Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies

This article is a discussion of the interaction between monks, nuns, and their secular kin in the monastic rules produced between the fifth and the eighth centuries, from Egypt to Cappadocia, Italy, Spain, as well as southern and northern Gaul. It begins with admission into the community and moves inwards from contact with one’s kin outside the monastery to the relationship between family members inside the monastery. Though its results are preliminary, this survey demonstrates a significant amount of interaction between the monastery and the secular family, thus reaffirming the centrality of kinship to the monastic project.

A member of the comital family that ruled several Pyrenean counties, Oliba was abbot of Cuixà and Ripoll and bishop of Vic from 1017 to 1046. He wrote sermons and poetry, supervised the building of the Romanesque cathedral of Vic and is regarded as the founder of the Truce of God, an attempt to prohibit warfare on ecclesiastical festivals and holy days. Why did Oliba renounce secular power in 1002 or 1003 to enter the monastery of Ripoll? Because of his subsequent accomplishments, it has generally been argued that he was always of a pious and intellectual temperament, but in fact it seems more likely that particular political and dynastic circumstances led to the decision to become a cleric. Oliba was co-ruler of Cerdanya-Besalú with his older brothers, but unlike them, he had no territorial jurisdiction. The death of the Countess Ermengarda limited Oliba’s options. Becoming a religious was a way of both ceding political control to the two older brothers who already effectively ruled, while pursuing a career appropriate to his status.

A twelfth-century chapter book made for the nuns of Admont (MS Admont 567) contains an unstudied line-drawing depicting a monk ascending a ladder next to a list of vices crowned with the word ‘curiositas’ (curiosity). This article uncovers the textual source for this list of vices in Bernard of Clairvaux’s treatise On the Steps of Pride and Humility (De gradibus superbiae et humilitatis), written in the 1120s, and explores the history of curiosity as a sinful quality in monastic thought between the fourth and twelfth centuries. It shows that, despite the absence of inquisitiveness as a cause for concern in the Rule of Benedict, early medieval monks repeatedly expressed dire warnings about curiosity as a dangerous and potentially lethal pursuit in cloistered communities, but none more so than the Cistercians, who in the twelfth century deployed the accusation of curiosity to great effect against their rivals, the Cluniacs. It concludes by situating the line-drawing of the ascending monk in the context of the threat posed by curiosity in the double monastery of twelfth-century Admont, where the potential for improper interaction between male and female religious was a source of considerable anxiety.

This article seeks to explain a rhetorical curiosity, unique in mid-twelfth-century Portuguese historiography, namely an exhortation to massacre, contained in the so called De expugnatione Scalabis, ostensibly an eyewitness account of the conquest of Santarém in Portugal by Christian forces under King Afonso Henriques, in 1147. Highlighted are several contextual elements likely to have been significant in conditioning the origins and production of the text as it survives to us from the library of the great Portuguese Cistercian house of Alcobaça, not least the espousal by the White Monks of progressively hardening attitudes towards those hostile to Roman Christianity in a discourse that reached a peak in the early thirteenth century. Against this cultural background and re-evaluating the evidence for the time of redaction of the Scalabis it becomes possible to suggest an author for the text and to glimpse the operation of timely Cistercian literary, perhaps even liturgical, innovation at a crucial juncture when, for a moment in late 1217/early 1218, the whole of the Islamic Iberian west appeared wide open for immediate Christian conquest.

This article explores the retirement of male and female monastic superiors in late medieval England. It examines the practicalities of abbatial retirement, along with attitudes towards resigning and resigned superiors, and developments taking place in these matters over the later Middle Ages. The majority of monastic heads died in office, and attempts to resign might be resisted by convents and/or the ecclesiastical authorities. On the other hand, the retirement of infirm or incompetent superiors could protect monastic communities from serious mismanagement. The cost of maintaining a quondam superior was not negligible, and gradually grew over the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as retirement provision for ex-heads became more generous. This had ramifications for the Dissolution process, in which a similar process of pensioning off monastic superiors was deployed.

Unlike several other monastic orders of the Middle Ages, the mendicant orders of Dominicans and Franciscans chose from an assorted list of saints as patrons and patronesses for their friary churches and for their many side altars which were also dedicated to a broad variety of saints. These were not just venerated by the friars internally, but also used in their pastoral connection to the lay public as central figures in sermons, processions, and intercessory prayers. This article identifies a ‘short list’ of particularly popular saints among the Dominicans in the Baltic Sea region, with a comparative look at the local Franciscans as well as the neighbouring Dominican provinces. For both orders an outspoken preference for female saints (the Holy Virgin, Mary Magdalene, St Catherine of Alexandria, and, later, St Anne) can be noted in the region, while devotion to male saints (especially St John, St Nicholas, and St Olav) appears with significant sub-regional variations. Although some veneration of St Dominic and St Peter Martyr can be noted, the Dominican Order never seems to have attempted any major promotion of their own saints in the Baltic Sea region.

The election dispute at Fountains which began sometime after August 1410 has previously been explored by E. F. Jacob, who considered that the affair had lasted for six years ( Jacob, ‘Disputed Election’, in Ruffer and Taylor, eds, Medieval Studies, pp. 78-97 and reprinted in Jacob, Essays, pp. 79-97; citations refer to the latter work). This article supplements Jacob’s work, and presents additional evidence to show, first, that far from concluding in 1416, disruptions to monastic life continued sporadically for almost two more decades; second, it affirms that both contenders were supported by rival magnates and it identifies the two most likely candidates; third, it suggests why the winning candidate defeated his rival, and finally it shows how repercussions from the incident continued to influence the abbey half a century later.

This article considers the nature and variety of forms of patronage bestowed by women on friaries in Connacht in the west of Ireland in the high and late medieval period. Two detailed case studies are presented to this end. The first deals with the evidence for Athenry Dominican priory, drawing especially on the priory’s register, a survival of a type rare for medieval Ireland. The second considers Creevelea Franciscan friary, a foundation attributed to a Gaelic-Irish woman. The contrasts between the types of patronage provided by women and men are drawn out as are the differences between Anglo-Irish and Gaelic-Irish women, in terms of their capacity to act as patrons and the forms taken by their beneficence. The motivations of female patrons are considered.

In the fifteenth century, north-western Italy witnessed a proliferation of settlements of Observant friars following the spread of mendicant friars in previous centuries. It was a vast and significant phenomenon, inspired by the renewed ‘Franciscan’ ideals that stemmed from the original ethical and social vision of this community. Western Italy has been overlooked by systematic research into the settlements of Observants. There is still a lack of exhaustive research by architectural historians that could reconstruct the circumstances of such settlements, detail their construction systems, and retrace the architectural choices they made. With regard to these aspects, the area that corresponds to the Observant province of Milan has been studied in greater depth compared to the southern province of Genoa which was the location of a considerable number of new settlements in the fifteenth century.

This article analyses a previously unpublished fifteenth-century inventory of saints’ relics from Battle Abbey. The provenance of the relics is discussed, demonstrating that many are likely to have been at the monastery since the time of its foundation in the late eleventh century. Evidence for the continued acquisition of relics into the fourteenth century is also analysed. It is contended that relics affirmed the abbey’s self-identity and also its kinship with its dependent priories. The relationship between the cult of saints’ relics at Battle and the liturgy of the abbey is also considered. An edition of the inventory is appended.