38 Chapter 1 ‘inherent tension between monasticism and geographical mobility’, which he connects (among other things) to the ‘ideal of stabilitas loci’.120 On one side of the scholarly debate, stabilitas loci is thus used as an explanation for little monastic mobility. These scholars see monastic mobility as exceptional and stabilitas loci as an ideal that is enforced in Byzantine society (e.g., Nicol and Kaplan). On the other end of the debate on the prevalence of mobility in Byzantine society, there are scholars who stress the mobile character of Byzantine monks (e.g., Maladakis, Talbot and Ritter). The latter scholars as well assume that stabilitas loci was an ideal articulated in legislation and therefore they still feel the need to frame monastic mobility in relation to stability, but they also indicate that, in practice, monks ignored this ideal. The next section (1.2) will make some general comments on why using the term stabilitas loci is problematic. The subsequent section (1.3) will illustrate that also the sources themselves, on which scholars have based this ideal, do not sufficiently justify using the concept in an Eastern Roman context. 1.2 Stabilitas loci: the term The idea or a principle of stability is taken from an understanding of western medieval monasticism, especially with reference to the Rule of Benedict.121 The basis for the principle of stabilitas loci in Benedict’s Rule is found in chapter 58, where the text indicates that people desiring to enter a monastery should vow stability, conversion of his way of life and obedience.122 In addition, the Rule voices a clear aversion to monks who travel frequently. The Rule of Benedict starts with a categorisation of four groups of monks: cenobites, hermits, Sarabaites and ‘gyrovagues’. The first two categories are presented as venerable, while the third and fourth are not. The gyrovagues in particular are considered the worst, according to the Rule: they wander from province to province, they are never settled (stabiles), and they are ‘worse than Sarabaites in every way’.123 The Latin term stabilitas loci is not an emic term, since it is not used in the Greek Eastern Roman sources themselves, nor is there an equivalent medieval Greek term that expresses 120 Mitrea (2023a), pp. 3–4. The preceding list of studies in the field of Byzantine Studies referring to stabilitas loci is not exhaustive, but it gives an indication that Eastern Roman monastic mobility is habitually framed in relation to this concept (others include e.g., Prieto Domínguez (2021), p. 171). 121 Currently many ideas on early western monasticism are also being revised, including the importance monastic ‘rules’ in general, and the Rule of Benedict in particular, would have had in a western monastic tradition. According to Albrecht Diem and Philip Rousseau, the Rule of Benedict was only pushed as a standard rule for monasteries during Carolingian monastic reforms in the eight century and culminating in councils of 813 and 816/17, and even this process was messier and more diverse than hitherto thought. According to this view, the standardisation of Benedictine Rule for (western) monastic life may be seen as a Carolingian ideological invention (with limited success in practice), rather than reflecting earlier practices. Diem and Rousseau (2020). 122 Suscipiendus autem in oratorio coram omnibus promittat de stavilitate sua et conversatione morum suorum et oboedientiam. Rule of Benedict 58.17 in Venarde (2011). 123 Rule of Benedict 1, translated in Venarde (2011), p. 19.
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