Ideas of resilience in the Monastery historiography of the High Middle Ages (11th-13th century)

In the humanities and social sciences, resilience is generally understood as the ability of individuals and social groups to adapt to and withstand crises. Until now, research into monasteries and religious orders has hardly focussed on the concept of resilience at all. This doctoral project aims to fill this gap to some extent. The project, which focuses on the history of ideas, investigates the extent to which monks’ and canons’ ideas of resilience can be found in the monastic historiography of the 11th-13th centuries. Since coping, adaptation and transformation efforts in the course of crisis phases could affect various areas, a heuristically broad definition of the concept of resilience is appropriate: These can be spoken of when the authors point out the ability of monks or canons to develop political, social, economic and cultural options for action, which, from the perspective of contemporaries, made it possible to react to threats and dangers.
A total of 16 hagiographical or historiographical works from three different monastic and canonical models of life (‘classical Benedictines’, Cistercians, Premonstratensians) serve as the objects of investigation. What all these texts have in common is that the respective authors do not conceal the earlier emergency situations of their houses, but in some cases describe them in detail and present their confreres with exemplary solutions for crisis phases. One could therefore ask whether such narrative sources serve as exemplary guides for learning resilient behaviour.
The surviving disruptive events are categorised into three threat and danger situations (A: Physical violence against convents; B: Diseases, fire and natural disasters; C: legal disputes with secular and clerical persons). With the help of an analytical tool developed by the Trier-based Collaborative Research Centre 2539 ‘Phases of Social Upheaval in the Dialogue between Medieval Studies and Sociology’, it is important to take a closer look at the options for action raised by the authors: So-called resilience strategies represent measures aimed at protecting and maintaining the monastic or canonical order during or after a disruption. Material or immaterial resilience resources were required to realise these plans. The knowledge acquired by the actors from possible previous crises, known as resilience disposition, also affected their works. Conclusions could be drawn from the authors' biographies regarding their experience with disruptive events.
In addition, the doctoral project sheds light on the extent to which different lifestyles of the vita religiosa had an impact on the medieval actors' ideas of resilience. Due to their integration into a religious order structure, the Premonstratensian and Cistercian convents had a higher degree of institutionalisation than the ‘classical Benedictines’. Thus, on the one hand, it will be determined whether the corresponding authors refer to the religious authorities (general chapter, statutes, visitation) with regard to overcoming disruptive events. On the other hand, it will be investigated whether the desired uniformity of the Cistercians and Premonstratensians is also reflected in uniform ideas of resilience.

Editor: Cornelius Caspar

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