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Dark Age Nunneries: The Ambiguous Identity of Female Monasticism, 800–1050
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In Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten dismantles the common view of women religious between 800 and 1050 as disempowered or even disinterested witnesses to their own lives. It is based on a study of primary sources from forty female monastic communities in Lotharingia—a politically and culturally diverse region that boasted an extraordinarily high number of such institutions. Vanderputten highlights the attempts by women religious and their leaders, as well as the clerics and the laymen and -women sympathetic to their cause, to construct localized narratives of self, preserve or expand their agency as religious communities, and remain involved in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of the laity amid changing contexts and expectations on the part of the Church and secular authorities.
Rather than a "dark age" in which female monasticism withered under such factors as the assertion of male religious authority, the secularization of its institutions, and the precipitous decline of their intellectual and spiritual life, Vanderputten finds that the post-Carolingian period witnessed a remarkable adaptability among these women. Through texts, objects, archaeological remains, and iconography, Dark Age Nunneries offers scholars of religion, medieval history, and gender studies new ways to understand the experience of women of faith within the Church and across society during this era.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page, Copyright
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Setting the Boundaries for Legitimate Experimentation
2. Holy Vessels, Brides of Christ: Ambiguous Ninth-Century Realities
3. Transitions, Continuities, and the Struggle for Monastic Lordship
4. Reforms, Semi-Reforms, and the Silencing of Women Religious in the Tenth Century
5. New Beginnings
6. Monastic Ambiguities in the New Millennium
Conclusion
Appendix A: The Leadership and Members of Female Religious Communities in Lotharingia, 816â1059
Appendix B: The Decrees on Women Religious from the Acts of the Synod of Chalon-sur-Saône, 813, and the Council of Mainz, 847
Appendix C: Jacques de Guiseâs Account of the Attempted Reform of Nivelles and Other Female Institutions in the Early Ninth Century
Appendix D: The Compilation on the Roll of Maubeuge, c. Early Eleventh Century
Appendix E: Letter by Abbess Thiathildis of Remiremont to Emperor Louis the Pious, c. 820sâ840
Appendix F: John of Gorzeâs Encounter with Geisa, c. 920sâ930s
Appendix G: Extract on Women Religious from the Protocol of the Synod of Rome (1059)
Appendix H: The Eviction of the Religious of Pfalzel as Recounted in the Gesta Treverorum, 1016
Appendix I: The Life of Ansoaldis, Abbess of Maubeuge (d. 1050)
Appendix J: Letter by Pope Paschalis II to Abbess Ogiva of Messines (1107)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
| ISBN | 9781501715976 |
|---|---|
| Related ISBN(s) | 9781501715945, 9781501715952, 9781501715969 |
| MARC Record | Download |
| OCLC | 1001968627 |
| Pages | 330 |
| Launched on MUSE | 2018-04-10 |
| Language | English |
| Open Access | No |
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