Abstract
Children donated to monasteries by their parents in tenth- and eleventh-century England required not just education, but socialization from boyhood into their monastic identities. Colloquies, or conversational dialogues, taught the boys Latin, but also helped them to understand how to speak and act like monks. In order to illuminate a young child’s transition from home to monastery, Rebecca King Cerling examines two colloquies used in Benedictine monasteries to teach young oblates who they were as monks. The chapter follows the structure of the colloquies, which opened with quotidian concerns and then moved the students toward the practice of monastic patterns of speech including restraint and blessing.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
ROB (4–7 and passim).
- 3.
Regularis Concordia (23). Hereafter Regularis.
- 4.
Porter (15–23, 34–43), O’Brien O’Keeffe (111), Barrau.
- 5.
Porter (33), O’Brien O’Keeffe (107), Hurt.
- 6.
Porter (3–4, 29, 43–51).
- 7.
Hart, Tinti, Barlow, Hurt.
- 8.
Aelfric (18), Regularis (8).
- 9.
ROB (19, 45), Regularis (7–8), O’Brien O’Keeffe (121–3).
- 10.
O’Brien O’Keeffe (104–9), Anderson (158–9).
- 11.
Aelfric (43). Garmonsway identified Aelfric’s reference to Matthew 23:27 in which Jesus excoriates leaders for being like “whitewashed tombs” which are beautiful on the outside, but unclean on the inside (Ibid., 43, n. 257–8). O’Brien O’Keeffe (134–6).
- 12.
Aelfric/Garmonsway (5), Aelfric Bata/Porter (1–3), James (xxvii), Hill (7–29).
- 13.
Porter (3, 36–7), Brooks (266).
- 14.
Jones (242–3, 248–51).
- 15.
Osbern (135–6), Eadmer (169).
- 16.
O’Brien O’Keeffe, Porter, Jones.
- 17.
Cicero (221). Caplan translation.
- 18.
Carruthers (171), O’Brien O’Keeffe (116–17).
- 19.
Karras (200), Woods (66).
- 20.
Woods (65), Hexter (413–42), Porter (41).
- 21.
Woods (60–1, 65, 69), Karras (44–50).
- 22.
- 23.
Bata (196–7). Translation modified.
- 24.
Bata. Colloquies (3, 4, 14, 24, 25).
- 25.
Bata (138). Literally “foolish.” Given the context of the string of synonyms for “foolish”, Porter appropriately translates “blabbermouth.”
- 26.
Bata (170–1). Porter’s translation.
- 27.
Bata (82–5). Translation modified. The dialogues dealing with the boys’ schooling include numbers 3–6, 14–17, 24–25, 29.
- 28.
ROB (30), Bata (83).
- 29.
Regularis (11, cf. Psalm 51:15).
- 30.
Bata (94–5). The other blessing colloquies are 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, 24, 25.
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Cerling, R.K. (2019). Learning to Talk: Colloquies and the Formation of Childhood Monastic Identity in Late Anglo-Saxon England. In: Miller, N.J., Purkiss, D. (eds) Literary Cultures and Medieval and Early Modern Childhoods. Literary Cultures and Childhoods. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14211-7_2
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