Daily life and routine in an English medieval monastic institution can be fairly accurately described. There is an abundance of source material for a prosopographical approach to these close-knit communities that lived under obedience to a rule, were governed by customs and regulations covering almost every waking moment, and carefully preserved a written record of past acts and achievements. Individual biographical details, however, are scarce and depend largely on the survival of a few personal notebooks and letters that contain little information that would be considered essential for successful biography today.

The cultural environment within the medieval monastic context is even more elusive than biographical data since, in essence, it deals with intangible evidence concerning the intellectual and spiritual labours of monks and their thoughts and attitudes. With the aim of elucidating the foundations on which monastic civilisation in medieval Europe first developed and on which it always remained dependent, the Benedictine scholar monk Dom Jean Leclercq, produced in 1960 a masterly study which bears the title, in its English translation (by Catherine Misrahi), The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. The accompanying subtitle, ‘a study of monastic culture’, makes it clear that the author's approach would focus on the two identifying characteristics of monastic culture named in his title: understanding and faith. Leclercq finds the literary sources of monastic culture in Holy Scripture, patristic tradition and classical literature, and in this last category he includes history and letter writing. The monks of western Europe diligently pored over the books of both the Old and New Testaments, committing lengthy passages to memory including the entire Book of Psalms; they zealously studied and preserved the writings of the Church Fathers; and they utilised and adapted the literary heritage of Graeco-Roman antiquity, converting the pagan writings of Latin authors into Christian modelsof grammar and style. The intellectual stimulus of the twelfth-century renaissance and its thirteenth-century continuation made a significant impact upon Benedictine cloisters thanks largely to the élite group of monks selected for university studies; it was mainly they who were responsible for the acquisition of copies of many of the biblical and theological writings that proliferated in this period.