Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies

The abbey of Saint-Étienne de Caen was founded by Duke William II of Normandy in or around 1063. Within a few years of its festive dedication, it was endowed with extensive lands and churches, many of which were located in the ecclesiastical province of Bayeux. These grants played a key role in shaping Saint-Étienne’s relationship with one of the region’s foremost spiritual and political authorities: the cathedral chapter of Bayeux. This article engages with a sizeable corpus of archival sources (many of which are unpublished) in scrutinizing a particularly important rivalry that emerged between the monks and the cathedral canons during the later eleventh and twelfth centuries, involving not only their respective abbots and deacons, but also the bishop of Bayeux, the archbishop of Rouen, the pope and the king of England. Particular attention will be paid to the symbolic dimension of this rivalry and the ways in which conflicts of authority were turned into political ritual and public display.

Small relative to its importance as the capital of the Anglo-Norman lordship of Meath, the medieval town of Trim was home to communities of canons regular and mendicants, and among the former were Victorine canons who served as the chapter of a cathedral that was newly-built just outside the town at the start of the thirteenth century. This paper presents a discussion of monastic observance in Trim before and after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, and an exploration of the context of the foundation of the Victorine priory and its cathedral church. It is argued that the Victorine church, one of the first Gothic buildings in Ireland, offers us a glimpse of what was possibly the earliest work of Gothic architecture in Ireland, a now-demolished Victorine house in Dublin.

This study addresses the issue of female literacy amongst religious women in England in the early thirteenth century. Evidence exists for respected and well-educated women such as Hild of Whitby and the Bonifacian correspondents in the early medieval period, yet there is little evidence for women contributing to theological discussions or being educated in religious texts after the mid-tenth century monastic reform. However, London, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius D. iii was produced c. 1220 for a female community, and contains the earliest intact version of a bilingual Rule of Saint Benedict adapted for women in both Latin and English. This article examines the manuscript textually and compares it to the masculine version of the Rule of Saint Benedict, and to its Latin counterpart for alterations such as additions or omissions, and word changes. More detailed attention is given to chapters giving instruction on reading and literacy to assess whether the text assumed a high or basic level of understanding. It is argued that changes in chapters relating to reading demonstrate that attitudes towards women’s literacy were positive, and assume a solid base of learning.

The ‘Monastero di Sant’Ambrogio’ was established in Milan around the year 784 ad and was placed under protection of the Frankish kings. It rapidly became the most beloved religious institution of the Frankish and Lombard aristocracies. Its wealth increased quickly, due to the charity of several grants by private subjects, from their personal belongings, and by emperors, from the royal treasury. The Capiate territory was one of the earliest recorded donations, but, in contrast to other properties, its history has never been studied. Notwithstanding, Capiate is probably the only possession of this monastery where we can still find well-preserved buildings dating from the monastic period, and an uninterrupted series of documents covering the period from the Middle Ages up to today.

There has been, as yet, no sustained scholarship on anchoritic ‘depression’ in the high Middle Ages. Situated in burgeoning research on the interplay between literature and medicine, the present article seeks to address this gap. It examines the attempts of authors and readers to define, express, and ultimately soothe depressive and despairing states through the act of reading. Focus will rest on three anchoritic guidance texts from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries: Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s (c. 1035–1107) Latin Liber confortatorius; Aelred of Rievaulx’s (1110–67) Latin De institutione inclusarum; and the English Ancrene Wisse (1215–30). For anchorites, the practice of reading these texts heals and rejuvenates a wearied soul - or, as put by Goscelin, the vagabond mind (‘mens uagabunda’)

Of the numerous and in part excellent case studies on letters by and to religious women - the focus of this article - few have been comparative, only ever focusing on the analysis of singular letters or letter collections. In the following, I endeavour to systematize the results gleaned from such case studies. My research survey zooms in on two long-prevalent types of monastic letters: the pastoral or admonitory letter and the epistola familiaris, to which the ‘mystical letter’ in Wilhelm Oehl’s terms can be added. My argument will be introduced by an overview of the stipulations of rule texts, substantiating why the pastoral letter dominates in this context and why most early and high medieval letters from and to women were authored by abbesses. This changed in the fifteenth century, when letter writing was elevated to a ubiquitously mastered cultural technique.

The history of alchemy has relied primarily on textual evidence with few studies of pictorial sources, and even fewer focusing on the material culture of alchemical practice. Building upon the small body of work in this area and applying it to monastic sites this paper analyses twenty-three assemblages from monastic sites in Great Britain and Northern Ireland to show that distillation, cupellation, and sublimation were all practised at British monastic sites. An attempt is made to explore the specific uses of these chemical processes at each site with alchemy, medical chemistry, and metallurgy all being indicated. It is concluded, that although explaining specific uses of chemical apparatus at any one site may be beyond the reach of current scholarship, more work is needed in this area so that monastic chemistry can be better understood through its material culture.

Ten editions of the Cistercian breviary are known to have been published in Paris the early sixteenth century. This paper adds to this corpus, reporting an edition published in 1527 and intended for use by monks of the order who were travelling or who held office. The arms of the Cistercian abbey of Morimond have been painted on the title page and the text has also been embellished with Renaissance illuminations. Inserted manuscript leaves and annotations to the text show that by the seventeenth century the breviary was in the diocese of Liège.