Shaping Stability: The Normation and Formation of Religious Life in the Middle Ages (Disciplina Monastica, Book 11)

This volume examines the efforts of medieval religiouscommunities and orders to bring stability to the dynamic complexityof organized religious life. By focusing on legislative structuresand normative documents (rules, customaries, constitutions), theauthors address not only such matters as the meaning of these textsand the motivations behind them, but also the evolving conditionsof their production and use, the internal politics of institutionalchange, and the reality of “precept not practice.” These papersthus present spiritual principles and social practices in theirhistorical and functional contexts, confront normative programswith formative processes, and explain distinctive modes and modelsof life within the broader landscape of medieval organizedreligion..Krijn Pansters, Ph.D. (2007) in Medieval History, RadboudUniversity Nijmegen, is Lecturer in Church History and Spiritualityat Tilburg University (School of Theology, Franciscan Study Center)and Research Associate at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven,Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies). He has publishedextensively on medieval mentality and religious thought.Abraham Plunkett-Latimer is a Ph.D. candidate in Medieval Historyat the University of Toronto. He specializes in high-medievalmonasticism, particularly the lay brotherhoods of thetwelfth-century reformed orders. Areas of special interest to himare the place of labor in medieval ideology and the history of thebody.