PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

How did monks in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries work together across the boundaries of institutions and orders to create and distribute literary texts? This paper presents a typology of the different roles that collaborated across time and space to create manuscripts as they have come down to us, and considers the specific case of literary material passing between the abbeys of Malmesbury and Cirencester over the course of a hundred years. It also offers a proposal for a step towards integrating literary and archival documents with a digital version of G.R.C. Davis’s Catalogue of Cartularies. This project aims to shed new light on an era that is thought to mark the end of traditional monastic book production.