Last modified on Thursday October 28, 2004 at 4:28 AM UTC
Monasticism as practiced in the Christian churches had its origins in the Christian East, when St. Anthony first sought the solitude of the desert in order to be closer to God away from the distractions of the urban life of Egypt and in order to aspire to theosis, e.g., to become God-like. After St. Anthony there followed many others seeking God in remote places, so many in fact that some forms of common order and behavior evolved in what became the heavenly metropolises of the desert. St. Mary of Egypt, St. Mary, the sister of St. Pachomius, and St. Macrina, sister of St. Basil, are but some of the witnesses that prove that this movement was not the sole domain of men seeking after God.
During the early centuries of Christianity, the names of St. Pachomius, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, and St. John Cassian became associated with the development of ancient sets of guidelines or rules for various forms or styles of monastic life, ranging from the hermetic (individual) to the idiorythmic (loose association of hermits gathering for common prayer and occasionally meals) to the cenobitic (a community sharing common life).
The rule of St. Basil was clearly a principal source of that of St. Benedict, the father of Western monasticism. The original sets of guidelines were from time to time revised by particular communities to fit their particular circumstances.
Perhaps the most famous of these later revisions within the Byzantine tradition is that attributed to St. Theodore the Studite (of the St. John the Baptist of Studius monastery in Constantinople), which has had a significant impact on monasticism in the lands of the former Byzantine Empire (Greece, Turkey, the Middle East) as well as in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Ukraine and Russia.
Rules of one monastery often were and continue to be the basis of the rule of new monastic foundations, and thus a considerable amount of commonality of practice, if not uniformity, can be found among the practices of most Byzantine monasteries. To this day Byzantine Christian monks and nuns generally follow the rule of their own monastery and do not belong to an order as do most Western religious. Nor do most Byzantine monastics focus their spirituality upon the teachings, or institutes, of one or two founders, but rather on the Scriptures and the Holy Tradition of the Church.
On the pages that follow are excerpts from writings concerning the monastic life and its importance in the Byzantine Churches from a sermon given by Fr. Peter Knowles, O.P., which subsequently appeared as an article entitled Monasticism and the Byzantine Church published in the June 14, 1998 issue of Eastern Catholic Life, the newspaper of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic;
For additional information about monasticism and the monastic life in the Christian East, please consult the following works (available from the Icon and Book Service at Monastery of Holy Cross — see below, after listing of books) and the references contained therein:
I. Brianchaninoff, The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticsm
C. Cavarnos, Anchored in God: Life, Art and Thought on the Holy Mountain
S. Chetverikoff, Elder Ambrose of Optina
D. Chitty, The Desert a City
Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Poustinia
Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses and Sayings
Hieromonk A. Golitzin, Living Witnesses of the Holy Mountain: Contemporary Voices from Mount Athos
G. Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community
Mother Kassiana, Come Follow Me: Orthodox Monasticism in Moldavia
Archimandrite S. Keleher, Metropolitan Andrew Sheptitsky (Chapters VIII & IX)
Archimandrite B. Luykx, Eastern Monasticism and the Future of the Church
B. Maguire, Friendship and Community: the Monastic Experience 350 to 1250
The Northern Thebaid
Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O, 0 Holy Mountain!
The Philokalia
C. Sederholm, Elder Anthony of Optina
S. Senyk, Women's Monasteries in Ukraine and Belarus to the Period of the Suppressions, OCP No. 222
S.P. Todorovich, The Chilandarians: Serbian Monks on the Green Mountain
G. Trumler, Athos, the Holy Mountain
T. Ware, The Orthodox Church
These — and much more — can be ordered from:
The Icon and Book Service
1217 Quincy Street, NE
Washington DC 20017
Tel.: 202-526-6061
1-800-ASK-IKON
Fax: 202-526-3316