Palmisano, Stefania (2015) Exploring New Monastic Communities. The (Re)Invention of Tradition. Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington: Ashgate. - 208 p.

Interest in studying the activities of monasteries today is associated with the possibility of reconceptualizing such popular academic views as the privatization of religion, the assembly of one's own religion, and the reduction of the role of religious institutions. Moreover, the study of monasteries provides an opportunity to consider these issues on the concentrated material of groups that have declared spiritual improvement to be the goal of their lives. Since Western Europe is considered the cradle of the ideology of secularism, which proclaims the decline of religious beliefs, the special attention of sociologists of religion is attracted by changes in the situation of traditional Catholic monasteries. Stefania Palmisano, a professor at the University of Turin, focuses mainly on modern Italian monasteries. As a participant in many conferences on this topic and editor of a collection on modern monasticism, she is well acquainted with the situation of adaptation of recognized Catholic orders to the realities of today. 1 This knowledge gives

1.For European trends in the sociology of monasticism, see Ksenia Medvedeva's review of Jonveaux, I., Palmisano, S. and Pace, E. (eds) (2014) Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion.

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it needs comparative material to consider its even more exotic object of research.

The book under review is devoted to the study of new monastic communities. This phenomenon may be completely unfamiliar to the Russian-speaking reader, so I will focus on it in more detail. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which introduced many innovations in the life of the Catholic Church, offered in particular much more freedom for those who would like to follow the monastic path. Although the dogmatic and legal foundations of alternative monasticism were not spelled out in detail, this did not prevent people inspired by the reformist message of the Second Vatican Council from beginning to experiment with the arrangement of a wide variety of monasteries. Those who wanted to become a nun / monk could not only join existing orders or organize new ones in their image, but also create extremely different communities, such as a male and female monastery united under one roof; a monastery that included monks (in the traditional sense) and lay people (family and single) a Catholic monastery that seeks inspiration from Orthodox spiritual practices (the Jesus Prayer) or even Buddhist meditation techniques; a monastery that is a yoga retreat center. Here, for example, is a description of the everyday life of one of these new monastic communities on behalf of a participant: "The new moon was coming, we were fasting all day. By nightfall, the four of us were gathered in a small cemetery near the Garfagnan hills. I chose a place in an old abandoned crypt. More than two hours of meditation passed like a flash" (p. 155).

Actually, determining what a "new monastic community" is was the main initial difficulty of Palmisano's research, since this category included groups of two to a hundred people, consisting of men and women, lay people and former monks of recognized orders, guided both by the dogmas of the Roman Church and by Eastern traditions. I would say that the term "new monastic community" included in the title of the book is an umbrella term (in a sense, near-

Vol. 5: Sociology and Monasticism: Between Innovation and Tradition. Leiden, Boston: Brill. - 322 p.//Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkva [State, Religion, Church], No. 1, 2016, pp. 404-410.

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kim to the concept of New Age), which combines very different phenomena on the principle of"from the opposite". Thus, "new monastic communities" are groups that do not correspond to the traditional understanding of the Catholic monastic order, but identify themselves with the Roman Church.

At the beginning of the book, Palmisano just describes eight such new monastic communities located in the Turin district, which she visited more or less regularly and with whose representatives she was able to interview. Several pages are devoted to each of these communities, and one of the most successful and widely represented in the media Bose Monastery has a separate chapter. From the description, you can learn about the history of the founding of these groups, the charismatic leaders who usually stood at the origins of the new monastic community, the organizational nuances and declared mission of monasteries, and their relations with the church authorities who legitimize the activities of such groups. Since these eight communities are really very different and difficult to compare according to the usual sociological criteria: the number and composition of participants, economic indicators, the branching of social networks, etc., Stefania Palmisano compares them in terms of the degree of problematic relations with the local episcopate. Potentially, the larger the new monastery and the more radical its revision of Catholic dogmas, the more difficult its interaction with the church authorities will be. The introduction of such a scale allows Palmisano to structure further material on how and with what consequences new monastic communities are revising traditional monastic postulates.

Thus, the blurred boundaries of the main object of the book determined the main research problem, which is related to traditions in dynamics. In the following chapters, the author examines what a break in tradition is, the invention of tradition and its legitimation, and what changes should take place so that we can no longer talk about the development of tradition, but about its complete replacement. Stefania Palmisano takes as a starting point the famous work of Eric Hobsbawm and corrects, and somewhere polemics with it. She agrees that new monastic communities are reinventing the tradition because they are fundamentally changing its dogmas, but Palmisano is not interested-

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et - whether these new groups are true or false monastics. To get rid of the opposition of true/invented traditions implicit in Hobsbawm's concept, Stefania Palmisano suggests talking about inventive traditions rather than invented ones (pp. 97-98).

In practice, the daily life of the new monastic communities is quite different from the recognized routine of Catholic orders. First, although new monastic communities usually have prescribed rules, their role in the life of the group is not nearly as high as in traditional orders. The new monasteries were mostly founded by charismatic spiritual leaders, whose vision of the group's future path was often crucial in choosing the principles of monastery organization. Also, the resolution of everyday issues, and sometimes the development of relations with the church authorities, depends on the policy of the spiritual leader-the founder of the monastic community.

Secondly, if earlier monasteries sought to protect themselves from the world (often with the help of quite material walls), then today's monastic communities promote openness to the world. This position is expressed primarily in the refusal to recognize the monastic path to God as higher than the worldly one, as a result of which the time for joint prayers is reduced in favor of increasing working hours, that is, living conditions are closer to the worldly ones. Work is also usually sought outside the monastery in accordance with the profession of a member of the monastic community. On the one hand, there is an economic necessity behind this, and on the other, there is a belief in the equality of monastic and worldly ways.2 Working outside the monastery gives members of the new monastic communities much more freedom to move around, structure their day, and manage their money. In some monasteries, it is customary for monastics to give out a certain amount of pocket money and send them on mandatory leave,

2. It would be interesting to compare this situation with the situation of monasteries in the former Soviet Union, where many residents see the same trend (reduction of time for prayer and increase for work). as a forced sad consequence of the forcibly interrupted pre-revolutionary monastic tradition. If for new monastic communities changes in the rules of life of the monastery are a consequence of the development of modern monasteries, then for monastics in the post-Soviet space-this is a sign of their immaturity.

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during which they can go on a trip to Europe. The inability to control people in the above-mentioned situations leads to a shift in attitude from external supervision towards internal discipline, which in particular is expressed in an increase in personal responsibility. Palmisano sees this as a manifestation of the general trend in the religious sphere today - that believers adhere to their own religion to a greater extent than following one tradition.

The third difference from recognized Catholic orders will be the almost complete rejection of asceticism in new monastic communities as a result of a revision of attitudes to the body. In the church tradition, monastics are often presented as having left their human shell and taken the angelic image. Representatives of the new monastic community categorically deny this postulate: even after taking vows, a person has to deal with his body, its needs, desires, and limitations. One of the interesting results of this "body turn" is the recognition of one's own sexuality. However, it remains unclear how it is expressed, since the reader learns about it from the interview quotes, and not from the materials of the included observation. The lack of ethnographic sketches of the everyday life of the new monastic communities is particularly noticeable in this chapter. A detailed description of a typical day of one of the participants of such a group would help to better understand how the new postulates of monastic communities are actually implemented. However, a book written in the classical sociological style can hardly be blamed for the lack of ethnography.

The last chapter examines the specifics of legitimation of new communities by the local episcopate. While traditional Catholic orders are often directly subordinate to the Pope, new monastic communities have to start their path of recognition with local church authorities. Palmisano builds a pattern of rapid legitimation based on the general policy of the bishop, the personal connections of the spiritual leader of the group, the ecumenical views of the new community and the breadth of its public support.

Palmisano's original vision of combining the perspectives of the sociology of religion and the sociology of organization is somewhat slack. The author's research interest is noticeably shifted-

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It is directed towards the analysis of the concept of tradition. However, Palmisano makes one significant observation about the organization of the Catholic Church, namely that despite the well-established view of the rigid hierarchy adopted in Catholicism, in fact, the Roman Church has a flexible policy in relation to various kinds of non-institutional groups.

This book is particularly valuable because it is one of the first studies of new monastic communities. Thus, the work of Stefania Palmisano not only revealed a new interesting and exotic object on the religious map of Europe, but also left open a large field for further research (especially gender or subjectivation techniques in new communities) and excellent comparative material for those who are engaged in monasticism and religious groups not only in Catholicism, but also in other countries. christian denominations. I would also like to mention a successful and fruitful research question, since the problematization of the relationship between tradition and modernization, as well as changes and continuity in traditions, is relevant for the entire field of sociology of religion and religious studies.

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