Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000 – c. 1500
Edited by Thomas W Smith
Interdisciplinary studies in the conceptualization and exercise of authority and power in the medieval Church.
While they often go hand-in-hand and the distinction between the two is frequently blurred, authority and power are distinct concepts and abilities – this was a problem that the Church tussled with throughout the High and Late Middle Ages. Claims of authority, efforts to have that authority recognized, and the struggle to transform it into more tangible forms of power were defining factors of the medieval Church’s existence. As the studies assembled here demonstrate, claims to authority by members of the Church were often in inverse proportion to their actual power – a problematic paradox which resulted from the uneven and uncertain acceptance of ecclesiastical authority by lay powers and, indeed, fellow members of the ecclesia. The chapters of this book reveal how clerical claims to authority and power were frequently debated, refined, opposed, and resisted in their expression and implementation. The clergy had to negotiate a complex landscape of overlapping and competing claims in pursuit of their rights. They waged these struggles in arenas that ranged from papal, royal, and imperial curiae, through monastic houses, law courts and parliaments, urban religious communities and devotional networks, to contact and conflict with the laity on the ground; the weapons deployed included art, manuscripts, dress, letters, petitions, treatises, legal claims, legates, and the physical arms of allied lay powers. In an effort to further our understanding of this central aspect of ecclesiastical history, this interdisciplinary volume, which effects a broad temporal, geographical, and thematic sweep, points the way to new avenues of research and new approaches to a traditional topic. It fuses historical methodologies with art history, gender studies, musicology, and material culture, and presents fresh insights into one of the most significant institutions of the medieval world.
- Edited by Thomas W Smith
Other Titles in this Series
Mulieres Religiosae
Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods
Volume 12
Gendered Identities in Bernard of Clairvaux’s ‘Sermons on the Song of Songs’
Performing the Bride
Volume 15
Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers
Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan
Volume 18
Communities of Learning
Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100-1500
Volume 9
Confraternity, Mendicant Orders, and Salvation in the Middle Ages
The Contribution of the Hungarian Sources (c.1270-c.1530)
Volume 23
The Sacred and the Secular in Renaissance Florence
Vallombrosan Exorcisms and the Rise of Observant Mendicancy
Volume 31
Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Religious Discourse
Peter Lombard's 'Sentences' and the Development of Theology
Volume 8
Careers and Opportunities at the Roman Curia, 1300-1500
A Socio-Economic History of Papal Administration
Volume 29
Nature, Virtue, and the Boundaries of Encyclopaedic Knowledge
The Tropological Universe of Alexander Neckam (1157-1217)
Volume 13
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