Download or read book The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia written by Paul Freedman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1991 book is an examination of Catalonian peasants in the Middle Ages integrating archival evidence with medieval theories of society.
Download or read book The Splendor and Opulence of the Past written by Paul Freedman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-15 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Splendor and Opulence of the Past traces the career of Jaume Caresmar (1717–1791), a church historian and a key figure of the Catalan Enlightenment who transcribed tens of thousands of parchments to preserve and glorify Catalonia's medieval past in the face of its diminishing autonomy. As Paul Freedman shows, Caresmar's books, essays, and transcriptions—some only recently discovered—provide fresh insights into the Middle Ages as remembered in modern Catalonia and illustrate how a nation's past glories and humiliations can inform contemporary politics and culture. From the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, Catalonia was a thriving, independent set of principalities within what would become modern Spain. In the wake of the dismantling of its autonomy by the eighteenth-century Spanish state, Catalan scholars looked to the region's medieval independence and wealth as a means of maintaining a distinct Catalan identity and resisting Castilian hegemony. Through their writings and archival investigations, Caresmar and the canons at Santa Maria de Bellpuig de les Avellanes, where Caresmar was abbot, laid the foundations for not only the scholarly exploration of the Middle Ages but also the development of Catalan national sentiment. Although the eighteenth century is often regarded as a low point for the Catalan language and culture, The Splendor and Opulence of the Past emphasizes the importance of this period's antiquarians to Catalan projects of modernization and economic progress and links their historiography of the Middle Ages to struggles over Catalonia's relationship to the Spanish state over two centuries.
Download or read book Images of the Medieval Peasant written by Paul H. Freedman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The medieval clergy, aristocracy, and commercial classes tended to regard peasants as objects of contempt and derision. In religious writings, satires, sermons, chronicles, and artistic representations peasants often appeared as dirty, foolish, dishonest, even as subhuman or bestial. Their lowliness was commonly regarded as a natural corollary of the drudgery of their agricultural toil. Yet, at the same time, the peasantry was not viewed as “other” in the manner of other condemned groups, such as Jews, lepers, Muslims, or the imagined “monstrous races” of the East. Several crucial characteristics of the peasantry rendered it less clearly alien from the elite perspective: peasants were not a minority, their work in the fields nourished all other social orders, and, most important, they were Christians. In other respects, peasants could be regarded as meritorious by virtue of their simple life, productive work, and unjust suffering at the hands of their exploitive social superiors. Their unrewarded sacrifice and piety were also sometimes thought to place them closest to God and more likely to win salvation. This book examines these conflicting images of peasants from the post-Carolingian period to the German Peasants’ War. It relates the representation of peasants to debates about how society should be organized (specifically, to how human equality at Creation led to subordination), how slavery and serfdom could be assailed or defended, and how peasants themselves structured and justified their demands. Though it was argued that peasants were legitimately subjugated by reason of nature or some primordial curse (such as that of Noah against his son Ham), there was also considerable unease about how the exploitation of those who were not completely alien—who were, after all, Christians—could be explained. Laments over peasant suffering as expressed in the literature might have a stylized quality, but this book shows how they were appropriated and shaped by peasants themselves, especially in the large-scale rebellions that characterized the late Middle Ages.
Download or read book Military Orders and Peasant Servitude in Catalonia written by Paul H. Freedman and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Out of the East written by Paul Freedman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-25 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How medieval Europe’s infatuation with expensive, fragrant, exotic spices led to an era of colonial expansion and discovery: “A consummate delight.” —Marion Nestle, James Beard Award–winning author of Unsavory Truth The demand for spices in medieval Europe was extravagant—and was reflected in the pursuit of fashion, the formation of taste, and the growth of luxury trade. It inspired geographical and commercial exploration, as traders pursued such common spices as pepper and cinnamon and rarer aromatic products, including ambergris and musk. Ultimately, the spice quest led to imperial missions that were to change world history. This engaging book explores the demand for spices: Why were they so popular, and why so expensive? Paul Freedman surveys the history, geography, economics, and culinary tastes of the Middle Ages to uncover the surprisingly varied ways that spices were put to use—in elaborate medieval cuisine, in the treatment of disease, for the promotion of well-being, and to perfume important ceremonies of the Church. Spices became symbols of beauty, affluence, taste, and grace, Freedman shows, and their expense and fragrance drove the engines of commerce and conquest at the dawn of the modern era. “A magnificent, very well written, and often entertaining book that is also a major contribution to European economic and social history, and indeed one with a truly global perspective.” —American Historical Review
Download or read book A Stake in the Ground Jews and Property Investment in the Medieval Crown of Aragon written by Michael Schraer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Stake in the Ground, Michael Schraer challenges the traditional view of medieval Jews as money-lenders and merchants, finding property trading and investment to be an essential part of their economic activities in the crown of Aragon.
Download or read book Lords and Communities in Early Medieval East Anglia written by Andrew Wareham and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is an investigation of the changing power structures of the English aristocracy in medieval England. The author uses the organization of the aristocracy in East Anglia as a case study to explore the issue.
Download or read book From Al Andalus to the Americas 13th 17th Centuries written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Al-Andalus to the Americas (13th-17th Centuries). Destruction and Construcion of Societies offers a multi-perspective view of the filiation of different colonial and settler colonial experiences, from the Medieval Iberian Peninsula to the early Modern Americas. All the articles in the volume refer the reader to colonial orders that extended over time, that substantially reduced indigenous populations, that imposed new productive strategies and created new social hierarchies. The ideological background and how conquests were organised; the treatment given to the conquered lands and people; the political organisations, and the old and new agricultural systems are issues discussed in this volume. Contributors are David Abulafia, Manuel Ardit, Antonio Espino, Adela Fábregas, Josep M. Fradera, Enric Guinot, Helena Kirchner, Antonio Malpica, Virgilio Martínez-Enamorado, Carmen Mena, António Mendes, Félix Retamero, Inge Schjellerup, Josep Torró, and Antoni Virgili.
Download or read book Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe written by Yuen-Gen Liang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together distinguished scholars in honor of Professor Teofilo F. Ruiz, this volume presents original and innovative research on the critical and uneasy relationship between authority and spectacle in the period from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, focusing on Spain, the Mediterranean and Latin America. Cultural scholars such as Professor Ruiz and his colleagues have challenged the notion that authority is elided with high politics, an approach that tends to be monolithic and disregards the uneven application and experience of power by elite and non-elite groups in society by highlighting the significance of spectacle. Taking such forms as ceremonies, rituals, festivals, and customs, spectacle is a medium to project and render visible power, yet it is also an ambiguous and contested setting, where participants exercise the roles of both actor and audience. Chapters in this collection consider topics such as monarchy, wealth and poverty, medieval cuisine and diet and textual and visual sources. The individual contributions in this volume collectively represent a timely re-examination of authority that brings in the insights of cultural theory, ultimately highlighting the importance of representation and projection, negotiation and ambivalence.
Download or read book Negotiation and Resistance written by Constance Brittain Bouchard and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Negotiation and Resistance, Constance Brittain Bouchard challenges familiar depictions of the peasantry as an undifferentiated mass of impoverished and powerless workers. Peasants in eleventh- and twelfth-century France had far more scope for action, self-determination, and resistance to oppressive treatment—that is, for agency—than they are usually credited with having. Through innovative readings of documents collected in medieval cartularies, Bouchard finds that while peasants lived hard, impoverished lives, they were able to negotiate, individually or collectively, to better their position, present cases in court, and make their own decisions about such fundamental issues as inheritance or choice of marriage partner. Negotiation and Resistance upends the received view of this period in French history as one in which lords dealt harshly and without opposition toward subservient peasants, offering numerous examples of peasants standing up for themselves.
Download or read book Victory s Shadow written by Thomas W. Barton and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the eleventh century, Catalonia was a patchwork of counties, viscounties, and lordships that bordered Islamic al-Andalus to the south. Over the next two centuries, the region underwent a dramatic transformation. The counts of Barcelona secured title to the neighboring kingdom of Aragon through marriage and this newly constituted Crown of Aragon, after numerous failed attempts, finally conquered the Islamic states positioned along its southern frontier in the mid-twelfth century. Successful conquest, however, necessitated considerable organizational challenges that threatened to destabilize, politically and economically, this triumphant regime. The Aragonese monarchy's efforts to overcome these adversities, consolidate its authority, and capitalize on its military victories would impose lasting changes on its governmental framework and exert considerable influence over future expansionist projects. In Victory's Shadow, Thomas W. Barton offers a sweeping new account of the capture and long-term integration of Muslim-ruled territories by an ascendant Christian regime and a detailed analysis of the influence of this process on the governmental, economic, and broader societal development of both Catalonia and the greater Crown of Aragon. Based on over a decade of extensive archival research, Victory's Shadow deftly reconstructs and evaluates the decisions, outcomes, and costs involved in this experience of territorial integration and considers its implications for ongoing debates regarding the dynamics of expansionism across the diverse boundary zones of medieval Europe.
Download or read book Heresy in Medieval France written by Claire Taylor and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2005 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigation of heresy in south-west France, including a new assessment of the role of Catharism and the Albigensian Crusade.
Download or read book Last Things written by Caroline Walker Bynum and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-10-19 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the medievals spoke of "last things" they were sometimes referring to events, such as the millennium or the appearance of the Antichrist, that would come to all of humanity or at the end of time. But they also meant the last things that would come to each individual separately—not just the place, Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, to which their souls would go but also the accounting, the calling to reckoning, that would come at the end of life. At different periods in the Middle Ages one or the other of these sorts of "last things" tended to be dominant, but both coexisted throughout. In Last Things, Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman bring together eleven essays that focus on the competing eschatologies of the Middle Ages and on the ways in which they expose different sensibilities, different theories of the human person, and very different understandings of the body, of time, of the end. Exploring such themes as the significance of dying and the afterlife, apocalyptic time, and the eschatological imagination, each essay in the volume enriches our understanding of the eschatological awarenesses of the European Middle Ages.
Download or read book The Spirit of Catalonia written by Institut d'Estudis Catalans and published by Institut d'Estudis Catalans. This book was released on 1985-07-10 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jews in An Iberian Frontier Kingdom written by Mark Meyerson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004-05-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the history of a Jewish community in the colonial kingdom of Valencia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It sheds new light on Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations and on the social, economic, and political life of medieval Jews.
Download or read book Agriculture in the Middle Ages written by Del Sweeney and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the cultural framework within which changes in agricultural technology and economic organization occur and the ways in which changes in the social fabric influence attitudes toward rural work and the peasantry.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Medieval Rural Life written by Miriam Müller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Medieval Rural Life brings together the latest research on peasantry in medieval Europe. The aim is to place peasants – as small-scale agricultural producers – firmly at the centre of this volume, as people with agency, immense skill and resilience to shape their environments, cultures and societies. This volume examines the changes and evolutions within village societies across the medieval period, over a broad chronology and across a wide geography. Rural structures, families and hierarchies are examined alongside tool use and trade, as well as the impact of external factors such as famine and the Black Death. The contributions offer insights into multidisciplinary research, incorporating archaeological as well as landscape studies alongside traditional historical documentary approaches across widely differing local and regional contexts across medieval Europe. This book will be an essential reference for scholars and students of medieval history, as well those interested in rural, cultural and social history.
