Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between mental rest and wandering thoughts as conceived in the literature of the early medieval monastic tradition. As with contemporary neuroscientific models, medieval theologians were aware of the mind’s natural propensity to roam and drift away from a task toward unrelated thoughts and feelings. While universal and unavoidable, this was nonetheless unacceptable, and monks were instructed to make every effort to still wandering thoughts. For the monks, therefore, mental rest involved unceasing vigilance and mental exertion, for it was a task which, if neglected, could lead to spiritual destitution.
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Further Reading
Carruthers, Mary J. The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Dunn, Marilyn The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.
Russell, Norman, and Benedicta Ward, S.L.G. The Lives of the Desert Fathers. London: Cistercian Publications, 1981.
Ward, Benedicta, Sisters of the Love of God The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the early Christian monks. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
White, Carolinne Early Christian Lives: Life of Antony by Athanasius, Life of Paul of Thebes by Jerome, Life of Hilarion by Jerome, Life of Malchus by Jerome, Life of Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus, Life of Benedict by Gregory the Great. London: Penguin Books, 1998.
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Powell, H. (2016). The Quest for quies mentis . In: Callard, F., Staines, K., Wilkes, J. (eds) The Restless Compendium . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45264-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45264-7_3
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