Other Middle Ages : witnesses at the margins of medieval society / edited by Michael Goodich.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Goodich, Michael, 1944-2006, editor.

Series:

Middle Ages series.

Middle Ages Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social history--Medieval, 500-1500--Sources.

Social history.

Marginality, Social--Europe--History--Sources.

Marginality, Social.

Marginality, Social, in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (288 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Seldom heard from in modern times, those on the margins of Medieval Europe have much to tell us about the society that defined them. More than just a fascinating cast of characters, the visionaries and sexual dissidents, the suicidal and psychologically unbalanced, the lepers and converts of Medieval times reveal the fears of a people for whom life was made both meaningful and terrifying by the sacred. After centuries of historical silence, these and other disenfranchised members of the medieval public have been given voice by Michael Goodich in a unique collection of texts from the mid-eleventh through the fourteenth century. Translated from their original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic, these texts, many of them first person narratives or testimonies, give insight into those figures who made Medieval society uneasy. The book is divided into chapters dealing with the Jewish community, apostates and converts, sexual nonconformists, victims of the Devil, Christian heretics, and the liminal and temporarily marginalized. The texts included both give spiritual voice to such groups, and illuminate the more mundane affairs of their daily lives—child rearing, social life, economic difficulties, sexuality, dreams, emotional instability, and gender relations among them.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction

I. The Jews: From Tolerated Minority to Persecuted Foe

II. Apostates and Converts

III. Sexual Nonconformists and the Fires of Lust

IV: Victims of the Devil: The Possessed, the Ecstatics, and the Suicidal

V. Christian Heterodoxy

VI. Insiders and Outsiders: Liminality and Integration

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8122-9231-6

OCLC:

606996192