Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society PDF
Preview Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society
Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts MONKS &NUNS, SAINTS & OUTCASTS RELIGION IN MEDIEVAL SOCIETY ESSAYS IN HONOR OF LESTER K. LITTLE EDITED BY H. SHARON FARMER &BARBARA RosENWEIN CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON Copyright© 2000 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 5I2 East State Street, Ithaca, New York I4850. First Published 2000 by Corndl University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2000 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Monks and nuns, saints and outcasts: religion in medieval society: essays in honor of Lester K. Little I edited by Sharon Farmer and Barbara H. Rosenwein. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-80I4-3445-9 (cloth : alk. paper)-ISBN o-8014-8656-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Church history-Middle Ages, 6oO-I500. 2. Civilization, Medieval. 3· Europe-Church histoty-600-I500. I. Little, Lester K. II. Farmer, Sharon A. III. Rosenwein, Barbara H. Br252.M575 2000 274.03-dc2I 99-056454 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegerable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. Books that bear the logo of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) use paper taken from forests that have been inspected and certified as meeting the highest standards for environmental and social responsibility. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing IO 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I Paperback printing IO 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I Lester K. Little CoNTENTS Preface ix Abbreviations Xlll Introduction Sharon Farmer and Barbara H. Rosenwein PART I: NEw PARADIGMS, TRADITIONAL TooLS Monastic Memory and the Mutation of the Year Thousand I9 Patrick]. Geary 2 Perennial Prayer at Agaune 37 Barbara H. Rosenwein 3 Claustration and Collaboration between the Sexes in the Twelfth-Century Scriptorium 57 Alison I. Beach PART 2: TEXTs AND CoNTEXTs 4 Sulmona Society and the Miracles of Peter of Morrone 79 Robert Brentano Female Religious Experience and Society in Thirteenth-Century Italy 97 Luigi Pellegrini 6 Saints and Angry Neighbors: The Politics of Cursing in Irish Hagiography I23 LisaM Bite! PART 3: RETHINKING BINARIES 7 The Beggar's Body: Intersections of Gender and Social Status in High Medieval Paris 153 Sharon Farmer 8 The Leper's Kiss 172 Catherine Peyroux 9 The Colonization of Sacred Architecture: The Virgin Mary, Mosques, . and Temples in Medieval Spain and Early Sixteenth-Century Mexico Amy G. Remensnyder 10 Saints, Heretics, and Fire: Finding Meaning through the Ordeal 220 Thomas Head Contributors 239 Index 243 PREFACE This collection of essays honors Lester K. Little on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Even without this preface, it would be hard for read ers to miss how much of this book is inspired by Lester's writings on reli gious movements, on monastic cursing, and on the social meaning of dis ease. What might be less obvious is Lester's personal impact as a teacher, colleague, and correspondent. Many of the contributors, including the two editors, were once Lester's students. We were transfixed in his classes, not by anecdotes (though there were certainly some of those), but by the intensity, passion, high seriousness, and downright good humor that Lester brought to his subject. He was (he is) a connoisseur of the hu man condition and its vicissitudes. He was not exactly the Ancient Mar iner, fixing us with his glittering eye-for one thing he was much too young, and still is. Yet we felt much the same immediate grip: we were about to hear the most important thing in the world. "Listen to this!" It's doubtful that he ever said that; but that's what we heard as Lester launched into the history of the pilgrimage to Santiago or unraveled a knotty text by St. Anselm. We were drawn into these classes as equals, not in expertise (of course) but in worth. Our ideas counted, and not just as "good student responses," but as contributions to a common enterprise. We were creators of his tory: "Write it as if you're going to publish it," Lester told one of the edi tors as she started a paper. She did. And it was published. These experiences were-must have been-magical. How else explain this largely undergraduate teacher producing so many Ph.D.'s? They X PREFACE rival the number of Joseph Strayer's progeny-those students who, like Charles Radding, William Chester Jordan, Robert Lerner, and Lester himself, constitute so significant a part of the medieval professoriate in the United States. Lester's offspring certainly outdo Strayer's in the num ber of women professors. There is no denying that women would have entered the profession even if Lester had not been at Smith College. But so many? One suspects that if Lester had taught at a men's school, there would now be an even more disproportionate number of men teaching medieval history. Not that Lester's influence was or is limited to his students. Consider the ways in which medievalists interact: at conferences, whether at for mal meetings, in the corridors, or over drinks; through e-mail; as visiting professors; as guest lecturers; as fellow laborers in libraries and archives. Lester was (is) active in all of these ways; and through them he became important to many of his colleagues and their students, not only because of his ideas but because of his warmth, wit, passion, and compassion. But also, of course, because of his ideas. Lester's specific theses are very important, and we discuss some of them below. But to understand Les ter's influence, it is important to realize that above all there has always been one idea: allow your curiosity to get the better of you. Ask what happened-and cast the net wide. Ask why, and cast it wider. For an swers, don't be afraid to read anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and anything else that may shed light. Pursue your interests because there is delight in doing so. Such delight is ever-present in Lester's classes. In the introduction we trace the historiography of medieval religious studies, showing how, in the 1960s, historians began to link religious, po litical, and social movements. Lester was not interested simply in "links." He was interested in the "social meaning" of religion: the elements of re ligious phenomena that expressed a society. In his first book, Religious Pov erty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (1978), he traced the growth of the new European money economy and the religious and moral crisis, then resolution, that it provoked. In Liberty, Charity, Fraternity: Lay Re ligious Confraternities at Bergamo in the Age of the Commune (1988), he brought to center stage some little-studied lay religious organizations of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These were lay initiatives, the product of profound religious, political, and social upheavals. In Benedic tine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France (1993), he stud ied ritual cursing as a cultural artifact of multiple significance in a society of monks and malefactors. The contributors to this collection draw upon and discuss these and
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