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Non similitudinem monachi,
sed monachum ipsum!
An Investigation into the Monastic Category of the Person
– the Case of St Gall
Wo j t e k Je z i e r s k i
for Ivar, born in Örebro
on November 29th, 2007
One day, most likely in the early 880s, the noblest monks of the St Gall monastery assembled to deliberate over an outrageous incident that had occurred
the previous night. Salomo, the Bishop of Constance,1 as well as being a former apprentice and a friend of the monastery, secretly crept into its facilities
causing a great confusion especially among the younger monks unaccustomed
to people in lay clothes within the walls. Even worse, this was just one of his
illegitimate nocturnal break-ins, each one aggravating the perplexity in the
convent and forcing the abbot and the senatores to regulate the presence of
their mighty acquaintance. This time, the bishop asked Abbot Hartmut (872883) if he should be allowed to enter St Gall’s closure in monk’s habit even
though he was only a secular cleric. The abbot, looking for a broader support
for his decision, turned to his venerable advisers: ”and so they were asked to
speak out. Hartmann said: ‘Our rule does not look for a resemblance of a
monk, but for the monk himself.’ Notker [Balbulus ~840-92] added: ‘This
toga praetexta that he wants to cover himself with would not entirely displease
me if it had only been possible to recognize the actual toga.’”2
This short fictional dialogue, whose basic elements were taken from the oral
tradition but which was considerably improved thanks to its author’s vivid
imagination, was noted down nearly two hundred years later, ca. 050, by a
monk of the name Ekkehard (IV). For us today this quoted fragment, despite
its brevity, abounds with quite serious and interesting philosophical implications. What was the difference between toga praetexta and the genuine toga,
that here stands for a monk’s habit?3 What did it mean to be a monk, and what
were the descriptive limits of this being? Was acting and behaving like a monk
sufficient to count as such? In short, what was the relationship between the
essence, existence and appearance of persons in the early medieval monastic
world?
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PartI:Purpose,layout&previousresearch
What will be investigated is thus, borrowing from Ian Hacking, the space of
possibilities of personhood. In other words, what were the conditions of being and becoming a person in the monastic milieu as depicted in Ekkehard
IV’s Casus sanct Galli. In consequence my text must also make an attempt to
answer the methodological question of how we should conceptualize these
conditions. Both these problems will be elucidated by referring to the concept of role, which, I believe, can fairly accurately cover the category of the
person. More precisely this means to explore how, what, and how many roles
an individual was allowed or not allowed to play in a medieval monastery,
as well as what effects it had on his being and on the institutional life. The
contingency of existence is crucial here, because: ”Who we are is not only
what we did, do, and will do, but also what we might have done and may do.”4
The limits of one’s existence were set by the more or less explicit descriptions
of actions these institutions provided for the monks.5 In the second part of
my article, hence, drawing on some more contemporary examples and some
recent research, I would like to put forward a more general hypothesis that
monks in the early Middle Ages were seen as a special kind of human beings,
and that this conviction had serious consequences for their life in cloisters.
The problems that I would like to analyze are interconnected in an obvious
way, yet I decided to introduce a twofold division of the text for methodological reasons. The analysis will be conducted on two different levels, first a more
historical and sociological one - concerned with the technique of the person
production, the second one focusing more on discourse and methodology of
research. I will start with the theoretical basis for the analysis of life in closed
institutions borrowing from Erving Goffman’s research on social roles.6 Then
I will try to apply these analytical categories to a few examples taken from
the Casus sancti Galli. In the second part of the article, the conclusions drawn
from these examples, as well as from some other sources, will serve to prove
a more general point that there was some broader, inherent idea underlying
the way of speaking about monks in the early Middle Ages. Finally, these two
themes will be brought together in a few methodological postulates for the
ways in which the construction of person in the medieval monasteries should
be analyzed.
The category of the person is a risky and somehow still undetermined field of
study in relation to the Middle Ages, so everyone dealing with it runs the risk
of being easily accused of arbitrariness.7 Then again, an obligation to construct
the object and a methodology for its study on the one hand allows for various
and occasionally daring conceptualizations, on the other hand, it proves that
the problem itself is multi-faceted and many angles are required to illuminate
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General map of St Gall from 642.
it. One obvious attempt, always referred to, is Colin Morris’s The Discovery of
the Individual, 1050-1200, focused on the twelfth-century renaissance of the
Latin culture and the social transformations of that time, which led to a new
vision of individuality considered independently of the community. Morris
notes that people were encouraged to self-knowledge, particularly thanks to
the expansion of the practice of confession, also the notions of friendship and
love gained new meanings stressing the inner feelings of the person, besides
which a host of biographical and historiographical works truly interested
in the personal characteristics of people appeared during that period. The
conceptual frame of the book is though rather loose, which seems reasonable
if one considers that it was to cover many different areas such as art, literature,
theology, education etc. in which the individual was discovered.8 Another
attempt is Sarah Coakley’s, this time theologically oriented, short article on
the visions of the self indirectly tracing back the Cartesian divide between
body and soul to late medieval spiritual handbooks in Western and Eastern
Christianity, and obviously many others that follow in a similar vein.9 One
could say that we start every time from the beginning, but that would not be
entirely true since in the current article I am greatly indebted to Mayke de
Jong’s insightful texts, which have already covered many of the problems enumerated above. She wrote particularly on St Gall and mental boundaries and
frames of reference regulating the life of this community, and more broadly
on the conceptual divisions organizing the monastic world.10 It was done,
however, almost without any reference to the sociological framework. In no
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way do I intend to undermine the value of her research, quite the contrary,
despite this lack of theory she came to many very perceptive remarks touching upon the organizational elements of cloistral life. Yet I believe some of
her analyses could have been carried further and some issues were left out and
need to be taken up again. Her original Dutch text on the Casus sancti Galli
focuses on the binary opposition of claustrum and saeculum that organized
St Gall’s world not only geographically but also mentally, which resulted in
very strong in-group identification.11 She described these borders and the
ways they could be crossed by showing persons, who did it in a more or less
legitimate way. The claustrum/saeculum opposition, as she claimed elsewhere,
stems from the Regula Benedicti and was elaborated by later commentators
such as Hildemar of Corbie, who came with the reform movement initiated
by the synods in Aachen 86/87. In the educational process this interpretative
frame was to be instilled into the mental horizon of pueri oblati trained in the
late Carolingian monasteries. It was to form their identity and become a cognitive compass both within cloistral boundaries and outside of them. An ideal
monk, so to speak, was to develop an inner cloister in his soul.12 Quite recently
de Jong published an expanded and revised version of ‘Kloosterlingen’ in
English, which combines more narrowly these two perspectives and better
elucidates the normative and typological dimension of the examples she took
from the Casus.13 Taking a few of the examples studied by de Jong I would like
to filter them through the theory and questions chosen for this text. Even if I
generally agree with de Jong it should thus be clear that the potential of these
instances is greater and allows for more far-going conclusions about the early
medieval category of person once they are investigated with better defined
and carefully adapted concepts.
Role&institution
The conceptual frame that I have chosen for the analysis of the power relations
within medieval cloisters is Goffman’s notion of total institution, roughly defined as: ”a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated
individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time,
together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.”14 For present
purposes, one central aspect of total institutions is particularly of interest i.e.
inmates populating total institutions are expected to have one, and only one
role – the one of an inmate. All the mechanisms that are meant to fulfil the official aims of a total institution are designed to tear the attachments, loyalties
etc., i.e. roles he brought with him on entering the facility, but also those that
could develop within it, away from the individual.15 Separation from the outside world, enforced visibility of everyone’s activities, often violent admission
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procedures, and assisted self-mortification
etc. serve this one ultimate purpose, that is,
to dispose an individual of his roles.16 I shall
return to some of these mechanisms in detail,
when commenting upon relevant passages
from Ekkehard. Of course, every scholar who
ever dealt with medieval cloisters will immediately object to this one-sided view, since
neither the absolute impermeability of these
institutions nor a complete bereavement of
Caricature of Notker Balbulus (c. external roles were ever achieved in any of
840-92), also known as Notker I
them. That is true, but here we speak in terms
of St Gall, distinguished as musiof Weberian ideal types pointing at common
can, author and poet.
features of similar yet distinct phenomena.17
A total institution can actually never be total, because there will always be
secondary adjustments that breathe some real life into it by opening the
walls for trespassers, separating spheres of activities and, hence, offering an
opportunity to enact different roles and allowing inmates to live a sort of
real life again. The examples that I will analyze in the current article present
individuals, who thanks to their dual belonging i.e. to the external and the
internal world of St Gall, challenged the alleged totality and played more
than just one role.
A role, according to Goffman, ”consists of the activity the incumbent would
engage in were he to act solely in terms of the normative demands upon someone in his position.”18 Materially, roles exist in enactment, they need to be
staged. Moreover, roles lie at the bottom of the socialization process, because
thanks to them, on the one hand, people learn not only about their own tasks
in society but also anticipate the actions attached to the roles of others. Through roles people discover the dramaturgical social landscape and opportunities opened or closed to them or, to put it differently, to a certain extent they
may choose whom to be. On the other hand, every role is constrictive as well,
because to choose whom to be is to choose from a catalogue of more or less
ready-made roles.19 At the most basic level then, roles are decisive for being
in society as such, because all being (read: enacting) in society is qualified – it
has to be of some kind. To follow the script for a given role is thus to count as
a human being, a member of society, a person.20 Obviously people have to play
several roles in their lives, and some combinations may cause more friction and
result in greater embarrassment than others. In order to evade such situations
people tend to separate the audiences for their roles either geographically or
temporally. For the same reason the dramaturgical activity is divided into
front and backstage regions, where one either stages a desired persona or makes
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preparations for a staging process. As I have previously mentioned, one of the
organizational methods of a total institution is to tear down this divide and
introduce an all-including, homogenous visibility coercively producing equal
selves.21 This, however, does not have to be the case.
In the following part I will focus on the so-called discrepant roles, those
that ”bring a person into social establishment in a false guise.”22 In other
words, individuals playing these roles either acted indifferently to the front/
backstage division, created backstage selves where it was prohibited, or did
impersonations, that is, they pretended to be someone else. What follows is
that the concept of role includes an ethically relevant aspect (the attached
obligations and loyalties as well as an ego invested in a given role), which
puts serious constraints on an incumbent who would like to engage in such
activity. This restriction is the trust that other people may or may not place
in him. In all institutions and in total institutions a fortiori, social cohesion is
a strategic matter for it gives the necessary conditions for these institutions
to function. This may be either secured by violence, or a threat to use it, or
by trying to build the mutual trust for each other in a common enterprise.
Trust is also an indispensable side effect of human interactions, where people
present themselves in their usual guises, giving the grounds to predict their
future behaviour. But predictability is impaired the moment some people
start to present themselves in abnormal, unexpected guises.23 If we accept
this rather uncontroversial statement that monks staged a performance for
the outside world and acted differently within cloistral bonds, then we can
also transpose these terms to the monastic milieu. To put it in a nutshell,
other monks found it difficult to trust actors playing discrepant roles even if
sometimes their existence in the monastery was necessary or useful. Except
that, as we shall see, the monks in St Gall knew some artificial methods for
re-establishing the trust. Before we proceed with the examples, we need first
to realize what kind of source the Casus sancti Galli is from the point of view
of the questions posed.
CasussanctiGalli
There are numerous modes of reading the Casus sancti Galli, some of which
were suggested by Ekkehard IV himself in the preface to his work, where he
promised to narrate the fortunia and infortunia of his monastery’s history.24
Yet a modern reader who would like to reconstruct historical events or figures
based on this account faces so many problems with factuality, chronology and
reliability of the account that Ekkehard’s work must be cross-referenced and
treated with extreme caution.25 Newer approaches to the Casus, including
de Jong’s, accentuate rather its value for studies, regardless of the notion’s
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fogginess, on mentality and monastic modes of perception, where this text is
without match in comparison to the contemporary sources.26 In research of
this kind, and I adhere to this tradition with my article, we try to reach the
horizon of the author’s understanding, his situated Weltanschauung placed
beyond self-reflection. Ekkehard’s way of presenting events that had happened at least a hundred years before he noted them down symptomatically
mirrors the conditions from his own lifetime but I do not believe that a major
change has taken place in regard to the matters discussed here, which evolved
at a different pace of the longue durée. Furthermore, according to the author’s
words, it was the elder monks in the St Gall community that instigated him
to write the Casus and provided him with information embedded in the oral
tradition alive in the monastery.27 In an environment where the past was a
part of everyday experience and where the present influenced the vision of
the past, one could hardly think outside this box of timelessness.28 That is why
I believe we are entitled to raise the following examples above their historical
context and analyze their long-lasting sociological implications as well.
BishopSalomo’sbadhabits
The story of Salomo, Bishop of Constance and Abbot of St Gall that was
mentioned at the beginning of my article has drawn the attention of many
scholars. In my analysis I would like to limit myself to the ways in which
Salomo presented himself to the monks and how he was gradually made
to appear in front of them. As was said above, Salomo, stemming from an
aristocratic family, was raised as a secular cleric in St Gall, and afterwards
joined the royal court of Charles III, where he acquired the position of a
chaplain. Finally, in 890 he was appointed Bishop of Constance and Abbot
of St Gall. In Ekkehard’s text, Salomo appears when he pleads to become
the convent’s frater conscriptus, long before he ascended to the chaplain’s office and obtained the abbey.29 After he was inscribed into the Book of Life
he became too confident of his power and influence and began to enter the
closure every day without any guide and dressed in lay clothes, which resulted
in great confusion among the brothers and caused his adversaries to mutter.30
Salomo, however, unmoved by their mean comments kept on coming to St
Gall. One day he gave a fur coat to a brother asking him to pray for his soul, to
which the brother answered: ”If you like, I will pay you for this fur in the best
possible way. I have namely two cowls from the abbot, and I will give one of
them to you to wear, so you could, together with us, enter the closure dressed
more decently.”31 Salomo, defending himself, referred to Abbot Grimald, also
a secular cleric, who entered the closure in lay clothes just as often as he did.
The monk answered that he, Salomo, was coming in dressed in such a way
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only because of his episcopal might. ”We do accept laymen as fratres sometimes, but we never allow ourselves to enter the closure together with them as
long as they are wearing lay clothes.”32 After this, it may have appeared that
the bishop was persuaded and accepted not to go into the claustrum without
an accompanying monk, but soon he was up to his old practices again. One
night in Lent, as one of these identity anecdotes goes,33 he came from the court
and clandestinely went barefoot into the cloister with a hood over his head,
”to be perceived as a brother” (”uti fratrum unus putaretur”). This pious fraud
(”sanctam fraudam”) was exposed almost immediately by the roundsmen because ”it was against the custom, […] as it is still today, that anyone who is not
wearing a monk’s habit should enter our intimate space, especially during the
night.”34 Again, the situation was repeated some time later when this good
thief (”bonus fur”) sneaked into the monastery’s courtyard during nighttime
and was spotted there by the noble fater Roudker who went out to pray by
the graves, and who alarmed the nearby roundsmen. The monks rushed to the
courtyard with lanterns and recognized the chronic intruder: ”By the merits
of St Gall - for that is how the fathers’ swore in the old days - such dress we
do not tolerate in the cloister at this hour!”35 What followed later was the
already mentioned debate between the abbot and his monks, whether Salomo
should be granted more access to St Gall or not. Abbot Hartmut answered
the doubts of his companions with the following words:
I know, brothers and sons, what you fear of him and something similar
crossed my mind as well. But I deem we will be better off, if he is allowed to
join us in this manner [by being able to wear a monk’s habit in the cloister]
and will then become our monk - not that we again, as before, would be
subjected to a secular cleric. I mean we should rather come to an agreement
with him, so he will use the habit of St Gall in a proper manner. Thus, if such a
troublesome event occurs again he will still be our brother and monk, despite
his adroitness.36
And indeed, following the decision of St Gall’s senate, Salomo was ”allocated
a place, which we can still find today marked with rectangular stones, where
he would put on monk’s clothes when visiting [the cloister], and take them
off when leaving.”37 He became a praemonachus, an impossible creature of a
hitherto unknown species belonging to both worlds.
What were the monks afraid of, then? ”They were namely afraid that the
man of the court [hominem palatinum], who already possessed several abbeys as a secular cleric, could by chance, see some irregularities and try to take
advantage of them with the king to clear his way to our monastery.”38 As it is
obvious from this quote and from many others the crucial and a very fragile
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resource medieval monasteries had at their disposal was their external reputation. In a way they constantly staged a performance of their regularity for the
audience of the outside world, especially when a king was one of the spectators
and the ultimate evaluator of this spectacle.39 For that reason homo palatinus
Salomo could have been perceived as a spy, someone who pretended in front
of the performers that he was one of them, whilst his real intent was to come
backstage and to learn destructive secrets about the performance and the actors.
Needless to say, this information could have been radically incompatible with
the image fostered by the performers.40 Since the monastery clearly profited
from Salomo’s proximity (he built churches, made valuable gifts and donations, invited kings to St Gall, organized festivities at his own expense etc.)
from its point of view it was important to turn him from an external informer
into a loyal and foreseeable member of the team, in other words, to make him
a trustable person.41 A neat definition of trust corresponds very well to this
situation and illustrates the goal the institution strived to achieve – ”the mutual
confidence that no party to an exchange will exploit another’s vulnerability.”42
The methods that the monks of St Gall had at their disposal have already been
named: Salomo became frater conscriputs, they provided him with a guiding
monk, subjected him to rules of entering, and, finally, made him promise to
change guises and made him up to a praemonachus. Usually these steps were
interpreted as his calculated approaching to St Gall that in the end was to
win him the abbacy, but this image changes when mirrored. He was instead
institutionally stripped of other roles irreconcilable with the cloistral milieu,
a sort of symbolical compensation he had to make in order to be allowed to
come in.43 What is characteristic, the symbolism of Salomo’s short-term nudity while he changed clothes is a distant echo of admission procedures such as
for the oblation of children and the monks’ profession - to vest a monk’s habit
was in the early Middle Ages traditionally recognized as making an implicit
vow.44 Furthermore, it hardly escapes one’s attention that in imposing constraints upon Salomo, the upper echelons of St Gall concentrated primarily
on his appearance.45 It seems as if to conform externally was the first, yet as we
shall see insufficient, step on the way to becoming a monk. In addition, there
is an interesting dramaturgical asymmetry between the bishop and his hosts
in St Gall - he is presented as someone who was to perform ceaselessly, to
enact his relevant roles for different audiences, only changing clothes for these
occasions. The monks of St Gall, in contrast, played out only for the outside
world, while for them the cloister was a backstage, a natural milieu for their
true selves.46 He acted, they were.
Speaking of conformity by garment, the Casus gives other examples of powerful laymen such as counts, but also servants who on feast days joined the
monks in processions walking through St Gall’s claustrum. Ekkehard declares
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that he saw with his own eyes how both young and old men, whose beards
often reached their belts, marched dressed in habits where only monks of
St Gall usually walked. A subsequent example of a certain Bernhard, who
regardless of being in the monastery and in spite of the fact that he wore a
habit, kept to lay conduct, greedily gulping wine and shouting despite the rule
of silence in the refectory.47 Vestis virum non facit, then? Well, yes and no. No,
because with these laymen the clothes they were dressed in had obviously no
long-lasting effects on their inner attitude. Yes, because in this yearned-for
situation, a monk’s habit was to be the instrument that lastingly changed the
identity of the person wearing it, a sort of amalgamation of the individual and
his dress. To clear up this ambiguity somehow, we should notice the double
denotation of the word habitus - a monk’s dress, but also the ideal form of
life, a permanent inner disposition. In an ideal case this notional ambivalence
would dissolve, as clothing would exactly match the conduct and belief, indicative signifiant would be identical with signifié of identity.48 We shall return
to this matter later on when discussing the question of human kinds.
In this regard Salomo as a praemonachus stands for a dissociated individual,
someone between habit and habitus. As remarked by Gerold Meyer von Knonau, also in contexts other than strictly related to St Gall, even after his climb
to abbacy Salomo is time and again described in terms connoting artificiality
and phoniness, that might be linked to his theatrical way of life mentioned
above.49 For now we should only mention that his metamorphosis had never actually neared completion. In his summary of Salomo’s character and
life following the description of his death, Ekkehard IV, despite the overall
elegiac tone in praising his achievements and merits for St Gall, returned to
some of his faults e.g. proclivity for cajolement, boisterousness etc.50 He even
revealed, on the face of it - publicly unknown, unbecoming details from the
bishop-abbot’s past, namely, that as a young man he had an illicit affair that
resulted in an extramarital daughter.51 To determine how widely this by that
time nearly two hundred year old hearsay was known in Salomo’s days, or
even whether it was genuine in the first place is impossible. It is though tempting to note that in the sequence of Ekkehard’s narrative the story appears
after the account of his death, as if this defamatory information could only
do harm to the memory of Salomo, but not to him when still in the office.
Thanks to this cunning, if ever intended, literary solution it may seem that
Salomo’s vulnerability had not been exploited on the part of St Gall monks.
Salomo’s case, no matter how exceptional or even counterfeit in some details
it may seem, works like a perfect prism that both refracts the different means
or half-means accessible to a community, which could be used to bind an
individual to itself but also splits up the compositional elements of what we
today see as a unified individual. This category of person may be simply over16 Nonsimilitudinemmonachi
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rated because an individual could have been perceived simultaneously as fake
in some aspects and authentic in others, keep opposite allegiances, be a person
caught in the no-man’s-land between the institution and its surroundings.
TheJanus-facedabbot
We will now move to a different example of discrepant roles, this time the
discrepancy was not only fully incorporated into the monastic conceptual
frame, but was, to be sure, a desired feature of this specific role constellation
attached to a particular function, in this case, the abbot’s.52 In St Benedict’s
eyes it was the abbot who was primarily responsible for the contacts with the
outside world and regulated the traffic between these areas. However, these
contacts were rather limited, potentes from the outside could only have very
restricted influence on a monastery’s internal matters and the monastery itself
was imagined as a self-sufficient, rather autonomous entity on the outskirts of
the society, which somewhat reflects the world in which St Benedict lived.53
Monks in the late Carolingian era and in the tenth and eleventh centuries
faced nearly the exactly opposite situation - the royal monasteries such as St
Gall became important centres of power and their abbots grew to be potentes
themselves, often recruited from among the closest advisers of emperors and
kings. Their preoccupation with internal affairs, accentuated by St Benedict,
had to be counterbalanced by dealing with politics, properties, flocking pilgrims and guests, sometimes even warfare. A conspicuous sign of this new
tendency was the growing share of laymen holding abbacies, as Salomo’s
example shows, but also an inclination of rulers to hand out these posts as a
profitable capital.54 It goes without saying that the abbot’s duties were constantly debated on various occasions, both when these external conditions
altered, but also when a change in internal relations superseded the former
order of power. For instance, in Supplex Libellus monachorum Fuldensium,
the famous letter of complaint, which the monks of Fulda presented first
to Charlemagne (ca. 82) and later to Louis the Pious (86/87), the authors,
apart from the litany of calamities that befell them on account of their Abbot Ratgar, included a picture of an ideal abbot that should be adhered to.
He was, inter alia, to be benignant for the infirm, merciful for the sinners,
supporter of the fatigued, he should also love all the brothers, be modest in
his undertakings and not excessive in dispensing the justice.55 In short, the
monks of Fulda implored the successive emperors to appoint them an abbot
who would focus on the monastic discipline and the monks of the cloister
instead of the disproportionate architectural enterprises that devastated the
community’s life, and especially emphasized the harsh methods Abbot Ratgar used to make them comply.56 As mentioned above, Supplex is just one
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instance in a row of discussions about the ideal abbot recurring back as far
as the Regula Benedicti’s second chapter ”Qualities of the Abbot”, to which
we shall return in due course. Now I would like to discuss this problem with
the concept of role in mind, and the Casus offers a few examples that best
elucidate the aforesaid discrepancy.
The abbot that Ekkehard gave most credit to for his time in power was
unquestionably Notker (97-975), the great disciplinarian and restorer of St
Gall’s prestige injured during the weak abbacy of Purchard I and the hostile
incursion of the Saracens. Directly after his election to office, Notker reorganized the incomes of the monastery, acquired many vineyards and filled
the monastery’s cellars with barrels of the finest wine. The somewhat shaken
discipline was reinforced, Notker chose to punish the monks who lived and
worked in St Gall’s cellae outside in the world, whereas the rebellious monks
from the monastery were often exiled to desolate outposts. To prevent any
rumours of brothers’ misconduct reaching the king’s ears, he decided to bind
the monks closer to the claustrum, especially the vociferous ones who because
of their noble origin enjoyed greater freedom and spread gossip about the
monastery.57 In his reformative endeavour, with an apparent touch of absolutism, Notker resumed and finished the construction of a high wall around
the monastery, provided with protecting towers and gates.58 The abbot’s actions, then, moved St Gall a little towards the Goffmanian ideal type of total
institution. However, what he did outside was, to draw on Ekkehard’s words,
the complete opposite (”longe alius”). He used to feast with the laymen and
knights both in St Gall and elsewhere and demanded from them to be served
in a proper manner i.e. a manner appropriate for potentes. Furthermore, he
trained lightly dressed adolescents of noble origin in the game of chess and
checkers, and in the taming of birds of prey, taught them algebra, presented
them with valuable gifts etc. ”Thanks to such and similar measures, that made
him famous as a prudent man, he commended himself to such an extent, that
he won eminence everywhere, so even in front of kings he was addressed not
less than with the title of the most excellent abbot.”59 One should, though,
observe that, as Ekkehard puts it, Notker allowed himself all this only when
no brothers accompanied him (”quando sibi absque fratribus esse vacabat”).
According to de Jong who also commented on this fragment, ”the ideal
abbot was a disciplinarian and nutritor in both worlds; his success depended
on his ability to switch between two codes of behaviour at the drop of a hat,
keeping them well apart at the same time.”60 Correct, but there is more to
it. First of all, from the sociological point of view it is hardly surprising that
the monastery’s representative, when performing in the outside world, bore
more resemblance to the members of the surrounding society than with the
members of the institution he stemmed from.61 Second, what seems more
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problematic is whether we can speak of representation in this particular case.
Literally, on the outside Notker was not re-presenting, in other words, en-acting the standards of his home institution but rather played a different persona
- a noble lord. Hence, by Ekkehard’s and, most likely, the wider standards
ruling at that time in the feudal society, the question how much of a monk
there was in the abbot’s role was much more sophisticated and the abovementioned discrepancy lay at the core of this relationship. In other words, not
looking and behaving like a monk did not necessarily mean that one was not
regarded as such. Third, as for the methodology, the materialization of this
discrepancy could only be realized by the careful separation of audiences for
these incompatible personae.62
The counterexample to Notker that better explains this crucial dual connection, also identified by de Jong in the Casus, is Abbot Hartmann, whose
short abbacy (922-925) was marked by on the one hand, the blossoming of
scholarship and the strengthening of the internal discipline, on the other
hand, the negligence of St Gall’s material condition. The pious abbot was
so focused on the inner life of his monastery and so unconcerned about his
possessions that ”he suffered because his [officials e.g. deans and provosts]
owned more than he did.”63 Especially the external administrators of the
monastery’s properties, whose activities remained uncontrolled, grew overconfident about their position and acted like nobles wasting St Gall’s goods
away.64 When some of the aspects of the abbot’s function, it is thus implied,
here directed towards the outside world remained unfulfilled, others were
likely to take this place, which might have caused damage to the monastery
- a worry similar to St Benedict’s concern with priors who might compete
with the abbots.65
An analogous example is brought by Jocelin of Brakelond in his twelfthcentury Cronica, a source bearing remarkable resemblance in its anecdotal
style to Ekkehard’s work. The Cronica starts with the late phase of Abbot
Hugh’s term of office (57-80), when he became senile and started loosing
control over his subjects: ”Pious he was and kindly, a strict monk and good,
but in the business of this world neither good nor wise.”66 Again, exactly like
Hartmann he was far too concerned with the observation of the Rule and
overlooked his agents’ felonies committed outside – ”every man did, not what
he ought, but what he would, since his lord was simple and growing old.”67 In
this way the properties deteriorated while the abbot, borrowing huge sums of
money, exacerbated the already severe situation. After his death a remarkable
discussion about the desired qualities of the future abbot broke out in the
convent. These dialogues deserve a short study on their own, here I will only
focus on the main arguments that were taken up in their course. It appears
that this evaluative scheme was triangle-shaped with respectively (.) wisdom
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combined with scholarship, (2.) managerial skills and (3.) care for the internal
discipline resting in its angles. Deducing from the opinions voiced in these
debates, all three merits went seldom hand in hand and necessary concessions
in the election process had to be made.68 Returning finally to the problem
of staging, Jocelin, who was the secretary and a close co-worker to Abbot
Samson, the main figure in the Cronica, noted his master’s views of the office
he held. One day Jocelin told him:
‘The other is that at home you do not show as kind a face as elsewhere, not
even among the brethren who love you still and loved you of old and chose
you to be their lord, but you are rarely among them, nor do you rejoice with
them, as they say.’ The abbot saddened with these words and answered: ‘You
are a fool and speak like a fool. You should know what Salomon says, ‘Thou
hast many daughters. Show not thy face cheerful towards them.’’69
In other words, a seemingly hypocritical practice of adapting different codes
of behaviour for external and internal use was in fact sought after.
Concluding from the examples given we can say again, that the function
of an abbot was marked with an essential strain, and as long as the balance
between the respective poles was maintained, the person holding the office
appeared as competent in the eyes of his contemporaries. Fulda’s abbot Ratgar
is here the symbol of a fervent administrator, whose enterprises were pursued
at the expense of the community; on the other hand, the inward-oriented
abbacies of Hartmann in St Gall and Hugh in Bury St Edmunds nearly
ruined their economy. Those truly awe-inspiring, like Notker or Samson,
proficiently played their roles according to a schizophrenic scenario generated by their institution.70 To put it differently, their role was split into two,
independent components subjected to two fundamentally different regimes
of expression.
Summing up, using the examples mentioned above, I was trying to show
how power acted on the micro-level on its subjects and their ways of expression. The practical instrument for this action was a role handed out to a given
subject, while parts of its script were conveyed by the written norms, learned
intuitively in the process of socialization, inferred by the incumbent from the
social environment, and last but not least, regulated by others through the social control emphasized here. The examples mentioned differ in the degree of
these components - while the scenario for an abbot’s role had a solid literary
basis (the Rule, customs, exempla etc.), to learn how to play a visiting monk or
a bishop-abbot craved much rectifying labour on the part of the community
and the actor. What they had in common were the collusive loyalties, some
more welcome than others, loyalties that had to be institutionally dealt with,
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attuned, refined or, when necessary, cut off. Accordingly, I also tried to present
the praxis of these adjustments – through rituals, the drawing of borders, the
wearing of particular clothes, performing, the affixing and removing labels
etc. All this may be gathered together, to evoke once again this slightly highbrow term, as putting constraints on the space of possibilities of personhood. It is
also important to stress again that it was done in interplay between the given
individuals and the social group they existed in. What I deliberately excluded
from this analysis, and to which I would like to devote the second part of
this article, is that these practices and complementing ideas were founded on
some broader categories used in thinking about monks as a very specific kind
of human being, engendered by monastic institutional discourse.71
PartII:Humankinds
The purpose of this section of my article is to unearth some of the wideranging discourses about monks as a special kind of human being, which
underlie the practices I described in the previous part. Here I would only
like to tentatively sketch these discourses so I will constrain myself to a very
limited selection of examples to give the readers the general idea. Thus, I will
attempt to show that for the correct understanding of power and subjectivity
in medieval monasticism we need to oscillate between these two levels. It
should be clear that without these general beliefs the practices would not exist, and vice versa - without the practices the beliefs would have no impact on
people. The core idea is to demonstrate the tricky symbiosis between people
and their classifications. To do this, we need yet more theory, this time the
theory of human kinds.
Human kind, another term coined by Ian Hacking to be used here, is a
classificatory device that organizes both our scientific and societal knowledge about diverse groups of people in the society. 72 What differentiates
these groups may be their behaviour, drives, emotions, situations they find
themselves in, experiences they share etc. We need human kinds because they
help us make generalizations about people and thus make their behaviour
more predictable. Hence we can analyze them, and, when necessary, change
them to some extent. Since they are descriptions, they affect the space of possible intentional actions. What makes them particularly thorny is that they
often have intrinsic moral value (e.g. homosexuals, suicide, war criminals,
normalcy), and the greater the moral value the more powerful their effects on
the classified people. Finally, the relationship between people and their classifications is reciprocal - they change people, but also people may influence
these labels. All in all, human kinds are:
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(i) kinds that are relevant to some of us, (ii) kinds that primarily sort people,
their actions, and behaviour, and (iii) kinds that are studied in the human
and social sciences, i.e. kinds about which we hope to have knowledge. I add
(iv) that kinds of people are paramount; I want to include kinds of human
behaviour, action, tendency, etc. only when they are projected to form the idea
of a kind of person.73
For a student of early medieval monasticism only the third point from
Hacking’s definition is an obstacle and needs a qualification. For obvious
reasons this specification has to be discarded, in the Middle Ages there was
nothing comparable to the impact the academia has on the organization of
our society nowadays and it is pointless to discuss it any further. In his own
research Hacking focused on the human kinds in the post-Enlightenment
era and designed this concept from this point of view.74 Nonetheless, he did
not deny that human kind is a more universal phenomenon applicable to
different contexts e.g. to the problem of witches in early modern Europe.75
Thomas S. Szasz’s research, preceding Hacking’s studies to some extent, suggests that the central feature of witch hunts was indeed a classification and
regime for establishing the truth, while burning stakes were only the logical
consequence of these classifications.76 When it comes to medieval monks as
a human kind, as we shall see in the following examples, the procedures of
accountability were not that rigorous as stipulated by Hacking, nevertheless
clear enough to support my use of this term.
Makingadistinction
In his study on conflicts in monastic communities of the Reich around 000
Steffen Patzold suggested that the perception of these conflicts, which were
predominantly interpreted as effects of the evil and quarrelsome characters
of their participants, was not so much dependent on the oral modes of perception of conflicts proposed by Hanna Vollrath as on the type of thinking about
human character and essence introduced by St Benedict.77 Indeed, Patzold’s
brief examination of the Regula shows that in his prescriptions for the Benedictine communities, its author focused on the desirable personalities of the
monks rather than behaviour that could or should be exhibited in cloister e.g.:
”Anyone found contentious should be reproved”, ”Third, there are sarabaites,
the most detestable kind of monks, who […] have a character as soft as lead.”,
”Of what kind should the cellarer be.”78 Especially, defining the functionaries-to-be he was aiming at a perfect combination between a given individual’s
character and the tasks attached to the office he was supposed to take - an
ideal man for an ideal-typical office.79 Furthermore, as mentioned above, St
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Benedict had a strictly essentialist view of human beings, where human actions were simply manifestations of the innate dispositions. Finally, he spoke
of his monks in terms of a special kind of being distinguished from the outside
world and other types of monks by the kind of life they were expected to live.80
The further circumscription and specification of the attributes of this life
with a simultaneous strengthening of its conditions for qualification as such,
was done during the synods at Aachen 86/87 and was an effect of the reform
movement started by Benedict of Aniane, strongly supported by Louis the
Pious.81 The significance of this movement and these decisions for drawing
distinctions between diverse types of religious life is hard to overestimate, so
only two examples of its direct results will suffice; eighth years after Aachen
Pope Eugene II, who was himself appointed to this office by Emperor Lothar,
summoned another council of bishops in Rome.82 In the significantly entitled
”About monks who only exist in habit, but do not live in it” twenty-eighth
chapter of one of the disciplinary decrees issued by the council, the bishops
were admonished to ensure that such monks living all too liberally in their
dioceses would either return to their proper monasteries or be sent to another
one, ”so that those who have once vested habits of monks and shaved their
heads for God, would hold firm to the regular way of life.”83 The disciplining
of those who were already monks was only one of the main thrusts of Benedict of Aniane’s reform, another was the cautious upbringing and education
of the oblates, who dominated the populace of the monasteries. The commentaries on the Rule written for that purpose by Hildemar of Corbie and
Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, which closely followed the reform, presented a
slightly different view of human nature, perhaps because their main objective
were children. For their authors, these oblates were a kneadable material,
who, as long as sufficient amounts of custodia and disciplina were invested in
their bodies and souls, would ultimately develop a nature radically unlike its
worldly counterpart - homo interior and homo exterior were to be species so
different so they would be unable to live in each other’s habitats (which fits
well in my use of the notion of the human kind).84 In fact, this sharp cleavage
between the monks and the rest of the society was of deep interest for the secular powers that sought new forms of legitimacy and administrative centres
- types of profits that only well-educated, immaculate priest-monks living in
celibacy could yield.85
Monastic reform and the late Carolingian and early Ottonian eras, in which
many royal monasteries rose to power, mark a turning point in the development of the monastic human kind, because, apart from the already existing, so
to speak ecclesiastical and inner-monastic categories of definition, a new one
begun to play an important role – the public reputation. Since monks became
a socially relevant group, it is no wonder that their public image grew to be
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a significant element not only deciding about their welfare but also defining
their essence, which would explain the serious worries expressed by Ekkehard. Lampert of Hersfeld, almost a contemporary of Ekkehard, also showed
in several examples how destructive the consequences of the inner conflicts
could be for a monastery’s reputation.86 Characteristically, which corroborates
the thesis of seeing monks as a human kind, Lampert saw this damage as done
not only to a particular monastery but also to the monks in general. In one of
the episodes he tells of Abbot Robert of Bamberg who bought himself the
abbacy in Reichenau and tried to corrupt royal advisers and the king himself
to obtain the abbacy in Fulda.
This pseudo-monk - but deeply disgusted, I want to say that even more
harshly - this angel of Satan, who transfigured himself into an angel of light,
has defamed, corrupted and dishonoured the saintly and angelic profession of
monks to such an extent that monks nowadays in our regions are estimated
not by their innocence and virtue of their way of life but by the amount of
money […].87
Further on, in a self-reflexive manner, Lampert writes in the margin of the
visit he paid to Saalfeld, where he was to investigate the regularity of the
monks who replaced the canons that lived there before, how paradoxically
the public image of monks could affect their self-esteem. The nearby vulgus
held the newly-introduced Benedictines, despite the regularity of the expelled canons, for something better,
not for men, but for angels, not for flesh, but for spirit. And this opinion grew
roots even deeper and stronger in the minds of the noble men than ordinary
folk. From them this belief spread out among the people and caused such
anxiety in most of the cloisters in this area, that here thirty, there forty, and
somewhere fifty monks scared of the austerities of life left the monasteries
and believed it was better to expose the salvation of their souls to worldly
danger rather than to take the task beyond one’s powers to violently enter
into the kingdom of heaven.88
These two incidents show that the classification of monks both in their own
view of themselves and in the external counterpart was an effect of a delicate
interaction between the expressions given by them and the response they got
from the outside world.
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Essentialopinion&thediscourseofdivisibleessence
There is no need to continue enumerating these instances especially because
abundant examples are well known - my selection of the examples was not
meant to be representative nor did I intend to find a main thread leading
directly from one to another. More important is to see that monks were defined and defined themselves from different interrelated poles - secular power,
public opinion, inner-monastic discourse and within the context of their own
monasteries. To a certain extent all these bodies of knowledge upheld the
discourse about monks as a kind of human beings radically different from
other people in the society. Not only the obvious categories introduced by
Hildemar of homo exterior and homo interior, or the claustrum/saeculum divide
back this up, but also the terms derived from them like pseudomonachus used
by Lampert or the manner in which Ekkehard and his continuator described
certain individuals as only looking like monks but not really being them.
These latter categories conveyed by the historiographical works are especially
interesting here because they seem to translate the former, rather abstract
terms into more practical keys for decoding the reality that surrounded these
monks. Furthermore, they were indispensable for the, often purely physical,
practices of person production, which we have seen in the first part of my
article. These ideas required a material expression in clothes, posture, places
that people had to occupy if they were to satisfy the established requirements
etc. The terms such as pseudomonachus or the angel of Satan could also act as
negative labels that would stick and set the machinery of social control in motion, regardless of whether it was the emperor who was to intervene or other
brothers. On the other hand, these routines sustained those general categories
and classifications, confirmed their purpose but also very subtly shaped their
content. Finally, despite the postulated separation from the outside, in reality
the secular world functioned not only as an intellectual frame of reference
giving feedback to monastic communities, but also as a possible source of
practices to maintain this classification - one could, when necessary, turn e.g.
to the king, as monks of Fulda or of St Gall did when their abbots’ actions did
not adhere to the proper descriptions.
Obviously, here I turned my attention to only two themes among many
parallel debates delineating monks as an exceptional kind of human being in
the Middle Ages. For instance Giles Constable has presented an absorbing
discussion led since St Benedict’s times within the monastic world about
the voluntariness of the monk’s profession and which of its elements were
necessary for the constitution of a Benedictine monk. His analysis of signs
and rituals that accompanied taking the monastic habit brought him to similar conclusions although not headed under the term of human kind. In his
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opinion, in the early Middle Ages appearance was taken for reality, hence
the simple life led by monks or nuns was often enough to categorize them
as such. After 000 an observable split between the essence and appearance
emerged, and a conviction grew that external conformity no longer sufficed
to qualify as monachus ipsus - thus, on the one hand, greater importance of
formality in the entry, on the other hand, growing concern with the monks’
inner feelings.89 These debates rested, in turn, on even more general concepts
of the person and the sense of human nature that circulated in Europe around
and after 000. What emerges from the examples of the discrepant roles analyzed in this text shows that an individual was not necessarily perceived as an
integrated entity, even if that was the ideal, but also as flexible enough to, in
extreme cases, encompass different, seemingly exclusive, personae and their
accompanying loyalties within himself.90 The important factors, at least in
Ekkehard’s eyes, were the particular incumbent’s intentions and whether his
role was integrated in the monastery’s institutional frame or not. Depending
on these, a given individual could either perform his tasks almost naturally,
or be expelled from the cloister stamped as a misfit. However, the essentialist
thinking was not entirely gone but persisted, so to speak, on the higher level
of the human kind, where the alleged essence of the monastic person was
debated. Due to the often contradictory interests of contributors to these
debates and the expectations of the monastic world that changed over time
and, in consequence, due to a lack of a coherent body of knowledge, which
would once and for all settle upon its content, during the Middle Ages monks
were to remain a fundamentally contested human kind. Therefore, the whole
human kind concept mirrors to some extent the loosely defined idea of ordo
or ”estate”, which characterizes the medieval, and the monastic in particular,
way of thinking about society. According to ordo, people were divided and
belonged to different ordines, of which the most outworn example, which
actually does no justice to the often abundant and sophisticated hierarchies
circulating then, is the tripartite division of oratores, bellatores, and laboratores. In this case, however, the examples taken from Lampert’s Annales, and
confirmed by numerous others, reveal that during the tenth and eleventh
centuries medieval monks as an ordo were becoming, in a manner of speaking, a class-for-itself, aware of the range and importance of classifications
and self-classification, in consequence developing some sense of common
interest.91
Finally, a synopsis of the methodology needs to be given. My suggestion is
that for a complete, I dare not say holistic, understanding of monastic person
production, the micro-level of everyday life and the macro-level of discourses
roughly sketched above are necessary. Here, I proposed to use the Goffmanoriented study of interpersonal communication patterns and processes that
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led to establishing the definition of situations expressed in human behaviour;
on the other hand, the Foucauldian archaeological overview of social structures and institutions that generated the discourses on personhood. These two
paradigms met on the mid-stage of institutions such as monasteries, which,
depending on their local context, transformed and implemented the loose
discourses and made them into fixable labels - the descriptions of meaningful
actions later used in the interpersonal practices. In short, we need Goffman to
understand how Foucault’s discourses sneaked into the bodies, and see how
people were made up in everyday life as well as in large-scale processes.92 Still,
it is essential to bear in mind that on neither of these levels were the outcomes
of the operating forces definite. These forces provided a field for the game
with loosely defined rules and plenty of possible moves for the players. Also,
the connection between the levels was by no means fixed and necessary; the
discourses did not stipulate a mechanical response on the level of practices,
on the other hand peoples’ actions could manipulate and redesign their classifications - monks, after all, were an interactive human kind.
Before I conclude I need to mention that this article is only a part in a
bigger project of a sociologically inspired PhD study: Total St Gall. The Modes
of Power and Social Control in a Medieval Monastery, which discusses different
forms of institutional power that could be found mainly in the Casus sancti
Galli but also in some parallel monastic sources from about that time. The
other studies of this forthcoming project deal with the question of surveillance,93 patterns of persecution and monastic divide between Öffentlichkeit
and Nichtöffentlichkeit expressed in the oral and literary practices respectively.
In the current article the aspect of power has been deliberately toned down,
since this text may have been experienced as already theoretically overloaded
but obviously at its core the problem of the category of person is the problem of
power and its effects on human subjectivity, both understood in Foucauldian
terms.94 I have mainly focused on the interpersonal and discursive dimensions
of institutionalized power forming people, but there have clearly been other
functions of medieval cloisters, which could be underscored. For instance, the
abbot’s authority was a multifarious question - he was a spiritual shepherd of
the monks, their economical nutritor, sometimes an erudite person, and in
the times of which we speak a powerful, influential person able to punish the
disobedient thanks to his mighty friends even when they fled the cloister.95 It
seems, though, justified to draw attention to the specific aspects of the power
relations within the monasteries and analyze them separately without referring to all their forms. I believe the scheme and the concepts for the analysis
of monastic personhood in the Middle Ages presented here will help us to
better understand the complex forces that formed this subtle yet very central
phenomenon. There is still a chapter on the medieval category of person to
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write and we need the analytical equipment, even this stored in the modern
toolboxes, to carry out this job, because there are no simple tensions inbuilt
in this problem.96 Be it Mayke de Jong’s claustrum as a cognitive category
suitable for constant re-negotiation of cleavages in the world, or be it my application of the idea of human kinds and the theory of roles - these concepts
allow us to realize how much painstaking intellectual and physical labour on
different levels was in fact required to manufacture a medieval monk.
Nonsimilitudinemmonachi,sedmonachumipsum!Enundersökningomdetmedeltidaklostretspersonkategori–exemplet
SanktGallen
Denna text undersöker personbegreppet och dess villkor i relation till äldre
och högmedeltida munkar och abbotar på klostret Sankt Gallen (nuvarande
Schweiz). Undersökningen är baserad på Ekkehard IV:s Casus sancti Galli (ca
050), och en rad andra krönikor och dokument från den tiden. Huvudfrågan
lyder: Hur och utifrån vilka positioner uppfattades och konstruerades en
individ i en miljö där man endast fick spela en roll – munkens. Munkar och
besökande personer behöll vissa delar av sina gamla identiteter och sociala
anknytningar, trots den deklarerade separationen från yttervärlden. Detta
hotade den institutionella integriteten. Texten visar vilka medel och metoder
munkar hade att stöpa och göra om individer för att skapa tillit och bindande
relationer på den interpersonella nivån. Abbotens roll diskuteras också som
ett exempel på en person som spelade sin roll för två olika publiker – för
den inom klostret och för den övriga världen – som krävde motsatta uppträdande. En slutsats att dra från de analyserade exemplen är att en person inte
alltid sågs som en enhetlig individ, utan dess gestalt var en brokig effekt av
kompromisser och tryck komponerad av emellanåt uteslutande element. Den
teoretiska basen för den delen av texten består av Erving Goffmans begrepp
total institution, och rollbegreppet.
I andra delen av texten, baserad på Ian Hackings begrepp the human kinds,
undersöks och presenteras den högmedeltida diskursen om munkar som en
speciell art av människor samt skisseras dess utveckling från Sankt Benedikts
Regula till högmedeltiden. Metodologiskt påstås att för att få en korrekt uppfattning av det medeltida personbegreppet i klostermiljön måste de två nivåerna kombineras – de abstrakta diskurserna, vilka diskuterade människans
och munkens natur, och de intersubjektiva praktiker gällande dräkt, beteende,
uttryck osv., som en materiell tillämpning av de allmänna beskrivningars regler och föreskrifter i vardagslivet.
Keywords: medieval monastery; category of the person; Ekkehard IV; total
institution; Casus sancti Galli; Erving Goffman; Salomo, Bishop of Constance
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Notes
I would like to thank Jan-Magnus Jansson (Örebro universitet) and Sita
Steckel (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster), who commented on
the earlier version of this paper as well as two anonymous reviewers for their
insightful remarks that helped to improve this article.
For Salomo see: H. Maurer, ”Salomo III.”,
Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. VII, col. 34.
2 Ekkehard IV, Casus sancti Galli cap. 6, Darmstadt 980, (ed. and trans.) Hans F. Haefele,
p. 26: ‘Loquique iussi sunt: ”Regula nostra”,
Hartmannus ait, ”non similitudinem monachi, sed monachum ipsum querit.” Notker:
”Mihi pretexta hec, qua superindui,” inquit,
”desiderat, si togam praetenderet, non utique
displiceret.”’; Further referred to as CSG;
all translations of the Casus are mine unless
otherwise indicated.
3 Gerold Meyer von Knonau, Ekkeharti (IV.)
Casus sancti Galli, St Gallen 877, p. XLVII.
4 Ian Hacking,”Making Up People”, in Historical Ontology, London 2002, pp. 99-4, at p. 07.
5 Hacking 2002, p. 08.
6 The use of the concept of ”role”in the monastic
context may be confusing for the readers, since
it connotes monastic functions as well, say, of
an abbot, cellarer or magister infirmorum. This
is, however, not what I will analyze in this
text, although some of the examples will deal
with the functionaries as well. If I wanted to
be consistent, but I do not, sometimes the
term ”person” and/or ”self ” would be more
appropriate, because I am interested in (.)
Individuals who enacted different personae
for their separate audiences and (2.) How
power acted upon their selves. For the sake of
convenience I will use the umbrella concept of
role and make qualifications where necessary.
7 The limited scope of this article unfortunately
does not allow for presenting the fundamental text by Marcel Mauss, from which all
‘category of the person’-studies stem more
or less directly. For this text and its critical
assessment, especially in the essays by N.J.
Allen and Steven Collins, see: The Category
of the Person. Anthropology, philosophy, history,
Cambridge 985, (ed.) Michael Carrithers,
Scandia74:1
Steven Collins, Steven Lukes.
8 Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual,
1050-1200, Toronto 987. For a more detailed
study following in these footsteps see: Michael
Clanchy,”Documenting the self: Abelard and
the individual in history”, Historical Research
76 (2003), pp. 293-309.
9 Sarah Coakley, ”Visions of the Self in Late
Medieval Christianity: Some Cross-Disciplinary Reflections”, in Philosophy, Religion
and the Spiritual Life, Cambridge-New York
992, (ed.) Michael McGhee, pp. 89-03. See
for example: Talal Asad, ”On discipline and
humility in medieval Christian monasticism”,
in Genealogies of Religion. Discipline and
Reasons of Power in Christianty and Islam,
Baltimore-London 993, pp. 25–67.
0 Mayke de Jong,”Kloosterlingen en buitenstaanders. Grensoverschrijdingen in Ekkehards
Casus Sancti Galli”, Bijdragen en medelingen
betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 98
(983), pp. 337-57; Mayke de Jong, ”Claustrum
versus saeculum. Opvoeding en affectbeheersing in een Karolingische kloostergemeenschap”, Symposion 3 (98), pp. 46-65.
de Jong, 983, p. 340: ”Dat wil zeggen - en dit is
de hypothese die ik hier formuleren - dat het
claustrum voor de kloosterlingen die binnen
de begrenzing hiervan opgroeiden niet alleen
een tastbare, fysieke realiteit vormde, maar
ook een sociale notie.”
2 de Jong 95, pp. 46-65.
3 Mayke de Jong, ”Internal Cloisters: The Case
of Ekkehard’s Casus Sancti Galli”, in Grenze
und Differenz im frühen Mittelalter, Wien
2000, (ed.) Walther Pohl, Helmut Reimitz,
pp. 209-22.
4 Erving Goffman, Asylums. Essays on the Social
Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, Harmondsworth 968, p. . A somewhat
inconclusive discussion about the usefulness
WojtekJezierski 29
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5
6
7
8
9
20
2
22
of this concept for the analysis of medieval
cloisters has been going on almost since its
appearance in 96, see: Wojtek Jezierski,
”Monasterium panopticum. On Surveillance
in a Medieval Cloister – the Case of St Gall”,
Frühmittelalterliche Studien 40 (2006), pp.
67-82, fn. 5; and most recently: Sarah Foot,
Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600900, Cambridge 2006, pp. 38-42.
See for example chapter 69 of Regula Benedicti: St Benedictus, Regula Benedicti/Die
Benediktusregel, cap. 69, Beuron 200, (ed.
on behalf of the Salzburg Commission of
Abbots), p. 234; the Latin text is taken from
this edition, all translations of the Regula
Benedicti, if not indicated otherwise, are taken
from: St Benedict, The Rule of Saint Benedict,
(ed.) Timothy Fry, Collegeville 998.
Goffman 968, pp. 24-25, 35-42.
Goffman 968, p. 7; Max Weber, ”Samhällsvetenskapernas objektivitet”, in Vetenskap och
politik, Göteborg 977, (trans.) Aino and Sten
Andersson, pp. 30, 38-39, 42-43.
Erving Goffman, ”Role Distance”, in Encounters: two studies in the sociology of interaction, Indianapolis 96, pp. 84-52, at p. 85. For
a brief survey on the use of the concept of role
in historical research see: Peter Burke, History
and Social Theory, Cambridge 2005, pp. 47-50.
The famous idea of Foucault, to whom as a
matter of fact the concept of role never mattered, that all human relations are relations of
power is perhaps too abstract and intangible
to be accepted as an approach to study. In
this regard, by combining Foucault with
Goffman, we may say that roles are the way
power is distributed within the social sphere
and that physically it takes form in everyday
interaction rituals, where images of people are
collaboratively produced: Randall Collins,
Theoretical Sociology, San Diego 988, pp. 88208; Spencer E. Cahill, ”Toward a Sociology
of the Person”, Sociological Theory 6 (998), pp.
32-48, at pp. 34-38.
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life, New York 959, pp. 56-57, 7-75.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The
Birth of the Prison, London 99, (trans.) Alan
Sheridan, pp. 76-77; Cahill, pp. 4-42.
Goffman 959, p. 45.
30 Nonsimilitudinemmonachi
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23 Barbara A. Misztal, ”Normality and Trust
in Goffman’s Theory of Interaction Order”,
Sociological Theory 9 (200), pp. 32-324, at pp.
34-36, 322; Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical
View, 2ND edn, London 2005, p. 65; Goffman
959, p. 82.
24 CSG preloquium, p. 6: ”quam verissime
datum est stilo et atramento veritatem perstringere, fortunia et infortunia loci nostri
veritati nihil parcentes edisserere.”
25 For problems with reliability of the Casus,
and generally on the source and its author see:
Ernst Dümmler,”Ekkehard IV von St Gallen”,
Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 4 (869), pp.
-73; von Knonau, pp. II-LXXXII; Hans F.
Haefele,”Zum Aufbau der Casus sancti Galli
Ekkehards IV”, in Typologia literarum. Festschrift Max Wehrli, Zürich 969, (ed.) Stefan
Sondegger, Alois M. Haas, Harald Burger,
pp. 55-66; Hans F. Haefele, Einleitung, in:
Ekkehard IV., Casus sancti Galli, pp. -;
Johannes Duft, ”Ekkehardus – Ekkehart”,
in Die Abtei St. Gallen. Beiträge zur Kenntnis
ihrer Persönlichkeiten, vol. 2, Sigmaringen 99,
pp. 2-220.
26 de Jong 983, pp. 342-343; for various uses of
Ekkehard IV’s Casus in culturally oriented
studies see: Iso Müller OSB, ”Ekkehard IV.
und die Rätoromanen”, in Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner- Ordens
und seiner Zweige 89 (97) vol. I-II, pp 27-288;
Hans F. Haefele,”Wolo cecidit. Zur Deutung
einer Ekkehard-Erzählung”, Deutsches Archiv
35 (979), pp. 7-32; Rüdiger Brandt, ”Fama
volante – publica inspectio – populo moribus
acceptus. Vorstellungen von Öffentlichkeit
und Nichtöffentlichkeit in den Casus Sancti
Galli Ekkehards IV”, in Das Öffentliche und
Private in der Vormoderne, Köln 998, (ed.)
Gert Melville, Peter von Moos, pp. 609-628;
Ernst Hellgardt, ”Die Casus Sancti Galli und
die Benediktinerregel”, in Literarische Kommunikation und soziale Interaktion: Studien zur
Institutionalisierung mittelalterlicher Literatur,
Frankfurt am Main 200, (ed.) Beate Kellner,
Ludger Lieb, Peter Strohschneider, pp. 27-50.
27 See for example: CSG preloquium, p. 6; c. 26,
p. 67; c. 33, p. 76.
28 Giles Constable, ”The Ceremonies and
Symbolism of Entering Religious Life and
Scandia74:1
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29
30
3
32
33
34
35
Taking the Monastic Habit, from the Fourth
to the Twelfth Century”, in Segni e riti nella
chiesa altomedievale occidentale (Settimane di
studio del centro italiano di studio sull’alto
medioevo XXXIII), vol. 2, Spoleto 987, pp.
77-834, at pp. 774-775. Hans-Werner Goetz,
”Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit im
früh- und hochmittelalterlichen Geschichtsbewußtsein”, Historische Zeitschrift 255 (992),
pp. 6-97.
On frater conscriptus see: Karl Schmid, ”Von
den ‘fratres conscripti’ in Ekkeharts St. Galler Klostergeschichten”, Frühmittelalterliche
Studien 25 (99), pp. 09-22, particulary about
Salomo at pp. 6-7. Dieter Geuenich,”Liturgisches Gebetsgedenken in St. Gallen”, in Das
Kloster St. Gallen im Mittelalter. Die Kulturelle
Blüte vom 8. bis zum 12 Jahrhundert, Darmstadt
999, (ed.) Peter Ochsenbein, pp. 83-94.
CSG c. 3, p. 20: ”Claustrumque ille, quia
potens erat, absque duce et, quod magne
confusionis tunc erat est”.
CSG c. 3, p. 22: ‘”Pellitium”, ait ille, ”tuum, si
volueris, tibi optime repretiabor. Nam duas
cucullas ab abbate habeo, quarum unam
tibi, ut claustrum decentius nobiscum in ea
introeas, induendam contrado.”’
CSG c. 3, p. 22: ”‘Sed nos in fraternitatem
interdum et laicos recipimus, quibus tamen in
laico habitu nequaquam’, inquit, ‘in claustro
abutimur’”.
Goffman observed that identity anecdotes i.e.
stories about incidents when either inmates
or members of the staff or people from the
outside mistakenly took the members of the
other group for their own affiliates, are one of
the characteristic features of the total institutions. He interpreted these as sporadically
surfacing awareness of how arbitrary the supposedly vast differences between these worlds
were: Goffman 968, pp. 04-05.
CSG c. 5, p. 24: ”Nimis tamen, ut iam diximus,
insolens semper erat et est praeter monachici
nostri habitus quemquam introire intima
nostra, maxime noctibus.”
CSG c. 5, p. 24: ”‘Per sancti Galli’, inquid,
‘meritum’ - sin enim patres iurabant – ‘hunc in
claustro eius his horis non patimur habitum’”.
English translation taken from: de Jong 2000,
p. 26.
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36 CSG c. 6, p. 26: ”‘Scio’, inquit, ‘fratres et filii,
quid ab illo vereamini; sed hoc et mihi quoque
quiddam subolet. Existimo tamen melius
nobiscum actum fore, si sic apud nos initiatus
monachum se aliquando nostrum faciat, ne
iterum canonico subdamur ut antea. Placet
igitur, ut agamus cum illo, quo re vera habitum
sumat a sancto Gallo, ut, si arte sua acciderit,
quod veremur, noster tamen sit frater et
monachus.’”
37 CSG c. 6, p. 28: ”Designaturque ei locus, quem
hodie quadris lapidibus notatum videmus,
quibus intrans habitum indueret, exiens exueret”.
38 CSG c. 5, p. 24: ”Verebantur enim hominem
palatinum, qui iam quasdam abbatias canonicus habebat, ne aliquid irregulare, ut forte
fit, videns sibi viam apud regem occasione hac
etiam ad nostram aperire temptaret.”
39 St Gall was a royal abbey since 883 and up to
the eleventh century was frequently visited by
kings and emperors: Johannes Duft, Anton
Gössi, Werner Vogler,”St Gallen”, in Helvetia
sacra. Frühe Kloster, die Benediktiner und Benedikterinnen in der Schweiz, section III, vol. ,
Bern 993, (ed.) Elsanne Gilomen-Schenkel,
pp. 80-8.
40 Goffman 959, pp. 40-46.
4 Rüdiger Brandt, ”his stupris incumbere non
pertimescit publice. Heimlichkeit zum Schutz
sozialer Konformität im Mittelalter”, in
Schleier und Schwelle I. Geheimnis und Öffentlichkeit, München 997, (ed.) Aleida and Jan
Assmann, pp. 7-88, at pp. 80-84.
42 Charles F. Sabel, ”Studied Trust: Building
New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile
Economy”, Human Relations 46 (993), pp.
33-70, at p. 33 quoted in: Misztal, p. 33.
43 Sita Steckel, Lehrer und Schüler. Studien zur
Kommunikation unter Gelehrten des Früh- und
Hochmittelalters (c. 800 - 1150), forthcoming.
44 Constable, pp. 808- 85; Mayke de Jong, In
Samuel’s Image. Child Oblation in the Early
Medieval West, Leiden 996, pp. 85-9; particularly on nudity and its meaning in admission procedures to total institutions: Goffman
968, pp. 24-32. More generally: Arnold van
Gennep, The Rites of Passage, London 960,
(trans.) Monika B. Vizedom, Gabrielle L.
Caffee, pp. 66-88.
WojtekJezierski 31
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45 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge 2003, (trans.) Richard Nice,
pp. 94-95: ”The whole trick of pedagogic
reason [in total institutions par excellence] lies
precisely in the way it extorts the essential
while seeming to demand the insignificant: in
obtaining the respect for form and forms of
respect which constitute the most visible and
at the same time the best-hidden (because
most ”natural”) manifestation of submission
to the established order, the incorporation
of the arbitrary abolishes what Raymond
Ruyer calls ”lateral possibilities”, that is, all
the eccentricities and deviations which are
the small change of madness.The concessions
of politeness always contain political concessions.”
46 Ekkehard affectively called cloistral space for
‘our intimate space’ and ‘our nest’: CSG c. 5, p.
24; c. 75, p. 56. He also had a very strong sense
of ”we” identification with the monks and the
past of St Gall: Wolfgang Eggert, Barbara
Pätzold, Wir-Gefühl und Regnum Saxonum
bei frühmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibern,
Weimar 984, p. 64.
47 CSG c. 36, p. 264. See also de Jong’s analysis
of these examples: de Jong 983, pp. 349-350.
48 Peter von Moos, ”Das mittelalterliche Kleid
als Identitätssymbol und Identifikationsmittel”, in Unverwechselbarkeit. Persönliche
Identität und Identifikation in der vormodernen
Gesellschaft, Köln-Weimar-Wien 2004, (ed.)
Peter von Moos, pp. 23-46, at pp. 24-28,
34-36. See also: Roland Barthes, ”History
and Sociology of Clothing. Some Methodological Observations”, in The Language of
Fashion, Oxford-New York 2006, (ed.) Andy
Stafford, Michael Carter, (trans.) Andy Stafford, pp. 3-20, at pp. 8-0, see also fn. 33
49 von Knonau, p. XXIII fn. 64.
50 CSG c. 28, pp. 68-70.
5 CSG c. 29, p. 70.
52 For a reconstructed succession of early medieval abbots at St Gall as well as the analysis of
the abbot’s position and functions see: Rupert
Schaab, Mönch in Sankt Gallen: zur inneren
Geschichte eines frühmittelalterlichen Klosters,
Ostfildern 2003, pp. 93-96, 23-235.
53 St Benedictus, Regula Benedicti, cap. -2, 3,
50-5, 53-54, 56, 6, 64-67; for comments on
32 Nonsimilitudinemmonachi
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54
55
56
57
58
Benedict’s concept see: Walter Horn, ”On
the Origins of the Medieval Cloister”, Gesta
2 (973), pp. 3-52, at p. 9; Jean Leclerq OSB,
The Love of Learning and the Desire of God,
New York 988, (trans.) Catherine Misrahi,
pp. -2.
Arnold Angenendt, Das Frühmittelalter. Die
abendländische Christenheit von 400 bis 900,
Stuttgart-Berlin-Köln 200, pp. 48-49;
Heinrich Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth
Century. Mentalities and Social Orders, Chicago-London 99, (trans.) Patrick J. Geary,
pp. 273-275; John Van Engen, ”The ”Crisis of
Cenobitism”Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 050-50”, Speculum 6
(986), pp. 269-304, at pp. 285-29.
Supplex Libellus monachorum Fuldensium
Carolo Imperatori porrectus, (ed.) Josef Semmler, in Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum
(cura Pontifici Athenaei Sancti Anselmi de
Urbe editum), (ed.) Kassius Hallinger OSB,
Siegburg 963, vol. , pp. 39-327, c. XX, at pp.
326-327: ”id est unitatem et concordiam cum
abbate nostro habere sicut cum anterioribus
nostris abbatibus habuimus et misericordiam
et familiaritatem, pietatem et modestiam
in illo sentire; et ut esset benignus infirmis,
propitius delinquentibus, affabilis fratribus,
maestorum consolator, laborantium adiutor,
benevolorum auxiliator, bene certantium
hortator, lassorum refocillator, cedentium
sustentator, cadentium restaurator; omnes
fratres amaret, nullum odiret et nullum zeli
vel livoris dolo persequeretur fieretque non
turbulentus vultu, non anxius animo, non
nimius in iudicio, non obstinatus in consilio,
sed hilaris facie, laetus mente, discretus in
opere, consentiens in utilitate. Et quando
aliquis de fratribus praeoccupatus fuerit in
aliquo delicto, non statim tyrannica vindicta
illum excruciaret, sed misericordi disciplina
corrigere festinaret conversumque clementer
susciperet nec prava suscipione denuo illum
fatigaret neque perpetuo odio exterminaret.”
Josef Semmler, ”Studien zum Supplex Libellus und zur anianischen Reform in Fulda’,
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 69 (958), pp.
268-98.
CSG cc. 34-35, pp. 260-262.
CSG c. 36, p. 264.
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59 CSG c. 35, p. 262: ”His similibusque, que se
frugi hominem vulgassent, operibus adeo se ille
commendabat, ut ubique de eo fama volaret, sed
et coram ipsis quoque regibus non aliter nisi boni
abbatis praenomine momoraretur.”
60 de Jong 2000, p. 23.
6 Goffman 968 p. 2: ‘If they are to move with
grace and effectiveness in the wider community, then it may be advantageous for them
to be recruited from the same small social
grouping as leaders of other social units in the
wider society.’. This general principle refers
better to Salomo than to Notker, but in the
latter’s case it may be reversed: by his behavior
Notker recruited himself into the social class,
for which he was to perform.
62 Goffman 959, pp. 48-49, 37-40.
63 CSG c. 47, p. 06: ”Magisque suos habere passus quam se.”
64 CSG c. 48, pp. 08-0.
65 St Benedict, Regula Benedicti c. 65, pp. 226228.
66 Cronica Jocelini de Brakelonda de rebus gestis
Samsonis Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi/
The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond concerning
the acts of Samson Abbot of the Monastery of St.
Edmund, (ed. and trans.) H.E. Butler, London-Edinburgh-Paris-Melbourne-TorontoNew York 949, p. : ”Homo pius et benignus,
monachus religiosus et bonus, set nec bonus
nec providus in secularibus exerciis.”
67 Jocelin of Brakelond, Cronica Jocelini, p. .
”dum quisque, serviens sub domino simplice
et iam senescente, fecit quod voluit, non quod
decuit.”
68 Jocelin of Brakelond, Cronica Jocelini,pp.-5.
69 Jocelin of Brakelond, Cronica Jocelini, p. 36:
”‘Aliud nimirum est quod domi non exibetis
vultum propicium sicut alibi, nec inter fratres
qui vos diligunt et dilexerunt et in dominum
sibi eligerunt, set raro estis inter eos, nec tunc
congaudetis eis, sicut dicunt.’ […] ‘Stultus es
et stulte loqueris. Scire deberes quod Salomon
ait: ‘Filie tibi/sunt multe: vultum propicium
ne ostendas eis’”.
70 de Jong 98, pp. 47-48. For more examples
of complex relationships and dissension
between abbots and their convents see: Steffen Patzold, Konflikte im Kloster. Studien zu
Auseinandersetzungen in monastichen Gemein-
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7
72
73
74
75
76
schaften des ottonisch-salischen Reichs, Husum
200, pp. 63-89.
Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual. Essays on
Face-to-Face Behavior, New York 982, p. 45:
”The general capacity to be bound by moral
rules may well belong to the individual, but
the particular set of rules which transforms
him into a human being derives from requirements established in the ritual organization of
social encounters. And if a particular person
or group or society seems to have a unique
character all its own, it is because its standard
set of human-nature elements is pitched
and combined in a particular way. […] the
human nature of a particular set of persons
may be specially designed for a special kind of
undertakings in which they participate […].”
Ian Hacking, ”The looping effects of human
kinds”, in Causal Cognition. A Multidisciplinary
Debate, Oxford 995, (ed.) Dan Sperber, David
Premack, Ann James Premack, pp. 35-394, at
pp. 35-370. See also: Hacking 2002, pp. 08-3.
Hacking 995, p. 354.
See for example: Ian Hacking, The Taming of
Chance, Cambridge 2004; Ian Hacking, Mad
Travelers. Reflections on the Reality of Transient
Mental Illnesses, Cambridge, MA 998.
Hacking 995, p. 388: ”A witch was a kind of
person within a framework of knowledge
different in type from ours, but no less rigorous. […] If one were to extend my notion of
human kind to apply to a classification within
a system of knowledge for which there are
sharp criteria - procedures of accountability,
canons of evidence, and so forth - then in Europe ‘witch’ was a human kind.”
Thomas S. Szasz, The manufacture of Madness.
A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the
Mental Health Movement, London 97, pp.
28-56. See also his article on the working and
effects of classifications in psychiatry: Thomas S. Szasz, ”Psychiatric Classification as a
Strategy of Personal Constraint”, in Ideology
and Insanity. Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man, London 983, pp.90-27.
Obviously, we can also refer to Foucault’s research on classifications of madness: Michel
Foucault, Madness and Civilization. A History
of Insanity in the Age of Reason, London 200,
(trans.) Richard Howard.
WojtekJezierski 33
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77 Patzold, pp. 224-227; Hanna Vollrath, ”Konfliktwahrnehmung und Konfliktdarstellung
in erzählenden Quellen des . Jahrhunderts”,
in Die Salier und das Reich: Gesellschaftlicher und
ideengeschichtlicher Wandel im Reich der Salier,
vol. 3, Sigmaringen 99, (ed.) Stefan Weinfurter, pp. 279-296; Hanna Vollrath, ”Oral Modes
of Perception in Eleventh-Century Chronicles”, in Vox intexta. Orality and Textuality in the
Middle Ages, Madison 99, (ed.) A.N. Doane,
Carol Braun Pasternack, pp. 02-.
78 St Benedict, Regula Benedicti c. 7, p. 236:
‘Quod si quis contentiosus repperitur, corripiatur.’. I have altered the imprecise English
translation of this fragment; ‘Tertium vero
monachorum teterrimum genus est sarabaitarum, […] in plumbi natura molliti’, c. , p. 72;
‘de cellarario monasterii, qualis sit’, c. 3, p. 52;
see also: cc. 2, 23, 3, 6, 62, 64.
79 Goffman 968, p. 267; Basilius Steidle OSB,
‘Abba Vater! Zur Abtsidee der Regel St.
Benedikts’, in Beiträge zum alten Mönchtum
und zur Benediktusregel, Sigmaringen 986,
(ed.) Ursmar Engelmann, pp. 79-9.
80 St Benedict, Regula Benedicti: ‘Saeculi actibus
se facere alienum’(c. 4, p. 88); ‘ut non suo arbitrio viventes vel desideriis suis et voluptatibus
oboedientes, sed ambulantes alieno iudicio et
imperio in coenobiis degentes abbatem sibi
praeesse desiderant’ (c. 5, p. 96); see also c. 73.
8 Still fundamental: Josef Semmler, ”Die Beschlüsse des Aachener Konzils im Jahre 86”,
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 74 (963),pp.5-82.
82 Angenendt, p. 378.
83 Eugenii II Concilium Romanum, (ed.) Georg
Heinrich Pertz, MGH Capit. I, pp. 370-377,
at p. 375: ”De monachis qui in solo habitu
existunt et non in ea vita vivunt. Quamquam
plura sint genera monachorum, observanda
videlicet et alia omnimodis refutanda, tamen
de his qui in solo habitu existunt diligenti
cura debet ununsquisque episcoporum in sua
diocese decertare, ut qui religiositate conantur
illudere boni pastoris studio coartentur, ut aut
ad proprium de quo defuerunt revertantur
monasterium aut prospectu congruo in aliud
mittantur. Ut, qui semel de Deo voverunt et
habitum monachorum ostenderunt vel comas
totonderunt regularem teneant vitam, uno
scilicet, ut convenit dormitorio ac refectorio
34 Nonsimilitudinemmonachi
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84
85
86
87
dormientes atque existens et ad similitudinem apostolorum omnia peragentes, quia
nequisquam quod habebat aliquid suum esse
dicebat, sed erant illis omnia communia.”Surprisingly, the words of this decree echo in the
critique directed against late tenth-century
Abbot Gerhard that St Gall monks presented
for Otto III, and which is reported by the first
continuator of Ekkehard’s Casus sancti Galli:
Casuum sancti Galli continuatio anonyma,
(ed. and trans.) Heidi Leuppi, Zürich 987,
c. , p. 94: ”‘Eum, quem nobis, domine rex,
abbatem praeposuistis, solo nomine id, quod
dicitur, est. Locum enim nostrum sanctum,
quem ad regendum suscepit ipse non rector
sed destructor omnimodis depravavit. Quod
enim maximum est, Dei et sui propositi oblitus, irreguraliter vivens regulares disciplinas
destruxit, monachi habitum gerens monachi
opera nulla fecit.’”
Mary A. Schroll, Benedictine monasticism as
reflected in the Warnefrid-Hildemar commentaries on the Rule, New York 967, pp. 82-92; de
Jong 98, pp. 46-65; de Jong 983, pp. 99-28.
For quantitave evidence of the clericalization
process in St Gall see: Schaab, pp. 9-22.
More generally: Mayke de Jong, ”Imitatio
Morum. The Cloister and Clerical Purity in
the Carolingian World”, in Medieval Purity
and Piety. Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform, New York-London
998, (ed.) Michael Frassetto, pp. 49-80; de
Jong 996, pp. 228-252; Angenendt, pp. 40-4,
324-325, 368-369; Gerd Althoff, Die Ottonen.
Königsherrschaft ohne Staat, Stuttgart 2000,
pp. 234-239.
Lampert of Hersfeld, Lamperti monachi
Hersfeldensis Annales, (trans.) Adolf Schmidt,
elucidated by Wolfgang Dietrich Fritz, Berlin
958, pp. 76-86; 324-326. Jocelin of Brakelond
seems to suggest that it was better to lie to the
pilgrims visiting Bury St Edmunds about the
shameful circumstances of the fire that nearly
consumed the feretory of the saint in order to
protect the monastery’s reputation: Jocelin of
Brakelond, Cronica Jocelini, pp. 06-09.
Lampert, Lamperti Annales, p. 46: ”Is
pseudomonachus, dicam expressius vi doloris
impulsus, is angelus Satanae transfiguratus in
angelum lucis, ita sanctam et angelicam mo-
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nachorum professionem infamavit, corrupit,
viciavit, ut monachi nostris temporibus atque
in his regionibus non innocentia estimentur
atque integritate vitae, sed quantitate pecuniae […]”. For another use of pseudomonachus
see also: Lampert, Lamperti Annales, p. 54.
88 Lampert, Lamperti Annales, pp. 52-54:
”Denique, sicut vulgo assiduitate vilescunt
omnia, et popularium animi novarum rerum
avidi magis semper stupent ad incognita, nos,
quos usu noverant, nihili estimabant, et hos,
quia novum inusitatumque aliquid preferre
videbantur, non homines, sed angelos, non
carnem, sed spiritum arbitrabantur. Et hoc
opinio principum quam privatorum mentibus
altius pressiusque insederat. A quibus ad
populum derivatus rumor tantum terroris plerisque in hac regione monasteriis iniecit, ut ad
ingressum illorum alias XXX, alias XL, alias L
monachi austerioris vitae metu scandalizati de
monasteriis abscederent saciusque ducerent de
salute animae in seculo periclitari quam supra
virium suarum mensuram vim facere regno
caelorum.”; For an analogous example see:
Casuum sancti Galli continuatio: c. 3, p. 00.
89 Constable, pp. 832-834.
90 Giles Constable, ”The Abstraction of
Personal Qualities in the Middle Ages”, in
Unverwechselbarkeit. Persönliche Identität und
Identifikation in der vormodernen Gesellschaft,,
Köln-Weimar-Wien 2004, (ed.) Peter von
Moos pp. 99-22, at pp. 8-22; Peter von
Moos, ”Herzengeheimnisse” (occulta cordis)
Selbstbewahrung und Selbstentblößung
im Mittelalter”, in Schleier und Schwelle.
Geheimnis und Öffentichkeit, vol. , München
997, (ed.) Aleida Assman, Jan Assmann, pp.
89-09, at pp. 9-94; Brigitte Miriam BedosRezak, ”Medieval Identity: A Sign and a
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9
92
93
94
95
96
Concept”, American Historical Review 05
(2000), pp. 489-533.
Fichtenau, pp. 3-8, 20-22; Van Engen, pp. 292293; R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle
Ages, New Haven 966, pp. 54–63. Gerd
Tallenbach, The Church in Western Europe
from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century,
Cambridge 993 (tran.) Timothy Reuter, pp.
22–34.
Cahill, pp. 35-38, 45-46; Ian Hacking,
”Between Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman: between discourse in the abstract and
face-to-face interaction”, Economy and Society
23 (2004), pp. 277-302, at, pp. 277-280, 287-288.
See also: Ian Hacking, ”The Archeology of
Michel Foucault”, in Historical Ontology,
London 2002, pp. 73-86.
Jezierski, pp. 67-82.
Michel Foucault,”The Subject and Power”, in
Power. Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984,
vol. 3, London 2002, (ed.) James D. Faubion,
pp. 326-348, at p. 34: ”[Power] operates on
the field of possibilities in which behavior of
active subjects is able to inscribe itself. […] it
incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or
more difficult; it releases or contrives, makes
more probable or less […] it is always a way
of acting upon one or more acting subjects
by virtue of their acting or being capable of
action.”; See also: Lukes, pp. 88-99.
See for example the story of monk Victor and
his conflict with Abbot Craloh: CSG cc. 6977, pp. 46-62.
Martin Hollis, ”Of Masks and Men”, in The
Category of the Person. Anthropology, philosophy, history, Cambridge 985, (ed.) Michael
Carrithers, Steven Collins, Steven Lukes, pp.
27-233, at pp. 230-232.
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