Intro; TITLE PAGE; PREFACE; CONTENTS; ABBREVIATIONS; PART I: Fifth-Century Authorities; 1: Augustine and the Problem of Authority; The Monastic Jerusalem; Monastic Scandal; Reluctance and Power; 2: The Moral Science of John Cassian; Ascetic Ambition in Fifth-Century Gaul; Mastery of the Mind; Experts and Beginners; The Republic of Christian Letters; PART II: Sixth-Century Alternatives; 3: The Pastoral Arts of the Rhetor Pomerius; Scriptural Contemplation and Rhetorical Action; Virtues and Vices; Ecclesial Community and Episcopal Authority; 4: The Pure Speech of Caesarius of Arles
The Caesarii of ArlesMoral Surveillance; The City of Pure Speech; 5: The Anonymity of The Rule of St Benedict; The Love of Letters and the Making of Rules; The Obedience of the Cenobite; Monastic Community and Abbatial Authority; PART III: The Gregorian Synthesis; 6: The Weakness of Gregory; Authenticating Gregory; Authority and Isolation in Rome; Monastery and Church in the Last Days; The Place of the Preacher; 7: A Language of Power; St Paul's Admonition; Job's Comforters; 'A Speech Without Noise'; Language, Institution, and Charisma; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX
Summary
When barbarians invaded the Roman Empire in the years around 400 AD, Christian monks hid their cloisters. Conrad Leyser shows that monks in the early medieval West were, in fact, pioneers in the creation of a new language of moral authority
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-215) and index
