Was the First Medieval Monk a Woman? – Reconsidered
Keynote Paper by Albrecht Diem
Given at the Center for Armenian Studies 2023 International Graduate Student Workshop: The Quotidian and the Divine: Early Modern Gendered Economies of Monasticism in the Eastern Christian World, on April 6, 2023
Excerpt: My argument is that contrary to the self-perception and master narrative, the roots of many key aspects of monastic life can be found in much older traditions of female religious life rather than in the imagined world of the desert fathers. To be more concrete, when bishops started to claim control of monastic institutions and give monks a different status than lay people, and a key moment was the Council of Chalcedon in 451, they imposed on monks what they had already imposed on religious women for about 200 years.
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Albrecht Diem is a Professor at Syracuse University, where he is a historian of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Click here to view his university webpage.
Was the First Medieval Monk a Woman? – Reconsidered
Keynote Paper by Albrecht Diem
Given at the Center for Armenian Studies 2023 International Graduate Student Workshop: The Quotidian and the Divine: Early Modern Gendered Economies of Monasticism in the Eastern Christian World, on April 6, 2023
Excerpt: My argument is that contrary to the self-perception and master narrative, the roots of many key aspects of monastic life can be found in much older traditions of female religious life rather than in the imagined world of the desert fathers. To be more concrete, when bishops started to claim control of monastic institutions and give monks a different status than lay people, and a key moment was the Council of Chalcedon in 451, they imposed on monks what they had already imposed on religious women for about 200 years.
Albrecht Diem is a Professor at Syracuse University, where he is a historian of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Click here to view his university webpage.
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