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IMC 2022: Sessions

Session 1328: Blurred Boundaries and Religious Dissent, IV: Fluid Beliefs and Dissent among the Laity

Wednesday 6 July 2022, 16.30-18.00

Sponsor:Medieval Heresy & Dissent Research Network, University of Nottingham
Organiser:Justine Trombley, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto, Downtown
Moderator/Chair:Claire Taylor, Department of History, University of Nottingham
Paper 1328-aMeco del Sacco and 'Free Spirit' Beliefs
(Language: English)
Janine Larmon Peterson, Department of History, Marist College, New York
Index terms: Lay Piety, Mentalities, Religious Life
Paper 1328-bHeresy or Devotion?: Discerning One from the Other amongst the Beguins of Languedoc and Catalunya
(Language: English)
Louisa A. Burnham, Department of History, Middlebury College, Vermont
Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Lay Piety, Mentalities, Religious Life
Paper 1328-cFranciscans in the Attic: The Many Shapes of Lay Religious Dissent in the Late Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Delfi-Isabel Nieto-Isabel, Departament d'Història Medieval, Paleografia i Diplomàtica, Universitat de Barcelona
Index terms: Lay Piety, 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.