Why read Clothing the Clergy?

Book cover of Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, C. 800 1200

Book description

After initial ambivalence about distinctive garb for its ministers, early Christianity developed both liturgical garments and visible markers of clerical status outside church. From the ninth century, moreover, new converts to the faith beyond the Alps developed a highly ornate style of liturgical attire; church vestments were made of precious…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Clothing the Clergy as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

R.I. Moore

Author

By exploring how their sumptuous ritual vestments were designed, manufactured, and cared for, Maureen Miller shines powerful new light on the key social transformation of the European middle ages - how the clergy emerged as a distinct and dominant order of society in the eleventh and twelfth centuries - and how the process was shaped by their essential, intimate and contradictory relationships with the women who discharged these tasks.

From R.I.'s list on the real Middle Ages.