Monastic World Research Articles

Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500. Edited by Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner, and Elizabeth M. Tyler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xvi+581.

<i>Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500</i>. Edited by Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner, and Elizabeth M. Tyler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xvi+581.

Byzantine Monasticism on the Black Mountain West of Antioch in the 10th-11th Centuries

This article sheds light on a hitherto unexplored phenomenon that alters our picture of Byzantine monasticism: the monastic culture of the Black Mountain outside Antioch. From 969-1084, the Black Mountain thrived as a destination for a variety of Chalcedonian monks: Greek-speaking Romans, Arabic-speaking Melkites, Georgians, and Armenians. I illustrate the prosperity of monastic life on the Black Mountain, the scholarly activity flourishing in and between languages, and the networks connecting the mountain to monasteries inside and outside of Byzantium. In this paper, I examine three bodies of source material: manuscripts produced at the Black Mountain, texts produced by its scholars, and the letters of Nikon of the Black Mountain. Colophons in Greek, Arabic, Syriac, and Georgian manuscripts display the active scribal culture of these monasteries. Scholars centered at St. Symeon produced scores of translations from Greek into Arabic and Georgian that illustrate the lasting impact of this multilingual intellectual atmosphere. Nikon’s letters provide the basis for a cultural history of Antiochene monasticism. From these and other sources, I show that the Black Mountain was a major hub in middle Byzantine monastic networks. At the same time when Athos was assuming a primary role in the western Orthodox monastic world, the Black Mountain was performing a similar function in the east.

“ACCORDING TO THE BROTHERHOODS’ CUSTOM” BANQUETS OF KYIV CRAFTSMEN OF THE SECOND HALF OF XVIII CENTURY

Nutrition has always been an important element of the subculture of different social communities of Early Modern Europe. Holiday feasts of craftsmen corporations in the cities performed symbolic functions, separating the socio-professional community from the rest of society, and at the same time demonstrated its status, wealth, prestige. The joint banquets of craftsmen on the occasion of church holidays and corporate events strengthened group identity, saved it from blurring, restrained the isolation and individualization of its members. The several-day banquets held after the church liturgies were accompanied by music and hearty feasts, gifts to the clergy patrons of the craft and magistrate officials, and demonstrated the material power of the craft brotherhood and the respectful social status of its members.&#x0D; The books of Kyiv craft corporations allow to reconstruct the middle-class townsfolk cuisine of the middle - second half of the 18th century. According to the expenditure registers contained in them, it is evident that the townsfolk gastronomic tradition retained all the features inherent in the late medieval food system. It was dominated by the meals and drinks that formed the basis of nutrition for the high and the middle-class: large amounts of meat, fresh and salted fish, thick crunchy soups and cereals, white bread, vodka (horilka), mead and beer.&#x0D; The culinary culture of craftsmen was no stranger to imitation of higher gastronomic patterns and habits. In early modern Kyiv, the monastic world and the everyday culture of the church hierarchs acted as a model for imitation. This is where the artisans borrowed their taste for the use of tea, caviar and sturgeon. Another model to follow was the merchants, whose table was rich in various spices, imported alcohol, vegetables, fruits and sweets. Less significant, but noticeable, was the influence of the household fashion of the Cossack officials (starshyna) and the LittleRussian nobility (shliakhta): wildfowl, lavish local and imported liquers (vodka) appeared on the townspeople's tables. For all its ostentatious personality and efforts to imitate the cuisine of the upper classes, the food style of the craftsmen was far from cosmopolitanism. In the kitchen of Kyivites we will not see manifestations of culinary fashion of the XVIII century. The periphery of Kyiv's economic and administrative status made the food of its inhabitants quite typical of the rest of the country, having preserved the noticeable features of the food structure that had been developed in the previous XVII century. In the case of craft corporate records, we can see literally microscopic changes - the appearance of cheap spices, sugars, inexpensive imported wines in the diet of burghers, which were markers of sluggish economic changes

The View from the Monasteries: Taxes, Muslims and Converts in the “Pseudepigrapha” from Middle Egypt

Abstract This paper analyzes a group of homilies composed in Middle Egypt around the early ninth century CE by monastic leaders who had to cope with unsettling changes in local politics and society. The corpus deals with issues of taxation, economic distress and conversion to Islam in subtle and indirect ways, showing the inside perspective of Christian leaders on developments on which we are informed primarily from documentary papyri and historical works. It highlights the view of a certain segment of Egyptian Christianity on Islam and ongoing processes of Islamization, adding to the better-known literary sources from the area of Alexandria, and revealing the existence of internal tensions within the monastic world.

A Light in the Darkness: Theologies of the Book of Kells

A Light in the Darkness: Theologies of the Book of Kells Kieran I. Hayes (bio) I begin this essay with a 10th century riddle and will end it with a 9th century poem, both of which illume the monastic world of the book and of learning, faith, and art in the first millennium in Ireland. So, riddle me this and say what I am: One of my enemies ended my life sapped my world strength afterward soaked me wetted in water set me in the sun, where soon I lost the hairs which I had and then the hard knife edge cut me fingers folded me, and feather of bird traced all over my tawny surface with drops of delight. Then, for trappings, a man bound me with boards, bent hide over me glossed me with gold so I glistened wondrous in smithwork. Useful to mortals Mighty my name is A help to heroes, and holy am I. Say what I am.1 You are a calf that becomes a book. The riddle-poem is found in the Exeter Book, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and it describes the process of creating an illuminated manuscript such as the Book of Kells, beginning with [End Page 212] killing a calf, “ending its life,” and preparing its skin as vellum (from vitulus, Latin for calf) by soaking it in a bath of lime, scraping off the hair and fat, and stretching and drying it before cutting it into folios or pages. The folios are then “traced all over” with calligraphic script and decorative imagery and initial letters using “feather of bird,” a writing instrument made from the tail feather of a goose or swan stripped to its shaft and sharpened at the quill to create a nib. Inks, “drops of delight,” were produced from carbon or from the interaction of iron salts and crushed oak tree galls, varied pigments from clays and minerals, and dyes extracted from lichen, berries and even insects.2 The manuscript was finally bound between boards, “trapping” it, and then placed in a shrine decorated with smithwork. The poem captures the brute physicality, almost violence, of building the book organically from the ground up, wresting it from nature. Christianity abandoned the scroll and adapted the codex format early on, becoming a cult of the book, with the Bible being the ultimate book of that cult. Medieval monasteries had to be their own publishing houses. Missals were needed for mass, psalters for the liturgy of the hours, and textbooks of Latin grammar for the school. Monks made the book, wrote the book, and in the case of the Book of Kells venerated the book. Books were important because they carried on the story of Jesus Christ. When these books were “lit up” with colourful imagery, ornate borders and decorated letters they were called “illuminated” manuscripts. Illuminated manuscripts grew from love of the book and of Scripture, specifically the monastic practice of lectio divina, sacred reading, a slow, prayerful reading of the text, falling in love with it, allowing your life to flow into it. There are more than forty images of books within Kells itself, books within a book. The Book of Kells is one of seven early Irish gospel books held in the Old Library at Trinity College, Dublin, and has caught the public imagination as an emblem of medieval European art and culture. In the Irish collective consciousness, according to Bernard Meehan, “it symbolizes the power of learning, the impact of Christianity on the life of the country, and the spirit of artistic imagination.”3 Each year half a million people queue to see this 9th century religious manuscript; they are people of all faiths and none, and they want to see a Christian book that somehow transcends its orthodoxy and touches something universal in the human heart. In the hushed darkness of the treasury room they gaze silently on it. When I went to see it last year a woman whispered to me “It’s perfect, isn’t it?” Twelve hundred years after its creation it is still a catalyst for contemplation. What is the allure of the Book of Kells and what can...

Women in the Medieval Monastic World eds. by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber

Reviewed by: Women in the Medieval Monastic World eds. by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber Bruce L. Venarde Women in the Medieval Monastic World. Edited by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber. [Medieval Monastic Studies.] Turnout: Brepols. 2016. Pp. ix, 377. €90,00. ISBN 978-2-503-55308-5. This excellent volume collects the work of fifteen scholars from ten countries who focus on subjects including history, spirituality, archeology, art, and architecture. It is not, as the editors put it, "a comprehensive history of female monasticism in medieval Europe" (p. 9) for good reasons that this brief review tries to demonstrate. Rather, the book presents new research, much of it quite exciting, from different eras across a wide swathe of Western Christendom. The geographical scope ranges from Ireland to the west, Sweden to the north, Transylvania to the east, and Iberia and Italy to the south, and together the studies take in the entire Middle Ages, from the sixth century to the sixteenth. Most contributions have regional and chronological foci, even when regions are large and the time-span is in centuries. (The most notable exception is Anne Müller's discussion of the symbolic meanings of space, which ranges from the era of Caesarius of Arles to the thirteenth century, with examples from across western and central Europe.) Several themes emerge: the relationship of women and their communities to male authority figures, from the Mass priest to bishops and kings; the place of women's [End Page 802] communities within pan-European monastic federations, especially the Cistercians; patrons and patronage; the internal workings of nunneries and lived experience in the spaces within them; and women's contributions to monastic and other forms of cultural life. Even in more focused studies, the accent is on diversity. Regarding Cistercian nuns in northern Italy, Guido Cariboni notes an "extreme variety […] of origins, social extractions, relations with the ecclesiastic structure, and aims" (p. 69), while Carmen Florea concludes that "Transylvanian women living in a monastic life in the Middle Ages … had several choices they could opt for when deciding to join a religious order" (p. 224). Sprinkled throughout are remarks with broad application, like Erin Jordan's bracing reminder, "Clearly, the physical presence of a woman was not in and of itself regarded as polluting. If so, nunneries would never have had patrons" (p. 294). And there are genuine insights, too, like Anne Müller's conclusion, "Social behavior, rituals, religious practice, art, and decoration (such as painting, wall hangings, pictures, and images), as well as atmospheric qualities … it was all of these elements combined that created the space of the religious, both male and female, and were vital for definitions of the sacred" (p. 320). What generalizations can we draw? Very few, for reasons already alluded to and nicely summarized by the last two chapters of the book. Matthias Untermann examines placement of the choir in nuns' churches in the medieval German lands during the central Middle Ages. He finds no fewer than seven configurations, whereas for male communities, there were only three. To conclude the volume, Hedwig Röckelein offers an interim report on an evolving research tool on women's religious houses, "Female Monasticism's Database" (http:femmodata.uni.goettingen.de). This ambitious project aims to create a complete repertory of European women's monastic communities founded from ca. 400 to ca. 1500. There are already more than 3,000 entries, but Röckelein notes that "houses in the German-speaking part of Europe dominate the corpus of the database, while other European regions are underrepresented" (p. 358). She goes on to explain the kinds of information in each entry and plans for expansion and new research projects. It says a great deal that my 1997 book on women's monasticism warrants exactly one mention in the entire book. The scholarship since has been plentiful and, as this collection demonstrates, extremely rich. Much wonderful work on the subject is being done—and much remains to be done. [End Page 803] Bruce L. Venarde University of Pittsburgh Copyright © 2017 The Catholic University of America Press

Women in the medieval monastic world

Women in the medieval monastic world

Women in the Medieval Monastic World eds. by Janet Burton, and Karen Stöber

Reviewed by: Women in the Medieval Monastic World eds. by Janet Burton, and Karen Stöber Judy Bailey Burton, Janet, and Karen Stöber, eds, Women in the Medieval Monastic World (Medieval Monastic Studies, 1), Turnhout, Brepols, 2015; hardback; pp. x, 377; 30 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503553085. This edited collection of essays is a welcome addition to recent research on female monasticism. It is the first volume of Brepols’s new series, ‘Medieval Monastic Studies’, which complements the annual Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies. Women in the Medieval Monastic World offers the reader a broad range of case studies that address various thematic, chronological, and architectural aspects of female monasticism in the medieval period. The religious landscape of medieval Europe showed great vitality, and women were able to found, join, and lead – some with distinction – religious communities. They also influenced, and in turn were influenced by, the local communities in which they lived their lives. The contributions examine these aspects of female monasticism across a wide geographical range, including Spain and Catalonia, northern Italy, northern Gaul, England, Wales, Venice, Denmark, Sweden, the Low Countries, Transylvania, Ireland, and the medieval German kingdom. As the editors, Janet Burton and Karen Stöber, note in their Introduction, in his influential work on monastic and religious orders, written over sixty years ago, David Knowles found little to say about the lives of the female religious in nunneries, except that they were ‘intellectually inferior and [End Page 201] materially decadent’ (p. 1). Indeed, there was nothing unique about female monasticism; male religious always occupied higher positions, and nuns only ever played minor roles in monastic scholarship. This collection systematically dismantles this perspective, along with the belief that few nunneries left adequate documentary or material sources for historical analysis. About a third of the chapters focus their analyses on contemporary material culture, specifically examining the archaeology and architecture of nunneries, with fascinating results. Matthias Untermann’s study of the positioning of choirs within German convent churches, for example, sheds light on the use of sacred space within these churches. In his sample of convent churches, Untermann found no fewer than seven different positions. Most conventual choirs took up their positions in the galleried western ends of their churches, but a significant number were positioned in transepts, or in their churches’ eastern ends, traditionally the location of monks’ and canons’ choirs. In her contribution, Tracy Collins initiates a new interpretation of Irish nunneries, which were richly distributed throughout Ireland and totalled 114 by 1540. Collins argues that the archaeology of female monasticism in Ireland has been greatly understudied and her examination of St Catherine’s, County Limerick is intended to go some way towards redressing this situation. Her analysis indicates that the building was enlarged in the fifteenth century and that ship graffiti incised near the western end may well signify the position of an altar. This resonates with other nunneries in England and on the Continent, where the western end was often considered to be the nuns’ space. Anne Müller’s chapter on claustral space reiterates a theme that runs through the whole volume: female monastic space was different from male monastic space, having divergent and completely different functions. In particular, Müller argues that female claustral space, as a form of ‘active enclosure’ where nuns were prohibited from leaving, was often physically separate from the male-dominated church. In male monasteries, cloisters were attached to the church and intimately connected with how the monastery functioned. The close proximity of male authority to nunneries affected not only how female communities functioned, but also impacted upon the physical space in which the nuns lived their lives. Janet Burton further examines male authority in her chapter on Cistercian nunneries in Yorkshire. Yorkshire is also the setting for Michael Carter’s analysis of the patronage of Swine Priory. His examination of documentary evidence, such as wills and suppression documents, along with the architectural evidence of rood and parclose screens, confirms the findings of other studies of late medieval patronage of monasteries that late medieval nunneries and monasteries were actively supported by patrons. [End Page 202] The final important chapter describes the Female...

Reading Augustine’s Confessions in Normandy in the 11th and 12th Centuries

Scholars such as Pierre Courcelle have observed an intensification in interest in Augustine’s Confessions in medieval Europe after the 11th century. This intensification was manifested in Normandy in two ways: first, in the early 11th century, Abbot John of Fecamp drew extensively from Augustine’s Confessions in his own Confessio Theologica; and second, book lists and extant manuscripts from the Norman monastic world show a marked increase in the number of copies of Confessions in Normandy by end of the 12th century. This article offers, for the first time, both an analysis of how John of Fecamp used Augustine’s work in his own Confessio and an interpretation of the manuscript evidence for the diffusion of Confessions in Normandy. This study hopes to demonstrate how an analysis of contemporary intellectual interpretations of texts in Normandy can be used alongside paleographical examination of surviving copies to uncover both the ways in which and the reasons for which books circulated among the monastic houses.

The Tip of the Iceberg: The Material of Skriðuklaustur Monastery and Hospital

Material objects from distant societies and cultures have long been an axis for archaeological research. In recent research, however, growing attention has been drawn to exploring simultaneously the conceptual meaning of material substances as the products of humans. The visual appearance of material is in this respect no more than the tip of an iceberg, where only a small part of something largely hidden is evident. In this article, Skriðuklaustur, an Augustinian monastery which operated in Eastern Iceland from ad 1493 to 1554 will thus be approached as embracing the remains of an internationally based society that flourished on the outskirts of the medieval monastic world. An excavation of its ruins has revealed residues of a society whose material is both domestic and international but still reflects the universally based meaning of monasticism. The Catholic Church is in this manner regarded as having fabricated phenomena through its pervasive institutions, upholding a distinct monastic identity. This view does not though involve a general denial of cultural or social changes as it rather underlines the hybrid character of everything that is and, at the same time, the significance of examining the materiality of past cultures as the creation of humans in their relational context.

Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire (review)

the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire. By Charlene Villasenor Black. (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2006. Pp. 259. $60.00.) This study assembles a wealth of material pertaining to the rich topic of the devotion, cult, and imagery of St. Joseph in Mexico and Spain during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Its theme is gendered discourse vis-a-vis mandates of the Spanish Inquisition and societal aims of Spanish Habsburg and Bourbon rule. Chapters Two through Six are accordingly entitled Love and Marriage, Happy Families, Mothering Fathers, Men at Work, and The Good Death. Of particular merit is the discussion (pp. 151-156), appended to Chapter Six, emphasizing the association of Joseph's patronage with charitable institutions in Spain and Mexico and with the Spanish monarchy and state. These observations invite comparison with Barbara Mikuda-Huttel's substantial study (1997) of Joseph's contemporary cult in Habsburg Austria, but Mikuda-Huttel's work is not cited. Indeed, Black's book, based on her 1995 doctoral dissertation, is significantly flawed throughout by inattention to groundbreaking literature on Joseph's cult and imagery published during the past decade and by her exclusive treatment of Hispanic Baroque textual, devotional, and pictorial features as innovative, or isolated, without consideration of analogous developments both earlier and elsewhere in the Christian world. Other sources not cited that bear meaningfully on points Black raises and that provide prototypes and contextual interpretation for the visual motifs and compositions she addresses include books by Jorg Traeger (1997) and Brigitte Heublein (1998). Importantly so, too, do two 1996 books by Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S. ES., and mine of 2001, studies cited but without consideration of the facts, images, and observations there presented, as in our subsequent publications. Of further help to Black's anchoring of cult evidence and liturgical data would have been compendia published by Tarcisio Stramare, O.S.J. (1997), and Roland Gauthier, C.S.C. (1999, 2002). Germane are publications by Sheila Schwartz and Christopher C. (not Dean as on p. 248) Wilson; Black's bibliography lists only their dissertations. A reference to Barbara von Barghahn's penetrating essay in Chorpenning (ed.), (1996) (pp. 57-89) would have bolstered Black's discussion (pp. 30-33) of the association of Joseph with the Mesoamerican god Tlaloc. Most problematic is Chapter I: Creating the Cult of St. Joseph, along with repetition of this phrase in the book's title. Black ignores both John W. O'Malley's recent cautioning (2000) against too readily viewing the Council of Trent as a watershed for devotional and pictorial change and the abundant archival evidence of Joseph's call to the altars in pre-Tridentine Italy (Stramare 1997,Traeger 1997, and especially Wilson 2001 and my articles of 1996, 2002, 2004, and 2005). Black instead clings to the notions that Joseph's cult was unimportant prior to Trent (pp. 23-24, 33) and El Greco's altarpiece (Toledo) among the first St. Joseph altarpieces (pp. 35-36), whereas I have identified some forty Joseph altarpieces in Renaissance Italy. (Her most recent reference to El Greco dates from 961; major exhibition catalogues [1982; 2003] are ignored.) Joseph was invoked in early Cinquecento Italy as civic and personal protector, his cult having been promoted through the policy of Sixtus IV and Franciscan Observantist preaching. That Sixteenth-century efforts to promote St. Joseph in Europe were centered in the monastic world(p. 24) is inaccurate. Black neglects Bernard of Clairvaux's signal contribution to Josephine doctrine and Eturgy. Bernard established Joseph's role in exegesis and defined his standing in grace as Mary's fore-ordained Davidic spouse, first witness to the Incarnation, and recipient of God's word, gifts seen by the early sixteenth century as the basis of Joseph's crown of martyrdom and capacity as intercessor. …

Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity

Reviewed by: Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity Douglas Burton-Christie Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity. By David Brakke. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. ix + 308 pp. $49.95 The past twenty-five years have witnessed a remarkable transformation in the way scholars understand and interpret early Christian monasticism. In the wake of the ground-breaking work of social historian Peter Brown, a generation of scholars has emerged for whom the study of Christian monasticism must be approached with a critical awareness of, among other things, issues of gender, power, and social construction. Although this methodological shift has sometimes resulted in a reductionistic reading of monastic experience, it has for the most part yielded a richer, more varied and textured understanding of the early monastic world than we have had before. David Brakke is among the most gifted of this new generation of scholars and is already well known in the field for his astute and original reading of the monastic ethos of Athanasius of Alexandria (Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism [Oxford, 1995]). Brakke turns his considerable skill here to a subject of crucial importance for understanding early Christian monastic spirituality: the monk's battle with the demons. It is the singular contribution of this outstanding book to lay bare the roots of this important idea and to delineate the astonishing range of expressions to which it gave rise in early monasticism. One of the virtues of Brakke's disciplined historical analysis is that we come to see that neither "spiritual combat," nor "demons" meant one thing in early monastic experience. Rather, there were intricate and subtle differences between and among different authors, schools, and monastic traditions concerning what it meant to struggle with demons. It is Brakke's stated aim to investigate the idea of "spiritual combat" in all its complexity and variety, to understand how theological assumptions, ecclesial location, philosophical orientation, literary genre and other matters affected this crucial idea. But if Brakke is a careful historian, he is not historicist; that is, he is not interested only in situating the idea of "spiritual combat" historically. He wants to interpret it, understand how it came to expression in a range of genres and settings. He wants to understand what it meant to the early Christian monks to struggle in this way, with the demons, with God, with oneself. And if he cautions us against importing anachronistic ideas about contemporary psychology into our reading of the early monastic understanding [End Page 119] of the demons (about which I will say more below), he neither underestimates nor dismisses the power of the demonic in early Christian monastic life. One might well characterize this work as "historical-phenomenological" in its outlook. The book is divided into two main sections. Part I, "The Monk in Combat," consists of an excellent introductory chapter that lays out the main thematic and theoretical issues of the book, and in-depth analyses of works by or about some of the key figures from the early monastic movement—Antony of Egypt, Evagrius of Ponticus, Pachomius, and Shenoute. Part II, charmingly entitled "War Stories," engages in analysis of key thematic issues arising from the monks' experience of struggle with the demons: the diversity of stories and literary genres through which tales of spiritual battle came to expression in the first few generations of monastic life (Brakke considers the distinctive stories through which the History of the Monks, the Lausic History and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers imaged and configured spiritual battle); the image of the Ethiopian, through which fears connected to racial and sexual otherness came to be crystallized in the early monastic mind; the complex and ambiguous use of gender to render the demonic; and the role of the demonic in framing the ever shifting debate between Christian monastics and their pagan counterparts. This brief summary hardly does justice to the complexity and depth of Brakke's analysis of the texts and figures from the early monastic tradition, or to the real theoretical sophistication that he brings to bear upon his interpretation of this material. But it does reveal something of...

Letaldus of Micy, Germigny-des-Prés, and Aachen: Histories, Contexts, and the Problem of Likeness in Medieval Architecture

Architectural historians, focused on whether form or meaning had primacy in the medieval “copy,” have debated the significance and value of Letaldus of Micy’s statement that Theodulf’s oratory at Germigny-des-Prés was “manifestly in the likeness” of Aachen, as Germigny-des-Prés bore little formal resemblance to Charlemagne’s famous chapel. Letaldus’s quote, however, has been divorced from its textual and historical contexts. Considered as part of his tenth-century Miracula Sancti Maximini and the circumstances of its production, Letaldus’s association of the ninth-century buildings confirms Richard Krautheimer’s well-known assertion that meaning was primary in medieval notions of likeness, voicing an image of a Carolingian past remembered in light of fierce present struggles within the monastic world of the Orléanais. Indeed, rather than answering the question of whether Germigny-des-Prés was built as a “copy” of Aachen, Letaldus’s quote raises the issue of how buildings’ complex, layered, and transforming meanings are rooted in time and place.

Medieval Worlds: A Sourcebook edited by Roberta Anderson and Dominic Aidan Bellenger (review)

Reviews ROBERrA Anderson and Dominic AiDAN bellenger, eds., Medieval Worlds: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx, 328. isbn:o-415-25309-8 (pbk). $29.95. This anthology contains a variety ofexcerpts from medieval sources, ranging from charters and monastic documents to literary texts and travel narratives. The editors' objectives are to provide 'an introduction to the period which goes far beyond conventional medieval history'(Preface) and to 'convey the depth of the medieval achievement: its faith, its structures, its ideas, its magnificence and folly, the lives of its people' (2). Anderson is a lecturer in the School ofHistorical and Cultural Studies at Bath Spa University College; Bellenger, also an historian, is Prior of Downside Abbey in Somerset. The book is the product of a team-taught medieval history course at BSUC. The collection is sorted into twelve major divisions, each representing a particular aspect of the Middle Ages: The first section, 'Introduction to medieval worlds,' is followed by 'The monastic world,' 'The world of the papacy,' 'The world of the Crusades,' 'The world of the feudal kingdom,' 'The English political world,' 'The world of the outsider,' 'The world ofwomen,' 'The world ofthe mind,' 'The world ofthe countryside,' 'The world ofthe town,' and 'The medieval world self-observed.' Each ofthese divisions concludes with a brieflist ofsuggestions for 'Further reading.' In addition to the documents themselves and the standard apparatus (contents, bibliography, and index), the volume also features a useful glossary of medieval terms, with 78 entries from 'Abbot' to 'Villein,' thirty illustrations, a handsome photographic sequence of Wells Cathedral. The discursive matter is minimal, consisting in a three-paragraph Preface, a two-page Introduction, brief contextualizing head-matter for each of the larger divisions, and even briefer commentary preceding the documents themselves. As the collection clearly targets undergraduate history students (and their instructors), it is not surprising that only eight of approximately 160 excerpts are taken from literary sources: Langland, the Chanson de Roland, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory, Chaucer, Gower, Christine de Pizan, and Boccaccio. The literary selections range in length from a generous dollop of Langland (the first 230 lines ofPiers) to a mere squib ofChaucer, the thirteen-line portrait ofthe plowman from the General Prologue. Excerpts from Malory appear in two different sections. At first glance, the volume would seem—with its inclusion of major rubrics for town and country and its two chapters on marginalized populations (women and 'the outsider')— to fulfill the editorial promise of cultural multivalence. Despite these gestures, however, the anthology is actually rather conservative in its ARTHURIANA ?4.4 (2??4) 75 76ARTHURIANA representation of the European Middle Ages, even a tad retrograde: the dominant voice throughout is that of the patriarch and the churchman. All but two of the eleven selections in the introductory section, for example, arc connected in some way to matters Christian and theological: even the excerpt from Malory, the narrative of Galahad's Grail experience (Caxton 17, clxxi-cxcvii), reflects this thematic. And parsing the contents, one cannot help but observe that the first three ofthe 'worlds' are those of the monastery, the papacy, and the Crusades. Nowhere is this spin more evident than in the chapters on marginalized groups. The only secular entry amongst twelve pieces in 'The world ofwomen' is an excerpt from Christine's Citédes dames. Additionally, Christine is one ofonly three women represented in this section (the other two non-patriarchal documents arc 'The Testament ofSt. Clare' and Radegund's 'Letter of Foundation). For the remainder, the usual suspects are assembled: Jerome, Anselm, Augustine, and Abelard amongst them. The section begins with the Biblical account of Eve's fall, and the Virgin Mary figures prominently thereafter. Similarly, only two of the thirteen 'outsider' excerpts are ofsecular provenance. Three documents represent what Christians have to say about the Jews, particularly their causal connection to the Black Death, but no Jewish voice is heard. Lepers and witches comprise the other two 'outsider' groups here—the Islamic Other is not even mentioned, surely a necessary antidote to the casual demonization of 'Saracens' in other sections of the anthology. (The only Islamic voice in the entire collection is that ofUsmah ibn Munquidh, ironically 'An...

The Chan Mind: Transmission or mission-of-translation? Reading Wright’sPhilosophical Meditations

Wright maintains that tradition (including language) plays a fundamental role in the origins and shaping of the monastic world that made a unique “Chan mind” possible. Through a creative application of the Buddhist idea of “dependent origination,” Wright has broadened the hermeneutic concept of historicity in that it is more than a linear and causal relationship of contextuality (that is, the person is always a person-in-community, and the text is always a text-in-context). Instead, contextuality refers to a (w)holistic network of associations and re-associations. The word “tradition” thus becomes an open tradition that is constantly shaped and reshaped, formed and transformed. The meaning of tradition as such is always a “trace” of that other which is forever absent. In this sense, Wright is quite Derridean. Like Derrida’s deconstruction, Wright’s interpretative endeavor, as part of the tradition of “linguistic turn,” seems to become separated from the real world of flux and takes on an independent status, that is, the realm of reading, explaining, and understanding (perhaps mis-understanding, sometimes). Wright’s project fits the need of those who have a passion for “doing things with words,” and those who prefer meditative reading to meditative practice (in a Buddhist sense). Though Wright keeps reminding us that the effort to play language in relation to Chan experience does not imply that Chan enlightenment/mind is in any sense reducible to language; it still remains a question whether his critical “philosophical meditations” are fully out of the “spell of conceptuality” of the hermeneutical circle. Wright might say that there is no need to be out of the circle, or there is no such circle in the first place.

Gregor VII. Papst zwischen Canossa und Kirchenreform (review)

Reviewed by: Gregor VII. Papst zwischen Canossa und Kirchenreform John J. Contreni Gregor VII. Papst zwischen Canossa und Kirchenreform. By Uta-Renate Blumenthal. [Gestalten des Mittelalters und der Renaissance.] (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag. 2001. Pp. xiii, 376; 8 illus. DM 59.) Modern examinations of Gregory's skeletal remains put him at about 160 cm. or five feet, two and a half inches tall. As any student of church history or of the Middle Ages knows, Gregory stood much taller than that. Uta-Renate Blumenthal, who has written extensively on the papacy, canon law, and the eleventh-century reform movement, offers in this new book a wide-ranging synthesis of contemporary scholarship anchored in more than 500 titles by German, Italian, French, British, and North American scholars. Blumenthal also has something new of her own to contribute to the rich legacy of Gregorian scholarship. Of the book's 338 pages of text, the first 136 focus on Hildebrand and provide a rich account of Gregory's pre-papal years including his birth probably in Sovana, his family background, his youth in Rome, his activities as subdeacon, legate, and archdeacon, and his participation in the Lateran Council of 1059. Blumenthal observes that birthplace and family meant nothing to Hildebrand, who counted himself a son of the ecclesia romana, nurtured in the bosom of St. Peter (p. 43). More specifically Blumenthal argues that Hildebrand began his ecclesiastical career not as a monk, as conventional wisdom has it, but as a regular canon. Without diminishing the significance of his confrontation with Emperor Henry IV, Blumenthal refreshingly resists the temptation to organize the book around that epochal struggle. What readers might lose in dramatic build-up is more than compensated for by a rounded, comprehensive portrait of the pontificate. The longest chapter in the book reviews Gregory's councils, an important tool employed by all eleventh-century reforming popes. But, in contrast to his predecessors, Gregory sited his councils in Rome and, exceptionally, once in Salerno during his exile in 1084. A following chapter sheds light on Gregory's use of legates, important agents for centralizing the Church and for broadcasting papal reform initiatives. Gregory's policy of centralization also extended to the ecclesiastical hierarchy.In his relations with patriarchs, primates, and bishops, he proceeded from the principles sketched out in the Dictatus papae (of which a color illustration is provided), which quite explicitly staked out the supremacy of the Roman church. Blumenthal's chapter on Gregory's monastic policy is particularly interesting, if only because the topic has not heretofore been treated so thoroughly. Gregory was an avid defender of monastic liberty and of the canonical elections of abbots. After the monastic world, the book explores [End Page 526] Gregory's relations with the emperor, nobles, and other laymen. A final short chapter treats the pope's death and canonization. Blumenthal succeeds admirably in making the case that Gregory should be remembered for more than Canossa and his confrontations with kings and the emperor.Although billed by Peter Herde as the first book in German on Gregory VII in more than a century, this book has much to teach an English-reading audience. Like the author's The Investiture Controversy (1988), which first appeared in German in 1982, Gregor VII. also deserves translation and a wider audience. John J. Contreni Purdue University Copyright © 2004 The Catholic University of America Press

Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders' 'Typika' and Testaments by J. s&gt; Thomas A. C. Hero (review)

I24 SEER, 8i, I, 2003 such tension in contemporary Ukraine. This is an excellent guide to a fascinatingsubject,and highly recommended to all. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ANDREW WILSON University College London Thomas, J. and Hero, A. C. (eds). Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents. A Complete Translation oftheSurviving Founders' 'Typika' andTestaments (5 vols). Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 35. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C., 2000. xlix + 202 I pp. Abbreviations. Glossary. Appendices. Bibliography . Indexes. $I50.00; $I00.00. THIS is a monumental publication on the history of the Byzantine monastic foundations. It brings together, in a most comprehensive way, the results of scholarship spanning a period from the seventeenth century to the present, making it accessible to both Byzantinists and Western medievalists. Volume one begins with a lucid and detailed Preface by Giles Constable, who conceived the project ultimately to be realized by John Philip Thomas in co-operation with Angela Constantinides Hero. The Preface (pp. xi-xxxvii) explores the typikaand their precursors, the testaments, the monastic world they reflect and the differences between Byzantine and Western monasticism. The Preface is followed by Thomas' Introduction (pp. I-20), which sets out the purpose of the present Corpus of 6I Byzantine documents. It delineates the history of the research into the subject from the time of Leo Allatius to the present, noting the various editions and commentaries. A preliminary section entitled 'Early Monastic Rules' (pp. 2I-41) gives a succinct overview of the Basilian, Pachomian and Syriac monastic rules, and considers to what extent these influenced the development of Byzantine monasticism. The Corpus (volumes I-4) is divided into nine chapters, each containing clusters of different categories of monastic foundation documents, listed in chronological order and translated by eminent scholars. Each chapter is preceded by an introduction written by Thomas, giving details on the author and historical context, together with an extensive analysis of the documents. It explores the political and economic changes that had an impact on the status of a monastery, which in turn influenced aspects of monastic discipline. Each document is introduced by a brief 'Institutional History' followed by notes to the text, both again written by Thomas. Volume five contains an extensive glossary, three appendices, a full bibliography and indexes. It is impossible, in a short review, to do justice to the extensive and complex material with its imaginative and thorough treatment contained in these five volumes. We shall therefore focus on some of the documents in this rich collection. The study begins with documents pertaining to private religious foundations dating from the seventh to the eleventh century. They illustrate the development of the foundation document from a simple testament to a set of guiding rules for a monastic lifestyle in all its aspects: religious, moral and administrative . The first stage is illustrated by (i) the Testament of Apa Abraham, who was concerned with bequeathing his monastery, a private property, to his successor REVIEWS I 25 to the exclusion of his own relatives.There is no mention of any rules in this document, whose only purpose was to secure the integrityof the property, a constantly recurring theme in Byzantine monasticism. It is the second document, that of (2) the Pantelleria, our earliest surviving typikon, which in contrast to Apa Abraham's Testament, is solely interested in discipline. Both these concerns were shared by (3) Theodore of Stoudios, though the essence of hisideal, set out in his (4)Ruleforthe Monasteryof Stoudios,was the revival of the cenobitic life, as against the solitary. Occasional attempts to reconcile the two modes of monastic life were subsequentlyproposed by (6)John Rila in his Testament, and by Paul the Younger, the founder of (7) the Monasteyon MountLatros.The presence of monks able to pursue the solitary lifestyle, however, remained an aspect of Byzantine monasticism as it is evidenced in (I 3) Athanasios's Typikon, and the Ruleof (24) Christodoulosof Patmos in the tenth and eleventh centuries,up to the fifteenthcentury. The Rule of the Monastery of St John Stoudios (4) initiated a reform movement which, with a few exceptions, was to dominate Byzantine monasticism at least until the eleventh century. The Rulespecified liturgical, dietaryand refectoryprocedures,but it was also concerned with disciplinein general, the conduct...

Een vrauwe te sijn op mijn selfs handt

Alijt Bake (1415-t 1455), prioress of the Augustinian Convent Galilea in Ghent, recorded the story of her spiritual life around 1451. In a climate of criticism and renewal in matters of church and religion as well as of education, Alijt Bake proclaimed her own key role as a 'reformer of the inner life'; her propensity to piety and literature is clearly expressed in her writings. This paper proposes to investigate the origins of Bake's self-confidence as a woman in matters spiritual. The driving power of her reformist activities as a leader, teacher and author extended to not only her own community but also far beyond the walls of the Windesheim cloister. Bake stands in the context of the Devotio moderns, with its constant attention for religious and moral education and its special preference for writing as a method for individual and common spiritual development. She appears as a well educated religious woman at the top of the Windesheim hierarchy, who uses the writing-process to articulate and develop her spiritual thoughts and mystical experiences and - as a professional, devout leader of her convent - to instruct her 'beloved children' in God's will. Bake's autobiographical writings also show that her career evinces more than a little mistrust from the authority of Windesheim as such. As a mystic writer, Bake believes that good works of faith spring from freedom of the will and from the grace of God, and that nothing is meritorious and agreeable to Him which is done merely through obligation. To those who do what is in their power, she claims in her autobiographical writings, God will not deny His grace. She therefore argues for a new kind of religious life mediated through literary examples as realistic as possible, and for a conscious and consistent formulation of the individual personality. The latter is coloured by a critical refusal of traditional dogmas of knowledge, while also offering a critique of established notions of the vita religiosa. Following her own path of faith unavoidably brought Alijt Bake in conflict with the male-dominated and hierarchical monastic world of Windesheim. Bake's unyielding struggle for her particular mission as a 'reformer of the inner life', which would include overturning traditional convictions on the subservient position of females in the church, ended tragically with her persecution and early death in 1455.

Nilus of Ancyra and the Promotion of a Monastic Elite

Among the new elites that emerged in late antiquity, none so consciously defined and postured itself against traditional markers of elite status in the Roman world (e.g., family, wealth, education, civil or military service) than the monastic movement. By the late fourth century, its most outstanding members were identified with those few who had expressed their renunciation of the “world” and its trappings by withdrawing to the far desert or countryside. Such new “philosophers” of Christian culture were presented to ordinary Christians as proof that it was possible to disentangle oneself from the web of competitive relationships and hierarchical concerns found elsewhere in late Roman society. 2 Early hagiography gives the impression that the only care dogging these monks in their alternative, monastic world was eluding the visitations, solicitations, and flatteries constantly thrust on them by pursuing admirers. 3 This was, ideally, a reluctant elite, whose members best drew attention to themselves through the measures they took to evade that status. In reality, of course, the early monastic world was notoriously competitive. From the torturous one-upmanship of Symeon Stylites at Teleda and Telanissos to the “theatrical one-downmanship” of monks in the Egyptian

Listening and Responding: Benedictine Spirituality in Non-monastic Contexts

194 WiL Derkse Listening and Responding: Benedictine Spirituality in Non-monastic Contexts A Simple Way ofLife One of the blessings of Catholic life is its wealth of spiritualities: Ignatian, Franciscan, Salesian, Augustinian, Dominican, the Carmelite spirituality of St. John ofthe Cross and Theresa ofAvila, Benedictine, and many others. These spiritualities are quite different both from a theological and from a practical point ofview.Yet there are important similarities. All are connected with a founding father or mother—so with persons, not with theories and concepts—someone who was especially attentive and responsive to the Spirit. All try to incarnate this spirit in a way oflife. All are centered around Christ. In the midst of this wealth of spiritualities, Benedictine spirituality is one ofthe oldest. St. Benedict wrote his little Rulefor Monks in the first halfofthe sixth century. And still his simple and balanced "Manual for Total Quality Management" (as I am fond ofcharacterizing the Rule) appears to be perfectly suitable to direct the daily life ofthousands ofnuns and monks, and many tiiousands oflay people. This paper was first given at a seminar at the Jesuit Institute ofBoston College on December 12, 1998. LOGOS 3:3 SUMMER 2O00 BENEDICTINE SPIRITUALITY IN NON-MONASTIC CONTEXTS By the way, Benedict was a layman himself and his monastic communities around Monte Cassino consisted mainly of laypeople. The Rule has two careful and rather cautious chapters about priests who wish to live in the monastry, and on the ordination to deacon or priest of one of the members ofthe community. Among the many Catholic spiritualities, Benedictine spirituality probably is the least dramatic. It is very down-to-earth, very unspectacular , with only a very limited degree of spiritual direction, not directed at"interesting" enlightenment experiences or dramatic conversions . Whatever enlightenment might occur is of the type expressed in a well-known Zen proverb: "Before enlightenment: hewing wood and drawing water; after enlightenment: hewing wood and drawing water." Benedictine spirituality is as far away from the supposedly spiritual adventures in James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy as you can get. Here is a spirituality that is firmly rooted, without haste, not eclectic, not esoteric, not oriented in a subjective manner to the individual's mystical quest, but instead to the individual 's personal growth embedded in a community and its everyday, often very mundane activities. It is telling that the central maxim of Benedictine spirituality (which is not the often mentioned ora et labora, a combination that cannot be found in the Rule and is even somewhat misleading as it suggests a dualism, whereas Benedictine life should be a "seamless garment") can be found in one ofthe most mundane chapters ofthe Rule, chapter 57 on the craftworkers of the monastry: ut in omnibus Deus glorificetur—"that in all things God may be glorified." This remark has to do with the price level ofthe craft products. Even the context ofbuying and selling can give possibilities ofglorifying God. This is Benedictine spirituality in a nutshell: that in all things God may be glorified, that in every activity God's praise may be sung. This is indeed a holistic spirituality. I9Í 196 LOGOS A Visit to St. Hildegard'sAbbey To bring this before your eyes, I will describe some episodes taken from the beautiful Dutch-Flemish television production, called "Abbeys of Western Europe and their inhabitants," and readers should use their imaginations to provide the pictures to the following description. We will consider first some episodes from the daily life of the nuns living in the Abtei St. Hildegard near the little German town of Eibingen, which is quite near the remains of the abbey built by Hildegard of Bingen, that remarkable medieval "woman for all seasons ." People unaquainted with the monastic world would at first sight find this portrait strange. What motivates a group of about sixty women from three generations to live under an abbess and a fifteen-hundred-year-old Rule for monks? "What are you doing there in the MiddleAges?"could be an understandable question. Little details will soon show, however, that these women are living at the close ofthe twentieth century: a portable telephone clipped on to a scapular, modern kitchen utensils, the computerized...