The Regularis Concordia was probably written by Æthelwold of Winchester as part of the reform of Benedictine monasteries in England in the late tenth century. It is based on the Rule of St. Benedict and gives guidelines for the monastic lives of monks and nuns. It contains an early example of theatre ritual or drama. An eleventh-century manuscript of the work Cotton Tiberius A. iii contains interlinear glosses in Old English. Here the official preface tells of king Edgar’s role in the Benedictine reform.

Women as well as men from western Europe were drawn to the religious life in the Holy Land, and convents for women were an important feature of the Latin monastic landscape. The largest, St Anne’s and St Mary the Great in Jerusalem and Bethany, near Jerusalem, owned substantial landed property throughout the Christendom, and their abbesses could wield important political influence. St Anne’s and Bethany in particular had close associations with the Latin ruling dynasty of Jerusalem. This chapter examines the history of the women’s convents in the Crusader States and their fate after the loss of territory in the thirteenth century.

Some Latin monasteries were not founded in the wake of the First Crusade but had already existed before 1095. Two in particular, St Mary Latin and Notre-Dame de Josapahat, both of which are examples of growing western interest in the Holy Land in the eleventh century, reflect the dominance of the Benedictine form of monasticism in that period. Other Benedictine monasteries were founded in the Holy Land in the twelfth century, mostly in locations associated with biblical events. This chapter considers Benedictine monastic foundations in the Holy Land from before and after the First Crusade, and examines their role in land-holding and political society and how they coped with loss of income and vocations in the thirteenth century after the conquests by Saladin in 1187.