Download or read book Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages written by Steven Vanderputten and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the turn of the first millennium AD, there emerged in the former Carolingian Empire a generation of abbots that came to be remembered as one of the most influential in the history of Western monasticism. In this book Steven Vanderputten reevaluates the historical significance of this generation of monastic leaders through an in-depth study of one of its most prominent figures, Richard of Saint-Vanne. During his lifetime, Richard (d. 1046) served as abbot of numerous monasteries, which gained him a reputation as a highly successful administrator and reformer of monastic discipline. As Vanderputten shows, however, a more complex view of Richard’s career, spirituality, and motivations enables us to better evaluate his achievements as church leader and reformer. Vanderputten analyzes various accounts of Richard’s life, contemporary sources that are revealing of his worldview and self-conception, and the evidence relating to his actions as a monastic reformer and as a promoter of conversion. Richard himself conceived of his life as an evolving commentary on a wide range of issues relating to individual spirituality, monastic discipline, and religious leadership. This commentary, which combined highly conservative and revolutionary elements, reached far beyond the walls of the monastery and concerned many of the issues that would divide the church and its subjects in the later eleventh century.

Download or read book Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages written by Steven Vanderputten and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the turn of the first millennium AD, there emerged in the former Carolingian Empire a generation of abbots that came to be remembered as one of the most influential in the history of Western monasticism. In this book Steven Vanderputten reevaluates the historical significance of this generation of monastic leaders through an in-depth study of one of its most prominent figures, Richard of Saint-Vanne. During his lifetime, Richard (d. 1046) served as abbot of numerous monasteries, which gained him a reputation as a highly successful administrator and reformer of monastic discipline. As Vanderputten shows, however, a more complex view of Richard's career, spirituality, and motivations enables us to better evaluate his achievements as church leader and reformer.Vanderputten analyzes various accounts of Richard’s life, contemporary sources that are revealing of his worldview and self-conception, and the evidence relating to his actions as a monastic reformer and as a promoter of conversion. Richard himself conceived of his life as an evolving commentary on a wide range of issues relating to individual spirituality, monastic discipline, and religious leadership. This commentary, which combined highly conservative and revolutionary elements, reached far beyond the walls of the monastery and concerned many of the issues that would divide the church and its subjects in the later eleventh century.

Download or read book Dark Age Nunneries written by Steven Vanderputten and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten dismantles the common view of women religious between 800 and 1050 as disempowered or even disinterested witnesses to their own lives. It is based on a study of primary sources from forty female monastic communities in Lotharingia—a politically and culturally diverse region that boasted an extraordinarily high number of such institutions. Vanderputten highlights the attempts by women religious and their leaders, as well as the clerics and the laymen and -women sympathetic to their cause, to construct localized narratives of self, preserve or expand their agency as religious communities, and remain involved in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of the laity amid changing contexts and expectations on the part of the Church and secular authorities. Rather than a "dark age" in which female monasticism withered under such factors as the assertion of male religious authority, the secularization of its institutions, and the precipitous decline of their intellectual and spiritual life, Vanderputten finds that the post-Carolingian period witnessed a remarkable adaptability among these women. Through texts, objects, archaeological remains, and iconography, Dark Age Nunneries offers scholars of religion, medieval history, and gender studies new ways to understand the experience of women of faith within the Church and across society during this era.

Download or read book Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians written by Chris R. Armstrong and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Christians today tend to view the story of medieval faith as a cautionary tale. Too often, they dismiss the Middle Ages as a period of corruption and decay in the church. They seem to assume that the church apostatized from true Christianity after it gained cultural influence in the time of Constantine, and the faith was only later recovered by the sixteenth-century Reformers or even the eighteenth-century revivalists. As a result, the riches and wisdom of the medieval period have remained largely inaccessible to modern Protestants. Church historian Chris Armstrong helps readers see beyond modern caricatures of the medieval church to the animating Christian spirit of that age. He believes today's church could learn a number of lessons from medieval faith, such as how the gospel speaks to ordinary, embodied human life in this world. Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians explores key ideas, figures, and movements from the Middle Ages in conversation with C. S. Lewis and other thinkers, helping contemporary Christians discover authentic faith and renewal in a forgotten age.

Download or read book Monastic Reform as Process written by Steven Vanderputten and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of monastic institutions in the Middle Ages may at first appear remarkably uniform and predictable. Medieval commentators and modern scholars have observed how monasteries of the tenth to early twelfth centuries experienced long periods of stasis alternating with bursts of rapid development known as reforms. Charismatic leaders by sheer force of will, and by assiduously recruiting the support of the ecclesiastical and lay elites, pushed monasticism forward toward reform, remediating the inevitable decline of discipline and government in these institutions. A lack of concrete information on what happened at individual monasteries is not regarded as a significant problem, as long as there is the possibility to reconstruct the reformers' ''program.'' While this general picture makes for a compelling narrative, it doesn't necessarily hold up when one looks closely at the history of specific institutions. In Monastic Reform as Process, Steven Vanderputten puts the history of monastic reform to the test by examining the evidence from seven monasteries in Flanders, one of the wealthiest principalities of northwestern Europe, between 900 and 1100. He finds that the reform of a monastery should be studied not as an "exogenous shock" but as an intentional blending of reformist ideals with existing structures and traditions. He also shows that reformist government was cumulative in nature, and many of the individual achievements and initiatives of reformist abbots were only possible because they built upon previous achievements. Rather than looking at reforms as "flashpoint events," we need to view them as processes worthy of study in their own right. Deeply researched and carefully argued, Monastic Reform as Process will be essential reading for scholars working on the history of monasteries more broadly as well as those studying the phenomenon of reform throughout history.

Download or read book Saracens written by John Victor Tolan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval Christian writers distorted the teachings of Islam and caricatured its believers in a variety of ways. This book provides a comprehensive study of Christian polemical responses to Islam in the Middle Ages.

Download or read book Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai Translation and Commentary written by Bernard S. Bachrach and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First commissioned by Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai (1012-1051) in 1023 or 1024, the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium was the work of two authors, the second of whom completed the text shortly after the death of Bishop Gerard. The three books of the Gesta shed considerable light on the policies and actions of many of the key political and religious figures in an economically and intellectually vibrant region on the frontier between the German and French kingdoms. The Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, translated in this volume into English for the first time, provides unique insights into the relationship between the German king and the bishops within the context of the so-called imperial church system, the rise of both secular and ecclesiastical territorial lordships, the conduct of war, the cult of the saints, monastic reform, and evolving conceptions of the proper social order of society. Including extensive commentary, apparatus of explanatory notes, maps, genealogies, this text will be of considerable value both in undergraduate and graduate courses as well as to scholars.

Download or read book Abbots and Abbesses as a Human Resource in the Ninth to Twelfth Century West written by Steven Vanderputten and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a record of the response, by eight expert scholars in the field of medieval monastic studies, to the question "To what extent did abbots and abbesses contribute as a `human resource' to the development of reformed monastic communities in the ninth- to twelfth-century west?" Covering a broad geographical area, papers consider one or several of three key points of interest: the direct contribution of abbots and abbesses to the shaping of reformed realities; their influence over future modes of leadership; and the way in which later generations of monastics relied upon the memory of a leader's life and achievements to project current realities onto a legitimizing past.

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West written by Alison I. Beach and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monasticism, in all of its variations, was a feature of almost every landscape in the medieval West. So ubiquitous were religious women and men throughout the Middle Ages that all medievalists encounter monasticism in their intellectual worlds. While there is enormous interest in medieval monasticism among Anglophone scholars, language is often a barrier to accessing some of the most important and groundbreaking research emerging from Europe. The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West offers a comprehensive treatment of medieval monasticism, from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. The essays, specially commissioned for this volume and written by an international team of scholars, with contributors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, cover a range of topics and themes and represent the most up-to-date discoveries on this topic.

Download or read book Rethinking Reform in the Latin West 10th to Early 12th Century written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-14 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of studies investigates how people of the 10th to early 12th century experienced and represented processes of intentional change in the Church, and what the consequences are of modern scholars’ reliance on ‘reform’ to describe and interpret these processes. In 11 thematic chapters it takes stock of the current state of research and offers suggestions to deepen our understanding of the ideological, institutional, and cultural dynamics at play. Contributors are Julia Barrow, Robert F. Berkhofer III, Gordon Blennemann, Katy Cubitt, Nicolangelo D'Acunto, Anne-Marie Helvétius, Ludger Körntgen, Rutger Kramer, Brigitte Meijns, Diane Reilly, Rachel Stone, and Steven Vanderputten.

Download or read book Flodoard of Rheims and the Writing of History in the Tenth Century written by Edward Roberts and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major re-assessment of the Frankish historian Flodoard of Rheims, one of the tenth century's most intriguing but neglected narrators.

Download or read book Women s Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination written by Emma O. Bérat and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovering the many striking female alternatives to patrilineal narratives in medieval texts, Emma O. Bérat explores strategies of writing and illustration that creatively and purposefully depict women's legacies. Genealogy, used to justify a character's present power and project it onto the future, was crucial to medieval political, literary, and historical thought. While patrilineage often limited women to exceptional or passive roles, other genealogical forms that represent and promote women's claims are widespread in medieval texts. Female characters transmit power through book patronage and reading, enduring landmarks, and international travel, as well as childbearing and succession. These flexible – if messy – genealogies reflect the web of political, biological, and spiritual relations that frequently characterized elite women's lives. Examining hagiography, chronicles, genealogical rolls, and French, English, and Latin romances, as well as associated codices and images, Bérat highlights the centrality of female characters and historical women to this fundamental aspect of medieval consciousness.

Download or read book Hariulf s History of St Riquier written by and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new and accessible translation of Hariulf’s History of St Riquier, this book examines the history of a monastic community from the seventh to the eleventh century. It covers the ascetic life of the founding saint and the development of the community under the Carolingians in the late eighth and ninth centuries. There were setbacks when the house was sacked by the Vikings and the founder’s relics were stolen for political ends, but it recovered in the tenth and eleventh centuries and developed the links with both the Norman and English courts that enable Hariulf to make interesting observations about the Norman Conquest of England. Hariulf’s description of the monastic site with its three churches and the liturgical arrangements practised there, as well as the relics, treasures, books and endowments of a great monastic foundation, make his history an important source for monastic history.

Download or read book Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-08-24 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notions of other peoples, cultures, and natural conditions have always been determined by the epistemology of imagination and fantasy, providing much freedom and creativity, and yet have also created much fear, anxiety, and horror. In this regard, the pre-modern world demonstrates striking parallels with our own insofar as the projections of alterity might be different by degrees, but they are fundamentally the same by content. Dreams, illusions, projections, concepts, hopes, utopias/dystopias, desires, and emotional attachments are as specific and impactful as the physical environment. This volume thus sheds important light on the various lenses used by people in the Middle Ages and the early modern age as to how they came to terms with their perceptions, images, and notions. Previous scholarship focused heavily on the history of mentality and history of emotions, whereas here the history of pre-modern imagination, and fantasy assumes center position. Imaginary things are taken seriously because medieval and early modern writers and artists clearly reveal their great significance in their works and their daily lives. This approach facilitates a new deep-structure analysis of pre-modern culture.

Download or read book A Companion to the Abbey of Cluny in the Middle Ages written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Founded in 910 by Duke William of Aquitaine, the abbey of Cluny rose to prominence in the eleventh century as the most influential and opulent center for monastic devotion in medieval Europe. While the twelfth century brought challenges, both internal and external, the Cluniacs showed remarkable adaptability in the changing religious climate of the high Middle Ages. Written by international experts representing a range of academic disciplines, the contributions to this volume examine the rich textual and material sources for Cluny's history, offering not only a thorough introduction to the distinctive character of Cluniac monasticism in the Middle Ages, but also the lineaments of a detailed research agenda for the next generation of historians. Contributors are: Isabelle Rosé, Steven Vanderputten, Marc Saurette, Denyse Riche, Susan Boynton, Anne Baud, Sébastien Barret, Robert Berkhofer III, Isabelle Cochelin, Michael Hänchen, Gert Melville, Eliana Magnani, Constance Bouchard, Benjamin Pohl, and Scott G. Bruce"--

Download or read book Forgeries and Historical Writing in England France and Flanders 900 1200 written by Robert F. Berkhofer, III and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A close analysis of forgeries and historical writings at Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury, offering valuable access to why medieval people often rewrote their pasts.What modern scholars call "forgeries" (be they texts, seals, coins, or relics) flourished in the central Middle Ages. Although lying was considered wrong throughout the period, such condemnation apparently did not extend to forgeries. Rewriting documents was especially common among monks, who exploited their mastery of writing to reshape their records. Monastic scribes frequently rewrote their archives, using charters, letters, and narratives, to create new usable pasts for claiming lands and privileges in their present or future. Such imagined histories could also be deployed to "reform" their community or reshape its relationship with lay and ecclesiastical authorities. Although these creative rewritings were forgeries, they still can be valuable evidence of medieval mentalities. While forgeries cannot easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts.This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future. easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts.This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future. easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts.This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future. easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts.This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future.lose analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future.

Download or read book Imagining Jesus Christ in Middle English Literature 1275 1475 written by Theresa Tinkle and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: