The MSCA has developed the field of medieval masculinity, gender studies, and the history of the papacy in a number of ways. The series of international workshops brought together leading experts and early-career researchers in the fields of Gender History, Women’s History, and Masculinity Studies to re-orient questions on the construction of medieval masculinities in considerations of gendered inequalities in power and the monopolisation of professional offices by men in the Middle Ages. The researcher is seeking to edit a special issue of a journal and will invite the participants in this workshop to publish their contributions. The articles have paved the way forward for the application of methodologies and conceptual approaches drawn from the History of Emotions to papal documents in order to trace how medieval popes used emotions to communicate (an exclusively masculine) authority, and to make visible gendered inequalities that are often difficult to trace in official writing. The articles and conference presentations in particular have, more broadly, demonstrated the value and importance of treating the papacy as a gendered office, a line of enquiry which has thus far been absent in medieval masculinity studies.
Impacts anticipated from the MSCA are: a more widespread understanding of the importance of the deep history of gendered relations, emotions in political communication, and of how men’s emotions are policed, performed, and read; enhanced public and academic perception of medieval history as a field which can make important contributions to the understanding of gendered inequalities; and sustained dialogues between early-career and established historians interested in masculine hegemony.
