Sunday, 14 June 2009

Balmerino Abbey

Welcome Publication
CITEAUX Commentarii cistercienses
2008, t. 59
Life on the Edge
The Cistercian Abbey of
Balmerino, Fife (Scotland)


A monastery is not just the cluster of buildings enclosed within the monastic precinct. It is also the community - religious and lay - who inhabited it, the complex of lands, rights and privileges assembled to sustain that community, and the interaction with notables and neighbours whose influence helped shape its history.

The small Cistercian abbey of Balmerino, on the southern shore of the Firth of Tay in north Fife, has long languished in relative obscurity, consigned to a supporting role in Scottish monastic studies with dismissive comments based on the fragmentary nature of its physical and documentary history. Current research is demonstrating how wrong that interpretation is. These chapters will present a diametrically opposed view of the significance of the surviving record and its value as a source of evidence for the social, economic and environmental history of Balmerino Abbey specifically and the wider region more generally.









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See also
Posted: Tuesday, 9 June 2009
At Balmerino Abbey, Fife. 9th. June 1997.
Recalling - THE FOURTEENTH CENTENARY of St Columba

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