Results by title
8 books match the query 'Monasticism and religious orders'
"Songes of Rechelesnesse"
Langland and the FranciscansLawrence M. Clopper
University of Michigan Press, 1997
William Langland's Piers Plowman provides a highly charged picture of England near the end of the fourteenth century, a time of political, religious, and moral crises. The period in which Langland wrote was volatile and full of colorful and contentious people: Edward III, Richard II, Chaucer, Wyclif--and Langland. In "Songes of Rechelesnesse," Lawrence M. Clopper presents the voice of this powerful disputant who lived in a period marked by dissent and discontent.
In the late Middle Ages, Franciscan friars had a significant impact on all levels of society.
But because of the apparent discrepancy between the poverty the Franciscans claimed and the life they lived, a large body of antifraternal literature arose, including, supposedly, Piers Plowman. Since the sixteenth century, when it was first put into print, Piers Plowman has been understood to be a proto-Protestant work that revealed the failures of the medieval clergy, but especially of the mendicant orders. In "Songes of Rechelesnesse," Clopper establishes the presence of a Franciscan reformist position in Piers Plowman.
Clopper maintains that the poem articulates a reformist agenda, presenting the internal Franciscan debate, in a bid to return the order to its initial foundation. Clopper believes that Langland is deeply imbued with a Franciscan mentality that reaches deep into the structure of the poem. It manifests itself at the level of the alliterative long line in his exemplarist poetics and is the source of his imagery and politics. In short Clopper identifies Franciscanism as holding the poem together.
"Songes of Rechelesnesse" is a historical, political, and religious history of late fourteenth-century England. It will be of interest to literary scholars, historians of the late Middle Ages, and scholars in religious studies.
Lawrence M. Clopper is Director, Medieval Studies Institute, and Professor of English, Indiana University.
In the late Middle Ages, Franciscan friars had a significant impact on all levels of society.
But because of the apparent discrepancy between the poverty the Franciscans claimed and the life they lived, a large body of antifraternal literature arose, including, supposedly, Piers Plowman. Since the sixteenth century, when it was first put into print, Piers Plowman has been understood to be a proto-Protestant work that revealed the failures of the medieval clergy, but especially of the mendicant orders. In "Songes of Rechelesnesse," Clopper establishes the presence of a Franciscan reformist position in Piers Plowman.
Clopper maintains that the poem articulates a reformist agenda, presenting the internal Franciscan debate, in a bid to return the order to its initial foundation. Clopper believes that Langland is deeply imbued with a Franciscan mentality that reaches deep into the structure of the poem. It manifests itself at the level of the alliterative long line in his exemplarist poetics and is the source of his imagery and politics. In short Clopper identifies Franciscanism as holding the poem together.
"Songes of Rechelesnesse" is a historical, political, and religious history of late fourteenth-century England. It will be of interest to literary scholars, historians of the late Middle Ages, and scholars in religious studies.
Lawrence M. Clopper is Director, Medieval Studies Institute, and Professor of English, Indiana University.
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Breaking the Mind
Kristian S. Heal
Catholic University of America Press, 2014
This collection of sixteen new critical essays offers fresh perspectives on the Book of Steps, adding greater detail and depth to our understanding of the work's intriguing picture of early Syriac asceticism as practiced within the life of a local church and community.
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From Monastery to Hospital
Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late AntiquityAndrew T. Crislip
University of Michigan Press, 2005
From Monastery to Hospital traces the origin of the late Roman hospital to the earliest groups of Christian monastics. Often characterized as holy men and miracle-workers who transformed late antique spirituality, monks held an equally significant impact on the development of medicine in Late Antiquity. Andrew Crislip illuminates the innovative approaches to health care within the earliest monasteries that provided the model for the greatest medical achievement of Late Antiquity: the hospital.
From Monastery to Hospital draws on some of the most vibrant areas of scholarship of the ancient world, including asceticism, the study of the body, history of the family, and the history of medicine. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of early Christianity, Roman History, the history of medicine, and Catholic, Coptic, and Eastern Orthodox history and theology. It will also be of interest to the broader field of history of Christianity, especially with its connections to charitable traditions in the church through the modern period.
Andrew Crislip is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Hawaii.
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Inquiry about the Monks in Egypt
Catholic University of America Press, 2020
From September 394 to early January 395, seven monks from Rufinus of Aquileia’s monastery on the Mount of Olives made a pilgrimage to Egypt to visit locally renowned monks and monastic communities. Shortly after their return to Jerusalem, one of the party, whose identity remains a mystery, wrote an engaging account of this trip. Although he cast it in the form of a first-person travelogue, it reads more like a book of miracles that depicts the great fourth-century Egyptian monks as prophets and apostles similar to those in the Bible. This work was composed in Greek, yet it is best known today as Historia monachorum in Aegypto (Inquiry about the Monks in Egypt), the title of the Latin translation of this work made by Rufinus, the pilgrim-monks’ abbot.
The Historia monachorum is one of the most fascinating, fantastical, and enigmatic pieces of literature to survive from the patristic period. In both its Greek original and Rufinus’s Latin translation it was one of the most popular and widely disseminated works of monastic hagiography during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Modern scholars value it not only for its intrinsic literary merits but also for its status, alongside Athanasius’s Life of Antony, the Pachomian dossier, and other texts of this ilk, as one of the most important primary sources for monasticism in fourth-century Egypt.
Rufinus’s Historia monachorum is presented here in English translation in its entirety. The introduction and annotations situate the work in its literary, historical, religious, and theological contexts.
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Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages
Edited by Judith M. Bennett, Elizabeth A. Clark, Jean F. O'Barr, B. Anne Vilen,
University of Chicago Press, 1989
Focusing on medieval women with a wide range of occupations and life-styles, the interdisciplinary essays in this collection examine women's activities within the patriarchal structures of the time. Individual essays explore women's challenges to a sexual ideology that confined them strictly to the roles of wives, mothers, and servants. Also included are sections on women and work, cultural production and literacy, and religious life.
These essays provide a greater understanding of the ways in which gender has played a part in determining relations of power in Western cultures. This volume makes a vital contribution to the current scholarship about women in the Middle Ages.
These essays provide a greater understanding of the ways in which gender has played a part in determining relations of power in Western cultures. This volume makes a vital contribution to the current scholarship about women in the Middle Ages.
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The Chronicle of Andres
Leah Abbot William of Andres
Catholic University of America Press, 2017
Translated with Notes and Commentary by Leah Shopkow
In 1220 Abbot William of Andres, a monastery halfway between Calais and Saint-Omer on the busy road from London to Paris, sat down to write an ambitious cartulary-chronicle for his monastery. Although his work was unfinished at his death, William’s account is an unpolished gem of medieval historical writing. The Chronicle of Andres details the history of his monastery from its foundation in the late eleventh century through the early part of 1234. Early in the thirteenth century, the monks decided to sue for their freedom and appointed William as their protector. His travels took him on a 4000 km, four-year journey, during which he was befriended by Innocent III, among others, and where he learned to negotiate the labyrinthine system of the ecclesiastical courts. Upon winning his case, he was elected abbot on his return to Andres and enjoyed a flourishing career thereafter. A decade after his victory, William decided to put the history of the monastery on a firm footing.
This text not only offers insight into the practice of medieval canon law (from the perspective of a well-informed man with legal training), but also ecclesiastical policies, the dynamics of life within a monastery, ethnicity and linguistic diversity, and rural life. It is comparable in its frankness to Jocelin of Brakelord’s Chronicle of Bury. Because William drew on the historiographic tradition of the Southern Low Countries, his text also offers some insights into this subject, thus composing a broad picture of the medieval European monastic world.
In 1220 Abbot William of Andres, a monastery halfway between Calais and Saint-Omer on the busy road from London to Paris, sat down to write an ambitious cartulary-chronicle for his monastery. Although his work was unfinished at his death, William’s account is an unpolished gem of medieval historical writing. The Chronicle of Andres details the history of his monastery from its foundation in the late eleventh century through the early part of 1234. Early in the thirteenth century, the monks decided to sue for their freedom and appointed William as their protector. His travels took him on a 4000 km, four-year journey, during which he was befriended by Innocent III, among others, and where he learned to negotiate the labyrinthine system of the ecclesiastical courts. Upon winning his case, he was elected abbot on his return to Andres and enjoyed a flourishing career thereafter. A decade after his victory, William decided to put the history of the monastery on a firm footing.
This text not only offers insight into the practice of medieval canon law (from the perspective of a well-informed man with legal training), but also ecclesiastical policies, the dynamics of life within a monastery, ethnicity and linguistic diversity, and rural life. It is comparable in its frankness to Jocelin of Brakelord’s Chronicle of Bury. Because William drew on the historiographic tradition of the Southern Low Countries, his text also offers some insights into this subject, thus composing a broad picture of the medieval European monastic world.
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The Office and Authority of the Local Prior in the Order of Saint Augustine
Robert F. Prevost
Catholic University of America Press, 2025
As a young priest, Robert Prevost was sent in 1981 to Rome to study church law at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas (known as the Angelicum). There he earned a licentiate and composed a doctoral thesis, which made final in 1987. This is that thesis, the first book-length work composed by the man now known as Pope Leo XIV.
Specifically, his study— drawing from sources in English, Italian, and Spanish and from medieval history and theology as well as canon law —focused on the role of the prior as the local superior in the Order of St. Augustine. In doing so, he describes a traditional notion of obedience in religious life -- one based on love of the truth and growth in one's inner freedom to pursue holiness. At the center of his reflection are key ideas regarding the common good of the Church; the Eucharistic liturgy at the center of the life of the community; the role of hierarchy and consultation; and mutual respect for the diverse contributions of each person. Present in this text, moreover, is a far-reaching conception of the priesthood characterized by the triple munera: the priestly work of teaching, sanctification, and governance. Central to the whole volume is an Augustinian conception of the spiritual life that focuses on the inward work of grace, the primacy of the love of God, and inward conformity to Christ.
The book's preface—composed by eminent theologian and present-day rector of the Angelicum, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP—helps frame the work for the wider public interested in it as a privileged window into the mind and heart of Prevost as a young priest, showing how its subject matter has implications for how one thinks about the life of the Catholic Church. There are clearly in this early work central themes regarding the life of Church, the apostolic tradition, and ecclesial authority in the service of the common good, that may well indicate directions and themes in the subsequent life and teaching of the author. Canonists will be drawn to Prevost's analysis of the Constitutions of the Augustinians in light of the then-newly promulgated Code of Canon Law. Historians and theologians alike may enjoy considering parallelisms that occur between this Augustinian vision of the prior and the subsequent unfolding of an Augustinian pontificate. Hopefully the publication of this work will lead to constructive debate about and comprehension of the relation of between the two.
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What Makes a Carmelite a Carmelite
Exploring Carmel's CharismKeith J. Egan
Catholic University of America Press, 2022
Vatican II initiated lively conversations about the identity of religious orders and congregations when the council pointed out that these religious communities are divine gifts in and to the church. Keith Egan examines the nature of these charisms including, not only the original or founders’ charism, but how charisms evolve over the centuries. Special theological attention to these charisms show that they are not something but, in fact, are the dynamic presence of the Holy Spirit.
This volume offers a case study the original charism of the Carmelites. The first Carmelites originated when various hermits were displaced by the armies of Saladin. These dislodged hermits sought refuge on Mount Carmel in a ravine facing the Mediterranean Sea. There, these hermits, now Carmelites, sought from Saint Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, a description of their life of solitude. Albert’s Formula of Life describes the original Carmelite charism as a life of prayer and contemplation. This Formula eventually became a Rule that made possible a transformation of hermits into friars. Egan is at work on a sequel that examines this radical transformation.
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