Religious and Laity in Western Europe 1000-1400: Interaction, Negotiation, and Power

Arising from a 2003 conference on the religious and the laity held at the University of Leicester, this collection includes nineteen interesting, solidly researched, and useful essays. Consistent attention to religious and lay interactions provides a thematic unity to the collection, which thus avoids the random nature that occasionally characterizes some essay collections.

The book has three sections. The first, on patrons and benefactors, features nine essays on patronage of religious institutions. Marjorie Chibnall demonstrates the political function of patronage, as the Plantagenet Henry II patronized monasteries which were on political borders, such as those of the Fontevraudine and Grandmontine orders. Belle Stoddard Tuten wonders how the establishment of Fontevraud affected patronage patterns; she finds that upwardly-mobile families favoured this new house but that well-established families were more likely to continue their old patronage patterns.

Janet Burton also examines the politics of patronage, looking at Roger de Mowbray's patronage of monasteries in twelfth-century England. Emilia Jamroziak's study of Rievaulx abbey demonstrates that, in the absence of a patron, Rievaulx's monks had to create bonds through other means, such as via lay burials, confraternity admissions, and commemoration practices. Linda Rasmussen compares monastic benefactors in England and Denmark. Among her findings, she identifies more royal benefactors in Denmark, and points out that in both countries some benefactions came from lower down the social scale than hitherto thought.

Kim Esmark's study blends the large scholarly area of family and kinship studies with the topic of monastic patronage. We learn that patronage of the Danish Cistercian abbey of Sorø helped create an identity for the otherwise disparate kin-group of the Hvide 'family'. Hence, patronage does not just reflect group consciousness but it also constitutes such consciousness and so is a fruitful source for our study of medieval group identities.

Moving away from monasteries, Sheila Sweetinburgh's essay examines two southern English hospitals to find, via the study of gifts, that the hospital at Orspringe was embraced by its local community whereas St Mary's at Dover was not. Karen Stöber, author of a recent monograph on the role of the laity as founders and hereditary patrons in English and Welsh monasteries, continues this theme in her chapter, with a focus on the changing meaning of patronage to lay families over time, and using examples from the de Clare family. To complete this section, Hans-Joachim Schmidt analyses the close relationship between the Luxemburg dynasty and the mendicants, especially the political role played by the Dominicans.

Section two, on 'lay and religious: negotiation, influence, and utility' has links with the first section, but emphasizes relationships between lay and religious that were exhibited in areas other than patronage. Stephen D. White's essay fits into the large historiography on the feudal mutation of the year 1000 and the scope, functions, and meanings of violence at this time. Using miraculous/hagiographic material concerning Sainte Foy at Conques, White suggests that it is not a question of either violence or peace, nor is it a question of either physical violence or oral resolution. Rather, the relationships between and among individuals and institutions around the turn of the first millennium were much more complex and subtle.

Next, Marsha L. Dutton examines the Genealogia regum Anglorum, written by abbot Aelred of Rievaulx. She shows that Aelred presented St Dunstan as a model of how church and king should cooperate, a topic of genuine relevance in mid-twelfth-century England. Anne E. Lester examines religious women in northern France, specifically the links between women caring for lepers and women joining and establishing Cistercian nunneries. She finds that Cistercian convents often started out as leper houses. This emphasis on the apostolic and active nature of Cistercian nuns' early history is an important addition to scholarship. In the next essay, William Chester Jordan studies documents composed in order to facilitate Louis IX's canonization, and in so doing finds interesting evidence of ideal lay/monastic relations.

Erin Jordan examines the religious patronage of Jeanne, countess of Flanders and Hainaut in the thirteenth century. Differences in Jeanne's patronage of Cistercian, Franciscan, and Dominican houses suggest that ideas about the correct balance between patronage of monasteries and the monastic ideal of poverty were undergoing change and redirection at the time.

Finally, Constance H. Berman examines the meaning of the Latin term conversus/conversa in southern France. She identifies changing meanings over time. Before the 1160s or 1170s, the distinction between monks (or nuns) and conversi (or conversae) had not yet become established; at this early stage a conversus was simply someone who had converted as an adult, and it would not be until later that conversus took on its meaning of the peasant laybrother who possessed, in practice, second-class status within the monastery.

The final section focuses on confraternities and urban communities. Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld provides not only a thorough study of monastic and lay confraternities in the Southern Low Countries but also a useful overview of past scholarship on the area. His case studies confirm previous scholarship that sees lay confraternities developing out of the earlier (Benedictine-inspired) monastic confraternities.

James G. Clark examines the curiously under-studied Liber benefactorum from St Albans Abbey, with attention to its listing of the confraternity of St Albans. Over 300 names are included, covering entrance to confraternity over a period of about five centuries. Sometimes portraits of the confrères were included, sometimes individual monks from other houses were admitted to confraternity, sometimes domestic servants of the abbey were admitted – all of this provides valuable evidence for the varieties of relationship that confraternity could both reflect and enable.

Next Jens Röhrkasten provides a broad study of the English mendicants, especially their links or otherwise to the towns. Bram van den Hoven van Genderen and Paul Trio conclude the book with a helpful survey of scholarship on confraternities in the Low Countries from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. With most of the scholarship written in Dutch, and many important studies lying in unpublished theses in continental European universities, this is a very helpful guide for the English-language scholar.

To conclude, this collection is a credit to all involved in its production. The 2003 conference was clearly the occasion for excellent scholars to gather together, and the resulting collection is a fine example of essays which are strong in their own right and also united by a general attention to an overall theme, in this case the many forms and functions of the relationship between religious and laity in the high Middle Ages.