*Study Abroad embedded trip May 20-June 1
Why spend a semester exploring the rise and fall, religious and social achievements, artistic and architectural legacies, and contemporary mystique of the Monastery of Cluny, located in Burgundy, in the heart of France? For those impressed by massive buildings, Cluny is fascinating first and foremost for its magnificent abbey church, which in its time was the largest Romanesque church in all of Christendom, and was decorated in magnificent style. But beyond this, there are five other credible reasons for embarking on this adventure.
First, Cluny was not simply the custodian of a huge and beautiful church, but the headquarters of what became, at its height in the twelfth century, a monastic empire, with some 1400 dependencies scattered throughout Europe. How it evolved from rather humble beginnings to an incredibly successful “religious business enterprise” is a fascinating puzzle worth exploring.
Second, as Cluny steadily achieved this organizational success it evolved as a “church within the church,” with its own distinctive life style and view of the world, the key features of which are quite surprising and often deeply foreign to the modern mind. Thus, for those interested in exploring medieval “mentalité and spirituality,” Cluny is a very special gold mine, a particularly crucial theme of which is its encounter with Islam. It was at Cluny, in the times of its eighth abbot Peter the Venerable, that the first Latin translation of the Qur’an was achieved. Why, you may ask, and whatever for? We’ll explore this in depth!
Third, as intimated above, the architecture and art associated with the Cluniac order, particularly at its center, were among the best and most influential of the medieval period, surviving reflections of which are of stunning beauty.
Fourth, since so much of Cluny was destroyed in the decade after 1789, recovering a secure knowledge and understanding of its “headquarters site” is a remarkable chapter of modern archaeology, a project in which Americans played a key role from 1928 through the 1950s.
Finally, students will have the opportunity to follow up their semester’s classroom study with a twelve day field trip to France (May 15-26), encountering the ruins and remains first hand in Burgundy, and topping it all off with a few days in Paris contemplating the reflections of Cluny which still are to be found in “the city of light.”
Students enrolled in this course will also enroll in the study abroad experience. A study abroad application is required for entry into this course.
About Professor Reinert
My research focus is comparative Byzantine, Balkan, and Turkic history and culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I am particularly interested in the figures Manuel II Palaiologos and Yildirim I Bayezid, and Christian perceptions of Islam and Muslims.