Chastity seems so self-evidently a part of medieval monasticism that scholars have been slow to examine exactly how and when it became a central aspect of the religious life. In this book, a revision of his 2000 dissertation at the University of Utrecht, Albrecht Diem sets out to discuss the ways that sexuality and chastity were considered in the Latin West, primarily in the fifth and sixth centuries, and how monasticism came to embrace chastity. That he personally does not consider this a valid development is indicated by his dedication of the book to the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence," which he characterizes as a group of gays, lesbians, and transsexuals who live communally, following something like the Benedictine Rule, but without imposing chastity, and who have dedicated themselves to overcoming religious fanaticism and sexual intolerance.
The book's title, "The Monastic Experiment," comes from Diem's conceptualization of monastic history as primarily institutional history, a highly successful effort to find ways of organizing people in groups and regulating their social and political structures. This "experiment," he argues, still has echoes in the twenty-first century in the organization of hospitals, schools, and universities. No other institution or form of government has had such staying power. Still, he points out, we know very little about the first monastic communities in the West, and much of what we do have is a description of an ideal house or a rule that, it was hoped, would actually be followed. We do know that monasteries considered themselves a place of refuge from a dangerous outside world, a sacred space (here Diem relies especially on the work of Barbara H. Rosenwein), and he suggests that the development of the ideal of chastity was at least in part an effort to define the inner community as living in a way diametrically opposed to the secular world outside. Even bishops were considered part of this potentially hostile outer world in the fifth and sixth centuries, and bishops were not yet expected to be chaste.
Much of the book is a close reading of monastic rules, starting with the early rule of Pachomius, the "Life" of Saint Anthony, and the "Institutes" of Cassian, but focusing on the most influential western Rules, those of Caesarius of Arles, Benedict of Nursia, and Columbanus. For each, he gives particular attention to the author's views on sexuality, fornication, and chastity. A final chapter discusses the value of chastity as found in Merovingian-era hagiographic texts. This is a work based on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, especially notable for the author's knowledge of the manuscripts containing the seminal texts of late antiquity on the monastic life. He provides a handlist of some 151 manuscripts, dating from the sixth or seventh century to the twelfth century, which contain such early monastic texts. This appendix may indeed prove the most useful part of the book to scholars. One wishes, however, that Diem could have done more with the manuscripts themselves, how, for example, the grouping of certain texts in a single manuscript reveals the mindset of the scribe who compiled the manuscript (as, for example, Rosamond McKitterick has recently done with those who wrote history in the Carolingian period). The bibliography shows a much greater familiarity with the Anglophone literature on early monasticism than is found in many German-language studies.
This said, in many ways the book proves unoriginal. Diem relies heavily on the concepts of Barbara Rosenwein (as already noted) and of Mayke de Jong, his own mentor, without a great deal of effort to take the discussion further. Mary Douglas and her Purity and Danger make the obligatory appearance they have been making for forty years. Diem sees few major changes in Gallic/Frankish monasticism between the fifth century and the ninth, other than becoming increasingly institutionalized and regulated. Although he understands very well that monastic rules cannot be taken as a transparent window into the reality of the cloister, he makes little effort to look at other sorts of sources (such as chronicles or charters) that might have provided additional insights.
Since the book's focus is the central role of chastity in monks' self- perception, it is not surprising that sexuality is always at the discussion's center, but the topic can become surprisingly dull when it is treated in virtual isolation from other aspects of the ways that monks differentiated themselves from the rest of the world. The introduction of a Foucaultian view of sexuality as a form of control or power relationship somewhat undercuts the central theme about physical renunciation as a form of self-definition. Indeed, the rather simplistic treatment of demonic temptation as equivalent to sexual urges and the repeated equation of chastity with repression rather than with individuals' control over their own bodies seem quite old-fashioned, as though coming from a pre-Peter Brown era--even though Brown is found extensively in the bibliography. (Here Diem might also have benefited from reading Caroline Walker Bynum on Christianity and physicality.) In conclusion, although the book does not greatly advance our understanding of sexuality and chastity in early monastic texts, it still remains a solid introduction to the topic. The wide-ranging bibliography and especially the manuscript hand-list should prove very useful to other scholars working on pre-seventh-century western monasticism.