Religious congregations and monastic orders

Taft R. F. The Great Entrance. A History of the Transfer of Gifts and other Preanaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. [A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. II]. Roma, 1975. (Orientalia Christiana Analecta; 200).

En los reales monasterios, los monarcas no sólo proyectaron su poder, sino que redujeron el de la nobleza y los prelados seculares a través de las fundaciones monásticas, la concesión de privilegios y la participación en las reformas. Se sirvieron de los mismos para dar solución a las despoblaciones y allí se albergaron los reyes y sus huéspedes y se celebraron ceremonias políticas. Los religiosos ocuparon cargos cortesanos, ejercieron como embajadore y colaboraron en los episodios bélicos.

In royal monasteries, monarchs not only projected their power, but they also reduced that of nobility and secular prelates through monastic foundations, the granting of privileges and their participation in reforms. Monarchs saw monasteries as a solution to depopulation, and in them kings and their guests were housed, and political ceremonies were held. Religious men occupied posts at court, served as ambassadors and participated in military confrontations

This article presents a manuscript that significantly enriches the textual corpus of ›Helfta Mysticism‹ with a series of hitherto unknown writings. Aside from this, it contains what is by some distance the oldest copy of the ›Legatus divinae pietatis‹, in the form of a ›special edition‹ that consists of excerpts from the known text as well as new material. This is preceded by a prologue and a florilegium which is marked in an epilogue as Gertrude’s own work. We argue that the epilogue of the florilegium, the prologue and the ›special edition‹ itself were probably composed by ›Sister N‹ of Helfta herself. The article provides a full description of the manuscript (Ms 827), a breakdown of the new ›special edition‹ of the ›Legatus‹-text, and an edition, translation, and close reading of the prologue.

Im Folgenden soll eine Handschrift vorgestellt werden, die die Textbasis der Helftaer Mystik mit einer Reihe von bislang unbekannten Schriften bereichert. Außerdem enthält sie die mit Abstand älteste Abschrift des ›Legatus divinae pietatis‹ in Form einer ›Sonderausgabe‹, die aus Exzerpten aus dem bekannten Textcorpus und aus weiterem bislang nicht bekanntem Material besteht. Dieser geht eine Vorrede und ein im Epilog als Gertruds Werk ausgewiesenes Florilegium voraus, Texte, die wie die ›Sonderausgabe‹ selbst von Schwester N von Helfta stammen dürften. Die vorliegende Studie bietet eine Beschreibung von Ms 827, die Aufschlüsselung der ›Sonderausgabe‹ des ›Legatus‹ sowie Abdruck, Übersetzung und inhaltliche Analyse der Vorrede.

Príspevok má za cieľ facilitovať reflexiu o dejinách saleziánskej charizmy v Strednej Európe. Vnímanie podobností a zároveň rozdielov v prežívaní charizmy v „post-komunistických“ zemiach je štartovný bod príspevku. Spôsob prezentácie je sled „obrazov“ objasňujúcich niektoré aspekty charizmy: dejinné, zemepisné, politické, kultúrne, komunikatívne, organizčné, koordinačné. Rozvinuté body:
1. Zemepis a história: Centrum, alebo hranica Európy ?
2. Ekonómia: Dôvod rastu a pádu komunizmu
3. Oratórium bez štruktúr ako antropologická skúsenosť: Slovensko 1950-1989
4. Kultúry, komunikácia a riadenie: habsburská, poľská a ruská mentalita
5. Železná opona a dva paralelné príbehy Európy
6. Post-komunistická antropológia medzi históriou, kultúrou, zemepisom,
totalitnými dynamikami a skúsenostnými danosťami

"Enlightened Monks investigates the social, cultural, philosophical, and theological challenges the German Benedictines had to face between 1740 and 1803, and how the Enlightenment process influenced the self-understanding and lifestyle of these religious communities. It had an impact on their forms of communication, their transfer of knowledge, their relationships to worldly authorities and to the academic world, and also their theology and philosophy. The multifacetedachievements of enlightened monks, which included a strong belief in individual freedom, tolerance, human rights, and non-violence, show that monasticism was on the way to becoming fully integrated into the Enlightenment. Ulrich L. Lehner refutes the widespread assumption that monks were reactionary enemies ofEnlightenment ideas. On the contrary, he demonstrates that many Benedictines implemented the new ideas of the time into their own systems of thought. This revisionist account contributes to a better understanding not only of monastic culture in Central Europe, but also of Catholic religious culture in general.

Reviews:
 
"Lehner is nothing if not a thorough and industrious scholar, and the wealth of information he has amassed alone makes this book a valuable resource. But he is also a fluid writer, with an eye for piquant details and arresting stories, ensuring that the narrative is enlivened along the way by a great number of vivid and sensitive portraits of individuals."
Darrin McMahon, The Catholic Historical Review

"This book is of the same calibre as Derek Beale's magisterial work about monasticism during the Ancien Régime."
Rainald Becker, Francia Recensio

"No scholar interested in early modern monasticism or Catholicism, the Catholic or German enlightenments, or religion and the Enlightenment can afford to overlook this book ... This book deeply contextualizes intellectual and religious history. One of its great virtues is the way it combines monastic responses to new historical, legal, philosophical, and theological ideas with concrete attention to monastic material culture, social practices and institutional innovations."
Brad S. Gregory, Theological Studies

"Beautifully written and cogently argued, Lehner’s book makes a thoroughly convincing case for – what those clinging to a Voltairean Enlightenment will hardly believe – enlightened monks."
James Lees, Eighteenth Century Studies

"This fascinating book … might stimulate monastic communities today to ask whether they too could learn from the Enlightened Monks."
James Leachmann, Benedictine Culture

"This book is highly entertaining."
Johannes Reich, Erbe und Auftrag

"A stimulating book that will leave no one indifferent!"
Daniel Misonne, Revue Benedictine

"Many of the ideas and reforms of these eighteenth century Benedictines are in many ways strikingly similar to the radical changes in monasticism after the Second Vatican Council. … It is the great merit of this book to have saved these enlightened Benedictines from oblivion and to have unearthed a monastic culture that was characterized by its openness to modernity."
Klaus Schatz, Theologie und Philosophie


"Engagingly written, deeply researched, and seriously engaged with current research, Lehner’s work demonstrates that the Enlightenment was far more than a secular movement pitted against an obscurantist religious outlook. It was, rather, a multi-faceted trend to reconcile science and reason with matters of faith. Enlightened Monks illustrates how, paradoxically, an institution known most as a relic of the medieval past actually stood on the front lines of this endeavor."
from the Gilmary Shea Prize Committee

"This little summary doesn’t do justice to the book’s range and depth of research. Lehner offers, among other things, an excellent description of mo- nastic prisons, as well as deftly drawn portraits of various savants, rogues, and dreamers in and out of the mon- asteries. Enlightened Monks also pro- vides important context for the later German revival of theology centered in nineteenth-century Tübingen. Despite its somewhat recherché title, this is one the most interesting books I’ve read this year."
Lawrence S. Cunningham, Commonweal

"This very learned and highly original book, based on little-known and often obscure sources, reveals the existence of a remarkable subculture of Enlightened, even revolutionary, monks who had personal as well as literary and philosophical connexions with the non-monastic world."
Journal Ecclesiastical History, Derek Beales, Cambridge

Lehner's work marks a significant step in original research. His extensive citation of archival sources offers a new perspective on European religious culture... The book's content appeals to a wide range of scholars and is not reserved for the narrow musings of the specialist. The sociologist and historian will be intrigued as will the philosopher and the theologian.
Journal of Church and State

"Far from idle malingerers or enemies of Enlightenment, Lehner recounts how these monks interacted with and contributed to the Enlightenment. Lehner's monks voraciously consumed Enlightenment-era scholarship, supported reforms that would relax monastic duties in favor of a life of knowledge, invoked the language of natural rights to call for freedom of conscience and privacy from their abbots, corresponded with other luminaries, gave public lectures, produced original research on sacred and secular topics, and thus fully participated in the Republic of Letters. As such, Lehner has proffered a convincing argument that the German Benedictines might be counted not only as constituents of the Catholic Aufklärung, but as figures who existed squarely within the Enlightenment itself."
Religious Studies Reviews

"As a model of contemporary historiography and engaging scholarship, Enlightened Monks is about as good as it gets." J. Yegge, catholicbooksreview.org

"Die zunaechst als Praemisse begruendete besondere Affinitaet des Benediktinerordens zur Aufklaerung wird ueberzeugend nachgewiesen, katholische Aufklaerung erhaelt ein weiteres Profil."
S. Benz, Historische Zeitschrift"

“Riso limpo de fortes dentes tratados a fumo e cinza, da inefável doçura daquela moça irradiava-se contudo estranha energia, inexplicável mistério. Do contrário, a esbeltez de seu porte endoidaria irremediavelmente os homens, para a quase totalidade dos quais é pecado desejá-la como fêmea, impossível, por santa, derrubá-la no caminho da fonte. Daí o suplício dos insofridos, ainda que só em pensamento acuados entre o abrasamento da carne e os interditos da fé. Pois eis uma coisa que alguns não alcançaram compreender direito: se feita apenas para servi-Lo, por que Deus não a despiu de tão sumarentos apelos, de tão sublimes encantos?” As palavras do literato Antônio José de Moura descrevem Benedita Cipriano Gomes, sertaneja inculta que liderou centenas e encantou milhares. De singela menina à linda mulher, de santa do povo à bruxa do Rio do Peixe, de profeta de Deus à louca, comunista e histérica. Na década de 1920, após sua suposta ressurreição, surgiu no interior de Goiás o mais importante movimento religioso de caráter messiânico do estado. “Santa Dica”, como ficou conhecida, acreditava conversar com anjos, através dos quais curava, profetizava, abençoava, batizava e até mesmo casava aqueles que a procuravam em seu reduto. Seus ritos, embora muito confundidos com práticas do espiritismo, se deram de maneira híbrida, uma vez que mesclou tanto características do catolicismo, como do próprio espiritismo. Em face do caráter não somente religioso, mas político e social do movimento, uma união informal entre Estado, Igreja Católica e coronéis locais culminou na abertura de um processo criminal, resultando em uma violenta invasão policial no reduto onde o movimento ocorria, em outubro de 1925.Por trás deste desfecho, entretanto, a ação dos missionários católicos da Congregação Redentorista chama a atenção não somente pela ação condenatória do movimento em si, mas por sua minuciosa articulação com o Estado para pôr fim às atividades da “santa”. Mais que isso, o conflito religioso aqui esboçado abre espaço para a compreensão de condicionamentos estruturais de agentes e instituições religiosas que servem de base para importantes reflexões teóricas no âmbito da Sociologia e História. A presente obra, portanto, analisa o movimento messiânico de Santa Dica, especialmente em suas relações de conflito com a Igreja Católica em Goiás, tomando por base a reflexão histórico-sociológica de elementos como o carisma, a legitimidade e a dominação religiosa. As páginas aqui contidas versam-se tanto em uma análise minuciosa das estruturas religiosas do movimento de Santa Dica e sua relação com seus opositores, quanto na maneira como as disputas locais por poder religioso podem ser encaradas histórica e sociologicamente a partir do prisma weberiano. Neste sentido, o leitor encontrará nesta obra tanto interpretações originais das fontes ainda pouco exploradas sobre o movimento de Santa Dica, como recursos para se pensar a História e Sociologia da Religião a partir de elementos teóricos estruturais como o carisma, a legitimidade e a dominação religiosa.

Demonstrated the role of monastic orders in the formation of architecture of Romanesque style, identified stylistic types of Catholic temples of the Romanesque, depending on the monastic order, who built the temple. The article contains a table where demonstrated of major catholic monastic orders according to Romanesque styles, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque. The author defined the features of architecture of Church of Benedictine, Klunі, cistercians (bernardints) and military orders of Roman style

Висвітлено роль чернечих орденів в формуванні архітектури романського стилю, визначені стилістичні типи католицьких храмів романіки залежно монашеського ордену, який будував храм. Подано таблицю основних католицьких монашеських орденів відповідно стилям романіки, готики, ренесансу, бароко. Автор визначив характерні риси архітектури храмів бенедиктинців, клюні, цистерціанців (бернардинців) та військових орденів романського стилю.

The present paper tries to determine the number of the members of Roman Catholic Male Religious Orders in Hungary in a phase when it reached its maximum: after the limitation of the Mendicant Orders and before the abolition of the Society of Jesus, namely, in the early 1770s. Without any statistical data available in this era, the research is only possible by using the often non-consistent internal sources of the Orders. Besides setting the number in ca. 5410-5460, the paper also gives a brief prosopographical analysis of the most numerous Orders in Hungary, the Franciscans, Jesuits, Piarists, Paulines and Benedictines.

Du lendemain des guerres de Religion à la Révolution française, Menat, abbaye clunisienne depuis 1107, règne sur la vallée de la Sioule, au nord-ouest du diocèse de Clermont. Les religieux, propriétaires terriens, tissent des liens multiples et complexes avec leur entourage en levant des droits seigneuriaux, en fournissant du travail au petit peuple rural et en côtoyant quotidiennement les notaires, marchands et chirurgiens. Bien qu’ils ne participent qu’indirectement à l’encadrement des fidèles, les moines jouent un rôle moteur dans la vie religieuse grâce à la mise en place du clergé paroissial, à la pratique de la charité et de l’assistance et à leur rôle d’intercesseurs. Cette communauté monastique auvergnate constitue, jusqu’à sa suppression sous la Révolution, un rouage essentiel des structures économiques, sociales et religieuses d’un terroir français d’Ancien Régime.

From the end of the Wars of Religion to the French Revolution, Menat, a Clunisian abbey dating back to 1107, ruled over the Sioule valley, in the northwest region of the Clermont diocese. The monks were large landholders and developed a diversified and complex set of links with their neighbors ; they received seignorial rights, provided work to the rural poor, and were in daily contact with notaries public, merchants and surgeons. While they did not directly manage the religious life of the faithful, they did constitute a motive force in it through their setting up a parish clergy, providing alms and social services, and playing a role of intercessors. Down to the French Revolution, this monastic community of Auvergne constituted a key element of the economic, social and religious life of a local French territory under the Old Regime.

https://www.rutter-project.org/uploads/1/2/9/4/129482413/salomoni_review_nuns_navigating.pdf

The history of women in the context of the early modern globalization is still largely unwritten, despite the increasing gender awareness of this research field. Among the reasons for this historiographical deficiency is the scarcity of sources produced by women in the Renaissance, also due to a lower female schooling during this age. In addition to this, the world of transoceanic sailing was particularly lacking in female presence, even for Renaissance standards. Women on board ships could create disorders among the motley crews, which were composed by sailors, soldiers, and adventurers of all kinds. As we can easily imagine, the captains were not eager to embark ladies. However, this was not a strict rule and there is abundance of exceptions. Noblewomen, widows, prostitutes, slaves, and servants often had room on board. To these categories we can add that of the nuns. Sometimes, an exception within an exception, thanks to their greater literacy, they could produce written sources and testimonies of their travels.

The order of the Canons Regular of St Augustine followed the Rule of Augustine, which, however, contained very few specific regulations and thus could not be the only normative text that governed the everyday life of the community. It was necessary to supplement the text of the Rule with more detailed regulations for religious life, which led to the emergence of the so-called statutes.
The first house of the order of the Canons Regular of St Augustine in the Czech lands was founded in 1333 by the bishop of Prague, John IV of Dražice, in Roudnice nad Labem (Raudnitz). The new foundation also received its statutes, which are referred to as the statutes of Roudnice, although they were later used in many other religious houses as well. These statutes were created specifically for the Czech environment, but they are based on earlier normative texts. The statutes of Roudnice are divided into thirty-two chapters. In comparison with other statutes of the order of the Canons Regular of St Augustine, their text is very concise and their mode of expression is economical. There is a clear attempt at clarity and lucidity, but in some passages, the text is very condensed and somewhere too abbreviated. The statutes of Roudnice soon came into use in all the Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian houses of Augustinian canons. The statutes of Roudnice spread to neighbouring lands and were used in the houses in Poland, Austria and Germany that were populated from Bohemia.
This book presents the first modern edition of the text of the statutes of Roudnice. This critical edition is based on their earliest surviving record, available in the manuscript of the National Library of the Czech Republic XIX B 3, fols. 11va-36rb. The edition also takes into account ten other handwritten copies identified so far and text of these statutes preserved in two 18th-century printed books. The critical edition is accompanied by an introductory study and a detailed overview of the manuscript tradition of the text of the statutes of Roudnice. In addition, this book also contains a translation of the statutes of Roudnice into Czech, making the text accessible to a wider range of readers.

Religious institutes must ensure that their assets are used in keeping with their congregational needs, their historical ministries and their charism. How does a community ensure that this will happen? We have begun to use terms like Living Will and Legacy Planning for communities that are coming to completion, but what does this mean when applied to a religious institute?

Klöster wirkten in die Welt. Der Band nimmt Phänomene in den Blick, in denen die Wirkmacht des klösterlichen Handelns zum Ausdruck kommt. Die Beiträge gehen der Frage nach, welche Möglichkeiten Nonnen und Mönche hatten, innovativ zu sein, und welche Grenzen ihnen hierbei gesetzt waren. Durch ihre Regeln und Verfahrensabläufe, durch spirituelle wie ökonomische Effizienz, aber auch durch die gestalterische Kraft des Einzelnen konnten sie nicht nur eine Potenz entwickeln, mit der sie die eigene Lebensform auf Dauer stellten, sondern sie waren ebenso in der Lage, innovatorisch über den eigenen Bereich hinaus zu wirken. Auf diese Weise waren Klöster und religiöse Orden über Jahrhunderte hinweg Wegbereiter gesellschaftlichen Wandels und vermochten es, das Leben in Europa und weit darüber hinaus nachhaltig zu prägen. Die vielfältigen klösterlichen Lebensformen erweisen sich ebenso als entscheidende Faktoren menschlicher Kultur wie als innovative Triebkräfte gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen.

- Klöster als Grundmodule menschlicher Kultur und innovative Triebkräfte gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen
- Welche Möglichkeiten hatten Mönche und Nonnen, innovativ zu wirken, und welche Grenzen waren Ihnen hierbei gesetzt?

Mit Beiträgen von Henryk Anzulewicz, Mirko Breitenstein, Julia Burkhardt, Michael Hänchen, Anette Kehnel, Martin Kintzinger, Volker Leppin, Gert Melville, Jens Röhrkasten, Regina Schiewer, Eva Schlotheuber, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Jörg Sonntag, Matthias M. Tischler, Stefan Weinfurter (+)

In questo momento assai delicato della nostra storia e del nostro presente, aggravato da una difficile crisi economico-finanziaria, non è fuori luogo il ricorso al paradigma etico-economico e socio-politico della Scuola francescana. Esso propone una sintesi tra concorrenza e condivisione, tra competizione e solidarietà, aggregando ai due elementi classici del sistema economico – valore d’uso e valore di scambio – un terzo elemento che racchiude entrambi: il valore legame. Superando quindi la contrapposizione for profit/no profit, il pensiero francescano suggerisce un operare economico fondato sul donare e ricevere, su condivisione e scambio.
Il francescanesimo non è, pertanto, solo prassi ascetico-mistica, né solamente una filosofia e una teologia, ma anche – e in particolare – una metodologia etico-sociale, alla quale Oreste Bazzichi ci introduce a partire dalle idee e dai testi di pensatori come Duns Scoto e Bernardino da Siena. Un percorso che ha come esito l’istituzione dei Monti di Pietà e l’invenzione del microcredito, e che ci porta a riconsiderare la storia del pensiero economico secondo un’etica del profitto profondamente rinnovata.

Indice:

Prefazione
Introduzione
1. Il metodo francescano dell’ agire socio-economico e politico
2. Fecondità del paradigma etico-economico francescano
3. Il modello socio-economico nel pensiero e nella predicazione di Bernardino da Siena
4. Fra Luca Pacioli, ideatore della moderna economia aziendale
5. Attualità dell’ invenzione dei Monti di Pietà
6. Un approccio al discorso “politico” francescano
7. La predicazione socio-politica e pastorale in piazza
8. Dal discorso socio-economico e politico francescano al modello “civile”
Conclusione
Nota bibliografica ragionata
Appendice antologica
Indice dei nomi

Nota sull'Autore
Oreste Bazzichi è docente di Sociologia alla Pontificia Facoltà Teologica S. Bonaventura – Seraphicum (Roma) e di Deontologia nel Master in comunicazione d’impresa alla Pontificia Università S. Tommaso (Roma). Collabora a diversi periodici e fa parte della redazione della rivista scientifica della Fondazione Giuseppe Toniolo, La Società. Dal 1968 al 2005 ha svolto la sua attività professionale come funzionario e poi come dirigente di Confindustria: da questa esperienza è nato il volume Cent’anni di Confindustria (1910-2010). Un secolo di sviluppo italiano, pubblicato nel 2009 per libreriauniversitaria.it Edizioni. La sua attività di studioso si rivolge oggi all’analisi dei rapporti tra etica ed economia, con particolare attenzione ai teologi e canonisti della Scuola francescana. Tra le sue pubblicazioni più recenti: Dall’usura al giusto profitto. L’etica economica della Scuola francescana, Torino, 2008; Il paradosso francescano tra povertà e società di mercato. Dai Monti di Pietà alle nuove frontiere del credito, Torino, 2011; Giuseppe Toniolo. Alle origini della dottrina sociale della Chiesa, Torino, 2012. Ha realizzato inoltre dei contributi per l’Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani.

This articles offers practical guidelines for religious institutes facing decline in an uncertain and changing world. In this difficult but grace-filled time, a community can live today's challenges with the same courage, fidelity and creativity that have marked its entire history. It discusses developing a timeline, identifying the covenant(s) and/or partnership(s) that will be helpful along the way and arranging for transition in:
    Sponsorship
    Eldercare
    Administration, Temporal Goods and Finance, and
    Leadership, both Canonical and Pastoral

The manuscript of the Codex regulamm by Benedetto d'Aniane found in 1902, after the Pact attributed to Fruttuoso, reports an Excarpsum Regulae ex omnibus Institutionibus Cassiani collectae, breviter explanatae de institutis ac regulis monasteriorum.  This collection is presented as an anthology of passages taken from the first four books of the Institutions of Cassia-nò and which, with some minor changes compared to the original, directs in an exhortative sense what Cassian referred to the monks of Egypt and the East. This writing was almost unknown until recently, since in the seventeenth century L. Holste had not reported it in his edition of the Codex, an edition later reproduced in the xix century by JP Migne in Patrologia Latina, although it appears almost entirely in edition of the same Migne of Concardia regularum (PL 103).  After a first edition in 1906 he gave H. Plenkers, integrating the passages of Concardia with those found in the aforementioned Codex manuscript and also using a further, though fragmentary, witness, in 1984 H. Ledoyen offered the critical edition.  Only in 1985, however, there was a first attempt at dating and localisation of it, by A. de Vogùé, who, proposing to situate it in the monastic environment of Fruttuoso di Braga, towards the years 640-50, also that it would not be extended in order to govern a community, but only for the purpose of edification, in order to make easier the knowledge of the spiritual teaching that Cassian had delivered in the Instituzioni.

Die Umbruchszeit um 1800 mit ihren zahlreichen Kriegen und Herrschaftswechseln wurde von vielen als Zeit der Krise wahrgenommen. Dies gilt auch für den Historiker P. Roman Zirngibl, Benediktiner von St. Emmeram: Für ihn war es vor allem die Säkularisation, die seine Welt zusammenbrechen ließ. Schon in den Jahrzehnten zuvor war sein Lebensentwurf als Mönch massiver, oft polemischer Kritik der Klostergegner ausgesetzt. Von den Klosteraufhebungen des Jahres 1803 blieb sein Kloster aufgrund der Sonderstellung Regensburgs als Fürstentum Dalbergs zunächst noch verschont. Doch auch dessen Maßnahmen führten bereits zu ersten Veränderungen innerhalb des Konvents. Außerdem stellte die unsichere Lage St. Emmerams eine große Belastung für ihn dar. War er zunächst noch Beobachter der Entwicklungen im bayerischen Umland, so musste auch Zirngibl nach dem Übergang Regensburgs an Bayern sein Kloster endgültig verlassen – und war nach 53 Jahren gezwungen, sich im Alltag außerhalb des Klosters zurechtzufinden. Zirngibl hinterließ außergewöhnlich umfangreiche Selbstzeugnisse: Tagebücher und Briefe, in denen er seinem Vertrauten Lorenz Westenrieder gegenüber recht offen seine Ängste, Sorgen und Erwartungen zum Ausdruck brachte.

Co-auteur: P. Lauras Antoine S.J. Publication: Rome, P.U.G.- Ignaziana (Supplément 1), 2015, 338 pp.
La première édition de l’Epitome de l’Institut de la Compagnie de Jésus remonte à 1689, durant le généralat du P. Tirso González de Santalla, mais fut décidée quelques années auparavant par la douzième Congrégation Générale, en 1682, au cours de laquelle fut élu le P. Charles de Noyelle. Le Décret 56 de cette Congrégation demanda en effet, suite aux Postulats de plusieurs Provinces, que « le droit de la Compagnie soit rassemblé en un Epitome, et que les diverses lois dispersées soient réunies en un seul lieu de manière ordonnée, afin de mieux les connaître et de les utiliser plus uniformément. » La mise en oeuvre de ce travail fut confiée au Père Général. Dès le début, l’Epitome a eu pour vocation de rassembler et de rendre accessible, « en temps réel » et par un unique document, le droit qui régit la Compagnie, lequel trouve son
fondement essentiellement dans des Constitutions qui cependant évoluent au cours des Congrégations Générales. Celles-ci ont en effet autorité pour les compléter, les modifier voire les abroger. Pour cela, « du fait de nouvelles prescriptions du Saint Siège, d’une Congrégation Générale ou du Préposé Général lui-même », les éditions régulières de l’Epitome devaient tenir compte de l’évolution des lois. « Celui qui oublie son passé ne sait pas qui il est », écrit le P. Général Adolfo Nicolás dans une lettre à tous les jésuites pour commémorer le bicentenaire du rétablissement de la Compagnie. Même si l’entrée « Epitome » n’apparaît pas dans le Diccionario Historico de la compañía de Jesus de 2001,  cet ouvrage contribuera à la connaissance de son histoire et de la manière de procéder des jésuites. Ce document évolutif pluriséculaire, rassemblant les toutes dernières décisions du Saint Siège et de la Compagnie en date du 31 juillet 1962, est inévitablement plus imposant que sa source principale que sont les Constitutions. La traduction intégrale en langue française de la dernière édition latine, promulguée à l’aube du Concile Vatican II, rend certainement sa lecture plus aisée.

This article suggests to view monasticism as a sequence of 'unisex-experiments' and to reflect on the fact that the medieval world developed monastic ideals that were to a large extent applicable equally to women and men. Furthermore, it analyzes the different textual techniques to describe female religious life as a mere variant of a male model. It contrasts this marginalization of the female 'variant' with an archeology of concepts of religious life, which shows that a lot of central aspects of medieval religious life (of women and men) had its roots not in desert father asceticism but in the tradition of urban praying virgins and widows. The 'first medieval monk' was, in fact, a religious woman.