A Bishop and His World Before the Gregorian Reform

A Bishop and His World Before the Gregorian Reform
Author: Steven Fanning
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1988
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780871697813

Contents: Part One: (I) The Background; (II) The World of the Family: Genealogical Chart A: The Family of Bishop Hubert of Angers: Genealogical Chart B: The Family of Fulcherius the Rich of Vendome; Genealogical Chart C: The Family of Viscount Fulcradus of Vendome; Genealogical Chart D: The Family of the Viscounts of Le Mans Genealogical Chart E: The Houses of Belleme and Chateau-du-Loir; (III) The Political World; (IV) The Ecclesiastical World; (V) Conclusion. Part Two: Catalogue of Acts of Bishop Hubert of Angers; Introduction; Summary of the Contents of the Catalogue; Abbreviatons Used in Part II; The Catalogue; Index of Customs in Documents in Part II; Index of Ecclesiastical Rights; Index of Ecclesiastical Establishments in Documents in Part II; Index of Pesonal Names in Documents in Part II; Index of Place Names in Part II Documents; Correspondence to Other Catalogues. Bibliography.

The World of Gregory of Tours

The World of Gregory of Tours
Author: Mitchell
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2021-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004473815

In a fascinating series of essays, the life, works and world of Gregory of Tours are evaluated. This sixth-century bishop is probably best known as writer of the History of the Franks. The collection of essays makes a valuable contribution to the flourishing field of Gregory of Tours studies. Though the contributors take full account of his political dimension, they also see Gregory in his cultural context. In addition to being representative of the age in which he lived, Gregory is presented here as an exceptional man. Furthermore, the contributors offer an up-to-date assessment of Merovingian culture, history and religion. Themes include: the urban history of Tours and the Merovingian world; ideas, politics and international contacts in the Merovingian world; the Merovingian church; Gregory's hagiographic writings; the Histories; and the manuscript tradition. Contributors include: Bernard S. Bachrach, Peter Brown, John J. Contreni, S. Fanning, Nancy Gauthier, Walter Goffart, Guy Halsall, Yitzak Hen, Conrad Leyser, Felice Lifshitz, Jo Ann McNamara, Kathleen Mitchell, William Monroe, Janet L. Nelson, Giselle de Nie, Thomas F.X. Noble, Patrick Périn, Walther Pohl, E.M. Rose, B.H. Rosenwein, Danuta Shanzer, Julia M.H. Smith, Ian Wood, andBarbara Yorke.

Out of Love for My Kin

Out of Love for My Kin
Author: Amy Livingstone
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2011-02-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801457726

In Out of Love for My Kin, Amy Livingstone examines the personal dimensions of the lives of aristocrats in the Loire region of France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She argues for a new conceptualization of aristocratic family life based on an ethos of inclusion. Inclusivity is evident in the care that medieval aristocrats showed toward their families by putting in place strategies, practices, and behaviors aimed at providing for a wide range of relatives. Indeed, this care—and in some cases outright affection—for family members is recorded in the documents themselves, as many a nobleman and woman made pious benefactions "out of love for my kin." In a book made rich by evidence from charters—which provide details about life events including birth, death, marriage, and legal disputes over property—Livingstone reveals an aristocratic family dynamic that is quite different from the fictional or prescriptive views offered by literary depictions or ecclesiastical sources, or from later historiography. For example, she finds that there was no single monolithic mode of inheritance that privileged the few and that these families employed a variety of inheritance practices. Similarly, aristocratic women, long imagined to have been excluded from power, exerted a strong influence on family life, as Livingstone makes clear in her gender-conscious analysis of dowries, the age of men and women at marriage, lordship responsibilities of women, and contestations over property.The web of relations that bound aristocratic families in this period of French history, she finds, was a model of family based on affection, inclusion, and support, not domination and exclusion.

The Bishop Reformed

The Bishop Reformed
Author: Anna Trumbore Jones
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351893920

In the period following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire up to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the episcopate everywhere in Europe experienced substantial and important change, brought about by a variety of factors: the pressures of ecclesiastical reform; the devolution and recovery of royal authority; the growth of papal involvement in regional matters and in diocesan administration; the emergence of the "crowd" onto the European stage around 1000 and the proliferation of autonomous municipal governments; the explosion of new devotional and religious energies; the expansion of Christendom's borders; and the proliferation of new monastic orders and new forms of religious life, among other changes. This socio-political, religious, economic, and cultural ferment challenged bishops, often in unaccustomed ways. How did the medieval bishop, unquestionably one of the most powerful figures of the Middle Ages, respond to these and other historical changes? Somewhat surprisingly, this question has seldom been answered from the bishop's perspective. This volume of interdisciplinary studies, drawn from literary scholarship, art history, canon law, and history, seeks to break scholarship of the medieval episcopacy free from the ideological stasis imposed by the study of church reform and episcopal lordship. The editors and contributors propose less a conventional socio-political reading of the episcopate and more of a cultural reading of bishops that is particularly concerned with issues such as episcopal (self-)representation, conceptualization of office and authority, cultural production (images, texts, material objects, space) and ecclesiology/ideology. They contend that ideas about episcopal office and conduct were conditioned by and contingent upon time, place and pastoral constituency. What made a "good" bishop in one time and place may not have sufficed for another time and place and imposing the absolute standards of prescriptive ideologies, medieval and modern, obfuscates rather than clarifies our understanding of the medieval bishop and his world.

Aristocratic Women in Medieval France

Aristocratic Women in Medieval France
Author: Theodore Evergates
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2010-08-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812200616

Were aristocratic women in medieval France little more than appendages to patrilineal families, valued as objects of exchange and necessary only for the production of male heirs? Such was the view proposed by the great French historian Georges Duby more than three decades ago and still widely accepted. In Aristocratic Women in Medieval France another model is put forth: women of the landholding elite—from countesses down to the wives of ordinary knights—had considerable rights, and exercised surprising power. The authors of the volume offer five case studies of women from the mid-eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, and from regions as diverse as Blois-Chartres, Champagne, Flanders, and Occitania. They show not only the diversity of life experiences these women enjoyed but the range of social and political roles open to them. The ecclesiastical and secular sources they mine confirm that women were regarded as full members of both their natal and affinal families, were never excluded from inheriting and controlling property, and did not have their share of family property limited to dowries. Women across France exchanged oaths for fiefs and assumed responsibilities for enfeoffed knights. As feudal lords, they settled disputes involving vassals, fortified castles, and even led troops into battle. Aristocratic Women in Medieval France clearly shows that it is no longer possible to depict well-born women as powerless in medieval society. Demonstrating the importance of aristocratic women in a period during which they have been too long assumed to have lacked influence, it forces us to reframe our understanding of the high Middle Ages.

The King’s Bishops

The King’s Bishops
Author: E. Crosby
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2013-09-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137352124

This is the first detailed comparative study of patronage as an instrument of power in the relations between kings and bishops in England and Normandy after the Conquest. Esteemed medievalist Everett U. Crosby considers new perspectives of medieval state-building and the vexed relations between secular and ecclesiastical authority.

The Cults of Sainte Foy and the Cultural Work of Saints

The Cults of Sainte Foy and the Cultural Work of Saints
Author: Kathleen Ashley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2021-06-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000396789

Bringing together artifacts, texts, and practices within an interpretive framework that stresses the cultural work performed by saints, Kathleen Ashley presents a comparative study of the cults of the medieval Sainte Foy at a number of the sites where she was especially venerated. This book analyzes how each cult site produced the saint it needed, appropriating or creating whatever was required to that end. Ashley’s approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, incorporating visual, religious, medieval, and women’s and gender studies as well as literary studies and social history. She uses the theoretical framework of "cultural work" to analyze how the cult of Sainte Foy was sponsored and received by specific groups in different locales in Europe. The book is comprehensive in terms of historical as well as geographical range, tracing the history of the cult from the early Middle Ages into the present day. It also includes historiographical analysis, examining the way the cults of Sainte Foy have been represented in various historical accounts. Ashley’s narrative challenges the boundary between "elite" and "popular" culture and complicates the traditional vernacular vs. Latin language binary. A chief aim of the study is to show how "art" objects always operated in conjunction with other cultural texts to construct a saint’s cult. The volume is heavily illustrated, showing artifacts such as stained-glass windows and wall paintings which are not readily available from any other source. This book will be of special interest to scholars in art history, medieval history, gender studies, and religion.