Women more likely to be incriminated in a medieval inquisition : results from a Dynamic Network Actor Model on data from the Bologna inquisition register, 1291–1310
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In medieval North-Central Italy, multiple institutions obstructed women. Females were placed under constant wardship of men, their learning opportunities were limited and were mostly excluded from guilds (Herlihy, 1995:15). Females were also not allowed to preach (Benedetti, 2005; Brenon, 1998) and were almost totally barred from public affairs (Herlihy, 1995:16). However, women were active in the day-to-day supervision of the household and predominant in the mystical and charismatic orthodox religious life (Herlihy, 1995:32). Some scholars (Brenon, 1998; Kienzle & Walker, 1998; Orioli, 1975) have suggested that some dissident religious cultures (e.g. Apostles and Cathars) were more gender-egalitarian than the orthodox majority. However, the gradual exclusion of women in Languedoc Catharism from leading roles is also documented (Abels & Harrison, 1979). The inquisition aimed at eradicating Apostles and Cathars. Inquisitors applied pressure to obtain incriminating testimonies against specific individuals as the legal theory emphasized individual responsibility (Heimann, 2004; Hill, 2019). Consequently, the documentation from inquisition registers provides relational information of incrimination. While inquisition registers do not offer an independent account of the real network of dissident relations (Bedell, 1999; Zbíral & Shaw, 2022), we assume that the gender-based incrimination patterns of incriminations reflect gender relations in these dissident religious cultures. |
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