IMC 2020: Sessions

Monasteries usually secluded themselves from the world by building walls around their institutions. These walls did not only have a religious meaning but also a legal and administrative one. The physical aspect was tied to imagined boundaries being created between the religious and the secular. Imagined and physical boundaries interacted. Nevertheless, it varied how much religious communities sought to isolate themselves. The relationship between the religious and the secular sphere was highly contested throughout the middle ages. Especially in the case of less regulated communities, the boundaries were permeable and space was used both by religious as well as secular actors. Since enclosure was seen as especially important for female monasteries, monastic boundaries and their permeability seem to have been gendered. However, apart from spiritual matters monasteries were also concerned about the boundaries of their possessions. Charters and cartularies include detailed descriptions of the boundaries of specific possessions. Chronicles and vitae show how nuns and monks hoped to protect their possessions through performative acts such as processions with relics.