Considerations on Life and Death: Medieval Asceticism and the Dissolution of the Self

Abstract

Th is essay explores the question of whether medieval asceticism is annihilation of the self or a means of constituting the self. It reads Gary Lease's conclusion, that religion is programmed suicide, against studies of medieval asceticism that argue for an understanding of religion as an embodied discipline which forms the subject and provides a means of resisting social norms. It suggests that the project of understanding the forms of power embedded in particular concepts of religion requires not only historicizing the term "religion" but also analyzing concepts of self, body, and agency. Drawing on the writings of the twelfth-century monk Bernard of Clairvaux as a case study, it argues that Bernard's conception of religion described a variety of ways in which embodied discipline could form a subject, and that he employed these variations ideologically to defi ne the boundaries of his community and Church.

Arnulf of Lisieux and the crisis at Grestain 1164–6: brother bishops, inherited policies and failed leadership

“…163 As Martha Newman has argued with regard to Bernard of Clairvaux, a close ally and source of inspiration for Arnulf, communal life under a discipline 'shaped patterns of thought and redirected misguided desires so that thought, action and the meaning of salient symbols could be brought into harmony'. 164 Discipline, in other words, establishes a composed body and mind. Arnulf's reform programme thus connected with a culture that had found its way into both the Benedictines and the Augustinian movement.…”

A historical theory of organization and management in Europe's Orthodox East: A Weberian re-enchantment of disenchanted rationalization

“…Orthodox emotional ethics has had its critics since the Byzantine nickname for its virtuosi, omphaloskopoi – navel-gazers, no compliment even in our days (Runciman 1968; Weber 1985d). Rancour-Laferrière (1995) blames the Orthodox ethics for having generated a slave soul among Orthodox peoples, and Newman (2009) regards its application as nothing but programmed suicide. However, let us note that both in its first and third streaks the ethics entails also the aspect of agape – divine love.…”