The Historical Atlas of Eastern and Western Christian Monasticism (review)

The Benedictines have long been in the business of making beautiful books. This is a fine example. Laboa and his team survey monastic sites and monastic movements from around the world and from every era of Christian history. As the title suggests, Eastern Christian monasticism gets equal, if not more, attention. One finds chapters on Bulgarian, Serbian, Armenian, and Georgian monasticisms; on Mt. Sinai and Mt. Athos; on the Studite reform and the theology of Gregory Palamas. On virtually every page, one finds a rich array of maps, photos, and illustrations. This Historical Atlas is a feast for the eye. There are full-color reproductions of icons and manuscript illuminations, of mosaics and frescos as well as images from archeological sites and schematic floorplans of abbeys and basilicas. The work also richly illustrates the many exotic landscapes that Christian monks called home: searing deserts, remote islands, towering and cave-pocked cliffs.

The volume's broad sweep imposes a necessary brevity. In this 270-page book there are some sixty-two chapters, each chapter no more than four pages. After a brief glimpse at the "universality of the monastic phenomenon" in world religions and in the ancient Mediterranean, Laboa and his contributors survey the origins of Christian monasticism and its flowering in the fourth and fifth centuries, particularly in Syria, Egypt, and Cappadocia. From there they go on to examine the Western monastic tradition (Cassian, Jerome, Martin of Tours, Augustine, Benedict, Irish and Iberian monasticisms) and the parallel developments in the East (Basil of Caesarea, Sabas, Theodore the Studite). Roughly one third of the text surveys figures and regions of immediate relevance to readers of JECS. The illustrations through this section include famous favorites, such as the 7th century icon of Christ and St. Menas from Bawit, the ruins of the Church of St. Simeon the Stylite, and the hollowed out caves of Cappadocian hermits. The authors have also collected many hard-to-find photos such as those of the hermitages excavated in the 1980s at the ancient monastic settlement of Kellia, where Evagrius Ponticus and Palladius once resided.

While this book is a feast for the eye, it can be a disappointment to read. Obviously it is intended for a broad popular audience, and four pages per topic hardly permit depth. Even so, high-quality scholarship richly informs some "coffee table" books (witness, for instance, Eamon Duffy's brilliant illustrated history of the papacy, Saints and Sinners). Unfortunately, Laboa, who is the primary author, does not seem attuned to developments in recent patristic research. For example, he speaks of Pachomius "as founder and father of Christian cenobitic monasticism" (44), unaware, apparently, of the challenges to such a claim in the researches of James Goehring and other specialists in Pachomian literature. Laboa works from a painfully simplistic account of the spread of monasticism, claiming "monastic life began in Nitria in the first decades of the 4th century and spread rapidly throughout Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor" (40). This shows little awareness of the widespread scholarly recognition of the independence of Syrian asceticism, to say nothing of the broad range of Palestinian experiments and of the local traditions associated with Eustathius of Sebaste in Cappadocia. There are other passing inaccuracies. For example, apatheia is defined as "freedom from emotion or excitement" (7), a very odd claim given the extensive studies of Antoine and Claire Guillaumont on Evagrius and his mystical spirituality.

Such inaccurate generalizations are only one side. It is ironic that a book whose illustrations accent the diversity of monasticism tends in its text to smooth over real historical diversity and the many pungent historical conflicts. This flattening is best illustrated in the chapter on "Two Tireless Propagandists," Cassian and Jerome. One finds no discussion of the Origenist ontroversy in which Jerome was an often ruthless propagandist, and Cassian was likely a victim. Melania the Elder and Rufinus are mentioned but only because they helped monasticism become better "admired and...