| Paper 227-a | Ecclesiastical Dominium over Agricultural Workers in Carolingian Europe
(Language: English)
Mary Sommar, Department of History, Millersville University, Pennsylvania
Index terms: Anthropology, Canon Law, Onomastics, Social History |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
Of growing interest among historians of the Middle Ages is the question of the economic importance of slavery in the Carolingian era presented in the McCormick thesis. Until recently, however, there has been relatively little attention paid to the situation of servi (and ancillae) who were under ecclesiastical control, as opposed to those whose lords were counted among the laity. This paper is an examination of the relevant canon (and secular) law, of demographic data concerning free and unfree peasant populations, and of cartulary and epistolary evidence from the 8th and 9th centuries to discover more about the nature of the relationships between ecclesiastical institutions and personnel, and their unfree dependants.
Paper -b:
The English episcopal acta are a remarkable, and rather underexploited, source for 12th-century legal, social, and cultural history. This paper will explore how the acta treated disputes between religious foundations and the secular church over sepulturae - burial rights. While there has been some attention paid to these, I intend to provide a more comprehensive examination, with particular attention to how these disputes reveal conflicting ties of patronage between noble families and religious houses. I also wish to explore a singular case from Hereford where, between 1150-1154, bishop Gilbert Foliot was informed that Walter del Mans and his wife Agnes had granted to Leominster priory the virgate and meadow at Priddleton in Humber; Gilbert consented to consecrate a cemetery at their chapel of Humber, provided that only one body was buried there, the rest being buried at Leominster as before.
Paper -c:
In contemporary culture it is assumed that most people in the middle ages drank beer or wine in preference to potentially unhealthy water. This pragmatic reading is, of course, at odds with medieval cultures which granted water a whole range of ritual meanings. This paper will review some of the evidence for the status and practice of water drinking in contexts both lay and clerical as well as urban and rural. Do practices penitential and manorial have common origins? Did a monk drinking water experience the same substance as a peasant labourer?
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