| Paper 626-c | Melrose Abbey and the Dissemination of Visionary Narratives, c.1200
(Language: English)
Helen Birkett, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York
Index terms: Administration, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Monasticism, Religious Life |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
The paper focuses on the circulation of Caesarius of Heisterbach's exempla in medieval and early modern Europe, with the main emphasis on the material and geographical aspects of this circulation. How did Caesarius' exempla reach their audience outside Germany: in France, Italy, the Low Countries? What town or monastery served as a 'trans-shipment point' for their further distribution? What region was the most hospitable for them? To answer these questions I will study the origin and provenance of the Dialogus miraculorum manuscripts and their owners; the journeys of Caesarius and his abbots; the contacts of famous Dominican preachers who used Caesarius' stories (e.g. Stephen of Bourbon and Jacobus de Voragine) with Cistercians, German Dominicans, etc. I will also analyse all changes in Caesarius' exempla that occurred during their 'European travel', especially changes concerning references to the authorship and the geographical setting.
Paper -b:
The Cistercians travelled, and so did their books. In 1146 twelve Cistercian monks and their abbot Ranulf moved from the abbey of Fountains to the Western coast of Norway, establishing the Cistercian order further north than ever before at the abbey of Lyse. Their manuscripts came with them, and more were imported, copied, and used by Cistercians in Norway throughout the Middle Ages. After the Protestant Reformation in 1537 the Cistercian books, as so many others, went from churches and monasteries to the hands of the royal administration of the Danish-Norwegian kin - not to be read, but to hold the bindings of tax papers. In this way, at least a few pieces of the books which were once used in the Cistercian monasteries in Norway survived the centuries between the Middle Ages and today. This paper will present some of the Cistercian manuscript fragments now kept in the Norwegian National Archives, and as well as the state of research on the Cistercian book culture in Norway.
Paper -c:
The Cistercians were at the forefront of collecting and transmitting visionary material in the decades around 1200 and Melrose provides a particularly dynamic British example of this activity. This talk will examine the visionary material produced, collected, and transmitted by the Cistercian abbey of Melrose in south-eastern Scotland during this period. It will use the visionary narratives found in the Vita S. Waldevi, Helinand of Froidmont's Chronicon and Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 17, as well as contemporary evidence from the abbey's chronicle, to explore the role of Melrose as the nexus of a wider socio-intellectual network that recorded and disseminated these accounts.
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