The discipline of silence was a core element of monastic life, at least in Cluniac tradition, for much of the Middle Ages and beyond. Scott Bruce is to be congratulated for tackling a subject that has for too long been simply taken for granted. In the process of exploring the codes of communication that were devised to maintain this discipline, he has helped illuminate significant aspects of monastic culture. Bruce's central argument is that the monks of Cluny played a key role in developing the ethos that monastic life ought to anticipate that of the angels, and that through the cultivation of reverential silence they could create liturgical worship that anticipated the angelic worship of heaven.

The injunction to keep silence, particularly at night, had always been a core precept of Benedictine tradition. Bruce's focus is not so much on the ethos of reverential silence within monasticism as a whole as it is on the development of codes of sign language to help facilitate communication while preserving silence. The only way to circumvent chatter was thought to be through the creation of sign systems. Bruce observes that there was a late antique system of signs to denote numbers that Bede discusses as a mode of communication, and was likely in use in monasteries in the early medieval period. John of Salerno, biographer of Odo (925–942), Cluny's second abbot, indicates that it had already become more detailed in the early tenth century. Our major witnesses to the system, however, are the customaries of Bernard and of Ulrich, from the late eleventh century. The expansion in size of the monastery in the eleventh century, from 100 to 300, demanded that such measures be taken. Bruce supplies in a table the 118 words for which signs are given, the great majority specific names for daily objects in monastic life, with only a minimal number of verbs.

There is inevitably a descriptive quality to much of this monograph, in keeping with the character of the customaries Bruce analyzes. We learn a lot from the customaries about the elaborate diet of fish that monks could consume, and which would be satirized by Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century. Effectively, the sign system created a speech community that was at odds with the discipline of interior silence that the Rule of Benedict sought to instill. Perhaps of particular interest are the conclusions Bruce draws about the ethnic and linguistic diversity of large monastic communities such as Cluny. Combing through monastic literature for any references to spoken language shows that, despite the universality of Latin within liturgy and intellectual life, various vernaculars were in use. Because many German monks came to Burgundy in the late eleventh century, it was necessary to devise a communication system that transcended local interest groups.

A helpful aspect of Bruce's study is that his focus on sign language helps confirm our understanding of Cluny's influence outside Burgundy between the tenth and twelfth centuries. He looks in detail at the customaries of Fleury in the Loire valley, and at Christ Church in Canterbury, which itself came under the influence of Fleury in the tenth century. Sign systems that were preserved here show how a system Cluniac in inspiration could be adapted in different contexts. Our richest example of such influence is that of Hirsau, established in the late eleventh century in order to introduce its discipline into Germany. Its customary rivals that of Cluny in its detail and provides vivid insight into the detail of the monastic diet (and thus the aquatic system) within the region.

Because the focus is so resolutely on the inspiration of Cluny, the reader gets only limited discussion of perhaps the most intriguing question raised in this study, namely, the place of silence outside the monastic cloister. Bruce comments more briefly on the way the discipline of silence was preserved in a Cistercian milieu, although the assumption is that it was just as important. Only in writers like Hildegard do we get a sense that strict imposition of silence was cruel, and contrary to the spirit that guided Benedictine precepts. His comments, too brief, on how Augustinian canons sought a more balanced attitude toward silence provide a way of understanding the attractiveness of a movement that has still not been as well analyzed as monasticism. Because their way of life was pastoral in emphasis, silence was simply impractical. One would have liked to learn more about how the monastic rule was interpreted at St. Victor, where much of the discipline was Cluniac in inspiration, but canons were required to discern the most appropriate time to speak. Because the book defines itself as narrowly concerned with monasticism before 1200, the reader misses out on a larger reflection about the place of silence within religious life as a whole in the medieval period. In particular, one would like to know about how communities reconciled the code of silence with the demands of education. The major pedagogical development in the twelfth century was in the realm of disputation. How did communities reconcile the ideals of contemplative silence with those of education through argument?

Bruce is to be commended for closely scrutinizing an aspect of monastic life that has for too long been simply taken for granted. Sign language has a history that (as he observes) can be traced into the modern period to education for the deaf. He has analyzed Cluniac documentation with admirable thoroughness. Yet there are larger answers that one would still like to know, not just about sign language, but about the nature of silence. Monasticism did not stop after the twelfth century. The longer history of silence still has to be told.