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Ascetic Culture honors Philip Rousseau’s pathbreaking work on early Christian asceticism in a series of essays exploring how quickly the industrious and imaginative practitioners of asceticism, from the early fourth through the mid-fifth century, adapted the Greco-Roman social, literary, and religious culture in which they had been raised. Far from rejecting the life of the urban centers of the ancient world, they refined and elaborated that life in their libraries, households, and communities. The volume begins with a discussion of Egyptian monastic reading programs and the circulation of texts, especially the hugely influential Life of Antony. A second group of essays engages the topic of disciplinary culture in ascetic spaces such as the monastery, the household, and the city. A third group focuses on the topic of imaginary landscapes and ascetic self-fashioning. Ascetic Culture concludes by surveying the scholarly study of asceticism over the last one hundred and fifty years, arguing that previous generations of scholars have regarded asceticism either as a product of the inner dynamism of early Christianity or as a distortion of its earliest aims. Together, the contributors recognize, reflect upon, and extend the themes explored in Rousseau’s work on early Christianity’s ascetic periphery—a region whose inhabitants reflect in various ways the aspirations of their religion, from the daily to the otherworldly.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
  2. p. 1
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  1. Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
  2. pp. 2-7
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-x
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  1. Abbreviations
  2. pp. xi-xiv
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. 1-8
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  1. Part I: Books as Guides
  1. Chapter 1: Pachomius and the Mystery of the Letters
  2. pp. 11-28
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  1. Chapter 2: Writing Rules and Quoting Scripture in Early Coptic Monastic Texts
  2. pp. 29-49
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  1. Chapter 3: The Life of Antony in Egypt
  2. pp. 50-74
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  1. Chapter 4: Apologetics of Asceticism: The Life of Antony and Its Political Context
  2. pp. 75-96
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  1. Chapter 5: The Memory Palace of Marcellinus: Athanasius and the Mirror of the Psalms
  2. pp. 97-124
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  1. Part II: Disciplines and Arenas
  1. Chapter 6: From the Pillar to the Prison: Penitential Spectacles in Early Byzantine Monasticism
  2. pp. 127-146
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  1. Chapter 7: Cassian, Cognition, and the Common Life
  2. pp. 147-166
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  1. Chapter 8: Gender, Eros, and Pedagogy: Macrina’s Pious Household
  2. pp. 167-181
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  1. Chapter 9: Waiting for Theodosius, or The Ascetic and the City: Gregory of Nazianzus on Maximus the Philosopher
  2. pp. 182-198
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  1. Part III: Landscapes (with Figures)
  1. Chapter 10: Remembering for Eternity: The Ascetic Landscape as Cultural Discourse in Early Christian Egypt
  2. pp. 201-228
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  1. Chapter 11: Xeniteia According to Evagrius of Pontus
  2. pp. 229-252
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  1. Chapter 12: Adam, Eve, and the Elephants: Asceticism and Animality
  2. pp. 253-268
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  1. Chapter 13: The Consolation of Nature: Fields and Gardens in the Preaching of John Chrysostom
  2. pp. 269-292
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  1. Part IV: Founding the Field
  1. Chapter 14: Adolf Harnack and the Paleontological Layer of Church History
  2. pp. 295-314
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  1. Chapter 15: From East to West: Christianity, Asceticism, and Nineteenth-Century Protestant Professors in America
  2. pp. 315-341
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  1. Select Publications of Philip Rousseau
  2. pp. 342-346
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  1. Bibliography
  2. pp. 347-389
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 390-392
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 393-415
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  1. Back Cover
  2. p. 431
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