39 A reconsideration of the ideal of stability in Byzantine monasticism a principle or ideal that monks should stay within the confines of their monastery.124 The etic nature of the term is not necessarily problematic.125 Nonetheless, if stabilitas loci – or a direct equivalent – was not used in Eastern Roman contexts we should (a) be careful in using it and (b) we should be aware why this term was introduced and the possible ramifications this has had on the interpretation of the Eastern Roman sources. The risk involved in using a term that is supposed to be an important Eastern Roman concept, but not used by the Byzantines themselves, is that we may apply ideas from one context to another. That is, the interpretation of the Eastern Roman context could be coloured by the interpretation of a western context. This may eventually inhibit rather than help understand aspects of Eastern Roman culture. Therefore, if we want to use terms like stabilitas loci, we need to explicitly justify why it is a term and concept that is helpful in understanding Byzantine society. Such clear justification is lacking in the scholarly literature. Instead, since the cited article by Herman, who even uses ‘stabilitas loci’ in its title but does not elaborate on the term itself, the term and concept are treated as a given.126 As the examples above have illustrated, an ideal of stability is referred to as if it were a pervasive ideal throughout the existence of the Eastern Roman Empire (although possibly deviating from practice). In my view, especially in cases in which a phenomenon or concept is assumed to be applicable for a long period of time and a large geographical area – during which there were many changes and there was much diversity – an explicit justification of an etic term and concept is necessary to prove it is a helpful one rather than an oversimplification or distortion of the time periods, concepts and places involved. Up to this point, scholarship has failed to do so. Secondly, if there is no Byzantine equivalent for the term, it is good to be aware why it was originally used for an Eastern Roman context and from which context the term derives, so that it is possible to judge whether this context has influenced the interpretation of the Eastern Roman sources, and to assess whether this interpretation is helpful or problematic. Apart from a general recognition of the association of the term stabilitas loci 124 Originating in linguistics in the 1960s, the distinction between etic and emic has been used to mean different things in different disciplines. Such distinction is generally used in cultural anthropology to refer to an outsider perspective (etic) versus an insider perspective (emic) when understanding a particular culture. See e.g., Agar (2007); Flemming (2010). In line with an anthropological understanding of emic/etic, in this study I use emic to refer to terminology as originating from within the medieval Greek hagiographical tradition itself, and etic as terminology originating from another outsider context, such as modern categories of analysis. 125 If the Byzantines did not name a phenomenon – perhaps even because it is so wrapped up in their culture that there would be no need to name it – it does not mean it was not there. If we use the criterion of only using emic terminology it would also mean that we could not use any modern terminology or concepts at all in discussing the past. Besides being unpractical if not impossible, this would also deprive us of many valuable insights and scholarship. 126 Variant derivative terminology is also used in scholarship, such as ‘the principle of stability’, ‘the ideal of stability’, or ‘monastic stability’, in addition to stabilitas loci. ‘Stabilitas loci’ is used e.g., in Nicol (1985); Maladakis (2018), p. 373; Delouis et al. (2019b); Mitrea (2023a), pp. 3–4; Prieto Domínguez (2021), p. 171. For ‘ideal of stability’, see eg., Kaplan (2002). Mary-Alice Talbot uses both ‘ideal of monastic stability’, ‘stabilitas loci’ as well as ‘the monastic principle of stability’ in Talbot (2019), pp. 113; 135; 156. 1
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