Die feinen Unterschiede zwischen einem Einsiedler und einem Apostel

AElfric's reputation as a scholar and leading religious writer was acknowledged even within his own lifetime, when Archbishop Wulfstan of York wrote to him seeking advice on pastoral care. This reputation, coupled with his well-developed skills of self-promotion, helped establish AElfric's corpus of public writings. Fresh analyses of the surviving manuscripts are indicating that, the Anglo-Saxon homiletic and hagiographic traditions, the legal and medical, computistical and grammatical traditions continued well into the twelfth century and beyond in many writing centres in England, and continued in ways that suggest dynamic and meaningful engagements by manuscript compilers, editors and scribes with the material that they had copied. The annotations, nota , interlinear alterations, and glosses are absolutely typical of this kind of activity witnessed in many of the manuscripts surviving from the period, and of the similar activities of readers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Keywords: AElfric's reputation; Anglo-Saxon homiletic tradition

Reviewed by: Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe by Scott G. Bruce Rebecca Hill Scott G. Bruce, Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe ( Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2016) 160 pp. In a compact investigation into southern Europe's relationship with Islam, ScottG. Bruce's Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe explains the devotional context of the first known written conversion invitation, Summa totius haeresis Sarracenorum (Summary of the Entire Heresy of the Saracens), to a Muslim audience. The author of this invitation is Peter the Venerable (d. 1156), the prolific abbot of Cluny in the twelfth century who is probably most famous for commissioning the first Latin translation of the Qur'an. Through a long and winding method of process of elimination, Bruce advances the suggestion that Peter's treatise was influenced most significantly not by the surrounding discourse of anti-heretical reasoning but by the hagiographic accounts of Maiolus, who, like Peter, once led the same monastic powerhouse. Maiolus was captured by Muslims in 972 while crossing the Alps, a scene that haunts the entire book and several generations of abbots. In increasingly suspect, conflicting, and elaborate hagiographical accounts of this ordeal, Maiolus proves himself to be a capable preacher and a performer of miracles. According to Bruce, both of these qualities—persuasive eloquence and supernatural intercession—unveil themselves in Peter's deathbed attempt to address the threat of Islam in Europe in that he feels confident that words alone will incite conversion. Bruce's book begins with a well-researched record of the environment of travel across the Alps in the early Middle Ages. Close readings of travel prayers and accounts suggests that beasts, climate, and mountain pirates were the main culprits of trans-Alpine casualties. Maiolus, far from the only victim of such exploits, was—unfortunately for the Muslim brigands—the most high-profile and dear amongst local, armed Christian polities. Once captured, Maiolus pens his own ransom note, which survives in a few cross-referencing manuscripts. Unlike the accounts that follow in the hagiographical tradition, the note does not bespeak his conditions but economically echoes well-known passages from II Samuel and Psalms that would hasten his subordinates to his aid. A pre-Crusade era allegorical connection between the Muslim captors and Belial negatively characterize his aggressors for what appears to be centuries. [End Page 192] Of the hagiographies under consideration, early in the book Bruce examines the anonymous volume by Pavian monk (BHL 5180), Syrus' Vita, Olido's Vita, and Glaber's Historiarum Libri Quinque; later, in the last twenty pages of the book, he introduces Nalgod's retelling of Maiolus' life, as commissioned by Peter the Venerable himself, to adduce Peter's ambitious desire to distill Cluny's saintly legacy. In recounting the hagiographies composed in memory of Maiolus' life, Bruce highlights certain peculiarities that may have inadvertently influenced his legacy in relation to Muslims in the Cluniac community. First, the abduction episodes, which hardly feature as a defining moment in Maiolus' existence, tend to reflect, among other things, territorial wars between monasteries. Second, especially in Glaber's account, some Muslims demonstrate Christlike compassion toward the imprisoned abbot. In a similar vein, different accounts illustrate heterogenous fates of the captors: some embrace baptism in narratives that do not end in complete Muslim annihilation. These hagiographies offer a bundle of lenses through which to view not only the strengths of Maiolus' character and saintedness but also the disposition and faculties of those who took Muhammad to be the greatest and final prophet. Bruce's rhetorical efforts to erode a dichotomous Muslim-Christian tone (sometimes present in scholarship that is becoming outmoded) are noticeable. Namely, he uses words like "adventurers" (1) or "entrepreneurial" (7, 26) to describe the abduction activities at La Garde-Freinet, stressing repeatedly that kidnapping for ransom and slave-trading were imperative to the survival of Alpine Muslims, who were, as he demonstrates, most likely isolated from any recognized Islamic polity. Similarly, Maiolus is "waylaid" (1) rather than kidnapped...

The early twelfth century has long been recognized as a period of monastic expansion and adaptation, in which old rules (such as the rules of Benedict and Augustine) were reshaped to fit new forms of life. This process of adaptation continued into the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, as the founders of new religious communities continued to grapple with perennial problems and questions. A particularly intractable set of questions related to the care of nuns (the cura monialium), and to the practicalities of reconciling spiritual equality with bodily difference. This article explores two interlinked responses to these questions, namely the Institutes of the Order of Sempringham, and the legislation of the Dominican convent of San Sisto, Rome. The rule of Augustine, with its emphasis on preaching and pastoral care, could be adapted to provide a self-regulating, homeostatic solution to some of the problems of the cura monialium. A particularly innovative feature of the Institutes of the Order of Sempringham was the use of a complex series of windows and doors, which could be adopted by other groups seeking to balance the tension between institutional integrity and physical segregation.

This chapter shows that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries manifest an embarrassment of riches: the number, variety and development of monastic and religious orders in this period is overwhelming. It also discusses traditional Benedictine monasticism, and considers the changes that came in the twelfth century. The Cistercians were one of the great historical enterprises of Western monasticism. The Premonstratensians belongs to the family of Augustinian canons. In the Augustinian mould the Premonstratensians combined community life with a pastoral mission. The Cistercians were more positive in their dealings with the Templars. In 1119 Hugh de Payns, a knight from Champagne, organised his companions into soldier-monks. Their founder Bruno, a teacher at Cologne, was fascinated by the stories of the hermits of the desert in Late Antiquity. The foundation of the Franciscans and the Dominicans shortly after 1200 resulted from a new surge of religious feeling and desire for vita apostolica, in imitation of the lives of the apostles.

Religious communities were considered a necessary and active part of Christian society. In addition to praying on behalf of individuals and of society as a whole, they performed many functions which are now the responsibility of public institutions. Religious communities embodied the highest ideals of medieval society, and their members must be seen in relation to the hopes and needs of people living in the world. The new forms of religious life and types of religious communities must be seen against a broader background of changes, which contributed to the atmosphere of personal isolation and uncertainty. The men and women who entered religious communities in the eleventh and twelfth centuries came from all walks of life. The reformers liked to emphasise the breadth of their appeal. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, thousands of women entered religious communities and some of them lived on terms of spiritual and intellectual equality with men.

Introduction Already, by the early twelfth century, the kind of piety practiced by Anglo-Scandinavian elites in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries was considered old-fashioned, even vulgar. The almost complete annihilation of the upper reaches of this aristocracy, both lay and ecclesiastical, in the decade following the Battle of Hastings left this group open to a set of wide-ranging critiques by the Norman victors; and AngloNorman churchmen, kings, and historians were quick to point out preConquest earls' and bishops' impious behavior, their lack of generosity toward the Church, and their worldliness. To further complicate matters, from the middle decades of the eleventh century on, Gregorian and other reform efforts were radically altering contemporary assumptions about proper pious behavior, and an unprecedented flurry of literary activity in the twelfth century both reinforced the new piety and denigrated the old. Beyond this, historians' (both modern and medieval) enthusiasm for tenth-century spirituality, in particular reformed Benedictine monasticism, and their disinterest in, even hostility toward, other forms of religious life have led them to view many great men and wealthy women of the late Anglo-Saxon period as irreligious at best. What follows is an attempt to take a fresh look at the religious practices and interests exhibited by three groups found in and around the Anglo-- Scandinavian court in the first half of the eleventh century-the bishops, the earls, and aristocratic women. It sets out to describe the religious enthusiasms and pious practices of the late Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, lay and ecclesiastical, and to reconsider its piety and its liberality toward the Church. Piety More than thirty years ago, Dorothy Bethurum argued that the great wealth of Anglo-Saxon bishops was interpreted by contemporaries as a reflection of God's majesty on earth.1 Bethurum's article, boldly entitled Episcopal Magnificence in the Eleventh Century,was somewhat revolutionary in its approach to the topic of episcopal piety. While the majority of historians tended to view piety through a monastic filter, Bethurum offered a much more balanced and nuanced approach to contemporary norms and expectations as they related to ecclesiastical wealth, power, and piety.2 Despite the even-handedness of her approach, however, Bethurum's article did not alter the course of Anglo-- Saxon ecclesiastical historiography. With very few exceptions, historians have continued to privilege the cloistered church of monks and abbots over the worldly church of canons and secular bishops.3 That this imbalance persists is even more surprising given the publication of Stephen Jaeger's two masterful studies of continental courtier bishops and eleventh-century cathedral culture.4 What is missing from the modern historiography of the English Church, then, is an appreciation for the kind of piety practiced by bishops in the late Anglo-Saxon period, a piety as out of vogue in the twelfth century as it is in the twentieth.5 As Jaeger and others have demonstrated, however, piety is of tremendous significance to social as well as ecclesiastical historians since it was a defining characteristic of nobility in the early Middle Ages.6 Piety in this period was characterized by active devotion rather than intro-- spection, and it was made visible through public acts. Entrance into confraternity with an ecclesiastical community, for example, almost always entailed a reciprocal gift symbolizing the establishment of a spiritual relationship, a relationship that was often proclaimed publicly through the laying of a bit of sod or a gospel book on the altar.7 Because of their participation in the king's witan, their broad-ranging economic and judicial powers in their dioceses, and their pastoral mission centered on ordination and visitation, bishops were public figures of unrivaled magnitude. But they were also models of aristocratic behavior in their generosity to religious communities both monastic and secular. …

This paper considers the relevance of Franciscan monastic practice to contemporary postcapitalist politics in the time of the Anthropocene. Giorgio Agamben’s reflections on the monastic revolution of the eleventh and twelfth centuries explores the different relationships between the rules governing monastic life and materiality, wherein the renunciation of property and the practice of highest poverty give the greatest expression of a collective, monastic form of life. The embodied connection between having a rule and living it contrasts starkly with emergent Church doctrine that introduced a cynical split between the sacred and the material: good or bad, the priest only need say the words. Centuries later, a version of this cynical split seems operative in contemporary “green consumerist” responses to the Anthropocene, amounting to a palliative gesture when what is required is revolutionary transformation. In contrast, this essay considers how contemporary postcapitalist politics, like monasticism, rests upon embodied forms of collective life.

Much recent scholarship on the period of the Investiture Struggle and the reform of the Church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries has suggested that the origins of these reforms lay not merely in the desire for moral regeneration, but in the conscious wish to return to the antique, Biblical, patristic, and Roman models of the Christian life represented by the early, pre-feudal Church. What modern historians have sometimes called ‘Germanic Christianity’ or ‘feudal Christianity’ was felt to be a pattern of institutions which had at least partly corrupted the life of the early Church. This explains the great concern of the Hildebrandine Party to rid the Church of those abuses which they felt had grown ‘especially since the time when the government of our church passed to the Germans. … But we, having searched out the Roman Order and the ancient custom of our church, imitating the old Fathers, have ordered things to be restored as we have set out above.’ The reaction against the immediate past in favor of a more perfect antique model manifested itself in the notion, expressed throughout the period, that custom must always be judged by natural law and by truth: ‘the Lord said: “I am the Truth.” He did not say: “I am the custom”; but “I am the Truth.” The reformers became impassioned to restore the ancient discipline, to rediscover the ancient laws of the Church, to bring monasticism back to its original purity, and in all this to use what they believed to be the ancient forms of the Christian life as a model by which to compare and criticize the Christianity of their own times. An extensive and varied literature appeared dealing with the problem of what the ancient ideal of the Christian life had been, a literature which began both to speak frequently of the ecclesia primitiva, and to use this idea as a model by which to reform the Church. Often this literature passed beyond the use of the idea of the ecclesia primitiva as a tool of reform to the use of the idea as a basis for the discussion of the more basic problem of what the perfect form of the Christian life had been or should be. In this regard, ‘reform’ signified not only the restoration and reestablishment of the forms of the Christian life of the past, but also the search for the continuing perfection of both the individual and the Church. The nexus of ideas associated with the Augustinian reformatio in melius was in this respect close to the idea of ‘renewal.’ Men not only returned to the forms of the past, but also explored ways of introducing new structures and forms of life into the Church.

Reviewed by: L’antichità classica nel pensiero medievale, Atti del convegno della Societá Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale, Trento, 29–29 settembre 2010 ed. by A. Palazzo Rossella Pescatori L’antichità classica nel pensiero medievale, Atti del convegno della Societá Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale, Trento, 29–29 settembre 2010, ed. A. Palazzo (Porto: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales 2011) 498 pp. L’antichità classica nel pensiero medievale is a rich and valuable work that sheds light on different aspects of the intellectual culture of the Middle Ages. The volume derives from the nineteenth conference of the Italian Society for the Study of Medieval Thought (SISPM), which was held at the university of Trento in 2010; it is a collection of essays whose common theme is the heritage of classical culture in the intellectual universe of the Middle Ages. The volume, edited by Alessandro Palazzo, is composed of twenty essays that deal with the complexity of the reception of classical culture in the Middle Ages, and illustrates other “ways” in which the legacy of classical antiquity was assimilated from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. However, this book deliberately omits the more well-known and broadly discussed topic of the fortunes of ancient philosophy in the Middle Ages (such as Platonism in the twelfth century, Aristotelism [End Page 224] in the thirteenth, and Stoicism in the fourteenth) and instead considers themes, sources, and authors which until now were little or not at all studied. The essays are preceded by an introduction, L’antichità classica nel pensiero medievale, written by Alessandro Palazzo who highlights the common elements of the various contributions. These elements are a) the sources, which are the channels of access through which the medieval authors received their knowledge and the influence of classical culture; b) the problem of integrating classical pagan culture in the Christian world; and c) the interdisciplinary character that binds philosophy, theology, romance literature, Medieval Latin literature, and the law. This last element makes this collection of essays unique. It is rare to find a volume where different aspects of medieval and Renaissance thoughts are synchronically and diachronically presented. Michele Trizio’s Dissensio Philosophorum. Il disaccordo tra Platone e Aristotele nei commenti di Eustrazio di Nicea (d. ca. 1120) focuses on the writings of Eustratius of Nicaea, in particular his commentaries on Aristotle (Book II of the Posterior Analytics and books I and VI dell’Ethica Nichomachea). Trizio observes that Eustratius sees a great irreconcilability between Plato and Aristotle, and highlights the influence of the neo-Platonist Proclus on his work. Luisa Valente’s Exhortatio e recta vivendi ratio. Filosofi antichi e filosofia come forma di vita in Pietro Abelardo, outlines, on the basis of the sayings and deeds of the ancient philosophers, the concept of philosophy as a form of life. According to Abelard, philosophy leads to a right way of living, which is a separation from mundane life. His Theologia Christana proposes a Christian ideal city based on Plato and Macrobius’s classification of the four levels of virtue (political, purifying, soul purified, and exemplar) and leads to the theoretical justification that the solitary life dedicated to contemplation of the divine philosophers and monks is greater than the active life of the rulers. Gregorio Piaia’s I filosofi antichi nel “Polyhistor” di Guglielmo di Malmesbury, considers the Polyhistor (written in the first part of twelfth century) of William of Malmesbury not as florilegium but as one of the first examples of history of philosophy, or rather “history of the philosophers.” Carlos Steel’s A Philogical diet for philosophers. Aristippus’s translation of book IV of Aristotele’s Meteorology and Albert the Great, focuses on the complexity of the translation into Latin of the fourth book of Aristotle’s Meteoreologica by Aristippus (d. ca.1162) and emphasizes the differences in translation from those of future generations. In particular, it focuses on the influence of Aristippus in the works of Albert the Great, in particular the Meteora. Luca Parisoli’s Pensare la normatività: l’eredità classica e le specificità medievali nella civiltà della interpretazione contains interesting observations on legal apparatus in medieval society and...

Reviews 227 increase difficulties; it does not simplify but complicate. Yet interpretation paradoxically also nourishes a work: “Une œuvre a besoin de l’interprétation pour rester vivante”(91). In this light, essayistic interpretation must be seen as an act of generosity, responding to this demand of the text—sustaining rather than foreclosing (which would be tantamount to killing the œuvre) its semantic openness. The issue of partial truths—as opposed to allegorical truths or transcendental certitudes—becomes more than an epistemological matter; interpreting is a form of life (“L’interprétation est la vie de l’esprit humain”[115]); it necessarily evokes ethical and aesthetic registers. The force of Foglia’s book lies in this powerful and timely reminder. Whitman College (WA) Zahi Zalloua Gaffney, Phyllis. Constructions of Childhood and Youth in Old French Narrative. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7546-6920-3. Pp. viii + 236. $99.95. Gaffney’s book includes a preface, three sections divided into six chapters,‘Works Cited,’ and an index. The preface introduces Philippe Ariès’s 1960 study of childhood, now largely discredited. Gaffney proposes to add to evidence about cultural ideas of childhood in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Northern France through imaginative literature, since “a culture’s fables and stories can unlock what it thinks and feels at a deep level”(vii). The first two chapters summarize Ariès’s argument together with contrary historical and archeological evidence. Gaffney begins with a résumé of literary and linguistic analyses of Old French terms for childhood and youth, and suggests that the type of text influences how childhood is represented, though she acknowledges overlap in the two genres (epic and romance), and the lack of precision for dating texts and mapping terms. Gaffney hypothesizes that epic shows nature whereas romance illustrates nurture. Part two treats childhood in chanson de geste, then in romance, and examines enfances poems (those narrating the childhood of a hero) specifically, contrasting representations in the different genres. In the chanson de geste, Gaffney finds male youths tasked with helping their lineage “in ancestral feuds, avenging wrongs perpetrated against their kinsmen”(99) versus romance youths who seek to find their history, and whose education may be specifically defined in the text; where young women appear, they are wiser than male counterparts, but are few (126). Chapter 4 concludes that, in romance, protagonists become narrators since they must discover their own childhood (158). Finally, Gaffney addresses the question of enfances as a genre and the relationship between epic and romance; she clearly notes the difficulties in distinguishing epic from romance, and how the two grow together at the end of the period considered. She carefully avoids most stereotypes that have tainted contrasts of epic and romance, though the mention of a chanson de geste heroine who “lacks plausibility”(132) is bothersome, for plausibility (or what we call realism), is not the goal of the chanson de geste. Gaffney, however, carefully notes “implausibilities” (132) also in the romance heroine to whom she compares the epic figure. She suggests that romance influenced epic. Here she reinterprets the longstanding tendency to discuss epic as expanding backwards to include the childhood of a hero in the larger narrative context,biography and genealogy increasingly forming parts of adult identity. Examples are wide-ranging, including well-known and lesser-known works, with careful contrasts of epic and romance characters (for example, Guillaume d’Orange and Gauvain). Part three,“A Slow Conversion of Sensibility,”illustrates the cultural changes of the twelfth century concomitant with change in literary taste, from noble women’s roles and instruction to marriage laws and changes in the administration of the sacraments , arguing convincingly for a“shifting change of direction in the history of mentalities ” (195) that endures today. “Works Cited” are divided into “Primary texts,” “Secondary Sources,”and“Reference Works.”Gaffney has read widely, and intelligently includes both collections of essays by title and by articles cited. There was a missing reference, Harf-Lancner 1994 (153, n145), but other items were present. Not only is this volume wide-ranging and thoughtful, it is also extremely readable. Though Gaffney carefully introduces her arguments and reviews her findings, she does so...

REVIEWS 248 Hungarian ruling class as a whole toward their past. The fifth chapter discusses a completely different model of holiness: the princesses and queens of the Hungarian ruling dynasty, starting with Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew II of Hungary and wife of Louis IV of Thuringia, and their imitators (often blood relatives) in the neighbor dynasties of the Piasts (in Poland and Silesia) and the Premysls (in Bohemia) or the German princely families of the thirteenth century. Klaniczay finds the reason behind the immediate success of these cults in their importance for the aggrandizement of the dynasties to which they belonged (209). He sees this in the elaboration, by the Hungarian ruling houses, of the notion of “hereditary sanctity” (228), and in the conscious emulation of the older, Anglo-Saxon, Bohemian, and Hungarian models (233). Klaniczay does not neglect the gender implications of the holy princesses’ sainthood, which fits into the male prejudice that “woman’s nature” consists of an unpredictable wavering between extremes (199), and discusses the character of the princesses’ chastity and renunciation in light of the contemporary phenomenon of the Beguines in the Low Countries. Yet, using an approach similar to Le Goff’s in his study of St. Louis, the author draws attention specifically to the general movement, throughout the thirteenth century, among religious orders and the laity to bring closer together the “heavenly” court and world authority (244). The last chapter is dedicated to the construction of the memory of the Central European “holy rulers and blessed princesses.” Klaniczay sees as essential promoters of the saintly cults the successful dynasties of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially the in Naples and, after 1301, Hungary and Bohemia. Manipulation of hagiographic material; pilgrimages by kings and queens around Europe and the establishment of churches and abbeys in honor of ancestors; recultivation of forgotten traditions; and generous artistic patronage of the arts: all were part of a conscious policy of appropriation, by a new dynasty, of the prestige and spiritual heritage of their predecessors. This led to the presumable establishment of a continuity between all royal saints of the Latin West. In the end, however, this appropriation would, in Klaniczay’s view, erase the dynastic essence of the saints’ cults and transform the holy rulers into national saints who could be used against the present monarch himself (389 ff.) The abundance of facts, the extensive case studies of objects of art or hagiographical traditions, as well as the rich illustrative material make Klaniczay ’s monograph a substantial contribution to the history of Christian saints and of medieval European political ideology. In addition to its scholarly merits, the complete index, the twelve genealogical tables, the files of the hagiographical tradition and canonization “files” of the five most important Hungarian saints, the ninety-one illustrations, and the extensive bibliography make the book an essential reference tool for any student of the history of Central Europe or the field of royal sainthood. BORIS TODOROV, History, UCLA Adam J. Kosto, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order and the Written Word, 1000–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001) 366 pp. In his first monograph, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia, Adam REVIEWS 249 Kosto approaches the subject of medieval social and political transformation from a unique perspective. By focusing on a single type of document, the convenientia , Kosto uses text, that is, he investigates the development, use and evolution of a specific textual format, as a lens through which to view medieval society. The convenientia, written agreements which began with the phrase “hec est convenientia” were made for a variety of purposes: to settle disputes, to establish terms of castle or land tenure, and to create bonds of fidelity. Approximately 1000 convenientia from the eleventh and twelfth centuries originated in Catalonia and survive within the crown and provincial archives in which Kosto conducted his research (3). This rich archival survival corresponds with the period of shifting political structures and increasing authority of the counts of Barcelona. While acknowledging that regional studies should not automatically be presented as proof of general European trends, since they “run the risk of isolating an area under consideration from its wider context”(4), Kosto examines the convenientia of...

It has been a truism in the history of medieval religious orders that the Cistercians only admitted women late in the twelfth century and then under considerable outside pressure. This view has posited a twelfth-century “Golden Age” when it had been possible for the abbots of the order of Cîteaux to avoid contact with women totally. Only later did the floodgates burst open and a great wave of women wishing to be Cistercians flood over abbots powerless to resist it. This paper reassesses narrative accounts, juridical arguments, and charter evidence to show that such assertions of the absence of any twelfthcentury Cistercian nuns are incorrect. They are based on mistaken notions of how the early Cistercian Order developed, as well as on a biased reading of the evidence, including a double standard for proof of Cistercian status—made much higher for women's houses than for men's. If approached in a gender-neutral way, the evidence shows that abbeys of Cistercian women appeared as early as those for the order's men. Evidence from which it has been argued that nuns were only imitating the Cistercian Order's practices in the twelfth century in fact contains exactly the same language that when used to describe men's houses is deemed to show them to be Cistercian. Formal criteria for incorporation of women's houses in the thirteenth century are irrelevant to a twelfth-century situation in which only gradually did most communities of monks or nuns eventually identified as Cistercian come to be part of the newly developing religious order.

The twelfth century is often seen as a revolutionary age in which a static archaic society changed into a dynamic one laying the foundations for modern society. There has been ample discussion about the exact moment when these revolutionary changes began as well as about the causes for this development, but that demographic and economic growth, urbanization, the development of new institutions such as universities and new religious orders had a great impact on medieval society is generally accepted. The clarity of the divide between the earlier period and the later one, however, has recently become subject to debate. A lot of work on the early Middle Ages stresses the dynamics of this period, thus adding nuance to the notion of a sharp break between the early Middle Ages and the later ones. Nevertheless, the twelfth century is deservedly known as an ‘age of renaissance and renewal’ and this is also true for the history of penance in this period. This chapter tries to outline the new developments in the field of penance and confession and to assess the impact of these changes on religious experience in this century and beyond. Because of the multitude of sources from this period, which is a reflection of the growing use of the written word accompanying the major changes in society, this chapter cannot be as comprehensive as earlier chapters. It will necessarily probe into some topics more than others and rely more on secondary sources than on a fresh analysis of the primary sources.

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe "Crisis of Cenobitism" Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050-1150John Van EngenJohn Van Engen Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 61, Number 2Apr., 1986 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2854041 Views: 74Total views on this site Citations: 26Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1986 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Christophe Mauduit Retour sur la ‘crise du cénobitisme’: Émergence et expansion des Cisterciens et des chanoines réguliers en Normandie ( xiie siècle-début xiiie siècle), Nottingham Medieval Studies 65 (Jan 2021): 173–213.https://doi.org/10.1484/J.NMS.5.131510SAMANTHA KAHN HERRICK Friend or Foe? The Bishops of Metz in Monastic Historical Narrative, c . 1000– c . 1200, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 71, no.22 (Nov 2019): 253–269.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046919001192Alison I. 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The Cistercians (White Monks) were the most successful monastic experiment to emerge from the tumultuous intellectual and religious fervour of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By around 1150 they had established houses the length and breadth of Western Christendom and were internationally renowned. They sought to return to a simple form of monastic life, as set down in the Rule of St Benedict, and preferred rural locations 'far from the haunts of men'. But, as recent research has shown, they were by no means isolated from society but influenced, and were influenced by, the world around them; they moved with the times. This book seeks to explore the phenomenon that was the Cistercian Order, drawing on recent research from various disciplines to consider what it was that made the Cistercians distinctive and how they responded to developments. The book addresses current debates regarding the origins and evolution of the Order; discusses the key primary sources for knowledge; and covers architecture, administration, daily life, spirituality, the economy and the monks' ties with the world. Professor Janet Burton teaches at the School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David; Dr Julie Kerr is Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History, University of St Andrews.