With the health and wellness of our presenters, attendees, and the Saint John’s community in mind, we are postponing the 33^rd Monastic Institute to Monday, June 27th – Friday, July 1^st, 2022.

In lieu of the Monastic Institute 2021, please join us for a special virtual presentation on Tuesday June 29^th, 2021 at 12:00 pm CST

Register Here

Event Description

What can the origins of Christian monasticism tell us about monastic life today? 

Presented by:
Columba Stewart, OSB
HMML Executive Director & Professor of Theology, Saint John's University 

Columba Stewart is Professor of Theology at the Saint John’s School of Theology and executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML), both at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, MN. A Benedictine monk of Saint John’s Abbey since 1981, he publishes regularly in his field of eastern and western Christian monastic history. Because of his work at HMML leading the digitization, cataloging, and online access for more than 300,000 endangered Christian and Islamic manuscripts in libraries around the world, he has been featured in international radio programs, newspapers and documentaries, and the CBS News television program "60 Minutes." At HMML he has led several projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Arcadia Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Henry Luce Foundation. Most recently he has been a member in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NY (2016-2020), a Guggenheim Fellow (2016), and a Resident Scholar at the Collegeville Institute (2018-). He is currently writing a new study of the origins of Christian asceticism and monasticism.  He was the 2019 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities for the NEH and a 2019-2020 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar.”