Dr Danica Summerlin
Department of History
Senior Lecturer in Medieval History
Exams and Unfair Means Officer
+44 114 22 22560
Full contact details
Department of History
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I joined the department of History in 2016. Prior to that, I studied at the universities of Durham and Cambridge. I then spent 4 years as a wandering post-doc, split between two years in Munich at the Stephan Kuttner Institute for Medieval Canon Law and the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, thanks to the Leverhulme Trust’s Study Abroad programme, and two years at University College, London, as a British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow in their Department of History.
- Research interests
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I research the history of Europe in the central middle ages, around 1000 to 1300. Most of my work focusses on the history of the institutional church - i.e. the papacy & its actors - and the development and use of law. As a result, my main field of research is in ecclesiastiastical, or canon, law, although I’ve been known to go down many related rabbit-holes. Alongside that, I have a passing interest in manuscripts and their creation, and a more long-lasting one in the social and institutional aspects of religious and legal history, particularly focussed on the role of meetings, councils, and assemblies in medieval life.
My monograph, focussing on the creation, transmission and reception of the canons a particular church council held in 1179, was published by Cambridge University Press, and I co-edited a collection on the use of canon law in administration with Melodie H. Eichbauer of Florida Gulf Coast University, published by Brill in 2019. Both of these engage with the question of how law and legal ideas spread and functioned in the medieval world, and investigate the relationship between the people and institutions which created laws and those which copied, used, and employed them.
I’m now considering the wider repercussions of a large-scale rethink of our ideas around the experience of law through a project on legal jurisdictions and work on ideas of 'new law' in the late-twelfth century, and plan to return to my interest in councils & assemblies, and the practice of power in the twelfth-century church. I'm also increasingly interested in digital humanities: I’m one of the three leaders of an international project revamping the Clavis Canonum, a key database for the study of medieval canonical collections available online via the Monumenta Germaniae Historica at http://www.mgh.de/ext/clavis/, alongside colleagues at the MGH and at the University of Bamberg.
- Publications
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Books
- The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179, their origins and reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Introduction. BRILL.
Edited books
Journal articles
- Order in the Court: Medieval Procedural Treatises in Translation. By Bruce C. Brasington. Brill. 2016. xxviii + 329pp. €140.00.. History, 103(354), 129-131.
- III . The reception and authority of conciliar canons in the later-twelfth century: Alexander III’s 1179 Lateran canons and their manuscript context. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung, 100(1), 112-131.
- Three Manuscripts Containing the Canons of the 1179 Lateran Council. Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, new series, 30, 22-43.
- Three Manuscripts Containing the Canons of the 1179 Lateran Council. Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, 30(1), 21-43.
Chapters
- Using the 'Old Law' in twelfth-century decretal collections In Rolker C (Ed.), New Discourses in Medieval Canon Law Research: challenging the master narrative (pp. 145-169). Leiden: Brill. View this article in WRRO
- Using the ‘Old Law’ in Twelfth-Century Decretal Collections, New Discourses in Medieval Canon Law Research (pp. 145-169). BRILL
- USE OF THE CANONS, CA. 1179-CA. 1191, CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179: THEIR ORIGINS AND RECEPTION (pp. 183-240).
- THE DISSEMINATION OF THE 1179 CANONS, CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179: THEIR ORIGINS AND RECEPTION (pp. 125-182).
- THE CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179 Their Origins and Reception INTRODUCTION, CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179: THEIR ORIGINS AND RECEPTION (pp. 1-+).
- THE CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179 Their Origins and Reception CONCLUSIONS, CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179: THEIR ORIGINS AND RECEPTION (pp. 241-248).
- THE 1179 CANONS AND THE SCHOOLS, CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179: THEIR ORIGINS AND RECEPTION (pp. 94-124).
- MANUSCRIPT LISTING OF THE 1179 CANONS, CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179: THEIR ORIGINS AND RECEPTION (pp. 249-260).
- HISTORICAL SURVEY, CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179: THEIR ORIGINS AND RECEPTION (pp. 11-43).
- DISPUTES, DECRETALS, AND THE 1179 CONCILIAR CANONS, CANONS OF THE THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL OF 1179: THEIR ORIGINS AND RECEPTION (pp. 44-93).
- Hubert Walter's Council of Westminster of 1200 and its use of Alexander III's 1179 Lateran Council In Summerlin DJ & Eichbauer MH (Ed.), The Use of Canon Law in Ecclesiastical Administration, 1000-1234 (pp. 121-139). Turnhout: Brill. View this article in WRRO
- Papal Councils in the High Middle Ages, A Companion to the Medieval Papacy (pp. 174-196). BRILL
- Using the canons of the 1179 Lateran Council In Drossbach G & Carmassi P (Ed.), Rechtshandschriften des deutschen Mittelalters. Produktionsorte und Importwege. (pp. 245-260). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
- Henry II (pp. 1-2). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Conference proceedings papers
- Lateran Council IV (Rome, November 23-29, 2015). Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, Vol. 25 (pp 482-487)
- The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179, their origins and reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Research group
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Research supervision
I am happy to supervise students with interests in the central Middle Ages, but particularly those interested in the legal, religious, and political history of Europe.
- Current Students
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Secondary Supervisor
- Teaching interests
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My teaching focuses on medieval history and the medieval church, with a Level 2 Document Option focussing on the life and legacy of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who, having been murdered in 1170, became a saint 3 years later, and a special subject on religion and politics in the twelfth-century Mediterranean.
- Teaching activities
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Undergraduate
- HST116 - Empire: from the ancient world to the Middle Ages
- HST120 - History Workshop
- HST2041 - Murder in the Cathedral. The Becket Affair
- HST31009/10 - Popes, Caliphs, Emperors, 1095-1229
Postgraduate
- HST6067 - Church, Life, and Law in the Central Middle Ages
- HST6601 - Approaching the Middle Ages
- Professional activities and memberships
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Higher Education Academy, Fellow
Previous administrative roles
Past administrative roles have included a brief stint as schools liaison and two years as a Level Tutor for Level 3 students.
- Public engagement
I have featured on Radio 4's programme In Our Time, speaking on Thomas Becket.