Asceticism in Medieval Armenia: Texts, Practices, Purpose

ARMENST 221 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Asceticism is a feature common to many religious traditions and refers to strenuous bodily practices or disciplines that are meant to facilitate self-mastery and confer the ability to live in accordance with an ideal of perfection. Like an athlete performing drills in order to excel in competition or a musician in training who practices scales and studies musical notation in order to be able to perform a sonata, so the ascetic engages in rigorous training of body, mind, and spirit, in order to acquire the skills and abilities necessary to live a just, good, and beautiful life. This course will focus on asceticism in the Eastern Christian tradition of medieval Armenia, with attention to the various disciplines themselves (fasting, vigil, solitude, cold exposure, sleeping outdoors, spiritual mourning with tears, etc.) as well as those texts that were meant to aid in ascetic training or which arose out of the ascetic environment. Due attention will be paid to the monasteries in which such texts were produced, read, copied, and circulated and comparison will be made to other medieval religious traditions. A knowledge of asceticism enables one to understand and appreciate premodern Armenian texts and material culture.