QUAINT AND CURIOUS VOLUMES OF FORGOTTEN LORE
A scholar of the history of Christianity in the Middle Ages, Scott G. Bruce has written widely on the frontiers of the monastic imagination in premodern Europe. His books treat a diverse range of topics in medieval religious and cultural history, from monastic sign language to European perceptions of Islam to the meaning of the restless dead in medieval culture.
SGB's most recent book is Monasticism and Manuscript Culture in Medieval Europe: Studies in Cluniac History, c. 900-1200 (Cornell University Press, 2026). The book offers a new perspective on the abbey at Cluny, one of the medieval Christianity's most influential institutions. Most historical approaches to Cluny have embraced a predictable "rise and fall" narrative, determined largely by the extent of the abbey's legislative reach. In this volume, Scott G. Bruce instead focuses on Cluny's cultural history through close attention to manuscript evidence. Rather than emphasizing the great Burgundian abbey's exceptionalism, the essays in this book underscore the interconnectedness of Cluniac devotional practices and written culture with contemporary Benedictine houses, even those, like the Cistercians, commonly seen as being at odds with the brethren of Cluny. As the essays in Monasticism and Manuscript Culture in Medieval Europe make clear, Cluny was a center of cultural production at once receptive and influential, embedded in a dynamic field of monastic institutions, some friendly, some competitive, but all participating in a vibrant cross-pollination of written texts studied by monks in the safety of their cloisters and carried by them throughout Europe, to the Mediterranean, and to the Holy Land.
SGB's most recent book is Monasticism and Manuscript Culture in Medieval Europe: Studies in Cluniac History, c. 900-1200 (Cornell University Press, 2026). The book offers a new perspective on the abbey at Cluny, one of the medieval Christianity's most influential institutions. Most historical approaches to Cluny have embraced a predictable "rise and fall" narrative, determined largely by the extent of the abbey's legislative reach. In this volume, Scott G. Bruce instead focuses on Cluny's cultural history through close attention to manuscript evidence. Rather than emphasizing the great Burgundian abbey's exceptionalism, the essays in this book underscore the interconnectedness of Cluniac devotional practices and written culture with contemporary Benedictine houses, even those, like the Cistercians, commonly seen as being at odds with the brethren of Cluny. As the essays in Monasticism and Manuscript Culture in Medieval Europe make clear, Cluny was a center of cultural production at once receptive and influential, embedded in a dynamic field of monastic institutions, some friendly, some competitive, but all participating in a vibrant cross-pollination of written texts studied by monks in the safety of their cloisters and carried by them throughout Europe, to the Mediterranean, and to the Holy Land.
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