Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies

At present specialists’ understanding of how unaffiliated communities of regular canons responded to societal, institutional, and ideological trends during the Long Twelfth Century is fragmentary at best. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that a re-examination of their extant normative output has the potential to yield notable evidence of this response and the ways in which the members of individual communities committed it to memory. It does so through a re-examination of the so-called Rule of Hérival, which is part foundation narrative, part customary, and part set of congregational statutes relating to a small priory in the Vosges region of present-day France. Traditional scholarly accounts interpreted the text as a mid-twelfth-century attempt by the second prior, Constantine, to complement St Augustine’s rule for clerics. Closer inspection, however, reveals that the extant version contains a mid-thirteenth-century redaction of Constantine’s original Rule as well as the traces of up to four subsequent stages of additions and redactions. As such it represents a stratigraphic account of multiple incarnations of the Hérival community and the corresponding narratives of institutional, spiritual, and communal identity between the 1120s and the 1240s.

From about the thirteenth through to the seventeenth century in England and on the continent certain nuns held the office of chaplain in their monasteries, serving as companions and chaperones to their superiors. In England, evidence for their roles survives especially in bishops’ visitation reports, revealing for example the repeated desire that superiors regularly rotate their chaplains. Some literary evidence for the existence of nun chaplains also survives, as in Mechtild of Magdeburg’s Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This article considers the origins of the office and the concerns surrounding those who held it.

‘Reflux’ in distillation refers to a phenomenon whereby evaporated liquid trickles back into the still from which it originated. In much the same way, the art of distilling did not reach Russia directly from Byzantium, where it is believed to have first emerged. This paper explores the reasons behind Constantinople’s failure to become a technological hub for Muscovy, using the development of distilled spirits as a case study of missed technological transfer. It is argued that it was the Orthodox Church’s emphasis on mysticism, particularly through deeply contemplative and theocentric monastic movements such as Hesychasm, and the deliberate disregard of rational inquiry and secular sciences within Russian monasteries that hindered the diffusion of already available knowledge and associated skills.

This joint article presents in published form papers delivered at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in 2024 as well as expanding on aspects of the roundtable discussion that complemented the panel. They encompass a whole range of issues, choices, challenges, and decisions, that may confront both editors and users of cartularies. Together, they reflect the revolution that has taken place in cartulary studies over recent years. Rooted in several case studies of recent and ongoing cartulary editing and analysis, this article sets out how the authors have approached a variety of cartulary manuscripts through close analysis of their form, structure, palaeography, and contents, and in so doing illuminates how researchers can nuance their approaches to these challenging manuscripts.

The recently identified second copy of the Franciscan Liber Exemplorum (LE) exempla collection in the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek (ULB) Bonn represents a much fuller version of the original thirteenth-century collection than the fragmentary copy held by the Durham Cathedral Library (DCL) that has been the subject of scholarly attention to date. This article compares the two extant copies of the LE, the incomplete fourteenth-century copy in DCL MS B.IV.19 and the more complete version in ULB Bonn MS S 361, copied in the fifteenth century. This study examines the differences between these copies of the LE by focusing on their manuscripts, provenance, and textual variations.

Małgorzata Krasnode̜bska-D’Aughton and Anne-Julie Lafaye, eds, Mendicants on the Margins: Geographical, Social and Historiographical Margins in the Study of Medieval and Early Modern Mendicant Orders (Cork: Cork University Press, 2024), pp. xiv + 250, 43 figures. €49/£45/$55. ISBN: 9781782056058, reviewed by Neslihan Şenocak

Tony McAleavy, Malmesbury Abbey 670–1539: Patronage, Scholarship and Scandal (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2023), pp. 298, 25 b/w illustrations. £60/$85. ISBN: 9781783277148, reviewed by Benjamin Pohl

Bjørn Bandlien, ed, Jerusalem in Viken: Crusading Ideology, Church-Building and Monasticism in South-Eastern Norway in the Twelfth Century (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2023), pp. 243, colour illustrations. Open Access. ISBN: 9788202798406, reviewed by Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir

Sébastien Bully, Morana Čaušević-Bully, and Stéphane Gioanni, eds, St Peter of Osor (Island of Cres) and Benedictine Monasticism in the Adriatic Area (Rome: École française de Rome, 2024), pp. iv + 272, 123 figures. €35.00. ISBN 978-2-7283-1804-9, reviewed by Elisa Broccoli

Ionuț Holubeanu, Christianity in Roman Scythia: Ecclesiastical Organization and Monasticism (4^thto 7^thCenturies) (Leiden: Brill, 2024), pp. 487, 43 figures. €160. ISBN: 9789004690295, reviewed by Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen

Denva Gallant, Illuminating the Vitae Patrum: The Lives of Desert Saints in Fourteenth-Century Italy (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2024), pp. 168, 35 colour & 39 b/w illustrations. $94.95 (hardback). ISBN: 978-0-271-09563-9, reviewed by Lauren Mancia

Jonathan Zecher, Spiritual Direction as a Medical Art in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 400, b/w figures and tables. £102.50. ISBN: 9780198854135, reviewed by Paul Dilley

Edel Bhreathnach, Monasticism in Ireland,ad 900–1250 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2024), pp. xx + 450, 32 colour illustrations. €45 (hardback). ISBN: 978-1-80151-117-9, reviewed by Westley Follett

Jacques Dalarun, To Govern is to Serve, an Essay on Medieval Democracy Translated by Sean F. Field (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023), pp. xxix + 229, 3 b/w illustrations. $29.95 (paperback). ISBN: 978-1501768354, reviewed by Constant J. Mews

Mateusz Fafinski and Jakob Riemenschneider, Monasticism and the City in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 75, £17 (paperback). ISBN: 9781108984485, reviewed by Louise Blanke

Olivia Adankpo-Labadie, Moines, saints et hérétiques dans l’Éthiopie médiévale (École Française de Rome, 2023), pp. 512, 16 b/w illustrations, 35 €. ISBN 978-2-7283-1573-4 (print version), reviewed by Nafisa Valieva

Lauren Mancia, Meditation and Prayer in the Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Monastery: Struggling towards God (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2023), pp. xviii + 101, £79 (hardcover or eBook). ISBN: 978-1-64189-312-1, reviewed by Katherine Allen Smith

Henrike Lähnemann and Eva Schlotheuber, The Life of Nuns: Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2024), pp. 199; 38 illustrations, £24.95 (paperback), and Open Access. ISBN: 978-1-80511-266-2, reviewed by Diana Denissen

Carmel Posa, The ‘Lost’ Dialogue of Gregory the Great: The Life of Saint Scholastica (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2024). Pp. xiv + 113, ISBN 9798400800535 (paperback); 9798400800542 (epub). $19.95 (paperback); $17.99 (epub)

Hugh FeissOSBandMaureen M. O’Brien (eds), A Benedictine Reader 1530–1930 Cistercian Studies Series, 295 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2023). Pp. xxxiv + 500, ISBN 9780879071691 (paperback); 9780879071783 (epub). $19.95 (paperback); $17.99 (epub)

Tim Vivian(ed.), trans. byTim Vivianandothers, Becoming Fire: Through the Year with the Desert Fathers and Mothers, new edn, Cistercian Studies Series, 300 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2024). Pp. xxxiii + 482, ISBN 9780879073435 (hardcover); 9780879073459 (epub). $39.95 (paperback); $37.95 (epub)

Callinicus, The Life of Our Sacred Father, Hypatus of the Rufinianae Trans. by Bradley K. Shorin, Cistercian Studies Series, 301 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2025). Pp. vii + 175, ISBN 9780879073565 (paperback); 9780879073596 (epub). $21.95 (paperback); $19.99 (epub)