Learning as Shared Practice in Monastic Communities, 1070-1180

278 Pages·2021·1.436 MB·English

by  Micol Long

Learning as Shared Practice in Monastic Communities, 1070–1180
Micol Long - 978-90-04-46649-4
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Education and Society in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Editors
William J. Courtenay (Madison)
Jürgen Miethke (Heidelberg)
Frank Rexroth (Göttingen)
Jacques Verger (Paris)
Advisory Board
Daniel Hobbins (Notre Dame)
Roberto Lambertini (Macerata)
volume 58
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/esmr
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Learning as Shared Practice
in Monastic Communities,
1070–1180
By
Micol Long
leiden | boston
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Long, Micol, author.
Title: Learning as shared practice in monastic communities, 1070-1180 / by
 Micol Long.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2022] | Includes bibliographical
 references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021027115 (print) | LCCN 2021027116 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9789004460416 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004466494 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Monastic and religious life—Europe,
 Western—History—Middle Ages, 600–1500. | Learning and
 scholarship—History—Medieval, 500–1500. | Latin letters, Medieval and
 modern—Europe, Western—History and criticism. | Knowledge, Theory
 of—Europe, Western—History.
Classification: LCC BX2470 .L58 2022 (print) | LCC BX2470 (ebook) |
 DDC 271.00902—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027115
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027116
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0926-6070
isbn 978-90-04-46041-6 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-46649-4 (e-book)
Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink,
Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
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without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be
addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
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For Marianna, who has been eager to learn (leergierig)
from the very beginning
∵
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Micol Long - 978-90-04-46649-4
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 The Authors and Their Letters 15
1.1 The Long Twelfth Century 15
1.2 Chronological Survey of the Most Important Authors 22
1.3 Comparative and Methodological Remarks 37
2 The Context of Shared Learning 47
2.1 A Time for Learning? 47
2.2 The Physical Environment 61
2.3 The Social Environment 76
3 The Means of Shared Learning 96
3.1 Social Control and Peer Pressure 96
3.2 Imitation 105
3.3 Accusation, Admonition and Correction 116
3.4 Consolation and Exhortation 131
3.5 Sharing Ideas, Knowledge and Experience 145
4 The Effects of Shared Learning 156
4.1 Effects on the Individual 156
4.2 Effects on the Community 170
5 Shared Learning in Female Communities 188
6 Shared Learning in Other Religious Groups 206
6.1 Canons 206
6.2 Anchorites 219
Conclusions 227
Bibliography 233
Index 259
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Micol Long - 978-90-04-46649-4
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Acknowledgements
This book is the result of a research project entitled “Learning as Shared Practice.
Towards a New Understanding of Education in Monastic Communities of the
High Middle Ages”, which was funded by a postdoctoral fellowship from the
Research Foundation – Flanders (fwo) from 2014 to 2018 at Ghent University:
I am very grateful to both institutions. Crucially, I wish to thank Steven
Vanderputten, who acted as my supervisor for this project. He has been the
first to apply the notion of “communities of practice” to medieval monasteries,
and the research project on shared learning was developed in close dialogue
with him; during my time at Ghent University, he was always a source for inspi-
ration and advice. He was also the first person to read a draft of this book, offer-
ing many insightful comments that greatly helped me to improve it. Within the
research group “Religion and Society in the Early and Central Middle Ages”,
I also learned a lot from my exchanges with Tjamke Snijders and Johan Belaen.
The conference “Horizontal Learning within High Medieval Religious
Communities” (organized by Tjamke Snijders, Steven Vanderputten and me
and funded by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts
in Brussels, Ghent University’s Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies,
Department of History, and Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, and the Leuven
Centre for the Study of the Transmission of Texts and Ideas in Antiquity)
offered an opportunity to put to the test the notion of peer-to-peer knowl-
edge transfers in high medieval religious communities. It also allowed me
to establish or renew enriching intellectual contacts with Cédric Giraud, Jay
Diehl, Marc Saurette, Karl Patrick Kinsella, Stephen Jaeger, Babette Hellemans,
Nicolangelo D’Acunto, Neslihan Şenocak and Sita Steckel. I am particularly
grateful to Stephen Jaeger for entertaining a lively e-mail exchange with me
through the years and for kindly commenting on many of my drafts. While
Mia Münster-Swendsen ultimately could not contribute to the “Horizontal
Learning” conference or the book which resulted from it, and which was pub-
lished by Amsterdam University Press in 2019, she has helped this book project
take shape by sharing her expertise on multiple occasions and ways.
At the Department of History of Ghent University, and also thanks to the
presence of the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies, I enjoyed a warm
and intellectually stimulating environment: special thanks go to Marianna
Mazzola, Lorenzo Focanti, Brianne Dolce, Tineke Van Gassen, Rayek Vereeken,
Linde Nuyts, Claudia Wittig, Pieter Bytterbier, Barbara Vinck, Stefan Meysman,
Jeroen de Gussem, Jeroen Wijnendale, Erika Graham-Goering, Frederick
Buylaert, Jan Dumolyn, Jeroen Deploige and Els De Paermentier.
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x Acknowledgements
I also benefitted from short stays at the Centre for Medieval Literature in
Odense and the Academia Belgica of Rome in 2016: in both places I found
friendly people, exciting ideas and excellent libraries. I am particularly grate-
ful for the feedback that I received in Odense following a presentation of my
research on shared learning and during insightful conversations with Aglae
Pizzone, Lars Boje Mortensen, Elizabeth M. Tyler, Shazia Jagot, Réka Forrai,
Steffen Hope, Christian Høgel, Dale Kedwards and Kristin Bourassa.
The people with whom I came in contact at conferences and from whose
presentations I learned are too numerous to be listed here, but I would like to
mention that it was for me both pleasant and profitable to attend the confer-
ences organized in the contexts of the research projects “Marginal Scholarship:
The Practice of Learning in the Early Middle Ages (c. 800–1000)”, “Monks
around the Mediterranean. Contacts, Exchanges and Influences in East and
West from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (4th–15th c.)” and “MISSIVA.
Lettres de femmes dans l’Europe médiévale (Espagne, France, Italie, Portugal,
VIIIe–XVe s.)”.
I also wish to thank the Board of the “Education and Society in the Middle
Ages” series and the editorial team at Brill for their faith in this publication,
and the anonymous reviewers for their thorough readings and many useful
comments, which allowed me to improve the text. Of course, responsibility for
all errors remains my own.
Last but not least, I am very grateful to my husband Tommaso, who has
always supported my career and my work, for making the relocation to Belgium
not only possible but also joyful, and for helping me maintain a healthy work/
life balance. Little Alessandro arrived too late to have a significant impact on
this book, although my plan to send off the manuscript days before giving birth
was thwarted by his early arrival, so I ended up doing some of the final polish-
ing with a newborn asleep on my lap. Watching our eldest, Marianna, grow
and learn, and learning from her and with her as much as she learned from
us, has been – and still is – a source for inspiration. To her this book is – quite
appropriately – dedicated.
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