This title was first published in 2000: This is a full-scale integrated synthesis of the origins, spread and effects of monasticism in Scandinavia, and along the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea. Beginning with a review of the geography and communications by land and, especially, by sea, of the region, the author goes on to describe early monasticism among the Frisians ,Saxons and the Danes, then in Norway and Sweden, Saxony, Slesvig and Ribe, and finally Pomerania and the southern and eastern Baltic littoral. Throughout the book he stresses the place of abbeys and convents within their local surroundings, as centres of conversion, recruitment and redistribution of wealth. He traces the intellectual, literary and liturgical connections between monastic centres and neighbouring cathedral towns and royal strongholds, and the means by which orders or congregations maintained discipline from the centre. He also describes the leaders who emerged from convent, abbey or congregation to command local and regional political and cultural life, and the ways in which monastic centres influenced popular devotion.

Hugh Lawrence's book ranges right across Europe and the Middle East as well as reconstructing the internal life, experience and aims of the medieval cloister, he also explores the many-sided relationships between the monasteries and the secular world from which they drew recruits. This Third Edition contains new thoughts and perspectives throughout.

This book provides an overview of medieval monasticism in Iceland, from its dawn to its downfall during the Reformation. Blending the evidence from material remains and written documents, Monastic Iceland highlights the realities of everyday life in the male and female monasteries operated in Iceland. The book describes the incorporation of monasticism into the Icelandic society, the alleged land of the Vikings, and thus how the monasteries coexisted with the natural and social environments on the island while keeping their general aims and objectives. The book shows that large social systems, such as monasticism, can cross social and natural borders without necessitating fundamental changes apart from those triggered by the constant coexistence of nature and culture inside the environment they exist within. The evidence provided debunks the myth that Icelandic monasteries, male or female, were isolated, silent places or simple cells functioning principally as retirement homes for aristocrats. To be a member of an ecclesiastical institution did not mean a quiet, secluded life without any outside interaction, but rather active participation in the surrounding community. The book is for researchers in archaeology, osteology, and medieval history, in addition to all those interested in monasticism and the medieval history of northern Europe.

Monasticism, in all of its variations, was a feature of almost every landscape in the medieval West. So ubiquitous were religious women and men throughout the Middle Ages that all medievalists encounter monasticism in their intellectual worlds. While there is enormous interest in medieval monasticism among Anglophone scholars, language is often a barrier to accessing some of the most important and groundbreaking research emerging from Europe. The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West offers a comprehensive treatment of medieval monasticism, from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. The essays, specially commissioned for this volume and written by an international team of scholars, with contributors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, cover a range of topics and themes and represent the most up-to-date discoveries on this topic.

While both regular canons and monasticism with its development into different orders have reached a roughly even level of coverage in research, the history of secular canons is a field which has hitherto been far less in focus of historian scholarship. This might be due to the fact that they did not form orders or congregations offering a systematic approach to their institutions. Hence the pieces of research carried out so far mostly deal with a single cathedral or collegiate chapter and do not expand on the phenomenon in general. Likewise, the present publication may not give a comprehensive survey but yet takes a comparative approach by regarding the establishment of secular canons in a European longitudinal section from the Polar Circle to Southern Italy. In this course, both cathedral and collegiate chapters in Scandinavian, German, Polish and Italian territories and the respective career paths canons took into them will be considered. In this course, the essays take only some brief recourses to the early middle ages, when canons maintained a cloistered vita communis, but rather turn their view to those centuries in the high and later middle ages up to reformation times, when the chapters reached their full implementation. The essays collected in this volume base on a session series held at the International Medieval Congress 2018 in Leeds. The contributors are renowned historians in this field: Antonio Antonetti (Caserta), Anna Minara Ciardi (Stockholm), Emanuele Curzel (Trento), Sigrun Høgetveit Berg (Tromsø), Jochen Johrendt (Wuppertal), Anna Kowalska-Pietrzak (Łódź), Arnold Otto (Nürnberg), Kirsi Salonen (Turku), Jörg Wunschhofer (Beckum).

Hugh Lawrence's book ranges right across Europe and the Middle East as well as reconstructing the internal life, experience and aims of the medieval cloister, he also explores the many-sided relationships between the monasteries and the secular world from which they drew recruits.