Selbststigmatisierung und Charisma christlicher Heiliger der Spätantike

Götz Hartmann studies Christian ascetics of late antiquity who were seen as 'holy men' during their lifetime. Their contemporaries believed that due to their self-imposed deprivations they had acquired the gift of working miracles, meaning that they could make things happen which interrupted the course of events in a manner which seemed to be unfathomable. Committed to the theoretical approach to sociological charisma research, the author analyzes the phenomenon of ascetic holiness as a specifically Christian variety of charismatic authority. He focuses on the mutual correspondence of autostigmatic prerequisites and the 'thaumaturgical' potential of ascetic charisma, on the phenomenon that monasteries originate when ascetic charisma becomes part of everyday life and is given a certain institutional form, on the interaction between charisma and hagiography as well as the role-specific behavior of ascetic Christian holiness.