ABSTRACT
Coming to the end of this study it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, although most of the communities to which this volume is dedicated are uninfluential, peripheral and ephemeral, they nevertheless cause ‘irritation’, both to the Church authorities who have to evaluate their ecclesiality and to traditional monks who resent the competition. It is equally true that the whole history of the Church is signposted by an unending proliferation of religious virtuosi and charismatic leaders who, although born from its womb, oppose it more or less openly (Wittberg 2007). To change metaphors, if the institutional Church is a comet, those microscopic ‘areas of virtuosity’ (Séguy 1971) are the dust trail which it leaves behind.
