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The Boundaries of Charity : Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098-1180
$22.93
Book
“This is a first-rate contribution to a new social/cultural history of religious institutions that has emerged in recent American scholarship. It is the first book that successfully explains the so-called paradoxes of twelfth-century Cistercian history, especially the fact that members of the order became intensely involved in political and ecclesiastical affairs while claiming that their religious life demanded withdrawal from the world. After reading Newman’s book, I feel that for the first time I really understand the twelfth-century Cistercians.”
- Sharon Farmer, University of California, Santa Barbara
This work explores how twelfth-century Cistercian monks maintained their tradition of social withdrawal yet played a pivotal political role in the world outside their monasteries. It argues that the Cistercians' political behavior was neither a betrayal of their monastic ideal nor evidence of some inherent Cistercian paradox, but that such public involvement grew out of the monks' conception of their monastic life, notably the cluster of ideas associated with Christian love, or caritas.
Skillfully integrating the religious, political, and economic components of Cistercian culture, the author shows that the boundaries of Cistercian monasteries were never impermeable to outside life. The Cistercian conception of caritas borrowed connotations from the aristocratic culture in which many of the monks had been raised, and the monks used caritas to express ideas about the interaction of individual introspection, group cohesion, physical transformation, and a longing for the divine that resonated in twelfth-century society.
Caritas provided an underpinning fro the Cistercians’ view of a Church bound by the spiritual progress of its members, and it explains the activities of those men who left their monasteries to enact this vision in the society around them. The author suggest that the monks’ image of social cohesion, which depended on each individual’s moral reform, held particular importance at a time when people struggled to understand the bonds uniting an abstract Church. By the late twelfth century, however, the Church’s new bureaucratic networks and reliance on abstract legal reasoning made the Cistercians’ image of a Church bound by caritas increasingly anachronistic.
Martha G. Newman is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Cover photo: The cloister at Fontenay. Courtesy of Geraudon/Art Resourse, N.Y.
This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the following edition:
Title The boundaries of charity: Cistercian culture and ecclesiastical reform, 1098-1180
Author Martha G. Newman
Edition illustrated
Publisher Stanford University Press, 1996
ISBN 0804725128, 9780804725125
Length 387 pages
Subjects 12th century
600-1500
Church history
Church history/ 12th century
Cistercians
Civilization, Medieval
Europe
History
History / Medieval
Middle Ages, 600-1500
Monasticism and religious orders
Monasticism and religious orders/ Europe/ History/ Middle Ages, 600-1500
Religion / Christian Church / History
Religion / General
Religion / Institutions & Organizations
The Origins of the University The Schools of Paris and Their Critics, 1100-1215
$22.96
Book
The University of Paris is generally regarded as the first true university, the model for other universities not only in France but also throughout Europe, including Oxford and Cambridge. In this book, the author challenges two prevailing myths about the origins of the university: first, that the university developed naturally to meet the utilitarian and professional educational needs of European society in the late Middle Ages, and second, that the university was born as a product of the struggle by scholars to gain freedom and autonomy from external authorities, notably from local church officials.
In the twelfth century, Paris was the educational center of Europe, with a large number of schools and masters attracting and competing for students. Over the decades, the schools of Paris had many critics-monastic reformers, humanists, satirists, and moralists-and the focus of this book is on the role of these critics in the development of the schools into a university. The author argues that it was the educational values and ideas promoted by the critics-ideas of the unity of knowledge, the need to share learning freely and willingly, and the higher purposes and social importance of education-that first inspired the scholars of Paris to join together to form a single guild. Their programs for educational reforms are also seen in the first set of statutes promulgated for the nascent University of Paris in 1215.
Stephen C. Ferruolo is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University.
This is a reproduction edition from a scan of the following original edition:
The origins of the university: the schools of Paris and their critics, 1100-1215
By Stephen C. Ferruolo
Published by Stanford University Press, 1985
ISBN 0804712662, 9780804712668
380 pages
Contents
CHAPTER ONE Paris and the Expansion of Education 11
William the Breton , William of Champeaux , Peter Helias
CHAPTER TWO The School of St Victor 27
William of Champeaux , trivium , Hugh of St
CHAPTER THREE Monastic Opposition to the Schools 47
William of St , Bernard of Clairvaux , Citeaux
CHAPTER FOUR The Satirists 93
Walter of Chatillon , Geta , Birria
CHAPTER FIVE The Humanists 131
Peter of Blois , Gerald of Wales , Bernard of Chartres
Preaching to Scholars 184
Peter Comestor , Peter of Poitiers , Hilduin
Promoting Reform 222
Peter of Poitiers , Peter Comestor , Stephen of Tournai
CONCLUSION The Formation of the University of Paris 279
Robert of Courson , William the Breton , bishop of Paris
Notes 319
Historia calamitatum , Peter of Blois , R. W. Southern
Manuscripts Cited 371
