Telling Tales explores the lived experiences of Christian women, parish clerics, and church officials in Italy during the later Middle Ages through one previously unpublished historical source – a register prepared in 1421/1422 for a Dominican inquisitor in the northern Italian city of Ferrara that includes interrogations about the lives, work, and domestic arrangements of otherwise-obscure women.
The book provides both a translation of the source from the original Latin and a critical examination of its content from two distinct analytical perspectives. Cossar and Brown also illuminate the workings of an inquisitorial investigation, with details about how the inquisitor gathered information and worked both with, and against, other local authorities.
Telling Tales invites readers to explore the tools of the historian's craft, illustrating how different analytical approaches to the same historical source can yield rich – and sometimes contradictory – conclusions.
Preface
i. Theoretical Approaches
ii. Ferrara: Historical Background
iii. The Environmental History of Ferrara: Land and Water
iv. Christian Spaces and Authority
v. Clerical Celibacy
vi. How to Use This Book
Translator’s Introduction
i. Publishing Historical Texts
ii. This Edition: Documentary Presentation of the Latin Text
iii. The Translation and Its Challenges
iv. Working with Historical Documents: a Plea
v. Bibliography
English Translation
Part 1: Beginnings: Context and Content
1. Overall View
2. The Inquisition and the Inquisitor’s Team
3. The Sections of the Register
4. The Record as Object and Artifact
Part 2: Churches and Clergy in Ferrara
5. Church History
6. Clerical Titles
7. Ecclesiastical Space in the Register
8. Churches Outside Ferrara
9. The Meetings with Clerics
Part 3: Reading Along the Grain: Concubines, Servants, and the Inquisitor
10. The Interrogations
11. The Capitula
12. Personal Questions
13. Punishments
14. The Inquisitor’s Court: Punishment and Mercy
Part 4: Reading against the Grain: the Women
15. Older Women
16. Life with a Cleric: Work, Sex, Emotions
17. Family and Friends
18. Religious Culture
19. After 1422
Conclusion: What Really Happened?
Glossary of Terms
Height:229
Width:152
Spine:25
Weight:1.00