Fields of Expertise:
Medieval Europe, 300-1450;
ecclesiastical and urban history of northern France and Flanders (eleventh and twelfth centuries);
hagiography and the cult of saints; social and religious minorities, religious dissent, authority; medieval Iberia.
John Ott is the author of Bishops, Authority and Community in Northwestern Europe, c.1050-1150 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2015), and, with Anna Trumbore Jones, of The Medieval Clergy, 800-1250: A Sourcebook (Toronto: PIMS, 2024). He is also the editor, with Anna Trumbore Jones, of The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007); with Trpimir Vedris, of Saintly Bishops and Bishops' Saints (Hagiotheca, 2012); and with Radislaw Kotecki and Jacek Maciejewski of Between Sword and Prayer: Warfare and Clergy in Cultural Perspective (Leiden, 2017), and has authored various articles on bishops, canon law, and episcopal office in eleventh- and twelfth-century northern France. He is currently at work on two projects: a monograph on ecclesiastical reform in the archdiocese of Reims and a study of the Collectio Sinemuriensis, a handbook of canon law from around 1100.
Courses taught:
- HST 300, Historical Imagination
- HST 354U, Early Medieval Europe, 300-1150
- HST 355U, Late Medieval Europe, 1100-1450
- HST 356U, Renaissance and Reformation Europe, 1400-1600
- HST 453/553, The Medieval City
- HST 454/554, Topics in Medieval History: The Holy Dead: Saints, Relics, and Society in Medieval Europe
- HST 454/554, Topics in Medieval History: Holy War in the Middle Ages: Christian and Muslim Perspectives
- HST 492/592, Seminar: Lords and Lordship in Western Europe, 950-1250
- HST 492/592, Seminar: The Medieval Church and Reform
- HST 492/592, Seminar: Medieval Iberia