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Information about this book was provided by its publisher in 2011. The description given is not an independent review. All details are subject to change, especially pricing. Please use the contact links at the top of this page to notify any innacuracy.

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James G. Clark.
The Benedictines in the Middle Ages.
Publisher: Boydell Press.
Series: Monastic Orders.
Publication due: June 2011.
Size: 23.4 x 15.6.
Page count: 392.

Publisher's recommended price
Hardback ISBN 9781843836230, £25.00

Description:

The men and women that followed the sixth-century customs of Benedict of Nursia (c.480-c.547) formed the most enduring, influential, numerous and widespread religious order of the Latin middle ages. Their liturgical practice, and their acquired taste for learning, served as a model for the medieval church as a whole: while new orders arose, they took some of their customs, and their observant and spiritual outlook, from the Regula Benedicti. The Benedictines may also be counted among the founders of medieval Europe. In many regions of the continent they created, or consolidated, the first Christian communities; they also directed the development of their social organisation, economy, and environment, and exerted a powerful influence on their emerging cultural and intellectual trends.

This book, the first comparative study of its kind, follows the Benedictine Order over eleven centuries, from their early diaspora to the challenge of continental reformation.

Contents:
1 Introduction 2 The Making of a European Order 3 Observance 4 Society 5 Culture 6 The Later Middle Ages 7 Reformations 8 Select Bibliography.