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2.1 - The Monastery

from History 2 - Mechanisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2024

Simon Franklin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Rebecca Reich
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Emma Widdis
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

During the age of devotion, monasteries were the dominant institutions for the production, preservation, and consumption of books. This chapter uses a spatial device to map the character and range of monastic writing and reading. Monastic book consumption is described in terms of three zones. The first zone is the church, with the books needed for the performance of the liturgy and to support services every day of the year. The second zone can be represented by the refectory or other communal space, where the monastic Rule advised that, rather than engage in idle chatter, the brethren should listen to the reading of instructive and edifying texts. The third zone is the individual cell, the zone of texts for private reading. The chapter’s main temporal focus is on the period from the late fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth century, the main age of monastic expansion.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Gritsevskaia, I. M., Chtenie i chet'i sborniki v russkikh monastyriakh XV–XVII vv. [Reading and non-liturgical manuscript miscellanies in Russian monasteries from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries] (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2012).Google Scholar
Knizhnye tsentry Drevnei Rusi. Knizhniki i rukopisi Kirillo-Belozerskogo monastyria [Centres of early Rus book culture. Bookmen and manuscripts of the Kirillo-Belozerskii monastery], ed. Ponyrko, N. V. and Semiachko, S. A. (St Petersburg: Pushkinskii dom, 2014).Google Scholar
Knizhnye tsentry Drevnei Rusi. Knizhniki i rukopisi Solovetskogo monastyria [Centres of early Rus book culture. Bookmen and manuscripts of the Solovetskii monastery], ed. Semiachko, S. A. (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2004).Google Scholar
Knizhnye tsentry Drevnei Rusi. Solovetskii monastyr' [Centres of early Rus book culture. The Solovetskii monastery], ed. Semiachko, S. A. (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001).Google Scholar
Knizhnye tsentry Drevnei Rusi. Severnorusskie monastyri [Centres of early Rus book culture. North Russian monasteries], ed. Semiachko, S. A. (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001).Google Scholar
Knizhnye tsentry Drevnei Rusi. Rostovo-iaroslavskaia zemlia [Centres of early Rus book culture. The Rostov-Iaroslavl land], ed. Semiachko, S. A. (St Petersburg: Pushkinskii dom, 2022).Google Scholar
Miller, David B., Saint Sergius of Radonezh, His Trinity Monastery, and the Formation of the Russian Identity (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Smolitsch, Igor, Russisches Mönchtum. Entstehung, Entwicklung und Wesen 988–1917 (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1953).Google Scholar
Vodarskii, Ia. E., and Istomina, E. G., Pravoslavnye monastyri i ikh rol' v razvitii kul'tury (XI–nachalo XX v.) [Orthodox monasteries and their role in the development of culture (eleventh to early twentieth centuries)] (Tula: Grif i K., 2009).Google Scholar

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