Session837
TitleBorders of Unfreedom and Dependency in Medieval Europe, II: Escaping Unfreedom
Date/TimeTuesday 5 July 2022: 16.30-18.00
 
OrganiserNiall Ó Súilleabháin, Medieval History Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin
 
Moderator/ChairRobert F. Berkhofer, Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo
 
Paper 837-a Ways in and out of Dependency in the Ecclesiastical Domain
(Language: English)
Julia Winnebeck, Bonn Center for Dependency & Slavery Studies, Universität Bonn
Index Terms: Canon Law; Ecclesiastical History; Monasticism; Social History
Paper 837-b Resistance, Coercion, and the State: Searching for Unfree and Free Responses to Power in Medieval England, 900-1100
(Language: English)
Stuart Pracy, Department of History & Archaeology, University of Exeter
Index Terms: Daily Life; Law; Social History
Paper 837-c Flight and Punishment: Unfree Resistance in 11th-Century French Hagiography
(Language: English)
Niall Ó Súilleabháin, Medieval History Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin
Index Terms: Ecclesiastical History; Hagiography; Mentalities; Social History
 
AbstractThe lines between personal liberty and coercive dependence are never clear and navigating the multiple forms of unfreedom in medieval Europe is especially difficult. This series of sessions will explore the often-fuzzy borders of unfreedom and dependency in a comparative framework, with the second panel addressing potential means for exiting or resisting dependent status. Julia Winnebeck will focus on the manumissio in ecclesia as presented in the records of the Western Church councils, placing the analysis of this practice in the context of other practices which connect the late antique and early medieval Western Church to the institutions of unfreedom; Stuart Pracy will explore the curious dearth of peasant responses to abuses of power in pre-Conquest England via a combination of historical and historiographical evidence; and Niall Ó Súilleabháin will examine narratives of unfree resistance to coercion and control in hagiographical texts from 11th-century France, in order to map the anxieties felt by ecclesiastical authors about the social institutions in which their patron saints were enmeshed.