Conference | KU Leuven | 11 -12 September 2025
Canonical Life in Western Europe in the Long Tenth Century: Reforms, Identities and Intellectual Networks (Late Ninth Century – c. 1050)
Call for Papers, deadline – 20 December 2024
Traditionally, the history of canonical life in the Middle Ages is narrated through two foundational periods of reform. On the one hand there are the Carolingian reforms, which resulted in the composition of the Institutio canonicorum Aquisgranensis (816) as a rule of conduct for canons. On the other hand there is the broad canonical reform movement of the second half of the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth century, which led to the emergence of a new type of canons, the canons ‘regular’, who inspired their way of life on the Rule of Saint Augustine. Past research has been heavily focused on these two reform moments, whereas canonical life during the intervening period – from the late ninth century until c. 1050 – has been largely underexposed. Although current scholarship does begin to pay attention to the long tenth century, a general overview of canonical life is as yet lacking, and the traditional opinion of a period of decline between two vibrant reforms is still prevalent. Recent scholarship on reforms in monastic milieus prior to the eleventh-century Church Reform has convincingly demonstrated that the image of decline in the preceding period is largely the result of the rhetoric of the eleventh-century reformers. There are reasons to believe that this is also the case for the ordo canonicus and that the ardent eleventh-century innovators deliberately portrayed canonical life in the preceding period in dark colours, without paying attention to prior attempts to improve the quality of religious life.
The aim of this conference is to shed light on the nature of canonical life in the long tenth century so as to challenge the paradigm of decline still persistent in scholarship on post-Carolingian canons. We welcome papers on the following topics: 1) reforms or transformative processes in canonical milieus and/or initiatives taken to guarantee the quality of canonical life in particular communities; 2) the search for canonical identities and/or tensions between the vita canonica and the vita monastica; 3) the procuring, diffusing and use of normative texts in canonical communities; 4) the representation of canonical life in hagiographical and narrative sources; 5) the participation of canonical communities in intellectual networks: the mobility of persons, objects and ideas or the interactions between religious communities.
We invite paper proposals (max. 400 words) in English or French, accompanied by a (provisional) title and a short biobibliographical note. Proposals should be submitted by December 20, 2024 via email to brigitte.meijns@kuleuven.be and lene.tenhaaf@kuleuven.be.
Applicants will be notified in January 2025. Accepted papers will be awarded a 30-minute slot (20 min. presentation + 10 min. for discussion). Afterwards, these papers can be submitted for a peer-reviewed publication.
This conference is organized by Brigitte Meijns (KU Leuven), Anne Massoni (Université de Limoges), Gert Partoens (KU Leuven), Matthieu Pignot (Université de Namur / KBR) and Lene ten Haaf (KU Leuven).
Image: Wiki Commons – CC 3.0