Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Monasteries are closed spaces where monks committed to chastity, poverty, and obedience coexist. These self-sufficient institutions were not only places of worship, but also the intellectual heart of Christian society. The scriptorium within the monastic complex ensured the continuity of knowledge through processes such as copying, writing, and archiving manuscripts. The focus of this study is on the Western monastic scriptorium and how knowledge is processed in the historical process. Likewise, it is supported by the scriptorium examples of religious communities such as Cluny and Cistercians, which spread rapidly in Western geography in the 10th to 13th centuries. In the study, the decisions of religious communities shaped according to Catholic doctrine regarding cultural studies were utilized. In addition, issues such as the provision of writing tools, the copying process, the role of qualified monks in copying as a form of worship, the preservation of knowledge, and the archiving and processing of information in monastic libraries are discussed in a multidimensional manner. In this context, monastic knowledge memory is analyzed in its historical, social, ideological, and cultural aspects. The article aims to reveal the effective role of medieval monastic scriptoria in the production and continuity of knowledge, as well as their contribution to the present day.
Author: Havva Turan
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4412390516