Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication: (Western Europe, Tenth-Thirteenth Centuries)

Description

Although traditionally defined as a literate environment, Western monastic culture depended on a range of communicative practices which was just as large, and in some ways more sophisticated in its diversity, than that of other groups of society. Monks and nuns exchanged considerable amounts of information for which no written media were deemed necessary or which did not make a complete or immediate transition into written sources. Grouped in five thematic chapters, the papers in this volume aim to provide inroads into a useable interpretation of the various contexts in which monks and nuns in the central Middle Ages considered the spoken word as a vital complementary medium to other forms of communication. Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xi Introduction Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication / STEVEN VANDERPUTTEN 3 Part I: The Politics of Non-Written Communication Communication at the Abbey of St. Gall / GERD ALTHOFF 11 'Verba volant, scripta manent': Limits of Speech, Power of Silence and Logic of Practice in Some Monastic Conflicts of the High Middle Ages / WOJTEK JEZIERSKI 23 'Monachos hujus ecclesie ad se venire fecit': Attitudes laïques comme reflets des stratégies monastiques orales et rituelles dans les transferts patrimoniaux / STEVEN VANDERPUTTEN 49 Part II: Traces of Orality in Liturgy, Customs and Material Culture Oral Transmission of Liturgical Practice in the Eleventh-Century Customaries of Cluny / SUSAN BOYNTON 67 Education, Liturgy and Practice in Early Cîteaux / DIANE J. REILLY 85 Celebrating with Dignity: The Purpose of Benedictine Matins Readings / TJAMKE SNIJDERS 115 Part III: Traces of Orality in the Transmission of Memory Traces d’oralité dans les recueils d’exempla cisterciens / MARIE-ANNE POLO DE BEAULIEU 139 What Charles the Simple Told the Canons of Compiègne: Oral and Written Transmissions of Memory in the 'Genealogia Dictata a Karolo Rege' / GEOFFREY KOZIOL 159 L’oralité monastique et la fabrication des légendes hagiographiques / EDINA BOZÓKY 183 Part IV: Talking Shop: Educating the Monastic Mind 'Ins Gespräch gebracht': Der Dialog als Prinzip monastischer Unterweisung / MIRKO BREITENSTEIN 205 Performance, Orality, and Communication in Medieval Women Convents in the Light of the Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim / ALBRECHT CLASSEN 231 Bericht, Verschriftlichung und Reoralisierung visionärer Erlebnisse im Mönchtum des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts / PETER DINZELBACHER 245 Part V: Talking Shop: Voicing the Monastic Mind Conversations Amongst Monks and Nuns, 1000-1200 / ELISABETH VAN HOUTS 267 Did Medieval Monks Actually Speak Latin? / JULIE BARRAU 293 'Oleum de saxo durissimo': Bernard of Clairvaux’s Poetics of Silence / WIM VERBAAL 319 Wandering Eyes, Muttering, and Frowns: Bernard of Clairvaux and the Communicative Implications of Gesture / METTE B. BRUUN 337 Conclusions Orality, Non-Written Communication and Monastic Studies / MARCO MOSTERT 367 Index of Manuscripts 389