Reputation Management: Clerics, Women, and the Household in the Early Middle Ages
Event details
Join us for research seminars hosted by the Department of History with a selection of visiting academics, alongside University of York researchers. All students and staff are very welcome.
A zoom link will be made available for distance learning PhD students on request. Please contact Dr Purba Hossain or Stephanie Mawson if you have any questions. You can view the full schedule for the semester here
Speaker: Dr David Addison (University of Liverpool)
Abstract: The authority of clerics was defined in ecclesiastical canons, episcopal letters, and in numerous treatises. Yet, it was equally, if not more important, that clerics could command a degree of moral authority in their own communities. Issues of sexuality were at the forefront of this. Higher clerics were enjoined to continence and yet often had wives; they were instructed to separate themselves from women, and yet pervasive assumptions about the gendered order of the household made separation impossible. In thinking about clerics’ moral authority (or lack thereof), we need to attend to the practical ways in which their character and reputation were contested and defended in the small worlds in which they operated. Drawing on cases from across the Latin west, this paper will show that allegations of sexual misconduct offer a privileged window onto the basis and limitations of clerical power in the early medieval world.
Image: San Pedro de la Nave (wikimedia)