The needs of provisioning of the monastic communities and the management of their estates, that often were very extensive, and not homogeneous, implied the moving of the monks from the main monastery. The essay focuses on some aspects of monastic mobility for economic-administrative reasons in the 12th-13th centuries’ Southern Italy, in the area between southern Campania, Basilicata and Calabria, through examples related to Latin monasticism and in particular to "new monasticism". We illustrate the different kind of travels, either locally, or within the same region, or on a long distance-scale; we would also describe the different economic motivation of these travels. I.e. monks traveling from the monastery to the dependencies (or grange), to look after the goods; or traveling within their patrimony from the mountains to the sea and back, for the needs of the sheep-rearing; or traveling across lands or waterways for the transport and the trade, also the wide-ranging one, to sell in the town markets the surplus production, or to buy the goods necessary to the monastery. The territory, its orographic characteristics, its vocation and resources are related to the ability of adaptation and use it by the monks, continually put to the test and reached mainly through their mobility.
Spostamenti di monaci per motivi economici nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia (secc. XII-XIII)
Salerno Mariarosaria
2019-01-01
Abstract
The needs of provisioning of the monastic communities and the management of their estates, that often were very extensive, and not homogeneous, implied the moving of the monks from the main monastery. The essay focuses on some aspects of monastic mobility for economic-administrative reasons in the 12th-13th centuries’ Southern Italy, in the area between southern Campania, Basilicata and Calabria, through examples related to Latin monasticism and in particular to "new monasticism". We illustrate the different kind of travels, either locally, or within the same region, or on a long distance-scale; we would also describe the different economic motivation of these travels. I.e. monks traveling from the monastery to the dependencies (or grange), to look after the goods; or traveling within their patrimony from the mountains to the sea and back, for the needs of the sheep-rearing; or traveling across lands or waterways for the transport and the trade, also the wide-ranging one, to sell in the town markets the surplus production, or to buy the goods necessary to the monastery. The territory, its orographic characteristics, its vocation and resources are related to the ability of adaptation and use it by the monks, continually put to the test and reached mainly through their mobility.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.