The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris

The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris PDF Author: Bronislaw Geremek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521026123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This book discusses the 'marginal' people of late medieval Paris, the large and shifting group of men and women who existed on the margins of conventional organized society. Professor Geremek examines the various groups which made up the marginal world - beggars, prostitutes, procuresses and pimps, petty criminals, casual workers and the unemployed - their haunts in and around Paris, their way of life, and their relation to 'normal' society. Professor Geremek has made with this book a major contribution to the study of late medieval society which illuminates the little-known area of the medieval underworld in a fascinating and very accessible manner. Translated by Jean Birrell from the French edition of 1976, this edition includes a new introduction by Jean-Claude Schmitt, which offers a frank appraisal of the author's life and career to date.

The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris

The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris PDF Author: Bronislaw Geremek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521026123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book

Book Description
This book discusses the 'marginal' people of late medieval Paris, the large and shifting group of men and women who existed on the margins of conventional organized society. Professor Geremek examines the various groups which made up the marginal world - beggars, prostitutes, procuresses and pimps, petty criminals, casual workers and the unemployed - their haunts in and around Paris, their way of life, and their relation to 'normal' society. Professor Geremek has made with this book a major contribution to the study of late medieval society which illuminates the little-known area of the medieval underworld in a fascinating and very accessible manner. Translated by Jean Birrell from the French edition of 1976, this edition includes a new introduction by Jean-Claude Schmitt, which offers a frank appraisal of the author's life and career to date.

Experiences of Poverty in Late Medieval and Early Modern England and France

Experiences of Poverty in Late Medieval and Early Modern England and France PDF Author: Anne M. Scott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131713785X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Exploring a range of poverty experiences-socioeconomic, moral and spiritual-this collection presents new research by a distinguished group of scholars working in the medieval and early modern periods. Collectively they explore both the assumptions and strategies of those in authority dealing with poverty and the ways in which the poor themselves tried to contribute to, exploit, avoid or challenge the systems for dealing with their situation. The studies demonstrate that poverty was by no means a simple phenomenon. It varied according to gender, age and geographical location; and the way it was depicted in speech, writing and visual images could as much affect how the poor experienced their poverty as how others saw and judged them. Using new sources-and adopting new approaches to known sources-the authors share insights into the management and the self-management of the poor, and search out aspects of the experience of poverty worthy of note, from which can be traced lasting influences on the continuing understanding and experience of poverty in pre-modern Europe.

Liturgy and Society in Early Medieval Rome

Liturgy and Society in Early Medieval Rome PDF Author: John F. Romano
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317104072
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
The liturgy, the public worship of the Catholic Church, was a crucial factor in forging the society of early medieval Rome. As the Roman Empire dissolved, a new world emerged as Christian bishops stepped into the power vacuum left by the dismantling of the Empire. Among these potentates, none was more important than the bishop of Rome, the pope. The documents, archaeology, and architecture that issued forth from papal Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries preserve a precious glimpse into novel societal patterns. The underexploited liturgical sources in particular enrich and complicate our historical understanding of this period. They show how liturgy was the ’social glue’ that held together the Christian society of early medieval Rome - and excluded those who did not belong to it. This study places the liturgy center stage, filling a gap in research on early medieval Rome and demonstrating the utility of investigating how the liturgy functioned in medieval Europe. It includes a detailed analysis of the papal Mass, the central act of liturgy and the most obvious example of the close interaction of liturgy, social relations and power. The first extant Mass liturgy, the First Roman Ordo, is also given a new presentation in Latin here with an English translation and commentary. Other grand liturgical events such as penitential processions are also examined, as well as more mundane acts of worship. Far from a pious business with limited influence, the liturgy established an exchange between humans and the divine that oriented Roman society to God and fostered the dominance of the clergy.

The Later Medieval City

The Later Medieval City PDF Author: David Nicholas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317901886
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
The Later Medieval City, 1300-1500, the second part of David Nicholas's ambitious two-volume study of cities and city life in the Middle Ages, fully lives up to its splendid precursor, The Growth of the Medieval City. (Like that volume it is fully self-sufficient, though many readers will want to use the two as a continuum.) This book covers a much shorter period than the first. That traced the rise of the medieval European city system from late Antiquity to the early fourteenth century; this offers a portrait of the fully developed late medieval city in all its richness and complexity. David Nicholas begins with the economic and demographic realignments of the last two medieval centuries. These fostered urban growth, raising living standards and increasing demand for a growing range of urban manufactures. The hunger for imports and a shortage of coin led to sophisticated credit mechanisms that could only function through large cities. But, if these changes brought new opportunities to the wealthy, they also created a growing problem of urban poverty: violence became endemic in the later medieval city. Moreover, although more rebellions were sparked by taxes than by class conflict, class divisions were deepening. Most cities came to be governed by councils chosen from guild-members, and most guilds were dominated by merchants. The landowning elite that had dominated the early medieval cities of the first volume still retained its prestige, but its wealth was outstripped by the richer merchants; while craftsmen, who had little political influence, were further disadvantaged as access to the guilds became more restricted. The later medieval cities developed permanent bureaucracies providing a huge range of public services, and they were paid for by sophisticated systems of taxation and public borrowing. The survival of their fuller, richer records allow us not only to apply a more statistical approach, but also to get much closer, to the splendours and squalors of everyday city-life than was possible in the earlier volume. The book concludes with a set of vibrant chapters on women and children and religious minorities in the city, on education and culture, and on the tenor of ordinary urban existence. Like its predecessor, this book is massively, and vividly, documented. Its approach is interdisciplinary and comparative, and its examples and case studies are drawn from across Europe: from France, England, Germany, the Low Countries, Iberia and Italy, with briefer reviews of the urban experience elsewhere from Baltic to Balkans. The result is the most wide-ranging and up-to-date study of its multifaceted subject. It is a formidable achievement.

Rethinking Medieval Margins and Marginality

Rethinking Medieval Margins and Marginality PDF Author: Ann E. Zimo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000034844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Marginality assumes a variety of forms in current discussions of the Middle Ages. Modern scholars have considered a seemingly innumerable list of people to have been marginalized in the European Middle Ages: the poor, criminals, unorthodox religious, the disabled, the mentally ill, women, so-called infidels, and the list goes on. If so many inhabitants of medieval Europe can be qualified as "marginal," it is important to interrogate where the margins lay and what it means that the majority of people occupied them. In addition, we scholars need to reexamine our use of a term that seems to have such broad applicability to ensure that we avoid imposing marginality on groups in the Middle Ages that the era itself may not have considered as such. In the medieval era, when belonging to a community was vitally important, people who lived on the margins of society could be particularly vulnerable. And yet, as scholars have shown, we ought not forget that this heightened vulnerability sometimes prompted so-called marginals to form their own communities, as a way of redefining the center and placing themselves within it. The present volume explores the concept of marginality, to whom the moniker has been applied, to whom it might usefully be applied, and how we might more meaningfully define marginality based on historical sources rather than modern assumptions. Although the volume’s geographic focus is Europe, the chapters look further afield to North Africa, the Sahara, and the Levant acknowledging that at no time, and certainly not in the Middle Ages, was Europe cut off from other parts of the globe.

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany PDF Author: Jamie Page
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198862784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Based on legal case studies, this book focuses on how gender discourse shaped the lives of prostitutes in medieval Germany.

Paris

Paris PDF Author: Alexandra Gajewski
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000904601
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Paris: The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City considers the various forces – royal, monastic and secular – that shaped the art, architecture and topography of Paris between c. 1100 and c. 1500, a period in which Paris became one of the foremost metropolises in the West. The individual contributions, written by an international group of scholars, cover the subject from many different angles. They encompass wide-ranging case studies that address architecture, manuscript illumination and stained glass, as well as questions of liturgy, religion and social life. Topics include the early medieval churches that preceded the current cathedral church of Notre-Dame and cultural production in the Paris area in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, as well as Paris’s chapels and bridges. There is new evidence for the source of the c. 1240 design for a celebrated window in the Sainte-Chapelle, an evaluation of the liturgical arrangements in the new shrine-choir of Saint-Denis, built 1140–44, and a valuable assessment of the properties held by the Cistercian Order in Paris in the Middle Ages. Also, the book investigates the relationships between manuscript illuminators in the 14th century and representations of Paris in manuscripts and other media up to the late 15th century. Paris: The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City updates and enlarges our knowledge of this key city in the Middle Ages.

Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France

Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France PDF Author: Meredith Cohen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351944231
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Difference in medieval France was not solely a marker for social exclusion, provoking feelings of disgust and disaffection, but it could also create solidarity and sympathy among groups. Contributors to this volume address inclusion and exclusion from a variety of perspectives, ranging from ethnic and linguistic difference in Charlemagne's court, to lewd sculpture in Béarn, to prostitution and destitution in Paris. Arranged thematically, the sections progress from the discussion of tolerance and intolerance, through the clearly defined notion of foreignness, to the complex study of stranger identity in the medieval period. As a whole the volume presents a fresh, intriguing perspective on questions of exclusion and belonging in the medieval world.

Crime in Medieval Europe

Crime in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Trevor Dean
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131788177X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
What is the difference between a stabbing in a tavern in London and one in a hostelry in the South of France? What happens when a spinster living in Paris finds knight in her bedroom wanting to marry her? Why was there a crime wave following the Black Death? From Aberdeen to Cracow and from Stockholm to Sardinia, Trevor Dean ranges widely throughout medieval Europe in this exiting and innovative history of lawlessness and criminal justice. Drawing on the real-life stories of ordinary men and women who often found themselves at the sharp end of the law, he shows how it was often one rule for the rich and another for the poor in a tangled web of judicial corruption.

Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110434873
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 551

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Book Description
Death is not only the final moment of life, it also casts a huge shadow on human society at large. People throughout time have had to cope with death as an existential experience, and this also, of course, in the premodern world. The contributors to the present volume examine the material and spiritual conditions of the culture of death, studying specific buildings and spaces, literary works and art objects, theatrical performances, and medical tracts from the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. Death has always evoked fear, terror, and awe, it has puzzled and troubled people, forcing theologians and philosophers to respond and provide answers for questions that seem to evade real explanations. The more we learn about the culture of death, the more we can comprehend the culture of life. As this volume demonstrates, the approaches to death varied widely, also in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. This volume hence adds a significant number of new facets to the critical examination of this ever-present phenomenon of death, exploring poetic responses to the Black Death, types of execution of a female murderess, death as the springboard for major political changes, and death reflected in morality plays and art.