Conflict and Authority: William of Saint-Thierry and Peter Abelard as Readers of Origen

This study compares how two prominent twelfth-century Latin authors and theological opponents, namely the monastic author William of Saint-Thierry (c. 1080–1148) and the school master Peter Abelard (1079–1142), variously understood the authority of the controversial yet influential Greek author Origen (c. 184–253) in their works. Modern scholars who study the reception of Origen in the twelfth-century Latin West have, to this point, spoken of an Origenian revival in this period, concluding that Origen was especially popular in the cloister, among Cistercian monks, such as Bernard of Clairvaux and his followers, like William of Saint-Thierry, based on the assumption that as monks they found his writings more relevant. This study seeks to challenge this scholarly narrative by focusing on two authors who are perceived as typifying two different strands of theology, one of a contemplative character developed in the cloister (William) and one making use of dialectics and developed in the emerging schools (Abelard). By demonstrating that the schoolmaster Abelard drew on Origen to a greater degree and in a more transparent manner than his monastic opponent, this study will show that Origen’s popularity in the cloisters was not, as such, a clear point of distinction between them and schools in the way that has usually been claimed by modern scholarship.

Diane J. Reilly, The Cistercian Reform and the Art of the Book in Twelfth-Century France. Knowledge Communities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, 230; 16 color plates.

This volume contributes to our understanding of the liturgical and mental world of the early Cistercian monks and to the oral and aural community associated <?page nr="398"?>with early Cîteaux. Its title may be a misnomer for it is not about “Reform” per se or really about the art of the book (in the sense used by most specialists on the medieval book), but about the early liturgical practices at the new monastery that came to be called Cîteaux and about illustrations or illuminations of a limited number of manuscript volumes produced at Citeaux and preserved in the Dijon municipal library.

Imaginative immersion in the Cistercian Cloister

This article uses analytical concepts from cognitive science to explore and deepen our understanding of how medieval monastics imagined themselves as characters within biblical narratives. It argues that Cistercian monks - and in particular Bernard of Clairvaux - used techniques of imaginative immersion to enter and blend themselves into biblical viewpoints and events, thereby engaging the monks in epistemically and personally transformative experiences. The article concludes that this served to build community and to enculture monks and converts. Specifically, the article offers a close reading of two of Bernard's liturgical sermons, Sermon Two for Palm Sunday and Sermon Two on the Resurrection, to show how his sermons 1) traverse time and space and 2) blend viewpoints. Examples are also taken from texts by John Cassian, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and William of St. Thierry. Keywords: Bernard of Clairvaux, blended viewpoint, deictic displacement, lectio divina, liturgical time and space. On cover:Monks singing the Office and decorated initial A[sperges me.]. Gradual Olivetan Master (Use of the Olivetan Benedictines), illuminated manuscript on parchment ca. 1430-1439. Italy, Monastero di Santa Maria di Baggio near Milan, Ca 1400-1775.Beinecke Ms1184: The olivetan Gradual. Gradual. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

¿Arquitectos o administradores? Sobre el mito de los monjes constructores en el Císter / Architects or supervisors? The myth of the monk as an architect in the Order of the Cistercians

Resumen: El célebre comentario de Orderic Vital sobre cómo los cistercienses construían las abadías con sus propias manos, junto a la existencia de algunas evidencias iconográficas que muestran a eclesiásticos participando enla construcción, ha dado lugar a una leyenda que sigue viva en la actualidad: la creencia que la arquitectura cisterciense fue obra casi exclusiva de los arquitectos y artesanos monásticos. El presente trabajo tiene como objeto dar respuesta a ciertos interrogantes que todavía giran alrededor de este debate historiográfico. Para ello, se propone un análisis de las fuentes primigenias de la Orden, así como de diversos casos-estudio de maestros de obra conversosy laicos documentados en los reinos hispanos.Abstract: The famous comment of Ordericus Vitalis about how the Cistercian monks built monasteries with their own hands, together with some iconographicexamples involving builder monks, have given rise to a legend that is still alive: the conviction that Cistercian architecture was produced almost entirely by monastic architects and craftsmen. The present paper aims to answer to some questions of this discussion. For that purpose, the primary sources or the Order and different case studies of lay builders and conversi in the Hispanic kingdoms has been analyzed.

Los hospitalarios y los monasterios en la Corona de Castilla durante los siglos XII y XIII = Hospitallers and Monasteries in the Kingdom of Castile during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

La Orden del Hospital absorbió a varios cenobios que ya existían en la época anterior a su penetración en la Corona de Castilla. Se trataba de pequeños monasterios familiares de reducidas dimensiones. Más numerosos fueron los contactos que mantuvieron los freires sanjuanistas con grandes entidades monásticas por motivos puramente económicos. Muchas veces nos encontramos con enfrentamientos y pleitos en cuestiones específicamente materiales, preferentemente en el último cuarto del siglo XII y la primera mitad del XIII. Por regla general, se solucionaban gracias a concordias privadas. Usualmente, una sola avenencia resolvía todos los problemas de los hospitalarios con cada monasterio. También se presentan casos de algunos cenobios muy poderosos con los que hubo una sucesión de varios enfrentamientos. Los monjes cistercienses quizás parecen haber ocasionado especiales problemas a la Orden de San Juan.AbstractThe Order of the Knights of the Hospital absorbed several monasteries that already existed in the period prior to her introduction into the Crown of Castile. They were small family monasteries of limited size. Contact maintained by the Hospitaller brethren with large monastic entities for purely economic reasons were more common than with these smaller ones. Confrontations and lawsuits concerning specifically material issues took place primarily in the last quarter of the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth century. As a general rule, they were resolved by private agreements. Usually, a single deal solved all problems the Hospitallers had with each monastery. There are also cases of some very powerful monasteries with which there was a succession of confrontations. The Cistercian monks seem to have caused particularly serious problems for the Order of Saint John.

The Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka, Greece, edited by Sheila Campbell. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, May 2018; pp. xviii, 260.

Excavations undertaken by Sheila Campbell and her associates at Zaraka, Greece, beginning in the early 1990s provide much <?page nr="3"?>of the evidence for this volume on this thirteenth-century Cistercian monastery in the eastern Mediterranean established after the Latin Conquest of Constantinople. Ten experts contributed articles that provide evidence about the political and religious context of the Frankish Morea; the architecture and the sculpture of the abbey; a comment on what its library may have contained; its medieval pottery, glass and coins; human and faunal remains, and the archaeology of nearby settlements. More than 200 black and white photos and drawings and four plates in color document the finds and their context. There are very few surviving documents that make mention of the abbey, and it would have been useful to have included them in this publication. The site was probably only occupied by Cistercian monks from circa 1225 to circa 1262. Still this is a very impressive report of the excavations and related topics for the site.