The Monks of Tiron: A Monastic Community and Religious Reform in the Twelfth Century, by Kathleen Thompson

Abstract

The group of monastic houses founded from Tiron in the county of Perche, west of Chartres, has, until now, been given only a footnote in medieval history. It is the achievement of Kathleen Thompson to provide this monastic network with a treatment that is careful, thoughtful and illuminating. She speaks of ‘an affiliation of houses’ that was found not only in northern France and England, but also in Scotland. The successors of Bernard of Tiron maintained their monastic identity and did not become absorbed into the new monastic orders, as the congregation of Savigny did with the Cistercians. Thanks to the Vita beati Bernardi Tironensis, we have one of the most detailed examples of medieval monastic hagiography and can get a good idea of the early years of the movement. Thompson succeeds in placing this Vita in its historical context, especially in considering the fact that its abbreviated version, the so-called Brevis description, casts fresh light on Bernard of Tiron and his world. A careful appendix goes through the contents of the Vita, while a second appendix lists the possessions of Tiron. The first chapter, ‘Developing the Tiron narrative’, provides an analysis of the Vita, which is ‘indeed a good story’ with ‘a very strong narrative drive’ (p. 11). The author looks at other sources from later in the twelfth century, including William of Newburgh’s narrative from the 1190s, which sees Bernard and his companions as preachers, thus in harmony with the perceived needs of a more pastoral church. A number of pages are devoted to a comparison of the Vita Bernardi and the Brevis descriptio. Thompson concludes that the Vita cannot be ‘what it purports to be—a near eyewitness account of events’ (p. 33). The source can be seen rather as contributing to the history of Tiron by providing an indication of how the monks understood and interpreted their history.