A thousand years ago the French abbey of Cluny was the hub of one of the most powerful empires of the Middle Ages, and the spiritual heart of Europe. Nearly 1,500 religious houses were subject to its authority, and it was the seat of immense political power throughout the Christian world. The abbots of Cluny were among the most formidable men of their day; they were friends and advisers to successive popes and Holy Roman Emperors, as well as to the kings of England, France and Spain. They were also among the greatest builders the world has known, responsible for some of the finest mediaeval architecture, painting and sculpture.
A thousand years ago, the French abbey of Cluny was the hub of one of the most powerful empires of the Middle Ages and the spiritual heart of Europe. Cluny was a Benedictine monastery in Burgundy, its church a breathtaking structure of towers, roofs, walls, and windows almost 600 feet long and 100 feet high--a true wonder of the world. Reconstructing the lives, beliefs, and ambitions of Cluny's countless monks and legendary abbots, this book discusses the abbey and its network of 1,500 dependent monasteries in the context of medieval European history. Exploring a monastery like no other, this historical account investigates Cluny's enduring legacy through the great cultural innovations that the abbey sponsored, from the famous medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela to some of the most magnificent churches in all of France and England.--From publisher description.
A thousand years ago, the French abbey of Cluny was the hub of one of the most powerful empires of the Middle Ages and the spiritual heart of Europe. Cluny was a Benedictine monastery in Burgundy, its church a breathtaking structure of towers, roofs, walls, and windows almost 600 feet long and 100 feet high--a true wonder of the world. Reconstructing the lives, beliefs, and ambitions of Cluny's countless monks and legendary abbots, this book discusses the abbey and its network of 1,500 dependent monasteries in the context of medieval European history. Exploring a monastery like no other, this historical account investigates Cluny's enduring legacy through the great cultural innovations that the abbey sponsored, from the famous medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela to some of the most magnificent churches in all of France and England.--From publisher description.
"Founded in 910 by Duke William of Aquitaine, the abbey of Cluny rose to prominence in the eleventh century as the most influential and opulent center for monastic devotion in medieval Europe. While the twelfth century brought challenges, both internal and external, the Cluniacs showed remarkable adaptability in the changing religious climate of the high Middle Ages. Written by international experts representing a range of academic disciplines, the contributions to this volume examine the rich textual and material sources for Cluny's history, offering not only a thorough introduction to the distinctive character of Cluniac monasticism in the Middle Ages, but also the lineaments of a detailed research agenda for the next generation of historians. Contributors are: Isabelle Rosé, Steven Vanderputten, Marc Saurette, Denyse Riche, Susan Boynton, Anne Baud, Sébastien Barret, Robert Berkhofer III, Isabelle Cochelin, Michael Hänchen, Gert Melville, Eliana Magnani, Constance Bouchard, Benjamin Pohl, and Scott G. Bruce"--
Order and Exclusion is a rare and magnificent book of medieval history with clear relevance to today's headlines. Through the lens of the polemics of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, Dominique Iogna-Prat examines the process by which christianity transformed itself into Christendom, a powerful spiritual, social, and political system with pretensions to universality. Iogna-Prat's close examination of a set of writings central to the history of Catholicism resolves into a deeply troubling study of the origins of attitudes that continue to shape world events. Iogna-Prat writes that "versions of fundamentalism nourished by the soil of an often terrible common history" show that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have all been capable of intolerance.Peter the Venerable's writings had a far-reaching impact: the powerful network of Clunaic houses expanded from the founding of the original monastery of Cluny to dominate Christendom by the twelfth century. This Christendom, Iogna-Prat demonstrates, defined itself in part through its increasingly bitter struggles against its perceived enemies both within and without. Peter the Venerable's all-pervasive logic pitted the "order" of the monastery and its hierarchical society against all those--heretics, Jews, Muslims, lepers--outside its bounds. In his proclamations against Jews and Muslims, Peter devised a Christian anthropology: in his view, to be non-Christian was to be non-human. The power of the Church came at a great and lasting price.
In the summer of 972 a group of Muslim brigands based in the south of France near La Garde-Freinet abducted the abbot of Cluny as he and his entourage crossed the Alps en route from Rome to Burgundy. Ultimately, the abbot was set free, but the audacity of this abduction outraged Christian leaders and galvanized the will of local lords. Shortly thereafter, Count William of Arles marshaled an army and succeeded in wiping out the Muslim stronghold. The monks of Cluny kept this tale alive over the next century. Scott G. Bruce explores the telling and retelling of this story, focusing on the representation of Islam in each account and how that representation changed over time. The culminating figure in this study is Peter the Venerable, one of Europe's leading intellectuals and abbot of Cluny from 1122 to 1156, who commissioned Latin translations of Muslim texts such as the Qur'an. Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet provides us with an unparalleled opportunity to examine Christian perceptions of Islam in the Crusading era.
In the English-speaking world, the Catholic Literary Revival is typically associated with the work of G. K. Chesterton/Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. But in fact the Revival’s most numerous members were women. While some of these women remain well known⎯Muriel Spark, Antonia White, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Day - many have been almost entirely forgotten. They include: Enid Dinnis, Anna Hanson Dorsey, Alice Thomas Ellis, Eleanor Farjeon, Rumer Godden, Caroline Gordon, Clotilde Graves, Caryll Houselander, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Jane Lane, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Alice Meynell, Kathleen Raine, Pearl Mary Teresa Richards, Edith Sitwell, Gladys Bronwyn Stern, Josephine Ward, and Maisie Ward. There are various reasons why each of these writers fell out of print: changes in the commercial publishing world after World War II, changes within the Church itself and in the English-speaking universities that redefined the literary canon in the last decades of the 20th century. Yet it remains puzzling that a body of writing so creative, so attuned to its historical moment, and so unique in its perspective on the human condition, should have fallen into obscurity for so long. The Catholic Women Writers series brings together the English-language prose works of Catholic women from the 19th and 20th centuries; work that is of interest to a broad range of readers. Each volume is printed with an accessible but scholarly introduction by theologians and literary specialists. The first volume in the series is Caryll Houselander’s The Dry Wood. Houselander is known primarily for her spiritual writings but she also wrote one novel, set in a post-war London Docklands parish. There a motley group of lost souls are mourning the death of their saintly priest and hoping for the miraculous healing of a vulnerable child whose gentleness in the face of suffering brings conversion to them all in surprising and unexpected ways. The Dry Wood offers a vital contribution to the modern literary canon and a profound meditation on the purpose of human suffering.
At the heart of the various articles in this book are four customaries, compiled over the course of nearly a hundred years beginning at the end of the tenth century, that describe daily life and liturgy at the abbey of Cluny. Two principal objectives motivated the creation of the present volume of essays : first, to bring out the unequaled richness of these monastic customaries for scholars, primarily medievalists in all disciplines; and second, to facilitate the use of these sources, which can be challenging at first sight. Drawing upon the multiple disciplines needed to account for the full range of information presented by the customaries, the editors have brought together varied and complementary approaches to these multifaceted documents. Among the principal themes common to the studies in this volume are the genesis and transmission of the customaries, the relationship between texts and practice, and the evidence they offer for the function of monastic spaces as well as for the ritualization of communal life.
Following World War II, a British widow joins a Benedictine monastery in this poignant New York Times bestseller from the author of Black Narcissus. For most of her adult life, Philippa Talbot has been a successful British professional. Now in her forties, the World War II–widow has made a startling decision: She’s giving up her civil service career and elite social standing to join a convent as a postulant Roman Catholic nun. In Sussex in the south of England, Philippa begins her new life inside Brede Abbey, a venerable, 130-year-old Benedictine monastery. Taking her place among a diverse group of extraordinary women, young and old, she is welcomed into the surprisingly rich and complex world of the devout, whom faith, fate, and circumstance have led there. From their personal stories, both uplifting and heartbreaking, Philippa draws great strength in the weeks, months, and years that follow, as the confidence, conflicts, and poignant humanity of her fellow sisters serve to validate her love and sacred purpose. But a time of great upheaval in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church approaches as the winds of change blow at gale force. And for the financially troubled Brede and the acolytes within, it will take no less than a miracle to weather the storm. Author Rumer Godden spent three years living in close proximity to Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire communing with the Benedictine nuns in preparation for the writing of this beloved bestseller. The result is an honest and unforgettable novel of love, sacrifice, and devotion, a major literary achievement from the acclaimed author of Black Narcissus and The River. This ebook features an illustrated biography of the author including rare images from the Rumer Godden Literary Estate.
The Christian faith has the allegiance of one third of the human race. It has succeeded in influencing civilization to such a degree that we now take its existence almost for granted. Yet it might all have been so different. Christianity began with the words and deeds of an obscure village carpenter's son who died a shameful criminal's death at the hands of the Roman occupiers of his country: itself an insignificant outpost of the powerful ruling Empire. The feverish land of biblical Palestine, awash with apocalyptic expectations of deliverance from its foreign overlords, was hardly short of seers and prophets who claimed to be sent visions from God. Yet the followers of this man thought he was different: so different, in fact, that some years after his death and asserted resurrection they scandalously insisted not only that he was sent by God, but that he 'was' God. How a provincial sect, with its seemingly outrageous ideas, became first the sanctioned religion of the Roman Empire and then, over the course of 2000 years, the creed of billions of people, is the improbable story that this book tells. It is a story of freethinkers, friars, fanatics and firebrands; and of the lay people (not just the clerical or the powerful) who have made up the great mass of Christians over the centuries. Many introductions to Christianity are written by Christians, for Christians. This elegant textbook, by contrast, shows that the history of the religion, while often glorious, is not one of unimpeded progress, but something still more remarkable, flawed and human.
