"Against the Custom": Hagiographical Rewriting and Female Abbatial Leadership at Mid-Eleventh-Century Remiremont
The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of a recently identified campaign of hagiographic writing from the mid-eleventh-century monastery of Remiremont to reconstruct how this female convent positioned itself at a time when clerical resistance to the lifestyle and autonomy of non-Bened...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
Published: |
2021
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In: |
The journal of medieval monastic studies
Year: 2021, Volume: 10, Pages: 41-66 |
IxTheo Classification: | KAE Church history 900-1300; high Middle Ages KBG France KCA Monasticism; religious orders KCD Hagiography; saints NBE Anthropology |
Further subjects: | B
female abbatial leadership
B Networking B Remiremont B Memory Culture B hagiographical rewriting B Luxeuil B Exemption B WOMEN'S MONASTICISM |
Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of a recently identified campaign of hagiographic writing from the mid-eleventh-century monastery of Remiremont to reconstruct how this female convent positioned itself at a time when clerical resistance to the lifestyle and autonomy of non-Benedictine communities was gaining momentum. In a first stage it looks at the three hagiographies from this campaign and how they reveal a cohesive strategy to drastically review the abbey’s narrative of origins. In a second it reconstructs how their argument fits into Abbess Oda’s (before 1045-1065/70) governance strategy and how that strategy was influenced by historical leadership choices at the nearby male houses of Luxeuil and Lure. And in a final one it considers memories of abbatial agency and discourses of communal identity at ninth- and tenth-century Remiremont, and how these influenced the abbess and her associates. In doing all these things, this study reveals that the abbey's leadership deployed a multi-faceted strategy to secure Remiremont's independence, taking ownership of its identity narrative at a critical juncture in its existence. |
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ISSN: | 2034-3523 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of medieval monastic studies
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1484/J.JMMS.5.125358 |