Bounded Wilderness

In Bounded Wilderness, Kathryn Jasper focuses on the innovations undertaken at the hermitage of Fonte Avellana in central Italy during the eleventh century by its prior, Peter Damian (d. 1072). The congregation of Fonte Avellana experimented with reforming practices that led to new ways of managing property and relations among clergy, nobles, and the laity.

Jasper charts how Damian's notion of monastic reform took advantage of the surrounding topography and geography to amplify the sensory aspects of ascetic experiences. By focusing on monastic landscapes and land ownership, Jasper demonstrates that reform extended beyond abstract ideas. Rather, reform circulated locally through monastic networks and addressed practical concerns such as property boundaries and rights over water, orchards, pastures, and mills. Putting new sources, both documentary and archaeological, into conversation with monastic charters and Damian's letters, Bounded Wilderness reveals the interrelationship of economic practices, religious traditions, and the natural environment in the idea and implementation of reform.

Kathryn Jasper is Associate Professor of History and Director of European Studies at Illinois State University.

An elegant examination of the changing relationships between religiosity and ideas of land ownership and landscape in medieval Italy. Jasper innovatively approaches the vast topic of Church reform through the lenses of practice and experience. She provides rich insights into the lives and minds of people, whether laity or dedicated religious, of the eleventh century.

John Ott, coauthor of The Medieval Clergy, 800-1250: A Sourcebook:

Bounded Wilderness makes a valuable contribution to the scholarship of medieval Church and monastic reform. At its heart stands the influential figure of Peter Damian (d. 1072) and his community of Fonte Avellana, whose approach to property management and its relationship to the environment Jasper smartly centers, thereby drawing our focus to the natural and material forces that shaped religious change in the eleventh century.

Steven Vanderputten, author of Monastic Reform as Process:

Bounded Wilderness is an important and valuable study of the uses and perception of land in the context of eleventh-century ecclesiastical reform in central Italy. Kathryn Jasper shows how new notions about the status of Church property arose in different local contexts, explaining why reform was never formulated or implemented uniformly.