The Translator of Desires, Poems

Abstract

tifying these forgeries, which he describes as ‘clumsy’, although weighing up the veracity of other documents seems to have proved rather more challenging. The later chapters go on to discuss the abbey’s administration, lordship, and its treatment of its peasants. The second section concludes with a discussion of Cava’s role within the regional economy. This detailed discussion includes many points of interest. These include the abbey’s evolving relationship with Salerno’s Jewish community, which suffered increasing pressure and persecution especially under Angevin rule in the late thirteenth century. Loud also stresses Cava’s role in the regional economy. As he demonstrates, the abbey pursued several economic roles: providing a secure depository where local elites could safeguard their property, acting as a creditor (an unusual role for a monastic institution), involving itself in trade with locations as distant as North Africa and the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well as more local commerce in Salerno. As a landowner it typically relied upon long-term leases rather than farming estates through its own personnel. Loud concludes his work with an appeal for further research into the Cava archive which clearly has a great deal more to offer. He also suggests that more could be learned from comparative studies – placing Cava side-by-side with other regional landowners. Certainly, the idea of conducting comparative local analyses makes a great deal of sense but this might also work on an international scale. Cava’s fluctuating fortunes, whilst very different in local context and experience from many other monastic houses, orders and networks in this period, nonetheless maps out a very common trajectory. Many other houses picked up substantial momentum in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries; reached their peak in the late-twelfth or early thirteenth centuries and then found themselves increasingly embattled thereafter. Exceptions could be found of course (mostly obviously the mendicants) and yet Cava’s experience was not unique and perhaps another zone for future research might be the influence of far broader macro social and cultural changes sweeping the Catholic world in shaping the abbey’s fortunes. Taken overall, The Social World of the Abbey of Cava represents a deeply impressive piece of work offering a nuanced and multi-faceted reconstruction of a fascinating monastic institution.