INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LAW AND THE OTHERS:

MANAGING DIVERSITY  AND MARGINALITY IN MEDIEVAL CANON LAW

(12th-15th centuries)

12 March, 2024

Fondazione Besso

Palazzo Besso, Largo di Torre Argentina, 11

Rome, Italy 

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 Download Call for Papers

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION

Aiming to regulate the entire life of Christian communities, Medieval Canon Law was inevitably confronted with the immense diverseness of human experience, having to address both the great structural differences which existed within the Church and countless specific situations of marginality. If, through the Middle Ages, political theologians elaborated the ideal of a uniformly Christian society, in which physical and spiritual diversity almost had no place at all, reality was in fact often much more complicated. Realistically avoiding – in most cases – to pursue both the complete assimilation of marginalized individuals and groups and their total exclusion from society, the Church handled the tensions arising from the great variety of human circumstances, first of all through legal instruments. 

The aim of this conference is to bring into focus the groups that were perceived as alien bodies within the Christian society, reconstructing both the strategies that were put in place to deal with them and the differentiated legal treatment elaborated in each particular case to this end. 

ORGANISERS

The conference is organized by the Fondazione Besso in collaboration with Trivent.

PROPOSED TOPICS

The conference will revolve around different thematic areas: 

- physical diversity, taking into consideration marginalization factors arising from specific medical conditions and other physical or mental impairments. The groups that can be examined include, but are not limited to: people presenting various kinds of disability, carriers of infectious disease, as well as hermaphrodites, castrated people, and others

- spiritual diversity that might arise from the commission of canon law crimes (like schism) or from the application of specific canon law penalties like excommunication or interdict. The issues raised by the relations with heretics may be addressed as well; historiographic topics concerning the inquisitorial process, on the contrary, are outside the main focus of the volume

- social diversity concerning specific marginalized groups (to list some among the most relevant: prostitutes, convicts, actors, foreigners, widows, slaves) 

- gender diversity: if gender relations in the Church are far too vast a topic to be addressed in this conference, papers on specific situations in which women appear to be treated as a marginal group may also be included 

The conference is open both to legal historians and to general historians. We are glad to accept proposals from scholars at any stage of their careers.

SUBMISSION AND DEADLINES

Please submit an abstract and your short bio (approx. 300 words each) to Dr. Federica Boldrini by 15 January 2024 at federica.boldrini@unipr.it. Please CC publishing@trivent-publishing.eu.

PUBLICATION

The proceedings of this conference will be published in the book series Canon Law: New Perspectives on the Law of the Church in Medieval Society. The book series is published by Trivent Publishing and edited by Federica Boldrini (Universita di Parma) and Andrea Errera (Universita di Parma).

CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION FEE

There will be no conference fee for the participants.

CONTACT

For any questions, please feel free to contact us at federica.boldrini@unipr.it or publishing@trivent-publishing.eu.