Nepantla in The Ninth Century: The Monastery of Redon and The Frankish-Breton Borderlands

Abstract

Medieval scholars write often about frontiers, but infrequently about borderlands. In this essay I bring together medieval studies and borderland studies, specifically the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, to read anew the Gesta Sanctorum Rotonensium (Deeds of the Holy Men of Redon). This late ninth century text describes the establishment (in 832) and early history of the monastery of Redon, which took place within multiple, overlapping, and contested borders. By translating Anzaldúa’s nepantla into a ninth-century idiom, I read the Gesta as a borderlands text, written by and for residents of the Frankish-Breton borderlands. The fluidity of this borderlands region, I argue, fostered the conflict and becoming essential to nepantla. This enabled the monks to formulate a transgressive identity, and community, that worked around and between and sometimes against both secular and ecclesiastical power.