Telling Tales: Clerics, Concubines, and an Inquisitor in Late Medieval Ferrara: A Primary Source Study

Telling Tales explores the lived experiences of Christian women, parish clerics, and church officials in Italy during the later Middle Ages through one previously unpublished historical source - a register prepared in 1421/1422 for a Dominican inquisitor in the northern Italian city of Ferrara that includes interrogations about the lives, work, and domestic arrangements of otherwise-obscure women.

The book provides both a translation of the source from the original Latin and a critical examination of its content from two distinct analytical perspectives. Cossar and Brown also illuminate the workings of an inquisitorial investigation, with details about how the inquisitor gathered information and worked both with, and against, other local authorities.

Telling Tales invites readers to explore the tools of the historian’s craft, illustrating how different analytical approaches to the same historical source can yield rich - and sometimes contradictory - conclusions.

Roisin Cossar is a professor of history at the University of Manitoba. Jason Aaron Brown is a research fellow at St. Paul’s College, University of Manitoba.