The changing sacred landscape, from one dominated by temples to one where churches and monasteries were omnipresent, is a main feature of Late Antiquity. In this chapter, we will use the concept of ‘appropriation’ to gain an impression of the diverse ways in which Christians responded to, and interacted with, the former sacred built environment. In order to grasp the full complexity of these responses and interactions the focus is on a local case study, Abydos, a site that functioned continuously as a necropolis and cult centre of Osiris up until the Graeco-Roman period. Based on recent fieldwork, the various ways in which Christians, and especially monks, used and reused the abandoned necropolis are discussed.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine how Theodoret of Cyrrhus appropriated discourses of Roman masculinity in his Historia religiosa (ca. 440–444 CE), with the purpose of making the monks more acceptable, more marketable, to his would-be readers. Masculinity was a tactical appropriation that signified social worth. The study analyses four discourses related to masculinity in the Historia religiosa, all functioning with the purpose of showcasing the interior struggle between the soul and body of the monk. These discourses are warfare, athletics, slavery and medical discourse (health and illness). All function to show the superiority of the souls of the monks. By proving that the souls of the monks have universally dominated their bodies, they are also qualified to exercise external social, political and religious control. Hence, because of their total inner domination, Theodoret’s masculine monks can show dominance against foreign armies and raiders, generals and governors, and even an emperor. As literary characters, they become quite marketable to more reserved and conservative would-be readers.

As part of his long-standing work on the ‘Oriens pontificius’, the edition of the papal charters issued before 1198 in favour of the Latin churches and religious institutions founded in medieval Syria and Palestine in the aftermath of the First Crusade, Rudolf Hiestand has repeatedly stressed the extensive loss of source material pertaining to the history of the ecclesiastical establishments of the Latin Levant. Because of the Muslim reconquest of the so-called Crusader States and the concomitant destruction or complicated transfer of archives to Cyprus, Apulia, Sicily or France, scholars of the crusades and the Latin East are in many respects lacking the diversity and quantity of documentation generally produced by the Church in Western Europe during the Central Middle Ages. No monastic annals, no episcopal chronicles and hardly any hagiographical texts, theological treatises or sermons from Outremer have come down to us, with only very few exceptions such as the inventio narrating the discovery of the relics of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Hebron, the poems revolving around the history of the Temple by Prior Achard and Abbot Geoffrey of the Templum Domini, the descriptions of the Holy Land by Rorgo Fretellus of Nazareth/Antioch and the writings of Gerard of Nazareth, bishop of Laodicea.

Closely related to the historiography of the Crusades, research on the Military Orders has been one of the most dynamic areas of medieval studies over the last forty years. Thus the historiography reviewed here is essentially limited to publications that have appeared since 2000 – without denying the considerable contributions of a generation of pioneers who, beginning in the 1960s, transformed the history of the Military Orders into a scholarly enterprise. Readers wanting to understand the historiographical transformations that have driven research in this field can easily refer to several recently published reviews.

In this chapter, an overview of the various genres of hagiographic literature is given: The focus gradually shifts from the martyrs in the age of persecution to holy bishops, monks and monastery founders. Collections of edifying stories and miracles become popular, holy fools and fictional saints appear on the scene as the heroes of novel-like texts. Hagiographic literature reflects the ecclesiastical and social developments in the lives of real and imaginary martyrs of Iconoclasm, of saints who resisted the unpopular church union in the late 13th century or who supported the Hesychast movement in the 14th century. Hagiographic literature was written at both a simple and a sophisticated stylistic and linguistic level, and many lives of saints were rewritten in later times in a more refined language. For liturgical purposes, lives of saints were also brought together in collections, reduced to short entries and used as the base of hymns.

This chapter explores the significance of the interaction between desert and city for the emergent church and its theology in early Byzantium. First, it examines how the desert resisted the city, focusing on the iconic figure of Antony the Great and the early desert dwellers. In withdrawing from the city, the anchorites also withdrew from the spatial and temporal dimensions of earthly life, entering the depths of their consciousness and being. Second, it probes how the desert sought to transcend the city, focusing on Barsanuphius and John in the mid-sixth century. The ascetic ways of these two Old Men, dying unto themselves and the world, as well as the wisdom of their 850 letters, portray a desire for spiritual constructs that overcame city conventions. Third, it looks at the hagiographic portrait of Mary of Egypt and how her liturgical afterlife shaped and transformed the city.

This chapter argues that women played significant and varied roles in the church of the Byzantine Empire. I examine the roles of women in four categories: women at church; female saints, martyrs and monastics; Empresses; and hymnographers. In the early Byzantine period, two ecclesial positions were set aside for women: deaconess and widow. Their responsibilities included some limited liturgical involvement, prayer for the church and training of other women in the faith. Throughout the life of the Empire, there were also significant and different female models of faith and piety. In discussing ‘holy’ women, I briefly explore the cult of female saints and the reality of celibate and monastic lives for women in the period, before then turning to Empresses and their varied roles as mothers of the faith, models of virginity and protectors of icons. Finally, this chapter introduces Kassia, the ninth-century abbess and hymnographer, as an example of female hymn-writers of Byzantium.

This chapter explores the importance of monasticism in the Orthodox church. It begins by outlining the various forms of Byzantine monasticism, from the reclusive (or eremitic) to the fully socialised (or coenobitic) and living arrangements somewhere in between (the lavriotic). The chapter argues that monasticism gave the Church not only a practical way of engaging with the needs of the community—providing various services such as aged care—but also a powerful expression of the symbolic. Using rich poetic evocations of Romanos the Melodist and Kassia on monastic life, the chapter shows how the figure of the monk or nun represented the angelic capabilities of people who dedicate themselves to God. Finally, the chapter explores the emotional difficulties of monasticism. The rigorous ascetic practices and the relinquishment of personal desires resulted in a variety of emotional struggles, including feelings of isolation and occasional frustration. This sentiment is often referred to as acedia or the ‘noonday devil’. In spite of these stresses, the chapter concludes that the monasteries provided a keynote for religious practice that clinches the highest spiritual aspirations of the Church.

This concluding chapter reflects on the legacy of Augustine and the transition into a newly Christianized Europe, focusing on the pivotal role of Pope Gregory the Great (540–604 CE). It traces how Gregory inherited and transformed the philosophical and spiritual frameworks of late antiquity, channeling them into a vision of the Church as both a universal institution and a community of interpretation. Gregory’s work, including his Moral Reflections on Job, exemplified a pedagogy rooted in humility, moral formation, and multilevel scriptural reading. His missionary efforts, especially to England, helped lay the groundwork for the Latin Christian Middle Ages, in which learning – especially in Latin – became intertwined with monastic spirituality. The chapter explores the shift from classical eloquence to scriptural simplicity, the emergence of Latin as a sacred language, and the role of books and interpreters in shaping intellectual authority. Gregory’s legacy is set against a wider transformation: the gradual Christianization of formerly pagan cultural forms, the narrowing of the classical canon, and the emergence of a new educational and philosophical ethos in which learning served the soul’s ascent toward God. The chapter closes by framing this moment as both culmination and point of departure.

Shenoute of Atripe (348–465) was the most important Egyptian monastic leader in late antiquity. He developed a formalized discipline with which he governed three monasteries (two for men, one for women) located in the village of Atripe, across the Nile River from the city Panopolis (modern Akhmim). Thanks to Shenoute’s leadership, these monastic complexes, collectively known as the White Monastery Federation, played a major role in the social, political, economic, and religious lives of people in the region (Christians and non-Christians alike) and would become the hub of Christian literary culture in Egypt well into the Arab period. Shenoute himself occasionally preached public sermons in his native Coptic tongue to large crowds consisting of monastics, clergy members, lay people, government officials, military professionals, and other local luminaries. In those moments, Shenoute repeatedly defined the moral contours of the Christian community by stridently and repeatedly lambasting any zdepravity he believed present among his hearers, such as exploitation of the poor by rich landowners, adultery, violation of monastic vows, theft, cultic veneration of pagan gods, and Origenist and eventually Chalcedonian heresy.

Here is another text that witnesses to the early period of the island monastery of Lérins. Its author, Faustus, succeeded Maximus twice, first as abbot of Lérins and then as bishop of Riez. For his part, Maximus became the abbot after the monastery’s founder, Honoratus, was appointed bishop of Arles in 427 or 428. Maximus served as abbot until 433 or 434, when he became bishop of Riez. Faustus then replaced Maximus as abbot of Lérins, and when Maximus died sometime between 457 and 461, Faustus replaced him again, this time as bishop of Riez. Shortly after Maximus’ death, Faustus preached a homily to the church of Riez that stressed how the monastic virtues Maximus acquired at Lérins were a providential training for his pastoral ministry as bishop of Riez. In fact, Maximus was but one of several Lérinian monks installed as bishops in the 420s and 430s: besides Honoratus becoming bishop of Arles, also Hilary was made bishop of Arles in 430 and Eucherius bishop of Lyons around 434. Of course, Faustus himself followed the same trajectory.

As noted in the introduction to Hilary’s Sermon, Honoratus founded a monastic community sometime between 400 and 410 on an island off the coast of what is now Cannes in southern France. Then called Lerina, the island is now called Île Saint-Honorat de Lérins. Inspired by the desert fathers he had visited during his travels, Honoratus initiated at Lérins a style of monastic living that stressed individual ascetic pursuits within a communal context. It has been described as a monastery of hermits in community. As time went on, however, and due to the influence of the writings of Augustine and John Cassian – the latter dedicated his second set of Conferences to Honoratus and Eucherius (another monk of Lérins, who was chosen bishop of Lyon around 434) – the monastery of Lérins came to place more emphasis on the communal aspects of monastic living.

The Life of Hypatius was likely written in the mid-fifth century by Callinicus, the second abbot of the monastery that Hypatius founded across the Bosporus Strait from Constantinople. From a literary perspective, the text is a fairly conventional example of a late antique Greek hagiography; it owes much in structure, tenor, and phrasing to the period’s most well-known hagiography, Athanasius’ Life of Antony. Based on evidence internal to the narrative, Hypatius would have lived from 366 to 446 and would have, along with two companions, set up their community some three miles south of Chalcedon around 400 in an otherwise unoccupied compound that included an apostolic church (that doubled as a martyrium), palace, and monastery built by the imperial official Rufinus. During the early years of Hypatius’ residence here, the site hosted the Synod of the Oak, an event that ultimately deposed John Chrysostom, although Hypatius was personally absent during the trial. Two of the Egyptian monks known as the Tall Brothers – Ammonius and Dioscorus – died during their stay, and their remains were deposited within the church.

Between 400 and 410, Honoratus, the scion of a noble Gallic family, founded a monastic community on the island of Lérins (modern Île Saint-Honorat de Lérins, just off the coast of Cannes in southern France). A charismatic figure, Honoratus inspired many men from Gaul and elsewhere, including his relative Hilary, to take up the ascetic life at Lérins. Some years later, around 427 or 428, when the island monastery had become an unqualified success, Honoratus left to become bishop of Arles, although he died shortly thereafter in 430. His successor as bishop, Hilary, commemorated the first anniversary of Honoratus’ death in 431 with a sermon delivered to the Christian community of Arles on his life and virtues. Having only been in office for a year, Hilary used the sermon to provide a kind of apologia for his own episcopal leadership, presenting himself as Honoratus’ handpicked and personally trained successor. Hilary served as the bishop of Arles until his own death in 449.