Klöster im Hochmittelalter

The Mind as Cell and the Body as Cloister | 113
life with the express intention of not only withdrawing from the world, but of also
carrying out the Gregorian ideal of pursuing the conversion of others. As we shall
see further, this included the laity.
It may seem paradoxical to argue that precisely these attitudes made Richard
an excellent candidate for abbatial office at Saint-Vanne. Like his fellow alumnus
Gerard of Cambrai, Richard saw the monastery not just as a place for worship – their
secular ecclesiastical backgrounds had them value other contexts just as much – ²⁹
but as a ‘professionalized’ exercise ground for spiritual perfection. For most monks,
the spiritual and mortificatory goals the reformers were setting were unattainable
unless pursued in an environment hermetically sealed off from the temptations of
the world. ³⁰ What was needed, therefore, were religious virtuosi whose ascetic qualities
were so highly developed that they did not need the rigours and regularity of
life in the cloister to enable them to observe the monastic propositum, and who were
able to reach out to lay society without the risk of being compromised, morally or
otherwise. ³¹ As early as the first half of the tenth century, abbots, most notably at
Cluny, had been trying to come to terms with the tense relation between stabilitas
loci and good abbatial behavior. The necessity of actively engaging with the outside
world, among others to manage the monastic estate, interact with secular donors,
and weave the intricate web that comprised the abbots’ network in this period, led
to a situation where it was an abbot’s ex officio duty not to observe the virtue of
stabilitas. The solution to this problem was thematized in Cluniac abbatial ideology,
which represented the office of abbot as the monks’ sole trait-d’union between
themselves and the world. ³² Abbatial itinerancy was the key instrument to promot-
29 This distinguished him from his contemporary Abbo of Fleury, who emphatically rejected the Pseudo-Ambrosian’s
and Adalbero of Reims’ view of society as tripartite (bishops – rulers and princes – ‘ordinary
people’) and considered the monastic ordo to stand above the clerical one, with bishops acting as
mediators between the cloister and secular society; George Huntston Williams, The Golden Priesthood
and the Leaden State. A Note on the Influence of a Work Sometimes Ascribed to St. Ambrose: the Sermo
de dignitate sacerdotali, in: The Harvard Theological Review 50, 1957, pp. 49 f. and Marco Mostert,
The Political Theology of Abbo of Fleury. A Study of the Ideas about Society and Law of the 10 ᵗʰ -Century
Monastic Reform Movement (Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen 2), Hilversum 1987, pp. 98 –100.
Richard, so it seems, did not share these ideas; his focus was on the virtuoso as individual.
30 Jestice, Wayward Monks (note 14 above), pp. 172 f. For monks, especially those who had converted as
adults, acting like Thierry of Saint-Hubert did according to his biographer, displaying total obedience and
humility in thought and behavior, practicing mortification, incessant prayer and study of the Scriptures,
would have been impossible unless they lived in a state or total seclusion from the outside world; Vita
Theoderici abbatis Andaginensis, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, in: MGH Scriptores 12, Hannover 1856,
pp. 36 –57, here pp. 41– 43.
31 Jestice, Wayward Monks (note 14 above), p. 173.
32 Isabelle Rosé, Construire une société seigneuriale. Itinéraire et ecclésiologie de l’abbé Odon de Cluny
(fin du IX ᵉ –milieu du X ᵉ siècle) (Collection d’études médiévales de Nice 8), Turnhout 2008, p. 561. The
presence and use of Gregory’s works in monastic contexts is well attested. Odo of Cluny (927–942) for
instance used several of the former’s texts, including the Rule of the Pastor, in his own writings, and relied