Benedictine Monastery Research Articles

Governance in Religious Institutes: Structures of Participation and Representation Canons 631–633

* Associate Professor of Canon Law, School of Canon Law, The Catholic University of America 1 John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2008) 36–43, 301. 2 PC 2 “Accommodata renovatio vitae religiosae simul complectitur et continuum reditum ad omnis vitae christianae fontes primigeniamque institutorum inspirationem et aptationem ipsorum ad mutatas temporum condiciones.” AAS 58 (1966) 703; English translation: Vatican Council II The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents—New Revised Edition, ed. Austin Flannery, O.P. (Northport: Costello Publishing Co., 1984) 612. 442 The Jurist 69 (2009) 442–471 GOVERNANCE IN RELIGIOUS INSTITUTES: STRUCTURES OF PARTICIPATION AND REPRESENTATION CANONS 631–633 Rose McDermott I. Introduction 1. The Second Vatican Council—An Historic, Dynamic Modus Operandi In his recent book, John O’Malley observes that a keen sense of history was operative during the Second Vatican Council and was manifest in three words current at the time: ressourcement, a return to the sources; aggiornamento, an updating or modernizing; and development, an evolution or progress. The author notes that the three words look to the past, the present, and the future; they effected a notable shift from the classicist world view with its static, abstract, and immutable terms to a more historical dynamic approach, leading to appropriate adaptations in the conciliar teachings in accord with the new conditions of life while being faithful to the Church’s tradition. The author further notes that the schemata or drafts of the various conciliar documents employed one, two or all three of these words reflecting change rooted in perennial values.1 2. Documents on Religious Life Reflecting the Process Perfectae caritatis, the decree on religious life, reflects this dynamic approach or play on the past, present, and future in a most significant way. Paragraph two of the decree begins: “The up-to-date renewal of religious life comprises both a constant return to the sources of the whole of the Christian life and to the primitive inspiration of the institutes, and their adaptation to the changed conditions of our time.”2 The decree on 3 PC 4: “Efficax renovatio et recta accommodatio obtineri nequeunt nisi cooperantibus omnibus instituti sodalibus. Normas autem accommodatae renovationis statuere et leges ferre, necnon sufficienti prudentique experientiae locum dare, competentium tantum auctoritatum est, praesertim capitulorum generalium, salva, quatenus necessaria sit, approbatione Sanctae Sedis aut Ordinariorum locorum, ad normam iuris. Superiores vero, in his quae ad totius instituti sortes spectant, sodales suos apto modo consultant et audiant .” AAS 58 (1966) 704; Flannery, 613. 4 ES II, 1: “Potiores partes in renovanda et aptanda vita religiosa pertinent ad ipsa Instituta , quae id efficient praesertim per Capitula generalia vel apud Orientales per Synaxes . Munus Capitulorum non absolvitur tantummodo leges ferendo sed insuper promovendo vitalitatem spiritualem et apostolicam.” AAS 58 (1966) 775; Flannery 624–625. Chapters in religious institutes date back to the sixth century in Benedictine monasteries. The community of monks assembled with the abbot to discuss a “chapter” of the Rule. They endeavored to live their lives in accord with its content. See Elizabeth McDonough, “General Chapters: Historical Background,” Review for Religious 56 (1996) 320–325. 5 ES II, 17: “Obsoleta reputanda sunt quae naturam et fines Instituti non constituunt atque, significatione et vi sua amissa, vitam religiosam revera iam non adiuvant, habita tamen ratione testimonii, quod status religiosus pro suo munere praestare debet.” AAS 58 1996) 778; Flannery, 627–628. governance in religious institutes 443 religious life further insists that the ressourcement or return to the original inspiration of the founder and the adaptation to modern conditions or aggiornamento be accomplished with the cooperation of all of the members of the institute. Perfectae caritatis 4 states: 4. Effective renewal and right adaptation cannot be achieved save with the cooperation of all the members of an institute. However, it is for the competent authorities, alone, and especially for general chapters, to establish the norms for appropriate renewal and to legislate for it, as also to provide for sufficient prudent experimentation. The approval of the Holy See and of the local ordinaries must be sought when the law requires this. Superiors, however, in matters which concern the destiny of the entire institute, should find appropriate means...

Philosophy, ca. 950–ca. 1050

The leading conception of “Philosophy” in the period 950–1050 distinguishes it from the discipline as understood either in the Carolingian period or the later eleventh and twelfth centuries. This essay takes issue with current opinion on the subject, which tends to give particular stress to the cultivation of Aristotelian logic, mediated above all by Boethius. The focus of the consensus view is fixed on Benedictine monasteries. However, the imperial court and the cathedral schools which arose in the second half of the tenth century received and developed a conception of philosophy based on Cicero’s ethical philosophy that is based on the Roman reduction of ancient Stoicism to an ethic of state service. This philosophy was not speculative. Dialectic played a part, but as a handmaiden of the language arts leading to public oratory. Witnesses to this development include Ruotger, the biographer of Bruno of Cologne; Gerbert of Aurillac; and a host of clerical writers in letters, poems and biographies from the period. The advent of speculative philosophy with Berengar of Tours in the second half of the eleventh century represents a sharp break with this brief hundred-year renewal of ancient Roman ethical philosophy.

Codex by Codex – Witnesses of the Past

AbstractThe manuscripts from the Abbey of St. Emmeram, a Benedictine monastery in Regensburg, reflect the culture and everyday life of the Middle Ages. What the monks wrote and collected long ago is now being reconstructed in painstaking archaeological detail

The Governance of Benedictine Abbeys from an Economic Perspective

Compared to other institutions, Benedictine monasteries show an extraordinary stability. We use a dataset of all Benedictine abbeys that ever existed in Bavaria, Baden-W?rttemberg and German-speaking Switzerland to determine their lifespan and the reasons that led to their closures. The studied monasteries show an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them dissolved as a result of agency problems. Governance mechanisms are then analyzed in detail. We argue that the success of Benedictine monasteries is due to an appropriate governance structure that strongly relies on internal control mechanisms. By analyzing monasteries from an economic perspective, a new approach is offered to understand these monastic institutions and their role as pioneers of governance. The theoretical foundations are based upon principal agency theory, psychological economics, as well as embeddedness theory.

Pilgrims and Prostitutes: Costume and Identity Construction in Twelfth-Century Liturgical Drama

Compiled sometime the last quarter of the twelfth century at the Benedictine monastery at St.-Benoit-sur-Loire, the Fleury Playbook contains the record of a highly unusual theatrical event. (1) It is found the Raising of Lazarus, a play that scholars believe may have originated at Fleury. (2) The action begins conventionally enough with Christ and his disciples dining at the house of Simon. But not long after the play begins, Mary Magdalen enters the scene in ... meretricio, or, costumed like a streetwalker. (3) The dignified Latin of the original text does not seem to capture fully the shocking quality of the staged performance it describes, that of a pious cleric entering the church dressed like a prostitute. One might reasonably ask what the assembled congregation would have made of such a spectacle. Or for that matter, what the monk-actors could have been thinking by presenting it. The mystery deepens when we consider the monks' peculiar staging choice the context of the heretofore established costuming techniques prescribed for liturgical dramas. For at least two centuries, tropes such as the visitatio sepulchri, Mary Magdalen and other female characters had simply been represented through the artistic draping of priestly vestments near to hand. (4) But the phrase habitu meretricio would seem to indicate clothing not likely to be found the sacristy, and therein lies the shock value of the diclascalia. But addition to appearing somewhat bizarre to the modern eye, they also document a contemporary costuming revolution: they are the first known examples medieval theater of a prescribed costume that was not a liturgical vestment. The monks of Fleury did not restrict their costuming innovation to Lazarus alone. In another of the Playbooks scripts, Peregrini, a male character appears ad modern Peregrini--in the manner of a pilgrim--a outfit that includes a tunic, a hat, a staff, and significantly, a leather purse or wallet. (5) Representing a pilgrim with that particular accessory is another innovation attributable to the monks of St.-Benoit-sur-Loire. (6) With its appearance the didascalia, the mystery of the Fleury costuming practices grows not only deeper, but darker--for the researcher is confronted with the intriguing and disturbing fact that, the long history of medieval liturgical theater, the first two characters ever represented through secular costume are a prostitute and a man with a wallet. Why nonliturgical costuming arose when it did, and why the practice was inaugurated such a seemingly unexpected fashion, is the subject of this essay. The tendency among medieval theater scholars has been to situate the Fleury plays within a progressivist narrative that charts successive attempts toward Dunbar Ogden labels the Fleury innovations touches Similarly, Theodore Komisarjevsky speaks of more the matter of costumes as the Middle Ages progressed. Karl Young writes of other plays which liturgical vestments were supplemented by realistic or symbolic objects and about how one case realism is increased when the angels are provided with wings. (7) But that interpretation attributes modern aesthetic sensibilities to medieval dramatists and denies the highly symbolic nature of medieval theater. A desire for is not a suitable explanation of a choice by medieval monks suddenly to incorporate individualized costuming into their theatrical presentations. Fleury's revolutionary theatrical conventions must have arisen from conditions and concepts unique to twelfth-century France. I argue that the Fleury monks' choice to forego universalizing liturgical vestments favor of particularized secular garments reflected a contemporary fascination with identity construction. I further contend that the characters of the pilgrim and the prostitute served as gendered role models for contemporary audiences their construction of new social identities. …

The Corporate Governance of Benedictine Abbeys: What can Stock Corporations Learn from Monasteries?

The corporate governance structure of monasteries is analyzed to derive new insights into solving agency problems of modern corporations. In the long history of monasteries, some abbots and monks lined their own pockets and monasteries were undisciplined. Monasteries developed special systems to check these excesses and therefore were able to survive for centuries. These features are studied from an economic perspective. Benedictine monasteries in Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria and German speaking Switzerland have an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them broke up as a result of agency problems. We argue that this is due to an appropriate governance structure, relying strongly on the intrinsic motivation of the members and on internal control mechanisms.

An Ideal Type of Spiritually Informed Organizations: a Sociological Model

With the insurgence of the spirituality of work phenomenon there is need for an apposite model against which practitioners, researchers and social scientists can empirically study contemporary workplace structures, or even to understand prior types of spiritual organizations. From case studies of a Benedictine monastery and of the Ford Motor Company, the “spiritual-family”, a new ideal type of spiritually informed social structure based on charismatic authority is proposed and compared against Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy. In their purest forms, the spiritual-family elects and Weber's bureaucracy appoints their superiors respectively. A central structural difference between the two is the means for this selection.

Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in Twelfth-Century Germany (review)

Reviewed by: Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in Twelfth-Century Germany Judith Collard Beach, Alison I. , Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in Twelfth-Century Germany (Medieval Church Studies, 13), Turnhout, Brepols, 2007; hardback; pp. x, 348 ; 21 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €60.00; ISBN 9872503515281. Recently there has been a growing interest amongst English-speaking scholars in the place of Germany in medieval history. This has been reflected not just in important monographs like those of Jeffrey Hamburger or Alison I. Beach, but also in collections of essays based on conferences and symposia that have brought together international scholars. The current publication, edited by Beach, is exemplary of this type of collection. The essays are drawn from a four-day conference held at the Benedictine monastery of Admont in Steiermark, Austria, in 2002, where scholars from a diverse range of disciplines gathered. The writers represented came from Australia, Europe and the United States and met to discuss Germany and the twelfth-century reform movements. The particular focus of this conference was Admont itself, a double monastery where both men and women [End Page 193] had studied, produced manuscripts and corresponded across wide intellectual, spiritual and social networks. The collection consists of ten essays that draw on the insights that can be gained from an examination of surviving German medieval manuscripts, locating them within the context of the monastic reform movements that centered on southern Germany. The one exception to this is an introductory chapter by Rodney Thomson on Germany's place on the twelfth-century renaissance. Thomson, whose work has been on twelfth-century England, attempts to set out what distinguishes Germany from a more Francocentric understanding of this period. These include continuities with intellectual traditions established in the Ottonian period, as well as the important role of the Church in cathedral centres, monasteries and amongst the canons regular in nurturing these traditions, together with aristocratic patronage. The unusual influence exerted by literate women religious is also referenced. At the same time, despite the richness of the artistic and intellectual culture in Germany, its influence in Europe was surprisingly limited. Most of the articles are grouped into three sections entitled: Seeing, Hearing, Believing; Preaching, Education and Reform; and Changing Intellectual Climate. The linkages across these areas are substantial. Alison Beach and Adam Cohen have published important monographs on aspects of eleventh- and twelfth-century German manuscript production, highlighting books produced for or by medieval women. Such research has been an important and revelatory feature of research into medieval Germany, and women as the readers and makers of manuscripts also feature prominently in this collection. Beach and Cohen's essays further complicate the complication that an acknowledgement of their presence provides. Cohen examines the line drawings that appear in manuscripts such as the Speculum virginum, from either Regensburg or Prüfening, and the De laudibus sanctae crucis treatise as well as the Admont Cassiodorus manuscript, connecting them to other Romanesque manuscripts from Central Europe. He discusses how they acted as visual aids to instruction and spiritual transformation not just for women but also for men. Beach further explores this in her close reading of a commentary by Abbot Irimbert on the Book of Ruth, written for both monks and nuns of his own house at Admont. Just as Beach and Cohen highlight the interconnection of the spiritual and intellectual communities of nuns and monks, Christina Lutter outlines the breakdown of simple gender-specific categories in such double-monasteries as Admont in the writings produced from such centres. At the same time she explores, through a set of three examples, the practical ramifications of living within such a community. Stephanie Seeberg also looks at a set of late [End Page 194] twelfth-century manuscripts produced for, and partly by, the female community at Admont. She touches on the difficult issue of establishing whether the images found within them were specifically designed for women, or reflects a woman's spirituality. Julie Hotchins looks at the impact of monastic reform on the contents of the library of the nunnery at Lippoldberg. What is apparent in these essays, as in Constant Mews' article on the Admont library, is the...

Indoor measurements of microclimate variables and ozone in the church of San Vincenzo (Monastery of Bassano Romano — Italy): A pilot study

This experiment describes a way of operation in MMA-CH, Microclimate Multivariate Analysis for Cultural Heritage. It is realised by choosing appropriate meteorological and air composition parameters according to the environment to be investigated, measuring them by appropriate instruments and making acquisition of time series to find out all possible correlations. It is possible to understand how this branch of multivariate analysis could contribute to the “science of conservation” by applying an appropriate microclimatic and air composition monitoring and processing. Microclimate parameters such us air temperature, relative humidity, mixing ratio and air composition parameters such as tropospheric ozone content were monitored during a summer period to assess their impact on the cultural heritage of the Benedictine Monastery dedicated to San Vincenzo Martire (Diocletian's Christians persecution). This marvellous place is settled next to Bassano Romano village, in the Sabatini mountains rural area. The importance of the site is established by the presence of many art treasures, like 2 frescos of '700, 2 frescos of '600 (Caravaggio School) and by a marble statue of Jesus (“The Jesus cross carrying”) which is recently attributed to Michelangelo as the original one.

CONCEPCIÓN MODERNA DEL TIEMPO EN EL VIAJE DE UNOS FRAILES DE SAN BENITO EL REAL DE VALLADOLID A MEDIADOS DEL SIGLO XV

The monastery of San Benito el Real of Valladolid in XVth century directed a Reformation of other benedictine monasteries in the Kingdom of Castile in order to obligate to the compliance of the San Benito´s rule. As a result of this, the relationships among the monasteries increased and the friars travelled along the kingdom of Castile. This research is about one of this travels and it analizes the time-conscious and the time-measuring in the course of the travel. The main source is a document stored in the Archivo Historico Nacional. This essay considers the possibility of using astronomical knowledge and devices to measure the time during the travels without mechanical clocks. The friars had a great interest in time, because they measured it with hours of equal length, as we do today. Finally the survey concludes explaining that the friars had an abstract and modern conception of time connected with the diffussion of the mechanical clock and its use.

:Ramsey: The Lives of an English Fenland Town, 1200-1600

In a vividly detailed study of the small English market town of Ramsey, the authors examine the inner life of this fascinating community from the twelfth century to the end of the sixteenth century. The book centers on the lives of medieval men and women and explores their social roles, activities, family relationships, and religion. It also considers the spatial and social boundaries that existed between the town's lord - the rich and powerful Benedictine monastery of Ramsey Abbey - and its tenants. In consulting a rich and varied collection of archives from both the town and abbey, the authors have ably produced one of the most comprehensive and multi-layered portraits of everyday living in medieval and early modern England. The people of Ramsey included clerics, knights, and laborers, and their activities overlapped to the point that the infamous tripartite division of medieval society - into those who prayed, fought, and worked - becomes meaningless. Social roles were fluid, and even the boundaries that separated landlords and tenants were regularly breached. During the turbulent fourteenth century, Ramsey was a community where, despite real grievances and suspicions, lord and town managed to work together with grudging respect. The book also crosses chronological boundaries, moving through decades of rebellion, plague, demographic turnover, violence, bloodshed, and war, and ending with religious upheaval that spelled the death of the 600-year-old abbey and the intrusion of an ambitious new lay landlord with courtly connections. This crossing of boundaries invites discussion of local politics and asks questions relating to the nature and process of state formation. The story of this medieval town brings to light the names and activities of thousands of individuals who moved in and out of Ramsey, shaping its destiny, as the scribes provided them - however briefly - with their own brand of immortality.

Analysis of Mural Paintings in Istria

Fragments of wall paintings from Istria, coming from the Basilica of Guran near Vodnjan, from the cemeterial Church of Saint Simeon in Guran and from the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria Alta near Bale were studied. The analytical instrumental techniques used were Optical Microscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy equipped with an EDS microanalysis detector, X Ray diffraction, FTIR infrared Spectroscopy and Raman Spectroscopy. Red and yellow pigments used in Guran and Bale have bean derived from red and yellow istrian bauxites, as already demonstrated for works from 11th to 15th century. The blue pigment found in the paintings of the Bale Chapel is a lapislazzuli blue; this fact confirms the literature data referring to the period from 11th to the 16th century. The materials and pigments used at Bale and Guran fit with the Istrian tradition and history of painting going back to the first Carolingian period.

Copia privilegiorum Monasterii Gradicensis

The monastery of Csorna (modern Western Hungary), which belonged to the Premonstratensian order and was established circa 1180, received the gift including the copies of the valuable charters from the archive of the Benedictine monastery of Hradisko ( Monasterium Gradicense ) in the vicinity of Olmutz/Olomouc. The earliest original of these charters dates from 1078. There are some documents written in Czech in this collection. The author of the article presents the textual and linguistic analysis of the oldest Czech charter dating from 1398.

The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300-1540: A Patronage History

The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300-1540: A Patronage History

A Time of Great Confusion. Second-Generation Cluniac Reformers and Resistance to Monastic Centralization in the County of Flanders (c. 1125-1145)

The present article argues that the years between circa 1125 and 1145 witnessed an attempt on behalf of ecclesiastical leaders from the archbishopric of Reims to homogenize and reorganize reformed Benedictine monasticism on a regional basis. Second-generation reformers controversially devised methods of supervision rooted in a Cluniac understanding of internal life but formally inspired by the Cistercian model of monastic organization. Central to the development of this new model of reformed monasticism was the leadership of Alvisus, abbot of Anchin and subsequently bishop of Arras. His interventions led to the creation of some form of regional supervision but failed to organize the Benedictine monasteries in the archbishopric of Reims into a well-structured, hierarchical network. A significant factor in convincing the reformers of the necessity of compromise was the fact that their objectives repeatedly clashed with the political interests of various ecclesiastical and secular leaders.

Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fließende Licht der Gottheit. Hg. von Gisela Vollmann-Profe. 2003

The inclusion of Gisela Vollmann-Profe's new edition of Das fließende Licht der Gottheit in the normative Bibliothek des Mittelalter series marks another significant milestone in the establishment of this extraordinary text in the canon of German medieval literature and in the opening up of this work to a wider modern readership. This process began in the nineteenth century with the publication of the first edition (Regensburg 1869) of the text by Father Gall Morel, librarian in the Benedictine monastery at Einsiedeln.

Paul Sérusier: Art and Theosophy

AbstractThe art of Paul Sérusier and that of his artist friends has been interpreted in this essay as having its roots in the Theosophical themes prevalent in an interdependent circle of authors and spiritualists in 18th and 19th century France. These mystical thinkers were less concerned with the writings and indomitable presence of the acknowledged leading light of Theosophy Helena Petrovna Blavatsky than with a more specifically French national yearning for its imagined Celtic and traditionally Roman Catholic roots, smothered, in their view, by secular and materialistic modern sensibilities. Theosophy, “the essence of all doctrines, the inmost truth of all religions” as defined by the doyenne of French Theosophy Maria, Countess of Caithness and Duchess of Medina-Pomar, led Sérusier to seek elemental truth for his art in a remote inland village in Brittany where he painted for many years, to a Benedictine monastery on the Danube where formerly Nazarene artist/monks had created a system of drawing and painting believed to be based on the original design of the universe, and to the widely read text Les Grands Initiés (1899) by the mystic writer, Edouard Schuré. Sérusier's broad-reaching search for the Theosophical roots of art was one aspect of the fin de siècle malaise that led the arts out of the world into dreams.

The Foundations of Medieval English Ecclesiastical History: Studies Presented to David Smith (review)

The Foundations of Medieval English Ecclesiastical History: Studies Presented to David Smith. Edited by Philippa Hoskin, Christopher Brooke, and Barrie Dobson. [Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, vol. 27.] (Rochester, New York: Boydell Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 235. $90.00.) The economics of the publishing world make the publication of Festschriften much rarer than used to be the case; however, this volume shows a great combination of personal tribute to an eminent scholar and a pioneering archivist, on the occasion of his retirement from the directorship of the Borthwick Institute, University of York. It is a focused and interesting collection of essays, the subjects of which reflect the breath and scope of David Smith's work. The first two contributions in the book, by Christopher Brooke and Christopher Webb respectively, present the scholarly work of David Smith as the editor of the British Academy's English Episcopal Acta series, general editor of the Lincoln Record Society, and editor of many volumes of other medieval ecclesiastical documents from the York diocese as well as director of the Borthwick Institute, which under his leadership became one of the most important repositories of documents related to the ecclesiastical and regional history of northern Britain as well as an active research center and training ground for new generations of archivists. Julia Barrow's contribution, Why Forge Episcopal Acta? Preliminary Observations on the Forged Charters in the English Episcopal Acta series argues that forgeries were produced primarily by large Benedictine monasteries and cathedral priories and to a lesser degree by other ecclesiastical institutions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The most active in this field were post-Conquest foundations at Gloucester, Rochester, Durham, and Norwich, and the charters were produced to assert the right to numerous parish churches or tithes granted in the late eleventh century, which was a low point in the production of private charters as well as an attempt to secure freedom from various demands of episcopal officials.This article contains also a useful list of forged episcopal acta and beneficiaries of these documents. The next essay, by Nicholas Bennett, Pastors and Masters: The Beneficed Clergy of North-East Lincolnshire, 1290-1340, argues for a less gloomy picture of lower clergy in later medieval Britain, which has traditionally been seen as dominated by absenteeism and lack of care for parish duties. Using the example from the registers of the bishops of the dioceses of Lincoln, he finds many examples contradicting this view. Then, Janet Burton elucidates how another type of sources-so called cause papers-concerning payments of ecclesiastical dues, matrimonial cases, defamation, and testamentary wills can be used to explore complex relationships between religious houses in Yorkshire and their lay neighbors. …

Unpacking the Household: Informal Property Rights around the Hearth

As Aristotle recognized in The Politics, the household is an indispensable building block of social, economic, and political life. A liberal society grants its citizens far wider berth to arrange their households than to choose their familial and marital relationships. Legal commentators, however, have devoted far more attention to the family and to marriage than to the household as such. To unpack the household, this Article applies transaction cost economics and sociological theory to interactions among household participants. It explores questions such as the structure of ownership of dwelling units, the scope of household production, and the governance of activities around the hearth. Drawing on a wide variety of historical and statistical sources, the Article contrasts conventional family-based households with arrangements in, among others, medieval English castles, Benedictine monasteries, and Israeli kibbutzim. A household is likely to involve several participants and as many as three distinct relationships—that among occupants, that among owners, and that between these two groups (the landlord-tenant relationship). Individuals, when structuring these home relationships, typically pursue a strategy of consorting with intimates. This facilitates informal coordination and greatly reduces the transaction costs of domestic interactions. Utopian critics, however, have sought to enlarge the scale of households, and some legal advocates have urged household members to write formal contracts and take disputes into court. These commentators fail to appreciate the great advantages, in the home setting, of informally associating with a few trustworthy intimates. author. Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law, Yale Law School. I am grateful for comments from participants in the Cornell University Social Science Seminar; the Harvard-MIT Organizational Economics Seminar; a conference on Norms and the Law hosted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Washington University School of Law; and law and economics workshops at Harvard Law School, University of Southern California Law School, and Yale Law School. I thank, for their suggestions, Anne Alstott, Scott Altman, Jennifer Arlen, Stephen Bainbridge, Yochai Benkler, Hanoch Dagan, Eric Fleisig-Greene, Robert Gibbons, Oliver Hart, Jill Hasday, Joni Hersch, John Langbein, Amnon Lehavi, Avital Margalit, Daniel Markovits, Steven Nock, Eric Rasmusen, Roberta Romano, Martha Roth, Scott Shapiro, Reva Siegel, Brian Simpson, Katherine Stone, Lynn Stout, Jay Weiser, James Whitman, and especially Margaret Brinig, Henry Hansmann, Richard McAdams, Robert Pollak, and Henry Smith. William Baude, YiLing Chen-Josephson, and John Eisenberg provided able research assistance. ELLICKSON – PRE-OP 11/6/2006 5:37:59 PM unpacking the household 227 article contents

Glenstal Abbey, Music and The Liturgical Movement

The Roman Catholic Church’s current theology of liturgy is influenced in a marked degree by the fruits of an intellectual movement whose roots lie mainly in the nineteenth century but which came to fruition in the twentieth. This movement is generally referred to as The Liturgical Movement. Pope Pius XII gave official ecclesiastical approval to this Movement of theologians, by commending it in his encyclical letter Mediator Dei (1947). The Catholic Church’s authoritative recent statement on liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 1963) of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), remains deeply imbued with the principles of the Liturgical Movement. The Movement took its rise in the 1830s from the work of Abbot Gueranger of the Benedictine monastery of Solesmes in France. Its ideas were developed more widely in academic and pastoral life during the twentieth century but especially in the Benedictine monasteries of Beuron and Maria-Laach (Germany), and Maredsous and Mont-Cesar (Belgium). These Benedictine environments, with their emphasis on the liturgy celebrated frequently throughout the day, were particularly fertile places for exploring and developing new approaches to liturgical activity and liturgical theology.