El monopoli de la paraula: cura d'ànimes, educació i fe pública a la parròquia de Santa Maria de Piera, durant la Baixa Edat Mitjana

Abstract

Using largely unpublished documentation, this article studies the spiritual, educational, and notarial control exercized by the parish of an expanding, late-medieval Catalan town (Santa Maria de Piera, in the bishopric of Barcelona). These three related áreas of control are viewed as the basic mechanisms that allowed the local church to maintain a monopoly of the word. It was this monopoly that, even in the face of a changing society, enabled the local church efficiently to maintain its directing role in spiritual guidance and in mediating cultural and moral ideals.