37 A reconsideration of the ideal of stability in Byzantine monasticism he concluded that while the norm of stabilitas loci theoretically remained in place in the Byzantine world, in practice, it was not always observed.112 Later scholars have followed the main conclusion of Herman that stabilitas loci as an ideal remained in place throughout the history of Eastern Roman monasticism. The reality of monastic mobility has consequently been interpreted in this light. According to Donald Nicol in 1985, discussing late-Byzantine wandering monks, ‘[i]n the Byzantine world these rules [of stability] were often bent or ignored’.113 Nicol did not dismiss the idea that stabilitas loci was a pervasive ideal in Byzantine monasticism, but saw wandering monks as exceptions that proved and re-established the rule.114 Equally, in more recent studies stabilitas loci is assumed to have been a rule or ideal that Byzantine monks somehow had to relate to: it is either used as explanation for why monks would not have travelled frequently, or – in a similar vein as Nicol’s position – monks are seen as having ignored the rules. Michel Kaplan, for example, argued that middle-Byzantine saints that went on pilgrimage were exceptional, for ‘[l]e pèlerinage est par trop contraire à l’idéal de stabilité du moine’.115 According to Marie-France Auzépy, travelling monks ignored norms imposed by canon and civil law and also in eastern monastic literature wandering was not valued positively.116 Vangelis Maladakis, on the other hand, observed that the monks of Mount Athos and of other monastic centres travelled frequently, ‘malgré d’idéal monastique de la stabilitas loci’.117 Similarly, Alice-Mary Talbot stated that ‘[a]lthough this principle [of monastic stability] was well established in both Byzantine canon and civil law, it was frequently ignored in practice, especially by male monastics’.118 Max Ritter wrote that ‘Byzantine monks of the mid-Byzantine period (8th-11th c.) travelled quite often […] regardless of the ideal of stabilitas loci’.119 And most recently, in 2023, Mihail Mitrea perceived an 112 ‘Sia I tipici che le ‘Vite’ dimostrano che I canoni non erano semplicemente caduti in disuso; essi teoricamente rimanevano in vigore. Ma mentre gli uni li consideravano ancora come norme obbligatorie, gli altri nella pratica non li osservavno più, specialmente in determinate circostanze, come abbiamo mostrato più sopra’. Herman (1955), p. 140. 113 Nicol (1985), p. 195. 114 Nicol described wandering monks of the thirteenth and fourteenth century as an ‘extreme example’ which eventually led to a ‘reform and revival of more ordered, coenobitic monasticism in the Orthodox world’. Ibid., p. 202. 115 Kaplan (2002), p. 127. 116 Auzépy (2009). Auzépy did observe diverse discourses on monastic mobility in the fifth-century compilations of sayings of ‘desert fathers and mothers’, the Apophthegmata Patrum, which she related to the distinction between communal monasticism (‘par definition stable’) and eremitism (‘souvent errant’). Auzépy (2009), par. 3. However, such a distinction can often not be made clearly in the lives of individual monks (cf. Introduction, p. 18), which would complicate connecting positions on mobility to either cenobitic of eremitic ideals. The travelling saints discussed in the next chapters equally alternated between communal and solitary forms of monasticism. Auzépy notes that travelling hermits were not valued positively in eastern monastic literature, and pointed out that wandering monks did not attain the same celebrity status as hermits with an opposite practice, the stylites (Auzépy (2009), par. 12) (in fact, many stylite saints travelled too, see Frank (2019). Auzépy concludes that wandering monks existed, but they were never encouraged. Auzépy (2009), par. 22. 117 Maladakis (2018), p. 373. 118 Talbot (2019), p. 135. 119 Ritter (2019b), par. 1. In the same publication, Olivier Delouis, Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert and Annick PetersCustot refer to an ideal of stability. Although they do recognise a diversity of attitudes on mobility, they also pose that monastic travel was considered only legit in certain circumstances, but otherwise not deemed justifiable from the ninth century onwards. Delouis et al. (2019b). 1
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