Skip to main content

IMC 2022: Sessions

Session 1128: Blurred Boundaries and Religious Dissent, II: Between Gendering Spirituality and a Gendered Spirituality

Wednesday 6 July 2022, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Medieval Heresy & Dissent Research Network, University of Nottingham
Organiser:Stamatia Noutsou, Department for the Study of Religions, Masarykova univerzita, Brno
Moderator/Chair:Frances Andrews, St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of St Andrews
Paper 1128-aLost and Found: The Blurred Boundaries of 12th-Century Women's Spirituality through the Historiographical Lens of Religious Polemics
(Language: English)
Andra-Nicoleta Alexiu, Historisches Seminar, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Index terms: Gender Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Sermons and Preaching
Paper 1128-b'She moves in mysterious ways': Women at the Forefront of Monastic Reformation
(Language: English)
Rachel Ernst, Department of History, Georgia State University
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Monasticism, Religious Life, Women's Studies
Paper 1128-cA Women's Issue?: Voluntary Reclusion in Medieval Portugal
(Language: English)
João Luís Fontes, Instituto de Estudos Medievais, Universidade Nova de Lisboa / Centro de Estudos de História Religiosa, Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Index terms: Gender Studies, Monasticism, Religious Life, Women's Studies
Abstract

Under the title 'Blurred Boundaries and Religious Dissent', this series of four conference sessions seeks to explore the disparity between the prescribed ideal of orthodoxy in the Middle Ages and Christianity as it was practiced by members of ecclesiastical, monastic, and lay communities. Thus, starting from different case studies with their own spatial and temporal particularities, the papers will be focusing on how the religious boundaries of the most diverse communities were negotiated. How and why was it possible or even desirable to preserve such blurred boundaries and how do they relate to what has been defined by R. I. Moore as 'dissent'? Participants will build on the sessions presented at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds (2021) under the title, 'Reconsidering Boundaries of Religious Dissent in the Long 12th Century'. Scholars in these sessions used their research as case studies to exemplify the permeability of the lines that were intended to separate ecclesiastical clerics from monastic authorities, male from female religious, laity from clergy, and orthodox from heretical. The current series of sessions will expand the temporal scope to include topics from the late 10th through the 14th centuries.