IMC 2016: Sessions
Session 511: Mastering Knowledge and Power, I: The Bishop's Books - Episcopal Libraries, Schools, and Scholarly Networks in Early Medieval Europe
Tuesday 5 July 2016, 09.00-10.30
| Organisers: | Giacomo Vignodelli, Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà, Università di Bologna Giorgia Vocino, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Rosamond McKitterick, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge |
| Paper 511-a | Bishops' Libraries in Western Europe, c. 800 - c. 1050 (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Education, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Manuscripts and Palaeography |
| Paper 511-b | Law, Learning, and the Networks of Knowledge: Archbishop Wulfstan and the Worcester Manuscripts in Context (Language: English) Index terms: Education, Law, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Politics and Diplomacy |
| Abstract | The first session will focus on episcopal libraries and bishops' personal books. Paper -a will offer an overview of the books owned, known and presumably read by western bishops between the ninth and the 11th century as a means to investigate the foundations of their education, culture and political action. This study is based on two sets of sources: on the one hand, published inventories of cathedral libraries and more particularly the lists of books explicitly offered, owned or bequeathed by bishops and, on the other, the extant codices carrying bishops' ex libris or donation notes. Paper -b will explore the connections between learning, teaching and political engagement focusing on manuscripts that can be connected to Wulfstan, bishop of London and Worcester and Archbishop of York (d. 1023). The paper will firstly shed light on Wulfstan’s possible educational background and networks and thus elucidate the transfer of his knowledge of the ‘holy society’ into his political and legal discourse. Secondly, it will emphasise the role of Worcester itself as a node of learning through which these notions were further circulated by means of lay education, pastoral care and secular legislation. |