This essay reconstructs the lives of a neglected group of women in the Christian church during the later Middle Ages. So-called clerical “concubines” were well-known in their communities, but their lived experience has been largely ignored by modern historians. Yet studying clerical concubines sheds light not only on the women themselves, but also on the social organization of the medieval Christian church. Drawing on information gathered from notarial acts across the northern Italian peninsula, I argue that concubines were not a unitary group. Their experiences varied instead according to their status and the regions they inhabited. For instance, while laywomen who became priests’ concubines moved into their lovers’ homes, nuns retained cells in their religious houses during these relationships. Furthermore, concubines in cities such as Treviso could openly live with their lovers and share their property, while in other places, such as Bergamo, severe legal restrictions on concubines made them a particularly vulnerable group.
photographs). There follows a very well -documented and helpful section devoted to the sources used , an appendix including various documents from the monastery , a bibliography (239-241), an index of names (243)(244)(245)(246)(247)(248), and a separate booklet of illustrations of the monastery.
This article investigates the neglected topic of clerical culture in premodern Venice by examining representations of the clerical household in notarial documents, in particular priests' testaments. Analyzing the process of creating those records, and drawing on the approaches of the "archival turn," it discusses how Venetian notaries framed the clerical household to allow priests' servant-companions and kin to inherit, despite legal restrictions and the potential opposition of the clerics' kin. While clerics' wills often contain quite generous bequests for the women and children living in their households, the article also argues that the women and children living in the clerical household remained vulnerable both inside and outside those households. Both their social and financial status depended on the priest's willingness to make provisions for them at the end of his life. Priests thus emerge from this analysis as powerful figures within their households, and their testaments both reflected and shaped their patriarchal authority.
Reviews 2 1 two churches associated with the confraternity. Included in Fumarola's chapter is a series of photographs of the Holy Friday procession still celebrated by the confraternity, attesting to the very real and continuing presence of the confraternity ethos in present-day Mottola.The bibliography and appendix of documents that follow will be of enormous value to those scholars actively involved in historical research into the continuing activities of confraternities and into their devotional focus. The continuing value of this publication, it seems to me, lies in the comprehensive approach it takes to a single confraternity; locating it historically, socially, and geographically, thus providing a witness to a rich past while securing the foundations for future study.
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