The Drive for Purity Workshop, part of International Project

'The Drive for Purity', the final workshop part of the international project 'Rethinking Reform 900-1150', led and organised by Professor Julia Barrow and Dr Ceri Pitches, will be held in Mainz.

'The Drive for Purity', the final workshop part of the international project 'Rethinking Reform 900-1150', led and organised by Professor Julia Barrow and Dr Ceri Pitches, will be held in Mainz.

'The Drive for Purity' workshop is part of a larger international project, titled 'Rethinking Reform 900-1150: Conceptualising Change in Medieval Religious Institutions', funded by the Leverhulme Trust. This project brings together medieval and modernist scholars in an informal environment from across Europe, to discuss how changes in medieval churches were understood and explained in their own day and how they have been reinterpreted in post-Reformation and especially post-Napoleonic historical writing. 

The project is coordinated by the University of Leeds, with partners from the University of East Anglia (UEA), University of Paris VIII, University of Mainz, KU (Catholic University) Leuven, Ghent University, and Durham University. Previous workshops were held in January 2017 (York), September 2017 (KU Leuven), and April 2018 (Leeds). These workshops gave scholars the change to reflect on the choice of vocabulary used to define changes between the early Middle Ages and the twelfth century and also the ways in which medieval institutions and individuals created narratives of change. 

Julia Barrow, Professor in Medieval Studies (University of Leeds), is the Principal Investigator of this project, and Ceri Pitches is the Network Facilitator (University of Leeds). 

A final conference bringing the themes of the project together and concluding the discussions will be held at Ghent University in May 2019.