The main tasks of this project were to collate, compare, and explain the relationships between the surviving (largely textual) evidence for the rituals imposed on newcomers who approached communal monastic groups between the fourth and seventh centuries CE in the Mediterranean. These sources were first compiled in a private database to facilitate later analysis of the descriptions available to us, followed in turn by analysis of the individual circumstances pertaining to each item, especially as they related to chronological, spatial, identity, and organisational differences between the described groups. These individual cirucmstances and their effects on monastic conceptualisations of entrance rituals were then woven together through broader considerations of shared issues (such as the influence of wealth, gender identifications, and non-monastic authorities on internal monastic hierarchies). This work progressed through five case studies, essentially structured around the evidence pertaining to testing, pledging, degradation, robing, and renunciation rituals. While these rituals were initially examined in turn, the shared purposes and effects of these processes were emphasised to note the cumulative impact of these public ceremonies on the relationships between monks, superiors, and the rest of late antique society. At the same time, these interlinked and overlapping effects meant that superiors did not necessarily need to use all of these rites, and thus had great flexibility in choosing what processes to impose and how to impose them on their followers. As such, this research by design paid attention to the variety of monastic expressions of service, obligation, and identity possible in these rituals, with the aim of emphasising late antique monasticism not as a uniform, cohesive whole but rather as a diverse, ever-changing landscape in which monks and their leaders sought to navigate the period's travails.
