War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture, by Katherine Allen Smith

Monastic communities were not isolated from the world around them. It is not surprising that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, an age of war, imagery drawn from siege, campaign and battle was used to describe the inner conflicts of spiritual life. The way in which military metaphors and comparisons were drawn from biblical and patristic texts provides Katherine Allen Smith with one of her themes. Another illustrates the development of concepts of spiritual warfare and of the miles Christi, and a third is provided by the way in which warriors might be viewed as spiritual exemplars for the monastic life. There was much in the Bible to be interpreted in terms of contemporary warfare. Old Testament figures such as David and Job became milites spirituales. St Paul was a ‘spiritual drillmaster’, a quartermaster supplying weapons from a celestial armoury. Religious ceremonies were compared to military practices. A liturgical procession was, according to the twelfth-century theologian Honorius Augustudunensis, like an army going to war. Priests with their copes and albs were like knights in hauberks, the cross and banner they carried like an imperial battle standard. The precentors and priors were like the commanders and captains of an army. Peter Damian compared a monastic procession at night to an army, woken by trumpets, advancing with a youthful vanguard, and with veterans guarding the rear.

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