Reforming Reform: Steven Vanderputten’s Monastic Histories

Abstract

Ecclesia Medio Nationis: Reflections on Study of Monasticism Central Middle Ages / Reflexions sur l'etude du monachisme au moyen âge central. Edited by Steven Vanderputten and Brigite Meijns. [Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, ser. 1, studia 42.] (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2011. Pp. 215. euro45,00. ISBN 978-90-5867-887-4.)Reform, Conflict, and Shaping of Corporate Identities: Collected Studies on Benedictine Monasticism, 1050-1150. By Steven Vanderputten. [Vita Regularis: ordnungen und Deutungen religiosen Lebens im Mittelalter, Abhandlungen 54.] (Zurich: LIT Verlag, 2013. euro34,90. ISBN 978-3-643-90429-4.)Monastic as Process: Realities and Representations Medieval Flanders, 900-1100. By Steven Vanderputten. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. Pp. xiv, 247. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-8014-5171-3.)Imagining Religious Leadership Middle Ages: Richard of Saint-Vanne and Politics of Reform. By Steven Vanderputten. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Pp. xvi, 244. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-80145377-9.)Reform is rarely defined. Nevertheless, it was an important concept to Latin Church Fathers, particularly to St. Augustine, whose fascination with early chapters of Genesis led him to meditate on how, after fall, human beings necessarily needed to be reformed-an act that, thanks to Incarnation, would be a reformatio ad melius. That patristic tradition was famously analyzed at time of Second Vatican Council Gerhart Ladner's The Idea of Reform, which presented as a leitmotif of ecclesiastical history, or the free, intentional and ever perfectible, multiple, prolonged and ever repeated efforts by man to reassert and augment values pre-existent spiritual-material compound of world.1 For Ladner, was always progressive and always in progress. He himself never completed his general history of idea of reform, but his work spawned a small school of studies, more successful with later Middle Ages that were saturated with discussions than with central Middle Ages where post-Carolingian monks and Roman reformers often preferred different terminology.2 modern world has evolved into a vague model for gradual, positive change, usually employed without same level of scrutiny given to parallel paradigms of change such as renaissance or revolution?Medieval narratives are getting new attention, thanks to work of Steven Vanderputten. Starting with a doctoral dissertation on medieval monastic historiography (University of Ghent. 2000),4 he has been urging a reexamination of whole paradigm of monastic reform. His publications, aided by major fellowships and research professorships, are extraordinarily numerous. He even coordinated 220 conference sessions and roundtable discussions on Reform and Renewal at 2015 Leeds International Medieval Congress. In contrast to earlier historiography, however, reform often now appears within scare quotes or accompanied by hints that it has acquired so much dysfunctional baggage that perhaps it ought to be abandoned as a research paradigm.Does now obscure more than illuminate? To clarify issues, it may be helpful to introduce four of Vanderputten's recent books. The earliest is Ecclesia Medio Nationis: Reflections on Study of Monasticism, an edited volume stemming from a 2009 conference at University of Leuven that sought to showcase current scholarship on Western religious communities of 900-1050, focusing especially on their relationships to outside world. Here, five papers French and two English demonstrate that the historiography of first monastic reforms has been profoundly renewed over course of last twenty years (34). Particularly distinguished are Isabelle Rose on monastic community life from ninth through twelfth centuries (pp. 11-45) and Florian Mazel on relationship between monasticism and aristocracy tenth and eleventh centuries (pp. …