Chapter 4 uses chronicles, hagiographies, ekphraseis and polemical treatises to discuss clerical hunting in Romanía. Prohibitions against clerical hunting had existed for Western men since Late Antiquity, but there is not enough evidence to suggest that Romanía followed the same pattern. In the Eastern Roman context, narratives of clerical hunting did not put the emphasis on differences between secular and religious men, and non-participation did not entail the loss of masculine capital. Rather, the focus was on human/animal interactions and the need to avoid overindulgence, and the emphasis was the same whether the person involved was an emperor or a cleric. The animals themselves also had an important role to play: they were not simply seen as prey to be dominated by the manly man but could act as co-creators of the skills necessary for the hunt, leaving their traces on their co-hunters’ subjectivity. At the same time, the malleability of Eastern Roman ideas about which animal lives were worth preserving allowed authors to strategically unify all men against the animal Other or to distinguish between different types of men, creating in the process hierarchies of masculinities.

Chapter 2 shows that Jiaozhi, the southernmost province of the Han empire was a cosmopolitan at the forefront of overseas contacts and influences. Many monks set out from here for the South Sea, India, and Sri Lanka, from where exotic plants were introduced and where they became cash crops. The aromatic economy gave Jiaozhi all the earmarks of a commercial-based economy that characterised cash-cropping of the Mekong delta. By the seventh century, Jiaozhi became the leading aromatic refinery of the South China Sea region. Production of aromatics, silk, and ceramics were organised by the hybrid Sino-Viet elite. This alone challenges the image of the ‘traditional Vietnam’, being essentialised into a rural and village Vietnam.

This chapter looks at the theme of travel in an early monastic setting and its impact on everyday monastic life. Surviving documentation acts as a witness for the economic activities of fourth- and fifth-century monks in Egypt and their roles as participants in the social and economic activities of the period. As we now know, fourth- and fifth-century monasticism was a phenomenon that expressed itself as vigorously within the towns and villages of Egypt as it did in the barren regions that bordered the fertile lands that lie alongside the length of the River Nile. Monks may have ideologically renounced the world, but they also had familial, economic, and social ties that required their attention. This necessitated travel both within and beyond the borders of Egypt. By examining the documentation that survives for a variety of monastic journeys, we can gain a deeper insight into the world of monasticism in its earliest phase.

The focus of the chapter is on those features of the late Roman world in the West which were the environment of early papal jurisprudence. These include: the sheer number of clerics and monks, the heterogeneity of these two Christian elites, their relation to existing secular legislation on status and occupations, inconsistency in ritual systems, contested meanings of baptism and its place in the religious year, the symbolic significance of time, the disruption to society of the barbarian invasions, the two Christian systems of marriage (episcopal and imperial), and the spatial structures of empire and church. The chapter attempts to elucidate two overlapping sources of tension which played a part in generating the first papal jurisprudence: the multiplicity of semi-autonomous evolving systems, and uncertainty about where or whether to draw a line between non-negotiable principles and legitimate variation.

This chapter argues that Thai manners today, although expressed in secular terms, contain vestiges of an older Buddhist theory of how to master the self. This theory, which is based on well-known Buddhist scripture as well as monastic and lay practice, places importance on training oneself to restrain one's body (kai), one’s speech (waja), and the mind (jai). Ideals of Buddhist conduct in the Theravada Buddhist world are often associated with the stories of the bodhisatta, the future Buddha, particularly through the Jataka tales. However, Buddhist scriptures also prescribe ideal forms of behaviour for the bourgeois 'householder', especially in the Sigalovada Sutta, which was popular throughout the Theravada Buddhist world. The chapter situates these discourses of good conduct within Thai history in the nineteenth century, when political, economic, and social changes were producing a more bourgeois society, albeit within the political framework of a traditional absolute monarchy.

Some Latin monasteries were not founded in the wake of the First Crusade but had already existed before 1095. Two in particular, St Mary Latin and Notre-Dame de Josapahat, both of which are examples of growing western interest in the Holy Land in the eleventh century, reflect the dominance of the Benedictine form of monasticism in that period. Other Benedictine monasteries were founded in the Holy Land in the twelfth century, mostly in locations associated with biblical events. This chapter considers Benedictine monastic foundations in the Holy Land from before and after the First Crusade, and examines their role in land-holding and political society and how they coped with loss of income and vocations in the thirteenth century after the conquests by Saladin in 1187.

The Holy Land attracted many from the West who rejected or drifted away from standard forms of religious life. Many lived as solitary hermits or anchorites for a period of time, or formed unofficial communities with like-minded religious. These forms of religious life away from the mainstream paralleled similar trends in the twelfth-century West, but also drew inspiration from long-standing traditions of solitary monasticism in the Holy Land and Syria. In this chapter the evidence for some of these communities and the individuals who led them is examined, and the relationship between ‘unofficial’ reforming communities and fully-endowed monasteries is considered.

Boys and girls of varying ages lived in early monasteries in Egypt or were part of the larger network of care for Egyptian monasteries in late antiquity. Children entered monasteries on their own or along with their parents. They joined monastic communities or monastic households for a variety of reasons: familial poverty, abandonment, orphanhood, religious devotion and dedication, temporary care, and education. This chapter surveys papyri, monastic rules, hagiography, Manichaean documents from Kellis, letters, inscriptions, and graffiti to document the presence of children in early Egyptian monasteries.

Monastic writers have long been considered the prototypical writers of history in the Middle Ages. This essay asks just how writing about the past related to the monastic life, in the myriad ways that nuns and monks practiced it in Ireland and Britain in the Middle Ages, and how history-writing was part of a broad array of memorial practices over the whole period. The concept of memory offers a practical context for considering the full range of historical production in monastic archives: romances, lais, sagas, and letters alongside chronicles, saints’ lives and cartularies. Since memory was also a major means of interaction between monastics and seculars, memory also clarifies the fluid boundaries between so-called monastic and secular forms of history.

The previous chapters showed how Christians assimilated the classical tradition of free speech and turned it into a Christian practice. This chapter explores the other end of the spectrum of the Christian reception of classical free speech, and investigates the doubts and reservations against frank speech that were expressed in some Christian communities, especially in ascetic milieus, from the fifth to the seventh centuries. It questions Foucault’s thesis that the rise of monasticism smothered classical ideals of free speech. As this chapter shows, authors of ascetic literature did indeed emphasise the beneficial effects of silence versus the dangerous power of the tongue and maintained that unrestrained freedom of speech and free behaviour of monks amongst each other impeded spiritual growth. However, it also shows that ascetic ideals of self-control and silence did not replace, but rather reframed the traditional discourse of free speech.

This chapter investigates narrative representations of free speech in early Christian martyr acts written between c. 150 and the end of persecution in 313. It discusses both pagan and Christian models that inspired authors of early Christian martyr acts to represent the speech and behaviour of martyrs in a certain manner. One of the issues the authors addressed was how a Christian should behave when he or she stood trial before secular authorities, and what measure of frank speech was appropriate in this situation. Early Christian martyrs are often presented as respectful, polite and reticent towards authorities during interrogation. We also see a clear preference for plain speech over studied rhetoric. The chapter addresses the question of whether new interpretations of parrhesia that we find in these martyrdom narratives should be seen as indicative of a growing reluctance among Christians to criticise those in power, or as part of a process of acculturation.