Cistercians, Stories, and Networks in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus Miraculorum

This paper explores the social networks embedded in Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogus miraculorum. Caesarius of Heisterbach (c.1180-c.1240) was a monk at the Cistercian house of Heisterbach in Germany. His best-known work is the Dialogus miraculorum, a collection of over 700 miracles stories. These stories tell us a lot about life and thought in early thirteenth-century Germany, but, since Caesarius recorded the sources of many of his stories, they also provide insights into his network of friends and contacts. Network analysis allows us to visualise these networks and to explore Caesarius’ social relationships both inside and outside the Cistercian order. It also allows us to examine how information flowed through the order’s internal network of mother- and daughter-houses. However, the networks drawn from Caesarius’ social contacts are limited by the literary nature of his source material. This data produces simplistic, artificial networks. In contrast, more complex, realistic networks can be produced by visualising the interactions within the stories themselves – even though this part of the Dialogusis more likely to contain fictive elements. The paper concludes by evaluating what network analysis allows us to do with this material, as well as questioning the extent to which Caesarius’ social network can be considered beyond the world of the text.