ABSTRACT
To invoke Caroline Walker Bynum's influential collection of essays Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion at the outset of an article on the movement and meaning of cathedral revenues in eleventh-century Arezzo may seem odd, if not actively inappropriate. Few subjects, therefore, may seem more remote from the themes and questions explored by Bynum's work than contemporary understandings of the effects of property ownership on the life of a medieval Italian church. The essay explores the "spirituality of the institutional body" as it was imagined in one specific time, place, and text: a "history" of the cathedral canons and custodians of Arezzo in the late eleventh century. A tale of corruption and conflict, the formation of petty lordships, and failed experiments in ecclesiastical management, it is also a detailed and appreciative portrait of the vital role of "administrative spirituality" in negotiating conflict, securing peace, and re-establishing public piety.
