Skip to main content

IMC 2005: Sessions

Session 616: Entering the Monastery, III: Female Communities in the High and Late Middle Ages

Tuesday 12 July 2005, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:University of Toronto / Universiteit Utrecht
Organiser:Isabelle Cochelin, Department of History & Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
Moderator/Chair:Isabelle Cochelin, Department of History & Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
Paper 616-aFemale Entrance into the Religious Life at Monasteries of the Hirsau Reform
(Language: English)
Alison Beach, Department of Religious Studies, College of William & Mary, Virginia
Index terms: Monasticism, Religious Life, Social History
Paper 616-bExperienced Women: Social Background, Cultural Formation, and Spiritual Knowledge of the Nuns of 12th-Century Admont
(Language: English)
Christina Lutter, Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Universität Wien
Index terms: Archives and Sources, Gender Studies, Monasticism
Paper 616-cEntering the Monastery and rite de passage: The Significance of Virginity for the Identity of the Nuns
(Language: English)
Eva Schlotheuber, Historisches Seminar, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Index terms: Gender Studies, Monasticism, Religious Life
Abstract

One of the most persistent challenges of monastic communities is the problem of recruitment. Without permanent recruitment of new members, every communities would die out within a few decades. The study of the repartition between, and evolution of the different ways of entering a monastic community (child oblation, adult conversion, entrance ad succurrendum, division between lay monks/priest monks or between nobles/non-nobles, etc.) gives fruitful access both to the main theme of this conference (Youth and Age) and to the development of medieval monasticism on a theological/organizational level as well as its integration in political and social structures.