The Monastic Lifeworld: Memories and Narratives of Landscapes of Early Medieval Monasticism in Argyll, Scotland

ABSTRACT

Despite being heavily criticised by archaeologists, phenomenology and Husserl’s concept of lifeworld to denote the collective sensory world of a group of humans arguably have the potential to uncover valuable information on past experiential landscapes. Drawing on a variety of sources, this paper explores the extent to which phenomenology can be used in early medieval monastic archaeological research. It focuses on the lifeworld of Irish monks that is expressed in the hagiography Vita Columbae, by Adomnán (d.704), which depicts orally transmitted landscape experiences and memories. These literary traces of a lifeworld are conflated with the physical landscape and archaeological evidence in a case study set in Argyll in western Scotland. It is argued that the location of monasteries was partly determined by the spiritual memories and religious experiences of the landscape, and that the spiritually memorised topographies were connected to certain emotions that the monks experienced daily and which they used to shape their mental landscapes of. By addressing the lifeworld in hagiographies, we may gain further insight into the mental maps of monks, and into their religious lives and movements in the landscape, which provides an alternative and fruitful approach towards medieval monastic landscapes.

KEYWORDS:

• Hagiography
• phenomenology
• monasteries
• landscapes
• spirituality
• Argyll

Acknowledgements

This article is rooted in my Master’s Thesis that I completed at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University in 2016. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Neil Price and Dr Karl-Johan Lindholm for helping me with this research. I would also like to thank the reviewers for giving me very valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Beatrice Widell completed her MA in Archaeology at Uppsala University in 2016, with a thesis entitled ‘Hinba in Ultimum Terrae: A Landscape Analysis of the Lost Monastery of St Columba’. She is planning to begin doctoral research at Reading University (UK) on the medieval landscape.