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Individualism in Twelfth-Century Religion. Some Further Reflections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Colin Morris
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In an article in the last number of this JOURNAL, Caroline Walker Bynum drew attention to the way in which historians during the past few decades have written of the twelfth century in terms which would once have been thought more appropriate to the fifteenth. We have become used to hearing about the twelfth-century renaissance, about the classical revival and the growth of humanism and about the discovery of the individual. The period has been credited with a rapidly growing awareness of the regularity of the natural order and with an increased confidence in the power of reason. The idea has now been widely accepted that the twelfth century saw the emergence of institutions and sensitivities which were to become characteristic of western civilisation, but which previously did not exist or played only a subordinate cultural role. It is then, as R. R. Bolgar has expressed it, that we can discern for the first time the lineaments of modern man. This is obviously not to say that the attitudes displayed were the same as those in subsequent centuries; it would be absurd to look for the humanism of the fifteenth century, the rationalism of the eighteenth, or the individualism of the nineteenth, in the writings of Cistercians or magitri. Some phrases will strike us by their modernity, but the context of thinking is usually different in important ways from our own. The question is not whether there is a cultural identity between the twelfth century and the modern world, for there obviously is not, but whether in the twelfth century we can discern elements of respect for humanity, reason and individuality which were largely lacking during the preceding five hundred years, and which were to have a lasting impact on the growth of.western culture.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 195 - 206
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 I am grateful to the author for permission to see the article in draft. (Bynum, C. W., ‘Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?’, this Journal, xxxi (1980), 1–17)Google Scholar.

2 Bolgar, R. R., The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries, Cambridge 1954, 188CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. the remark byMurray, A., Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, Oxford 1978, 5Google Scholar: ‘It was in the late eleventh century, the time of the first crusade, that Europe first became the enfantterrible she still is’.

3 Neill, S., A Genuinely Human Existence, London 1959 16.Google Scholar

4 There is an excellent summary of recent discussion inChâtillon, J., ‘La crise del'Êglise aux Xle et XIIe siècles et les origines des grandes fédérations canoniales’, Revue d'histoire de la spiritualité, liii (1977). 3–45Google Scholar. with a full bibliography which gives useful reference also to some works On the eremitical movement. On confraternities the authoritative book is nowMeesseman, G. G., Ordo Fratemitatis. Confratemite e pietà dei laid nel medioevo, Italia Sacra24–6, Rome 1977Google Scholar.

5 For a consideration of the development of models in this period, seeDuby, G., ‘The diffusion of cultural patterns in feudal society’, Past and Present, 39 (1968), 3–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his bookMedieval Marriage. Two Models from twelfth-century France, London 1978Google Scholar.

6 Thus Manning's, R. W. recent study The Individual in twelfth-century Romance, New Haven 1977Google Scholar. discusses the question mainly in terms of ‘inner awareness’, which the author clearly regards as an aspect of the growing respect for the individual.

7 , Bynum, art. cit., 4.Google Scholar

8 See, for example, the discussion inDownie, R. S. and Telfer, E., Respect for Persons, London 1969. chapter iiiGoogle Scholar.

9 Cf. Loomis's, E. A. remark in The Self in Pilgrimage, London 1961, 4Google Scholar: ‘It is an important part of self-discovery to participate in the life of our peers, to share in their pleasures and joys, their corporate aims and ideals.’ Incidentally the title of this book has an agreeably twelfth-century air.

10 We do not know with any accuracy how many nobles knew enough Latin to be able to sing the psalter. Monasteries almost certainly admitted adult recruits as convmi on occasions even when they could not participate in the offices properly, and it was accepted practice for members of noble families to be clothed in the habit on their death-beds and thus to die as monks. It would thus be wrong to say there was no flexibility in the tenth century, but there was certainly much more later.

11 , Guibert of , Nogent, De vita sua i. 15, ed. Bourgin, C., Paris 1904, 52Google Scholar: Peter Abelard, Histoia Calamitatn cap. 7, P.L. clxxviii. 130–5- Even if the latter work is not an authentic one, it is still of interest as a discussion of a contemporary dilemma.

12 , Manegold of , Lautenbach, Contra Wol?elmum 23 (ed. W. Hartmann, M.G.H. Quellen 8, 102).Google Scholar

13 The Council of Clermont offered forgiveness to those who went to Jerusalem ‘pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecunie adeptione’ (Somerville, R., Councils of Urban II. I: Decreta Claromontensia, Amsterdam 1972, 74). Cf. Urban II's letter to Bologna: ‘non tereni commodi cupiditate sed pro sola animae suae salute et ecclesiae liberatione’ (Google ScholarHagenmeyer, H., Epistulae et chartae, Innsbruck 1901, ep. III, 137)Google Scholar.

14 Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, i, R.H.C. Occ. iv, 124.

15 , Bynum, art. cit., 7. There are some valuable remarks on intellectual uncertainty inGoogle ScholarEvans, G. R., ‘A Change of Mind in some Scholars of the eleventh and early twelfth Centuries', Studies in Church History, 15 (1978), 27–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Some historians have argued that the sense of the Church as a body disappeared totally for a period: ‘the idea of corporate personality was too abstract to lay hold of men's minds’. (Dumas, A., ‘La notion de la popriété ecclésiastique’, Revue de l'Histoire dt I'Église de France, xxvi (1940), 17Google Scholar.) This puts the matter in a somewhat extreme way, but it must be agreed that property was very often conceded, not to a church, but to God and His saints at the church.

17 ‘Quas videlicet domos … abusive vocaverunt fideles ecclesias.’ (Guérard, M., Cartulaire … de S. Victor de Marseille, Paris 1857, i nos. 33, 52Google Scholar.) The phrase probably records the definition of Isidore: ‘Ecclesia vocatur poprie, popter quod omnes ad se vocet et in unum congreget.’ (De ecclesiasticis officiis, I, i.2.)

18 The most cogent declaration of this policy in the early days of the Gregorian Reform was contained in chapter in. 9 of Humbert's Advers Simoniacos: ‘Sicut clerici a laicis etiam intra parietes locis et officiis, sic et extra separari et cognosci debent negotiis.’ (M.G.H. Libelli de Lite, i. 208).

19 Revelation, xxi. The whole chapter is based on the recreation of the human order by the final manifestation of God, and the phrase quoted occurs twice, at verses 2 and 10 Cf. verse 3: ‘the dwelling of God is with men’.

20 Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse, no. 63: ‘Nova veniens e caelo,/nuptiali thalamo/praeparata.’

21 Hildebert of Lavardin, ‘Hymn to the Trinity’ (op. cit. no. 159;, Hildebertus, Carmina Minora, ed. Scott, A. B., Teubner 1969, no. 55)Google Scholar.

22 This is shorthand, and the ideals were not as elitist in intention as they proved to be in fact. The regular canons were seen as oflering the possibility of a general revival of the clergy, and some of the hermit-preachers, from Romuald to Robert of Arbrissel, saw themselves as making monastic perfection available to large elements of society. However, this desire ‘to turn the whole world into a wilderness’, even if it had proved realistic, would certainly not have been the same as the ecclesiology of Ambrose or Augustine.