IMC 2014: Sessions

Paper -a:
Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York 1480-1500, completed his last will on 24 August 1498, making bequests to the three bishoprics he had held (Rochester, Lincoln, York), earlier benefices, and, most important, to various members of his family, but excluding from the will clerical nephews whose careers he had done much to advance. The paper examines both the bequests given to his secular nephews and nieces and the support already given to his clerical nephews (three of whom became bishops) in the light of the bishop's own career, both episcopal and secular, and his previous charitable foundations.

Paper -b:
Medieval testators, like modern ones, remade their wills as their familial circumstances changed, but good documentation of this is rare. This paper examines several dozen examples of rewritten wills naming the Marian shrine of the Holy House of Loreto, in the Italian Marche, as a beneficiary. The changes show how the shrine competed with local churches and living heirs for testamentary bequests. The Holy House of Loreto directly benefitted from new forms of piety that emerged after the plague of 1348 as individuals redrafted their wills to ensure that the shrine received a part of their family patrimony.

Paper -c:
The origins of the Franciscan notion of poverty have often been traced back to the 12th-century Order of Grandmont. Yet a closer look at the Grandmontine Rule, the Sententiae of Stephen of Muret, the founder, and the writings of later priors of Grandmont reveals a very different picture of poverty than that which the Franciscans would champion a century later. The lack of material goods, vital to Franciscan poverty, was held with some ambivalence by the Grandmontines, who instead exalted a broadly defined spiritual poverty.