Content area
Full Text
Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe: Conflict and Cultural Interaction. Edited by Emilia Jamroziak and Karen Stöber. [Italia Sacra: Medieval Church Studies, Vol. 28.] (Turnhout: Brepols. 2014. Pp. x, 274. euro80,00. ISBN 9782-503-5435-6.)
This dynamic and interdisciplinary collection has its origins in the Leeds Medieval Congress of 2008 and offers a fresh approach to frontier scholarship. It explores the experiences of religious communities in border areas across Europe in the high and later Middle Ages and considers how their experiences were different from those of their counterparts in the hinterlands. The essays represent a wide geographical spread and include studies on Scandinavia, Poland, Britain, and Frankish Greece. Although monastic, canonical, and mendicant houses are considered, analysis is restricted to male communities, for the additional conditions that affected religious women require that they have their "own systematic approach" (p. 3).
Monasteries on the Borders seeks to examine all aspects of the frontier experience to understand better the roles that these houses played in their localities; the challenges they faced; and their negotiation of political, cultural, and linguistic landscapes. Whereas...