It became common for monastic writers to connect the worldly cloister in the convent to the celestial paradise from the twelfth century. Over the following centuries, authors from Hugh of Fouilloy to William Durand quoted and expanded on each other in both Latin and the vernacular as they explored the structure and meanings of conventual architecture and its links to the Heavenly Jerusalem. These connections have led art historians, scholars of literature and anthropologists to describe the medieval cloister as a place of transcendence, where the heavenly was made manifest in the everyday lives of monks, friars and nuns.
This talk returns to these descriptions to reexamine how they understood the material monastery to be a place of contact with a transcendent deity. Combining this reassessment with attention to other sources from within monastic environments, it will argue that the cloister was less a place of transcendence than a place to be transcended. It will then trace this interpretation across monastic regulations, exemplary literature and the planning and decoration of the cloister itself, with a focus on the architecture of the mendicants in Germany.
Gabriel Byng is the Principal Investigator of an FWF Stand Alone Project at the University of Vienna concerning the work of the mystic Henry Suso. Previously he held a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship and a Research Fellowship at Cambridge. His first book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017 and a collection he co-edited won ‘Best Multi-Author Book’ from the HBA in 2023. His research has won numerous awards, including a Dan David Prize scholarship from the University of Tel Aviv, a Faculty Grant at the University of Chicago and a fellowship at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.
The Paul Crossley Memorial Lecture is given annually in memory of the much-loved teacher and architectural historian at The Courtauld. Organised by Dr Tom Nickson (The Courtauld) as part of the Medieval Work-in-Progress Series, it is generously supported by Sam Fogg.
