Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe

Emilia Jamroziak is a historian of medieval religiosity, especially relationships between monastic communities and wider world. She has been working on various aspects of Cistercian history for over ten year and is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds.

• Introduction 1 Origins: ideas, myths and interpretations 2 The first multinational? How the Cistercian Order spread across Europe 3 Cistercian communities and the lay world 4 Cistercian nuns: the role of women in the order 5 Visual culture of Cistercian communities 6 Economy: not just sheep and grain 7 Intellectual horizons: writing, preaching and Cistercian spirituality 8 Was there a crisis of the Cistercian Order in the later middle ages? Conclusion

'As part of Routledge's "Medieval World" series, this book by historian Jamroziak (Univ. of Leeds, UK) presents a comprehensive examination of the Cistercian order in medieval Europe from its foundation to 1500...), this book is an extremely useful resource for those first delving into the Order of C'iteaux. Summing Up: Highly recommended.' - CHOICE 'This book is an extremely useful resource for those first delving into the Order of C'iteaux.' - J. M. B. Porter, Butler University“[Jamroziak’s] study is unusually strong in its inclusion of Cistercians on the periphery of medieval Europe as well as those in the center, and the linguistic abilities that allow that to be done are impressive.” -Constance H. Berman, University of Iowa, USA"Jamroziak's survey, the first single-authored, English-language introduction to the history of the Cistercians to be published in many decades, effectively recasts Cisterican history by treating the early and later centuries of the order's existence, and its houses throughout Europe, evenhandedly. Immersed in the scholarly literature of eastern, central, and far northern Europe as well as that of what has generally been considered the Cistercian 'heartland' of France and England, Jamroziak successfully constructs a new history of an order that repeatedly transformed itself."Diane Reilly, Indiana University, Bloomington in Speculum "Jamroziak's source material ranges across the breadth of the Cistercian world, citing many examples not only from western Europe but also from the eastern European countries. This breadth of source material provides a more holistic account of the Cistercian enterprise, allowing Jamroziak to question whether the Cisterican order should not be consdiered Europe's first multinational organization." Greg Peters in Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies "Emilia Jamroziak has done an excellent job bringing together recent scholarship in multiple languages, and her book provides illuminating details about Cisterican practices across Europe and throughout the Middle Ages." Martha G. Newman, University of Texas at Austin in The American Historical Review"The great originality of Jamroziak's work is in choosing to set aside the standard paradigm used by Lekai and and others, which is essentially an evaluative approach, judging the various phases of history in terms of rise, decline, and reform. The author also avoids the reductionist approach of many recent historians, whose dominant focus is on socio-economic realities to the exclusion of the religious dimension for whcih the monasteries were appreciated in their own time. The result is a well-balanced, multi-faceted, descriptive approach that traces Cistercian life in its first centuries in terms of change and adaptation." Elias Dietz in Sehepunkte"This is a very useful addition to the Medieval World series which provides a clear introduction to some of the key themes and debates in Cistercian historiography; the range of secondary material surveyed and synthesised is impressive."K. Sykes in English Historical Review