Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe: Conflict and Cultural Interaction ed. by Emilia Jamroziak and Karen Stöber (review)

Abstract

Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe: Conflict and Cultural Interaction. Edited by Emilia Jamroziak and Karen Stober. [Italia Sacra: Medieval Church Studies, Vol. 28.] (Turnhout: Brepols. 2014. Pp. x, 274. euro80,00. ISBN 9782-503-5435-6.)This dynamic and interdisciplinary collection has its origins in the Leeds Medieval Congress of 2008 and offers a fresh to frontier scholarship. It explores the experiences of religious communities in border areas across Europe in the high and later Middle Ages and considers how their experiences were different from those of their counterparts in the hinterlands. The essays represent a wide geographical spread and include studies on Scandinavia, Poland, Britain, and Frankish Greece. Although monastic, canonical, and mendicant houses are considered, analysis is restricted to male communities, for the additional conditions that affected religious women require that they have their own systematic approach (p. 3).Monasteries on the Borders seeks to examine all aspects of the frontier experience to understand better the roles that these houses played in their localities; the challenges they faced; and their negotiation of political, cultural, and linguistic landscapes. Whereas previous scholarship has tended to focus on the potential problems experienced in frontier zones, these essays consider the possible benefits that might result for both the communities and their neighbors. The collection opens with an editorial introduction, which includes a lucid historiographical discussion of frontiers, and introduces the aims and key themes of this publication. The ten essays are divided into two groups to represent two important types of frontier monastic experience-conflict and acculturation. A bibliography follows each contribution and there is a common index at the end.The first section-Conflict and its Resolution-considers the various conflicts that these frontier houses faced in their differing environments. This commences with a fascinating account by Brian Golding of two incidents involving the transfer of relics across the border from Wales to the Benedictine abbey of Shrewsbury: a relic of St. Winifred in 1138 and bones of St. Beuno in 1338. Golding argues that both acts need to be understood within the conditions of contemporary frontier politics. Thus, the first was a carefully negotiated act in volatile times when the Anglo-Welsh border was fluid-a currency in uncertain times and likely orchestrated by Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd (p. …