| Paper 726-a | Producing and Preserving Documents in the Monastery of Sobrado of the Monks (9th-11th Centuries)
(Language: English)
Leonor Sierra, Centro de Estudios Superiores Don Bosco, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Index terms: Charters and Diplomatics, Literacy and Orality, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Monasticism |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
Historically, the privileged classes, the Church and the nobility, have monopolised the use of writing, since they have found it a very useful tool to exercise their power. The Middle Ages are one of the historical periods that exemplify this situation. The medieval monasteries produced and preserved thousands of written records in order to strengthen their power. This happened in the Monastery of Sobrado of the Monks, placed in the old Kingdom of Leon, where the number of documents increased constantly between the 9th and the 11th century. The main cause of this increase was the interest of the abbots and the Leonese kings in creating more organized structures of government, in other words, in establishing a feudal system.
Paper-b
The aim of this paper is to explore, develop, and present the analytical potential of Erving Goffman's concept of total institution for the studies on early medieval monasticism. Hitherto and due to substantial misinterpretation the concept has met resistance in medieval studies, but it will be claimed that, if endowed with and tied to such concepts as social role, Öffentlichkeit, and patterns of persecution, it can contribute with a useful sociological perspective. The examples for the presentation will be taken from the PhD forthcoming the same year, which is based on the 11th-century Casus sancti Galli by Ekkehard IV.
Paper -c:
In historiographical texts, the historical narrative often represents the unfolding of historical events as a journey between two points. Often discussed in context of large-scale ('world') histories, this point seems to need examination regarding institutional histories of smaller scale as well, such as histories of religious houses, which were often written in terms of institutional decline and renewal - economic, religious etc. The aim of this paper is to discuss the theme of monastic reform as a narrative element of institutional history, analyzing monastic chronicles from Italian religious houses.
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