Overview

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 antisocial and oriented toward itself. These debates remained pertinent until the final decades of the twentieth century, but seem to have lost some of their relevance to the present-day scholar. Today monasticism is studied as a social entity that needed interactions with the outside world to survive and to give a clear sense of purpose to its members. Drawing on recent trends in historical scholarship, this book-which contains four chapters in English (including the introduction and conclusion) and five chapters in French-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.

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9789058678874

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Reviews

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, The American Benedictine Review (June 2016)

"""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, The American Benedictine Review (June 2016)"

""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, The American Benedictine Review (June 2016)

Author Information

Brigitte Meijns is Professor of Medieval History at the Katholieke Universiteit 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 is the author of Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages: Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Politics of Reform andMonastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900-1100, both from Cornell, and the editor of Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication and coeditor of Ecclesia in medio nationis.

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