ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the links between teaching and discourses surrounding deceit and truth-telling in eleventh- and twelfth-century monastic culture. It focuses on two manuscripts produced in the twelfth century: Brussels, KBR MS 10807-11 from the abbey of Saint Laurent in Liège and Douai BMDV 267 from Saint Rictrude at Marchiennes in Arras. Taking these manuscripts as a point of departure, this chapter suggests that they situated the act of truth-telling not only as the result of good pedagogy, but as itself a form of pedagogy. I will analyze what was at stake in both deceitful and honest speech in monastic culture and investigate how and why such behaviour could operate as a form of pedagogy in religious communities.
