6. Making Space for Learning in the Miracle Stories of Peter the Venerable

Abstract

This chapter explores how the monastery served as a site of narrative remembrance intended to inculcate monastic disciplina by examining twelfth-century hagiographic texts produced at Cluny. Peter the Venerable’s De miraculis and Ralph of Sully’s Vita Petri Venerabilis give evidence of the nominally silent monks trading stories amongst one another, and they both highlight the chapter as a privileged location for sharing useful stories. In his retelling of a divine and demonic visitation witnessed by abbot Hugh of Semur, Peter the Venerable adds a new focus on distinct Cluniac places (chapter, dormitory, and refectory), identif ied as sites of virtue. Doing so allows him both to advocate for new definitions of Cluniac monasticism and also to imbue key claustral spaces with these innovative ideas.