Monastic Spaces and their Meanings
Thirteenth-century English Cistercian Monasteries
By (author) Megan Cassidy-Welch
The author focuses on the Cistersian abbeys of northern England during the period 1132-1400, and supplies a microhistory of cultural, textual, personnel and architectural comparisons.
Medieval Cistercians distinguished between material and imagined space, while the landscapes in which they lived were perceived as both physical sites and abstract topographies. Ostensibly, Cistercians lived in intensely regulated and confined physical circumstances in accordance with ideals of enclosure articulated in the Regula S. Benedicti. However, Cistercian representations of space also express ideas of transcendence and freedom. This monograph focuses on the abbeys of northern England during the period 1132-1400 (Fountains, Rievaulx, Jervaulx, Meaux, Sawley, Roche, Byland and Kirkstall) to facilitate a microhistory of cultural, textual, personnel and architectural comparisons. Post-twelfth century Cistercian history has been understudied, in comparison with research into the euphoria of the order’s foundation, and has tended to focus on ‘ideals’ versus ‘reality’, whereas this study considers Cistercian houses in terms of contingency, singularity and specificity. The author engages with the work of theorists such as Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and Henri Lefebvre, all of whom have explored the cultural production of space and the meanings attributed to certain spaces by abstract reference, performative practice and institutional direction. The study is richly illustrated with 45 images of the landscape and space of these houses and enables the reader to see how one monastic order positioned itself in relation to geography, architecture, institution, community and cosmos, and dealt with the dialectic between regulation and imagination, freedom and enclosure. Patrick Geary (UCLA) commends this study as being ‘based on a wide reading of Cistercian texts and blends solid text-critical historical scholarship with more conceptual approaches in a most convincing way’.
- By (author) Megan Cassidy-Welch
Other Titles in this Series
Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe
Diverse Imaginations of Christ's Life
Volume 31
The Power of Words in Late Medieval Devotional and Mystical Writing
Essays in Honour of Denis Renevey
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Perspectives for an Architecture of Solitude
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‘God Wants It!’
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Inwardness, Individualization, and Religious Agency in the Late Medieval Low Countries
Studies in The 'Devotio Moderna' and its Contexts
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