Translated with an introduction and notes by Bruce L. Venarde with a new preface by the authorThis book tells the fascinating story of Robert of Arbrissel (ca. 1045-1116). Robert was a parish priest, longtime student, reformer, hermit, wandering preacher, and, most famously, founder of the abbey of Fontevraud. There men and women joined together in a monastic life organized so that women ruled men and men served women, according to the founder's plan. As Jacques Dalarun shows in this biography, however, Fontevraud was for Robert only one stopping point in a restless and lifelong journey in search of salvation that took place in roads, forests, towns, and monasteries across France. Hard as the travel was, the spiritual search was more agonizing still. Consumed with a sense of his own sinfulness, sexual and otherwise, Robert lived out penance however he could. The many women who gathered in his wake became partners in his religious quest, and his frequent contact with them was, paradoxically, a centerpiece of his penitential regime. At Fontevraud, he encouraged others to adopt the practice of intense contact with and indeed subservience to women. This reversal of the standard gender hierarchy in the midst of the ongoing battle with sexual temptation has baffled and even enraged observers during Robert's lifetime and ever since.Vividly narrating the course of Robert's life and his relationships with others along the way, the author hews closely to medieval sources, in particular two letters to Robert critical of his nonconformity and his relations with women, along with two admiring accounts written within a few years of his death. This translation by Bruce L. Venarde preserves the novelistic character of the original while updating and augmenting it with full notes, a bibliography, and an introduction both to the book and to scholarly interpretations of Robert in the past two decades. A new preface by Jacques Dalarun completes the reworking of the first full-length biography of Robert of Arbrissel available in English. ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Jacques Dalarun is senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and the author of numerous books and articles on medieval religious experience in France and Italy. Bruce L. Venarde, associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, is the author of Women's Monasticism and Medieval Society and Robert of Arbrissel: A Medieval Religious Life.PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:"A marvelous translation of an important book that is much more than the biography of the remarkable holy man who founded the abbey of Fontevraud, where nuns ruled over religious brothers. Dalarun places Robert's story in the larger context of a matrimonial crisis that placed women of this society at risk, while also treating with considerable delicacy Robert's self-testing, his urge to preach, and his ability to settle disputes. In his extensive annotation and clear translation, Bruce L. Venarde has made Dalarun's study accessible to English-readers at all levels."―Constance H. Berman, University of Iowa "Of all the religious athletes of the twelfth century, Robert of Arbrissel―the son of a priest, a hermit, wandering holy man, preacher to prostitutes, and advisor to people of power―is one of the strangest and most interesting. This book brings together the foremost French historian of Robert with the foremost American as his translator. A prize for both students and teachers of the Middle Ages."―Fredric Cheyette, professor emeritus, Amherst College"Beautifully translated and annotated, this biography offers a model historical study of a fascinating man and his times. Taken together with Venarde's collection of the primary sources connected with Robert (Robert of Arbrissel: A Medieval Religious Life), it provides the foundation for an ideal classroom experience in medieval

Robert of Arbrissel: Sex, Sin, and Salvation in the Middle Ages

Biographies & Memoirs

Dalarun, Jacques

Historical

The Catholic University of America Press

To Govern Is to Serve: An Essay on Medieval Democracy (Medieval Societies, Religions, and Cultures)

To Govern Is to Serve explores the practices of collective governance in medieval religious orders that turned the precepts of the Gospels―most notably that "the first will be last, the last will be first"―into practices of communal deliberation and the election of superiors. Jacques Dalarun argues that these democratic forms have profoundly influenced modern experiences of democracy, in particular the idea of government not as domination but as service. 
Dalarun undertakes meticulous textual analysis and historical research into twelfth and thirteenth-century religious movements―from Fontevraud and the Paraclete of Abelard and Heloise through St. Dominic and St. Francis―that sought their superiors from among the less exalted members of their communities to chart how these experiments prefigured certain aspects of modern democracies, those allowing individuals to find their way forward as part of a collective. Wide ranging and deeply original,To Govern Is to Serve highlights the history of the reciprocal bonds of service and humility that underpin increasingly fragile democracies in the twenty-first century.

History

Europe

Cornell University Press

A Female Apostle in Medieval Italy: The Life of Clare of Rimini (The Middle Ages Series)

Field, Sean L.

Cappozzo, Valerio

Community & Culture

University of Pennsylvania Press

This book centers on a fascinating woman, Clare of Rimini (c. 1260 to c. 1324–29), whose story is preserved in a fascinating text. Composed by an anonymous Franciscan, the Life of the Blessed Clare of Rimini is the earliest known saint’s life originally written in Italian, and one of the few such lives to be written while its subject was still living. It tells the story of a controversial woman, set against the background of her roiling city, her star-crossed family, and the tumultuous political and religious landscape of her age.\nTwice married, twice widowed, and twice exiled, Clare established herself as a penitent living in a roofless cell in the ruins of the Roman walls of Rimini. She sought a life of solitary self-denial, but was denounced as a demonic danger by local churchmen. Yet she also gained important and influential supporters, allowing her to establish a fledgling community of like-minded sisters. She traveled to Assisi, Urbino, and Venice, spoke out as a teacher and preacher, but also suffered a revolt by her spiritual daughters.\nA Female Apostle in Medieval Italy presents the text of the Life in English translation for the first time, bringing modern readers into Clare’s world in all its excitement and complexity. Each chapter opens a different window into medieval society, exploring topics from political power to marriage and sexuality, gender roles to religious change, pilgrimage to urban structures, sanctity to heresy. Through the expert guidance of scholars and translators Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field, and Valerio Cappozzo, Clare’s life and context become a springboard for readers to discover what life was like in a medieval Italian city.

L'Impossible Sainteté

World

CERF

Le Moyen Age en lumière: Manuscrits enluminés des bibliothèques de France

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

FAYARD

Isabelle de France, soeur de saint Louis: Une princesse mineure

Sean L. FIELD

Religion & Spirituality

FRANCISCAINES

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