Abstract
This special issue forms a capstone for the collaborative research project ‘History for the Community: Monk-Historians and Communal Heritage’ funded by the British Academy (MD19\190021) and conducted by myself (Dr Benjamin Pohl, University of Bristol, principal investigator) and the monastic community of Downside Abbey over a 15-month period in 2019–2021. The project capitalised on the renewed public and scholarly interest in the history and communal heritage of monasticism in its various forms seen in recent years, both in the United Kingdom and internationally, through an innovative, engagement-led approach for studying examples of historical writing, thought and identity in monastic communities from the Middle Ages to the present day. The aim was to showcase these communities as centres of historical activity where cultural knowledge has been collected, curated and preserved for centuries in ways that are of interest not only to the global academic community but also equally to the general public.
Downside Abbey proved an invaluable and ideally placed partner in this project with its well-established roots in both public and scholarly culture, particularly (though by no means exclusively) in the Southwest region and Bristol’s surroundings. Drawing on these important relationships and institutional partnerships – most recently, the Centre for Monastic Heritage between Downside Abbey and the University of Bristol with its Centre for Medieval Studies (https://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/research/centres/medieval/) – we successfully launched a year-long programme of collaborative activities and events attracting substantial audiences from academic and non-academic backgrounds alike. Besides public talks and workshops held at Downside Abbey, the Faculty of Theology in Fulda (where I was awarded a Gangolf Schrimpf Visiting Fellowship at the Bibliotheca Fuldensis project: https://www.bibliotheca-fuldensis.de/) and, following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, in virtual format, the project brought these audiences into dialogue through the online exhibition ‘History & Community: 20 Exhibits from Downside Abbey’ (http://www.historyandcommunity.com/). Featuring 20 carefully curated exhibits from Downside’s heritage collections selected and prepared collaboratively by the monks and a team of staff and student researchers from the University of Bristol, the exhibition offers a vibrant panorama of the community’s historical and cultural life spanning over a thousand years and connecting it with the British Isles, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, the Vatican, Russia and even Australia. Since its well-attended virtual launch event in November 2020, the exhibition website has seen consistently high levels of traffic and regular social media coverage sustaining the project’s presence and legacy in the public sphere.
From an academic perspective, the project’s legacy and scholarly impact will be ensured by a series of outputs including international journal articles and a forthcoming monograph on the role(s) of medieval abbots in the writing of history under contract with Oxford University Press. And yet, writing history is rarely (if ever) a solitary exercise, but a collective achievement that thrives on mutual intellectual stimulation and exchange. In recognition of this, Downside’s Director of Heritage, Dr Simon Johnson, and I agreed to dedicate this special issue of The Downside Review to the project as a means of showcasing some of the highly productive and stimulating research conversations it has facilitated over the course of the last year and a half, thereby lending a voice to academics other than the project team’s core members. Authored by established international experts in the field of medieval monastic studies, the five studies published here under the theme ‘History & Community’ shed light on key aspects of medieval monastic history and culture that complement and contextualise the project’s other outputs and activities.
Beginning with Scott Bruce’s survey ‘Veterum vestigia patrum: The Greek Patriarchs in the Manuscript Culture of Early Medieval Europe’, we are offered important new insights into the book collections and reading habits of Western monastic communities before c. 800 that help us understand how their monks used the writings of the Eastern Church Fathers to create a shared sense of historical tradition and identity. Equally ambitious and wide-ranging in scope is Eileen Gardiner’s ‘Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Monastic Literature’ which, based on a comparative discussion of 35 otherworldly visions composed across the Latin West between the late 6th and early 13th centuries, makes a compelling case for an inclusive community of audiences that connected medieval monasteries with the wider world outside their walls by drawing on shared experiences and expectations. Richard Allen’s ‘History, Memory, and Community in Cistercian Normandy (12th–13th Centuries)’ then takes us on a detailed tour of historiographical production and manuscript copying among the Cistercian communities of medieval Normandy that generates transformative knowledge about this dense network of monastic institutions which, until now, has never had its contribution to historical writing scrutinised systematically. Remaining within the Cistercian context, Victoria Hodgson’s ‘History and Hagiography: The Vita Sancti Servani and the Foundation of Culross Abbey’ reveals the complex historical vision surrounding the foundation of Culross Abbey in 1217 and serves as a unique window into the past constructed by Culross’ monks to cultivate a sense of belonging and carve out a place for themselves within the local memory landscape. Last but not least, Steven Vanderputten’s ‘They Lived Under That Rule as Do Those Who Have Succeeded Them: Simultaneity and Conflict in the Foundation Narratives of a French Women’s Convent (10th–18th Centuries)’ demonstrates both the remarkable longevity of communal narratives and their ‘shelf lives’ through a case study of three foundation histories for Bouxières Abbey produced over the course of nearly 800 years. Taken together, these five studies cover a large geographical and chronological area; still they converge and enter into dialogue with one another through their shared focus on the role of historical narratives for the creation of communal memories and identities.
As this issue’s guest editor, my thanks must go once more to the British Academy and the University of Bristol for their generous funding and institutional support, as well as to Simon Johnson, The Downside Review’s editor-in-chief, whose expertise, collegiality and friendship proved integral in bringing this collaborative work to its timely completion. I would also like to thank the contributors and academic peer reviewers for their enthusiasm, dedication and professionalism throughout the process. The fruits of their labour published in this special issue are timely reminders that history creates community, and community creates history.