The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread to discuss Medieval Demography, Economies and Societies



"Medieval demography is the study of human demography in Europe and the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages. It is an estimate of the number of people who were alive during the Medieval period, population trends, life expectancy, family structure, and related issues. In many ways, demography was one of the most crucial factors of historical change throughout the Middle Ages.

The population of Europe was stable at a low level in the Early Middle Ages, boomed during the High Middle Ages, reached a stable peak from about 1250-1350, then a number of calamities caused a steep decline, the nature of which historians have debated. Population levels then slowly expanded, gaining momentum in the early 16th century.

The science of medieval demography relies on various lines of evidence, such as administrative records, wills and other types of records, archaeological field data, economic data, and written histories. Because the data are often incomplete and/or ambiguous, there can be significant disagreement among medieval demographers.

Source: Wikipedia

Topics Include:

Demographic History of Europe

1 Demographic history of Europe
 1.1 Late Antiquity
 1.2 Early Middle Ages
 1.3 High Middle Ages
 1.3.1 England
 1.3.2 France
 1.3.3 Italy
 1.4 Late Middle Ages
2 카지노싸이트 and art of medieval demography
3 Also
 Historical demography
 Classical demography
 Early modern demography
 Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
 Dark Ages (historiography)
 Life expectancy
 List of famines
 List of disasters
 Little Ice Age
 Medieval household
 Migration Period
 Mongol Empire
 Slavery in medieval Europe
 Wheeled plow or Carruca
 3.1 Major Writers on Medieval Demography
 Karl Julius Beloch
 Michael Postan
 Josiah Cox Russell

The peasants preparing the fields for the winter with a harrow and sowing for the winter grain, from the The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry, c.1410 - Public Domain

Please make sure when adding books that you are recommending that you add both the book's cover and the photo or link to the author. This helps populate the site properly.

The Fontana Economic History of Europe - Volume I

by Carlo M. Cipolla (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Fontana Economic History of Europe is the first comprehensive survey of the subject to makes its original appearance in paperback.

The plan of the work, besides giving full weight to such traditional aspects of the subject as population, agriculture, trade, technology and finance, allows for teh treatment of topics too often neglected

The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change

by Robert C. Bartlett (no photo)

Synopsis:

From our twentieth-century perspective, we tend to think of the Europe of the past as a colonizer, a series of empires that conquered lands beyond their borders and forced European cultural values on other peoples. This provocative book shows that Europe in the Middle Ages was as much a product of a process of conquest and colonization as it was later a colonizer.From our twentieth-century perspective, we tend to think of the Europe of the past as a colonizer, a series of empires that conquered lands beyond their borders and forced European cultural values on other peoples. This provocative book shows that Europe in the Middle Ages was as much a product of a process of conquest and colonization as it was later a colonizer.

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

by John Kelly (no photo)

Synopsis:

La moria grandissima began its terrible journey across the European and Asian continents in 1347, leaving unimaginable devastation in its wake. Five years later, twenty-five million people were dead, felled by the scourge that would come to be called the Black Death. The Great Mortality is the extraordinary epic account of the worst natural disaster in European history -- a drama of courage, cowardice, misery, madness, and sacrifice that brilliantly illuminates humankind's darkest days when an old world ended and a new world was born.

José Luís Pinto wrote: "The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

[bookcover:The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Pl..."

I read this book a couple of years ago and was surprised that the Black Death even reached Greenland. I was especially taken by the last chapter in which the author posits different theories about exactly what the plague was....bubonic, pneumonic, or a disease of which we have no information. He leaned toward bubonic since some of the existing literature of the time talked about the swellings (or bubos) that appeared on the skin of the victim.

In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made

by Norman F. Cantor

Synopsis:

Ring around the rosies,
A pocketful of posies,
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down.

—"Ring Around the Rosies," a children's rhyme about the Black Death

The Black Death was the fourteenth century's equivalent of a nuclear war. It wiped out one-third of Europe's population, taking some 20 million lives. And yet, most of what we know about it is wrong. The details of the Plague etched in the minds of terrified schoolchildren—the hideous black welts, the high fever, and the awful end by respiratory failure—are more or less accurate. But what the Plague really was and how it made history remain shrouded in a haze of myths.

Now, Norman Cantor, the premier historian of the Middle Ages, draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and groundbreaking historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death as a gripping, intimate narrative.

Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541-750

by Lester K. Little (no photo)

Synopsis

Plague was a key factor in the waning of Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Eight centuries before the Black Death, a pandemic of plague engulfed the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and eventually extended as far east as Persia and as far north as the British Isles. Its persisted sporadically from 541 to 750, the same period that witnessed the distinctive shaping of the Byzantine Empire, a new prominence of the Roman papacy and of monasticism, the beginnings of Islam and the meteoric expansion of the Arabic Empire, the ascent of the Carolingian dynasty in Frankish Gaul and, not coincidentally, the beginnings of a positive work ethic in the Latin West. In this volume, the first on the subject, twelve scholars from a variety of disciplines history, archaeology, epidemiology, and molecular biology have produced a comprehensive account of the pandemic's origins, spread, and mortality, as well as its economic, social, political, and religious effects. The historians examine written sources in a range of languages, including Arabic, Syriac, Greek, Latin, and Old Irish. Archaeologists analyze burial pits, abandoned villages, and aborted building projects. The epidemiologists use the written sources to track the disease s means and speed of transmission, the mix of vulnerability and resistance it encountered, and the patterns of reappearence over time. Finally, molecular biologists, newcomers to this kind of investigation, have become pioneers of paleopathology, seeking ways to identity pathogens in human remains from the remote past."

Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe

by William Rosen

Synopsis:

A richly told story of the collision between nature’s smallest organism and history’s mightiest empire

The Emperor Justinian reunified Rome’s fractured empire by defeating the Goths and Vandals who had separated Italy, Spain, and North Africa from imperial rule. In his capital at Constantinople he built the world’s most beautiful building, married its most powerful empress, and wrote its most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome’s fortunes for the next five hundred years. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic plague killed five thousand people a day in Constantinople and nearly killed Justinian himself.

In Justinian’s Flea, William Rosen tells the story of history’s first pandemic — a plague seven centuries before the Black Death that killed tens of millions, devastated the empires of Persia and Rome, left a path of victims from Ireland to Iraq, and opened the way for the armies of Islam. Weaving together evolutionary microbiology, economics, military strategy, ecology, and ancient and modern medicine, Rosen offers a sweeping narrative of one of the great hinge moments in history, one that will appeal to readers of John Kelly’s The Great Mortality, John Barry’s The Great Influenza, and Jared Diamond’s Collapse.

by Jared Diamond

by John M. Barry

by John Kelly (no photo)

Thanks Jose - good job with the citations

An interesting take on how the climate affected the way history developed.

The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History

by Brian M. Fagan

Synopsis:

The Little Ice Age tells the story of the turbulent, unpredictable, and often very cold years of modern European history, how this altered climate affected historical events, and what it means for today's global warming. Building on research that has only recently confirmed that the world endured a 500year cold snap, renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan shows how the increasing cold influenced familiar events from Norse exploration to the settlement of North America to the Industrial Revolution. This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in history, climate, and how they interact.

The Domesday Book

by Elizabeth Hallam (no photo)

Synopsis:

This book challenges the orthodox views of William I's great census of 1086, to give an intriguing story of the origins of England’s greatest historical record, as well as new insights into its contents.

Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade

by Henri Pirenne

Synopsis:

Nearly a century after it was first published in 1925, "Medieval Cities" remains one of the most provocative works of medieval history ever written. Here, Henri Pirenne argues that it was not the invasion of the Germanic tribes that destroyed the civilization of antiquity, but rather the closing of Mediterranean trade by Arab conquest in the seventh century. The consequent interruption of long-distance commerce accelerated the decline of the ancient cities of Europe. Pirenne challenges conventional wisdom by attributing the origins of medieval cities to the revival of trade, tracing their growth from the tenth century to the twelfth. He also describes the important role the middle class played in the development of the modern economic system and modern culture.

Featuring a new introduction by Michael McCormick, this Princeton Classics edition of "Medieval Cities" is essential reading for all students of medieval European history.

The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century

by William Chester Jordan (no photo)

Synopsis:

The horrors of the Great Famine (1315-1322), one of the severest catastrophes ever to strike northern Europe, lived on for centuries in the minds of Europeans who recalled tales of widespread hunger, class warfare, epidemic disease, frighteningly high mortality, and unspeakable crimes. Until now, no one has offered a perspective of what daily life was actually like throughout the entire region devastated by this crisis, nor has anyone probed far into its causes. Here, the distinguished historian William Jordan provides the first comprehensive inquiry into the Famine from Ireland to western Poland, from Scandinavia to central France and western Germany. He produces a rich cultural history of medieval community life, drawing his evidence from such sources as meteorological and agricultural records, accounts kept by monasteries providing for the needy, and documentation of military campaigns. Whereas there has been a tendency to describe the food shortages as a result of simply bad weather or else poor economic planning, Jordan sets the stage so that we see the complex interplay of social and environmental factors that caused this particular disaster and allowed it to continue for so long.

Jordan begins with a description of medieval northern Europe at its demographic peak around 1300, by which time the region had achieved a sophisticated level of economic integration. He then looks at problems that, when combined with years of inundating rains and brutal winters, gnawed away at economic stability. From animal diseases and harvest failures to volatile prices, class antagonism, and distribution breakdowns brought on by constant war, northern Europeans felt helplessly besieged by acts of an angry God--although a cessation of war and a more equitable distribution of resources might have lessened the severity of the food shortages.

Throughout Jordan interweaves vivid historical detail with a sharp analysis of why certain responses to the famine failed. He ultimately shows that while the northern European economy did recover quickly, the Great Famine ushered in a period of social instability that had serious repercussions for generations to come.

Good Jose

Before the Industrial Revolution

by Carlo M. Cipolla

Synopsis:

During the seven hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, the stage was set for Europe's transformation from a backward agrarian society to a powerful industrialized society. An economic historian of international reputation, Carlo M. Cipolla explores the process that made this transformation possible. In so doing, he sheds light not only on the economic factors but on the culture surrounding them.

Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 800 -1200

by David Wyatt (no photo)

Synopsis:

Concentrating upon the lifestyle, attitudes and motivations of the slave-holders and slave-raiders, this book explores the activities and behavioural codes of Britain and Ireland s warrior-centred societies c.800-1200 highlighting the significance of slavery for constructions of power, ethnic identity and gender.

Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages

by Ruth Mazo Karras

Synopsis:

The Middle Ages are often viewed as a repository of tradition, yet what we think of as traditional marriage was far from the only available alternative to the single state in medieval Europe. Many people lived together in long-term, quasimarital heterosexual relationships, unable to marry if one was in holy orders or if the partners were of different religions. Social norms militated against the marriage of master to slave or between individuals of very different classes, or when the couple was so poor that they could not establish an independent household. Such unions, where the protections that medieval law furnished to wives (and their children) were absent, were fraught with danger for women in particular, but they also provided a degree of flexibility and demonstrate the adaptability of social customs in the face of slowly changing religious doctrine.

Unmarriages draws on a wide range of sources from across Europe and the entire medieval millennium in order to investigate structures and relations that medieval authors and record keepers did not address directly, either in order to minimize them or because they were so common as not to be worth mentioning. Ruth Mazo Karras pays particular attention to the ways women and men experienced forms of opposite-sex union differently and to the implications for power relations between the genders. She treats legal and theological discussions that applied to all of Europe and presents a vivid series of case studies of how unions operated in specific circumstances to illustrate concretely what we can conclude, how far we can speculate, and what we can never know.

Thank you Jose - some good adds here

The Good Wife's Guide: A Medieval Household Book

by Unknown (no photo)

Synopsis:

In the closing years of the fourteenth century, an anonymous French writer compiled a book addressed to a fifteen-year-old bride, narrated in the voice of her husband, a wealthy, aging Parisian. The book was designed to teach this young wife the moral attributes, duties, and conduct befitting a woman of her station in society, in the almost certain event of her widowhood and subsequent remarriage. The work also provides a rich assembly of practical materials for the wife's use and for her household, including treatises on gardening and shopping, tips on choosing servants, directions on the medical care of horses and the training of hawks, plus menus for elaborate feasts, and more than 380 recipes.

The Good Wife's Guide is the first complete modern English translation of this important medieval text also known as Le Menagier de Paris (the Parisian household book), a work long recognized for its unique insights into the domestic life of the bourgeoisie during the later Middle Ages. The Good Wife's Guide, expertly rendered into modern English by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose, is accompanied by an informative critical introduction setting the work in its proper medieval context as a conduct manual. This edition presents the book in its entirety, as it must have existed for its earliest readers.

The Guide is now a treasure for the classroom, appealing to anyone studying medieval literature or history or considering the complex lives of medieval women. It illuminates the milieu and composition process of medieval authors and will in turn fascinate cooking or horticulture enthusiasts. The work illustrates how a (perhaps fictional) Parisian householder of the late fourteenth century might well have trained his wife so that her behavior could reflect honorably on him and enhance his reputation.

The Measure of Multitude: Population in Medieval Thought

by Peter Biller (no photo)

Synopsis:

This innovative study challenges the view that medieval thought was fundamentally abstract. He describes what medieval people 'thought' about population, studying the texts which contained their thought, and examining the medieval realities which shaped it, such as birth, birth-control, sex-ratio, marriage ages, length of life, and the population of the Holy Land.

Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation

by Paul Binski (no photo)

Synopsis:

Medieval Death is an absorbing study of the social, theological, and cultural issues involved in death and dying in Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the early sixteenth century.

Thank you Jose for all of the adds in this folder

Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted

by Susan Reynolds (no photo)

Synopsis:

Fiefs and Vassals is a book that will change our view of the medieval world. Offering a fundamental challenge to orthodox conceptions of feudalism, Susan Reynolds argues that the concepts of fiefs and vassalage that have been central to the understanding of medieval society for hundreds of years are in fact based on a misunderstanding of the primary sources.

Reynolds demonstrates convincingly that the ideas of fiefs and vassalage as currently understood, far from being the central structural elements of medieval social and economic relations, are a conceptual lens through which historians have focused the details of medieval life. This lens, according to Reynolds, distorts more than it clarifies. With the lens removed, the realities of medieval life will have the chance to appear as they really are: more various, more individual, more complex, and perhaps richer than has previously been supposed.

This is a radical new examination of social relations within the noble class and between lords and their vassals, the distillation of wide-ranging research by a leading medieval historian. It will revolutionize the way we think of the Middle Ages.

Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900-1300

by Susan Reynolds (no photo)

Synopsis:

This wide-ranging and perceptive book focuses on the collective values and activities of lay society over several centuries, from trade guilds and manor courts to the development of parliaments and the rule of feudal monarchs. It offers a new approach to the history of medieval Europe. The second edition of this important study incorporates a substantial new introduction, which amplifies the arguments of the original edition and takes account of recent research.

Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe

by Richard W. Kaeuper (no photo)

Synopsis:

This original and authoritative text reveals how chivalry was part of the problem of violence in medieval Europe, not merely its solution. The ideal was to internalize restraint in knights, but a close reading of chivalric literature shows chivalry also praised heroic violence by knights. This fascinating book lays bare the conflicts and paradoxes surrounding the concept of chivalry in medieval Europe.

A social and economic history of medieval Europe

by Gerald Hodgett (no photo)

Synopsis:

This excellent and concise summary of the social and economic history of Europe in the Middle Ages examines the changing patterns and developments in agriculture, commerce, trade, industry and transport that took place during the millennium between the fall of the Roman Empire and the discovery of the New World.

After outlining the trends in demography, prices, rent, and wages and in the patterns of settlement and cultivation, the author also summarizes the basic research done in the last twenty-five years in many aspects of the social and economic history of medieval Europe, citing French, German and Italian works as well as English.

Significantly, this study surveys the present state of discussion on a number of on unresolved issues and controversies, and in some areas suggests common sense answers. Some of the problems of economic growth, or the lack of it, are looked at in the light of current theories in sociology and economic thought.

This classic text, first published in 1972, makes a useful and interesting general introduction for students of medieval and economic history.

An Economic and Social History of Later Medieval Europe, 1000-1500

by Steven A. Epstein (no photo)

Synopsis:

This book examines the most important themes in European social and economic history from the beginning of growth around the year 1000 to the first wave of global exchange in the 1490s. These five hundred years witnessed the rise of economic systems, such as capitalism, and the social theories that would have a profound influence on the rest of the world over the next five centuries. The basic story, the human search for food, clothing, and shelter in a world of violence and scarcity, is a familiar one, and the work and daily routines of ordinary women and men are the focus of this volume. Surveying the full extent of Europe, from east to west and north to south, Steven Epstein illuminates family life, economic and social thought, war, technologies, and other major themes while giving equal attention to developments in trade, crafts, and agriculture. The great waves of famine and then plague in the fourteenth century provide the centerpiece of a book that seeks to explain the causes of Europe s uneven prosperity and its response to catastrophic levels of death. Epstein also sets social and economic developments within the context of the Christian culture and values that were common across Europe and that were in constant tension with Muslims, Jews, and dissidents within its boundaries and the great Islamic and Tartar states on its frontier.

Thank you Jose for all of the adds on these threads.

An Environmental History of Medieval Europe

by Richard C. Hoffmann (no photo)

Synopsis:

As the very first book of its kind, An Environmental History of Medieval Europe provides a highly original survey of medieval relations with the natural world. Engaging with the interdisciplinary enterprise of environmental history, it examines the way in which natural forces affected people, how people changed their surroundings, and how they thought about the world around them. Exploring key themes in medieval history including the decline of Rome, religious doctrine, and the long fourteenth century Hoffman draws fresh conclusions about enduring questions regarding agrarian economies, tenurial rights, technology and urbanization. Revealing the significance of the natural world on events previously thought of as purely human, the book explores issues including the treatment of animals, sustainability, epidemic disease and climate change, and by introducing medieval history in the context of social ecology, brings the natural world into historiography as an agent and object of history itself.

Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c.1050-1614

by Brian A. Catlos (no photo)

Synopsis:

Through crusades and expulsions, Muslim communities survived for over 500 years, thriving in medieval Europe. This comprehensive study explores how the presence of Islamic minorities transformed Europe in everything from architecture to cooking, literature to science, and served as a stimulus for Christian society to define itself. Combining a series of regional studies, Catlos compares the varied experiences of Muslims across Iberia, southern Italy, the Crusader Kingdoms and Hungary to examine those ideologies that informed their experiences, their place in society and their sense of themselves as Muslims. This is a pioneering new narrative of the history of medieval and early modern Europe from the perspective of Islamic minorities; one which is not, as we might first assume, driven by ideology, isolation and decline, but instead one in which successful communities persisted because they remained actively integrated within the larger Christian and Jewish societies in which they lived.

The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, 1000-1500

by Robert Chazan (no photo)

Synopsis:

Between the years AD 1000 and 1500, western Christendom absorbed by conquest and attracted through immigration a growing number of Jews. This community was to make a valuable contribution to rapidly developing European civilisation but was also to suffer some terrible setbacks, culminating in a series of expulsions from the more advanced westerly areas of Europe. At the same time, vigorous new branches of world Jewry emerged and a rich new Jewish cultural legacy was created. In this important new historical synthesis, Robert Chazan discusses the Jewish experience over a 500 year period across the entire continent of Europe. As well as being the story of medieval Jewry, the book simultaneously illuminates important aspects of majority life in Europe during this period. This book is essential reading for all students of medieval Jewish history and an important reference for any scholar of medieval Europe.

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

by Ian Mortimer

Synopsis:

Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the 14th century. This text sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking the reader to the Middle Ages, and showing everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture.

The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium

by Robert Lacey

Synopsis:

In the year 1000 the world was one of mystery and magicians, monks, warriors and wandering merchants - people who feared an apocalypse and people who had no idea what year it was or what lay beyond the nearest valley. It was a world of dark forests and Viking adventures in which fear was real and death a constant companion. People felt they walked hand-in-hand with God, and envisaged him so literally that even Christians were sometimes buried with supplies for the journey to the new life in heaven. Narrated through the progression of the seasons, this book presents a recreation of English life at the end of the first millennium AD.

The Liber Augustalis: Or, Constitutions of Melfi, Promulgated by the Emperor Frederick II for the Kingdom of Sicily in 1231

by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen

Synopsis:

This first translation of the Liber Augustalis from Latin into a modern language makes one of the most important sources for medieval legal and social history available to a wide audience. These constitutions reveal not merely the warp and woof of the fabric of life in the Kingdom of Sicily but also help us to understand better some of the social and political changes that affected most of Western Europe. ...In reading these laws, we have an opportunity to see, if only dimly, the way in which thirteenth-century lawyers attempted to deal with the problems of their day. We experience some of the pragmatic spirit that was the source of their originality as well as their use of the past as an anchor of security for ideas that were novel.

Thanks Jose for the updates

Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World: Illustrative Documents

by Robert Sabatino Lopez (no photo)

Synopsis:

This collection of merchant documents is essential reading for any student of economic developments in the Middle Ages who wishes to go beyond the level of textbook summaries. Different aspects of economic life in the Mediterranean world are delineated in the light of a rich variety of articles and other contemporary writings, drawn from Muslim and Christian sources. From commercial contracts, promissory notes, and judicial acts to working manuals of practical geography and philology, this volume of documents provides an unparalleled portrait of the world of medieval commerce.

Medieval Prostitution

by Jacques Rossiaud (no photo)

Synopsis:

Even though the Church was a prime mover in medieval society, life in 15th-century France was fraught with sexual paradox. Public prostitution was not only tolerated but condoned by all sectors of society, including clerics and municipal officials. In an atmosphere where rape was commonplace and considered only a minor crime, women were frequent victims of male violence and desire. The author proposes that public prostitution may in fact have been viewed by secular and religious authorities as a means of social control and of preserving marital stability--a means by which the virtue of wives and daughters was actually protected. Rossiaud examines the background of the prostitute, brothel-keeper, and pimp, as well as the social climate that encouraged even respectable men to use their services. A valuable resource for the historian, sociologist, or interested general reader, this book reconstructs a little-researched part of the medieval world.

The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach

by Gideon Avni (no photo)

Synopsis:

Using a comprehensive evaluation of recent archaeological findings, Avni addresses the transformation of local societies in Palestine and Jordan between the sixth and eleventh centuries AD. Arguing that these archaeological findings provide a reliable, though complex, picture, Avni illustrates how the Byzantine-Islamic transition was a much slower and gradual process than previously thought, and that it involved regional variability, different types of populations, and diverse settlement patterns. Based on the results of hundreds of excavations, including Avni's own surveys and excavations in the Negev, Beth Guvrin, Jerusalem, and Ramla, the volume reconstructs patterns of continuity and change in settlements during this turbulent period, evaluating the process of change in a dynamic multicultural society and showing that the coming of Islam had no direct effect on settlement patterns and material culture of the local population.

The Wandering Throne of Solomon: Objects and Tales of Kingship in the Medieval Mediterranean

by Allegra Iafrate (no photo)

Synopsis:

In The Wandering Throne of Solomon: Objects and Tales of Kingship in the Medieval Mediterranean Allegra Iafrate analyzes the circulation of artifacts and literary traditions related to king Solomon, particularly among Christians, Jews and Muslims, from the 10th to the 13th century.

The author shows how written sources and objects of striking visual impact interact and describes the efforts to match the literary echoes of past wonders with new mirabilia. Using the throne of Solomon as a case-study, she evokes a context where Jewish rabbis, Byzantine rulers, Muslim ambassadors, Christian sovereigns and bishops all seem to share a common imagery in art, technology and kingship.

The Knight, the Lady & the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France

by Georges Duby

Synopsis:

This ambitious study sets out to discover what marriage meant in the daily lives of the nobles of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. Through entertaining anecdotes, family dramas, and striking quotations, Duby succeeds in bringing his subjects to life, making us feel as if we understand the motives and conflicts of those who inhabited the distant past.

Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries

by Mary G. Houston (no photo)

Synopsis:

Carefully researched, meticulously detailed account of the style and construction of period costumes. Includes descriptions and illustrations of royal apparel, elaborate ecclesiastical dress and vestments, academic and legal garments, and civilian dress of all classes. Also discusses jewelry, armor, textiles, embroidery and hairdressing.

The Byzantine Economy

by Angeliki E. Laiou

Synopsis:

This is a concise survey of the economy of the Byzantine Empire from the fourth century AD to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Organised chronologically, the book addresses key themes such as demography, agriculture, manufacturing and the urban economy, trade, monetary developments, and the role of the state and ideology. It provides a comprehensive overview of the economy with an emphasis on the economic actions of the state and the productive role of the city and non-economic actors, such as landlords, artisans and money-changers. The final chapter compares the Byzantine economy with the economies of western Europe and concludes that the Byzantine economy was one of the most successful examples of a mixed economy in the pre-industrial world. This is the only concise general history of the Byzantine economy and will be essential reading for students of economic history, Byzantine history and medieval history more generally.

Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria

by John Esten Keller (no photo)

Synopsis:

The hundreds of illuminated miniatures found in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, centered around the miracles of the Virgin Mary and sponsored by King Alfonso X (1252-84), reveal many vistas of daily life in thirteenth-century Spain. No other source provides such an encyclopedic view of all classes of medieval European society, from kings and popes to the lowest peasants. Men and women are seen farming, hunting, engaging in war, going on pilgrimage, watching bullfights, gambling, making love, tending silkworms, eating, cooking, and writing poetry. Placing the cantigas in the context of medieval life, the authors have grouped the illuminations by theme and introduce each section with commentary on the illustrations that follow.

Medieval Economic Thought

by Diana Wood (no photo)

Synopsis:

This book offers an introduction to medieval economic thought, as it emerges from the works of the twelfth to the fifteenth century academic theologians, lawyers and other sources. Using Italian merchants' writings, vernacular poetry, parliamentary legislation, and manorial court rolls, it discusses property, charity, the role of money, weights, measures, coinage, trade, fair price and fair wage. It makes a relatively neglected subject accessible by exploring the relationship between theory and practice.

Thank you Jose

Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages

by Jacques Le Goff

Synopsis:

In this book one of the most esteemed contemporary historians of the Middle Ages presents a concise examination of the problem that usury posed for the medieval Church, which had long denounced the lending of money for interest. Jacques Le Goff describes how, as the structure of economic life inevitably began to include financial loans, the Church refashioned its ideology in order to condemn the usurer not to Hell but merely to Purgatory. Le Goff is in the forefront of a history that studies "the deeply rooted and the slowly changing." As one keenly aware of the inertia of older societies, he is all the more able to delineate for us the disruptive forces of change.Jacques Le Goff is director of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en 카지노싸이트 Sociales, Paris, and codirector of the Annales - Economies, Societes, Civilisations. lie is the author of The Birth of Purgatory and Time, Work, and Culture. Distributed for Zone Books."

Medieval Households

by David Herlihy (no photo)

Synopsis:

Traces the history of family life during the Middle Ages and examines medieval marriages, childhood, motherhood, and fatherhood.

The Axe and the Oath: Ordinary Life in the Middle Ages

by Robert Fossier

Synopsis:

In The Axe and the Oath, one of the world's leading medieval historians presents a compelling picture of daily life in the Middle Ages as it was experienced by ordinary people. Writing for general readers, Robert Fossier vividly describes how these vulnerable people confronted life, from birth to death, including childhood, marriage, work, sex, food, illness, religion, and the natural world. While most histories of the period focus on the ideas and actions of the few who wielded power and stress how different medieval people were from us, Fossier concentrates on the other nine-tenths of humanity in the period and concludes that "medieval man is us".

Drawing on a broad range of evidence, Fossier describes how medieval men and women encountered, coped with, and understood the basic material facts of their lives. We learn how people related to agriculture, animals, the weather, the forest, and the sea; how they used alcohol and drugs; and how they buried their dead. But The Axe and the Oath is about much more than simply the material demands of life. We also learn how ordinary people experienced the social, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of medieval life, from memory and imagination to writing and the Church. The result is a sweeping new vision of the Middle Ages that will entertain and enlighten readers.

Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia

by William D. Phillips Jr. (no photo)

Synopsis:

The enslaved population of medieval Iberia composed only a small percentage of the general populace at any given point, and slave labor was not essential to the regional economy during the period. Yet slaves were present in Iberia from the beginning of recorded history until the early modern era, and the regulations and norms for slavery and servitude shifted as time passed and kingdoms rose and fell. The Romans brought their imperially sanctioned forms of slavery to the Iberian peninsula, and these were adapted by successive Christian kingdoms during the Middle Ages. The Muslim conquest of Iberia introduced new ideas about slavery and effected an increase in slave trade. During the later Middle Ages and the early modern period, slave owners in Christian Spain and Portugal maintained slaves at home, frequently captives taken in wars and sea raids, and exported their slave systems to colonies across the Atlantic.

Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia provides a magisterial survey of the many forms of bound labor in Iberia from ancient times to the decline of slavery in the eighteenth century. William D. Phillips, Jr., examines the pecuniary and legal terms of slavery from purchase to manumission. He pays particular attention to the conditions of life for the enslaved, which, in a religiously diverse society, differed greatly for Muslims and Christians as well as for men and women. This sweeping narrative will become the definitive account of slavery in a place and period that deeply influenced the forms of forced servitude that shaped the New World.

Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History

by Elina Gertsman

Synopsis:

Sacred and profane, public and private, emotive and ritualistic, internal and embodied, medieval weeping served as a culturally charged prism for a host of social, visual, cognitive, and linguistic performances. Crying in the Middle Ages addresses the place of tears in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic cultural discourses, providing a key resource for scholars interested in exploring medieval notions of emotion, gesture, and sensory experience in a variety of cultural contexts.

Gertsman brings together essays that establish a series of conversations with one another, foregrounding essential questions about the different ways that crying was seen, heard, perceived, expressed, and transmitted throughout the Middle Ages. In acknowledging the porous nature of visual and verbal evidence, this collection foregrounds the necessity to read language, image, and experience together in order to envision the complex notions of medieval crying.