Faire communauté, bâtir la société idéale. Aspects du silence dans la tradition monastique médiévale

Abstract

Alongside purely mystical silence, there is

another silence in Christian tradition, not unrelated to it.

This silence, which can be described as "disciplinary”,

was particularly important in the monastic communities

and was more or less precisely codified in many rules. In

contrary to what people generally think, it was for centuries

an instrument of communication which aimed at

building a collective identity directly prefiguring the heavenly

Jerusalem. All the texts used in this article show

that silence was not conceived as an absence of sound but

as an inversion of the profane speech. To silence did not

mean to be silent in solitude but rather to cultivate harmony

in a community that allowed the holy colloquium.

By reversing the values of the world and replacing the

word with silence, the monks claimed to build the heavenly

City together on earth.