Franciscan inquisition and mendicant rivalry in mid-thirteenth-century Marseille

Although Dominicans are more widely studied as the work force behind medieval inquisitions, Franciscan friars began to act as inquisitors of heretical depravity within Provence and elsewhere by the mid-thirteenth century. In this article, the testimony of a Marseille priest, Master Durand, found in the Archives Départementales de Vaucluse Cordeliers d'Avignon 24 H 3, reveals much about the period of political intrigue within the commune of Marseille when the order of Friars Minor first assumed control of the inquisition within the county of Provence. The testimony exposes the tensions between members of the Dominican convent at Marseille and the Franciscan inquisitors as the Franciscans sought to establish themselves as heresy inquisitors in the region and as both mendicant orders sought to retain the approval of the count of Provence, Charles I of Anjou.     

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Between 1491 and 1520 the Abbey of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, France, suffered two major assaults on its community of nuns. First, armed troops compromised the election of Abbess Jeanne de Couhé and occupied the abbey for months as her rivals contested her claim to the position. Second, Jeanne's successor, her niece Marie Berland, was removed from office under threat of violence and replaced by a candidate selected by the king of France. These two shocking disputes demonstrate the growing power of the French monarchy over religious institutions, the dangerous strength of family connections to – and family politicking in – the monastery and the influence of the fifteenth-century monastic-reform movement on shifting control over institutions for religious women.     

Prouille,Madrid, Rome: the evolution of the earliest Dominican Instituta for nuns

The lifestyles of the three earliest Dominican women's communities were formulated according to their specific historical conditions and exigencies during the years 1206–21. Initially, the women associated with the preaching mission of Diego of Osma and Dominic Guzman were based at Prouille in the Languedoc and followed the Augustinian Rule. The development of the first instituta for Dominican nuns was the result of 15 years of overseeing the lives of the sisters. However, enclosure, and the institutional requirement for its observance, only came about in 1220 with the establishment of San Sisto, when St Dominic wrote an instituta specifically intended for a cloistered nunnery. This paper retraces and elucidates the historical development of the first Dominican instituta for women, and considers the remarkable choice of the Augustinian Rule as the basis for an enclosed women's order.     

The Preacher Facing a Reluctant Audience According to the Testimony of Exempla

Abstract

In spite of the fact that from a theological point of view disobedience can sometimes be positive, in the preachers’ sermons to the people (ad populum), disobedience is always a strongly condemned sin. We focus on the sermones vulgares of Jacques de Vitry and on collections of exempla. In order to analyse the forms of reluctance and contestation to the norms proclaimed by the sermons, we evaluate the steps of this resistance ranging from lack of attention and disrespect to criticism and even hostility. Nevertheless, sometimes one must recognize that it is the preacher’s incompetence that leads to the failure of his pastoral care, for example when the preacher prepares unclear sermons (like Jacques de Vitry when he was a beginner) or is unable to tell a story or to make himself heard. It is even worse when the preacher conveys bad opinions. However, the biggest trouble comes when inattentive and disrespectful listeners are able to interrupt the preacher to contest any inconsistencies in the sermon or mistakes in the doctrine. When the sermon has no effect on the audience, it has clearly failed to get its message across. The preacher can also face competition from singers, jugglers and dancers who can distract the audience from the sermon.     

Foreigners under U.S. Occupation in the Caribbean

This article investigates the experiences of third-country diplomats, private citizens, and subjects during U.S. occupations in the Caribbean, specifically in Haiti (1915–34) and the Dominican Republic (1916–24). It asks how their treatment by occupation forces and others might have affected the occupations and finds that they did so negatively. Although important differences marked the experiences of white Europeans - Germans, Spaniards, French, and British - members of all groups suffered in some ways from U.S. occupation and led many to grow disenchanted and even join in negative public denunciations. In the case of the French and British, this anti-occupation sentiment contradicted their governments’ official stance. Non-whites and non-Europeans - Haitians in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Ricans, Syrians, and West Indians - were far greater in number and suffered largely because of their race. Even in the rare case where the metropole presented their case before Washington, non-white victims of abuse could not obtain justice. The overall frustrations of foreigners eventually turned many against U.S. occupations in the Caribbean.     

Embodied negotiations: identity,space and livelihood after trade zones in the Dominican Republic

In this article, I analyze socio-spatial processes of subject-making at the center of the restructuring of export industries. To do so, I develop the concept of ‘embodied negotiations’ to explain the spatial and corporeal experience of trade zone workers reproduced as migrants with the collapse of garment exports in the Dominican Republic. Drawing on ethnographic research, I examine ‘rural return’ as both a livelihood strategy and a discourse shaped by inter-related gender and racial ideologies of labor as well as the uneven transnationalization of rural and urban localities. I show how the negotiation of social position by subjects marked by race, gender and class is always also a negotiation of spatial position in and between localities structured through raced, gendered and class relations. Men's efforts to remain in urban areas as a form of social ‘whitening’ are compared to women's resistance to rural return as an attempt to stay in circulation as paid labor. Overall, I argue that feminist research on global production should be ‘spatialized’ by attending to livelihoods and practices of subject-making that emerge in parallel to export restructuring.     

Prouille,Madrid, Rome: the evolution of the earliest Dominican Instituta for nuns

The lifestyles of the three earliest Dominican women's communities were formulated according to their specific historical conditions and exigencies during the years 1206–21. Initially, the women associated with the preaching mission of Diego of Osma and Dominic Guzman were based at Prouille in the Languedoc and followed the Augustinian Rule. The development of the first instituta for Dominican nuns was the result of 15 years of overseeing the lives of the sisters. However, enclosure, and the institutional requirement for its observance, only came about in 1220 with the establishment of San Sisto, when St Dominic wrote an instituta specifically intended for a cloistered nunnery. This paper retraces and elucidates the historical development of the first Dominican instituta for women, and considers the remarkable choice of the Augustinian Rule as the basis for an enclosed women's order.     

The Rich,the Powerful and the Endangered: Conservation Elites,Networks and the Dominican Republic

Abstract: This paper explores conservation as an elite process in the Dominican Republic. It begins by showing how conservation at a global level is an elite process, driven by a small powerful elite. Looking at the Dominican Republic, it demonstrates how the extraordinary levels of protection have been achieved by a small network of well connected individuals, who have been able to shape conservation as they like, while limiting the involvement by the large international conservation NGOs who are considered so dominant throughout Latin America. Despite this, conservation both globally and in the Dominican Republic is shown to share similar political structures and the same lack of critique of capitalism or its environmental impacts.     

Transforming the landscape: Cistercian nuns and the environment in the medieval Low Countries

This article investigates the extent to which women’s monastic communities intervened in the natural landscape of the southern Low Countries in the Middle Ages, irrevocably transforming the environment in their efforts to support their communities. Focusing on the county of Flanders in particular, it contributes to an expanding historiography that traces the impact of human intervention on the natural world in the pre-modern period. Simultaneously, it offers a glimpse into a world where religious women worked alongside their male counterparts, challenging past notions about how gender shaped monasticism in the Middle Ages. While scholars have often noted the role of monastic communities in reclamation activities, this article makes a unique contribution by inserting Cistercian nuns into the narrative, ultimately producing a more inclusive and more accurate understanding of monastic experience in the Middle Ages.