medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: John Briggs <[log in to unmask]>
> On 23/12/2011 17:06, Christopher Crockett wrote:
>> would it be too far afield to consider the earliest Cistercian foundations
to be prototypes of this?
> Yes, it probably would.
so happy to have the corroboration.
>> founded in remote, unsettled and very frequently waste areas, in
contradistinction to the (mostly, in northern France at least) suburban
Benedictines (who may have started their institutional life, centuries
earlier, in remote, unsettled and very frequently waste areas), for the
purpose of allowing their monks to lead a life of, if not absolute solitude,
at least of silence, a near-penitential level of physical exercise, intense
practice of contemplation (a.k.a. "meditation") and extremely restricted
contact with the outside world.
> That is mostly Cistercian propaganda. In England,
viday soupra, J.B., re "the **earliest** Cistercian foundations."
i.e., not those out on the Western Fringe but (primarily) in Burgundy, esp.
the mother houses of Cisteaux, Clairvaux, Morimond, Pontigny and La Ferté and
their immediate daughters.
of course, these might be said to have been most susceptible to "Cistercian
propaganda."
>all available land was already under cultivation.
*all* available land??
you mean that no forests were cleared or swamps drained after c. 1100?
>The first house was at Waverley in Surrey - this is still countryside, but
was never remote, unsettled or waste. Frequently (especially in Yorkshire),
the peasants had to be cleared off the land to make way for the monks'
solitude. The displaced peasants were then recruited as "lay brothers" - that
is believed to be the source of lay brothers in all countries.
yes, the inhabitants of the Western Fringe can no doubt lay Proud Claim to
both the invention of Peonage and to its export to much of the rest of the
planet.
c
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