The Intentionality of Silence

Communication in medieval monasteries was strictly regulated by norms that exerted their influence on everyday interactions between monks as well as their relations to the outside world. The first abbots of Cluny, the tenth-century settlement that would eventually head the so-called Benedictine order of monastic houses, imposed stricter policies of silence and thereby gradually reduced conversation to a supervised activity. This was in line with the far-reaching influence accorded to The Rule of Saint Benedict, which had been institutionalized under Carolingian rule to homogenize the religious landscape. Ideally, every monastery followed (or should follow) the same set of principles. Limits on talk and chatter, which were subsequently replaced with sign language, were intended to prevent sin and to promote humility. Tranquility was also sought by establishing monastic settlements on the fringes of the civilized world. Silence – as that which remains once the audibility of human action has been laid to rest – should thus not be seen as the baseline of monastic existence. Instead, it is the result of an active conditioning of absence and presence in geography and human behaviour.

Medieval letters can be associated with the same categories of absence and presence. In the so-called golden age of letter writing, the twelfth century, a torrent of letters drew laymen, monks, abbots, bishops, kings, and the papacy together in unprecedented networks of communication. Messengers voiced the letters’ authors in lieu of their physical presence by using the written testimony as part of an oral performance.