Overview

Around the turn of the first millennium AD, there emerged in the former Carolingian Empire a generation of abbots that came to be remembered as one of the most influential in the history of Western monasticism. In this book Steven Vanderputten reevaluates the historical significance of this generation of monastic leaders through an in-depth study of one of its most prominent figures, Richard of Saint-Vanne. During his lifetime, Richard (d. 1046) served as abbot of numerous monasteries, which gained him a reputation as a highly successful administrator and reformer of monastic discipline. As Vanderputten shows, however, a more complex view of Richard's career, spirituality, and motivations enables us to better evaluate his achievements as church leader and reformer. Vanderputten analyzes various accounts of Richard's life, contemporary sources that are revealing of his worldview and self-conception, and the evidence relating to his actions as a monastic reformer and as a promoter of conversion. Richard himself conceived of his life as an evolving commentary on a wide range of issues relating to individual spirituality, monastic discipline, and religious leadership. This commentary, which combined highly conservative and revolutionary elements, reached far beyond the walls of the monastery and concerned many of the issues that would divide the church and its subjects in the later eleventh century.

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9780801453779

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Reviews

Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages is a fresh and necessary reexamination of Richard of Saint-Vanne. Steven Vanderputten's portrait of Richard unfolds in an analytical, narrative, and most entertaining fashion. Each chapter reveals further insights about Richard from different sources and keeps the reader anticipating what will come next. Vanderputten argues in clear, straightforward prose that seems to arrive effortlessly at answers that in fact draw on his wide range of knowledge. -Marc Saurette, Carleton University

"""Steven Vanderputten is a productive scholar, publishing a spate of books andarticles over the past decade, most of which deal with questions of monastichistory in medieval Flanders and the surrounding areas in the tenth andeleventh centuries. With Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle AgesVanderputten turns his attention to a monastic figure, who he argues has beenoft misinterpreted: Richard of Saint-Vanne. Vanderputten gives us the mostthorough investigation of the life and actions of Richard to date, and does so inan impressive manner."" -- Greg Peters,Comitatus 47 ""Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages is a fresh and necessary reexamination of Richard of Saint-Vanne. Steven Vanderputten's portrait of Richard unfolds in an analytical, narrative, and most entertaining fashion. Each chapter reveals further insights about Richard from different sources and keeps the reader anticipating what will come next. Vanderputten argues in clear, straightforward prose that seems to arrive effortlessly at answers that in fact draw on his wide range of knowledge.""-Marc Saurette, Carleton University"

Author Information

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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