ABSTRACT
Yet we know very little about how monks live today and even less about how they put into practice their search for God, which has always been their raison d’être. In contrast with historians, who have paid close attention to this topic, sociologists have practically ignored the phenomenon. It is reasonable to suppose that the scarcity of studies on monasticism in this field is due to the difficulties which, as an object of research, it presents to the sociologist – principally because of the indeterminate nature of the concept for the actors themselves.1 What is worse, most commentaries on contemporary monasticism accept uncritically the monks’ own version, on the basis of which they draw an idealized, mythical and hagiographical picture (Fisher 2007; Beltotto 2012; Maffeo 2013). They portray spiritualized, otherworldly figures which are utopian and fictitious.2 It comes as no surprise, therefore, that guests doing retreats in
monasteries expect en-suite bathrooms as well as internet in their rooms and, once they return home, wish to join in prayer via the monastery’s website, yet in their minds continue to perceive the monks as living in the Middle Ages, rejecting technology and contact with the outside world. On the other hand, directors who make documentaries about the monks often assign folklore roles to them, filming them behind grilles and wearing habits even where they have been abandoned. A Camoldolite monk told me that for a piece dealing with work in the monastery, journalists asked him to wear a white cowl – which is by now used only during the liturgy – while picking olives. They also wanted him to gather the olives singly from the tree and to place them delicately in a reed basket, unaware that anybody who knows anything about gathering olives would find the scene totally ridiculous. The monk went along with the farce for a while, then said: ‘This is all fantasy. Now I will tell you how it’s really done’.3
