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Guijarro González, Susana
2020.
La vie communautaire et le service à la communauté.
Article contents
Monk and Canon: Some Patterns in the Religious Life of the Twelfth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
If you were a religious of the i ith or 12th centuries choosing the order in which you were to find your vocation, how did you distinguish order from order, monk from canon? How did you determine gradations of the ascetic life? If you were a founder or benefactor, planning to found a new religious house, how did you determine which order to favour? At a time when asceticism and the religious orders flourished as never before, choice must have been bewildering. There is a copious contemporary literature arguing the relative merits of this mode and that; and modern scholars have offered a remarkably wide variety of advice. Some have proceeded on the assumption that there must have been a fundamental difference and have pursued it as best they might; others, disappointed in the chase, have doubted if any true difference existed. Some have seen all such differences engulfed in the deeper stream of new impulses and modes which affected every approach to the religious life in this age; others have said that to lose track of such differences is to take a very superficial view of the meaning of the rules of St Augustine and St Benedict. It is very easy indeed to take an entirely sceptical view; and I propose to start by stating the case for saying there was no difference visible to all in every part of Europe – that no general statement of the difference stands up to close inspection. But to rest the matter there, I am sure, would be superficial and mistaken – and so in the second part of this paper I embark on the much more hazardous path of determining where the difference lay. I shall try not to add another definition to the scrap heap, but to show by looking at a number of local situations how it might have appeared both externally to a founder and at a deeper level to an educated man with some discernment of different approaches to the ascetic life and religious spirituality. Yet the ultimate abiding impression is of the strangeness of the central fact: at a time when men were seeking their own religious vocation in numbers never before approached in medieval Europe – and patrons lavishing resources on an unparalleled variety of new religious houses – it is especially difficult for us to observe in many cases where the differences lay.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 22: Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition , 1985 , pp. 109 - 129
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1985
References
1 From the immense literature I select the following which are particularly helpful: Giles Constable’s reprinted studies, Religious Life and Thought (11th-12th centuries) and Cluniac Studies (Variorum Reprints, London 1979–80) and his Medieval Monasticism: a select bibliography (Toronto 1976); Bynum, Caroline W., Docere verbo et exemplo: an aspect of 12th century spirituality (Harvard Theological Studies 31, Missoula 1979 Google Scholar) mdjesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley etc 1982) – cited as Bynum 1979 and Bynum 1982; the work of J.C. Dickinson cited at nn 7 and 41 below; and the volumes of the Atti delle Settimane internazionali di studio Mendola = Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medioevali 3–6, Milan 1962–71: La Vita Comune del clero nei secoli XI e XII (3, 2 vols 1962), L’eremitismo in Occidente nei secoli XI e XII (4, 1965), I laici nella ‘Societas Christiana’ dei secoli XI e XII (5, 1968), Il monachesimo e la riforma ecclesiastica (1049-1122) (6, 1971) – cited as La Mendola 3–6.
2 Cf. for what follows Brooke, [C] and Swaan, [W.] [, The Monastic World (London 1974 Google Scholar)] cap 8; the view there expressed of the Rule of St Augustine has been severely criticised as too negative. For the rules themselves, see esp Le règle de S. Benoît edd Vogue, A. de and Neufville, J. (SCR 181–6, Paris 1971-2 Google Scholar); Verheijen, L., La règle de S. Augustin (2 vols Paris 1967 Google Scholar).
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16 Vita S. Gilberti cap 17 (in The Book of St Gilbert forthcoming; see meanwhile MA 6, 2, Insertion on ‘The Order of Sempringham’ p. xii).
17 See Sally Thompson’s London PhD Thesis on ‘English Nunneries: a study of the post-Conquest Foundations c. 1095-c. 1250’ (1984).
18 Vita S Gilberti cap 13–14, MA 6, 2, Insertion pp. xi*-xii*.
19 It has now been admirably clarified by Sally Thompson, ‘The problem of the Cistercian nuns in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’, Medieval Women, ed D. Baker (SCH Subsidia 1 1978) pp. 227–52.
20 In an unpublished lecture ‘Cloister and College: aspects of religious life and planning in the late middle ages’ delivered at Westfield College, London, in February and Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia before the Medieval Academy of America in March 1984.
21 See Horn, W. and Born, E., The Plan of St Gall (3 vols Berkeley etc 1979) esp 1 pp. 241–309 and 2 pp. 315–59 Google Scholar (CM. Malone and W. Horn on the influence of the plan).
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24 See n 20; Willis, R. and Clark, J.W., The Architectural History of the University of Cambridge and of the Colleges of Cambridge and Eton (4 vols Cambridge 1886 Google Scholar) and the RCHM (England) vols on City of Oxford and City of Cambridge (1939, 1959).
25 See ( Knowles, D.] and St Joseph, [J.K.S.], [Monastic Sites from the Air (Cambridge 1952)] esp p. xix Google Scholar; Aubert, M., L’architecture cistercienne en France (2 ed 2 vols Paris 1947) 1 p. 317 Google Scholar for lay brothers’ choirs, 2 cap 4 for lay brothers’ quarters; see Brooke, C., Medieval Church and Society (London 1971) p. 166 Google Scholar n – but further consideration of the evidence e.g. of the choir screen at Maulbronn (Brooke and | Swaan, plate 243) makes probable that Aubert was right that lay brothers could not normally see the high altar.
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28 OMT (1972), here cited as Libellus.
29 This is reflected in Bernard’s correspondence with him: Opera S. Bernardi edd Leclercq, J., Talbot, C.H. and Rochais, H.M. (Rome 1957-78) 7–8, Epp 147–9. 228, 265, 267, 364, 387–9, 521-esp 228 Google Scholar.
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33 Ibid pp. 10–11; cf. John 6:15.
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35 Ibid pp. 40–3.
36 E.g. Dereine, Charles, art ‘Chanoines’ in DHGE 12 (Paris 1953) cols 353–405 Google Scholar; and arts in RHE 41 (1946) pp. 365–406, 42 (1947) PP. 352–78, 46 (1951) PP. 534–65; cf. Bynum 1982, pp. 26–7 nn; Leclercq, J. in La Mendola 3, 1 pp. 117–41 Google Scholar; Constable, G., Trevelyan Lectures forthcoming, and see above n 1 meanwhile. Bynum 1982 pp. 25–6 Google Scholar notes scholars who see sharper differences, most notably (and with great subtlety) Sir Southern, Richard, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth 1970) pp. 241–50 Google Scholar.
37 Bynum 1979; Bynum 1982 cap 1.
38 Peter of Celle’s De disciplina claustrali (PL 202 cols 1097–1146) is discussed in Bynum 1979 pp. 157–60; Bynum 1982 p. 37.
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40 See esp Classen, P. in La Mendola 3, 1 pp. 304–48 Google Scholar and references; Backmund, N., Monastican Praemonstratense 1, 2 pts (2 ed 1983 CrossRefGoogle Scholar); above n 9.
41 See Dickinson passim, and many individual studies, most recently on St Augustine’s Bristol: Essays in Bristol and Gloucestershire History, ed McGrath, P. and Cannon, J. (Bristol 1976) pp. 109–126 Google Scholar.
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44 Brooke and Keir pp. 314–28; chronicle of Holy Trinity Aldgate in The Cartulary of Holy Trinity Aldgate, ed Hodgett, G.A.J. (London RecS 7 1971) pp. 223–33 Google Scholar; The Book of the Foundation of St Bartholomew’s Church in London ed Moore, N. (EETS 163 1923 Google Scholar); also modern English translation by King, H.H. and Barnard, W., ed Webb, E.A. (London 1923 Google Scholar).
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48 On the churches of Northampton see Franklin, Michael, ‘Minster and Parishes: Northamptonshire Studies’ (Cambridge PhD Thesis 1982) cap 2, esp pp. 86–98 Google Scholar -cited by kind permission of Franklin, Dr Google Scholar; and studies by Franklin, M. and others in Northamptonshire 5, RCHM England (1984)Google Scholar.
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53 Brooke, ‘The Churches of Medieval Cambridge’ n 50.
54 Sikes, J.G. and Jones, Freda in VCH Cambridgeshire 2 pp. 218–9 Google Scholar; Gray, A., The Priory of St Radegund, Cambridge (Cambridge Antiquarian Soc 1898 Google Scholar); The Atlas of Historic Towns 2, edd Lobel, M.D. and Johns, W.H. (London 1975 Google Scholar), Cambridge (separately paginated).
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