Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. English Monasteries by A. H. Thompson was first published in 1913 and reissued as this second edition in 1923. The book presents a study of medieval monasteries in England, paying special attention to describing the uses of principal monastic buildings.

The twin sisters Agnes Lewis (1843 1926) and Margaret Gibson (1843 1920) were pioneering biblical scholars who became experts in a number of ancient languages. Travelling widely in the Middle East, they made several significant discoveries, including one of the earliest manuscripts of the Four Gospels in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language probably spoken by Jesus himself. Their chief discoveries were made in the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. This fascicule is the translation of a Syriac manuscript from the monastic library of St Catherine. Translated by Lewis and first published in 1900, the manuscript recounts the tales of a number of saintly women, including Pelagia, a rich courtesan who converted to Christianity and Eugenia, a holy woman who lived as a man and became the abbot of a monastery. An interesting collection of stories with relevance for scholars of Middle Eastern Christianity.

The sisters Agnes Lewis (1843 1926) and Margaret Gibson (1843 1920) were pioneering biblical scholars who became experts in a number of ancient languages. Travelling widely in the Middle East, they made several significant discoveries, including one of the earliest manuscripts of the Four Gospels in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language probably spoken by Jesus himself. Their chief discoveries were made in the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. This fascicule, a useful resource for scholars of Syriac, and originally published as part of the Studia Sinaitica series, is the text of a Syriac manuscript from the monastic library at St Catherine's. Transcribed by Lewis and first published in 1900, the manuscript recounts the tales of a number of saintly women including Pelagia, a rich courtesan who converted to Christianity, and Eugenia, a holy woman who lived as a man and became the abbot of a monastery.

Originally published in 1909, this book contains an English translation of The History of the Foundations, the sequel to Saint Theresa's Life. While the Life focuses more strongly on purely spiritual matters, the Foundations is highly informative in terms of secular history and the practical aspects of Theresa's existence. Illustrations are provided throughout, including a map showing the sites where Theresa founded Carmelite institutions. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the life of Saint Theresa, Spanish history, and the development of the Catholic Church.

Between 350 and 850 Constantinople emerged as both the greatest city of the Mediterranean world and a monastic centre of unparalleled importance. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, including a rich body of hagiographical evidence, this 2008 study documents the historical relationship between the city and its monks during this crucial formative period. Monks and nuns played a key role from the beginning. In 350 their numbers were few, yet their impact on local politics and the church was significant. By 850 their presence was felt everywhere - from the world of the imperial court and church, to the local economy, elite culture, social services and popular piety. This dramatic rise in the influence of local monasticism was the result of its impressive numerical growth over time, and hard-won success in adapting the singular call of the monastic life to the challenges of the great medieval metropolis and imperial capital.

Detailed investigation into a transitional period of the Abbey's history, covering the whole community. This book surveys the monastic community at Westminster from the time when Edward the Confessor [1042-1066] adopted it as his burial church down to the end of the reign of king John. Originating according to legend during the Roman occupation, the West Minster was converted from a little collegiate church into a Benedictine monastery around 970. However, the growth of its significance largely dates from its massive endowment by king Edward, who commissioned a lavish rebuilding of the abbey church, a focal point in his programme of monarchical propaganda. Dr Mason covers every aspect of the abbey community in detail examining the careers of the abbots and priors, whilst ensuring that lesser figures are not neglected: monks; craftsmen; lay servants; the personnel of the royal court who were closely associated with the abbey. The author also considers the community's dealings with the growing ecclesiastical bureaucracy; the management of its properties, including its parochial churches; and its relationship with other religious houses. Dr EMMA MASON teaches in the Department of History, Birkbeck College.

First published in 1933 as part of the Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought series, Coulton's Scottish Abbeys and Social Life was an expanded version of his Rhind Lectures given to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1931. Although a rigorous academic, who stressed the importance of using primary sources, Coulton was skilled at making medieval history accessible to a wider audience. He played an important role in encouraging interest in the study of social and economic, rather than political and military, history of the Middle Ages among younger scholars. In the present work, he used his wide reading of the evidence to examine how monasticism developed in Scotland, from the early Celtic period to the Reformation. Much of the material reveals a complex relationship between the monks of the various orders and the world in which they lived, and teaches the reader about the Church and Scottish society.

For this 1916 work, Archdeacon E. H. Pearce searched through the extensive muniments of Westminster Abbey to provide a list of all the known members of the monastic community until the Dissolution. Over 700 individuals are included, with all the information about them available to the author. While the list is not complete, and the use of other sources would add additional names for the early period, Pearce completed a remarkable achievement. Westminster was a substantial foundation, with an average community of 47 for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. About half of these, who held some office or function, are naturally better documented than ordinary monks. Scholarship was evidently valued by the abbey, although the majority of the writings evidenced were on the history of the community rather than theological or literary works. Some monks were supported at Oxford, but little is known of the education offered to the remainder.

Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism explores the rationales for religious silence in early medieval abbeys and the use of nonverbal forms of communication among monks when rules of silence forbade them from speaking. After examining the spiritual benefits of personal silence as a form of protection against the perils of sinful discourse in early monastic thought, this work shows how the monks of the Abbey of Cluny (founded in 910 in Burgundy) were the first to employ a silent language of meaning-specific hand signs that allowed them to convey precise information without recourse to spoken words. Scott Bruce discusses the linguistic character of the Cluniac sign language, its central role in the training of novices, the precautions taken to prevent its abuse, and the widespread adoption of this custom in other abbeys throughout Europe, which resulted in the creation of regionally specific idioms of this silent language.

"Monasticism in Late Medieval England, c.1300-1535" provides the first collection of translated sources on this subject. The volume covers both male and female houses of all orders and sizes, and offers a range of new perspectives on the character and reputation of English monasteries in the later middle ages.

The first section surveys the internal affairs of English monasteries, including recruitment, the monastic economy, standards of observance and learning. The second part looks at the relations between monasteries and the world, exploring the monastic contribution to late medieval religion and society and lay attitudes towards monks and nuns in the years leading up to the Dissolution.

This book is an ideal introduction to this topic for students and scholars. Supported by an extended and accessible introduction, this collection of documents gives an unrivalled insight into the last phase of monastic life in medieval England.

"Crown and Veil" offers a broad introduction to the history and visual culture of female monasticism in the Middle Ages, from the earliest communities of Late Antiquity to the Reformation. Scholars from numerous disciplines offer a wide range of perspectives not to be found in any other single book on the subject, placing the art, architecture, literature, liturgy, religious practices, and economic foundations of these communities within a wide historical and cultural context.

Long considered marginal to mainstream history, nuns and canonesses in fact had a profound influence on medieval culture. Revered and admired as models of piety, they commanded considerable prestige and exercised a significant degree of political power. Whether acting as producers or patrons of art, nuns were widely celebrated for their imaginative accomplishments. Focusing on the visual culture of female monastic communities in the German Empire, Frankish Gaul, Langobard Italy, and Anglo-Saxon England, this volume underscores the richness of largely unfamiliar material and its role in shaping distinctive forms of religious life.

This extraordinary story is told from the archive documents in the case of Sister Benedetta Carlini, an Abbess who was imprisoned for thirty-five years after being found guilty of a lesbian relationship with another nun.

Confraternities were the most common form of organized religious life in medieval and early modern Europe. They were at once the lay face of the church, the spiritual heart of civic government, and the social kin who claimed the allegiance of peers and the obedience of subordinates. In this 1999 collection, fifteen scholars examine the development of confraternities in Italy, where they emerged first and had the greatest impact. Individual essays explore a common set of themes across Italy from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries: the ubiquity of confraternities, social construction, and devotional ethos; their ritual culture and civic religion; their antagonistic and collaborative relations with both civic and ecclesiastical authorities; and their role in social welfare and social control of marginal groups. The authors demonstrate how the ritual kinship expressed in confraternities emerged in the Middle Ages and became a powerful force in 'civilizing' early modern Italian society.

This 1999 book explores the dramatic growth of the monastic order in Yorkshire from the foundation of the first post-Conquest abbey at Selby in 1069 to 1215. The first half examines the dynamics of monastic expansion, discussing the influences on both its chronological development and its geographical pattern. It demonstrates that the monastic expansion owed much to the particular political and tenurial conditions which existed in the century after 1069: the establishment of Norman political ascendancy, the extension of central government under Henry I, and the civil war of the reign of King Stephen. The second part of the book explores recruitment, patronage, economy and cultural life. Particular attention is paid to the role of women in the religious life. Nunneries, so often regarded as second-class or failed monasteries, are here shown to have had a distinctive function in society, in terms both of recruitment and of interaction with the local community.

This major new history of monasticism in early Anglo-Saxon England explores the history of the Church between the conversion to Christianity in the sixth century and a monastic revival in the tenth. It represents the first comprehensive revision of accepted views about monastic life in England before the Benedictine reform. Sarah Foot shows how early Anglo-Saxon religious houses were simultaneously active and contemplative, their members withdrawing from the preoccupations of contemporary aristocratic society while in a very real sense remaining part of that world. Focusing on the institution of the 'minster' (the communal religious community) and rejecting a simplistic binary division between active 'minsters' and enclosed 'monasteries', Foot argues that historians have been wrong to see minsters in the light of ideals of Benedictine monasticism. Instead, she demonstrates that Anglo-Saxon minsters reflected more of contemporary social attitudes; despite their aim for solitude, they retained close links to aristocratic German society.

The Templars fought against Islam in the crusader east for nearly two centuries. During that time the original small band grew into a formidable army, backed by an extensive network of preceptories in the Latin West. In October 1307, the members of this seemingly invulnerable and respected Order were arrested on the orders of Philip IV, King of France and charged with serious heresies, including the denial of Christ, homosexuality and idol worship. The ensuing proceedings lasted for almost five years and culminated in the suppression of the Order. The motivations of the participants and the long-term repercussions of the trial have been the subject of intense and unresolved controversy, which still has resonances in our own time. In this new edition of his classic account, Malcolm Barber discusses the trial in the context of new work on the crusades, heresy, the papacy and the French monarchy.

In a little town in Italy, nearly eight hundred years ago, Francis of Assisi renounced everything he owned to follow Christ with passionate and single-minded abandon. Even today, centuries later, this simple saint draws people around the world to Francis' story of living in humility, love, and joy. Here in Following Francis, Susan Pitchford tells her own story of the Franciscan life, as a member of the Third Order, founded by Francis himself so that people from all walks of life can follow the saint's ideal, without leaving their homes or their occupations. Pitchford learned that the Franciscan tradition isn't the exclusive possession of monks cloistered in a monastery, but a spiritual path for ordinary people living in the twenty-first century. Organized around the Rule of St. Francis, this book - a wonderful resource for private devotion or group study - shows readers what it means to live out the Christian life with a Franciscan accent.

This book is the first major study in English of a group of late twelfth-century religious enthusiasts, the early Humiliati, who were condemned by the Church as heretics in 1184. However, in a remarkable transition, they were reconciled seventeen years later and went on to establish a highly successful religious order in north Italy. The Humiliati have been accorded little attention in previous studies both because of their local nature and because of the suppression of the Order in 1571, after one of their number made a disastrous attempt to murder Charles Borromeo. Using a combination of a wide range of sources, the nature of the early movement and its processes of institutional development are reconstructed. The book also includes a Bullarium Humiliatorum, a calendar of papal and episcopal letters and privileges, which will be of great use to scholars in the field.

In the course of this work, Dr Dobson is able to throw new light on the universal aspirations and pre occupations of medieval monasticism. He reconstructs life in Durham in the century before its final dissolution and concludes that it was an example of 'comparatively successful conservatism' during a period in English history characterized by institutional resistance to social and intellectual change.

The Rule of St. Benedict continues to attract those who seek to live a deeper life, connected to Christ. But with such an ancient text, how can we authentically engage St. Benedict s Rule in a manner that is true to its profound insights and to our own spiritual journey? Norvene Vest suggests that the answer lies in the way we read the Rule. It shouldn t be studied like a book of regulations, or a school textbook. It should be read as lectio divina.

This profound yet very practical volume speaks to our urgent spiritual need. People yearn for an interior life deeply rooted in God, humanly balanced, and substantially founded in the Christian heritage. Vest offers a valuable resource by rendering much more accessible the spiritual wealth of the key text of the ancient Benedictine charism. Here is the solid, balanced wisdom that has nourished and guided innumerable Christians for nearly fifteen centuries. "

The Monastic Order in England by Dom David Knowles was originally published in 1940 and was quickly recognised as a scholarly classic and masterpiece of historical literature. It covers the period from about 940, when St Dunstan inaugurated the monastic reform by becoming abbot of Glastonbury, to the early thirteenth century. Its core is a marvellous narrative and detailed analysis of monasticism in twelfth-century England, brilliantly set in the continental background of all the monastic movements of the day - with a vivid evocation of Anselm, Ailred, Henry of Blois and a host of other central figures. Dom David himself brought this second edition up to date in 1963.

The early historians of the Franciscan order traced the causes of the troubles of the order in their time to Elias, a contemporary and friend of St Francis and an early Minister General. Elias was blamed for opening the way to all relaxations of discipline and disregard of the founder's teaching, and all conflicts and persecutions. Mrs Brooke shows that responsibility cannot be placed on one man, but on many of the early friars. She gives a more historical account of Elias, showing that he was never as dominant a figure as has been supposed. The early conflicts of the order are shown to have been more complex, more interesting and more probable than the fourteenth-century controversialists would allow. The second part of the book describes the achievements of Elias's successors as Minister General, and the important laws they passed. Mrs Brooke has been able to reconstruct the early constitutions, now lost, in greater detail than has previously been attempted.

This book examines the selected writings of John of Wales, a thirteenth-century Franciscan scholar. Though overshadowed historically by men like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, John contributed significantly to the preaching explosion of the later Middle Ages, devoting his scholastic energies to the production of encyclopedic preaching aids for the growing number of the devout and learned emerging from the new universities. Through a detailed analysis of his world view, the author establishes John’s strong interest in politics and contemporary social issues and helps to explain why his writings appealed to young preachers and the popular imagination. John’s historic popularity and literary influence are also fully explored. His works seem to have been an important source of classical material for European literary texts of the period, and therefore, in addition to historians and theologians, this unprecedented book will appeal to those interested in the survival and transmission of Greek and Latin literature.

Runaway religious were monks, canons and friars who had taken vows of religion and who, with benefit of neither permission nor dispensation and for myriad reasons, fled their monasteries and returned to a life in the world, usually replacing the religious habit with lay clothes. Not only the normal tugs of the world drew them away: other less obvious yet equally human motives, such as boredom, led to a return to the world. The church pursued them with her severest penalty, excommunication, in the express hope that penalties would lead to the return of the straying sheep. This book is the first to tell their story.

This book is the first major study in English of a group of late twelfth-century religious enthusiasts, the early Humiliati, who were condemned by the Church as heretics in 1184 but--in a remarkable transition--were reconciled seventeen years later and went on to establish a highly successful religious order in northern Italy. Using a wide range of sources, the nature of the early movement and its processes of institutional development are reconstructed. The book also includes a Bullarium Humiliatorum, a list of papal and episcopal letters and privileges.