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The history of medieval learning has traditionally been studied as a vertical transmission of knowledge from a master to one or several disciples.
Horizontal Learning in the High Middle Ages: Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Transfer in Religious Communities centres on the ways in which cohabiting peers learned and taught one another in a dialectical process - how they acquired knowledge and skills, but also how they developed concepts, beliefs, and adapted their behaviour to suit the group: everything that could mold a person into an efficient member of the community. This process of 'horizontal learning' emerges as an important aspect of the medieval learning experience. Progressing beyond the view that high medieval religious communities were closed, homogeneous, and fairly stable social groups, the essays in this volume understand communities as the product of a continuous process of education and integration of new members. The authors explore how group members learned from one another, and what this teaches us about learning within the context of a high medieval community.
List of contents
Acknowledgements, 1. Steven Vanderputten, Micol Long, Introduction 2. Tjamke Snijders, Communal Learning and Communal Identities in Medieval Studies: Consensus, Conflict, and the Community of Practice 3. Micol Long, Condiscipuli Sumus: The Roots of Horizontal Learning in Monastic Culture 4. Cédric Giraud, Ut Fiat Aequalitas: Spiritual Training of the Inner Man in the Twelfth-Century Cloister 5. Jay Diehl, Truth as Teaching: Lies, Deceit and the Ethics of Learning in Twelfth-Century Monastic Culture 6. Marc Saurette, Making Space for Learning in the Miracle Stories of Peter the Venerable 7. Karl Patrick Kinsella, Teaching through Architecture: Honorius Augustodunensis and the Medieval Church 8. Stephen Jaeger, Men and Women in the Life of the Schools: In the Classroom of Herman of Reichenau 9. Babette Hellemans, Heloise's Echo. The Anthropology of a Twelfth-Century Horizontal Knowledge Landscape 10. Nicolangelo D'Acunto, Forms of Transmission of Knowledge at Saint Gall (Ninth to Eleventh Century) 11. Neslihan ?enocak, Horizontal Learning in Medieval Italian Canonries 12. Sita Steckel, Concluding Observations: Horizontal, Hierarchical, and Community-oriented Learning in a Wider Perspective, Bibliography, Index.
About the author
Micol Long is a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) based at Ghent University.
Tjamke Snijders is Collection Expert Book History at KU Leuven Libraries Special Collections.
Steven Vanderputten is Full Professor in Medieval History at Ghent University.
