Description
Book SynopsisAround the turn of the first millennium AD, there emerged in the former Carolingian Empire a generation of abbots that came to be remembered as one of the most influential in the history of Western monasticism. In this book Steven Vanderputten reevaluates the historical significance of this generation of monastic leaders through an in-depth study of one of its most prominent figures, Richard of Saint-Vanne. During his lifetime, Richard (d. 1046) served as abbot of numerous monasteries, which gained him a reputation as a highly successful administrator and reformer of monastic discipline. As Vanderputten shows, however, a more complex view of Richard''s career, spirituality, and motivations enables us to better evaluate his achievements as church leader and reformer.Vanderputten analyzes various accounts of Richard's life, contemporary sources that are revealing of his worldview and self-conception, and the evidence relating to his actions as a monastic reformer and as a promoter of
Trade Review
Steven Vanderputten is a productive scholar, publishing a spate of books and articles over the past decade, most of which deal with questions of monastic history in medieval Flanders and the surrounding areas in the tenth and eleventh centuries. With Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages Vanderputten turns his attention to a monastic figure, who he argues has been oft misinterpreted: Richard of Saint-Vanne. Vanderputten gives us the most thorough investigation of the life and actions of Richard to date, and does so in an impressive manner.
* Comitatus 47 *
Vanderputten places Richard within the wider context of ecclesiastical leadership at the turn of the first millennium.... Using multiple ecclesiastical chronicles, the eleventh-century Life of Richard, and some of Richard's own writings, Vanderputten paints a picture of Richard as a dynamic figure, part of the aristocratic elite of tenth-century Lotharingue who developed an ideal of following the suffering Christ, nudus Christum nudum sequere.
* The Historian *
Table of ContentsIntroduction1. Imagining Richard in Medieval and Modern Historiography2. Ecclesiastical Office, Religious Virtuosity, and the Apostolic Imperative3. Imagining Saint-Vanne4. "Founder and Head of Many Monasteries"5. Converting the WorldConclusionAppendix A: Chronology of Major Events in Richard's Life
Appendix B: The Life of Roding
Appendix C: Monastic Reading at Saint-Vanne
Appendix D: Overview of Richard’s Abbacies Outside of Saint-Vanne
Appendix E: Overview of Richard’s "Priors"
Appendix F: Overview of Richard’s SuccessorsBibliography
Index
