Moral Economy and Ecclesiastical Office. Discourses about Simony in the Early Middle Ages (600-1050)

• Applicant: Dr. Lioba Geis
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 417677359

The project is concerned with early medieval discourses of simony in the Frankish kingdom and its succeeding realms as well as in Italy. Simony is understood here as a monetary payment, as the acceptance of money or more generally as a gift in the sense of an intentional material influence on a concrete clerical official act. The objective of the project is the multidimensional analysis of the contemporary perception, interpretation and overcoming of simonistic actions based on a wide range of source material (canon and secular law, letters, hagiography and historiography, theological literature, poems) and a comprehensive methodical fundament (discourse analysis, historical corruption research, reflections on perception and social knowledge, moral economy and gift-giving theory). An essential factor for the analysis is the evaluation of the diverging terminological paraphrases used by the sources for simonistic actions. It helps not only to reflect the linguistic usage of the time, but also to identify the specific contexts in which simonistic acts were suspected or else supposedly or actually committed by contemporaries. The persons involved in simony, their motivation and the degree of their self-reflection are examined as well as the evaluation of the corresponding actions by those contemporaries who were not actively involved. Hereby it can be verified in which cases simony was understood as an incriminating offence or as socially accepted behaviour. An analysis of the interrelations between simony and other forms which are generally subsumed under the term 'corruption' makes it possible to introduce new perspectives on the topic and to analyse the contemporary discourses of simony in a more holistic manner than in previous research studies. Particular attention is paid to the discourses of simony in canon and secular law texts by considering not only the normative statements about simony but also the importance of this phenomenon within the arrangement of the law collections. This perspective serves to reveal the awareness of problems relating to simony which can be identified in the legal texts. Finally, the project focuses on an analysis, of how and to which grade of intensity early medieval thinking about simony influenced and changed contemporary efforts to reform the church and society as well as the contemporary concept of the clerical office. Thus the project closes a research gap in the field of medieval studies and proves to be highly compatible with current research fields due to the reorientation of the topic in terms of method and content.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants