Within ascetic literature, it is common to read biblical quotations (Gn 12,1; Mt 19,21), which imply that the path to perfection involves renouncing family ties. But this is only part of the story: at the same time there are holy couples and entire families, which are attracted to the ascetic style of life.
How the ascetic family could be reconciled with the moral commitments of traditional Roman education, and how the use and transmission of estates and possessions were altered in the context of the ascetic family, are the questions on which the proposed project concentrates.
The new monastic identity may take one of a number of possible forms. A more attentive consideration of the ascetic families, which emerged in Egypt, Gaul and Italy, give us the possibility to understand the plurality of monastic strategies where family is always the focus, but forms of organization are different. The study of these family transformations can help to define the complex relationship between asceticism as a way of life and monasticism as a form of social organization.
Finally, the attention to the role of the household makes it impossible to see early Christian monasticism as a single monolithic entity or process. It is not simply that there is an alternative history of asceticism coded outside institutional monasticism. It is rather that the specific historical, the social circumstances, and the varying positions and powers of household and family show that the late antique Mediterranean world has not one, unitary monastic history but a history of monasticisms.
Two are the areas the workshop will focus on: the relationships between parents and children in Egypt (C.T. Schroeder) and in Syria (V. Vuolanto); their representation in monastic literary and documentary texts, from Egyptian communities (M. Giorda) to Lérinian monasticism (R. Alciati).
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