‘Ecclesia in medio nationis’: Reflections on the Study of Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages—Réflexions sur l’étude du monachisme au moyen âge central, ed. Steven Vanderputten and Brigitte Meijns,

Abstract

This is a relatively little book with a big agenda. In late 2009, Steven Vanderputten and Brigitte Meijns convened a small conference at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium to explore the state of current scholarship in central medieval monasticism (c.900–1050) and to reflect in particular on the interaction of religious communities with the outside world ‘as a key paradigm with which investigations into the monastic phenomenon can be framed’ (p. 7). The result of their industry is a short volume comprising seven papers (five in French, two in English) that succeed in presenting ‘a multifaceted and multidisciplinary outlook on a field of study that has become bewildering in its complexity’ (p. 9). Isabelle Rosé opens the volume with a broad survey of recent trends in monastic studies concerned with the internal organisation of religious communities. Institutional memory, the uses of writing, the notion of ‘institutionality’ and the idea of monastic space take pride of place in her discussion, with examples drawn from German, French and North American scholarship. Unfortunately, Rosé does not address recent work on sexual anxiety and same-sex desire in central medieval cloisters; her brief evocation of gender history and ‘issues du mouvement Queer’ (p. 24) raises the topic without engaging with the issues of concern to scholars working in these fields.