Construction of a relational database of recluses and its development by the Research Computing team at the University of St Andrews, which is now partially open source on our website and will continue to expand. To create this database and the accompanying monograph, the plan of work outlined in the application was adopted, as follows:
1. Examination of published Italian sources, many of which provided numerous new references;
2. Examination of unpublished sources from 55 archives (State, Communal and Ecclesiastical). Consultations with archivists and historians in Southern Italy and further research in printed sources and unpublished theses demonstrated that there is no extant evidence of recluses in Bari, Brindisi, Foggia, Taranto, Trani, Matera; Calabria, or Sicily;
3. Selection of sample cities taking into account different institutional and political realities: Benevento, Bergamo, Bologna, Chieri, Ivrea, Naples, Rome, Perugia, Pisa, Savona, Venice and hinterland, Viterbo;
4. indexing of data provided by the documents identified using the relational database;
5. the planned quantification of evidence was not feasible because the data is insufficiently coherent to allow useful analysis in quantitative terms. Nonetheless the qualitative analysis was very significant with numerous new findings;
6. analytical study of the peculiarities of reclusion in different Italian urban contexts and comparative evaluation of the data obtained;
7. contextualisation with analysis of cases in other European countries;
8. development of analytical case studies selected to investigate the role of recluses.
The results of the project are articulated as follows:
A) A relational database with the following information for each record of a recluse:
Details of the archive, notary, recluse / religious person, legal parties / witnesses / patrons.
B) A monograph summarising the key findings, structured in 6 chapters (subject to peer review by the publisher): 1) Introduction, Historiographical Survey and discussion of the sources 2) Recluses seen by others 3) Living as a recluse 4) Isolated from the World? 5) Voices from the cell 6) From the cell to the monastery.
The main findings are
1. That recluses were present across the whole peninsula of Italy, in cities, villages and the countryside. Most blanks on the map are the result of the loss of medieval documentation.
2. The cell of a recluse was not a 'tomb' but rather a place of exchange, encounters and meetings, in each of the political and social contexts investigated. It was a place where the recluse could both act with juridical and financial autonomy and serve as a voice in the social and religious life of the community.
3. The status of reclusion was legitimate and authorised and included people of high socio-economic standing. Although at the end of the thirteenth century, in the wake of papal restrictions (Supra Montem, Periculoso) bishops tended to regulate all forms of religious life, the status of reclusion remained legitimate, half way between that of a penitent and a monastic. Where it occurred, the enclosure of recluses in monastic communities was not imposed by ecclesiastical authorities, but rather the result of choices made by recluses who wanted a more predictable form of life, with a more stable financial and social structure.
4. The growth in the numbers of recluses in the central middle ages cannot be explained only in terms of social history, but is also connected to the revival of lay penance and the 'birth' of purgatory in these centuries.
5. Reclusion does not seem to fit the model of 'civic religion' but rather, was characteristic of 'urban religion'.
C) Proceeding of two workshop on 'Rethinking voluntary reclusion in Medieval Europe. New sources and New questions', to be published in Quaderni di Storia Religiosa Medievale (Il Mulino), 2 volumes (June and December 2021).
volume 1: Sources and Questions: Liturgy; Hagiographical Sources; Diocesan Constitutions; Statutes; Necrologies; Cistercians and recluses; Widowhood, Terminology.
volume 2: Case studies: Naples and the South; Rome and Lazio; The Patriarchate of Aquileia; Venice; Verona; Bergamo; Dalmatia and Istria; Portugal; the German Region; England.
Dissemination
As well as the publications and website listed above and two international academic workshops, one in St Andrews and one in Rome-Viterbo, the project was presented in the following ways:
2 Public talks: Università Antonianum, Rome, 2018; City Festival, Viterbo 2018;
6 Conference papers and seminars: Cortona, ‘Frate Elia, the laity and lay associations’ (2018); St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies February 2018 and May 2019; the New College Conference, Sarasota 2018; the Leeds Medieval Congress 2019; Certaldo, ‘Centenary of Giulia of Certaldo’ 2019.
2 classes for Masters students at St Andrews on medieval reclusion and sources.
