Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies

In 1001 Duke Richard II of Normandy appointed William of Dijon as the first abbot of La Trinité de Fécamp. Together with his patron, William initiated a programme of monastic reform which scholarship has long seen as a deliberate imitation of Cluniac custom. This equation has been based on a corpus of early Norman charters that are widely held to have exempted Fécamp from Rouen’s episcopal authority as early as 1006, explicitly evoking Cluny in an attempt to abolish the bishop’s rights in the election and blessing of abbots. Following a comprehensive reassessment of the historical and diplomatic evidence, this article argues that Cluny did not become a model for Fécamp before the second half of the eleventh century. It questions notions of continuity by demonstrating that both the charters and the traditions to which they pertain are in fact later eleventh-century inventions, which medieval forgers and modern readers alike have projected back onto earlier periods.

By the end of the twelfth century the scholar Eberhard had become a brother in the Premonstratensian abbey of Arnstein. After studying at one of the cathedral schools in northern France, he had eventually become interested in the new reform movements of the twelfth century. With him and his manuscript collection a great deal of modern scientific knowledge arrived at Arnstein. A series of mysterious scientific diagrams added to the splendid Arnstein Bible (London, British Library, Harley 2799) shows an integration of this knowledge into the religious everyday life of the abbey. The paper reveals the programme underlying these diagrams: they brought together both scientific renewal and monastic reform by introducing scholastic sciences into a monastic framework.

Using a hitherto-ignored version of the so-called Statutes of the first general chapter of Benedictine abbots of 1131, this paper argues that the three manuscript witnesses of that text reflect different stages in a cumulative process of legislation taking place presumably between 1131 and c. 1135 (with additions up to the early 1140s). It also attempts a reconstruction of the complex relationship between the Statutes and contemporary legislative documents from the Cistercian, Premonstratensian, and especially Cluniac movements. Appended is an edition of the Statutes as documented in Douai, Bibliothèque Marcelline-Desbordes Valmore, 540, folios 69^r-v, with comparative notes on the previously edited version in BnF, MS Latins, 2677, folios 83^v-84^r, and the retrievable fragments of a lost copy from Mont-Saint-Quentin.

The Dominican convent of Sigtuna, mid-Sweden, enjoyed close connections with the surrounding aristocracy in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This is particularly well documented in a comparatively high number of donations to this convent that originated from a genealogically connected circle within the aristocracy of Uppland. This article argues that the joint support of an ecclesiastical community by a group of laypersons can hint at this group’s collaboration in other societal or political fields. In the present case such other fields of cooperation can be identified in the joint support of the cult of St Erik and the foundation of the helgeandshus in Uppsala.

This article focuses on the high-status medieval wall paintings depicting St Christopher, St Andrew, and the Crucifixion, located in the ‘chaplains’ room’ in the cloister range of the Augustinian nunnery of Lacock (Wiltshire). The study examines the iconography, function, and chronology of these thirteenth-century images, and suggests that the founder of the abbey, Countess Ela of Salisbury, was almost certainly the patron responsible for commissioning the elaborate scheme. Rather than functioning as a living space for the abbey’s chaplains as traditionally assumed, the chamber probably operated as a private devotional space for the abbess and her community.

The fourteenth-century typikon of the Convent of the Virgin of Sure Hope in Constantinople (Oxford, Lincoln College, MS Gr. 35) has attracted much scholarly attention due to its rich illuminations and text, which provide evidence for life in a Late Byzantine convent. This study concerns one of the most important artistic features of the codex: the significance of the manuscript’s group portrait of thirty-five members of the convent (folio 12^r) which reflects, I argue, the social organization within the convent, giving further insight into class systems and the role of work within Late Byzantine monasteries. It is argued that the group and other portraits in the manuscript together express the hierarchy and purpose of the convent, that is, to ensure the salvation of the convent’s elite patrons, a noble Byzantine family.