Bronach C. Kane, Popular Memory and Gender in Medieval England: Men, Women, and Testimony in the Church Courts, c.1200–1500. Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2019. Pp. vii, 301. $99.00 hardcover (ISBN 9781783273522).

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-603
Author(s):  
Emily J. Hutchison
Keyword(s):  
Medieval England ◽  
Church Courts ◽  
Popular Memory ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Church

The Bishops and the Deposition of Edward II

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 131-151
Author(s):  
Samuel Lane
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Legal Aspect ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

The deposition of Edward II was a watershed in the legal history of later medieval England. However, the significance of the church in its accomplishment has remained controversial. This article offers a reassessment by providing a brief narrative of the episcopate's involvement in events; analysing the importance of their contribution, with particular reference to the quasi-legal aspect of proceedings; considering whether this participation reflected their own initiative or was something about which they had no choice; and questioning why so many bishops turned to oppose Edward II. It becomes evident that prelates played a key part in Edward II's downfall, and that they became involved as a consequence of the oppressive treatment which he had meted out to them, to their families and to political society more broadly.

scholarly journals A Body of Authority: Reorienting Gender and Power in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Phillip Goodwin
Keyword(s):  
Feedback Loop ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Gender Performativity ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Spatial Logics

The 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich’s theology, dissolving gender binaries and incorporating medieval constructs of the female into the Trinity, captivates scholars across rhetorical, literary, and religious studies. A “pioneering feminist”, as Cheryll Glenn dubs her, scholarship attempts to account for the ways in which Julian’s theology circumvented the religious authority of male clerics. Some speculate that Julian’s authority arises from a sophisticated construction of audience (Wright). Others situate Julian in established traditions and structures of the Church, suggesting that she revised a mode of Augustinian mysticism (Chandler), or positing that her intelligence and Biblical knowledge indicate that she received religious training (Colledge and Walsh). Drawing from theories on space and gender performativity, this essay argues that Julian’s gendered body is the generative site of her authority. Bodies are articulated by spatial logics of power (Shome). Material environments discipline bodies and, in a kind of feedback loop, gendered performance (re)produces power in time and space. Spaces, though, are always becoming and never fixed (Chavez). An examination of how Julian reorients hierarchies and relations among power, space, and her body provides a hermeneutic for recognizing how gender is structured by our own material cultures and provides possibilities for developing practices that revise relations and create new agencies.

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