Walter Map’s De nugis curialium is a strange work, comprising a series of humorous anecdotes, with some serious satire, particularly of the monastic orders. Despite the attention it has drawn in modern times, it seems not to have been widely known and is preserved only in Bodleian MS Bodl. 851.

This chapter focuses on the period between roughly 1050 and 1150, when calls to reform the Church and religious life swept across Europe. The new religious orders that emerged in this period, including the Cistercians, Premonstratensians and Augustinian canons, all sought to limit the influence of secular authorities over their communities. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that – especially in the German-speaking lands – church advocacy was already too entrenched a feature of society for these new orders to ignore it or effectively control it. Someone needed to provide protection and exercise justice over the numerous estates these new foundations were receiving, and nobles had already come to rely on the position of advocate as an effective means of asserting their influence over monasteries and churches. As a result, while Church reformers increasingly sought in this period to regulate and place limits on advocates’ responsibilities, they were unable to prevent high-ranking nobles from accumulating large numbers of church advocacies in their own hands.

This chapter comprises a historical survey of the main religious and societal changes that occurred in the 11th and 12th centuries, including the founding of new religious orders (Cistercians, Augustinian canons).

Chapter 5 considers the relationships between Cistercian communities and lay society in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Upper Normandy. Episcopal visitation records and other sources reveal that there was considerable contact and interdependence between Cistercian religious and the laity in this period, and that the boundary between the monastic precinct and the world outside was permeable. As well as accommodating lay brethren and servants, Cistercian monks and nuns offered charity and hospitality. While female communities such as Bondeville took in children and vulnerable adults, the monks of Beaubec built housing for the poor inRouen. In turn, the benefaction that these communities received from patrons created lasting links with lay society. The burial and commemoration facilities that Cistercian monasteries offered to burgess families demonstrate how the they became nodes in mutually beneficial social networks of religious and laity. Other links were more pragmatic, especially financial interactions with the Jews of Rouen. The chapter also sheds light on the lives and identities of lay women and men from arange of backgrounds, from royal patrons to disabled lay sisters.

This chapter focuses on narrative texts from Wales largely comprising annals, chronicles and histories composed from the twelfth to the fifteenth century and situates these in their cultural, political and social contexts. After identifying key themes of the historical culture evidenced, for example, by poetry, prose tales and genealogy, the discussion highlights the significance of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the development of medieval Welsh historical writing and compares his work with other Latin histories from twelfth-century Wales. It then considers the vernacular chronicles known as Brut y Tywysogion (The History of the Princes) whose coverage extends from the late seventh century to the eve of the Edwardian conquest of 1282. While based on Welsh-Latin chronicles, these were intended as a continuation of Geoffrey, and from the fourteenth century are associated in some manuscripts with Welsh translations both of his History and of Dares Phrygius’ account of the Trojan War.