To receive ‘the best form and example of living’: ascetic instruction in the Life of John of Gorze

Abstract

ABSTRACT While studies of knowledge transmission in the central Middle Ages are abundant, much remains to be discovered about learning practices in an extra-institutional context. An exceptionally detailed example comes from the first portion of the Life of John of Gorze. It recounts John’s earliest encounters with asceticism, as he endeavoured to carve out a life pleasing to God. John learned to live ascetically through one-to-one interactions with a range of experienced individuals, many of them hermits, who comprised a ‘community of practice’. One community member observed the ascetic example of another and imitated it in their presence, through the process of active participation. This method of learning, which fostered experimentation and the exercise of reflection, belongs to a broader cultural preference within tenth-century Lotharingia for presence-based forms of knowledge transmission.