Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority in an Age of Reform, 1000–1122

Examines the debates over ecclesiastical reform in western Europe during the high Middle Ages from a new perspective.

Megan McLaughlin (Author)

9781107449077, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 November 2014

288 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.42 kg

'It is seldom that a book has the ability to make one fundamentally question one's previous assumptions and see things from an entirely new perspective, particularly when as here the subject matter is one that will be so very familiar to historians of eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe. This book, however, does just that … McLaughlin offers a thoughtful, highly nuanced and altogether new (and quite probably apposite) interpretation of the conceptual ferment and domestic/sexual imagery that animated the polemicists and thinkers of the age of reform. All of this makes [this book] indispensable reading.' Kathleen G. Cushing, Early Medieval Europe

The eleventh and early twelfth centuries were a period of intense debate over ecclesiastical reform in western Europe. This book examines the debates from a new perspective, exploring the ways in which contemporary political writers conveyed messages about 'public' life through textual and sometimes visual images of the 'private' life of the Church. It argues that the images they used - of bishops as husbands of their sees, of the laity as the sons of Mother Church, and of the pope as father of bishops - were shaped not only by intellectual and ritual traditions, but also by contemporary ideas about sexuality and gender. Megan McLaughlin reveals that the boundaries between the 'public' and the 'private' were extremely fluid in the central Middle Ages - because of both the realities of political life in that period and the changing nature of life within European households.

Introduction
1. The reform of marriage
2. The Bride of Christ
3. The ambiguities of motherhood
4. The Mother of the Faithful
5. Fathers and sons
6. Fathers in the spirit
Conclusion: the stumbling block.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]