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A People's Church brings together a distinguished international group of historians to provide a sweeping introduction to Christian religious life and institutions in medieval Italy. Each essay treats a single theme as broadly as possible, highlighting both the unique aspects of medieval Christianity on the Italian peninsula and the beliefs and practices it shared with other Christian societies. Because of its long tradition of communal self-governance, Christianity in medieval Italy, perhaps more than anywhere else, was truly a "people's church." At the same time, its exceptional urban wealth and literacy rates, along with its rich and varied intellectual and artistic culture, led to divers...
This book examines the contribution of women to the Humiliati movement, providing original archival evidence indicating that women dominated the group's membership. These findings have implications for both women's spirituality and women's work, correcting the received opinion that the patriarchal nature of Italian society and of the church limited the institutional options available to women. It also suggests that women found innovative ways to participate in the increasingly restrictive textile industry of the region. This work provides a glimpse at the novel ways in which women in medieval Italy were able to satisfy their spiritual and economic needs within the confines of a male-dominated church and society.
This volume of essays covers themes which are central to the work of Brenda Bolton as a scholar and teacher: Innocent III, the city of Rome, the medieval Church and the urban context of the Italian peninsula in the late Middle Ages.
Historical biography has a mixed reputation: at its best it can reveal much not only about an individual, but the wider context of their life and society; at worst it can result in a narrowly focused work of hagiography or condemnation. Yet in spite of its sometimes inferior status amongst academics, biography has remained a popular genre, and in recent years has developed into new and intriguing areas. As the essays in this volume reveal, scholars from an array of different disciplines have embraced what biography can offer them, expanding the remit of biography from people to things, tracing the 'life' of their chosen object from creation to use to disposal to rediscovery. The increasing c...
Earlier scholarship has characterized female Franciscanism as an institution established by Clare of Assisi in collaboration with Saint Francis. This understanding is anachronistic, however, and overlooks the more complicated disputes over what it meant for enclosed women to have a mendicant vocation. This book clarifies Clare’s contributions to these debates by distinguishing the historical figure from the uses made of her legacy by the papacy, the Friars Minor, and, most importantly, the enclosed sisters between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. By examining the diversity of female communities and their complicated institutional formation in medieval Italy, it examines how and when Clare was appropriated as a model of spiritual authority by the women to shape their identity as Franciscans.
In Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform, Bert Roest provides an up-to-date and comprehensive history of the Poor Clares from their early beginnings until the sixteenth century.
Winner of the 2002 John Gilmary Shea Prize and the 2002 Howard R. Marraro Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association. When Saint Francis of Assisi died in 1226, he left behind an order already struggling to maintain its identity. As the Church called upon Franciscans to be bishops, professors, and inquisitors, their style of life began to change. Some in the order lamented this change and insisted on observing the strict poverty practiced by Francis himself. Others were more open to compromise. Over time, this division evolved into a genuine rift, as those who argued for strict poverty were marginalized within the order. In this book, David Burr offers the first comprehensive hist...
Sherri Franks Johnson explores the roles of religious women in the changing ecclesiastical and civic structure of late medieval Bologna, demonstrating how convents negotiated a place in their urban context and in the church at large. During this period Bologna was the most important city in the Papal States after Rome. Using archival records from nunneries in the city, Johnson argues that communities of religious women varied in the extent to which they sought official recognition from the male authorities of religious orders. While some nunneries felt that it was important to their religious life to gain recognition from monks and friars, others were content to remain local and autonomous. In a period often described as an era of decline and the marginalization of religious women, Johnson shows instead that they saw themselves as active participants in their religious orders, in the wider church and in their local communities.
This book is the first major study in English of a group of late twelfth-century religious enthusiasts, the early Humiliati, who were condemned by the Church as heretics in 1184 but - in a remarkable transition - were reconciled seventeen years later and established a highly successful religious order in north Italy.