61 A reconsideration of the ideal of stability in Byzantine monasticism have a continuous wall built all round it, so that there is no way out other than by the wicket-gates.212 Similar to the Chalcedonian canon discussed above, this Novel emphasises that monks should be submitted to an authority, in this case to the monastic leader. More clearly than Novel 5, Novel 133 prescribes remaining physically within the monastic establishment. The law indicates that monasteries should just have one or two entrances, which have to be guarded both for keeping monks in and for keeping undesirable people out. The Novel indicates that monks should ask permission to go out of the monastery – an element also encountered in the canon. Whereas the council of Chalcedon seemed to aim primarily at the establishment of episcopal control over monks, for the Novel submission is presented not so much as the goal itself but a means to an end – maintaining the dignity and spiritual integrity of the monks. Similar to some prescriptions in the Rules of Basil, leaving the monastery is presented as potentially distracting to their religious vocation (‘keep them enclosed and zealous for their religion, not distracting themselves […]’). The law is specifically targeted at cenobitic monastic communities, and does not consider other forms of monastic life. Several points may be concluded from the relevant Novels of Justinian with regard to monastic mobility and a supposed regulation of stabilitas loci. Firstly, monastic mobility is assumed to happen, as it is implied in the Novels. Secondly, the Novels prescribe some measures regulating monastic mobility, but these only regulate cenobitic monastic communities. Other modes of monastic life are not targeted. In Novel 5, only a certain type of monastic mobility is legislated for, that is a transfer to another monastery (or leaving the monastic vocation altogether). Novel 133 applies to monastic mobility more generally: it prescribes that (cenobitc) monks should gain permission from their monastic leader if they physically want to leave the monastery. Unlike the canon, the Novel presents mobility without a clear or single purpose as potentially problematic on spiritual grounds, and leaving the monastery as a distraction from veneration to God. So more than in the discussed texts of the previous centuries, the Novels provide more persuasive evidence for an ideal of stability as presented in modern scholarly literature. However, we should nuance the understanding of such an ideal, to recognise that the Novels do not prohibit monastic mobility altogether and they do not prescribe a general rule for all types of monastic life, nor for all types of mobility. 1.4 Conclusion In modern scholarly literature, Byzantine monastic travel is habitually framed in relation to stabilitas loci. This term, mostly associated with Benedictine monasticism, has been 212 Translated by Miller and Sarris (2018), p. 882-883. 1
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