Paper presented at Leeds IMC 2015 on the changing role of the medieval monastic porter in England

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A broad survey of Benedictine monasticism from the time of Benedict to the present with sections on the Benedictine Office and music and monasticism. The bibliography (completed 2017) is divided by topic.

In a description of a trip through the Midi of France in 1835, Prosper Merimée devotes a lengthy paragraph to the analysis of the Christ in Vézelay's Pentecost tympanum (fig. 1). He marvels at the carving of the figure's feet and “blessing” hands, as well as the placement of the thighs in relation to the torso. Later in his treatment of the abbey church and its sculpture, the author notes that figures on the nave capitals convey a “savage zeal” (zèle farouche) by means of posture and facial expressions. Gestures, in the widely construed, medieval sense of the word, clearly struck the celebrated French author as a salient feature of Vézelay's sculpture. Merimée sympathized with Romantic visions of the Middle Ages as a period less tainted by the stifling effects of civilization, and perhaps his fascination with the dramatic body movement carved throughout the abbey church reflects the belief that these were unfettered by the artistic or social constraints of the early nine...

This PhD dissertation examined diverse narrative, legislative, and epistolary texts concerning conversion and leadership patterns in new religious communities of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with particular reference to Bernard of Clairvaux and early Cistercian monasticism. Congregations such as the Fonte Avellanesi, the Grandmontines, the Premonstratensians, and the Benedictines of Molesme were analysed to provide comparative perspectives. The thesis described the eleventh-century background of Cistercian asceticism and the secular contexts for Bernard of Clairvaux's early career. It examined the evidence on his extreme and idiosyncratic asceticism and situated his practices within the context of submission to abbatial and episcopal governance..