in monastic saints’ Lives will be discussed in the next chapters, but first a re-evaluation of the ideal of stability will be offered through a close reading of a selection of sources. The present chapter will specifically review lateantique texts that scholars have used as evidence for the existence of an ideal of stabilitas loci in the Eastern Roman world. It will inquire what aspects of monastic movement were considered problematic and why. It will be argued that the term and concept of stabilitas loci should be abolished as a reference point for Eastern Roman monastic mobility. In order to show that Byzantine monastic mobility is indeed habitually discussed in relation to an ideal of stabilitas loci in the current scholarly debate, some examples will be given below. In 1955, Emil Herman published an article titled ‘La ‘stabilitas loci’ nel monachismo bizantino’. This became the standard reference work on the topic. Herman asked himself whether the Benedictine ideal of stabilitas loci could also be observed in a Byzantine context. For this purpose, he turned to various normative sources, such as the Long Rules of Basil, the canons of the Council of Chalcedon and several Novels of Justinian. In the analysis of these sources, Herman indeed perceived a norm of physical stability, according to which monks should not leave their monasteries. Since ideology does not necessarily match observance, Herman examined monastic foundation documents (typika) and saints’ Lives to see to what degree the ideal of stabilitas loci was complied with. He observed that some typika did regulate monastic (im)mobility, but many others did not deal with it at all. After discussing examples of monastic mobility in saints’ Lives as well, 108 The other two are conversion and obedience. Rule of Benedict 58.17 in Venarde (2011). 109 Herman (1955), p. 116. 110 Ritter (2019b), par. 1. See also Maladakis (2018) (‘Malgré l’idéal monastique de la stabilitas loci, […]’), Maladakis (2018), p. 373. 111 Nicol (1985), p. 195; Talbot (2019), p. 135.
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