Richard of Saint-Vanne

Richard of Saint-Vanne (970–1046) was the abbot of the influential northeastern French Monastery of St. Vanne from 1004 to 1046. During his lifetime he succeeded in rebuilding the monastery as both a religious and political centre. New book focus on how he imagined his role as religious leader.

Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages
Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Politics of Reform
By Steven Vanderputten
Cornell University Press 1015
ISBN- 10: 0-8014-5377-1
ISBN-13:  978-0-8014-5377-9
GTIN13 (EAN13)     9780801453779

ABSTRACT:

Around the turn of the first millennium AD, there emerged in the former Carolingian Empire a generation of abbots that came to be remembered as one of the most influential in the history of Western monasticism. In this book Steven Vanderputten reevaluates the historical significance of this generation of monastic leaders through an in-depth study of one of its most prominent figures, Richard of Saint-Vanne. During his lifetime, Richard (d. 1046) served as abbot of numerous monasteries, which gained him a reputation as a highly successful administrator and reformer of monastic discipline. As Vanderputten shows, however, a more complex view of Richard’s career, spirituality, and motivations enables us to better evaluate his achievements as church leader and reformer.

Vanderputten analyzes various accounts of Richard’s life, contemporary sources that are revealing of his worldview and self-conception, and the evidence relating to his actions as a monastic reformer and as a promoter of conversion. Richard himself conceived of his life as an evolving commentary on a wide range of issues relating to individual spirituality, monastic discipline, and religious leadership. This commentary, which combined highly conservative and revolutionary elements, reached far beyond the walls of the monastery and concerned many of the issues that would divide the church and its subjects in the later eleventh century.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction

1. Imagining Richard in Medieval and Modern Historiography
2. Ecclesiastical Office, Religious Virtuosity, and the Apostolic Imperative
3. Imagining Saint-Vanne
4. “Founder and Head of Many Monasteries”
5. Converting the World

Conclusion

Appendix A: Chronology of Major Events in Richard’s Life
Appendix B: The Life of Roding
Appendix C: Monastic Reading at Saint-Vanne
Appendix D: Overview of Richard’s Abbacies Outside of Saint-Vanne
Appendix E: Overview of Richard’s “Priors”
Appendix F: Overview of Richard’s Successors