Focussing on the German empire, this book explains the diversification of monasticism during a period of great change, in particular a shift towards a greater interest in lay religious life. Jestics investigates the changing role of monks in society and examines monastic values in such areas as misionary work, public preaching, pilgrimage and the gregorian reform. It is based on monastic writings, particularly polemics and also uses hagiography.
Examining a central change in European religious thought, this study investigates the changing roles of monks in society to help understand the reform of Christian ideology. It is based on extant monastic writings, including hagiography and polemics. The book explains the diversification of monasticism in this period as an outgrowth of a shift toward greater interest in lay religious life. Focusing on the German Empire, it examines monastic values in such areas as missionary work, public preaching, pilgrimage, and the polemics of the gregorian reform. The sections on the role of polemic as a catalyst and reflection of monastic change and on missionary activities as part of ecclesiastical reform are especially important for the historian of religion. The book fills an important gap in the study of central European monasticism.
This book explores the relationship between the papacy and reform against the backdrop of social and religious change in later tenth and eleventh-century Europe. Placing this relationship in the context of the debate about ‘transformation’, it reverses the recent trend among historians to emphasise the reform developments in the localities at the expense of those being undertaken in Rome. It focuses on how the papacy took an increasingly active part in shaping the direction of both its own reform and that of society, whose reform became an essential part of realising its objective of a free and independent Church. It also addresses the role of the Latin Church in western Europe around the year 1000, the historiography of reform, the significance of the ‘Peace of God’ as a reformist movement, the development of the papacy in the eleventh century, the changing attitudes towards simony, clerical marriage and lay investiture, reformist rhetoric aimed at the clergy, and how reformist writings sought to change the behaviour and expectations of the aristocracy. Summarising current literature while presenting a cogent and nuanced argument about the complex nature and development of reform, this book will be invaluable for an undergraduate and specialist audience alike.
Adam of Dryburgh (d. 1212), a Scottish Canon of Prémontré, Monk of the Charterhouse of Witham, theologian, reformer, abbot, and hermit, is considered one of the earliest and most important witnesses to the nature of the canonical order in the twelfth century. Adam's theological works and sermons show a familiarity with the theological masters and schools of his day and indicate a profound familiarity with the Sacred Scripture, the liturgy of the Church, as well as, ancient classical and Christian literature. His theological writings are important for Marian theology because they present one of the earliest theological reflections on the status of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the reforming Canonical movement of the twelfth century. Adam's Marian theology maintains a formal Scriptural and Liturgical character; Mary is the daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, and resting chamber of the Holy Spirit. She is the watered garden, the ark, the queen of heaven, and at the same time, Adam makes her approachable, humble, compassionate, familiar, close, a spiritual model for vowed religious; and, the Mother of the Canonical Order.
Anglo-Saxon England is the only publication which consistently embraces all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture - linguistic, literary, textual, palaeographic, religious, intellectual, historical, archaeological and artistic - and which promotes the more unusual interests - in music or medicine or education, for example. Articles in volume 36 include: The tabernacula of Gregory the Great and the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England by Flora Spiegel; The career of Aldhelm by Michael Lapidge; The name 'Merovingian' and the dating of Beowulf by Walter Goffart; An abbot, an archbishop and the Viking raids of 1006-7 and 1009-12 by Simon Keynes; and Demonstrative behaviour and political communication in later Anglo-Saxon England by Julia Barrow.
In this study, Micol Long looks at Latin letters written in Western Europe between 1070 and 1180 to reconstruct how monks and nuns learned from each other in a continuous, informal and reciprocal way during their daily communal life.
This important study of episcopal office and clerical identity in a socially and culturally dynamic region of medieval Europe examines the construction and representation of episcopal power and authority in the archdiocese of Reims during the sometimes turbulent century between 1050 and 1150. Drawing on a wide range of diplomatic, hagiographical, epistolary and other narrative sources, John S. Ott considers how bishops conceived of, and projected, their authority collectively and individually. In examining episcopal professional identities and notions of office, he explores how prelates used textual production and their physical landscapes to craft historical narratives and consolidate local and regional memories around ideals that established themselves as not only religious authorities but also cultural arbiters. This study reveals that, far from being reactive and hostile to cultural and religious change, bishops regularly grappled with and sought to affect, positively and to their advantage, new and emerging cultural and religious norms.
Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire offers a new take on European history from c.900 to c.1050, examining the ‘post-Carolingian’ period in its own right and presenting it as a time of creative experimentation with new forms of authority and legitimacy. In the late eighth century, the Frankish king Charlemagne put together a new empire. Less than a century later, that empire had collapsed. The story of Europe following the end of the Carolingian empire has often been presented as a tragedy: a time of turbulence and disintegration, out of which the new, recognisably medieval kingdoms of Europe emerged. This collection offers a different perspective. Taking a transnational approach, the authors contemplate the new social and political order that emerged in tenth- and eleventh-century Europe and examine how those shaping this new order saw themselves in relation to the past. Each chapter explores how the past was used creatively by actors in the regions of the former Carolingian Empire to search for political, legal and social legitimacy in a turbulent new political order. Advancing the debates on the uses of the past in the early Middle Ages and prompting reconsideration of the narratives that have traditionally dominated modern writing on this period, Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire is ideal for students and scholars of tenth- and eleventh-century European history.
This book explores the origins of the role of the Master or head of the order of Sempringham, the only monastic order to be founded in medieval England, from the foundation of the order to the final drafting of its legislation in the 1230s. The book demonstrates that many previous assumptions about the early development of this important role are flawed, most notably the standard portrait of Gilbert of Sempringham, founder of the order, as a stereotypical charismatic leader, big on ideas but short on the capacity to provide his followers with effective leadership. (Series: Vita regularis - Ordnungen und Deutungen religiosen Lebens im Mittelalter. Abhandlungen - Vol. 46)
In Bounded Wilderness, Kathryn Jasper focuses on the innovations undertaken at the hermitage of Fonte Avellana in central Italy during the eleventh century by its prior, Peter Damian (d. 1072). The congregation of Fonte Avellana experimented with reforming practices that led to new ways of managing property and relations among clergy, nobles, and the laity. Jasper charts how Damian's notion of monastic reform took advantage of the surrounding topography and geography to amplify the sensory aspects of ascetic experiences. By focusing on monastic landscapes and land ownership, Jasper demonstrates that reform extended beyond abstract ideas. Rather, reform circulated locally through monastic networks and addressed practical concerns such as property boundaries and rights over water, orchards, pastures, and mills. Putting new sources, both documentary and archaeological, into conversation with monastic charters and Damian's letters, Bounded Wilderness reveals the interrelationship of economic practices, religious traditions, and the natural environment in the idea and implementation of reform.
