A Clergyman out of Control: Portray of a Bishop Around the Year 1000
The following short article is about actions of bishops and their interpretation as they are illustrated in the genre Gesta episcoporum.
Medieval Religious, Religions, Religion
This article sketches the most important shift in medieval religious history over the past few decades: the transition from ‘church history’ to ‘the history of religious culture.’
What if Arianism had won?
The fourth annual Princeton in Europe Lecture — Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch asks ‘What if Arianism had won?’
BOOKS: Canterbury Cathedral
After visiting Canterbury Cathedral, I was inspired to suggest books that relate to Canterbury’s famous Archbishops, history and beauty.
Community Conflict and Collective Memory in the Late Medieval Parish Church
What role does conflict play in the formation of community identity? And how do powerful, even violent, moments sustain that identity throughout centuries of change and transformation?
Chronicles and historiography: the interrelationship of fact and fiction
This paper indicates some of the challenges posed by fourteenth-century chronicles while focusing on contemporary testimonies about Clement V, pope between 1305 and 1314.
How to Win Friends and Influence People: Medieval Bishops edition
‘To be a bishop during this time was to be a leader who might crown kings or provoke a rebellion. So the question we’re asking is, if you wanted to become a bishop, who did you need to know?’
Monasticism and the Royal Abbey of Saint Denis
Saint‐Denis seems to occupy a curious place in French history: never has there been a church so revered and yet so reviled.
The Spread Out of Arianism: A Critical Analysis of the Arian Heresy
On this paper I will focus on the Arian heresy, trying to show how this heresy spread out on the Roman Empire and how it kept his strength for many century on the spiritual formation of some people.
Unpleasant Affairs That Please Us: Admonition and Rebuke in the Letter Collections of the Archbishops of Canterbury, 11th and 12th Centuries
From the Norman Conquest in 1066 up to the famous “murder in the cathedral”2 in 1170, six archbishops of Canterbury ruled over the English church…
Badia Burning: The Spectacle of Violence in 14th-century Tuscany
The theme of this paper is the use of ecclesiastical properties as sites of theatrical violence, and violence as a major element in the complex discourse between powerful rural lords and the Florentine commune.
Discrimination Against the Jewish Population in Medieval Castile and León
I have tried to show the degree of discrimination suffered by the Jewish community in these two kingdoms in the Middle Ages through a deep analysis of the legal sources, lay as much as ecclesiastical, and also through documentary collections reflecting their practical application
Advocating change: monasteries, territories and justice between East and West Francia, 11th-12th centuries
This article looks at the question of the formation of territorial principalities in western Europe through the issue of ecclesiastical advocacy.
What if the Arians had won? A Reformation historian reconsiders the Medieval Western Church
Diarmaid MacCulloch speculates on what Western Christianity would have been like in the perfectly plausible event of an Arian outcome to its emergence from the disappearance of the Western Roman Empire.
Under the aegis of the saints. Hagiography and power in early Carolingian northern Italy
This article gives an overview of the features, choices, tastes and models of sanctity characteristic of Italian hagiography, against the background of local contexts and political competition.
Promiscuous Priests and Vicarage Children: Clerical Sexuality and Masculinity in Late Medieval England
Historians continue to debate the the full extent to which priests had relationships with women, but unchaste clergy on the European Continent have been more forthrightly acknowledged and studied than those in England.
The First Jubilee
How did this tradition of Papal Jubilees start in the Middle Ages?
Pope Gregory VII: A Church Reformer
By the time that Hildebrand was appointed Pope Gregory VII, the Church was in dire need of change and direction.
Did St. Peter Damian Die in 1073? A New Perspective on His Final Days
The historical narrative of Peter Damian’s final years has been shaped by the belief that he died in early 1072. His chronic ill health, scholars assume, must have gotten worse as he reached his mid sixties.
Gay Reformers? Why the Medieval Church Banned Priests from Marrying
Among the issues that the current-day Roman Catholic Church is debating are whether or not priests should marry, and how accepting they should be of homosexuals. Interestingly, about nine hundred years ago both of these issues intertwined in the Anglo-Norman world.
The Holy Foreskin
When I first heard about the Sanctum Praeputium I actually thought it was a joke thought up by some medievalist. Apparently some medieval people thought so too!
Projecting Power in Sixth-Century Rome: The church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in the late antique Forum Romanum
In the year 526 CE, the bishop of Rome, Pope Felix IV, petitioned the Ostrogoth king Theoderic for permission to convert a small complex in the Forum Romanum into a place of worship dedicated to the Saints Cosmas and Damian…This paper critiques traditional interpretations of this church—its physical location and its apse mosaic—in light of new research that nuances our understanding of the historical context in which it was commissioned.
Mundane Uses of Sacred Places in the Central and Later Middle Ages, with a Focus on Chartres Cathedral
Although technically reserved for worship, church buildings were put to numerous non-devotional uses in the Middle Ages, raising the question just how set apart from daily life medieval churches were.
The Council of Trent (1545–63) and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (1541)
Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is one of the world’s most famous paintings, located in one of the world’s most famous rooms, the Sistine Chapel.
Simoniaca Heresis
With Gregory the Great (pope, 590–604) the expression simoniaca heresis becomes a frequently used phrase.