Secular Clergy and the Laity I: Clerical and Lay Initiative

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Episcopus: Society for the Study of Bishops and Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages

Organizer Name

Michael Burger

Organizer Affiliation

Auburn Univ.-Montgomery

Presider Name

Michael Burger

Paper Title 1

Elite Laywomen as Leaders of the Early Church

Presenter 1 Name

Aneilya Barnes

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Coastal Carolina Univ.

Paper Title 2

The Making and Unmaking of a Bishop: Bonizo of Sutri and the Laity of Piacenza

Presenter 2 Name

John A. Dempsey

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Westfield State Univ.

Paper Title 3

Parish Clergy, Friars, and the Question of Light Penances in Thirteenth-Century England

Presenter 3 Name

William H. Campbell

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Univ. of Pittsburgh-Greensburg

Start Date

12-5-2017 10:00 AM

Session Location

Bernhard 208

Description

Clergy and laity needed each other. Clergy needed lay support—consider, for example, lay founders and donors to churches, and laity at the least, for example, needed the sacraments (except when they disputed that clerical monopoly) or skills such as literacy enjoyed by clergy. Yet these groups were often in conflict: consider, just as a start, conflict over tithes, heresy, control of ecclesiastical appointments, and, in some cases, exercise of lay lordship by ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical corporations (consider, for example, relations between clerical landholders and lay tenants). This large issue of clerical/lay was common to a range of times and place, thus interests researchers over the whole of the Middle Ages, and in both Eastern and Western Christianity.\

Michael Burger