Publication – Steven Vanderputten et Brigitte Meijns, éd., "Ecclesia in medio nationis. Reflections on the Study of Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages"

The role of monastic institutions in society during the Central Middle Ages has been much debated in medieval studies. Some scholars saw monasticism as the principal motivator of economic, social, intellectual and ‘spiritual’ progress in human society, while others regarded monastic ideology as fundamentally anti-social and oriented towards itself.

These debates seem to have lost some of their relevance to the present-day scholar. Today monasticism is studied as a social entity which needed interactions with the outside world, not only to subsist in a physical sense, but also to give a clear sense of purpose to its members. Drawing on recent trends in historical scholarship, this volume seeks to identify some of the major questions that will dominate research into monasticism in the years to come. Contributions deal with the evolution of monasticism itself, its links with aristocracy, the economic relations of religious communities and their physical and ideological boundaries, and the representation of the outside world in monastic manuscripts.

Table des matières :

Steven Vanderputten (Gent) & Brigitte Meijns (Leuven) – Introduction

Isabelle Rosé (Rennes) – Les moines et leur vie communautaire du IXe au XIIe siècle. Tour d’horizon historiographique

Florian Mazel (Rennes) – Monachisme et aristocratie aux Xe-XIe siècles. Un regard sur l’historiographie récente

Nicolas Ruffini-Ronzani & Jean-François Nieus (Namur) – Société seigneuriale, réformes ecclésiales: les enjeux documentaires d’une révision historiographique

Alexis Wilkin (Bruxelles) – Communautés religieuses bénédictines et environnement économique, IXe-XIIe siècles. Réflexions sur les tendances historiographiques de l’analyse du temporel monastique

Harald Sellner (Tübingen) – Les communautés religieuses du Moyen Age central et la recherche des réformes monastiques en Allemagne

Gert Melville (Dresden) – Inside and Outside. Some Considerations about Cloistral Boundaries in the Central Middle Ages

Diane Reilly (Bloomington) – The Monastic World View in the Artistic Tradition

Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld (Tilburg) – Conclusions

Informations pratiques :

Steven Vanderputten et Brigitte Meijns, éd., Ecclesia in medio nationis. Reflections on the Study of Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages, Louvain, Leuven University Press, 2011 (Mediaevalia Lovaniensia – Series 1/Studia 42). Paperback, 215 p., 9 ill., 16 x 24 cm. ISBN : 9789058678874. Price: € 45,00.