Clerics' Wives and Women in the Medieval Latin West, 800-1200

Fiona J. Griffiths is Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor of Humanities at Stanford University and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. She is the author of Nuns' Priests' Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women's Monastic Life (2018) and The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century (2007). She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Émilie Kurdziel is Assistant Professor of Medieval History at the University of Poitiers and a member of the Centre d'Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale (CESCM). She is the co-editor, with Rutger Kramer and Graeme Ward, of Monastic Communities and Canonical Clergy in the Carolingian World (780–840): Categorizing the Church (2022). She has held fellowships from the Fondation Thiers (Institut de France/CNRS), the CNRS, and l'École française de Rome.

'Amid centuries of scholarship on clerical celibacy and its exceptions, priests' wives have often been forgotten. This volume complicates as well as restores this history, putting Godgifu, Huza, Onven, Gerberga, Azala, Susanne, Mabel, Elisabeth, Alazes, Pedreverga, and unnamed others at the centre. Though clerics like Peter Damian described these women as poisonous bloodsuckers, for most people they would have been everyday neighbours if not community leaders or political figures–although their position could also be precarious and vulnerable.' Ruth Mazo Karras, Lecky Professor of History, Trinity College Dublin

• Introduction: twice, or three-times, invisible: clerics' wives and women in western sources and scholarship Fiona J. Griffiths and Émilie Kurdziel; Part I. Reassessing Canon Law on Clerical Marriage: 1. Clerical marriage and canon law: reading, annotating and citing the Dionysio-Hadriana in eleventh-century Europe Steffen Patzold; Part II. Clerics' Wives and Women: Reading against the Grain: 2. A priest, his wife, and their child in the earlier eleventh century: reflections on the will of Wulf Julia Barrow; 3. Surrendering Huza: a clerical wife and mother as gift in the eleventh century Fiona J. Griffiths; 4. Gerberga, the erased wife of Bishop Willelmus of Arezzo (1011–1013) Émilie Kurdziel; 5. Clerics, concubines, and censuales: unfree women in the households of Bavarian clergymen Samuel S. Sutherland; Part III. Naming Women: Communities and the Recognition of Conjugality: 6. With or without uxor/femina mea: wives and women of clerics in West Francia in the tenth and eleventh centuries Emmanuelle Santinelli-Foltz; 7. What's in a name? Descriptors of priests' wives in Norman and English sources, 1050–1200 Hazel Freestone; Part IV. Clerics' Wives and Women within the Family: 8. Clerical dynasties and marriage strategies in eleventh-century Brittany Margot Laprade; 9. An early twelfth-century (ex-) archbishop of Reims, his wife, and their daughter: Gervase of Rethel, Elisabeth of Namur, and Melisende Elisabeth van Houts; 10. Wives and widows in secular community life: the female entourage of the canons of the collegiate church of Saint-Seurin in Bordeaux in the eleventh and twelfth centuries Anne Massoni; Part V. Contexts of Opposition: Law, Theology, and Discipline: 11. Ecclesia quae sponsa vel uxor eius dicitur: priests, women, and churches in the Carolingian world Charles Mériaux; 12. 'Since a priest or deacon cannot have a lawful wife': rather of Verona's struggle against clerical families Charles West; 13. Marginal opposition: manuscript contexts for the defence of clerical marriage during the twelfth century Bastiaan Waagmeester; 14. Focariae, their children, and the Bishop's notaries: legalese in the visitation records of Città di Castello Maureen C. Miller.