1115 Clairvaux was founded in France. Commemorating the events 900 years later, the 2015 Cistercian Studies Conference will once more be held at Kalamazoo.

This year Kalamazoo is impregnated with Cistercian scholars, who are busy convening for this year’s Cistercian Studies Conference organised under the auspices of the “Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies” at the Western Michigan University. All-in-all twelve sessions have been planned on a variety of topics pertaining to the medieval history of the Cistercian order and organized by the Center’s  director, E. Rozanne Elder, and by Henrike Lähnemann from Oxford University. The center also hosts a couple of social arrangements (drinks etc.)

To this list should be added a separate session on Cistercian preaching and a handful of other papers.

However, the main event is the Cistercian Studies Conference.

Programme

Introducing the Cistercian conference is of course Professor Emeritus Brian Patrick MacGuire from Roskilde University in Denmark, who is (rumour has it) currently writing his magnum opus: a biography of Bernard of Clairvaux. With the intriguing title: “Living on his Nerves” participants will be introduced to his on-going search to fathom this “difficult saint” (to quote from the title of his first biography of the man from 1991.

After this follows a distinct bonanza of papers approaching the man and his world from all sorts of interdisciplinary angles:

Below is the full programme (numbers refer to the number of the session):

Clairvaux’s First Abbot (11)

Presider: E. Rozanne Elder, Western Michigan University

• “Living on His Nerves”: In Search of the Founder of Clairvaux
  Brian Patrick McGuire, Roskilde Univ.
• The Vita Quarta and the Cistercian Literary Tradition
  Spencer J. Weinreich, Yale Univ.
• Cistercian Bestsellers by Anonymous Authors: An Outline History of the Main Pseudo-Bernardine Works
  Elias Dietz, OCSO, Abbey of Gethsemani

Lectio Divina and Its Echoes (58)

Presider: Cassian Russell, OCSO, Monastery of the Holy Spirit

• Lions in the Desert
  Kyler Williamsen, Western Michigan Univ.
• Saint Bernard and John Scotus Eriugena: Flying with the Evangelist’s Eagle through the Spiritual Landscape
  Natalie B. Van Kirk, Loyola Univ. Chicago
• Lectio Divina in the Cistercian Visionary Texts of the Thirteenth Century
  Elena Kuzmenko, Lomonosov Moscow State Univ.

Theologians and Hagiographers (108)

Presider: Elias Dietz, OCSO, Abbey of Gethsemani

• Soteriologial Epistemology? Bernard of Clairvaux and Saint Paul’s Exinanitio
  Marvin Döbler, Univ. Bremen
• Liberum Arbitrium in Saint Bernard’s Theology
  Luke Anderson, O.Cist., St. Mary’s Priory
• Impeccantia according to William of Saint-Thierry
  Aage Rydstrøm-Poulsen, Kalaallit Nunaata Univ.
• Aelred’s Biographer and His Sources
  Ryszard Groń, Archdiocese of Chicago

Cistercian Influences (154)

Presider: Cornelia Oefelein, St.-Jakobus Gesellschaft Berlin-Brandenburg

• Apocalyptic Prophecy and Cistercian Identity in the Thirteenth Century
  Magda Hayton, McGill Univ.
• How Far Did the Apple Fall from the Tree? Cistercian Elements in the Alphabet of Tales
  Marjory E. Lange, Western Oregon Univ.
• Gilbert of Hoyland’s Heaven, and Dante’s?
  Marsha L. Dutton, Ohio Univ.

Medingen Manuscripts in America (184)

Presider: Susan M. B. Steuer, Western Michigan Univ.

• The Medingen Prayer Book: Obrecht MS 23 at Western Michigan University
  Henrike Lähnemann
• The Interwoven Language of Houghton Library MS Lat 395, Harvard University
  Gennifer Dorgan, Univ. of Connecticut
• A Miniature of the Resurrection of Christ in Cambridge: Houghton MS Lat 440, Harvard University
  Laura Godfrey, Univ. of Connecticut

The Devotional Culture of Cistercian Nuns (238)

Presider: Henrike Lähnemann, Univ. of Oxford

• Devotional Print Culture in Northern Germany
  Elizabeth Andersen, Newcastle Univ.
• Letters from the Cloister: The Nuns’ Networks of Communication
  Anne Simon, Univ. of London
• Material Culture in the Digital Age: A Discussion
  Susan M. B. Steuer, Western Michigan Univ.

Cistercians in a Changing World (293)

Presider: Philip F. O’Mara, Bridgewater College

• Clairvaux, Its Abbots, and the Papal Curia in the Fourteenth Century
  Ralf Lützelschwab, Freie Univ. Berlin
• Katharina von Bora: A Cistercian Lutheran?
  Rose Marie Tillisch, Diocese of Elsinore
• Bernard and Augustine on Curiosity and Creation, and the Impetus for Science
  Cheryl Kayahara-Bass, Independent Scholar

Cistercian Exempla Tradition (348)

Presider: Brian Patrick McGuire, Roskilde Univ.

• You Must Remember This: The Recording and Preservation of Exempla in Britain and Ireland, ca. 1200
  Helen Birkett, Univ. of Exeter
• Rewriting Herbertus in Bavaria: The Changing Nature of Cistercian Exempla Collections
  Stefano Mula, Middlebury College
• The Miraculous and the Mundane
  Lawrence Morey, OCSO, Abbey of Gethsemani

Cistercians as Landowners (406)

Presider: Thomas X. Davis, Abbey of New Clairvaux

• This is Our Forest: Cistercian Expansion in Angoumois and the Conflict with Saint-Amant-de-Boixe
  Michael F. Webb, Univ. of Toronto
• Conflict Involving the Collection of Tithes at Cistercian Houses in Northeastern France
  Kathryn E. Salzer, Pennsylvania State Univ.
• Cistercians and Their Towns in Medieval England
  Anna Anisimova, Russian Academy of Sciences

Cistercian Property Management (465)

Presider: Kathryn E. Salzer, Pennsylvania State Univ.

• Building the Desert: Property Management according to the Early Cistercians
  Jean Truax, Independent Scholar
• The Founder of Henrykow in the Light of Medieval Monastic and Secular Founding Traditions
  Monica Michalska, Univ. Jagiellonski w Krakowie
• Does It Really Make Sense to Operate in All Countries?
  Klaus Wollenberg, Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften München

Cistercian Textual Studies I (520)

Presider: Charles Cummings, OCSO, Holy Trinity Monastery

• Secular Desire and Biblical Violence: Cistercian Interpretations of Dinah and Tamar
  Tristan Sharp, Newman Theological College
• “Are the eyes never to be raised at all?”: Curiosity and Sanctity among the Cistercian Fathers
  James DeFrancis, Christendom College
• New Writings by Roger of Ford
  Bryan VanGinhoven, Arizona State Univ.

Cistercian Textual Studies II (547)

Presider: John R. Sommerfeldt, Univ. of Dallas

• Miles Christi : The Image of the Soldier in Bernard’s Writings
  Stephen Russell, Hofstra Univ.
• Sponsus et Sponsa: Aelred of Rievaulx on Relationships
  Daniel Marcel La Corte, St. Ambrose Univ.
• Contemplation and Action in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Angelology
  Gilbert Stockson, Univ. of Notre Dame

More Cistercian Stuff

As if this is not enough, at least four other sessions include presentations of Cistercian matters:

The International Anchoritic Society (111)  includes a presentation on

• Robert of Knaresborough and the Problem of Eremitic Authority: Noble Patrons and Cistercian Neighbors
  Joshua Easterling, Murray State Univ.

The International Medieval Sermon Studies Society has organized a whole session on Cistercian Preaching (session 177) with the following presentations:

• How to Rejoice in the Physical Departure of Christ: The Six Ascension. Sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux
  By Philip F. O’Mara, Bridgewater College
• From Mud Bricks to Living Stones: Twelfth-Century Cistercian Exegeses of Ascension
  Timothy M. Baker, Harvard Divinity School
• Continuities in Cistercian Formation: Twenty-First-Century Interrogations of Aelred’s Sermons for All Saints
  Cassian Russell, OCSO, Monastery of the Holy Spirit

Post-Conquest Religiosity (258) includes a presentation on

• Conquering Cistercians: Savigny, Sempringham, and Obazine, ca. 1147
  Lochin Brouillard, Centre for Medieval Studies, Univ. of Toronto

Religious Persecution and Heretical Identities in Medieval Europe (425)

Violence and the Construction of the Heretical Identity in the Cistercian Anti-Heretical Discourse
Stamatia Noutsou, Masarykova Univ.

CENTER FOR CISTERCIAN AND MONASTIC STUDIES

The Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies encourages and facilitates research on all aspects of the Cistercian tradition and in the broader field of religious traditions. It was established in 2010 as a research center under the aegis of the Medieval Institute as the successor to the Institute of Cistercian Studies, which had been founded in 1973 as a cooperative venture between Western Michigan University and Cistercian Publications, Inc.

The Center offers a Graduate Certificate in the History of Monastic Movements, which is open to students enrolled in a graduate degree program at WMU.

FEATURED PHOTO:

St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church is a medieval Spanish monastery cloister which was built in the town of Sacramenia in Segovia, Spain, in the 12th century but dismantled in the 20th century and shipped to New York in the United States. It was eventually reassembled in North Miami Beach, Florida, where it is now an Episcopal church and tourist attraction. It is one of the oldest buildings in the Western Hemisphere. Source: Wikipedia. Rolf Müller (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Professor Brian patrick McGuires fond memories of the Cistercian Studies Conference and Kalamazoo