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IMC 2014: Sessions

Session 1116: Monastic Writing and Education

Wednesday 9 July 2014, 11.15-12.45

Moderator/Chair:Eva Schlotheuber, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Paper 1116-aSkipping a Grade?: English Black Monks and the Arts Course, c. 1300-1500
(Language: English)
Samuel Rostad, Department of History, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Index terms: Education, Monasticism, Religious Life
Paper 1116-bFriendship, Theological Authority, and Female Vocation
(Language: English)
Hollie Devanney, Department of History, University of Hull
Index terms: Gender Studies, Monasticism, Religious Life, Theology
Paper 1116-cHow a Chronicler Ludolf of Żagań Tried to Protect His Monastery: A Few Remarks about Excommunicatio and Absolutio Post Mortem in Silesia
(Language: English)
Aleksandra Filipek, Faculty of Historical & Pedagogical Sciences, University of Wrocław
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities
Abstract

Paper -a:
According to much of the conventional wisdom about Benedictines at medieval Oxford and Cambridge, monks, like the mendicants, skipped the university arts course and spent their careers in higher education in the law or theology faculties. If monks studied arts at all, it was in their cloisters or monastic colleges, somehow cut off from the secular university. In this paper I set out the evidence that strongly suggests that, in fact, not only did many monks take the arts course at university, they took a relatively rigorous one. Moreover, this course often involved contact with secular students and masters. This paper also begins to explore some of the implications of these findings, not the least of which is that late medieval monks can no longer be left out of the scholastic enterprise.

Paper -b:
Friendship networks have been widely studied. New research has examined the use of friendship networks in the propagation of ideas. To extend and include a person in one’s friendship network, came with certain obligations and loyalties, which arguably forged a unity amongst those who were included in and those who maintained friendship networks. This unity led to the transmission of authority; the authority of the monastic orders and their views throughout Europe.

This paper will examine how St Bernard and St Anselm included women in their friendship networks, in order to assert their authority in a theologically related topic which closely aligned with their view, in regards to an acceptable religious vocation for a female. Both Bernard and Anselm selectively included women within their friendship networks: The letters they sent offer an insight into the views of the authors in regards to a wide range of subjects; however, a commonality of the two authors in regards to their literary friendship exchanges with women was the comparisons they drew between the female recipient and the Virgin Mary.

This paper has stemmed from my PhD thesis which examines the inclusion of women in the male dominated religious friendship networks of the 12th century.

Paper -c:
Ludolf of Żagań (1353-1422) was a well known author of two conciliar treatises and one monastic chronicle, Catalogus abbatum Saganensium, in which he wrote mostly about internal affairs of the monastery. He described there also a case of Henry V the Iron, the Piast Duke of Żagań, excommunicated post mortem and absolved. The narrative shows how different could be a description in a chronicle (where Ludolf omitted the duke's threats against his monastery) and in a document (where they appear). This is the only example of such detailed description of excommunication post mortem and absolution in medieval Silesia.