HAIG Lecture

Michelle Herder, assistant professor of history, will give a lecture on April 14th titled “Serving in the Cloister: Work and Discipline in Late Medieval Monasteries.” Christian monastic rules typically call for time to be divided among prayer, study, and work. Late medieval practice, however, diverged substantially from this ideal. This presentation of work-in-progress will examine evidence for the presence of paid servants and even slaves at women’s monasteries in medieval Spain. What did these slaves and servants do? Why were they so often involved in disciplinary problems? This seldom studied group of people helps to illustrate the existence of competing ideas about the religious life in the later Middle Ages.