Land and cult: society and radical religion in the diocese of Milan, c.990-1130

Thesis

This thesis asks how cities changed the world, by conducting a close study of urban change in Milan during the long eleventh-century. The growth of the city both transformed and responded to religion and the rural landscape around it. The radicalism of social change in this period is above all reflected by the emergence of the popular movement for religious reform known as the Pataria. Between 1057 and 1075 this social campaign against simony and clerical marriage revolted against episcopal authority, and the kinship groups which stood behind it. In size and radicalism, the social movement had no parallel in contemporary Europe. In order to account for the extent of social and religious change in eleventh century Milan, this thesis engage with both the historiography of socio-economic change, and contemporary religious reform. Chapter 1 characterises the political and religious institutions which shaped Milan in this period. Chapter 2 studies how property relations and land management changed under the pressure of urban growth, underlining the precocious extension of city market relations from the 1050s in the north-east of the diocese. These rural changes enabled rapidly expanding growth and complexity in the city, mapped using a range of evidence in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 offers a new social account of the origins of the Pataria, which foregrounds the transformation of social relations in the north-east of the diocese especially. Chapters 5 and 6 explore how saints' cults and urban ritual and liturgy were crucial to the reproduction of authority in an evermore complex urban environment, and how for this reason these structures were contested by the Pataria.

Authors: Norrie, J

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Subjects: Middle Ages