Historical blog on the relationship between the secular and the religious in medieval Western Christianityhttp://turbulentpriests.group.shef.ac.uk/about-this-blog/This blog is the home for a new research project that I’m now working on, called ‘Turbulent priests: the problem of royal jurisdiction over the religious, 743-1215′....
At various times and in different ways across the Latin West during this period, many clerics of different status refused to attend certain kinds of court. Historians often talk about this as the privilegium fori, or ‘privilege of clergy’. The extent and nature of this privilege was seldom clear, even to those claiming it.
I want to use the debates and disputes that ensued to understand better how the boundaries between the secular and the religious were negotiated in the European Middle Ages. (Almost all these concepts – secular, religious, European, Middle Ages – are problematic in one way or another. That is of course all part of the fun!)....
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