'Hermit-Monks over the Borderline': Cartusiana-sponsored session at IMC Leeds 2022

The Carthusians and Camaldolese, just as other monks, lived within the borders of their symbolic death to the world ('entrance'/'ordination'), and biological death. Although lives of medieval hermit-monks were often invisible, available images were increasingly projections of exemplary reputations for strictness and holiness. A paradoxical relationship exists between the desire to remain within their enclosures and the reputation they enjoyed. Hermit-monks were famous for creating both material ('desertum') and spiritual borders. These shaped a unique monasticism - in terms of how eremitical monastics thought about their lives, and their relationships with the world, with lay men and women, and with the divine. This session discusses the development of the eremitical enclosure, negotiation of solitary, communal and external spaces, and lives and deaths of monks within such spaces.

Title: Hermit-Monks over the Borderline: Deserts, Limits, Enclosure, and Death
Date/Time: Tuesday 5 July 2022: 16.30-18.00
Session: 828
Sponsor: Cartusiana
Organiser: Tom Gaens, Ruusbroecgenootschap, Universiteit Antwerpen & Stephen J. Molvarec, School of Theology & Ministry, Boston College, Massachusetts
Moderator/Chair: Emilia Jamroziak, Institute for Medieval Studies / School of History, University of Leeds

Paper -a Women at the Door of Fonte Avellana: Female Religious on the Borders of Male Spiritual Space
Kathryn Benevento Jasper, Department of History, Illinois State University

Paper -b 'On a Horse with No Name': Limits, Boundaries, Possessions, and the Medieval Carthusian Concept of 'Desert'
Stephen J. Molvarec, School of Theology & Ministry, Boston College, Massachusetts

Paper -c From Ordination to Obit: The Prosopography of English Carthusians, c. 1350-1540
David E. Thornton, Department of History, Bilkent University, Turkey

This session is in honour of Dr. Glyn Coppack, of English Heritage and University of Nottingham.