The “Abaton” and the economic condition of convents

Abstract

The article deals with the ἄβατον, which is the prohibition for males to enter nunneries, and the everyday life of the convents, including their economic activities. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Byzantine law regarding the ἄβατον and to study the ways to reconcile the strict interdictions and reality. Our sources were, in the first place, the legislation, and secondly, the six typika, preserved up to date, of convents dating from the Komnenoi and Paleologoi era. We also cite some examples from early hagiography and the Rules of Basil the Great.The research has resulted in the following conclusions. The ktitors of the convents endeavoured to make the life of the communities as closed as possible. The nuns of these (but not of all the others, as may be deduced from some other sources) convents did not need to earn their living (even the clothes in some convents were not made by the nuns but bought at the market), thus their contacts with the outer world were easily to reduce to the minimum. But even where participation in worldly life was required, e.g., managing the monastic household, only a limited goup of people was involved.The admission of males into the convent was practised in the following few cases: a steward (often a eunuch), a medic (more often than not a eunuch), a priest (often also a eunuch), labourers, authorities and the ktitor's relatives (with a maximal frequency of once or twice a year).