Dr. Martha Newman’s article, “Reformed Monasticism and the Narrative of Cistercian Beginnings,” appeared in the recent volume of Cambridge University Press’s Church History. In it, she argues that reform is less a specific set of changes than a rhetorical use of the past that authenticates current practices and affirms that these interpretations of the past must be right and true.
Another article from Dr. Newman, “The Necromancer and the Abbot: Summoning the Dead in Cistercian Exempla,” is forthcoming later this spring in a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on the Medieval Undead. It explores the ambiguous boundaries between magic and religion in medieval Europe and the importance of emotions in creating distinctions between licit and illicit religious practices.
