Within the field of church history, this article is a study of a specific topic with regards to the Reformation period, namely, asceticism, from an uncommon perspective. One of the most well-known Reformation treatises, Martin Luther's On the Freedom of a Christian, is read in conversation with an earlier ascetic writing, Maximus Confessor's The Ascetic Life, and then compared to an understudied debate from the late sixteenth century between the Lutheran Tübingen theologians and the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremiah II. This textually-based study is concerned both with the methodological problems that characterize the politics of comparison and with the present debates surrounding asceticism. In the end, it is argued that asceticism is not only a historically valid topic of study in a Lutheran setting, but also theologically relevant. Based on a distinction between spiritual and physical exercise, I argue that there is a social dimension to be rediscovered if inner dimensions of "piety" are reconnected with embodied, visible and communal practices in the context of the counterculture that is the Christian church.

In this article, we trace a specific ‘situated bodily practice’, namely the ‘act of covering’ the head with a scarf during liturgy, in a church that has migrated from the Middle East to Sweden. This ‘veiled tradition’ is interpreted as a ‘ritual of migration’ that can cast light on the complexities of re-producing traditions in a new setting, functioning as a ‘cultural prism’ for the question of integration. The broader aim is to nuance the symbolic value given to the veil in political discourse in the West, as a sign of (non-)integration. The empirical basis for this study has mainly been film analyses of liturgies in Syriac Orthodox congregations in Sweden. Building on an analysis of this material, four different usages of the headscarf could be traced: as ordinary dress, that in theory should cover the hair, but seldom did; as festal dress, resembling an accessory; as liturgical dress, used both as a token of piety and spiritual authority, and not to dress in a headscarf, resisting gender discrimination. These usages are compared to, but not fully explained by the idea of ‘new veiling’ among Muslim women, and therefore broaden the understanding of veiled traditions in a migration context.

This is a study of three literary sources from the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE that depict the rise of monasticism, the anonymous History of the Monks of Egypt, the History of the Monks of Syria by Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Sozomen’s Church History. Although each of these texts conveys what Peter Brown has termed the “myth of the desert,” i.e. a portrayal of monks as being part of another world, I argue that the same texts also reflect a “myth of the city,” in which the monastic movement is depicted as a civic institution with regard to its foundation, regulation, and influence in the world. What these texts reflect is an attempt from the side of Christian authors to make sense of the multifaceted phenomenon that was monasticism, creating a conceptual space where different ascetic expressions come together as one, as ‘monasticism’ or as a desert city.

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