Rachel Stone
King's College London, History, Post-Doc
- I am a librarian at the University of Bedfordshire and also an honorary Research Associate at King's College London. ... moreI am a librarian at the University of Bedfordshire and also an honorary Research Associate at King's College London. My main research interests are Carolingian religion, gender and women's history.edit
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1. Introduction - Rachel Stone 2. The bearing of Hincmar's life on his historical writing - Janet L. Nelson 3. To fight with words: the case of Hincmar of Laon in the Annals of St. Bertin - Christine Kleinjung 4. An unfortunate... more
1. Introduction - Rachel Stone 2. The bearing of Hincmar's life on his historical writing - Janet L. Nelson 3. To fight with words: the case of Hincmar of Laon in the Annals of St. Bertin - Christine Kleinjung 4. An unfortunate necessity? Hincmar and Lothar I - Elina Screen 5. 'We are between the hammer and the anvil': Hincmar in the crisis of 875 - Clementine Bernard-Valette 6. Hincmar's influence during Louis the Stammerer's reign - Margaret McCarthy 7. Hincmar and his Roman legal sources - Simon Corcoran 8. 'Hincmar et la loi' revisited: on Hincmar's use of capitularies - Philippe Depreux 9. The bishop and the law, according to Hincmar's Life of Saint Remigius - Marie-Celine Isaia 10. Family order and kingship according to Hincmar - Sylvie Joye 11. 'The praetor does concern himself with trifles': Hincmar, the polyptych of St-Remi of Rheims and the slaves of Courtisols - Josiane Barbier 12. Hincmar's parish priests - Charles West 13. Heresy in the flesh: Gottschalk of Orbais and the predestination controversy in the archdiocese of Rheims - Matthew Bryan Gillis 14. Hincmar, priests and Pseudo-Isidore. The case of Trising in context - Mayke de Jong Bibliography of primary sources Select bibliography of secondary literature Index
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Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages. Edited by P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis. [Gender in the Middle Ages, Vol. 9.] (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 2013. Pp. x, 214. $99.00.... more
Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages. Edited by P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis. [Gender in the Middle Ages, Vol. 9.] (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 2013. Pp. x, 214. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-84383-863-0.)This work is the result of the conference on "Religious Men in the Middle Ages," which took place at the University of Huddersfield in July 2012. The editors, P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis, are to be commended for so quickly producing a fine set of essays and bringing them to publication. The various chapters of the work seek to advance our understanding of the Herrenfrage, or the idea that the concept of masculinity was undergoing rapid changes during and after the period of the Gregorian reforms, especially in relation to more stringent insistence on clerical celibacy. This book is particularly good in demonstrating the vitality of male clerical and monastic forms of life into the Middle Ages and helps to redress what perhaps had been an overemphasis of medieval female religiosity over the last twenty-five years.Cullum and Lewis provide an exceptionally helpful introduction wherein they situate the current state of scholarship regarding male religiosity as it relates to gender. This is a very useful tool, which will enable students and scholars to understand the emphases and directions of contemporary study. Indeed, nearly all the contributors include useful historiographical discussions at the beginnings of their papers-something of broad usefulness to the reader, especially when the research becomes very specialized.Although this is fundamentally a book about Christian Europe and the various experiences of maleness within the context of clerical and religious life, the first chapter by Michael Satlow discusses gender as it relates to Torah study among European rabbis. This provides a foil for the rest of the work, with its interesting description of how values relating to masculine aggression became transposed into academic study of the Torah and religious argumentation. Rachel Stone follows with an exposition of Hincmar of Rheims and his understanding of masculinity. She usefully explores both his ideal theory and the reality he confronted, closing with the interesting notion that clerical masculinity was defined in relation to other men, rather than in opposition to femininity. Jennifer Thibodeaux provides a fascinating glimpse into anticelibacy critics in the period following the Gregorians. She carefully details how much of the struggle was focused on control of the male body. …
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In the year 811, the emperor Charlemagne wanted to ask some of the most influential religious men in Francia a few difficult questions.* These included his demand that bishops and abbots should ‘reveal truthfully to us what to leave the... more
In the year 811, the emperor Charlemagne wanted to ask some of the most influential religious men in Francia a few difficult questions.* These included his demand that bishops and abbots should ‘reveal truthfully to us what to leave the world means, when it is said about them. Or in what way can those who have left the world be distinguished from those who still follow the world; whether it is only that they do not bear arms nor are publicly married?’1 This question comes from the second of two overlapping texts, which are preparations for an upcoming assembly.2 In the first, the ‘Capitula tractanda cum comitibus, episcopis et abbatibus’, Charlemagne calls for a discussion of particularly wide-ranging moral and religious questions by both religious and laymen.3 Why, he wants to know, are there such frequent disputes between men? What does a Christian renounce in baptism? How ought canons to behave?4 At one point he even demands an inquiry into ‘whether we are really Christians?’5 In the second text, the ‘Capitula de causis cum episcopis et abbatibus tractandis’, probably a series of further thoughts, he poses questions specifically for the bishops and abbots, particularly about the concept of leaving the world.6
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Catholic Historical Review, forthcoming Spring 2014.
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The article examines minor clerics ( clerici ) in Carolingian texts. Comparing episcopal capitularies from Italy and Francia suggests that clerici played a more prominent role in Italian church life. An analysis of charters from the... more
The article examines minor clerics ( clerici ) in Carolingian texts. Comparing episcopal capitularies from Italy and Francia suggests that clerici played a more prominent role in Italian church life. An analysis of charters from the monastery of Monte Amiata reveals a high proportion of clerici . They appear as a rurally-based group, with varying levels of education, but of some local social standing, and were often mature men with children. The prevalence of such clerici may be related to the northern Italian structure of pievi , and the opportunities these provided for mixed patterns of father-son and uncle-nephew inheritance of church office. The blurring of the lay/clerical divide by such clerici may have particularly worried eleventh-century church reformers coming to Italy from other regions of Western Europe.
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Around the middle of the eighth century near Langres, in eastern France, a crime passionelle allegedly took place. The wife of Gangulf, a Burgundian noble, began an affair with a cleric, but her husband discovered their wrongdoing. The... more
Around the middle of the eighth century near Langres, in eastern France, a crime passionelle allegedly took place. The wife of Gangulf, a Burgundian noble, began an affair with a cleric, but her husband discovered their wrongdoing. The cleric then murdered Gangulf. What is unusual is how we know about this story: Gangulf, a cuckold and a murder victim, became a saint.1 The church of Melun received relics from him at its foundation in 809 and St-Pierre de Varennes was rededicated to him by 870.2 Several versions of his life were composed: the first surviving one dates from the end of the ninth or early tenth century, and over 60 copies of this text survive.3 His cult became widespread in Lorraine and Germany. In the second half of the tenth century Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, author of a number of religious poems and plays, composed one on Gangulf; a collection of Gangulf’s posthumous miracles was also written at Liege in the eleventh century.4 Although Gangulf’s fame continued for centuries, however, I want to focus on the first vita (the written ‘life’) and its implications for our understanding of masculinity in the Carolingian empire, the vast area (eventually stretching from the Pyrenees to Croatia) ruled by Charlemagne and his successors between 768 and the end of the ninth century.5
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This collection of essays focuses attention on how medieval gender intersects with other categories of difference, particularly religion and ethnicity. It treats the period c.800-1500, with a particular focus on the era of the Gregorian... more
This collection of essays focuses attention on how medieval gender intersects with other categories of difference, particularly religion and ethnicity. It treats the period c.800-1500, with a particular focus on the era of the Gregorian reform movement, the First Crusade, and its linked attacks on Jews at home.
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Some recent interpretations of the early medieval Latin poem Waltharius have seen it as offering a clerical critique of warrior culture. While the poem is difficult to date accurately, it seems more likely to belong to the ninth than the... more
Some recent interpretations of the early medieval Latin poem Waltharius have seen it as offering a clerical critique of warrior culture. While the poem is difficult to date accurately, it seems more likely to belong to the ninth than the tenth century. When the poem is analysed in the context of contemporary Frankish works providing moral instruction to lay noblemen, its attitudes towards pride, wealth and warfare can be shown to lie within the mainstream of Carolingian reformers' thought. The notoriously bloody ending to the poem is also best seen as emphasizing Walter's successful heroism rather than undermining it.
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‘Raptus’, the abduction of women in order to marry them, was seen as a serious problem in Carolingian Francia. This article examines the only Frankish text that provides a theological justification for condemning raptus, Hincmar of... more
‘Raptus’, the abduction of women in order to marry them, was seen as a serious problem in Carolingian Francia. This article examines the only Frankish text that provides a theological justification for condemning raptus, Hincmar of Rheims's De coercendo et exstirpando raptu viduarum, puellarum ac sanctimonialium. It shows the difficulties that Hincmar found in providing a coherent theological argument against a practice normally condemned for its social and familial disruption. In particular, it suggests that Hincmar was worried that laymen, who had been encouraged by Carolingian reformers to study the Bible, might use Old Testament precedents to justify raptus.
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Paper presented at ‘Verbis et Exemplis: Queens, Abbesses and Other Female Rulers in Comparison, 800-1200’, London, April 2018
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Paper presented at 'The Sacral and the Secular: Early Medieval Political Theology', Cambridge, June 2018
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Paper presented at International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2015
Paper presented at International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2015
Paper presented at International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2017
Presented at International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2017
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Talk at Medieval Studies in the Digital Age seminar, University of Leeds, February 2015
Talk at Medieval Studies in the Digital Age seminar, University of Leeds, February 2015
Talk given at Buckinghamshire Historical Association, January 2018
Talk given at Buckinghamshire Historical Association, January 2018
Can we write a history of patriarchy: slides from paper given to RIMAP seminar, University of Bedfordshire, February 2019
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Can we write a history of patriarchy: paper given to RIMAP seminar, University of Bedfordshire, February 2019