Palestine and Sinai played a key role in the development of the monastic and ascetic tradition in Eastern Christianity in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. After a demographic and cultural peak during the early Byzantine period (fifth-sixth century), Palestinian monasticism was deeply affected by the seventh-century Islamic conquests, which brought about radical changes in the region. Nevertheless, monastic life and literature continued to flourish in the new political context of the early caliphate. Together with the on-going literary activity in Greek, this period witnessed the emergence of a Melkite Syriac and Arabic literature. Monasteries such as St Catherine’s on Sinai or Mar Saba near Jerusalem became important cultural centers fostering multilingual monastic communities.
The aim of this research project was to investigate the role played by these communities in the formation of the Byzantine literary canon of ascetic works. Throughout the medieval period, monastic audiences across the Mediterranean relied on the late antique ascetic writings of the fourth-seventh centuries CE as their main source of religious authority. Although the reception of these ‘classics’ had far-reaching consequences for the religious and intellectual history of the Mediterranean, key questions regarding the processes of transmission, reception, and adaptation of these texts are still open: How did a canon of ascetic literature emerge, who carried out the selection of authors and works, and how were these selections disseminated? Based on a detailed study of the ascetic manuscripts from Palestine and Sinai, the project argues that the large monastic centers in these regions played a pivotal role in this development.
The first objective of the project was to identify and analyze the Greek, Syriac, and Arabic ascetic manuscripts copied in the region between the 7th and 11th centuries. The descriptions of the relevant manuscripts will be published in the on-line database e-Sketikon, which has been developed as part of the project. The second objective was to study the most important features and textual practices in these ascetic collections (translation techniques, selection criteria, etc.). Moreover, the identification of the scribes and users of these manuscripts allowed for a reconstruction of the institutional and personal networks that worked as channels for transmitting ascetic knowledge in the Eastern Mediterranean during the early Islamic period. Based on these insights, the final objective of the project was to explain how a canon of monastic and ascetic literature, mainly consisting of late antique authors, was formed in the middle and later Byzantine period, and to assess the role played by the Palestinian monastic centers in this process.
