Date of Graduation
5-2012
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Degree Level
Undergraduate
Department
History
Advisor/Mentor
Coon, Lynda L
Committee Member/Reader
Pierce, Michael S.
Committee Member/Second Reader
Lee, Richard
Committee Member/Third Reader
Sexton, Kim
Abstract
In this honors thesis, I examine the development of the Cistercian monastic order, founded around 1098 CE, within the contexts of the burgeoning of a new kind of monastic business, moneylending, usury, and mercantilism of the high Middle Ages. I argue that the immense anxieties of the Cistercian Order concerning the practices of moneylending and participation in the larger economic system, particularly regarding grants of land, arose primarily from the order’s preoccupation with ritual purity, both of the individual monk and of the monastery as a physical space.
Citation
Smith, L. (2012). The lure of lucre and the hurdle of poverty: the Cistercian fusion of spirituality and monastic business. History Undergraduate Honors Theses Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/histuht/2