Table Of ContentTHE NEW MIDDLE AGES
BONNIE WHEELER, Series Editor
The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to transdisciplinary studies of medieval
cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist
and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs
and essay collections. The following books have all been published by Palgrave:
Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of
Patronage, and Piety Investiture
edited by Gavin R. G. Hambly edited by Stewart Gordon
The Ethics of Nature in the Middle Ages: On Representing Rape in Medieval and Early
Boccaccio’s Poetaphysics Modern Literature
by Gregory B. Stone edited by Elizabeth Robertson and
Presence and Presentation: Women in the Christine M. Rose
Chinese Literati Tradition Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in
by Sherry J. Mou the Middle Ages
The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: edited by Francesca Canadé Sautman and
Perceptions of Dialogue in Pamela Sheingorn
Twelfth-Century France Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages:
by Constant J. Mews Ocular Desires
Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault by Suzannah Biernoff
by Philipp W. Rosemann Listen, Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and
For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de the Formation of Religious Women in the
Burgh Middle Ages
by Frances A. Underhill edited by Constant J. Mews
Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in Science, the Singular, and the Question of Theology
the Middle Ages by Richard A. Lee, Jr.
edited by Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to
Jane Weisl the Renaissance
Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon edited by Thelma S. Fenster and Clare A.
England Lees
by Mary Dockray-Miller Maloryís Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian
Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Tradition
Twelfth-Century Woman by Catherine Batt
edited by Bonnie Wheeler The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval
The Postcolonial Middle Ages Religious Literature
edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski,
Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Warren
Chaucer’s Pardoner and Gender Theory: Bodies
of Discourse Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages:
by Robert S. Sturges Image Worship and Idolatry in England
1350–1500
Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on by Kathleen Kamerick
Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women
Writers Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and
edited by Barbara Stevenson and Literary Structure in Late Medieval England
Cynthia Ho by Elizabeth Scala
Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Creating Community with Food and Drink in
Later Middle Ages Merovingian Gaul
by Laurel Amtower by Bonnie Effros
Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: Queer Love in the Middle Ages
Image and Empire by Anna Klosowska Roberts
by Anne McClanan
Performing Women: Sex, Gender and the
Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Medieval Iberian Lyric
Objects, Texts, Images by Denise K. Filios
edited by Désirée G. Koslin and Janet
Snyder Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in
Medieval England
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady
by David Gary Shaw
edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John
Carmi Parsons Visual Culture and the German
Isabel La Católica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays Middle Ages
edited by David A. Boruchoff edited by Kathryn Starkey and Horst
Wenzel
Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of Male
Same-Sex Desire in the Fourteenth Century Medieval Paradigms: Essays in Honor
by Richard Zeikowitz of Jeremy duQuesnay Adams,
Volumes 1 and 2
Portraits of Medieval Women: Family,
edited by Stephanie Hayes-Healy
Marriage, and Politics in England 1225–1350
by Linda E. Mitchell False Fables and Exemplary Truth: Poetics and
Eloquent Virgins: From Thecla to Joan of Arc Reception of a Medieval Mode
by Maud Burnett McInerney by Elizabeth Allen
The Persistence of Medievalism: Narrative Ecstatic Transformation
Adventures in Contemporary Culture by Michael Uebel
by Angela Jane Weisl Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early
Capetian Women Modern Cultures
edited by Kathleen Nolan edited by Lawrence Besserman
Joan of Arc and Spirituality Tolkeinís Modern Middle Ages
edited by Ann W. Astell and Bonnie edited by Jane Chance and Alfred
Wheeler Siewers
The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Representing Righteous Heathens in Late
Southern Low Countries Medieval England
edited by Ellen E. Kittell and Mary A. by Frank Grady
Suydam Byzantine Dress
Charlemagne’s Mustache: And Other Cultural by Jennifer Ball
Clusters of a Dark Age The Laborerís Two Bodies
by Paul Edward Dutton by Kellie Robertson
Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight The Dogaressa of Venice, 1200–1500: Wife
in Medieval Text and Image and Icon
edited by Emma Campbell and by Holly S. Hurlburt
Robert Mills
On the Purification of Women: Churching in
Queering Medieval Genres Northern France, 1100–1500
by Tison Pugh Paula Rieder
Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism Logic, Theology, and Poetry in Boethius,
by L. Michael Harrington Abelard, and Alan of Lille: Words in the
The Middle Ages at Work Absence of Things
edited by Kellie Robertson and by Eileen Sweeney
Michael Uebel Voices from the Bench: The Narratives of Lesser
Chaucer’s Jobs Folk in Medieval Trials
by David R. Carlson by Michael E. Goodich
Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on The Theology of Work: Peter Damian
Literature, Architecture and Cultural Identity and the Medieval Religious Renewal Movement
by John M. Ganim by Patricia Ranft
THE THEOLOGY OF WORK
PETER DAMIAN AND THE MEDIEVAL
RELIGIOUS RENEWAL MOVEMENT
Patricia Ranft
THETHEOLOGYOFWORK
© Patricia Ranft, 2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-6847-0
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2006 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-73462-7 ISBN 978-1-137-12145-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-12145-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ranft, Patricia.
The Theology of Work : Peter Damian and the Medieval Religious
Renewal Movement / Patricia Ranft.
p. cm.—(New Middle Ages)
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
1. Peter Damian, Saint, 1007?–1072. 2. Work—Religious
aspects—Christianity—History of doctrines—Middle Ages, 600–1500.
3. Theology—History—Middle Ages, 600–1500. I. Title. II. New Middle
Ages (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))
BX4700.P77R35 2006
261.8(cid:2)5092—dc22 2005053507
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: April 2006
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Transferred to Digital Printing 2009
To Robert, with love,
For then and now
And to Mary McDonough Cricco, whose life and
love have touched so many people
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Part I The Foundations: Early Christian
Theologies of Work
1 Early Christian Attitudes toward Work 13
Part II The Framework:
Peter Damian’s Contributions
2 The Eleventh-Century World of Peter Damian 33
3 Damian’s Social Theology 55
4 Damian’s Apostolate: Theology of Work in Action 77
Part III The Completed Edifice:
Medieval Monastic Movement
5 The Regular Canons 99
6 The Cistercians 121
7 Carthusians, Women, and Marginal Groups 141
8 The Mendicants 169
9 Epilogue 191
Notes 203
Bibliography 241
Index 259
INTRODUCTION
In 2002 Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer (1902–1975), founder of Opus
Dei, was canonized by Pope John Paul II. Opus Dei, God’s Work, is an
organization that challenges all people, clerical, laity and religious, to find
eternal happiness by changing “the human work of our usual working day
into the work of God: something that will last for ever.”1 In an interview
to the New York Times in 1966 Escrivá claimed that his organization’s
goal was “to remind Christians that, as we read in the book of Genesis,
God created man to work,” and “that any honest and worthwhile work
can be converted into a divine occupation” capable of sanctifying the indi-
vidual worker “and sanctifying others through it.”2Escrivá takes issue with
a common theological assumption, that work is a punishment humanity
wrought upon itself as a result of sin. Rather, “work is man’s original voca-
tion. It is a blessing from God, and those who consider it a punishment are
sadly mistaken. The Lord, who is the best of fathers, placed the first man in
Paradise ut operaretur, so that he would work.”3Moreover, “no occupation
is in itself great or small. Everything gains the value of the love with which
it is done.”4Opus Dei’s message is timely, for “the conditions of contem-
porary society, which places an ever higher value on work, evidently make
it easier for the people of our time to understand this aspect of the Christian
message.”5
Indeed, it is perhaps not coincidental that the Opus Dei movement
arose (Escrivá began the movement in 1928) and spread first in Spain dur-
ing those years in which society was conducting a violent debate between
the adherents of communism and capitalism, two ideologies much con-
cerned with work. Spain was not unique in its conduct of this debate, but
its bloody civil war of 1936–1939 is an historical reminder of how intense
and personal the debate over the meaning of work and the priority of the
worker became during the twentieth century. The debate itself began in
earnest during the nineteenth century, a century which labor historian
Adriano Tilgher calls “the Golden Age for the idea of work.”6 Utopian
socialists of England and France, such as Robert Owen, Charles Fourier,
and Charles Henri de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon focused on work as the key
2 THE THEOLOGY OF WORK
to their utopian world, while Quakers, Puritans, and evangelical preachers
spread “the gospel of work” to the American middle class.7 It was the
philosophers of the nineteenth century, however, who had the greatest
impact on the concept of work; their ideas formed the bloody twentieth-
century debates that followed. Georg Hegel (1770–1831), Frederick Engels
(1820–1895), and Karl Marx (1818–1883) penetrated the social and eco-
nomic structures of their day, and each wrote extensively about work.
Hegel believed that a person’s work is basically a labor for self-knowledge,
for only in work is a person’s humanity realized: “I have done something,
I have externalized myself.”8 In 1848 Marx and Engels co-authored the
Communist Manifestoand in 1867 Marx published Das Kapital; within these
two treatises one finds a fully developed political economy in which work
is central.9 Philosopher Hannah Arendt maintains that “Marx actually
meant to replace the traditional definition of man as an animal rationale by
defining him as an animal laborens.” He went too far, though, according to
Arendt, when he posited “that labor (and not God) created man” and “that
labor (and not reason) distinguished man from the other animals.”10 Marx
did, in fact, place himself outside the Judeo-Christian tradition with this
belief and thus established an extremely clear dividing line between mod-
ern socialist thought on work and traditional Christianity’s understanding
of it. The Roman church recognized the challenge and responded with the
landmark Rerum novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s social encyclical of 1891, the
first official Roman hierarchical reflection on work and labor.
During the course of the twentieth century Marx’s interpretation of
work spread far and wide. It became the foundation of numerous new
political systems. The success of these systems, advances in technology, and
the establishment of industrial capitalism throughout the world all but
guaranteed that the debate over the nature of work would continue in
earnest. Theorist Hendrik de Man’s opus magnum, Joy in Work, is
oneexample.11In this sociological study of seventy-eight laborers, de Man
explores the workers’ attitudes toward machines, tools, and the workshop,
even while believing that uninhibited manual labor should yield joy to the
worker. The influential philosopher Henri Bergson defined humanity as
homo faber, a human whose manual labor manufactures and shapes matter.
Bergson did acknowledge, though, that the manufacture of new things “is
a slight matter compared with the new ideas and new feelings that the
invention may give rise to in every direction, as if the essential part of the
effect were to raise us above ourselves and enlarge our horizon.”12 Work,
in other words, actualizes humanity’s potential in the spiritual as well as the
material world. In Human Condition Arendt offered what one critic called
“one of the deepest and most provocative analyses of the nature of work
produced by a twentieth-century philosopher;”13 the subject of her study
