Product details
- ISBN 9781032704753
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jul 2026
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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This volume includes seventeen essays on Byzantine monasticism, focusing on the 9th to 15th centuries. Envisaged as a companion Variorum volume to Talbot's Women and Religious Life in Byzantium (2001), this compendium complements its predecessor by focusing more attention on male monasteries, hermits and holy mountains, while offering some pioneering studies of female patrons, rural nuns, and the links of many Byzantine women to Mount Athos. The volume also complements Talbot's 2019 monograph, Varieties of Monastic Experience in Byzantium, 800-1453, by offering detailed analyses of topics that could only be briefly addressed in that book.
Introductory essays include an overview of the historical development of Byzantine monasteries and holy mountains, emphasising the intertwining of monasticism with urban and rural society. Subsequent essays explore the regimen at coenobitic monasteries, while paying considerable attention to the less well-known lifestyles of hermits, especially those on holy mountains.
Other topics include monastery gardens and horticulture; the culture of the refectory; challenges for adolescent novices; factors influencing the choice of a monastery’s foundation site; female patronage of monastery construction and restoration; the conversion of monasteries from male to female and vice-versa; rules regarding personal poverty for monastics; and the choice of a monastic name.
Alice-Mary Talbot has spent most of her scholarly career at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, where she has held several research and administrative posts. In the 1980s she was executive editor of the three-volume Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Subsequently she managed the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database project. From 1997 to 2009 she served as director of Byzantine studies, and finally as editor of the Byzantine Greek series of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (2009-2019). Her research focuses on Byzantine women, monasticism, and hagiography.
