Ecclesia in medio nationis

The role of monastic institutions in society during the Central Middle Ages has been much debated in medieval studies. Some scholars saw monasticism as the principal motivator of economic, social, intellectual and ‘spiritual' progress in human society, while others regarded monastic ideology as fundamentally anti-social and oriented towards itself. These debates seem to have lost some of their relevance to the present-day scholar. Today monasticism is studied as a social entity which needed interactions with the outside world, not only to subsist in a physical sense, but also to give a clear sense of purpose to its members. Drawing on recent trends in historical scholarship, this volume seeks to identify some of the major questions that will dominate research into monasticism in the years to come. Contributions deal with the evolution of monasticism itself, its links with aristocracy, the economic relations of religious communities and their physical and ideological boundaries, and the representation of the outside world in monastic manuscripts. Les contributions rassemblées dans ce volume présentent un point de vue à la fois multiple et multidisciplinaire sur l'état de la question dans l'historiographie du monachisme, un domaine de recherche dont la complexité s'avère désormais incontestable. Il s'agit de réflexions portant sur l'évolution du monachisme, ou d'études approfondissant les liens entre le monachisme et l'aristocratie ou les réalités économiques, explorant les liens physiques et idéologiques avec le monde extérieur, sans oublier des analyses portant sur les représentations du monde extérieur dans les manuscrits médiévaux.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Contents/Contenu

Steven Vanderputten (Gent) & Brigitte Meijns (Leuven)
Introduction

Isabelle Rosé (Rennes)
Les moines et leur vie communautaire du IXe au XIIe siècle.
Tour d'horizon historiographique

Florian Mazel (Rennes)
Monachisme et aristocratie aux Xe-XIe siècles.
Un regard sur l'historiographie récente

Nicolas Ruffini & Jean-François Nieus (Namur)
Société seigneuriale, réformes ecclésiales: les enjeux documentaires d'une révision historiographique

Alexis Wilkin (Bruxelles)
Communautés religieuses bénédictines et environnement économique, IXe-XIIe siècles. Réflexions sur les tendances historiographiques de l'analyse du temporel monastique

Harald Sellner (Tübingen)
Les communautés religieuses du Moyen Age central et la recherche des réformes monastiques en Allemagne

Gert Melville (Dresden)
Inside and Outside. Some Considerations about Cloistral Boundaries in the Central Middle Ages

Diane Reilly (Bloomington)
The Monastic World View in the Artistic Tradition

Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld (Tilburg)
Conclusions

Format: Edited volume - paperback

Size: 240 × 160 × 10 mm

215 pages

ISBN: 9789058678874

Publication: December 13, 2011

Series: Mediaevalia Lovaniensia - Series 1-Studia 42

Languages: English | French

Stock item number: 65187

Brigitte Meijns is Professor of Medieval History at KU Leuven. She is a specialist of the ecclesiastical history of the Middle Ages and is a member of the international research network Conventus.

Steven Vanderputten is Professor of Medieval History at Ghent University. He has published extensively on monasticism and is the spokesman of the international research network Conventus.

 

Overall, this is a helpful volume and should be welcomed and read by scholars of monasticism and those interested in the interactions of the church and society in the central Middle Ages. The Conventus group that was responsible for this gathering is to be commended for making these articles available and it is with great anticipation that we should await more of their work.
GREG PETERS, Medieval and Spiritual Theology, Biola University, Comitatus 44 (september 2013)

 

It is a great gift of the collection that it gives attention both to monastic spiritual prerogatives and to the untidy worldly realities in which monks took part. Readers might come away from the volume wishing that the several authors had found a corporate synthesis more convincing than that monks suffered from a kind of bipolar disorder. Still, in their effort to reconcile the tendencies of Martha and Mary, the authors survey some very vivid evidence of robust monastic change. These essays offer rich bibliographies, especially in reference to recent scholarship in French. Their insights and provocations should draw attention for a long time.
Michael A. Vargas, sehepunkte, Ausgabe 13 (2013), Nr. 1