Local Priests and their Siblings c. 900–c. 1100

Abstract

Abstract Priests’ relationships with their brothers and sisters are richly evidenced in tenth- and eleventh-century documentary sources across the Latin West. But the looming shadow of the ‘Gregorian Reform’ has focused historians’ attentions on clerical marriage and vertical familial relationships ( fathers and sons, or uncles and nephews ). This article redresses the balance, arguing that sibling relationships have been underestimated in their importance to the lived experience of local priests, their families and communities in the tenth and eleventh centuries in post-Carolingian western Francia. It examines how priests and their brothers and sisters managed estates, co-operated to pool resources, and developed inheritance strategies with particular emphasis on how such records may reflect both practice on the ground and the concerns of the scribes, draftsmen and archivists who recorded, copied and edited them.