13. Was There an Observant Cistercian Movement? : Reform in the Medieval History of the Cistercian Order

Emilia Jamroziak

doi:10.54195/XFRB6134

13. Was There an Observant Cistercian Movement? : Reform in the Medieval History of the Cistercian Order

Authors

Emilia Jamroziak

University of Leeds

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54195/XFRB6134_CH13

Synopsis

This article confronts the problem that in late medieval/early modern Cistercian historiography the concept of Observant reform seems absent, and that there did not exist a distinct Observant movement within the Cistercian order in a way that was comparable with what happened in the Mendicant world. Nevertheless, a close analysis of Cistercian sources indicates that Observant ideas did exist at different levels, and that Observantist developments evolved in relation to contacts with other religious orders, such as the Carthusians and the Devotio moderna movement.

Author Biography

Emilia Jamroziak, University of Leeds

Emilia Jamroziak is a Professor of Medieval Religious History at the University of Leeds and an alumna of the Central European University. She has published 3 monographs and 3 collected volumes on various aspects of monastic social and cultural history in Northwest and East Central Europe. Her forthcoming book, under contract with Amsterdam University Press, explores Cistercian engagement with the cult of the saint between 1300 and the early 16th century. Jamroziak was a 2015-16 Humboldt Fellow at TU Dresden and a 2019-20 Marie Curie- and Horizon 2020-funded fellow at the University of Erfurt. She has been the recipient of 4 Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) grants and her current work focuses on the constructions of the historiography of Latin monasticism since the 19th century.