Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication (Western Europe, tenth-thirteenth centuries)

This collection of papers delves into the fascinating methods with which monastic groups of the central Middle Ages practised modes of oral communication. Although traditionally defined as a literate environment, Western monastic culture depended on a range of communicative practices which was just as large, and in some ways more sophisticated in its diversity, than that of other groups of society. Monks and nuns exchanged considerable amounts of information for which no written media were deemed necessary or which did not make a complete or immediate transition into written sources. Grouped in five thematic chapters, the papers in this volume aim to provide inroads into a useable interpretation of the various contexts in which monks and nuns in the central Middle Ages considered the spoken word as a vital complementary medium to other forms of communication.

Steven Vanderputten is head lecturer in the history of the Early and Central Middle Ages at the Department of History, Ghent University.