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This book centers on a fascinating woman, Clare of Rimini (c. 1260
to c. 1324–29), whose story is preserved in a fascinating text.
Composed by an anonymous Franciscan, the Life of the Blessed Clare
of Rimini is the earliest known saint’s life originally written
in Italian, and one of the few such lives to be written while its
subject was still living. It tells the story of a controversial
woman, set against the background of her roiling city, her
star-crossed family, and the tumultuous political and religious
landscape of her age. Twice married, twice widowed, and twice
exiled, Clare established herself as a penitent living in a
roofless cell in the ruins of the Roman walls of Rimini. She sought
a life of solitary self-denial, but was denounced as a demonic
danger by local churchmen. Yet she also gained important and
influential supporters, allowing her to establish a fledgling
community of like-minded sisters. She traveled to Assisi, Urbino,
and Venice, spoke out as a teacher and preacher, but also suffered
a revolt by her spiritual daughters. A Female Apostle in Medieval
Italy presents the text of the Life in English translation for the
first time, bringing modern readers into Clare’s world in all its
excitement and complexity. Each chapter opens a different window
into medieval society, exploring topics from political power to
marriage and sexuality, gender roles to religious change,
pilgrimage to urban structures, sanctity to heresy. Through the
expert guidance of scholars and translators Jacques Dalarun, Sean
L. Field, and Valerio Cappozzo, Clare’s life and context become a
springboard for readers to discover what life was like in a
medieval Italian city.
This book centers on a fascinating woman, Clare of Rimini (c. 1260
to c. 1324–29), whose story is preserved in a fascinating text.
Composed by an anonymous Franciscan, the Life of the Blessed Clare
of Rimini is the earliest known saint’s life originally written
in Italian, and one of the few such lives to be written while its
subject was still living. It tells the story of a controversial
woman, set against the background of her roiling city, her
star-crossed family, and the tumultuous political and religious
landscape of her age. Twice married, twice widowed, and twice
exiled, Clare established herself as a penitent living in a
roofless cell in the ruins of the Roman walls of Rimini. She sought
a life of solitary self-denial, but was denounced as a demonic
danger by local churchmen. Yet she also gained important and
influential supporters, allowing her to establish a fledgling
community of like-minded sisters. She traveled to Assisi, Urbino,
and Venice, spoke out as a teacher and preacher, but also suffered
a revolt by her spiritual daughters. A Female Apostle in Medieval
Italy presents the text of the Life in English translation for the
first time, bringing modern readers into Clare’s world in all its
excitement and complexity. Each chapter opens a different window
into medieval society, exploring topics from political power to
marriage and sexuality, gender roles to religious change,
pilgrimage to urban structures, sanctity to heresy. Through the
expert guidance of scholars and translators Jacques Dalarun, Sean
L. Field, and Valerio Cappozzo, Clare’s life and context become a
springboard for readers to discover what life was like in a
medieval Italian city.
To Govern Is to Serve explores the practices of collective
governance in medieval religious orders that turned the precepts of
the Gospels—most notably that "the first will be last, the last
will be first"—into practices of communal deliberation and the
election of superiors. Jacques Dalarun argues that these democratic
forms have profoundly influenced modern experiences of democracy,
in particular the idea of government not as domination but as
service. Dalarun undertakes meticulous textual analysis and
historical research into twelfth and thirteenth-century religious
movements—from Fontevraud and the Paraclete of Abelard and
Heloise through St. Dominic and St. Francis—that sought their
superiors from among the less exalted members of their communities
to chart how these experiments prefigured certain aspects of modern
democracies, those allowing individuals to find their way forward
as part of a collective. Wide ranging and deeply original,To Govern
Is to Serve highlights the history of the reciprocal bonds of
service and humility that underpin increasingly fragile democracies
in the twenty-first century.
To Govern Is to Serve explores the practices of collective
governance in medieval religious orders that turned the precepts of
the Gospels—most notably that "the first will be last, the last
will be first"—into practices of communal deliberation and the
election of superiors. Jacques Dalarun argues that these democratic
forms have profoundly influenced modern experiences of democracy,
in particular the idea of government not as domination but as
service. Dalarun undertakes meticulous textual analysis and
historical research into twelfth and thirteenth-century religious
movements—from Fontevraud and the Paraclete of Abelard and
Heloise through St. Dominic and St. Francis—that sought their
superiors from among the less exalted members of their communities
to chart how these experiments prefigured certain aspects of modern
democracies, those allowing individuals to find their way forward
as part of a collective. Wide ranging and deeply original,To Govern
Is to Serve highlights the history of the reciprocal bonds of
service and humility that underpin increasingly fragile democracies
in the twenty-first century.
This book tells the fascinating story of Robert of Arbrissel (ca.
1045-1116). Robert was a parish priest, longtime student, reformer,
hermit, wandering preacher, and, most famously, founder of the
abbey of Fontevraud. There men and women joined together in a
monastic life organized so that women ruled men and men served
women, according to the founder's plan. As Jacques Dalarun shows in
this biography, however, Fontevraud was for Robert only one
stopping point in a restless and lifelong journey in search of
salvation that took place in roads, forests, towns, and monasteries
across France. Hard as the travel was, the spiritual search was
more agonizing still. Consumed with a sense of his own sinfulness,
sexual and otherwise, Robert lived out penance however he could.
The many women who gathered in his wake became partners in his
religious quest, and his frequent contact with them was,
paradoxically, a centerpiece of his penitential regime. At
Fontevraud, he encouraged others to adopt the practice of intense
contact with and indeed subservience to women. This reversal of the
standard gender hierarchy in the midst of the ongoing battle with
sexual temptation has baffled and even enraged observers during
Robert's lifetime and ever since. Vividly narrating the course of
Robert's life and his relationships with others along the way, the
author hews closely to medieval sources, in particular two letters
to Robert critical of his nonconformity and his relations with
women, along with two admiring accounts written within a few years
of his death. This translation by Bruce L. Venarde preserves the
novelistic character of the original while updating and augmenting
it with full notes, a bibliography, and an introduction both to the
book and to scholarly interpretations of Robert in the past two
decades. A new preface by Jacques Dalarun completes the reworking
of the first full-length biography of Robert of Arbrissel available
in English.
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