We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Benedictine Monastic Communitas in Wartime Central Vietnam (1954-75).
- Authors
Jammes, Jeremy
- Abstract
This article focuses on the question of the establishment of a Catholic monastic tradition, shaped by its Western creation and subsequent exportation to an Asian society. In 1954 the French Benedictine Congregation of St. Bathilde of Vanves founded a monastery in Central Vietnam. The circumstances of the Vietnam war, coupled with a holistic implementation plan instigated by the nuns, enabled the establishment of a small, but sedentary and durable, community, organised within Benedictine structures involving a girls' hostel, plantation agriculture and catechism instruction. Choosing a life of self-denial alongside the indigenous people, they eventually formed a 'Benedictine community village', implementing a non-monastic but austere and disciplined life. However, these Benedictine nuns continuously self-transformed and re-defined themselves vis-à-vis their 'spiritual tradition'. The pursuit of a life of interiority produced a form of rupture with older forms of evangelisation and with established clergy, reflecting the way in which these nuns conceived their alternative role in the Benedictine tradition. I interrogate here the Benedictine ascetic form and the place given by the Order to new alternative subjectivities.
- Subjects
CATHOLIC Church; ASIAN Catholics; MONASTERIES; VIETNAM War, 1961-1975; BENEDICTINE architecture
- Publication
Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2017, Vol 28, Issue 2, p210
- ISSN
1035-8811
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/taja.12240