This contribution proposes different notions of “monastic landscapes” (geographic, political, textual, economic, spiritual) and discusses whether applying them to the monastic movement allegedly initiated by Columbanus may help us to refine or deconstruct the concept of “Columbanian monasticism.” Comparing evidence on monastic life in Gregory of…[Read more]

The seventh-century Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines (Someone’s Rule for Virgins), which was most likely written by Jonas of Bobbio, the hagiographer of the Irish monk Columbanus, forms an ideal point of departure for writing a new history of the emergence of Western monasticism understood as a history of the individual and collective attempt to p…[Read more]

Legal Expertise at a Late-Tenth-Century Monastery in Central Italy, or Disputing Property Donations and the History of Law in Benedict of Monte Soratte’s Chronicle

Invoking Gregory on the Caelian in Medieval Rome: A Study of an Inscription at SS. Giovanni e Paolo

Annulling Inherited Contracts: Legal Possibilities and Strategies at Early Medieval Italian Monasteries

“Chapter 7: Maintaining the City Enslaved Labor and Trade in Roman Philippi” in Philippi, From Colonia Augusta to Communitas Christiana: Religion and Society in Transition, edited by Steven J. Friesen, Michalis Lychounas, and Daniel N. Schowalter (Leiden: Brill, 2021).

Middle Ages; 10th-11th centuries; Farfa; Lombard law; notarial culture; breve

This article investigates two controversies that reveal the deeply intertwined nature of legal strategies and archival practices at the monasteries of Farfa and Monte Amiata around the turn of the millennium. It argues that the protagonists of these cases, abbots knowledgeable in law and the history of their monasteries, pursued markedly…[Read more]

This article investigates the ideological implications of Pope Gregory the Great’s beard for Catholic reformers of the sixteenth century. It argues that the portrayal of Gregory as clean-shaven, with a “moderate” beard, or with a long bushy beard (all representations that are to be found in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Roman art and schol…[Read more]