Disciplining the Body, Disciplining the Will: Hypocrisy and Asceticism in Cistercian Monasticism

Abstract

Abstract In the second decade of the thirteenth century, Goswin, a monk in the Cistercian abbey of Villers in the Brabant, celebrated the holy life and death of the Cistercian lay brother Arnulf by writing Arnulf’s vita. Goswin hardly knew Arnulf. As a lay brother, Arnulf had lived a life distinct from Goswin and the other choir monks: lay brothers did most of the manual labor and estate administration, and, as a result, they performed a shortened liturgy and often resided in granges some distance from the monastery. Goswin’s knowledge of Arnulf derived primarily from information provided by another monk ofVillers, but he nonetheless adopted a narrative stance that implied an intimacy with his subject.1 According to Goswin, Arnulf took advantage of the materials around him­ including bushes with thorns or prickly leaves, metal implements, horse hair, and hedgehog pelts supplied by the monastery’s shepherds-to fashion instruments of self.torture with which he scourged his body.