Phantoms of Remembrance. Creative Selection in Medieval Religious Life

Abstract

An analytical investigation like this presents the historian with two main challenges. On the one hand, religious life is a very heterogeneous research field that is truly difficult to address in all its facets, and indeed full of phantoms of remembrance. On the other hand, ‘memory’ possesses a no less multidimensional nature, and has received particular attention in recent decades. The literature on medieval ‘memory’ has become almost impossible to handle.1 Today, it is a well-known fact that people – consciously or not – create their past again and again. The ongoing transformation of knowledge by changing, adding, omitting or ‘simply’ forgetting facts is questioned by nobody. It is also clear that such phenomena are embedded in manifold cultural circumstances more or less shaped by crisis, concurrence and reforms in politics, economy and belief. Sometimes they are just shaped by coincidence. In light of these two challenges, there are two main approaches for my study on monastic phantoms of remembrance. The first option is to underpin those wellknown phenomena of historiography by adding some paradigmatic case studies: Robert of Molesme († 1111), for instance, who left his Benedictine monastery in 1098 and founded Cîteaux, the motherhouse of the Cistercian Order, was nearly forgotten in the Order historiography until the end of the 12 century. Since the Benedictine tradition of the Cistercians had to be re-emphasized and Bernard of Clairvaux († 1153) had become a rather European saint no more exclusive to the Cistercians, however, Robert was ‘discovered’ again.2 Bruno of Cologne († 1101), the founder of the Carthusian Order, offers a similar, but even more significant example. He was promoted intensively in the 16 century. The monks of Cologne were right to recog-