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CONNECTED CLERICS. BUILDING A UNIVERSAL CHURCH IN THE LATE ANTIQUE WEST (380-604 CE)

Objective

In 380 CE, the Emperor Theodosius (d. 395) ordered all Roman subjects to follow Catholic Christianity and limited imperial patronage to the Catholic Church. Theodosius was the last ruler to reign over a united empire. At his death the realm was divided into two halves, and by the end of Gregory the Great’s papacy (d. 604), a mosaic of independent kingdoms had replaced the western part of the empire. Yet despite the political division, during this period western clerics built a supra-regional ecclesiastical structure with substantial levels of hierarchy and cohesion.

Up to the 1950s historians have largely conceived of these ecclesiastical institutions as organizations with widely accepted power. More recent scholarship, however, has revealed the social origin and fallibility of clerical authority. Nonetheless, this move away from the study of institutions has left unanswered the fundamental questions of how a ‘universal’ church was built at a time of political fragmentation, and how the transition from informal mutual aid to more formal hierarchical structures of law- and policy-making came about.

With innovative methods of social inquiry we can offer new answers to these historiographical questions. Our project (CONNEC) will use social network analysis and new institutional theory to trace four processes: how clerical networks adapted to the new secular contexts, how these interactions shaped the development of ecclesiastical law, how clerics constructed and disseminated discourses that supported different structures of the church, and how networks fostered compliance and a sense of accountability among clerics. CONNEC’s use of state-of-the-art methods will be enhanced by the implementation of cutting-edge digital technologies, adapting network analysis software for late antique sources. By bringing together digital tools with qualitative textual analysis, CONNEC will provide a more nuanced understanding of a key process of world history.

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Topic(s)

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ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2017-STG

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Host institution

ROYAL HOLLOWAY AND BEDFORD NEW COLLEGE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 333 336,00
Address
EGHAM HILL UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
TW20 0EX EGHAM
United Kingdom

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Region
South East (England) Surrey, East and West Sussex West Surrey
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 333 336,00

Beneficiaries (2)

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