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

Call for Papers: Episcopus at (ICMS) Kalamazoo 2025

Episcopus is excited to be organizing and co-organizing a strong variety of sessions for ICMS 2025. All those making contributions to sessions of papers or roundtables at the Congress need to make proposals in the Confex system (the conference portal) by the deadline of Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. The general call for papers is available here, but the specific links for individual sessions are also given below.

Bishops and Secular Clergy of Medieval Italy (in-person)

Submit proposals here
Questions? Contact Neslihan Senocak at ns2495@columbia.edu and CC William Campbell at whc7@pitt.edu.

Bishops and Secular Clergy of Medieval Italy (virtual)

Email your paper title and extract in a single email to the co-organizers, using the following addresses: episcopussociety@gmail.com; whc7@pitt.edu; and ns2495@columbia.edu, and please do so as early as possible. To secure a virtual or hybrid session, we first need to demonstrate to the conference committee that there is demand in the form of sound proposals. Once we have secured the virtual or hybrid session, we will let you know, and you will then need to submit through the conference portal by the deadline of September 15.

Bishops, Clerics, and Digital Medievalists (A Roundtable) (hybrid)

Co-sponsored with Digital Medievalist.
Submit proposals here
Questions? Contact Kalani Craig at craigkl@indiana.edu.

The Church in the Fourteenth Century (in person)

Co-sponsored with The 14th-Century Society
Submit proposals here
Questions? Contact organizer Sarah Ifft Decker at ifftdeckers@rhodes.edu.

The Institutional Church in Medieval Iberia (in person)

Co-sponsored with the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS)
Submit proposals here
Questions? Contact Kyle Lincoln at kyle.c.lincoln@gmail.com.

The Investiture Controversy: A Reacting to the Past Game in Development (in person workshop)

Co-sponsored with The Reacting Consortium
Those contributing to a workshop do not submit through the conference portal; rather, they should email the organizer at whc7@pitt.edu, cc’ing episcopussociety@gmail.com.

Join Episcopus at (ICMS) Kalamazoo and (IMC) Leeds in 2024

We welcome members old and new, and members-yet-to-be, to the following conference events in this our 20th anniversary year.

Kalamazoo: Pastoral Care and Secular Clergy

Thursday, May 9, 1:30 PM, session 83, co-sponsored by the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society. In-person, Sangren Hall 4540.

Kalamazoo: Holy Bishops: Bishops, the Cult of the Saints, and Holiness in the Medieval World

Thursday, May 9, 3:30 PM, session 127, co-sponsored by the Hagiography Society. In-person, Sangren 3110.

Kalamazoo: ANNUAL BUSINESS LUNCH

Friday, May 10, 12:00 noon. All cordially welcome; new and improved food this year!, $15, Student Center 3222. The Business Lunch is typically where we plan our conference sessions for the coming year, and we are always looking for fresh ideas. If you have any suggestions for topics, whether you will be at Kalamazoo or not, we invite you to submit them ahead of time to our email address, episcopussociety@gmail.com .

Kalamazoo: Episcopus Twenty Years On: A Roundtable

Friday, May 10, 1:30 PM, session 262. Reflecting on the state of the field. VIRTUAL.

Leeds: Famine, Crisis, and Exclusion: Bishops and their Communities in the High Medieval Latin West, 10-13th Centuries

Co-sponsored with the Haskins Society. Moderator: Amelia Kennedy (Princeton Theological Seminary)

Join Episcopus at (ICMS) Kalamazoo and (IMC) Leeds in 2022

Kalamazoo: Brevia on Bishops and the Secular Clergy

For the fourth year in a row, we propose a lightning-round panel that gives up to 10 scholars ca. 3 minutes each to present a current research idea. The audience and session participants will then respond with suggestions about where to take the ideas. This panel aims to foster research in its very early stages and to generate paper proposals for the International Congress in 2023. Submit title and a short description of work-in-progress by Sept. 7 to Evan A. Gatti (egatti@elon.edu). This session is classified as a roundtable event

Kalamazoo: Cusanus and Ecclesiology [Co-sponsored with American Cusanus Society]

The late medieval humanist Nicholas of Cusa wavered between support for general councils against papal authority before moving cautiously but not completely to a nuanced papalist position. This panel will explore the development of Cusan’s careful ecclesiology from his period as a diocesan bishop to papal advisor. Special attention will be paid to the influences on him that impacted the changes in his thinking based on theoretical considerations but also political and practical implications in the context of the mid-fifteenth century recovery of papal authority after the conclusion of the Great Western Schism. Submit abstracts by Sept. 7 to Christopher Bellitto (cbellitt@kean.edu). Please note that the topic need NOT be Cusanus or limited to the 15th c.

Kalamazoo: Mendicant Friars and the Secular Church: Controversy, Coexistence, Collaboration [Co-sponsored with Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure Univ.]

From c. 1215 onward, the Latin church had two parallel structures for reaching the laity, the seculars and the mendicants. As the latter exploded in numbers and popularity, the two became rivals, sometimes espousing radically different agendas for reform and concepts of the nature of the church itself. From time to time, this broke into open conflict. But the two could often co-operate, as when a parish priest invited a friar to preach, or even overlap, as when a friar was elected to the episcopate. Papers are invited that address the nature of these complex relationships. Submit abstracts by Sept. 7 to William H. Campbell, (whc7@pitt.edu).

Leeds: “Becoming the Bishop: Examinations of Episcopal Self-Fashioning” [Co-Sponsored by Episcopus and the PSALM Network]

This session will explore the many ways that medieval bishops responded to local, regional, and institutional influences in order to create effective, individualized identities. While the office of the medieval bishop outlines certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities, how one managed those rights, privileges, and responsibilities varies greatly. At times, this variation was in response to local needs, conflicts, or traditions, but in other cases, the actions of a bishop seemed to point towards ambition, piety, or some other notable characteristic of a historical individual. By examining how a bishop defined himself within and beyond the office, we gain a better understanding of which aspects of a historical bishop are defined by the legacy of the apostolic office and which might be unique to the men who occupied it. Please submit abstracts for 15 to 20-minute presentations to egatti@elon.edu by September 15, 2021.

Leeds: On the Edge: Approaching Borders and Borderlands in the Middle Ages

Papers in the session will include examinations of marginal or marginalized content as well as methodological models that encourage us to shift or reframe, the notion of the Middle Ages. The space on either side of a border, borderlands, is a place of boundary formation and transgression, of dynamic mixing and interaction, of the exercise of and resistance to power. We welcome papers that embrace the complexity of borderlands in the middle ages, the people who lived in them, and the objects created by them. Please submit abstracts for 15 to 20-minute presentations to egatti@elon.edu by September 15, 2021. Note that papers proposed for this session do NOT have to deal explicitly with bishops or the secular clergy.

CFP Annual Symposium On Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Hosted by St. Louis University, 20-22 June 2022, in St. Louis, MO, USA. This is a physical, in-person conference. Episcopus is excited to offer the following session at the upcoming Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies, hosted by St. Louis University, 20-22 June 2022, in St. Louis, MO, USA. This is a physical, in-person conference. Please submit a paper title, abstract, along with your name, brief biography to the session organizer, Benjamin Wand (benjamin.wand@slu.edu) by December 31, 2021.

Clergy in their Communities: Charisma, Compassion, Conflict

From the village priest to metropolitan bishop, secular clergy were often at the center of their communities. Or were they? To what extent were clergy acting as spiritual guides, and how did their guidance impact their relationships with others? What role - social, pastoral, judicial, political, or other - did individual clergy prioritize in their own parish or diocese? To which social groups did clergy owe allegiance to, and how did they prioritize these allegiances? How did their judicial, economic, and political concerns impact their place in their parish, communities, or dioceses?

As spiritual guides, political actors, and members of families and social groups, secular clergy interacted with, managed, and often represented, members of their communities. These interactions were layered with expectations which impacted relationships, stemming from the often complex role clergy played in society.

This session hopes to examine the variety of ways secular clergy throughout Europe interacted with their families, friends, and communities, along with the tensions, expectations, and contexts accompanying such interactions. Furthermore, it hopes to illuminate the strategies and mechanisms clergy used to manage their relationships, conduct pastoral care, or accomplish secular aims. Papers should address roles, interactions, kinship, social bonds, expectations, along with cultural or other views of these relationships, from late antiquity through the early modern period. Studies utilizing geographic or chronological comparisons are encouraged.

Conference Information can be found at www.smrs-slu.org

Episcopus at ICMS/Kalamazoo in 2021

S352 / Friday, May 14, 1:00 p.m. EDT

Brevia on Bishops and the Secular Clergy

For the third year in a row, we propose a lightning-round panel that gives up to 10 scholars ca. 3 minutes each–strictly enforced!–to present informally a current research idea. The audience and session participants will then respond with suggestions about where to take the ideas. This panel, modeled initially on similar successful sessions at the American Historical Association and aims to foster research in its very early stages and to generate paper proposals for the International Congress in 2022.

This year’s Brevia will include presentations by:

Friday, May 14, 11:00 (EDT) / Business Meeting / All Welcome!

S442 / Saturday, May 15, 3:00 p.m. EDT

The Preaching of Bishops and Secular Clergy Clerics

Michael Thomas Martin: Dissemination of Knowledge through Pastoral Theology in the Carolingian Period (750–950 CE)

William H. Campbell: “Prelatus, more boni phisici, nunc purgat, nunc ungat”: An Episcopal Preacher’s Vademecum from Late Thirteenth-Century England

Andrew Reeves: The Episcopal Household and Preaching in Thirteenth-Century England