Download or read book Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages written by R. W. Southern and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 1990 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of an ordered human society, both religious and secular, as an expression of a divinely ordered universe was central to medieval thought. In the West the political and religious community were inextricably bound together, and because the Church was so intimately involved with the world, any history of it must take into account the development of medieval society. Professor Southern's book covers the period from the eighth to the sixteenth century. After sketching the main features of each medieval age, he deals in greater detail with the Papacy, the relations between Rome and her rival Constantinople, the bishops and archbishops, and the various religious orders, providing in all a superb history of the period.
Download or read book Medieval Christianity written by Kevin Madigan and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new narrative history of medieval Christianity, spanning from A.D. 500 to 1500, focuses on the role of women in Christianity; the relationships among Christians, Jews and Muslims; the experience of ordinary parishioners; the adventure of asceticism, devotion and worship; and instruction through drama, architecture and art.
Download or read book Law Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe written by James A. Brundage and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-02-15 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brundage offers a comprehensive history of legal doctrines–covering the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500–concerning a wide variety of sexual behavior, including marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest. His survey makes strikingly clear how the system of sexual control in a world we have half-forgotten has shaped the world in which we live today. The regulation of marriage and divorce as we know it today, together with the outlawing of bigamy and polygamy and the imposition of criminal sanctions on such activities as sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality, are all based in large measure upon ideas and beliefs about sexual morality that became law in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. "Brundage's book is consistently learned, enormously useful, and frequently entertaining. It is the best we have on the relationships between theological norms, legal principles, and sexual practice."—Peter Iver Kaufman, Church History
Download or read book Medieval Society written by Kay Eastwood and published by Crabtree Publishing Company. This book was released on 2004 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young readers will be captivated by this account of the daily life and social organization of people living in Europe in the Middle Ages. Medieval Society describes life under the feudal system and how kings and lords became rich while the peasants stayed poor.
Download or read book Motherhood Religion and Society in Medieval Europe 400 1400 written by Dr Conrad Leyser and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-07-28 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who can concentrate on thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying … ? Will he put up with the constant muddle and squalor which small children bring into the home? The wealthy can do so … but philosophers lead a very different life … So, according to Peter Abelard, did his wife Heloise state in characteristically stark terms the antithetical demands of family and scholarship. Heloise was not alone in making this assumption. Sources from Jerome onward never cease to remind us that the life of the mind stands at odds with life in the family. For all that we have moved in the past two generations beyond kings and battles, fiefs and barons, motherhood has remained a blind spot for medieval historians. Whatever the reasons, the result is that the historiography of the medieval period is largely motherless. The aim of this book is to insist that this picture is intolerably one-dimensional, and to begin to change it. The volume is focussed on the paradox of motherhood in the European Middle Ages: to be a mother is at once to hold great power, and by the same token to be acutely vulnerable. The essays look to analyse the powers and the dangers of motherhood within the warp and weft of social history, beginning with the premise that religious discourse or practice served as a medium in which mothers (and others) could assess their situation, defend claims, and make accusations. Within this frame, three main themes emerge: survival, agency, and institutionalization. The volume spans the length and breadth of the Middle Ages, from late Roman North Africa through ninth-century Byzantium to late medieval Somerset, drawing in a range of types of historian, including textual scholars, literary critics, students of religion and economic historians. The unity of the volume arises from the very diversity of approaches within it, all addressed to the central topic.
Download or read book Trustworthy Men written by Ian Forrest and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The medieval church was founded on and governed by concepts of faith and trust--but not in the way that is popularly assumed. Offering a radical new interpretation of the institutional church and its social consequences in England, Ian Forrest argues that between 1200 and 1500 the ability of bishops to govern depended on the cooperation of local people known as trustworthy men and shows how the combination of inequality and faith helped make the medieval church. Trustworthy men (in Latin, viri fidedigni) were jurors, informants, and witnesses who represented their parishes when bishops needed local knowledge or reliable collaborators. Their importance in church courts, at inquests, and during visitations grew enormously between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The church had to trust these men, and this trust rested on the complex and deep-rooted cultures of faith that underpinned promises and obligations, personal reputation and identity, and belief in God. But trust also had a dark side. For the church to discriminate between the trustworthy and untrustworthy was not to identify the most honest Christians but to find people whose status ensured their word would not be contradicted. This meant men rather than women, and—usually—the wealthier tenants and property holders in each parish. Trustworthy Men illustrates the ways in which the English church relied on and deepened inequalities within late medieval society, and how trust and faith were manipulated for political ends.
Download or read book Episcopal Power and Local Society in Medieval Europe 900 1400 written by Peter R. Coss and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The medieval bishop occupied a position of central importance in European society between 1000 and 1400. Indeed, medieval bishops across Europe were involved in an assortment of ecclesiastical and secular affairs, a feature of the episcopal office in this period that ensured their place amongst the most influential figures in their respective milieux. Such prominence has inevitably piqued the interest of modern scholars and a number of important studies focusing on individual aspects of the medieval episcopal office have emerged, notably in recent years. Yet scholarly attention has often been drawn towards the careers of extraordinary bishops, men whose renown was often due to their involvement in both ecclesiastical and secular activities that took them beyond the borders of their dioceses. As a result, there has been a tendency to overlook the significance of the function of the episcopal office within local society, and, in particular, the way that this context shaped episcopal power. The purpose of this volume is to examine the foundations of episcopal power in medieval Europe by considering its functioning and development at the level of local society. This collection of essays derives from papers delivered at a conference at Cardiff University in May 2013, are divided into three sections focusing on the construction of episcopal power in local society, the ways in which it was augmented, and the different forms through which it was expressed. The essays have a broad geographical scope and include studies focused on English, French, Italian, and Icelandic dioceses.
Download or read book The Medieval Church written by Joseph Lynch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Church was the central institution of the European Middle Ages, and the foundation of medieval life. Professor Lynch's admirable survey (concentrating on the western church, and emphasising ideas and trends over personalities) meets a long-felt need for a single-volume comprehensive history, designed for students and non-specialists.
Download or read book The Making of the Medieval Middle East written by Jack Tannous and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new religious history of the late antique and medieval Middle East that places ordinary Christians at the center of the story In the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam. Jack Tannous argues that key to understanding these dramatic religious transformations are ordinary religious believers, often called “the simple” in late antique and medieval sources. Largely agrarian and illiterate, these Christians outnumbered Muslims well into the era of the Crusades, and yet they have typically been invisible in our understanding of the Middle East’s history. What did it mean for Christian communities to break apart over theological disagreements that most people could not understand? How does our view of the rise of Islam change if we take seriously the fact that Muslims remained a demographic minority for much of the Middle Ages? In addressing these and other questions, Tannous provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the religious history of the medieval Middle East. This provocative book draws on a wealth of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources to recast these conquered lands as largely Christian ones whose growing Muslim populations are properly understood as converting away from and in competition with the non-Muslim communities around them.
Download or read book Going to Church in Medieval England written by Nicholas Orme and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging, richly illustrated account of parish churches and churchgoers in England, from the Anglo-Saxons to the mid-sixteenth century Parish churches were at the heart of English religious and social life in the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century. In this comprehensive study, Nicholas Orme shows how they came into existence, who staffed them, and how their buildings were used. He explains who went to church, who did not attend, how people behaved there, and how they--not merely the clergy--affected how worship was staged. The book provides an accessible account of what happened in the daily and weekly services, and how churches marked the seasons of Christmas, Lent, Easter, and summer. It describes how they celebrated the great events of life: birth, coming of age, and marriage, and gave comfort in sickness and death. A final chapter covers the English Reformation in the sixteenth century and shows how, alongside its changes, much that went on in parish churches remained as before.
Download or read book Liturgy and Society in Early Medieval Rome written by Dr John F Romano and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Magic and Medieval Society written by Anne Lawrence-Mathers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-30 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic and Medieval Society presents a thematic approach to the topic of magic and sorcery in Western Europe between the eleventh and the fifteenth century. It aims to provide readers with the conceptual and documentary tools to reach informed conclusions as to the existence, nature, importance and uses of magic in medieval society. Contrary to some previous approaches, the authors argue that magic is inextricably connected to other areas of cultural practice and was found across medieval society. Therefore, the book is arranged thematically, covering topics such as the use of magic at medieval courts, at universities and within the medieval Church itself. Each chapter and theme is supported by additional documents, diagrams and images to allow readers to examine the evidence side-by-side with the discussions in the chapters and to come to informed conclusions on the issues. This book puts forward the argument that the witch craze was not a medieval phenomenon but rather the product of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and demonstrates how the components for the early-modern prosecution of witches were put into place. This new Seminar Study is supported by a comprehensive documents section, chronology, who’s who and black-and-white plate section. It offers a concise and thought-provoking introduction for students of medieval history.
Download or read book Women in Medieval History and Historiography written by Susan Mosher Stuard and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was the status of women in the Middle Ages? How have women fared in the hands of historians? And, what is the current state of research about women in the Middle Ages? Susan Mosher Stuard addresses these questions in a collection of essays that delve in to the history and historiography of women in medieval England, France, Italy, and Germany. Contributors include Barbara Hanawalt, Diane Owen Hughes, Suzanne Wemple, Denise Kaiser, and Martha Howell. One of the most interesting observations made in Women in Medieval History and Historiography is the way in which the history of women in each country has followed a distinct course that is in rhythm with other concerns of national historical writing. Women in Medieval History and Historiography will interest historians, scholars of women's studies, and medievalists.
Download or read book Violence in Medieval Society written by Richard W. Kaeuper and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2000 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of ways in which the rapidly evolving society of medieval Europe developed social, legal and practical responses to public and private violence.
Download or read book Inquisition and Medieval Society written by James B. Given and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James B. Given analyzes the inquisition in one French region in order to develop a sociology of medieval politics. Established in the early thirteenth century to combat widespread popular heresy, inquisitorial tribunals identified, prosecuted, and punished heretics and their supporters. The inquisition in Languedoc was the best documented of these tribunals because the inquisitors aggressively used the developing techniques of writing and record keeping to build cases and extract confessions.Using a Marxist and Foucauldian approach, Given focuses on three inquiries: what techniques of investigation, interrogation, and punishment the inquisitors worked out in the course of their struggle against heresy; how the people of Languedoc responded to the activities of the inquisitors; and what aspects of social organization in Languedoc either facilitated or constrained the work of the inquisitors. Punishments not only inflicted suffering and humiliation on those condemned, he argues, but also served as theatrical instruction for the rest of society about the terrible price of transgression. Through a careful pursuit of these inquires, Given elucidates medieval society's contribution to the modern apparatus of power.
Download or read book Medieval Marriage written by David d'Avray and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005-06-16 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval Marriage shows how marriage symbolism emerged from the world of texts to become a social force affecting ordinary people. Building on d'Avray's Medieval Marriage Sermons, it broadens the scope of the argument and works from a wide range of manuscript sources of different genres.
Download or read book Medieval Christianity in Practice written by Miri Rubin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-16 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprising forty-two selections from primary source materials, each translated with an introduction and commentary by a specialist in the field, this collection illustrates the religious cycles, rituals, and experiences that gave meaning to medieval Christian individuals and communities. The texts represent the practices through which Christians conducted their individual, family, and community lives and explore such life-cycle events as birth, confirmation, marriage, sickness, death, and burial. The texts also document religious practices related to themes of work, parish life, and devotions, as well as power and authority.--From publisher's description.
