Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies

Although early medieval nunneries might be thought of as places of strict enclosure, Merovingian aristocratic nunneries and 'double houses' were characterized by a more permeable interface with the external world. As external boundaries became less rigid, the regulation of internal spaces and behaviours within them assumed more importance. Examination of two Merovingian rules for women, the Regula cuiusdam ad virgines and the Regula Donati in relation to two key monastic spaces, refectory and dormitory, reveals the ways in which the nuns' behaviours and bodies were controlled. It also highlights the concentration of control in the hands of the abbess through the institution of confession, enabling her to maintain communal cohesion.

By looking at the Life of Hathumoda, a ninth-century biographical account of the first abbess of the female monastery of Gandersheim in Saxony (d. 874), this article examines how women religious in ninth-century Saxony made use of normative legacies to create their own corporate identity through which they could respond to challenges in society. Contrary to what previous scholarship often assumed, the Benedictine portrayal of Hathumoda and her community was not a top-down stimulant aimed at convincing the women religious of Gandersheim to adopt a strictly Benedictine observance, but the result of the community's own attempt to shape a distinctive identity in an increasingly dense and competitive monastic landscape.

It is often claimed that both beer-hopping and large-scale brewing began in Western European monasteries during the early Middle Ages. However, the ancient Celts already hopped beers, and probably also barrelled them and brewed them on a large-scale. Furthermore, the first beer-drinking monks were in Egypt, where there also had long existed large beer-production facilities. Rather than being innovative, Western European monastic beer-making was highly dependent on both the self-sufficient industry of Egyptian monks (themselves probably influenced by Roman soldiers) and the brewing traditions of Celts.

This article looks to paint a picture of life and death at the reformed Benedictine (later Cistercian) abbey of Savigny, head of Normandy's only native monastic order. Using the abbey's extensive collection of charters, as well as narrative and annalistic texts, it traces in detail the different networks that underpinned recruitment at the abbey, from its abbots to its lay brothers, and attempts to reconstruct the community's lost sepulchral landscape, in particular with regards to the burial of its lay benefactors. As a result, it offers the first such evaluation of a Savigniac community, either in France or the British Isles, providing a case study that should be of interest not just to scholars working on the history of Savigny itself, but also to those looking to understand the various ways in which monastic institutions, both Cistercian and otherwise, helped to shape and influence the wider world in which they operated.

The settlement of Premonstratensian canons and nuns is addressed against the backdrop of the political and ecclesiastical settings of the Czech Lands and Ireland. Colonization was accomplished through political alliances, religious circles, and interaction with the central authority at Prémontré during transitional phases of diocesan reform in Bohemia, Moravia, and Connacht, and Anglo-Norman acculturation in Ulster. The letters of the father abbot at Steinfeld and the abbots of Prémontré indicate their concerns for the future prospects of the distant monasteries, the needs of new communities, and how they reacted in different ways to maintain standards of uniformity and discipline.

The reform of the monastic order was one of the great issues of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Two intentions were clearly formulated. One was the preservation of the traditional framework of existing orders, which included a ban on the foundation of any new order. The second was the innovative establishment of assemblies, to be attended by the delegates of all monasteries of a single order in a single ecclesiastical province. The assemblies, called capitula generalia, were to invest visitatores with power to control monasteries and compose reports. In this the Council followed the model of the Cistercian Order. In consequence of the integration of this decree into the canon law of the Liber extra, canonists analysed it and discussed problematic issues such as the definition of the power of the assemblies and the endangered autonomy of the monasteries. The decree of the Council, although repeated by some popes until the middle of the thirteenth century, failed to come into effect. The resistance of the monasteries to the reform was too strong, and popes had to accept failure. This article discusses the reasons for this failure on the part both of successive popes and of the archbishops as the hierarchical leaders of the ecclesiastical provinces in the field of monastic reform and the organization of the capitula generalia.

Chapels were commonly found in Cistercian ownership throughout Europe but remain an understudied topic, particularly in medieval Scotland. Yet their study has the potential to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the ways in which Cistercian houses interacted with local culture and lay populations through the cult of saints. This article examines those chapels which pertained to the abbey of Coupar Angus, considering the forms of worship which took place within them. It offers an interpretation of 'chapels on grange lands' as not necessarily synonymous with 'grange chapels' as they have typically been understood, while giving equal attention to chapels under Coupar's control elsewhere. In doing so, insight is gained into the evolving religious landscape of medieval Scotland and the role played by this abbey within it.

A traditional view of the Dominican Order as deeply involved with mission to the non-Catholic peoples of medieval Europe - Muslims, Jews, Orthodox Christians, and pagans alike - has recently been challenged by studies of Robin Vose and others. Organized Dominican activities in most border zone-regions with mixed religions almost exclusively appear to have been aimed at Catholic minorities, whereas actual proselytizing efforts towards non-Catholics was mainly an issue for a few individual, particularly devoted friars. The present article argues, however, that this general picture may differ when looking at Dominican contacts with pagan peoples on the north-eastern and northern borders of Western Christianity, where evidence does point to a more organized mission that was actually implemented.

In the chronological list of posthumous miracles attributed to St Thomas de Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford (1275-82, canonized 1320), there are eleven explicit references to religious order in Britain. This article explores some of the themes of these miracle stories as recorded in the surviving contemporary account, Oxford, Exeter College MS 158, and examines their potential to inform our understanding of aspects of monastic life. These accounts allow historians to re-date or extend some abbacies of heads of religious houses, observe the performance of visitations and the care for the sick, and highlight how religious houses were vehicles for communal remembrance and could influence lay dedication to particular cult centres. In order to make these accounts accessible to a wide audience for future use, the article includes the monastic miracles in a fully transcribed and translated appendix with relevant historical notes.

The Carthusian charterhouse of Nieuwlicht outside Utrecht was the fourth foundation of the order of the Carthusians in the present Netherlands, established in the summer of 1391 by Zweder van Abcoude. In 1579 it had to be abandoned permanently. Shortly afterwards it was put up for sale and demolished. What makes Nieuwlicht special are its many surviving documents with information on its foundation, construction, and the locations of buildings of the charterhouse. On the sole basis of historical sources, it was impossible to reconstruct a plan of the charterhouse. The same can be said of the archaeological evidence from the site, which was heavily robbed in the late sixteenth century and further disturbed by twentieth-century urban development. Its documents contain remarkable evidence for individual buildings, and the people connected with them; the archaeology allows a spatial understanding of the complex, the phasing of development, and even the probable identification of individual burials. The result is a reconstruction of the plan of Nieuwlicht, the Utrecht charterhouse.