Spiritual Morality. The Religious Orders and the Virtues, 1050-1300

Spiritual Morality aims to contribute to modern-day virtue ethics from a medieval perspective; to the reflection on method and form in the study of medieval theology; and to the history of the birth of the religious orders of the "long twelfth century." It discusses basic religious ideas that gave powerful impulses to incipient institutions. By analyzing a selection of foundational (Benedictine, Carthusian, Cistercian, Augustinian, Carmelite, Franciscan, and Dominican) sources, both "from within" and in relation to each other, it traces and unravels the key norms and moral structures that shaped the orders from their earliest beginnings (1050-1300). The first chapter describes the historical context and the religious traditions in which spiritual virtues and moral values were discussed and laid down in writing. The second chapter describes the historiographical context and the research traditions in the study of medieval religious spirituality. The third chapter describes the contents of religious rules as containers of spiritual morality. The fourth chapter describes the theological context in which the essential elements of Carthusian eremitical ethics were thought out and transmitted. The fifth chapter describes the self-definition of rising religious orders in terms of virtues and values. The final chapter describes Bonaventure of Bagnoregio's theory of virtue. Monks and mendicants developed models of life based on spiritual and ethical ideas. These models offered internal norms for the practices of the regulated life and external structures that were both patterned on these norms, and maintained to safeguard them. The religious orders, houses, and programs that were founded on spiritual virtues were also fundamental to the persistence of these virtues. The current study of religious rules, customaries, and constitutions focuses on the ethical dimensions of divinely inspired worldviews. In order to put normative and formative structures in a broader historical and ethical context, it analyzes the basic intuitions and dispositions captured in formae vitae; the spiritual principles and provisions transformed into detailed codes of observance; the customs and observances developed into broader programs for spiritual renewal; and the spiritual nourishment and moral formation offered by these documents. A systematic study of the primary sources as promoters of virtues thus reveals the dynamic between spiritual norms and historical forms. It also contributes to a phenomenology of medieval virtue; establishes deeper connections between historical and theological research traditions; and provides answers to the question how medieval religious morality can be made fruitful for a present-day virtue ethical practice.status: publishe