medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Lena Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Stinking rich they [Marmoutier] were,
well, you can't really *help* being stinking rich, when you've got folks
giving you land all over the place, even in different dioceses.
>too, with land all over the place, in different dioceses.
like i said... can't blame a rich man for having money --it's his Marcus
Aurelian essence, after all.
>These were the lot of whom Geoffrey of Vendome wrote: Quos B. Martini
humilitas superbos, et eius paupertas pecuniosos facit'.
sour grapes: Godfrey probably feeling the pinch of competition --several MM
priories down in Vendome's bailiwick.
>Nicholas of Clairvaux, in c. 1147, accuses them of bribery and corruption,
but he is not perhaps the most reliable of witnesses.
no, perhaps not.
cf. Walter Map on the cistercians just a few decades later --to hear him tell
it, Marmoutier hadn't lost it's amateur standing, corruption-wise.
which brings up an interesting question --or series of them.
as best i can make out, MM followed (or, being early, partially led) a
familiar pattern, perhaps going back to the original Benedictine tradition
itself, certainly pioneered by Cluny from the early 10th c. and followed by
the Cistercians in the course of the 12th:
an initial wave of enthusiastic expansion, perhaps associated with some sort
of idea of "reform" (at least with Cluny and Citeaux, though i've never heard
that perhaps loaded concept associated with MM), or, at a minimum, with some
sort of innovative ideas re ecclesiatical/monastic/*political*
organisation/"exploitation" (in the French sense of the word, if you prefer).
to judge by the worms' eye view i've gotten via the chartrain documents, MM
began to florish from the 1020's, picked up speed in the subseqent decades,
was still a significant player at the end of the century and the beginning of
the 12th, but seems to have petered out and rested on its laurels (or it's
wealth) and coasted into a complacent and, no doubt, comfortable middle and
old age (at least that's what i gather from the pattern of priory foundations
and important donations --again, from a potentially very limited and skewed
data base, unsystematically and incompetently evaluated).
which is not to say that MM and Cluny certainly remained a force to be
reconned with through the 12th c., as did the Cistercians in the 13th., but,
was there some sort of "morphological" principle at work here which "imposed"
(or, at least, provided) a pattern which governed (or, at least, might
explain) the trajectory of these three distintly different but remarkably
similar "movements" (and, perhaps, those of the Franciscians, Domininicans and
others which followed them, about which i know less than even nothing)?
perhaps i should brush up on my Hegel/Spengler.
best from all from here,
christopher
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