Ecclesia in Medio Nationis: Reflections on the Study of Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages

216 Pages·2012·22.595 MB·English

by  Brigitte Meijns, Steven Vanderputten

EcclEsia in mEdio nationis
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MEDIAEVALIA LOVANIENSIA
Editorial Board
Geert Claessens (Leuven)
Hans Cools (Leuven)
Pieter De Leemans (Leuven)
Brian Patrick McGuire (Roskilde)
Baudouin Van den Abeele (Louvain-la-Neuve)
SERIES I / StUDIA XLII
KAtHOLIEKE UNIVERSItEIt LEUVEN
INStItUUt VOOR MIDDELEEUwSE EN RENAISSANCEStUDIES
LEUVEN (BELGIUM)
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EcclEsia
in mEdio nationis
Reflections on the study of monasticism
in the centRal middle ages
•
Réflexions suR l’étude du monachisme
au moyen Âge centRal
edited by/edité par
steven VandeRputten
& Brigitte meijns
leuVen uniVeRsity pRess
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With support of:
www.conventus.ugent.be
© 2011 Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers
Leuven, Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium).

All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this
publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated datafile or made public in any
way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers.
ISBN 978 90 5867 887 4
D/2011/1869/57
NUR: 684
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CONtENtS/CONtENU
Steven Vanderputten (Gent) & Brigitte MeijnS (Leuven)
Introduction 7
Isabelle roSé (Rennes)
Les moines et leur vie communautaire du IXe au XIIe siècle.
tour d’horizon historiographique 11
florian Mazel (Rennes)
Monachisme et aristocratie aux Xe-XIe siècles.
Un regard sur l’historiographie récente 47
Nicolas Ruffini & jean-françois NieuS (Namur)
Société seigneuriale, réformes ecclésiales:
les enjeux documentaires d’une révision historiographique 77
Alexis wilkin (Bruxelles)
Communautés religieuses bénédictines et environnement
économique, IXe-XIIe siècles. Réflexions sur les tendances
historiographiques de l’analyse du temporel monastique 101
Harald Sellner (tübingen)
L es communautés religieuses du Moyen Age central
et la recherche des réformes monastiques en Allemagne 151
Gert MelVille (Dresden)
Inside and Outside. Some Considerations about Cloistral
Boundaries in the Central Middle Ages 167
Diane Reilly (Bloomington)
the Monastic world View in the Artistic tradition 183
Arnoud- jan BijSterVeld (tilburg)
Conclusions 211
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Steven VANDERPUttEN
& Brigitte MEIjNS
IntroductIon
the Benedictine hagiographer Gualbert of Marchiennes († c. 1130) did not
shy away from expressive language to describe the plight of past genera-
tions of monks. His account of the abbacy of Alberic (1033-1048) includes
the following remark: “this abbey, which was situated in the midst of a
perverted nation, was fighting a legitimate battle; it exceedingly pleased
the divine onlooker because of its troubles and distress”1. Gualbert’s com-
ment can be read in at least two different ways. One is historical, for it is
embedded in a narrative that deals with the contemporaneous fragmenta-
tion of political power and the ensuing conflicts over property and status.
Gualbert’s judgment that the nation was ‘perverted’ derived from a real
or supposed state of lawlessness and disorder that threatened the physical
integrity of the monastery. His characterization of the monks’ battle as
‘legitimate’ stems from a discourse central to the various means (symbolic
and legal) by which monks confronted their enemies. Gualbert’s comment
can also be read ideologically, for it reflects a vision of the monastery as
an island in the world, a symbolical space whose occupants were waging
a systematic battle against the continuing impact of original sin on hu-
man existence. thus, ‘perverted’ human society not only functioned as
a perpetual backdrop to the monastic existence, but also gave it purpose.
this paradox of the vita regularis (outwardly and inwardly focused,
and outwardly and inwardly modeled) is now recognized by most schol-
ars as a key paradigm with which investigations into the monastic phe-
nomenon can be framed. In a number of fields – most notably that of the
ordensforschung or study of the monastic orders of the twelfth to fifteenth
centuries – it has now become common practice to refer systematically to
this paradigm when situating one’s research in a broader context. How-
ever, in the study of monasticism in the period between c. 900 and c. 1150,
sometimes known as the ‘golden age’ of Benedictine monasticism, such
references to an overarching paradigm are often missing. this is under-
standable to a degree. Much of the explicit reflection is determined by
1. “Quod autem ecclesia, in medio nationis perversae sita, erat legitime decertans; per
tribulationes et angustias magis divinis adspectibus complacebat”; acta sanctorum maii
iii, Antwerp, 1688, col. 94.
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8 S. VANDERPUttEN AND B. MEIjNS
the problematic status of the primary evidence, and by the other debates
(the mutation féodale being one example) that dominate the study of this
period in western history. the comparative lack of an explicit common
focus to studies of this period has engendered, over the last two decades,
multiple attempts to establish a status quaestionis of research. In 1993, the
Revue bénédictine devoted a special issue to the history of high medieval
monasticism2, while in 1998, the more broadly conceived les tendances
actuelles de l’histoire du moyen Âge en France et en allemagne addressed
some of the central themes of monastic studies3. Articles by Dominique
Iogna-Prat and Barbara Rosenwein in the 2001 volume dove va la storio­
grafia monastica in Europa updated several of the surveys featured in
the two previous collections4, while Anne-Marie Helvétius briefly peered
into the future of monastic studies in her 2003 contribution to mediävistik
im 21. Jahrhundert. stand und Perspektiven5. the reading of these vari-
ous publications not only makes for a fascinating panorama of monastic
studies since the late nineteenth century, but has also allowed scholars to
reach a consensus on the main research challenges for several decades to
come. One of those challenges will be to examine the central narratives of
the period in light of this model of ‘inside versus outside’ which is latent
within them. this volume is, in part, a first contribution to that effort.
Exactly a decade after the last major survey was published it is still too
early to attempt a new, comprehensive evaluation of trends in monastic
studies. But as twenty-first century scholarship has become accustomed
to looking at historical research as a work-in-progress, and since so much
is published every year that it is almost impossible to keep track of subtle
changes in the debate, it has become useful, some might say necessary, to
increase the rate of evaluative reports. when the International Research
Network ‘Conventus. Problems of religious communal life in the cen-
2. le monachisme à Byzance et en occident du Viiie au Xe siècle. aspects internes et
relations avec la société. actes du colloque international organisé par la section d’Histoire
de l’UlB en collaboration avec l’abbaye de maredsous (14­16 mai 1992), a. dierkenS, d.
MiSonne and j. M. SanSterre eds., Maredsous, 1993 (= Revue bénédictine, 103/1-2).
3. les tendances actuelles de l’histoire du moyen Âge en France et en allemagne. actes
des colloques de sèvres (1997) et Göttingen (1998) organisés par le cnRs et le max­
Planck­institut für Geschichte, j.-C. SChMitt and o. G. oexle eds., Paris, 2002.
4. dove va la storiografia monastica in Europa? temi e metodi di ricerca per lo studio
della vita monastica e regolare in età medievale alle soglie del terzo millennio. atti del
convegno internazionale Brescia­Rodengo, 23­25 marzo 2000, G. andenna ed., Milan,
2001.
5. A.-M. helVétiuS, Comment écrire une nouvelle histoire du monachisme?, in me­
diävistik im 21. Jahrhundert. stand und Perspektiven der internationalen und interdiszipli­
nären mittelalterforschung, H. w. Goetz and j. jarnut eds., Paderborn, 2003, p. 443-455.
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INtRODUCtION 9
tral middle ages’ (http://www.conventus.ugent.be) was founded in 2009,
the members made it one of their primary goals to provide scholarship
with a more dynamic assessment of the current state of play in this field.
thus, on 23 October 2009, they invited several experts to the Catholic
University of Leuven in Belgium to present their views on the current
state of monastic studies. Each scholar responded in a different way to
the organisers’ request. Some came with an evaluation of scholarship over
the last two decades, combined with an outlook on future research; oth-
ers opted to focus squarely on the task ahead; while still others explored
the possibilities and limitations of scholarship’s current understanding of
the aforementioned paradigm. Ranging from a debate on the evolution of
monasticism itself in western francia and the Empire, to a discussion of
links with the aristocracy, with economic realities, physical and ideologi-
cal boundaries between the monastery and the outside world and, finally,
representations of the outside world in monastic manuscripts, the papers
presented a multifaceted and multi disciplinary outlook on a field of study
that has become bewildering in its complexity.
It is this complexity which the editors wanted to preserve in the current
volume, which contains reworked versions of the papers presented at the
Louvain conference. Its principal aim is to give some insight as to where
scholarship is currently heading, and provide the materials for further re-
flection and debate.

the editors of this volume would like to thank the Onderzoekseenheid
Geschiedenis van de Middeleeuwen of the K.U.Leuven for helping with
the organisation of the symposium at Leuven, and the fwO-flanders for
funding the International Research Network conventus.
Ghent University
Catholic University of Leuven
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