Local Priests and their communities in the early middle ages. An edition of handbooks of priests

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Steffen Patzold
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 395205352

Between the 8th and the 11th century, rural church-organisation changed fundamentally in central and western Europe. It saw the development of the parish, a new institution that was to shape local social practice until deep into the modern age. However, little is know about this transformation. In the past century, research has attempted to approach it with concepts such as the „Eigenkirche“ (Stutz), respectively the „église privée“ (Lesne), but both of these have now been recognised as too limited and even misleading. However, an alternative approach has not been developed so far. Recent research has, moreover, demonstrated that local priests acted as intermediaries between court-connected elites and local communities, which made them into important protagonists of Carolingian „correctio“. Their social profiles, economic potential, education and knowledge has been hardly studied, even though various case-studies show that there are rich sources to inform us about such matters. Additionally, there is a substantial corpus of extant manuscripts once used by local priests, either during their education or as handbooks, which has been barely explored at all. This project, therefore, has three goals. (1) First of all, it aims to analyse the institutionalisation of the local church in order to develop alternatives for the concepts of „Eigenkirche“ and „église privée“. (2) Secondly, it wishes to explore the social, economic and juridical profiles of local priests in various regions of the Carolingian world. (3) Thirdly, the manuscripts for ninth-century local priests will be opened up and explored as an important new corpus of primary sources. The results of this project will have significant consequences for our image of not just the Carolingian world, but also of the so-called „Gregorian reform“ of the eleventh century. The applicant is currently preparing a book which will achieve goals (1) and (2); for this research, he is funded by an „Opus-Magnum“-grant of the Volkswagen-Stiftung. To achieve goal (3) we are applying here for the funding of a Post-Doc (65 %) for two years, to prepare an online-edition of three important 9th century handbooks for priests.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants