RT Article
T1 The Knightly Brothers of Bernard of Clairvaux and the Twelfth-Century Cistercian Lay Monk
JF Journal of religious history
VO 47
IS 2
SP 295
OP 317
A1 Millan-Cole, Joseph
LA English
PB Wiley-Blackwell
YR 2023
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1850686866
AB Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (r. 1115–1153) was a prominent twelfth-century religious leader whose knightly family collectively converted to monastic life with him in adulthood around 1113. Following Clairvaux's foundation in 1115, Bernard's brothers held roles of significant estate seniority despite their own professional limitations as newly converted and apparently illiterate knights. This study discusses their professional backgrounds and contexts as “lay monks” or monachi laici, converts who possessed no prior church grade or formally recognised Latin competence. The careers of Bernard's brothers and other Benedictines across the eleventh to early thirteenth centuries illuminate a number of the ways in which secular converts could contribute to their abbeys as culturally mixed and prosperous religious estate communities.
DO 10.1111/1467-9809.12941