Raiding Saint Peter: Empty Sees, Violence, and the Initiation of the Great Western Schism (1378)
Year: 2008
Type: book
Abstract: Throughout the European Middle Ages, the death of high-ranking prelates was usually interwoven with violent practices. During Empty Sees, mobs ransacked bishops' and popes' properties to loot their movable goods. Eventually, in the later Middle Ages, they also plundered the goods of newly-elected popes, and the cells of the Conclave. This book follows and analyzes the history of this violence, using a methodology akin to cultural anthropology, with concepts such as liminal periodization. It contends that pillaging was attached to ecclesiastical interregna, and the nature of ecclesiastical elections contributed to a pillaging 'problem.' This approach allows for a fresh reading and re-contextualization of one of the greatest political crises of the later Middle Ages, the Great Western Schism.
Source: BRILL eBooks
Author: Joelle Rollo-Koster
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W104846197