Professor Frances Andrews, of the School of History, will deliver her Inaugural Lecture ‘Building Trust in the Italian Middle Ages’ in School III, St Salvator’s Quadrangle on Wednesday, 15 February 2012 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.
Professor Andrews’ research centres on the history of Italy and on religious, social and urban history in the middle ages more widely. She is currently working on relations between men of the church and the booming cities of the later middle ages. Driven in part by a search for modernity, historians long viewed these interactions as fundamentally hostile, but much recent work has tended instead to emphasise harmony, portraying the Italian cities as single, living, religious entities. The lecture will test some of the implications of this shift, focusing on ideas and practices of trust. 