Lynda L. Coon is Associate Professor of History at the University of Arkansas. She is the author of Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: Dark Age BodiesChapter 1. "Hrabanus Is My Name"Chapter 2. A Carolingian Aesthetic of BricolageChapter 3. Gendering the Benedictine RuleChapter 4. Carolingian Practices of the RuleChapter 5. Inscribing the Rule onto Carolingian Sacred SpaceChapter 6. Gendering the Plan of Saint GallChapter 7. Foursquare PowerEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"Dark Age Bodies stands the conventional view of early medieval monasticism on its head. It displaces commonplaces that monks were desexualized, ascetic, and celibate beings whose life, ideologies, and material surroundings were gender-free. Coon brilliantly deploys the rich array of recent sophisticated studies of Roman sex and gender, especially masculinities, to argue that western, specifically Benedictine, monasticism was predicated on same-sex hierarchies." (Julia Smith, University of Glasgow)

Lynda L. Coon is Associate Professor of History at the University of Arkansas. She is the author of Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: Dark Age BodiesChapter 1. "Hrabanus Is My Name"Chapter 2. A Carolingian Aesthetic of BricolageChapter 3. Gendering the Benedictine RuleChapter 4. Carolingian Practices of the RuleChapter 5. Inscribing the Rule onto Carolingian Sacred SpaceChapter 6. Gendering the Plan of Saint GallChapter 7. Foursquare PowerEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"Dark Age Bodies stands the conventional view of early medieval monasticism on its head. It displaces commonplaces that monks were desexualized, ascetic, and celibate beings whose life, ideologies, and material surroundings were gender-free. Coon brilliantly deploys the rich array of recent sophisticated studies of Roman sex and gender, especially masculinities, to argue that western, specifically Benedictine, monasticism was predicated on same-sex hierarchies." (Julia Smith, University of Glasgow)

Lynda L. Coon is Associate Professor of History at the University of Arkansas. She is the author of Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: Dark Age BodiesChapter 1. "Hrabanus Is My Name"Chapter 2. A Carolingian Aesthetic of BricolageChapter 3. Gendering the Benedictine RuleChapter 4. Carolingian Practices of the RuleChapter 5. Inscribing the Rule onto Carolingian Sacred SpaceChapter 6. Gendering the Plan of Saint GallChapter 7. Foursquare PowerEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"Dark Age Bodies stands the conventional view of early medieval monasticism on its head. It displaces commonplaces that monks were desexualized, ascetic, and celibate beings whose life, ideologies, and material surroundings were gender-free. Coon brilliantly deploys the rich array of recent sophisticated studies of Roman sex and gender, especially masculinities, to argue that western, specifically Benedictine, monasticism was predicated on same-sex hierarchies." (Julia Smith, University of Glasgow)