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IMC 2021: Sessions

Session 2211: 'All of nature wild and free / This is where I long to be': Carthusians, Camaldolese, and Climate

Friday 9 July 2021, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Cartusiana
Organisers:Tom Gaens, Faculteit der Letteren, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Stephen J. Molvarec, Department of History, Marquette University, Wisconsin
Moderator/Chair:Emilia Jamroziak, Institute for Medieval Studies / School of History, University of Leeds
Paper 2211-a'These men are harder than any rocks': The Monastery of La Chartreuse Shaped by Its Mountain and Weather
(Language: English)
Stephen J. Molvarec, Department of History, Marquette University, Wisconsin
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Economics - Rural, Monasticism, Religious Life
Paper 2211-bPutting the 'Wild' in Wilderness: What's Climate Got to Do with It?
(Language: English)
Kathryn L. Jasper, Department of History, Illinois State University
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Monasticism, Religious Life
Paper 2211-cClimate Change in Northern Carthusian Writing
(Language: English)
Tom Gaens, Faculteit der Letteren, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Index terms: Monasticism, Sermons and Preaching
Abstract

The new eremitical monastic orders of the 11th and 12th centuries situated themselves within their landscapes and climates in unique ways given both their preferences for physical locations that were initially enclosed in mountain wildernesses and their rhetoric concerning the importance of the desert in spiritual ways. The papers of this session will examine the engagement of hermit-monks (chiefly the Carthusians and the early Camaldolese as founded by Saint Romuald) with actual wilderness, desert, weather (particularly sun and rain), and climate, as well as idealizations and fictional constructs of these natural phenomena. The session will treat early monastic communities in the French and Italian Alps as well as later foundations in the Low Countries.