Books in Brief
The Monastic Realm
Raymond Oursel, Léo Moulin, Réginald Grégoire, translated by Donald Mills (New York: Rizzoli, 1985) 287 pp. and 299 illustrations, $65
Fascination with medieval monasticism seems to grow stronger by the day. How did medieval monks live? Why did they choose such an austere and isolated life in the first place? What were their contributions to the overall development of Western civilization? The Romantic attitudes that characterized the investigations of these questions during the 19th and early 20th centuries have fortunately given way in recent years to more rigorous and objective scholarship, carried out by both monks and lay observers. Indeed, a virtual avalanche of works on medieval monasticism has appeared in the past 15 years or so, with the result that we now have at our disposal more information about medieval monasticism than has ever before been available. (A good guide is Giles Constable’s Medieval Monasticism: A Select Bibliography [University of Toronto Press, 1976], which very helpfully lists scores of works on the subject.)
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