medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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From: "The Medieval Review" <[log in to unmask]>
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Subject: TMR 13.06.18 France, Separate but Equal (Bouchard)
France, James. <i>Separate But Equal: Cistercian Lay Brothers,
1120–1350</i> Series: Cistercian Studies 246. Collegeville, Minn.:
Liturgical Press, 2012. Pp. xxviii, 372. $39.95. ISBN-13: 9780879072469.
Reviewed by Constance B. Bouchard
University of Akron
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Cistercian lay brothers have remained very little studied, even though they
probably constituted at least half of the men who joined that religious
order in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They were called
<i>conversi</i> in medieval Latin because they had converted from the life
of the secular world, but they were not truly monks. These brothers took
vows as did the choir monks, but they served essentially as auxiliaries,
devoting their lives to manual labor or to a monastery's business (such as
buying and selling at market), rather than to the liturgical round. They
also tended to be of lower social and economic status and to be less well
educated than the monks. They appear overall to have joined the order for
the same religious reasons that motivated the monks, but for some it was
also a way out of the harshness of biting poverty. In this book James
France provides the first modern overview in English of the lay brothers,
incorporating the "Statutes" of these brothers as recently edited by
Chrysogonus Waddell. [1]
The book's purpose is to describe the functions and lives of these lay
brothers. They were a part of the monastery yet always somewhat separate,
as symbolized, for example, by their concentration on granges away from the
main monastic house. The book begins by defining lay brothers' backgrounds,
attributes, and activities, then goes on to discuss their appearance in a
variety of different sources. For the most part the focus is on the twelfth
and early thirteenth centuries. In the final chapter, however, France
addresses the decline of the institution of lay brothers as Cistercian
monasteries began leasing out their lands in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, rather than working them with their <i>conversi</i>, and as the
new orders of friars began outcompeting all Benedictines.
The use of varied sources is one of the book's strengths. Part of the
reason that lay brothers have remained so little studied is that, other than
their "Statutes," very little was directly written about them--and those
"Statutes" are short, scarcely a dozen pages in English translation
(helpfully provided in Appendix 3). In addition, none of the texts about
the lay brothers were written by the brothers themselves, for they were
almost always illiterate. France seeks to fill in the gaps by using other
kinds of sources, such as the architecture of their quarters ("ranges"),
which included dormitories and refectories--some still exist, as at
Clairvaux, Pontigny, and Fountains. Their architecture suggests the
"separate but equal" of the book's title, for the lay brothers essentially
had a separate monastery of their own, including their own choir within the
church. In addition, France finds and discusses references to lay brothers
in Cistercian miracle stories and sermon <i>exempla</i>, as well as in the
rulings of the order's chapter-general. He also reproduces several images
of carvings of monastic busts on claustral buildings and granges which he
believes represent lay brothers because they have beards; monks did not
normally have beards, but lay brothers did.
Although provided with the normal scholarly apparatus of footnotes and
bibliography, the book is not really aimed at scholars, but rather at a more
general audience, including modern-day Cistercians interested in their
order's history. There is no central argument or thesis, other than that
the lay brothers need to be better understood. France differs from previous
scholars primarily in being able to create a much broader and more nuanced
picture of the lay brothers, although he also argues convincingly, against
what he characterizes as a "consensus" in the historiography (xvii, 269),
that these brothers were not inherently more rebellious or undisciplined
than were the choir monks. But scholars of medieval monasticism will find
much of interest here, just because the topic has been so widely ignored,
and the book would be good for graduate students. France writes clearly and
well, although his organization is not always clear, and the twenty-four
illustrations are a nice addition, even though the subject-matter of most of
them dates to the end of the Middle Ages, after the period of the book's
chief focus.
France begins with the paradox of the lay brothers' incorporation into the
Cistercian order. On the one hand, the Cistercians insisted that they were
adhering more closely to Benedict's original Rule than were the black monks,
including its emphasis on manual labor; and yet on the other hand, the use
of lay brothers was a novelty, unanticipated by Benedict, and their presence
meant that the choir monks were less involved personally in agriculture
after the first generation or two of the order. (The Cistercians' other
major deviation from Benedict was in not allowing child oblates.)
Although the Cistercians probably ended up with more lay brothers than any
other monastic order, they had not originated them initially. As France
details, it was not until two or three decades into the order's history that
the monks decided that they could not continue celebrating all the canonical
hours while acting as full-time agricultural laborers unless they had some
help. <i>Conversi</i>, originally a sort of half-way status between a monk
and a hired hand, had been found at Camaldoli in Italy since the early
eleventh century, and other Italian and German houses had adopted something
similar in subsequent years. Perhaps the most important influence on
Cistercian practice would have been the Carthusians, who had had lay
brothers since the 1080s, and one wishes France had been able to give more
space to this influence.
The whole question of the original nature of the Cistercian order is
complex, since the monks' own accounts of their foundation were
retrospective, often written by men who had not even been there in 1098.
Scholars have frequently relied on the narrative provided by Orderic
Vitalis, even though he wrote over a generation after the fact and was not a
Cistercian himself. It would have been useful for France to address more
directly the nature of all these accounts as acts of creative memory, rather
than using them simply to try to determine at what point lay brothers became
a standard feature of Cistercian houses.
One of the chief values of this book (although not France's chief purpose)
is that it counters the old assumption that the Cistercian order fell into
decline during the twelfth century--some scholars have assumed from the
middle of the century on, others indeed from the 1120s. Even while
discussing the role of the lay brothers, France is careful to make clear
that their presence did not mean that the monks themselves had abandoned
manual labor. Rather, his book treats the lay brothers and their activities
in the context of an order attempting to maintain its ideals in the face of
often difficult circumstances, numerous temptations toward laxity, and some
debate as to what those ideals even entailed.
---------------
Note:
[1] Chrysogonus Waddell, ed., <i>Cistercian Lay Brothers: Twelfth-Century
Usages with Related Texts</i> (Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses, 2000).
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