Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity

by Andrea Sterk

Although an ascetic ideal of leadership had both classical and biblical roots, it found particularly fertile soil in the monastic fervor of the fourth through sixth centuries. Church officials were increasingly recruited from monastic communities, and the monk-bishop became the dominant model of ecclesiastical leadership in the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium. In an interesting paradox, Andrea Sterk explains that "from the world-rejecting monasteries...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674011899
• ISBN13: 9780674011892
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.7"