Monasteries and Patrons in the Gorze Reform : Lotharingia c.850-1000

Abstract

This book explores the prominent role of monasteries in the early medieval period and their relationship to the nobility in Lotharingia throughout the 9th and 10th centuries. It focuses on the evidence from three of the region's greatest abbeys — Gorze, Saint-Maximin, and Saint-Evre — which played a central role in the monastic reform movement. This swept through the region in the 930s and is commonly named after Gorze. Set within the context of the whole social structure and exercise of regional power in the early middle ages, this book demonstrates the vitality and importance of monasteries, focusing on their land transaction as well as their religious roles. Accepted notions of monastic lordship are challenged and the complexity of the two-way relationships between monasteries and their patrons, relationships which ensured the former a central place in the early medieval landscape, is discussed.