IMC 2010: Sessions

This session sets out to compare the role of relationships between ecclesiastical institutions and lay patrons in the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon world. How did these relationships, and the strategies of representation associated with them, serve to enhance the 'symbolic capital' of the actors involved and contribute to the formation of communal, regional, and political identities? The first paper (Yaniv Fox) deals with Columbanian monasticism and its beginnings. The three houses founded directly by Columbanus are located in the Merovingian kingdom of Burgundy, as are many of the later ones, founded by Frankish noble families patronising this enterprise. By studying the familial context within which Columbanian monasticism developed and the prominent kin groups giving patronage to Columbanian institutions, the paper will examine whether this context is indeed Burgundian in nature and to what degree regional, Burgudian, and monastic identities overlap.

Els Schroeder discusses the interplay between worldly ties and monastic identities in the context of political and social change in late 10th-century England. Comparison of three saints' lives (Vita S. Æthelwoldi, the Vita S. Oswaldi and the Vita S. Dunstani) reveals that different communities adopted different strategies to represent their associations with the outside world. The portrayal of worldly relationships was tightly connected to the expression of the community's identity, often closely linked to the establishment of the cult of the saint.