Although many of the greatest monasteries in Europe during the High Middle Ages and late medieval period were Benedictine, historians have often presented the black monks as in crisis or decline for much of the post-1100 period. New Benedictine foundations were relatively rare after this date, and much lay patronage was redirected to new expressions of the monastic life, such as the Cistercians or regular canons. The rhetoric of new monastic orders, which presented themselves as “reformed” versions of or necessary departures from traditional Benedictine monasticism, has also influenced historians’ interpretations of the black monks. Thus general surveys of medieval monasticism, such as Lawrence 2001 and Melville 2016 (both cited under General Europe-Wide Surveys), focus almost entirely on new monastic and mendicant orders after c. 1100. But as much recent historiography has shown, the Benedictines remained highly influential throughout the entire medieval period. In many parts of Europe, they retained the support of kings and aristocratic patrons into the 16th century. Collectively, they possessed very substantial estates and urban properties. They served the social and spiritual needs of their lay neighbors through (for example) their hospitality, almsgiving, and pilgrimage sites. And although no longer preeminent in intellectual and artistic life, they remained committed to intellectual studies and continued to be major patrons of art, architecture, and music. The later Middle Ages also saw projects for Benedictine renewal, particularly in the form of reformed congregations in continental Europe. This bibliography contains work on all these areas of research. It does not include the Cluniac branch of the black monks or Benedictine nuns, which are covered in separate Oxford Bibliographies articles.
