The monastic community of Fulda was one of the most powerful institutions in early medieval Europe. This book traces the development of the community from its foundation in the 740s over one and a half centuries, a period richly documented by a variety of texts and archaeological remains. These sources reveal how Fulda's success forced the monks to rethink their goals and the ways in which they sought to achieve them. Its close connection to the Carolingian royal court also makes Fulda a fascinating case study of how local events influenced life in the palace and vice versa. The importance of Fulda and the rich array of sources associated with it have long been recognised, but this is the first full study, bringing together theology, architectural history and archaeology. The result is a vivid picture of life in this monastery and also in early medieval religious communities in general.

The Priory of St Giles and St Andrew, Barnwell, was among the earliest English communities of Augustinian canons, founded by the sheriff of Cambridge in 1092. Although little survives of its buildings, its records form a significant source for both Cambridge and Augustinian history. The Observances, translated and edited in 1897 by J. W. Clark, form the eighth book of the late thirteenth-century Liber Memorandorum, also reissued in this series. The fourth-century Rule of St Augustine is a short and general guide to community life, and needed to be supplemented by a fuller set of instructions for the day-to-day running of the complex organisation which comprised a medieval monastery. The Observances provide detail about the roles played by all the officials of the priory and about the daily cycle of work and prayer, and give the modern reader a real insight into medieval monastic life.

This book presents a broad sociological perspective on the contemporary issues facing Christian monasticism. Since the founding work of Max Weber, the sociology of monasticism has received little attention. However, the field is now being revitalized by some new research. Focusing on Christian monks and nuns, the contributors explore continuity and discontinuity with the past in what superficially might appear a monolithic tradition. Contributors speak not only about monasticism in Europe and the United States but also in Africa and Latin America, a different landscape where the question of recruitment does not figure among issues considered as problematic.

The English Benedictine Cathedral Priories offers a detailed study of nine monastic communities. Joan Greatrex follows the lives of the young men, only some of whom are known by name, from the day of their arrival at the monastery to the moment of their death or departure. The individual chapters provide the details that fill in many of the gaps in the monastic biographies to be found in her earlier work. The result is the first comparative study of the implementation of the Benedictine Rule, and the daily routine, observances, and customs practised by the nine priories, as well as of the monks' progress through the successive stages of their monastic life. The author exploits to the full the archiepiscopal and episcopal registers, which record their official acts, in addition to the monastic accounts of the monk office holders who were responsible for the various departments within the monastery.

Richard Carter swapped a life of simplicity with an Anglican religious order in the Solomon Islands for parish ministry in one of London's busiest churches, St Martin-in-the-Fields. Seeing a need for monastic values in the centre of the city, he founded the Nazareth Community. Its members gather from everyday life to seek God in contemplation, to acknowledge their dependence on God's grace and to learn to live openly and generously with all. Part story, part spiritual meditation, The City is My Monastery offers spiritual wisdom for daily life rooted in the Nazareth Community's seven guiding principles: Silence, Service, Scripture, Sacrament, Sharing, Sabbath Time and Staying.

Today, as never before, interest in the Knights Templar is growing exponentially, especially since The Da Vinci Code. But who were these powerful knights of the Crusades? What is fact and what is fiction? And how did they become the wealthiest multinational corporation in the medieval West? A first of its kind, Knights Templar Encyclopedia presents in convenient, readable, A-to-Z format, the fascinating history behind the most famous military religious order of the Crusades--the Knights Templar. Written by leading Templar authority and medieval historian Dr. Karen Ralls, this authoritative sourcebook of hundreds of entries features a wealth of information on the key Templar people, places, events, symbols, organization, daily life, beliefs, economic empire, trial, and more. The product of more than a decade of meticulous, scholarly research, this indispensable resource is for the general reader and specialist alike--for anyone, in fact, who is interested in the history and legacy of the powerful Knights Templar (1119-1312). Knights Templar Encyclopedia includes photos and illustrations, an extensive bibliography, a historical time line, and a list of major European Templar sites.

This is the first modern study in English of the life and thought of the ninth-century Byzantine theologian and monastic reformer, Theodore the Stoudite. Cholij provides a guide to and a complete analysis of all the primary source material attributed to Theodore. If the monastic leader is considered in the context of the tradition to which he belonged, it is clear that his religious formation occurred within a widely established school of Basilian and Palestinian Christian thought. This encourages a fresh engagement with the subtleties in Theodore's behaviour towards the Byzantine religious and secular leaders of his time and provokes new conclusions concerning the religious and secular issues which involved Theodore in controversy. Cholij refutes the established view of Theodore as a breaker of the traditional; Byzantine church and state relationship and provides new insights into Theodore's true understanding of the involvement of the Emperor in church affairs. In his analysis of the rites of holiness that belonged to Theodore's church, the author identifies a false tradition of sacramental mysteries in a misreading of Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite and so offers a radically new definition of the origins of the Orthodox sacramental tradition.

Utterly in love with Jesus Christ and living in poverty, Francis of Assisi touched history. Christians, followers of other religions and even those who declare they have no faith, find they have something in common with him that stirs their sympathy. In 1209, as a young man from the Umbrian region, he went to see the pope. He sought permission to live exactly as Jesus Christ had done: poor obedient, celibate. From a distance the pope saw Francis and his eleven companions. But he had Francis sent away, banishing from his presence the very man sent by providence who could have turned his hopes for the Church into reality. Later, the pope recalled a dream he'd had. He had seen the Lateran basilica leaning dangerously to one side, when suddenly a little monk, looking like a beggar, supported it with his shoulder and stopped it from collapsing. 'Of course,' the pope understood, 'that monk was Francis of Assisi!' How could he not listen to him? We today, can listen to him through his writings, the stories and biographies that speak of him. It would be like a new dawn, reversing the decline all around us into a new future. The texts in this book can all be found in the Early Documents series of the Franciscan movement published by New City in three volumes plus a fourth volume containing the index for these Early Documents.

In Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity, Paul C. Dilley explores the personal practices and group rituals through which the thoughts of monastic disciples were monitored and trained to purify the mind and help them achieve salvation. Dilley draws widely on the interdisciplinary field of cognitive studies, especially anthropology, in his analysis of key monastic 'cognitive disciplines', such as meditation on scripture, the fear of God, and prayer. In addition, various rituals distinctive to communal monasticism, including entrance procedures, the commemoration of founders, and collective repentance, are given their first extended analysis. Participants engaged in 'heart-work' on their thoughts and emotions, which were understood to reflect the community's spiritual state. This book will be of interest to scholars of early Christianity and the ancient world more generally for its detailed description of communal monastic culture and its innovative methodology.

This book tells the story of Hild, the abbess of a highly successful double monastery at Whitby in Northumbria, where she was responsible for the education of five future bishops. Here she exercised an authority which in subsequent centuries would be reserved exclusively for men. At thirteen Hild was baptized by Paulinus, who had come to Britain to join Augustine's mission. Augustine had been sent by Pope Gregory to convert Britain, which had largely lapsed into paganism after the fall of the Roman Empire. Augustine in fact had little success in converting the Britons beyond Kent, and even in Kent Christianity had already been partially re-established by Queen Bertha, who had brought her Catholic Chaplain with her from Gaul upon her marriage to King Ethelbert. There were many powerful women, like Bertha, who had been at the forefront of keeping the faith alive in the "Dark Ages," but whose agency has been written out of history or down-played in favour of the actions of famous men. Hild's story is brought back to life alongside Mary, who founded a desert community at Tabenisi; Macrina, the teacher (didaskalos) of Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea; Ita, confessor to Brendan; the formidable Aelffled, who succeeded Hild at Whitby, a co-worker and confidante of Cuthbert. As the Catholic Church struggles under the weight of centuries-old misogyny, it is surprising to see how, in the early medieval period, abbesses had shared governance with bishops. As it struggles with a shortage of male priests to celebrate the sacraments, it is instructive to see how many sacramental ministries were once exercised by female monastics. Confession, for example, was once practiced in the same way whether the confessor was a man or, as in Hild's case, a woman. The span of Hild's life covers the period before and after the establishment of clericalism, the unbridgeable gap between the higher plane of the male priesthood and the lower plane of religious women. Bede's telling of Hild's life was already downplaying her authority as a powerful leader in the Anglo-Saxon church. It is time for that to be remedied.

The fourteenth-century controversy between the Dominican Durandus of St Pour ain and his order plays a central role in explaining the later success of Thomism. Durandus's independent approach earned him two censures from Dominican authorities, as he appeared to jeopardize the order's sense of doctrinal identity. Through a close examination of the relevant theological issues, this book follows the course of the controversy to reveal the significant role which Franciscan theology played in the Dominican interpretation of Aquinas. This challenges the commonplace portrayal of early Thomists as a homogenous group, as it reveals the Franciscan contribution to the shaping of a Dominican intellectual tradition.

A captivating look into the society of the Knights Templar

Brought to you by the author of "Freemasons For Dummies," The Templar Code is more than an intriguing cipher or a mysterious symbol - it is the Code by which the Knights Templar lived and died, the Code that bound them together in secrecy, and the Code that inspired them to nearly superhuman feats of courage and endurance. "The Templar Code for Dummies" reveals the meaning behind the cryptic codes and secret rituals of the medieval brotherhood of warrior monks known as the Knights Templar. This intriguing guide will cover such topics as who the Knights Templar were, how they rose so high and fell so far, and most importantly why there is so much interest in them today. "The Templar Code For Dummies" will explore myths and theories of Christian history that appear in the "Da Vinci Code" such as the quest for the Holy Grail, the Catholic Church's relationship with women that are hotly debated now with special emphasis on the Templar connection. It also explores the surprising part the Templars have played in some of the most important historic events of these past seven centuries, including the French Revolution, the birth of groups such as the Freemasons, and even the American Civil War.

The institutions of the middle ages are generally seen as tradition-bound; Monks and Markets challenges this assumption. Durham's outstanding archive has allowed the uncovering of an unprecedented level of detail about the purchasing strategies of one of England's foremost monasteries, and it is revealed that the monks were indeed reflective, responsive, and innovative when required. If this is true of a large Benedictine monastery, it is likely to be true also for the vast majority of other households and institutions in Medieval England for which comparable evidence does not exist.
Furthermore, this study gives a unique insight into the nature of medieval consumer behaviour, which throughout history, and particularly from before the early modern period, remains a relatively neglected subject. Chapters are devoted to the diet of monks, the factors influencing their purchasing decisions, their use of the market and their exploitation of tenurial relationships, and their suppliers.

At the end of the fourth century, on the banks of the Nile, there unfolded an extraordinary epic: one after another, men left fertile an uninhabited regions of the Delta and disappeared farther into the desert. Founders of Christian eremitism, these heroes of asceticism and virtue earned a reputation far beyond the ordinary as much by their lifestyle as by their maxims (or apothegms) which have been translated into all languages and distributed throughout the Christian world. Deprivation, silence, contemplation, and prayer -- such was the program of these monks for whom the desert did not fail to set many traps -- because it isn't enough to simply isolate oneself in order to meet and to come to know God.

The book provides an account of many Jesuits, from the time of St. Ignatius to the 1990's, who have been incarcerated around the world for their faith. It is divided into chapters that deal with specific themes related to their imprisonment. The principal themes are: prayer as a key element in survival, arrest and trial procedures, the experience of suffering, Mass, the daily order of prison life, forced labor, ministry to other prisoners, guards, prisoners who became Jesuits while imprisoned, community in prison, and voluntary incarceration.This is the first book to examine the experience of incarcerated Jesuits around the world and down through the centuries from the standpoint of these various themes. Much of the material is by the Jesuits themselves, in letters, autobiographical fragments and other sources-including obscure publications long out of print. The result is a gathering together of these pieces and fragments into a coordinated whole, with commentary on their significance in the context of the political and cultural situations of their time-situations that were generally the immediate cause of the Jesuits imprisonment, whether in Elizabethan England or in Communist China and Russia. A chart of imprisoned Jesuits by country of incarceration at the beginning, and a glossary of names at the back (as well as an index), will help the reader to keep track of the names of the many Jesuits who figure in the book.

This is a case study of one pietist religious group, the Bruderhof. A Christian brotherhood founded on Anabaptist and evangelical pietist doctrine, they practice community of goods, seeking to emulate the vision of the Apostolic church and fulfill the ethic of brotherhood taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Rubin offers compelling accounts of the lives of Bruderhof apostates who foundered over issues of faith, and relates these crises to the central tenets of Bruderhof theology, their spirituality, and community life.

In this book the renowned medievalist G.R. Evans provides a concise introduction to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a figure of towering importance on the twelfth-century monastic and theological scene. After a brief overview of Bernard's life, Evans focuses on a few major themes in his work, including his theology of spirituality and his theology of the political life of the Church. The only available introduction to Bernard's life and thought, this latest addition to the Great Medieval Thinkers series will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of history and theology.

This is the first detailed scholarly study of the Order of Fontevraud's English monastic houses. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Order was notably prestigious and autonomous, renowned both for the prayerfulness of its members and for their independent management of their affairs. The huge following of Robert Arbrissel (d. 1116) included many women - not at first the aristocrats who later dominated the Order of Fontevraud, but prostitutes, beggars, and other representatives of the dregs of society. Urged by Church authorities to stabilize his women followers, Robert gave them a Rule which was, in essentials, that of St Benedict, but he introduced men as chaplains, clerks, and lay-brothers for the nuns. Uniquely, however, for contemporary houses for women, the men were placed firmly under the direction of the nuns and remained there throughout the Order's history. Sister Berenice Kerr's study of Fontevraud's English establishments: Amesbury, Nuneaton, and Westwood (Grovebury, the Order's fourth foundation, was never more than administrative centre) opens up a wide range of insights and information about monasticism and religious life for women in the middle ages. Dr Kerr examines the endowment of each house, and its subsequent acquisition of property and its administration; monastic observance; domestic economy, including expenditure on food and drink; the scale and layout of conventual buildings, and the exploitation of new assets, such as salt-pans, markets, and appropriated churches.

This study of the books of Reading Abbey covers not only the whole history of the Abbey from its foundation, but also charts the subsequent dispersal of its book collection. In doing so, the author illustrates intellectual life in a medieval English monastery and, in particular, valuable insights into the fate of monastic books after the Dissolution of the monasteries.

The sixteenth century was a period of crisis in the Catholic Church. Monastic reorganization was a major issue, and women were at the forefront of charting new directions in convent policy. The story of the Carmelite Reform has been told before, but never from the perspective of the women on the front lines. Nearly all accounts of the movement focus on Teresa de Avila, (1515-1582), and end with her death in 1582. Women Religious and Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform: The Disciples of Teresa de Avila carries the story beyond Teresa's death, showing how the next generation of Carmelite nuns struggled into the seventeenth century to continue her mission. It is unique in that it draws primarily from female-authored sources, in particular, the letters of three of Teresa's most dynamic disciples: Maria de San Jose, Ana de Jesus and Ana de San Bartolome.

An engaging look into the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, queer activists devoted to social justice The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence make up an unlikely order of nuns. Self-described as "twenty-first century queer nuns," the Sisters began in 1979 when three bored gay men donned retired Roman Catholic nuns' habits and went for a stroll through San Francisco's gay Castro district. The stunned and delighted responses they received prompted these already-seasoned activists to consider whether the habits might have some use in social justice work, and within a year they had constituted the new order. Today, with more than 83 houses on four different continents, the Sisters offer health outreach, support, and, at times, protest on behalf of queer communities. In Queer Nuns, Melissa M. Wilcox offers new insights into the role the Sisters play across queer culture and the religious landscape. The Sisters both spoof nuns and argue quite seriously that they are nuns, adopting an innovative approach the author refers to as serious parody. Like any performance, serious parody can either challenge or reinforce existing power dynamics, and it often accomplishes both simultaneously. The book demonstrates that, through the use of this strategy, the Sisters are able to offer an effective, flexible, and noteworthy approach to community-based activism. Serious parody ultimately has broader applications beyond its use by the Sisters. Wilcox argues that serious parody offers potential uses and challenges in the efforts of activist groups to work within communities that are opposed and oppressed by culturally significant traditions and organizations - as is the case with queer communities and the Roman Catholic Church. This book opens the door to a new world of religion and social activism, one which could be adapted to a range of political movements, individual inclinations, and community settings.

Published in honor of John C. Olin, Professor Emeritus of History at Fordham University, for his many contributions to the study of Catholic reform in the sixteenth century, this is an assembly of nine essays on Catholic religious orders of that period. The contributors devote attention to the spirituality of the founder(s) and to the specific apostolate of the order. The focus of the essays is on the religious communities that were founded between 1524, when the Theatines arose, and 1621, when the Piarists were recognized by the papacy as a religious order. Most of these orders were founded for reasons unrelated to the crisis posed by Protestantism, but they were soon enlisted by the hierarchy to counteract its effects. If the Council of Trent (1545-1563) can be considered the architect of Catholic reform and renewal, and the papacy and episcopate as its enforcer, surely the religious orders of men and women in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries ought to be considered as the initiators or disseminators of reform while serving as missionaries, teachers, preachers, catechists, and confessors. The contributors are: Kenneth J. Jorgensen, S.J., Albertus Magnus College; Elisabeth G. Gleason, University of San Francisco; Richard L. DeMolen, Erasmus of Rotterdam Society; Charmarie J. Blaisdell, Northeastern University; John W. O'Malley, S.J., Weston School of Theology; Jodi Bilinkoff, University of North Carolina-Greensboro; John Patrick Donnelly, S.J., Marquette University; Wendy M. Wright, Creighton University; Paul F. Grendler, University of Toronto.

Throughout her adult life, the twelfth-century Benedictine nun Elisabeth of Schonau claimed to receive divine revelation through a series of ecstatic visionary experiences. Her reflections on these experiences were recorded and provide both a rich source of understanding of the religious life of a medieval woman and an important perspective on the religious and political ferment of mid-twelfth-century Germany. Anne L. Clark has written the first comprehensive study of Elisabeth of Schonau. In it, she points out that Elisabeth did not transcribe her own revelations, but rather dictated them to the other nuns of the convent and to her brother Ekbert. Clark takes on the problem of Elisabeth's literary and examines the nature and extent of Elisabeth and Ekbert's collaboration. In addition, Clark offers a new interpretation of Elisabeth's relationship with Hildegard of Bingen, her celebrated - and more studied - contemporary. Clark contends that Elisabeth was not a timid emulator of a brilliant mentor; instead, she had her own spiritual perspective and her own means of expressing it. In this way, Clark firmly establishes the originality of Elisabeth's visionary accounts. In the course of the text, Clark highlights the social dynamics revealed in these religious meditations, particularly Elisabeth's place in a world in which women were subordinated to male authority and lay people were subordinated to the religious authority of the clergy. Elisabeth of Schonau is an informative and ground-breaking work. It will be of particular interest to scholars and students of medieval religion and mysticism, as well as women's studies.

In the past, the question of the formal and functional context of sculpture and nunneries around the year 1300 has been predominantly confined to the Alemannic nunneries. This text focuses on Nordic sculpture. The medieval grounds of the Luneberg nunnery and their fittings represent an unusual legacy, deriving from the heyday of women's mysticism and the expansion of the system of territorial sovereignty.