The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism

doi: 10.1017/S0009640709000614 The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism. Edited by James G. Clark. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 30. Woodbndge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. xvi + 224 pp. $85.00 cloth.

This collection of essays appreciative of English medieval monasteries gives ample evidence of their cultural vitality right up to their dissolution under Henry VID. In the title essay, James G. Clark provides an overview of changing monastic beliefs and values - "monastic mentalities" - between the Conquest and the Dissolution, an appraisal that is possible now that scholars have shifted their attention from treasures, "the cultural remains," to the monastic communities that created them. Clark sees the "culture of cenobitic life" envisioned in the Benedictine Rule evolving dynamically, permitting "certain universal values" to coexist with those of "distinct cultural environments" shaped by "gender, economic conditions, or social status" (4, 5).

One development Clark highlights is an increased emphasis on reading: the pursuit of learning "more than any other pattern of life . . . separates the nuns of the later Middle Ages from their predecessors" (14). The resultant "cultural exchanges between the cloister and the world" were positive because they required nuns and monks to participate in "a process of critical engagement" (17) about what to accept or reject, a discernment that permitted innovation in spiritual literature, liturgy, and art. "There can now be no doubt," Clark concludes, "that the treasures recovered from the ruins of the religious houses after 1540 were not the fossils of a long forgotten world...