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From Individual Almsgiving to Communal Charity: the Impact of the Middle Byzantine Monastic Reform Movement on the Life of Monks

    Dirk Krausmüller

Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 66, pp. 111-126, 2017/06/20

doi: 10.1553/joeb66s111

doi: 10.1553/joeb66s111

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doi:10.1553/joeb66s111



doi:10.1553/joeb66s111

Abstract

The topic of this article is a change in attitudes towards private almsgiving in Byzantine monasteries of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. Originally individual members of monastic communities were permitted or even encouraged to give some of their food and clothing to the poor. However, with the rise of the coenobitic reform movement this practice increasingly came to be regarded as problematic. Now it was demanded that monks leave the distribution of alms to the monastery as an institution. This change appears to have caused great anxiety since private acts of almsgiving were traditionally regarded as an indispensable precondition for salvation.