The vow of stability : An ethnography of monastic life

Abstract

Though monastic life is often imagined to be a flight from the world, Benedictine monks take on the intense social commitment of life in close community. Drawing on long-term anthropological fieldwork in a Catholic English Benedictine monastery, this book traces the monks’ daily lives as they confront the eternal in the fabric of the everyday. Bringing into focus the vow of stability – a lifelong commitment to the monastery and its community – this ethnography explores the rhythms and architecture that sustain shared life in a world of movement and fleeting interaction. At the same time, it analyses those social processes that damage and undermine the monastic institution and those in contact with it – in particular the harm caused by sexual abuse. Engaging with the everyday dynamics of life in close community while paying close attention to the time-depth of monastic history, this is a study of how religious institutions endure and change through generations.