Between the sixth and twentieth centuries, the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino (est. 529) experienced a cycle of atrocities which forever transformed its identity. This book examines how such a tumultuous history has been constructed, remembered, and represented from the Middle Ages to the present day. It uses this singular and pivotal case to analyse the historical process of remembering and its impact on modern representations of the past. Exactly how Monte Cassino is remembered is distinctive and diagnostic. The abbey is recognizable today as a beacon of western civilization, culture, and learning precisely because of its 'destruction tradition' over fourteen centuries. The Destruction and Recovery of Monte Cassino, 529.1964 asks how the abbey's fragmented past has been ideologically, politically, and culturally constituted and preserved; how its experience with destruction and suffering . and recovery and rebirth . has become incorporated into a modern narrative of progress and triumph.

This book examines the history of monastic exemption in France. It reveals an institutional story of monastic freedom and protection, deeply rooted in the religious, political, social and legal culture of the early Middle Ages. Traversing many geo-political boundaries and fields of historical specialisation, the book defines the meaning and value of exemption to French monasteries between the sixth and eleventh centuries. It demonstrates how enduring relationships with the apostolic see in Rome ultimately contributed to an emerging identity of papal authority, the growth of early monasticism, Frankish politics and governance, church reform and canon law. -- .

Canon law is an unavoidable theme for medieval historians. It intersects with every aspect of medieval life and society, and at one point or another, every medievalist works on the law. In this book, Kriston Rennie looks at the early medieval origins and development of canon law though a social history framework, with a view to making sense of a rich and complex legal system and culture, and an equally rich scholarly tradition. It was in the early Middle Ages that the ancient traditions, norms, customs, and rationale of the Church were shaped into legislative procedure. The structures and rationale behind the law's formulation - its fundamental purpose, reason for existence and proliferation, and methods of creation and collection - explain how the medieval Church and society was influenced and controlled. They also, as this short book argues, explain how it ultimately functioned.