ÌǹûÅɶÔ

People gossip. It is a social activity that reinforces group cohesion and shared norms. However, it can also result in slander and rumors that damage a person's reputation and status since such talk informs public opinion. Ultimately, rumors can cause "cancellation" - i.e., public reprimand, exclusion, or even a legal sentence - whether justly or not. This cancellation further finds its legitimacy in public opinion. But public opinion is an ill-defined and highly manipulable construct. In medieval Europe, a person was defined by his/her fama. Fama encompasses reputation, memory, "what people know," and "it meant public opinion, idle talk, rumor as well as fame" (Fenster & Smail, Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, p. 2). Accordingly, it had a direct relation to a person's political and legal status. From c.1200, rumors and fama acquired validity as legal evidence in medieval Europe due to the Papacy's efforts to find and fight heretics. Soon, however, popes, bishops, and kings alike realized that they could also be used to discipline unruly officials and subjects. A culmination occurred in 1302 when the French king Philip IV indicted Pope Boniface VIII for heresy based on rumors and a "public opinion" aimed at undermining the pope's fama.

FMD aims to investigate the impact of fama, rumors, and public opinion on politics and upper-level society in medieval Denmark, c. 1240-1340. In this time period, the kingdom experienced political upheaval resulting in power struggles, rebellion, and conspiracies. Specifically, parts of the Danish church sought to establish itself as a "state-within-the-state." Simultaneously, the kings aggressively expanded royal prerogatives and power. In the historiography, this struggle is known as Kirkekampen (the Church Struggle). FMD hypothesizes that fama played a crucial role in the power struggles of the Danish elite as parties sought to construct and weaponize rumors to influence public opinion to make and unmake people's fama.

But fama was not confined to elite power struggles. In the 13th century, it penetrated all aspects of society as fama underwent a process of legal institutionalization. Fama became law. Thus, FMD seeks to investigate the role played by rumors, their impact on a person's fama, and how they informed and constructed public opinion. This directly influenced political and legal proceedings in a formative period of Danish history.

Since the role of fama, rumors, and reputation in medieval Denmark has never been studied, this project is a pioneering one. However, internationally, especially in France, the topic has been studied extensively. Accordingly, the FMD will base its theoretical and methodological approach on the avenues proposed by these historical studies. They emphasize semantics and how fama and public opinion were used in constructing repressive centralized power and legal practice. While groundbreaking, this research focuses on fama-cases as aspects of elite power struggles. But as both medieval evidence and contemporary MeToo cases show, rumors can also be mobilized to undo the position and fama of superiors. Hence, historical and sociological studies of fama's close relatives - gossip, rumors, reputation and public opinion - will also be employed to understand how talk e.g. rumors, generates fama and public opinion and functions as a more neutral social phenomenon.

Thus, FMD employs an interdisciplinary approach by combining historical research, legal studies, and sociology.

The source material consists of charters, royal decrees, court processes, the Provincial laws, the town laws, and finally chronicles and annals. These are all published; many online. Charters are searchable online in the Diplomatarium Danicum. This permits a comprehensive semantic approach to the sources, which entails a search in the sources for Latin words related to fama (including antonyms) e.g., rumor, opinio publica, reputatio, infamia etc. (approximately 50 words) to identify clusters of fama-cases. A preliminary investigation revealed a cluster of approximately 90 cases. They will be subject to a reading of the full correspondence in their historical context. This reveals the role of fama semantics and their strategic employment in legal and political cases. The law sources show how rumor and reputation became a legal reality and the jurisprudence of talk. The chronicles and annals from Danish monasteries reveal what was talked about in non-governmental/non-legal, but highly politicized, written sources. Hence, they are an indicator of significant events generating fama, "talk of the town," and public opinion.

FMD consists of three interlocked subprojects that study fama in medieval Denmark from three angles:

• Subproject 1: Fama, the King and the Politics of Talk (c. 1240-1340) carried out by Principal Investigator Thomas Heebøll-Holm
• Subproject 2: Fama and the Legalization of Public Opinion (c. 1240-1340) To be conducted by a postdoc
• Subproject 3: Fama and Public Opinion in Kirkekampen (1245-1302) carried out by PhD-fellow Emma Lindgaard Smed