Minor monastic orders
More general subjects:
Confraternity, Mendicant Orders, and Salvation in the Middle Ages
The Contribution of the Hungarian Sources (c. 1270-c. 1530)
By the late Middle Ages mendicant spiritual confraternities had developed a poor reputation. Their spiritual status was ill-identified: somewhere between requests for intercession necrological commemoration and pious associations. In the hands of the mendicants they seemed to resemble what indulgences had supposedly become in the hands of the papacy: bait that was handed out to extort funds from the faithful while offering an apparently immediate access to Paradise. Thus like indulgences they seem to have been gradually emptied of their substance and denounced (even before Luther) as glaring evidence of the corruption of the Roman Church. Much recent scholarship has followed this negative portrait of spiritual confraternities — unless it has conflated them with other non-spiritual confraternities or indeed ignored them altogether.
This volume draws on the abundant number of letters of confraternity available from Hungarian sources in order to provide a more nuanced picture of mendicant spiritual confraternities. It sheds new light on the links between the mendicants and their supports among the laity and emphasises the broader significance of the confraternity movement in late medieval piety in Central Europe and beyond.
Mendicant Cultures in the Medieval and Early Modern World
Word, Deed, and Image
The eleven interdisciplinary essays that comprise this book complement and expand upon a significant body of literature on the history of the Franciscan and Dominican orders during the later Middle Ages and the early modern period. They elucidate and examine the ways in which mendicant friars established sustained and transformed their institutional identities and shaped the devotional experiences of the faithful to whom they ministered via verbal and visual culture. Taking primary texts and images as their point of departure these essays break new scholarly ground by revising previous assumptions regarding mendicant life and actions and analysing sites works of art and texts that either have been neglected in the existing literature or that have not been examined through the lens of current methodologies such as sermon studies ritual gender and cross-cultural interactions. Indeed the varied methods and subjects of these essays demonstrate there is still much to be learned about the mendicant orders and the ways and spaces in which they operated and presented themselves on the local regional and global stages.
Bruno the Carthusian and his Mortuary Roll
Studies, Text, and Translations
As founder of the Carthusian order Saint Bruno of Cologne († 1101) is known as a leading figure in the twelfth-century religious renewal. As recent research has emphasized he was also one of the first proponents of a new intellectual culture of the French schools as a teacher at Reims before his conversion and retreat to the Italian hermitage of La Torre.
Various contrary aspects of his life are commemorated in his mortuary roll a unique document that was sent around churches and monasteries of Europe upon his death by his fledgling hermit community. Over 150 entries by individuals and monastic or clerical communities in Italy France and England mostly in verse survive in an early sixteenth-century text witness.
In celebrating Bruno’s life and saintly death the many-voiced entries comment upon intellectual and religious ideals illustrating literary practices and intellectual and spiritual values as well as the pragmatic workings of memoria. The present edition includes all materials accompanying the sole surviving sixteenth-century print of the roll. It offers complete translations into English and into German and includes five studies by experts debating the most important aspects and contexts of this singular and multi-faceted medieval text.
Petrarch's Humanist Writing and Carthusian Monasticism
The Secret Language of the Self
The fourteenth century saw an exponential rise in charterhouses across Europe. During this period of growth the cloister walls protecting the silence and solitude of the relatively small and isolated semi-eremitical Carthusian houses became more porous pliable and open to the outer world. Although still considered at the forefront of Christian piety and asceticism the Carthusians began to be more clearly identified with their newly acquired taste for the arts literature and architecture. Gradually charterhouses became major humanist centres attracting sophisticated patrons artists and scholars.
Of the long line of renowned anti-scholastic intellectuals who were attracted to Carthusian circles Petrarch was undoubtedly the first. By revealing the Carthusian imprint on Petrarch’s thought as well as elements of Carthusian spirituality present in his texts this book argues that Carthusianism was an essential component of Petrarch’s Christian humanism and hermeneutics of the self. An interdisciplinary approach involving parallel readings of Petrarchan texts early monastic and Carthusian primary sources together with more recent theological reflections offers new insights into the role of Carthusianism in the intellectual debate on spirituality and the position of the individual within this order. Through Petrarch and his literary works the Carthusian milieu ultimately shaped not only Renaissance humanism but also our understanding of the relationship between ‘self’ God and others.
Les deux vies de Robert d'Arbrissel, fondateur de Fontevraud. Légendes, écrits et témoignages
The Two Lives of Robert of Arbrissel, Founder of Fontevraud. Legends, Writings, and Testimonies
The multifaceted Robert of Arbrissel (ca. 1045-1116) is best remembered as the founder of Fontevraud a monastery of men and women under the direction of an abbess. A restless nonconformist Robert was both famous and infamous in his own lifetime and has been a subject of debate ever since. In this book an international team of scholars - Jacques Dalarun Geneviève Giordanengo Armelle Le Huërou Jean Longère Dominique Poirel and Bruce L. Venarde - present all known medieval sources concerning Robert of Arbrissel. The authors have created critical editions of materials including hagiography correspondence statutes charters and various short texts in verse and prose illustrating Robert’s life and memory. To facilitate broad access to these materials the entire dossier is translated into French and English. The authors’ purpose then is not to offer the last word on Robert of Arbrissel but to make available in one volume the materials that will promote further research and new interpretations of this controversial medieval Christian.
Robert d’Arbrissel et la vie religieuse dans l’Ouest de la France
Actes du Colloque de Fontevraud, 13-16 décembre 2001
Fontevraud: 1101-2001. Fontevraud: à la fois monastère et congrégation communauté mixte où par la singulière volonté du fondateur les hommes en ce temps féodal étaient soumis au pouvoir des femmes. Célébrer le neuvième centenaire de la fondation de Robert d’Arbrissel s’imposait; ce qui fut fait du 13 au 16 décembre 2001 dans l’enceinte même de la somptueuse abbaye ligérienne.
Le présent volume témoigne de ces denses journées d’étude; il intègre aussi des contributions supplémentaires pour gagner encore en richesse et en cohérence. Volontairement déroutant il nous entraîne d’abord bien loin du Val de Loire dans les solitudes boisées des Apennins où le ressourcement monastique surgi du haut Moyen Âge inaugure ce Moyen Âge que nous disons central. Les organisateurs scientifiques de la rencontre n’ont en effet pas souhaité la focaliser d’emblée sur l’originalité de Fontevraud et les étranges comportements de son fondateur. Ils ont au contraire voulu donner à lire l’accident de 1101 dans le vaste élan qui ouvre une ère nouvelle pour la Chrétienté et pour notre monde en ce qu’il en procède: cette réforme de l’Église qu’on dit «grégorienne» qui repense en fait toute l’architecture ecclésiale et sociale des plus hauts aux plus infimes pouvoirs des institutions aux individus et du sacré au profane.