Recent history amply demonstrates the importance of religious belief as a fundamental historical force. In studying early medieval Europe, we see how crucial it has been in the creation of our identity today, underlying our belief systems, cultural assumptions and core values. To understand medieval society, it is essential to understand medieval monasticism, and crucial to include a key player like Italy. This research project aimed at providing a comparative and interdisciplinary study of Italian female monasteries from 700 to 1100, in an integrated and broad-sweeping perspective associating history, archaeology, anthropology and art history. It approached the study of Italian religious women as a laboratory for exploring the complex relationship between gender and power in European history. Before 1100, monasticism was not today’s individualistic contemplative lifestyle, but an motor of political, economic, social and cultural life, as well as a spiritual choice. While men had the choice of exercising power and influence directly as rulers, soldiers, bishops, lawyers or merchants, women exercised authority indirectly, as queens or abbesses. Understanding the tensions between early medieval Italian society’s male-controlled political and religious power, and the considerable influence of noblewomen as nuns, on account of their religious status in charge of securing the salvation of their whole family, is essential for grasping women’s ideological and spiritual power in Italy, and their influence in society. Italian royal or aristocratic monasteries have sources detailing the names, background and activities of nuns. These sources, wideranging in time and space, are representative of the political and ethnic composition of Italian society, and enable us to trace changes in Italian politics, society and culture. This study focuses on the five best documented female monasteries across the Italian territory: S. Salvatore (Brescia), S. Sofia (Benevento), S. Zaccaria (Venice), S. Andrea (Ravenna) and S. Ciriaco (Rome). The project’s first objective was to consider the parallels and contrasts between nunneries in various geographical, and therefore ethnically and politically different areas, to explain the evolution of Italy from a set of separate political, ethnic and cultural entities before 750, into one moulded by Carolingian policy into a streamlined cultural and religious entity. Studying these five representative monasteries together allows one to see whether they functioned in a different way across centuries and across the extent of Italy. An analysis of gender constituted the second major objective. Understanding the influence of a group of women issued from high-ranking political families seemed essential for our perception of the manifestations of their political, ideological and spiritual power. The power of nuns, many related to the ruling elites of Italian society, is crucial, and our understanding of the configurations of political power is enriched by a gendered reading of religious, landed and commemorative politics. Such a study of the key mechanisms concerning the relationship between women, religious belief and behaviour, and politics and society can, through comprehending these in the past, illuminate key aspects of modern European societies.
