Steven Vanderputten
Steven Vanderputten is a senior full professor (ordinarius, in the Belgian rank of Gewoon Hoogleraar) in the history of the Early and High Middle Ages at Ghent University. His research focuses on the development of religious communities, particularly those that can be broadly identified as belonging to monasticism as a social and cultural phenomenon. It covers a wide range of subjects, including memory and the shaping of collective identities, conflict management, rituals and public behavior, oral and written practices of communication, gender and gendered identities, leadership, institutional development, and discourses and realities of ecclesiastical and religious reform.
His work has been widely published in collective volumes and in peer-reviewed journals, including Speculum, Viator, The Journal of Medieval History, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Traditio, The Catholic Historical Review, Studia Monastica, Revue Bénédictine, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Le Moyen Age, Studi Medievali, and Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique. His monographs include Monastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900-1100 (Cornell University Press, 2013); Reform, conflict and the shaping of corporate identities. Collected studies on Benedictine monasticism, 1050-1150 (Vita Regularis, LIT Verlag, 2013); Imagining Religious leadership in the Middle Ages. Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Politics of Reform (Cornell University Press, 2015); Dark Age Nunneries. The Ambiguous Identity of Female Monasticism, 800-1050 (Cornell University Press, 2018); Medieval Monasticisms. Forms and Experiences of Monastic Life in the Latin West (De Gruyter/Oldenbourg, 2020); and Dismantling the Medieval. Early Modern Memories of a Female Convent's Past (Brepols, 2021). He also co-edited (with Diane Reilly) a critical edition of Bishop Gerard of Cambrai's Acta Synodi Atrebatensis, along with several related texts from early-eleventh-century Cambrai (Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis, Brepols Publishers, 2015), and edited seven collective volumes (Leuven University Press, Brepols, Amsterdam University Press, The Medieval Low Countries), the latest of which are A Companion to the Abbey of Cluny in the Middle Ages, which he co-edited with Scott Bruce, and Judith of West Francia, Carolingian Princess and First Countess of Flanders. Biographical Elements and Legacy.
In 2005, 2010, and 2015, Ghent University's Special Research Fund awarded him one of its five-year research professorships. His Fellowships include Clare Hall (Cambridge University, 2003), the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, 2005), the Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte (Eichstätt, 2008), the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Wassenaar, 2009-2010), the Flemish Academic Center (Brussels, 2011-2012), the Institute for Advanced Study of Indiana University (Bloomington, 2012). In February 2017, he was a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study of Bristol University, and in April 2017, he was an invited professor of the Accademia dei Lincei at the University of Milan/Brescia. In April 2012, he was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award by the Humboldt Foundation for his contribution to historical scholarship. In October 2013, the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts proclaimed him Laureate in Humanities. The title of Laureate is the Academy's highest distinction for scholars.
SV has led several funded research projects: two on monastic reform in the tenth to twelfth centuries, one on the ‘ambiguous identity’ of female religious in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and one on the competitive aspects of the Peace of God. Currently he is in the start-up phase of a funded FWO-project on narratives of distinction in the long tenth century. He is currently acting as vice-chair of Ghent University's "Henri Pirenne Consortium for Medieval Studies", as member of multiple editorial borard and as chief editor of the series Communiras (Brepols). In 2015, he was the coordinator of the special strand "Reform and renewal" of the International Medieval Conference in Leeds. In 2024 he was one of the scholars behind the exhibition 'Judith, A Carolingian Princess in Ghent? (Sint-Pietersabdij, Ghent, October 2024-January 2025).
Twitter: http://twitter.com/StVanderputten
Address: Department of history
Ghent University
Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35
9000 Gent
Belgium
His work has been widely published in collective volumes and in peer-reviewed journals, including Speculum, Viator, The Journal of Medieval History, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Traditio, The Catholic Historical Review, Studia Monastica, Revue Bénédictine, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Le Moyen Age, Studi Medievali, and Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique. His monographs include Monastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900-1100 (Cornell University Press, 2013); Reform, conflict and the shaping of corporate identities. Collected studies on Benedictine monasticism, 1050-1150 (Vita Regularis, LIT Verlag, 2013); Imagining Religious leadership in the Middle Ages. Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Politics of Reform (Cornell University Press, 2015); Dark Age Nunneries. The Ambiguous Identity of Female Monasticism, 800-1050 (Cornell University Press, 2018); Medieval Monasticisms. Forms and Experiences of Monastic Life in the Latin West (De Gruyter/Oldenbourg, 2020); and Dismantling the Medieval. Early Modern Memories of a Female Convent's Past (Brepols, 2021). He also co-edited (with Diane Reilly) a critical edition of Bishop Gerard of Cambrai's Acta Synodi Atrebatensis, along with several related texts from early-eleventh-century Cambrai (Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis, Brepols Publishers, 2015), and edited seven collective volumes (Leuven University Press, Brepols, Amsterdam University Press, The Medieval Low Countries), the latest of which are A Companion to the Abbey of Cluny in the Middle Ages, which he co-edited with Scott Bruce, and Judith of West Francia, Carolingian Princess and First Countess of Flanders. Biographical Elements and Legacy.
In 2005, 2010, and 2015, Ghent University's Special Research Fund awarded him one of its five-year research professorships. His Fellowships include Clare Hall (Cambridge University, 2003), the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, 2005), the Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte (Eichstätt, 2008), the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Wassenaar, 2009-2010), the Flemish Academic Center (Brussels, 2011-2012), the Institute for Advanced Study of Indiana University (Bloomington, 2012). In February 2017, he was a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study of Bristol University, and in April 2017, he was an invited professor of the Accademia dei Lincei at the University of Milan/Brescia. In April 2012, he was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award by the Humboldt Foundation for his contribution to historical scholarship. In October 2013, the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts proclaimed him Laureate in Humanities. The title of Laureate is the Academy's highest distinction for scholars.
SV has led several funded research projects: two on monastic reform in the tenth to twelfth centuries, one on the ‘ambiguous identity’ of female religious in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and one on the competitive aspects of the Peace of God. Currently he is in the start-up phase of a funded FWO-project on narratives of distinction in the long tenth century. He is currently acting as vice-chair of Ghent University's "Henri Pirenne Consortium for Medieval Studies", as member of multiple editorial borard and as chief editor of the series Communiras (Brepols). In 2015, he was the coordinator of the special strand "Reform and renewal" of the International Medieval Conference in Leeds. In 2024 he was one of the scholars behind the exhibition 'Judith, A Carolingian Princess in Ghent? (Sint-Pietersabdij, Ghent, October 2024-January 2025).
Twitter: http://twitter.com/StVanderputten
Address: Department of history
Ghent University
Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35
9000 Gent
Belgium
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Monographs by Steven Vanderputten
Dismantling the Medieval is available as a paperback (http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503593470-1) and an open access ebook: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx (https://www.brepolsonline.net/action/showBook?doi=10.1484/M.STMH-EB.5.122603).
The most notable exception to this revisionist rule concerns the situation of women religious between c. 800 and 1050, a phase in the history of female monasticism many scholars still tend to think of as a ‘dark age’. Dark, in the sense that the realities of life in and around the cloister are exceedingly difficult to access: the primary evidence is extremely fragmented; the social, economic, intellectual, and religious context ill-understood; and scholars’ findings are scattered across a multitude of case studies. But dark also in the sense that, according to the dominant academic narrative, female monasticism suffered from the disempowerment of its members, the progressive ‘secularization’ of its institutions, and the precipitous decline of women’s intellectual life and spirituality.
Based on a study of forty religious communities in Lotharingia – a multi-lingual, politically and culturally diverse region in the heart of Western Europe – this book tells a more nuanced story, where the testimony of the primary evidence takes precedence over established scholarly accounts. It is a story, moreover, that dismantles the view of women religious in this period as the disempowered, at times even disinterested, witnesses to their own lives. As a running thread throughout the discussion, it highlights their attempts (and those of the men and women sympathetic to their cause) to construct localized narratives of self, nurture mutually beneficial relations with their social environment, and remain involved in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of the laity generally. Taking center stage throughout the book is the multiformity in the experience of the women religious themselves.
Vanderputten analyzes various accounts of Richard’s life, contemporary sources that are revealing of his worldview and self-conception, and the evidence relating to his actions as a monastic reformer and as a promoter of conversion. Richard himself conceived of his life as an evolving commentary on a wide range of issues, relating to individual spirituality, monastic discipline, and religious leadership. This commentary, which combined highly conservative and revolutionary elements, reached far beyond the walls of the monastery and concerned many of the issues that would divide the Church and its subjects in the later eleventh century.
In Monastic Reform as Process Steven Vanderputten puts the history of monastic reform to the text by examining the evidence from seven monasteries in Flanders, one of the wealthiest feudal principalities of northwestern Europe, between 900 and 1100. He finds that one cannot understand the efforts of individual reformers such as Bernard of Clairvaux without accounting for the wider social, economic, and intellectual context in which each individual monastery found itself. He also shows that reformist government was cumulative in nature, and many of the individual achievements and initiatives of reformist abbots were only possible because they built upon previous achievements. Rather than looking at reforms as “flashpoint events,” we need to view them as processes worthy of study in their own right. Deeply researched and carefully argued, Monastic Reform as Process will be essential reading for scholars working on the history of monasteries more broadly as well as those studying the phenomenon of reform throughout history.
Text editions by Steven Vanderputten
The miscellaneous corpus of texts commissioned by Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai (1012-1051) constitutes one of the primary means of accessing substantial parts of the Low Countries' political, cultural, and religious history in the early eleventh century. Encompassing historiography, hagiography, dogmatic treatises, correspondence, and other texts, it also constitutes a defense of episcopal prerogatives, and reflects Gerard's concerns and ambitions as bishop of Cambrai, an imperial bishopric wedged between Western Frankish territories, and lord of the Cambrésis. The programmatic nature of this discourse is revealed particularly in a group of seemingly unrelated narratives and documents, presented here in versions thought to best approximate those edited during Gerard’s lifetime. In the Acts of the Synod of Arras, a lengthy treatise presented as the report of the inquisition of heretics in 1025, Gerard provided, via an anonymous author, a detailed insight into his views on Christian dogma, religious practice, and bishops’ roles in society. Although they belong to a different textual genre, the Lives of St Aubert and St Géry, both predecessors of Gerard at Cambrai, reveal the coherence and persistence of Gerard’s views on the aforementioned subjects. Twelve miscellaneous documents (letters, treaties, and one Peace decree), each of which touches upon issues addressed in the three previous texts, complete the corpus.
Steven Vanderputten is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Ghent. He is the author of Monastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900-1100 (Ithaca, 2013).
Diane J. Reilly is Associate Professor of History of Art at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of The Art of Reform in Eleventh-Century Flanders: Gerard of Cambrai, Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Saint-Vaast Bible (Leiden, 2006).
Review
"(...) les sources sont soigneusement identifiées et regroupées dans des index consacrés aux références scripturaires, patristiques, hagiographiques et liturgiques. Si elle permettra des recherches plus poussées sur le corpus cambrésien des oeuvres "gérardiennes" et leurs thèmes favoris (l'autorité de l'évêque dans la vie politique et sociale, l'utilité des sacraments, la réflexion sur la nécessité de la sépulture chrétienne), nul doute que cette nouvelle édition fournira aussi un point de départ au repérage d'autres oeuvres contemporaines, notamment hagiographiques, inspirées par la pensée de l'évêque." (Charles Mériaux, in: Revue du Nord, tome 97, n° 410, avril-juin 2015, p. 409-410)
«Ce beau travail, bien servi par une introduction claire et stimulante, mérite des éloges» (Fr. De Vriendt, dans Analecta Bollandiana, 134.1, 2016, p. 220)
Edited volumes by Steven Vanderputten
With contributions by Michèle Gaillard, Katy Cubitt, Jirki Thibaut, Nicolangelo d’Acunto, Carlos Reglero, Ben Pohl, Johan Belaen, and Gert Melville.
Dismantling the Medieval is available as a paperback (http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503593470-1) and an open access ebook: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx (https://www.brepolsonline.net/action/showBook?doi=10.1484/M.STMH-EB.5.122603).
The most notable exception to this revisionist rule concerns the situation of women religious between c. 800 and 1050, a phase in the history of female monasticism many scholars still tend to think of as a ‘dark age’. Dark, in the sense that the realities of life in and around the cloister are exceedingly difficult to access: the primary evidence is extremely fragmented; the social, economic, intellectual, and religious context ill-understood; and scholars’ findings are scattered across a multitude of case studies. But dark also in the sense that, according to the dominant academic narrative, female monasticism suffered from the disempowerment of its members, the progressive ‘secularization’ of its institutions, and the precipitous decline of women’s intellectual life and spirituality.
Based on a study of forty religious communities in Lotharingia – a multi-lingual, politically and culturally diverse region in the heart of Western Europe – this book tells a more nuanced story, where the testimony of the primary evidence takes precedence over established scholarly accounts. It is a story, moreover, that dismantles the view of women religious in this period as the disempowered, at times even disinterested, witnesses to their own lives. As a running thread throughout the discussion, it highlights their attempts (and those of the men and women sympathetic to their cause) to construct localized narratives of self, nurture mutually beneficial relations with their social environment, and remain involved in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of the laity generally. Taking center stage throughout the book is the multiformity in the experience of the women religious themselves.
Vanderputten analyzes various accounts of Richard’s life, contemporary sources that are revealing of his worldview and self-conception, and the evidence relating to his actions as a monastic reformer and as a promoter of conversion. Richard himself conceived of his life as an evolving commentary on a wide range of issues, relating to individual spirituality, monastic discipline, and religious leadership. This commentary, which combined highly conservative and revolutionary elements, reached far beyond the walls of the monastery and concerned many of the issues that would divide the Church and its subjects in the later eleventh century.
In Monastic Reform as Process Steven Vanderputten puts the history of monastic reform to the text by examining the evidence from seven monasteries in Flanders, one of the wealthiest feudal principalities of northwestern Europe, between 900 and 1100. He finds that one cannot understand the efforts of individual reformers such as Bernard of Clairvaux without accounting for the wider social, economic, and intellectual context in which each individual monastery found itself. He also shows that reformist government was cumulative in nature, and many of the individual achievements and initiatives of reformist abbots were only possible because they built upon previous achievements. Rather than looking at reforms as “flashpoint events,” we need to view them as processes worthy of study in their own right. Deeply researched and carefully argued, Monastic Reform as Process will be essential reading for scholars working on the history of monasteries more broadly as well as those studying the phenomenon of reform throughout history.
The miscellaneous corpus of texts commissioned by Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai (1012-1051) constitutes one of the primary means of accessing substantial parts of the Low Countries' political, cultural, and religious history in the early eleventh century. Encompassing historiography, hagiography, dogmatic treatises, correspondence, and other texts, it also constitutes a defense of episcopal prerogatives, and reflects Gerard's concerns and ambitions as bishop of Cambrai, an imperial bishopric wedged between Western Frankish territories, and lord of the Cambrésis. The programmatic nature of this discourse is revealed particularly in a group of seemingly unrelated narratives and documents, presented here in versions thought to best approximate those edited during Gerard’s lifetime. In the Acts of the Synod of Arras, a lengthy treatise presented as the report of the inquisition of heretics in 1025, Gerard provided, via an anonymous author, a detailed insight into his views on Christian dogma, religious practice, and bishops’ roles in society. Although they belong to a different textual genre, the Lives of St Aubert and St Géry, both predecessors of Gerard at Cambrai, reveal the coherence and persistence of Gerard’s views on the aforementioned subjects. Twelve miscellaneous documents (letters, treaties, and one Peace decree), each of which touches upon issues addressed in the three previous texts, complete the corpus.
Steven Vanderputten is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Ghent. He is the author of Monastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900-1100 (Ithaca, 2013).
Diane J. Reilly is Associate Professor of History of Art at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of The Art of Reform in Eleventh-Century Flanders: Gerard of Cambrai, Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Saint-Vaast Bible (Leiden, 2006).
Review
"(...) les sources sont soigneusement identifiées et regroupées dans des index consacrés aux références scripturaires, patristiques, hagiographiques et liturgiques. Si elle permettra des recherches plus poussées sur le corpus cambrésien des oeuvres "gérardiennes" et leurs thèmes favoris (l'autorité de l'évêque dans la vie politique et sociale, l'utilité des sacraments, la réflexion sur la nécessité de la sépulture chrétienne), nul doute que cette nouvelle édition fournira aussi un point de départ au repérage d'autres oeuvres contemporaines, notamment hagiographiques, inspirées par la pensée de l'évêque." (Charles Mériaux, in: Revue du Nord, tome 97, n° 410, avril-juin 2015, p. 409-410)
«Ce beau travail, bien servi par une introduction claire et stimulante, mérite des éloges» (Fr. De Vriendt, dans Analecta Bollandiana, 134.1, 2016, p. 220)
With contributions by Michèle Gaillard, Katy Cubitt, Jirki Thibaut, Nicolangelo d’Acunto, Carlos Reglero, Ben Pohl, Johan Belaen, and Gert Melville.
Peter Treckpoel (1442-1510/11)
The purpose of this paper is to argue that the extraordinary body of vernacular historiographical texts by the cleric Petrus Treckpoel (1442-1510/11) is one of the ‘missing links’ in the literary canon of
Belgian and Netherlandish Limburg. Over nearly twenty-five years Treckpoel compiled extensive notes about the turbulent events in his region, which he subsequently used in a series of ambitious literary projects. The first of these, a convent chronicle of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ter Engelen in Bilzen, was part of an effort to shape the memory culture of this small community of semi-religious women. The next was a world chronicle with a focus on the Overmaas region, for which Treckpoel found inspiration in a copy he had recently acquired (and heavily annotated) of the Alder excellenste chronijke van Brabant. The third and final of his literary projects was a set of Deeds of the bishops of Liège. It is unclear what audience he envisaged for the latter two texts; nor do we know how they were received at the time. However, Treckpoel’s work distinguishes itself for its typological diversity and profound inter- textuality. It is also notable for its emotional idiom, its focus on the common man and woman, and for the many clues about his working methods that can be found in the texts and in the extant manuscripts.
Conférence de Steven Vanderputten "La dignité de nos corps et le salut de nos âmes. Scandales, pureté et visions de l'unité dans le monachisme à la fin du Xe siècle". Mardi 8 janvier 2019, 9h-11h Sorbonne, rue Victor Cousin, 75005 Paris Escalier E, 1er étage (EPHE), salle D. 052 Conférence ouverte sans inscription dans la limite des places disponibles Pour des informations sur les autres conférences de cet atelier, contacter polo@ehess.fr
In a second, speakers will consider gendered aspects of reform in the transitional phase of the 10th to 12th centuries: Jirki Thibaut will consider the tension between canonical and Benedictine modes of life in female convents in 10th-century Saxony, while Sarah Greer will consider issues of gendered and aristocratic identity in women's convents of the same region; finally, Tracy Collins will explore the material testimonies of the reform of female institutions in Ireland.
In a third,, speakers will consider how communal identities were (re-)negotiated in a context of reform between the middle of the 11th century and that of the 13th: Yvonne Seale will consider male programs for the reform of female communities in the Premonstratentian order, while Sara Moens will do likewise for bishops' and local abbots' tactics to harness female religiosity in 13th-century Liège; finally, Kirsty Day will investigate how Franciscan women themselves transmitted the reformist mandates of the Fourth Lateran Council.
In a final one, speakers will consider late medieval reflections and responses to reform: Julie Hotchin will investigate aspects of material change as a result of male-induced reform in women's convents; and finally Jennifer De Vries explores attempts by male agents to establish their authority over beguines in the Low Countries.
https://imc.leeds.ac.uk/dbsql02/AQueryServlet?*id=30&*formId=30&*context=IMC&chosenPaperId=NA&sessionId=6965&conference=2017&chosenPaperId=&*servletURI=https://imc.leeds.ac.uk/dbsql02/AQueryServlet
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https://imc.leeds.ac.uk/dbsql02/AQueryServlet?*id=30&*formId=30&*context=IMC&chosenPaperId=NA&sessionId=6968&conference=2017&chosenPaperId=&*servletURI=https://imc.leeds.ac.uk/dbsql02/AQueryServlet
In a first of two sessions, speakers will look at how inter-institutional networks were established and functioned, both within and outside of the context of the emerging orders. Sébastien Barret will consider the use of the written word in the upholding of these networks; Guido Cariboni will investigate the role played by abbots in their creation; Eric Delaissé will explore contemporary views of such networks; and finally, Johan Belaen will consider the modes of interaction between the ‘independent’ monasteries of the Benedictine order.
In a second, speakers will look at views on abbatial leadership in a context of profound transformations institutionally and shift in the scale of monastic government. Katharine Sykes will focus on leadership visions in adapted versions of the Benedictine Rule in mixed and female communities; Alexis Grélois will address Bernard of Clairvaux' perspective on monastic leadership by means of his Apologia; and Marco Krätschmer will treat contemporary ideas on the abbot's relation to the outside world. In conclusion to the two sessions, the organizers will formulate perspectives on future research in this underdeveloped area of monastic studies.
https://imc.leeds.ac.uk/dbsql02/AQueryServlet?*id=30&*formId=30&*context=IMC&chosenPaperId=NA&sessionId=7336&conference=2017&chosenPaperId=&*servletURI=https://imc.leeds.ac.uk/dbsql02/AQueryServlet
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Ghent/Gand, 15–16/12/2016
Recent years have seen tremendous development in historical scholarship on the significance of monastic leadership, particularly that of so-called ‘reformist’ abbots, in the ninth- to twelfth-century West. One reason for this is that historians’ view of the nature and consequences of reform’ in this period has profoundly changed. Another relates to the fact that reform is now increasingly being considered as resulting from the interplay of multiple, monastic and non-monastic stakeholders. Finally, there is now increased awareness of how the discourse of biographical commentaries has shaped modern views of abbots’ agency and motivations.
These three factors have yielded an approach that has moved away from regarding such monastic leaders as representatives of abstract ‘reform movements’, to looking at how they, as individuals, specifically contributed to the development of religious communities. Key to this trend in historical studies is the question of how Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of social, cultural and symbolic capital may be given a more central role in discussions of reformist leadership, and reform generally.
Bringing together international experts in the field, and relying on state of the art scholarship, this conference will seek to establish, for different regions and periods, how abbots contributed as ‘human resources’ to the development of reformed monastic communities. Speakers will address one or more of three approaches. The first looks at the direct contribution of abbots to the shaping of reformed realities; the second at their influence over future modes of leadership; and the third at the way in which later generations of monks relied upon the memory of their life and achievements to address current concerns.
what binds them together, even though this understanding is constantly being renegotiated.
Our aim is to focus on the ways in which co-habiting peers learned from one another. This “horizontal learning” has received much less attention than the vertical master/student
approach, and yet it emerges as an important part of the learning experience, especially as we are interested in “learning” in a broad sense: not only acquiring factual knowledge or skills, but also developing ideas and beliefs and adapting to behavioral patterns. In short, everything that
could make a monk a better and more efficient member of the community.
Whereas other projects thematize the institutional history of learning, the transmission of propositional knowledge in formalized educational contexts, or the importance of networks of learning, this project distinguishes itself through its focus on day-to-day interactions by community members.
Our starting point is the investigation of communal learning in the practices of high medieval religious communities. Progressing beyond the old view that they were closed, homogeneous, and fairly stable social groups, we intend to approach these communities as the product of a continuous process of education and integration of new members. Contributions will
investigate the way in which inter-personal exchanges of knowledge between peers concretely functioned, and what this teaches us about medieval learning within the context of a
community.
Whereas other projects thematize the institutional history of learning, the transmission of propositional knowledge in formalized educational contexts, or the importance of networks of learning, this project distinguishes itself through its focus on day-to-day interactions by community members.
Our starting point is the investigation of communal learning in the practices of high medieval religious communities. Progressing beyond the old view that they were closed, homogeneous, and fairly stable social groups, we intend to approach these communities as the product of a continuous process of education and integration of new members. Contributions will investigate the way in which inter-personal exchanges of knowledge between peers concretely functioned, and what this teaches us about medieval learning within the context of a community.
The organizers invite proposals for both case studies and theoretical reflections on the subject. Proposals should be submitted to horizontal.learning@UGent.be by February 1th, 2016, and should consist of a title, a 400-word abstract and a CV.
Join our interview with Steven Vanderputten for an insightful discussion about how the research on European Medieval Monasticism has been transformed in recent years and what future narratives of medieval monasticism might look like. After a 15-minute interview, the floor will be opened for questions from the audience.