Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great: (Oxford Historical Monographs)

Series: Oxford Historical Monographs

When barbarians invaded the Roman Empire in the years around 400 AD, Christian monks hid in their cloisters--or so it is often assumed. Conrad Leyser shows that monks in the early medieval West were, in fact, pioneers in the creation of a new language of moral authority. He describes the making of this tradition over two centuries from St. Augustine to St. Benedict and Gregory the Great.