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IMC 2011: Sessions

Session 1311: Poverty and Property: Monastic and Domestic Perspectives

Wednesday 13 July 2011, 16.30-18.00

Sponsor:Department of History, University of Sydney
Organiser:Julie Ann Smith, Department of History, University of Sydney
Moderator/Chair:Julie Ann Smith, Department of History, University of Sydney
Paper 1311-aHow Powerful Women Give Alms: Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda of Tuscany Compared
(Language: English)
Penelope Joan Nash, School of Philosophical & Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney
Index terms: Lay Piety, Women's Studies
Paper 1311-bInventing Austerity: Asceticism and Historiography in the Early Cistercian Exordia
(Language: English)
Joseph Millan-Cole, Department of History, University of Sydney
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Monasticism
Paper 1311-cEconomic Chastisement: Evidence from the Court of Chancery, 1350-1500
(Language: English)
Sarah Crawford, Department of History, University of Sydney
Index terms: Daily Life, Law
Abstract

Provision of support for monks and married women could be uncertain in the central-later Middle Ages. Monasteries depended on patronage, and women on their families, to shield them from poverty. Patronage in the gift of such benefactors as Empress Adelheid and Matilda of Tuscany was an inherent element of their imperial position. In the 12th century, Cistercian historians endeavoured to represent their origins as a reaction to the crisis of prosperity, though it seems that such works were intended to assert the authenticity of their early reform than the reality of their early poverty. It appears from English Chancery records that wives were more likely to prosecute their husbands for economic deprivation than for physical harm. Each of these case studies explores attitudes to poverty and property in monastic and domestic economies.