Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

2 results

  • 2.1 - The Monastery

  • from History 2 - Mechanisms
  • Edited by Simon Franklin, University of Cambridge, Rebecca Reich, University of Cambridge, Emma Widdis, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature
    Published online:
    31 December 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024, pp 227-240

  • Summary

    During the age of devotion, monasteries were the dominant institutions for the production, preservation, and consumption of books. This chapter uses a spatial device to map the character and range of monastic writing and reading. Monastic book consumption is described in terms of three zones. The first zone is the church, with the books needed for the performance of the liturgy and to support services every day of the year. The second zone can be represented by the refectory or other communal space, where the monastic Rule advised that, rather than engage in idle chatter, the brethren should listen to the reading of instructive and edifying texts. The third zone is the individual cell, the zone of texts for private reading. The chapter’s main temporal focus is on the period from the late fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth century, the main age of monastic expansion.

  • 32 - Hagiography

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 358-361

  • Summary

    Lives of the saints became one of the most popular forms of Christian literature: indeed for some periods of the Middle Ages, both in the East and the West, the literary sources are dominated by the hagiographical. The origin of the notion of the saint in the cult of the martyrs had a marked effect on the genre of the saint's Life. The saint's Life, is concerned to depict one whose closeness to God is a source of power, manifest in miracles, not just the miracles worked by the saint during his lifetime, but also the miracles he continues to work through his earthly remains: his relics. The vast majority of saints' Lives is monastic: the Life of St Antony is an important piece of monastic literature, as well as the archetypal saint's Life; there are several versions of the Life of St Pachomius: another early monastic saint's Life is the Life of Paul the Hermit by Jerome.