Monastic Economy and Networks in the Mediterranean

Objective

ECOMONY, through the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian on Patmos, bridges two major historiographical divides. It brings Eastern and Western European scholarship on monastic economic history into dialogue by focusing on an institution deeply embedded in the contested space of the Early Modern Mediterranean. By strategically filling gaps in the historiography of monastic institutions in both the Atlantic Archipelago and the Western Mediterranean, St John of Patmos serves as a model for analysing the interplay between secular and monastic economies, the role of insularity in institutional development, and the impact of maritime dynamics. Drawing on an untapped Greek archival corpus alongside Ottoman records, the project integrates St John’s accounting codices with Ottoman sources, addressing the persistent lack of engagement between Ottoman and Greek historiography while providing a comprehensive, spatially aware, and dynamic model for monastic economy. While rooted in traditional economic history, ECOMONY employs Digital Humanities methodologies, GIS and Network Analysis, to map, visualise, and interpret monastic presence across multiple scales. It reconstructs the full spectrum of economic activity, from maritime trade and landholding to agropastoral strategies, while recovering the agency of overlooked actors such as entrepreneurial monks and female donors. By highlighting gendered strategies and lay-monastic intersections, the project opens new perspectives on the social and economic entanglements of religious institutions. A major innovation will be the creation and public release of a Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) model for automated transcription and data extraction from Greek sources, with broad applications across the Humanities. Ultimately, ECOMONY offers a novel, comparative, and contextualised framework for monastic economic history, while supporting the sustainability of a UNESCO World Heritage site: the Monastery of Saint John of Patmos.