This collection of papers delves into the fascinating methods with which monastic groups of the central Middle Ages practised modes of oral communication.

Although traditionally defined as a literate environment, Western monastic culture depended on a range of communicative practices which was just as large, and in some ways more sophisticated in its diversity, than that of other groups of society. Monks and nuns exchanged considerable amounts of information for which no written media were deemed necessary or which did not make a complete or immediate transition into written sources. Grouped in five thematic chapters, the papers in this volume aim to provide inroads into a useable interpretation of the various contexts in which monks and nuns in the central Middle Ages considered the spoken word as a vital complementary medium to other forms of communication.

Table des matières :

Steven Vanderputten – Introduction : Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication

Gerd Althoff – Communication at the Abbey of St. Gall
Wojtek Jezierski – Verba volant, scripta manent: Limits of Speech, Power of Silence and Logic of Practice in Some Monastic Conflicts of the High Middle Ages
Steven Vanderputten – Monachos hujus ecclesie ad se venire fecit: Attitudes laïques comme reflets des stratégies monastiques orales et rituelles dans les transferts patrimoniaux

Susan Boynton – Oral Transmission of Liturgical Practice in the Eleventh-Century of Cluny
Diane J. Reilly – Education, Liturgy and Practice in Early Cîteaux
Tjamke Snijders – Celebrating with Dignity: The Purpose of Benedictine Matins Readings

Marie-Anne Polo de Beaulieu – Traces d’oralité dans les recueils d’exempla
Geoffrey Koziol – What Charles the Simple Told the Canons of Compiègne: Oral and Written Transmissions of Memory in the Genealogia Dictata a Karolo Rege
Edina Bozoky – L’oralité monastique et la fabrication des légendes hagiographiques

Mirko Breitenstien – “Ins Gespräch gebracht”: Der Dialog als Prinzip monastischer Unterweisung
Albrecht Claessen – Performance, Orality, and Communication in Medieval Women Convents in the Light of the Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim
Peter Dinzelbacher – Bericht, Verschriftlichung und Reoralisierung visionärer Erlebnisse im Mönchtum des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts

Elisabeth Van Houts – Conversations amongst Monks and Nuns, 1000-1200
Julie Barrau – Did Medieval Monks Actually Speak Latin?
Wim Verbaal – Oleum de saxo durissimo: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Poetics of Silence
Mette Bruun – Wandering Eyes, Muttering, and Frowns: Bernard of Clairvaux and the Communicative Implications of Gesture

Marco Mostert – Conclusions: Orality, Non-Written Communication and Monastic Studies

Informations pratiques : Steven Vanderputten (ed.), Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication (Western Europe, 10th-13th centuries), Brepols, Turnhout, 2011 (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 21). XII + 390 p., 156 x 234 mm. ISBN: 978-2-503-53482-4.