In Out of Love for My Kin, Amy Livingstone examines the personal dimensions of the lives of aristocrats in the Loire region of France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She argues for a new conceptualization of aristocratic family life based on an ethos of inclusion. Inclusivity is evident in the care that medieval aristocrats showed toward their families by putting in place strategies, practices, and behaviors aimed at providing for a wide range of relatives. Indeed, this care—and in some cases outright affection—for family members is recorded in the documents themselves, as many a nobleman and woman made pious benefactions out of love for my kin.'
This is a study of marriage litigation (with some reference to sexual offenses) in the archiepiscopal court of York (1300–1500) and the episcopal courts of Ely (1374–1381), Paris (1384–1387), Cambrai (1438–1453), and Brussels (1448–1459). All these courts were, for the most part, correctly applying the late medieval canon law of marriage, but statistical analysis of the cases and results confirms that there were substantial differences both in the types of cases the courts heard and the results they reached.
In this visually rich volume, Mariah Proctor-Tiffany reconstructs the art collection and material culture of the fourteenth-century French queen Clémence de Hongrie, illuminating the way the royal widow gave objects as part of a deliberate strategy to create a lasting legacy for herself and her family in medieval Paris. After the sudden death of her husband, King Louis X, and the loss of her promised income, young Clémence fought for her high social status by harnessing the visual power of possessions, displaying them, and offering her luxurious objects as gifts.
Focusing on women from Western Europe between c. 300 and 1500 CE in the medieval period and richly carpeted with detail, A Medieval Woman's Companion offers a wealth of information about real medieval women who are now considered vital for understanding the Middle Ages in a full and nuanced way. Short biographies of 20 medieval women illustrate how they have anticipated and shaped current concerns, including access to education; creative emotional outlets such as art, theater, romantic fiction, and music; marriage and marital rights; fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, contraception and gynecology; sex trafficking and sexual violence; the balance of work and family; faith; and disability. Their legacy abides until today in attitudes to contemporary women that have their roots in the medieval period.
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Lust for Liberty challenges long-standing views of popular medieval revolts. Comparing rebellions in northern and southern Europe over two centuries, Samuel Cohn analyzes their causes and forms, their leadership, the role of women, and the suppression or success of these revolts. Popular revolts were remarkably common--not the last resort of desperate people. Leaders were largely workers, artisans, and peasants.
In this study of sexual violence and rape in French medieval literature and law, Kathryn Gravdal examines an array of famous works never before analyzed in connection with sexual violence.
Call no. HQ1206 .Y35 2001
Available to Check out at the JSCC Library
Read chapter on Wives in Medieval Europe, 1100-1500
This book can be found in the JSCC Library at:
HQ1147.E85 B37 2007
Call no. GT2400 .H5713 1987 v.2
Available for check out at the JSCC Library
Get a general background on the private life that medievalists lived from a French perspective.