IMC 2024: Sessions

The problem of fraternal relations in the early Middle Ages has very recently been receiving renewed attention. The current consensus, which holds that relations between siblings were naturally constant, based on loyalty, solidarity, and readiness to act in the common interest, stemming from blood ties, is coming to be reassessed. The category of brotherhood/fraternitas has been for too long studied with concepts associated with sources from later periods. It is difficult to speak of kinship in the ninth century and later without being aware of the religious and ideological implications of the transformations taking place at the time. Three papers will address aspects of this adjusted view of fraternal relations in the Early Middle Ages. Aneta Pieniądz will address strategies for justifying conflict between brothers in early medieval narrative texts from Western Europe. Julia Barrow will discuss the forsterage of young clerics by their uncles, also in Western Europe, from the eighth to the early eleventh century. Claudia Rapp, finally, will shed some light on the topic from early medieval Byzantium, allowing the discussion of the (dis-)similarities between fraternal relations between early medieval Western Europe and Byzantium.