Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe

Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe PDF Author: Emilia Jamroziak
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503545356
Category : Akkulturation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
As a historical and cultural phenomenon, monasticism always had a close connection with frontiers. The earliest monasteries were believed to be founded in wildernesses and deserts, thus existing beyond society and the inhabited world in general. As intercessors praying for their patrons and benefactors, monastic communities also existed on the border between the earthly and the spiritual worlds. In medieval Europe, however, the frontier nature of monasticism had specific manifestations in addition to the founding myths of monastic wilderness. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the expansion of Latin Europe in East-Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Scandinavia, and into the Holy Land and Greece opened possibilities for extending monastic networks and establishing new houses. One of the most important parts of this process was the interaction between these new religious communities and the social world around them-an interaction that was characterised by various shades of hostility, cooperation, and adaptation to the local social and cultural framework. This is the first collection to consider the phenomenon of monastic frontiers in a cross-disciplinary manner. The book's ten chapters explore the role of monasteries in maintaining political and cultural borders, in breaking and sustaining linguistic boundaries in late medieval Europe, as well as in building and stabilizing Latin Christian cultural identities on the northern and southern frontiers of Europe. Using a wide range of textual, archaeological, and material evidence, an international group of authors examines the expansion of monastic and mendicant networks in Scandinavia, Iberia, East-Central Europe, the British Isles, northern France, the Balkans, and Frankish Greece.

Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe

Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe PDF Author: Emilia Jamroziak
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503545356
Category : Akkulturation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
As a historical and cultural phenomenon, monasticism always had a close connection with frontiers. The earliest monasteries were believed to be founded in wildernesses and deserts, thus existing beyond society and the inhabited world in general. As intercessors praying for their patrons and benefactors, monastic communities also existed on the border between the earthly and the spiritual worlds. In medieval Europe, however, the frontier nature of monasticism had specific manifestations in addition to the founding myths of monastic wilderness. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the expansion of Latin Europe in East-Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Scandinavia, and into the Holy Land and Greece opened possibilities for extending monastic networks and establishing new houses. One of the most important parts of this process was the interaction between these new religious communities and the social world around them-an interaction that was characterised by various shades of hostility, cooperation, and adaptation to the local social and cultural framework. This is the first collection to consider the phenomenon of monastic frontiers in a cross-disciplinary manner. The book's ten chapters explore the role of monasteries in maintaining political and cultural borders, in breaking and sustaining linguistic boundaries in late medieval Europe, as well as in building and stabilizing Latin Christian cultural identities on the northern and southern frontiers of Europe. Using a wide range of textual, archaeological, and material evidence, an international group of authors examines the expansion of monastic and mendicant networks in Scandinavia, Iberia, East-Central Europe, the British Isles, northern France, the Balkans, and Frankish Greece.

Survival and Success on Medieval Borders

Survival and Success on Medieval Borders PDF Author: Emilia Jamroziak
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This comparative study analyses Cistercian strategies on the northern and north-eastern frontiers of medieval Europe. Through case studies of six houses in Pomerania and Neumark (Ko'bacz, Marienwalde, and Himmelstadt) and on the Scottish-English border (Melrose, Dundrennan, and Holm Cultram), the author traces the development of social networks around these monasteries within their own regions and across borders, and explores the importance of the international Cistercian networks for communities located in these politically sensitive areas. Very different socio-economic conditions in the regions under discussion resulted in quite different strategies of land accumulation by Cistercian monasteries in Scotland and Pomerania, which in turn had a lasting impact on their relationships with their neighbours. The author also examines the role of these abbeys in wider ecclesiastical politics and in relation to the key issues of the time: church reform and the expectations of the order's lay patrons and benefactors. In the fourteenth century, all of the abbeys experienced war, violence, and long-term instability. Their responses to these threats and difficulties are significant for our understanding of monastic strategies in hostile environments. Above all, this study shows how a Cistercian model was adapted to fit the complex political, cultural, and ethnic contexts of the southern Baltic, Northern England, and Scotland.

Medieval Monasticism

Medieval Monasticism PDF Author: C.H. Lawrence
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000955885
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Medieval Monasticism traces the Western Monastic tradition from its fourth-century origins in the deserts of Egypt and Syria through the many and varied forms of religious life it assumed during the Middle Ages. It explores the relationship between monasteries and the secular world around them. For a thousand years, the great monastic houses and religious orders were a prominent feature of the social landscape of the West, and their leaders figured as much in the political as on the spiritual map of the medieval world. In this book many of them, together with their supporters and critics, are presented to us and speak their minds to us. We are shown, for instance, the controversy between the Benedictines and the reformed monasticism of the twelfth century and the problems that confronted women in religious life. A detailed glossary offers readers a helpful vocabulary of the subject. This fifth edition has been revised by Janet Burton to include an updated bibliography and an introduction which discusses recent trends in monastic studies, including reinterpretations of issues of reform and renewal, new scholarship on religious women, and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches. This book is essential reading for both students and scholars of the medieval world.

Sacred Heritage

Sacred Heritage PDF Author: Roberta Gilchrist
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108496547
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Forges innovative connections between monastic archaeology and heritage studies, revealing new perspectives on sacred heritage, identity, medieval healing, magic and memory. This title is available as Open Access.

Bishops' Identities, Careers, and Networks in Medieval Europe

Bishops' Identities, Careers, and Networks in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Sarah Thomas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503579108
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Examines the identities and networks of bishops in medieval Europe. Bishops were powerful individuals who had considerable spiritual, economic, and political power. They were not just religious leaders; they were important men who served kings and lords as advisers and even diplomats. They also controlled large territories and had significant incomes and people at their command. The nature of the international Church also meant that they travelled and had connections well beyond their home countries, were players on an increasingly international stage, and were key conduits for the transfer of ideas. This volume examines the identities and networks of bishops in medieval Europe. The fifteen papers explore how senior clerics attained their bishoprics through their familial, social, and educational networks, their career paths, relationships with secular lords, and the papacy. It brings together research on bishops in central, southern, and northern Europe, by early career and established scholars. The first part features five case-studies of individual bishops' identities, careers, and networks. Then we turn to examine contact with the papacy and its role in three regions: northern Italy, the archbishopric of Split, and Sweden. Part III focuses on five main issues: royal patronage, reforming bishops, nepotism, social mobility, and public assemblies. Finally Part IV explores how episcopal networks in Poland, Siguenza, and the Nidaros church province helped candidates achieve promotion. These contributions will thus enhance of our understanding of how bishops fit into the religious, political, social, and cultural fabrics of medieval Europe.

The Monastic World

The Monastic World PDF Author: Andrew Jotischky
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300280432
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
A major new history of medieval monasticism, from the fourth to the sixteenth century From the late Roman Empire onwards, monasteries and convents were a common sight throughout Europe. But who were monasteries for? What kind of people founded and maintained them? And how did monasticism change over the thousand years or so of the Middle Ages? Andrew Jotischky traces the history of monastic life from its origins in the fourth century to the sixteenth. He shows how religious houses sheltered the poor and elderly, cared for the sick, and educated the young. They were centres of intellectual life that owned property and exercised power but also gave rise to new developments in theology, music, and art. This book brings together the Orthodox and western stories, as well as the experiences of women, to show the full picture of medieval monasticism for the first time. It is a fascinating, wide-ranging account that broadens our understanding of life in holy orders as never before.

Continuation or Change? Borders and Frontiers in Late Antiquity and Medieval Europe

Continuation or Change? Borders and Frontiers in Late Antiquity and Medieval Europe PDF Author: Gregory Leighton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000645924
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
This volume examines interdisciplinary boundaries and includes texts focusing on material culture, philological analysis, and historical research. What they all have in common are zones that lie in between, treated not as mere barriers but also as places of exchange in the early Middle Ages. Focusing on borderlands, Continuation or Change uncovers the changing political and military organisations at the time and the significance of the functioning of former borderland areas. The chapters answer how the fiscal and military apparatus were organised, identify the turning points in the division of dynastic power, and assign meaning to the assimilation of certain symbolic and ideological elements of the imperial tradition. Finally, the authors offer answers to what exactly a "statehood without a state" was in regard to semi-peripheral and peripheral areas that were also perceived through the prism of the idea of a world system, network theory, or the concept of so-called negotiating borderlands. Continuation or Change is a useful resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in medieval warfare, Eastern European history, medieval border regions, and cross-cultural interaction.

Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks

Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks PDF Author: Martha G. Newman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081229758X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Around the year 1200, the Cistercian Engelhard of Langheim dedicated a collection of monastic stories to a community of religious women. Martha G. Newman explores how this largely unedited collection of tales about Cistercian monks illuminates the religiosity of Cistercian nuns. As did other Cistercian storytellers, Engelhard recorded the miracles and visions of the order's illustrious figures, but he wrote from Franconia, in modern Germany, rather than the Cistercian heartland. His extant texts reflect his interactions with non-Cistercian monasteries and with Langheim's patrons rather than celebrating Bernard of Clairvaux. Engelhard was conservative, interested in maintaining traditional Cistercian patterns of thought. Nonetheless, by offering to women a collection of narratives that explore the oral qualities of texts, the nature of sight, and the efficacy of sacraments, Engelhard articulated a distinctive response to the social and intellectual changes of his period. In analyzing Engelhard's stories, Newman uncovers an understudied monastic culture that resisted the growing emphasis on the priestly administration of the sacraments and the hardening of gender distinctions. Engelhard assumed that monks and nuns shared similar interests and concerns, and he addressed his audiences as if they occupied a space neither fully sacerdotal nor completely lay, neither scholastic nor unlearned, and neither solely male nor only female. His exemplary narratives depict the sacramental value of everyday objects and behaviors whose efficacy relied more on individual spiritual formation than on sacerdotal action. By encouraging nuns and monks to imagine connections between heaven and earth, Engelhard taught faith as a learned disposition. Newman's study demonstrates that scholastic questions about signs, sacraments, and sight emerged in a narrative form within late twelfth-century monastic communities.

Monastic Europe

Monastic Europe PDF Author: Edel Bhreathnach
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503569796
Category : Convents
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Monasticism became part of Europe from the early period of Christianity on the continent and developed into a powerful institution that had an effect on the greater church, on wider society, and on the landscape. Monastic communities were as diverse as the societies in which they lived, following a variety of rules, building monasteries influenced by common ideals and yet diverse in their regionalism, and contributing to the economic and spiritual well-being inside and outside their precincts. This interdisciplinary volume presents the diversity of medieval European monasticism with a particular emphasis on its impact on its immediate environs. Geographically it covers from the far west in Ireland, Scotland and Wales through Scandinavia, south to the Iberian Peninsula, and onto the continent to the east in Romania. Drawing on archaeological, art and architectural, textual and topographical evidence, the contributors explore how monastic communities were formed, how they created a landscape of monasticism, how they wove their identities with those around them, and how they interacted with all levels of society to leave a lasting imprint on European towns and rural landscapes.

The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe

The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Emilia Jamroziak
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317341899
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe offers an accessible and engaging history of the Order from its beginnings in the twelfth century through to the early sixteenth century. Unlike most other existing volumes on this subject it gives a nuanced analysis of the late medieval Cistercian experience as well as the early years of the Order. Jamroziak argues that the story of the Cistercian Order in the Middle Ages was not one of a ‘Golden Age’ followed by decline, nor was the true ‘Cistercian spirit’ exclusively embedded in the early texts to remain unchanged for centuries. Instead she shows how the Order functioned and changed over time as an international organisation, held together by a novel 'management system'; from Estonia in the east to Portugal in the west, and from Norway to Italy. The ability to adapt and respond to these very different social and economic conditions is what made the Cistercians so successful. This book draws upon a wide range of primary sources, as well as scholarly literature in several languages, to explore the following key areas: the degree of centralisation versus local specificity how much the contact between monastic communities and lay people changed over time how the concept of reform was central to the Medieval history of the Cistercian Order This book will appeal to anyone interested in Medieval history and the Medieval Church more generally as well as those with a particular interest in monasticism.