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Upcoming Lecture on Saints, Wives, and Prostitutes

The University of Tennessee Center for the Study of War & Society and the Department of History present an event with:

Lydia Walker

On Thursday, February 15, 2017 (Thurs.) at 2:30p.m. in the UT Humanities Center, Melrose Hall Room E102 (1st Floor Seminar Room) will present a lecture on the topic:

“Saints, Wives, and Prostitutes: The Role of Women in Thirteenth-Century Crusade Propaganda”

Lydia Walker is a Ph.D. candidate working on her dissertation entitled, “Ad sanctos ultimi temporis: Lay Spirituality, Crusading, and Reform in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry,” under the direction of Jay Rubenstein. Through investigating Jacques’s rich body of work, her dissertation seeks to link the scholarly conversations between gender and crusade, and offer a more comprehensive analysis of Jacques’s still largely unedited sermon collection. Lydia spent the 2016-2017 year as a Fulbright scholar in Belgium examining the manuscripts of Jacques’s sermons.

About the Talk: When Pope Innocent III ordered men and women alike to support the crusade through liturgical, financial, and penitential activity, the crusade preacher and Bishop of Acre, Jacques de Vitry, responded by outlining the practical sacrifices and moral purity of the whole community as essential preparations for the Fifth Crusade. This paper examines women’s varied participation in this crusading endeavor, and demonstrates how Jacques de Vitry articulated a significant place for women in the otherwise masculinized world of crusade.