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

Recently there has been a growing interest amongst English-speaking scholars in the place of Germany in medieval history. This has been reflected not just in important monographs like those of Jeffrey Hamburger or Alison I. Beach, but also in collections of essays based on conferences and symposia that have brought together international scholars. The current publication, edited by Beach, is exemplary of this type of collection. The essays are drawn from a four-day conference held at the Benedictine monastery of Admont in Steiermark, Austria, in 2002, where scholars from a diverse range of disciplines gathered. The writers represented came from Australia, Europe and the United States and met to discuss Germany and the twelfth-century reform movements. The particular focus of this conference was Admont itself, a double monastery where both men and women had studied, produced manuscripts and corresponded across wide intellectual, spiritual and social networks.

The collection consists of ten essays that draw on the insights that can be gained from an examination of surviving German medieval manuscripts, locating them within the context of the monastic reform movements that centered on southern Germany. The one exception to this is an introductory chapter by Rodney Thomson on Germany's place on the twelfth-century renaissance. Thomson, whose work has been on twelfth-century England, attempts to set out what distinguishes Germany from a more Francocentric understanding of this period. These include continuities with intellectual traditions established in the Ottonian period, as well as the important role of the Church in cathedral centres, monasteries and amongst the canons regular in nurturing these traditions, together with aristocratic patronage. The unusual influence exerted by literate women religious is also referenced. At the same time, despite the richness of the artistic and intellectual culture in Germany, its influence in Europe was surprisingly limited.

Most of the articles are grouped into three sections entitled: Seeing, Hearing, Believing; Preaching, Education and Reform; and Changing Intellectual Climate. The linkages across these areas are substantial. Alison Beach and Adam Cohen have published important monographs on aspects of eleventh- and twelfth-century German manuscript production, highlighting books produced for or by medieval women. Such research has been an important and revelatory feature of research into medieval Germany, and women as the readers and makers of manuscripts also feature prominently in this collection. Beach and Cohen's essays further complicate the complication that an acknowledgement of their presence provides. Cohen examines the line drawings that appear in manuscripts such as the Speculum virginum, from either Regensburg or Prüfening, and the De laudibus sanctae crucis treatise as well as the Admont Cassiodorus manuscript, connecting them to other Romanesque manuscripts from Central Europe. He discusses how they acted as visual aids to instruction and spiritual transformation not just for women but also for men. Beach further explores this in her close reading of a commentary by Abbot Irimbert on the Book of Ruth, written for both monks and nuns of his own house at Admont. Just as Beach and Cohen highlight the interconnection of the spiritual and intellectual communities of nuns and monks, Christina Lutter outlines the breakdown of simple gender-specific categories in such double-monasteries as Admont in the writings produced from such centres. At the same time she explores, through a set of three examples, the practical ramifications of living within such a community. Stephanie Seeberg also looks at a set of late twelfth-century manuscripts produced for, and partly by, the female community at Admont. She touches on the difficult issue of establishing whether the images found within them were specifically designed for women, or reflects a woman's spirituality. Julie Hotchins looks at the impact of monastic reform on the contents of the library of the nunnery at Lippoldberg.

What is apparent in these essays, as in Constant Mews' article on the Admont library, is the...