Synopses & Reviews
This volume of papers from the Conference on the Medieval Monastery held in 1985 jointly at the University of Minnesota and St. Johns Abbey, Collegeville, contains “Medieval Cloister Carving and Monastic Mantalite,” by Linda Seidel; “Analogues of the Cistercian Abbey Church,” by Emero Stiegman; “The Way of Mary or That of Martha: Conceptions of Monastic Life as Savigny 1112-1180,” by Kathryn Reyerson; “Mens Houses, Womens Houses: The Relationship between the Sexes in Twelfth-Century Monasticism,” by Constance Berman; “Circatores in the Ordo of St Victor,” by Hugh Feiss “Monastic Medicine in Pre-Crusade Europe: The Care of Sick Children,” by Bernard Machrach and Jerome Kroll; “Monastic Minting in the Middle Ages,” by Alan Stahl; “The Monastic Idea of Justice in the Eleventh Century,” by Geoffery Koziol; “Deconstructing the Monastery in Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose,” by Helen Bennet; “Fideli famae adscrbendum iudicantes: Four Monks in Search of a Hagiographic Method, 980-1125,” Thomas Hood; and “English Cathedral Monasteries and the Reformation,” by Stanford Lehmberg. For specialists in the twelfth century two of the papers hold particular interest and open new perspectives on well-worked areas of research. In the art and architecture section Emero Steigman contributes a stimulating critique of the historiography of the first half century of Cistercian church building. The documents and monuments of these years, he argues, have been viewed too narrowly from what he calls the “customary Cluny-Citeaux dichotomy” represented by St. Bernards Apologia and by Cluny and Fontenay. What is needed instead is a comparison with the entire reform movement, including earlier groups. Set in this wider context the plans and architectural vocabulary of the Cistercians early churches emerge as less novel and tied to a plausible tradition of reform that encompassed both monks and canons. Steigmans approach lies in religious studies, where the wealth of new research data (in comparison with the more sluggish output in architectural history) has opened the way for fresh observations. In this history section of the papers Constance Berman utilizes the new source material mined by womens studies to investigate one of the more enigmatic areas of twelfth-century religious reform life, the Cistercians attitude to women religious. Limiting her material to three nuns houses in the south of France, Berman suggests that their establishment preceded those of the mens houses with which they are traditionally tied. This inversion of accepted priorities leads Berman to conjecture that in Provence, at least, it was the need for priests to serve the new womens foundations that led to the establishment of the now much better known mens houses.
Synopsis
Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible to scholars, students, researchers, and general readers. Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The books offered through Minnesota Archive Editions are produced in limited quantities according to customer demand and are available through select distribution partners.
Synopsis
The Medieval Monastery was first published in 1991. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
About the Author
Andrew MacLeish is a retired professor of English at the University of Minnesota.