Medieval Monks, Nuns and Monastic Life, 21st Biennial Symposium of the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society (IMSSS), University of Bristol, July 15–20, 2018

The 2018 International Medieval Sermon Studies Society symposium will explore the breadth and depth of sermon literature and preaching activity relating to monks, nuns, and monastic life, and serve as a microcosm of the religious and cultural landscape of the Middle Ages.

Keynote speakers include Claudia Rapp and Brian Patrick McGuire.

The symposium will be based in the beautiful grounds of the University of Bristol’s Wills Hall, and will include a workshop at historic Downside Abbey, with its medieval manuscripts, incunables, and Centre for Monastic Heritage. We will also visit Wells Cathedral, as well as the medieval sites of Bristol.

Celebrate 2018—the first-ever European Year of Cultural Heritage—by delivering a paper or presenting a poster dealing with an aspect of one of the bedrocks of European culture: monasticism. Topics for posters and papers may include:

• the form or content that could distinguish a monastic sermon from others
• monks, nuns, and monasticism in Byzantine or other forms of medieval Eastern and African Christianity
• the Rule of Benedict and preaching
• preaching in monastic churches and chapter houses
• monastic figures preaching in public forums (churches, crusades)
• monastic preaching in or regarding schools and universities
• preaching by and about nuns
• de sanctis sermons on holy monks and nuns
• monasticism as treated in sermons
• sermons and the reformed monastic life (e.g., Camaldolese, Carthusian, Celestinian, Cistercian, Cluniac,et alii)
• preaching by and about hermits
• monastic rules in and about preaching
• monastic communities in conflict or in harmony
• monastic rejection/appropriation of mendicant sermons/preaching/identity
• -monks as characters in sermons, exempla and religious literature
• gender in monastic preaching
• monks/nuns in ad status sermon literature
• monastic preaching in art
• monks, nuns, and monasticism in pre-modern sermons of religious traditions other than Christianity (e.g., Islam, Buddhism, Taoism)
• the influence of Christian monks, nuns, & monastic sermons on preaching in other religions
• and more!