Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in Twelfth-Century Germany (review)

This collection of essays, highlighting the intellectual and spiritual vitality of monastic culture in Germany during the twelfth century,provides eloquent testimony to the growing interest in medieval German culture and society among contemporary English-language scholars. Fueled by such figures as Caroline Walker Bynum, Jeffrey Hamburger, and Barbara Newman, this interest has swelled in recent years. Nevertheless, attention to Germany has continued to lag behind other parts of Western Europe, particularly during the twelfth century, a period generally characterized by cultural and intellectual renaissance, but one during which Germany has been seen as "rather backward or inconveniently different" (p. 3). Measured against the yardstick of northern France—the presumed epicenter of renaissance—Germany has tended to come up rather short.

One purpose of the collected essays is, therefore, to reconsider Germany's place in the cultural and intellectual landscape of the twelfth century, a topic thoughtfully explored by Rodney Thomson in his opening essay. The language of "renaissance" is, however, largely absent from the volume, which favors instead vocabulary borrowed from the book's subtitle: "reform" and "renewal." The decision to highlight reform reflects the prominence of religious rather than secular concerns among the collected essays and marks the volume's contribution to debates concerning the intellectual dimensions of spirituality and devotion. As the various authors demonstrate, reformed monasticism in Germany provided the conditions necessary for both an intellectual and a religious revival.

In addition to the volume's emphasis on German intellectual vitality (which is, paradoxically, defended primarily in terms of access to French texts and ideas), the essays share a common focus on the material culture of monasticism, using manuscript studies as a window into such broader questions as monastic devotion, education, and community formation. Here again, the link between religious reform and intellectual activity emerges as a central theme. From the late eleventh century, newly reformed monasteries began to build monastic libraries, copying or commissioning manuscripts and, in some cases, promoting in-house authors and artists to write or embellish them. The fact that many of these monastic libraries survive fairly intact makes them particularly valuable as evidence for monastic intellectual and devotional culture.

Beyond the themes signaled by the volume's title, individual essays make important contributions to broader questions concerning medieval gender, visual culture, and community. Essays by Adam Cohen and Stefanie Seeberg explore the place of images in monastic manuscripts—whether exegetical or liturgical—demonstrating their intellectual complexity and engaging critical questions regarding the gendering of visual culture. Julie Hotchin and Christina Lutter investigate women's participation in the intellectual vitality of twelfth-century monastic culture, challenging the pervasive medieval association of woman with the flesh and not the spirit. Constant Mews and Ralf Stammberger offer a rich reassessment of the opposition posited by Jean Leclercq between the monastery and the schools, highlighting the reception of scholastic texts within German monastic libraries. As Mews provocatively argues, Bernard of Clairvaux's attacks on Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers may have been the result of their popularity within the monastic context, rather than evidence of monastic antagonism to them. Several essays (Ellen Joyce, Mews, Stammberger, and Hotchin) underscore the importance of friendship networks in enabling the spread of ideas and texts, demonstrating the extent to which German monastics shared in intellectual communities that extended beyond their individual houses—a topic also explored by Lisa Fagin Davis in her examination of the manuscript dissemination of Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons on the Song of Songs. Finally, Alison Beach, whose study of female scribal culture at Admont inspired the 2002 conference from which many of the essays originate, explores the centrality of community to reformed monasticism through a close reading of Irimbert of Admont's commentary on the Book of Ruth.

Taken as a whole, Manuscripts and Monastic Culture is a significant collection. Not only do the essays offer a welcome corrective to the view that medieval...