Julia Barrow is Professor Emerita of Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds, and former Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies at Leeds. She has published extensively on medieval church history, ecclesiastical charters and administration, and the so-called Benedictine reform period of the ninth through twelfth centuries. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. In 2018 she appeared on the University of Leeds Women of Achievement Roll of Honour.

The bond between parents and children was the one that mattered most for young people in the middle ages, but uncles and aunts mattered too, especially the former, who might be more powerful than the fathers of their nieces and nephews. For many clerical and monastic careers, the assistance of uncles and aunts was invaluable and became semi-institutionalised during the period from about 800 onwards. This paper will explore the types of influence uncles and aunts could wield. It will focus on examples from narrative and charter evidence from France, England and Germany but will build in wider comparisons.