Pippin Michelli wrote:
>....since the monasteries held the territory to which local jurisdictional
claims were linked, promoting themselves was (ideally)
promoting the kin-groups which sponsored them - of course there were
disputes and attacks, but the monasteries were not stand-alone entities.
Their abbots were high-status people in their own right, even princes, like
the founding saints whose "successor" they called themselves.
I've been engaged in trying to document such a simple, common-sensical
scenerio for the region in and around Chartres in the 11-13th cc. for quite
some time, using the (one would think) reasonably ample charter evidence which
survives to try and--first--sort out who the players (abbots, dignataries,
monks, canons, donors, whatever) were, to which families they belonged, who
belonged to what "kin-groups" (I like that term: being civilized folk, the
French of course didn't have "tribes")
and what *those* connections were;
and--second--see if I can discern any particular patterns suggested by known
"jurisdictional claims" and congruent "kin-group promotion."
Helas, without much sucess, so far.
An heckofa lot more difficult to prove such a seemingly obvious state of
affairs than a young fellow would have thought, just venturing out on suchlike
a modest quest.
Am I just slow, or is the surviving narrative and/or charter evidence so much
more fecund for (I assume you are talking about) pre-conquest Ireland?
Or both?
Best from here,
Christopher
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