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Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts
Religion in Medieval Society
Sharon Farmer (Edited by), Barbara H. Rosenwein (Edited by)
9780801434457
Hardback, published 10 April 2000
272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.907 kg
A common feature of these studies is the full and helpful citation of primary sources combined with an extensive acquaintance with relevant scholarly work. They merit the careful attention of those interested in their subjects, and they inspire confidence in the judicious use of the approach that they adopt. Its introduction and ten essays are well written and engage with wide-ranging and serious issues.... Their authors succeed in asking innovative questions and suggesting new approaches with a clear sense of the demands and limitations posed by the documentary remains that sustain their inquiries. The volume's essays are important, original contributions.
A new generation of historians today is borrowing from cultural anthropology, post-modern critical theory, and gender studies to understand the social meanings of medieval religious movements, practices, figures, and cults. In this volume Sharon Farmer and Barbara H. Rosenwein bring together essays—all hitherto unpublished—that combine some of the best of these new approaches with rigorous research and traditional scholarship. Some of these essays re-envision the professionals of religion: the monks and nuns who carried out crucial social functions as mediators between living and dead, repositories for social memory, and loci of vicarious piety. In their religious life these people embodied an image of the society that produced them. Other contributions focus on social categories, usually expressed as dichotomies: male/female, insider/outsider, saint/outcast. Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts is the first book to show the interaction of seemingly antithetical groups of medieval people and the ways in which they were defined by, as well as against, each other. All of the essays, taken together, form a tribute to Lester K. Little, pioneer in the study of religion in medieval society.