Dark Age Nunneries: The Ambiguous Identity of Female Monasticism, 800-1050

by Steven Vanderputten

Overview

In Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten dismantles the common view of women religious between 800 and 1050 as disempowered or even disinterested witnesses to their own lives. It is based on a study of primary sources from forty female monastic communities in Lotharingia—a politically and culturally diverse region that boasted an extraordinarily high number of such institutions. Vanderputten highlights the attempts by women religious and their leaders, as well as the clerics and the laymen and -women sympathetic to their cause, to construct localized narratives of self, preserve or expand their agency as religious communities, and remain involved in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of the laity amid changing contexts and expectations on the part of the Church and secular authorities.

Rather than a "dark age" in which female monasticism withered under such factors as the assertion of male religious authority, the secularization of its institutions, and the precipitous decline of their intellectual and spiritual life, Vanderputten finds that the post-Carolingian period witnessed a remarkable adaptability among these women. Through texts, objects, archaeological remains, and iconography, Dark Age Nunneries offers scholars of religion, medieval history, and gender studies new ways to understand the experience of women of faith within the Church and across society during this era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501715952
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2018
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Steven Vanderputten is Professor in the History of the Early and Central Middle Ages at Ghent University. He is the author of Monastic Reform as Process and Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Setting the Boundaries for Legitimate Experimentation
2. Holy Vessels, Brides of Christ: Ambiguous Ninth-Century Realities
3. Transitions, Continuities, and the Struggle for Monastic Lordship
4. Reforms, Semi-reforms, and the Silencing of Women Religious in the Tenth Century
5. New Beginnings
6. Monastic Ambiguities in the New Millennium
Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Scott G. Bruce

Dark Age Nunneries is a thought-provoking and paradigm-changing book. By reimagining the very ‘ambiguity’ of female monastic communities as a strength, Steven Vanderputten’s book allows us to look at the scant sources for female monasticism in this period with new clarity and insight and, in doing so, changes the way that we think about religious practice in the central Middle Ages.

Walter P. Simons

Dark Age Nunneries is top-of-the-line work by one of the world’s greatest experts on medieval monasticism. I have no doubt that it will be received as fundamental in the field of women’s monasticism in the central Middle Ages and become the go-to book on the subject for scholars of all linguistic or national backgrounds in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.

Editorial Reviews

Previous generations of modern historians describe Lotharingian female monasticism as inadequate, lax, and unobservant. In Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten puts us right by offering a compelling alternative analysis.

SPECULUM - Elisabeth Van Houts

An impressive volume [that] will be useful to all scholars of monasticism, particularly in its nuanced analysis of communities' interaction with normative texts.

EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE

An impressive volume [that] will be useful to all scholars of monasticism, particularly in its nuanced analysis of communities' interaction with normative texts.

-- "EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE"

Previous generations of modern historians describe Lotharingian female monasticism as inadequate, lax, and unobservant. In Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten puts us right by offering a compelling alternative analysis.

--Elisabeth Van Houts, Emmanuel College "SPECULUM"

The book illuminates the little-explored landscape of female monasticism. Vanderputten demonstrates that the current narratives remain oversimplified, and opens up possibilities for its revision.

-- "Sehepunkte"

From the Publisher

The book illuminates the little-explored landscape of female monasticism. Vanderputten demonstrates that the current narratives remain oversimplified, and opens up possibilities for its revision.

Sehepunkte

"Dark Age Nunneries is top-of-the-line work by one of the world’s greatest experts on medieval monasticism. I have no doubt that it will be received as fundamental in the field of women’s monasticism in the central Middle Ages and become the go-to book on the subject for scholars of all linguistic or national backgrounds in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere."

Walter P. Simons

"Dark Age Nunneries is a thought-provoking and paradigm-changing book. By reimagining the very ‘ambiguity’ of female monastic communities as a strength, Steven Vanderputten’s book allows us to look at the scant sources for female monasticism in this period with new clarity and insight and, in doing so, changes the way that we think about religious practice in the central Middle Ages."

Scott G. Bruce