IMC 2022: Sessions
Session 828: Hermit-Monks over the Borderline: Deserts, Limits, Enclosure, and Death
Tuesday 5 July 2022, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Cartusiana |
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| 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 828-a | Women at the Door of Fonte Avellana: Female Religious on the Borders of Male Spiritual Space (Language: English) Index terms: Monasticism, Religious Life, Women's Studies |
| Paper 828-b | 'On a Horse with No Name': Limits, Boundaries, Possessions, and the Medieval Carthusian Concept of 'Desert' (Language: English) Index terms: Monasticism, Religious Life |
| Paper 828-c | From Ordination to Obit: The Prosopography of English Carthusians, c. 1350-1540 (Language: English) Index terms: Genealogy and Prosopography, Monasticism |
| Abstract | The Carthusians and Camaldolese, just as other monks, lived within the borders of their symbolic death to the world ('entrance'/'ordination'), and biological death. Although lives of medieval hermit-monks were often invisible, available images were increasingly projections of exemplary reputations for strictness and holiness. A paradoxical relationship exists between the desire to remain within their enclosures and the reputation they enjoyed. Hermit-monks were famous for creating both material ('desertum') and spiritual borders. These shaped a unique monasticism - in terms of how eremitical monastics thought about their lives, and their relationships with the world, with lay men and women, and with the divine. This session discusses the development of the eremitical enclosure, negotiation of solitary, communal and external spaces, and lives and deaths of monks within such spaces. This session is in honour of Dr. Glyn Coppack, of English Heritage and University of Nottingham. |