University of Sydney: Medieval and Early Modern Centre Lecture Series – Upcoming Public Lectures

University of Sydney
Medieval and Early Modern Centre Lecture Series

The next two MEMC lectures are:

Wednesday 10 October: Joseph Millan-Cole (PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Sydney), ‘Monastic Peace and Lay Piety in the Life and Letters of Bernard of Clairvaux’ (see below for abstract).

Wednesday 17 October: Dan Anlezark (Department of English, University of Sydney), ‘Doctrine, Influences, and the Dream of the Rood’.

The venue for both lectures is the Rogers Room, John Woolley Building, University of Sydney, 1-2pm.

All welcome

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Joseph Millan-Cole
PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Sydney

“Monastic Peace and Lay Piety in the Life and Letters of Bernard of Clairvaux”

Abstract

Bernard of Clairvaux (ca. 1090-1153) is one of the most familiar figures from the twelfth century. By the time of his death, he had established secular and ecclesiastical contacts throughout France, the British Isles and Scandinavia, the Empire, Rome and Italy, Eastern Europe, Christian Spain, and the Holy Land. The once-young layman from Burgundy attained a public presence in Christendom that was the envy of a Gregorian Papacy. Yet, the interpretation of Bernard’s celebrity and influence in his own times remains centered on the cultic perception(s) that he was either (or both) a saint or a charismatic, political mystic – the Abbot’s rise from obscurity is yet to be explained beyond these largely supra-mundane parameters. This paper will present a sample of research from my dissertation, which explores Bernard’s earliest religiosity and his (at first local) career as an ecclesiastical activist. It will discuss three key issues: the sources for his biography and the tools necessary for their interpretation; his largely underestimated transformation from a layman with followers to an Abbot disciplining monks (and himself); and the context for his enduring sympathy with the lives of laymen and women, who remained ever central to the monastic mission that he pursued as an Abbot who never quite left the world behind him.