Driscoll, MS and SG Sheridan. (in
press). "Every knee shall bend: Liturgical and ascetical prayer in
V-VII Century Palestine. Worship.
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Abstract:
A dilema faces the church historian and
liturgist when confronted with a period in church history for which documentary
evidence is wanting. The following article attempts a solution to
this problem and reflects the work of a team of researchers at the University
of Notre Dame who working together in a collaborative fashion offer some
methodological solutions. The project concerns the Byzantine monastery
of St. Stephen in Jerusalem, which was an important monastic center from
the fifth to the seventh centuries. The focus of this particular
paper is both liturgical and ascetical prayer and the effects that sustained
strenuous prayer can have on the human body. Biological analysis
of the monastic remains in tandem with the written evidence for the site
and region can produce a picture which unto now has remained blurred.
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