Klöster im Hochmittelalter

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pursue the spiritual and institutional goals set in St Benedict’s sixth-century Rule.
Essential to this departure from earlier medieval realities were three fundamental
shifts in monastic institutionalism: emancipation from lay lords’ and bishops’ control;
progressive homogenization of monastic customs and government; and creation
of structures, first informal then increasingly institutionalized, of legislation
and supervision. Although ideologically coherent, reform monasticism in all other
respects was far from unified: different regions of Western Europe saw the emergence
of different reform movements, the methodology and development of which
were determined by local patronage, institutional legacies from earlier periods, and
other contextual constraints. ⁵ The geographical distribution of these movements or
‘types’ of reform monastisticim roughly corresponded with the political division
of the former empire, and each movement’s customs and organization reflected the
regional elites’ expectations regarding monasticism’s service to society. According to
this interpretation of the monastic past, the aforementioned abbots’ significance as
historical figures derived from the fact that they had functioned either as the principal
founders, or as the principal figureheads, of these movements and of the (semi-)
institutionalized, hierarchically-organized networks of reformed monasteries that
resulted from these movements’ agency. In these studies, abbots’ religious charisma
was typically downplayed in favor of their pragmatic attitudes in promoting reform
and their ability to navigate the troubled political waters of that period.
Beginning in the 1960s, specialist discussions gradually moved away from trying
to reconstruct ‘types’ of reform monasticism. ⁶ Distinguishing between the rhetoric
of apologetic commentators concerning the necessity and outcomes of reform
(be they spiritual or institutional) and the institutional and disciplinary realities at
reformed monasteries, scholars successfully challenged the notion that the reform
movements of the tenth and early eleventh centuries succeeded in homogenizing
monastic discipline and government in particular regions of Western Europe. Also
jettisoned was the idea that we can envisage all instances of reform as being the
implementation of a pre-conceived, reformist ‘program’ conceived in abstraction
5 For a discussion of this literature I refer to Joachim Wollasch, Monasticism. The First Wave of Reform,
in: The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3: c. 900 – c. 1024, ed. Timothy Reuter, Cambridge 1999,
pp. 163 –185 and Elmar Hochholzer, Die Lothringische (“Gorzer”) Reform, in: Die Reformverbände
und Kongregationen der Benediktiner im Deutschen Sprachraum, ed. Ulrich Faust/Franz Quarthal
(Germania Benedictina 1), St. Ottilien 1999, pp. 43 – 87.
6 The bibliography on reform is extremely abundant. For a status quaestionis, see the volumes Monastische
Reformen im 9. und 10. Jahrhundert, ed. Raymund Kottje/Helmut Maurer (Vorträge und Forschungen/Konstanzer
Arbeitskreis für Mittelalterliche Geschichte 38), Sigmaringen 1989; Mittelalterliche Orden
und Klöster im Vergleich. Methodische Ansätze und Perspektiven, ed. Gert Melville/Anne Müller
(Vita regularis. Abhandlungen 34), Berlin/Münster 2007 and Ecclesia in medio nationis. Reflections on the
Study of Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages – Réflexions sur l’étude du monachisme au moyen âge
central, ed. Steven Vanderputten/Brigitte Meijns (Mediaevalia Lovaniensia 42), Leuven 2011.