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According to an old story, a woman concealed her sex and ruled as pope for a few years in the ninth century. Pope Joan was not betrayed by a lover or discovered by an enemy; her downfall came when she went into labor during a papal procession through the streets of Rome. From the myth of Joan to the experiences of saints, nuns, and ordinary women, The Oldest Vocation brings to life both the richness and the troubling contradictions of Christian motherhood in medieval Europe.After tracing the roots of medieval ideologies of motherhood in early Christianity, Clarissa W. Atkinson reconstructs the physiological assumptions underlying medieval notions about women's bodies and reproduction; inherited from Greek science and popularized through the practice of midwifery, these assumptions helped shape common beliefs about what mothers were. She then describes the development of "spiritual motherhood" both as a concept emerging out of monastic ideologies in the early Middle Ages and as a reality in the lives of certain remarkable women. Atkinson explores the theological dimensions of medieval motherhood by discussing the cult of the Virgin Mary in twelfth-century art, story, and religious expression. She also offers a fascinating new perspective on the women saints of the later Middle Ages, many of whom were mothers; their lives and cults forged new relationships between maternity and holiness. The Oldest Vocation concludes where most histories of motherhood begin-in early modern Europe, when the family was institutionalized as a center of religious and social organization.Anyone interested in the status of motherhood, or in women's history, the cultural history of the Middle Ages, or the history of religion will want to read this book.

HISTORY / Medieval. --- European history: medieval period, middle ages

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Originally published in 1966. The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages, based on three guest lectures given at Johns Hopkins University in 1965, explores the place of the individual in medieval European society. Looking at legal sources and political ideology of the era, Ullmann concludes that, for most of the Middle Ages, the individual was defined as a subject rather than a citizen, but the modern concept of citizenship gradually supplanted the subject model from the late Middle Ages onward. Ullmann lays out the theological basis of the political theory that cast the medieval individual as an inferior, abstract subject. The individual citizen who emerged during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, by contrast, was an autonomous participant in affairs of state. Several intellectual trends made this humanistic conception of the individual possible, among them the rehabilitation of vernacular writing during the thirteenth century and the growing interest in nature, natural philosophy, and natural law. However, Ullmann points to feudalism as the single most important medieval institution that laid the groundwork for the emergence of the modern citizen.

Individualism. --- Feudalism. --- Feudal tenure --- Civilization, Medieval --- Land tenure --- Land use --- Land use, Rural --- Chivalry --- Estates (Social orders) --- Economics --- Equality --- Political science --- Self-interest --- Sociology --- Libertarianism --- Personalism --- Persons --- European history: medieval period, middle ages

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This book brings together the cumulative results of a three-year project focused on the assemblies and administrative systems of Scandinavia, Britain, and the North Atlantic islands in the 1st and 2nd millennia AD. In this volume we integrate a wide range of historical, cartographic, archaeological, field-based, and onomastic data pertaining to early medieval and medieval administrative practices, geographies, and places of assembly in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Scotland, and eastern England. This transnational perspective has enabled a new understanding of the development of power structures in early medieval northern Europe and the maturation of these systems in later centuries under royal control. In a series of richly illustrated chapters, we explore the emergence and development of mechanisms for consensus. We begin with a historiographical exploration of assembly research that sets the intellectual agenda for the chapters that follow. We then examine the emergence and development of the thing in Scandinavia and its export to the lands colonised by the Norse. We consider more broadly how assembly practices may have developed at a local level, yet played a significant role in the consolidation, and at times regulation, of elite power structures. Presenting a fresh perspective on the agency and power of the thing and cognate types of local and regional assembly, this interdisciplinary volume provides an invaluable, in-depth insight into the people, places, laws, and consensual structures that shaped the early medieval and medieval kingdoms of northern Europe.

Assembly, Right of --- Public meetings --- History --- Freedom of assembly --- Right of assembly --- Freedom of expression --- Liberty --- Freedom of association --- Freedom of speech --- Government in the sunshine --- Open meetings --- Sunshine, Government in the --- Meetings --- Law and legislation --- European history: medieval period, middle ages --- European history --- Scandinavia --- Great Britain --- North Sea Region --- Politics and government. --- England --- Politics and government --- North Sea

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This book is open access under a CC-BY 4.0 license. This book examines social and medical responses to the disfigured face in early medieval Europe, arguing that the study of head and facial injuries can offer a new contribution to the history of early medieval medicine and culture, as well as exploring the language of violence and social interactions. Despite the prevalence of warfare and conflict in early medieval society, and a veritable industry of medieval historians studying it, there has in fact been very little attention paid to the subject of head wounds and facial damage in the course of war and/or punitive justice. The impact of acquired disfigurement —for the individual, and for her or his family and community—is barely registered, and only recently has there been any attempt to explore the question of how damaged tissue and bone might be treated medically or surgically. In the wake of new work on disability and the emotions in the medieval period, this study documents how acquired disfigurement is recorded across different geographical and chronological contexts in the period. .

Disfigured persons --- Face --- Head --- History --- Social conditions --- Wounds and injuries --- Medieval philosophy. --- Medieval Literature. --- Medieval Philosophy. --- History of Medieval Europe. --- History—476-1492. --- Literature. --- Europe --- Literature, Medieval. --- European literature --- Medieval literature --- Belles-lettres --- Western literature (Western countries) --- World literature --- Medieval philosophy --- Philology --- Authors --- Authorship --- Scholasticism --- Philosophy, medieval. --- Europe-History-476-1492. --- Europe—History—476-1492. --- Philosophy, Medieval. --- Medieval Literature --- Medieval Philosophy --- History of Medieval Europe --- Disfigurement --- Gender --- Medicine and health --- Violence --- Literary studies: ancient, classical & medieval --- European history: medieval period, middle ages

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This work provides a comprehensive examination of the hospital movement that arose and prospered in northern Italy between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.

Hospitals, Medieval --- Medieval hospitals --- History. --- History --- Szpitale --- Italy. --- Italia --- Italian Republic --- Italianska republika --- Italʹi͡anskai͡a Rėspublika --- Italie --- Italien --- Italii͡ --- Italii͡a Respublikasi --- Italiĭsʹka Respublika --- Itālija --- Itālijas Republika --- Italijos Respublika --- Italikē Dēmokratia --- Īṭāliy --- Italiya Respublikasi --- It'allia --- It'allia Konghwaguk --- İtalya --- İtalya Cumhuriyeti --- Iṭalyah --- Iṭalye --- Itaria --- Itaria Kyōwakoku --- Jumhūrīyah al-Īṭālīyah --- Kgl. Italienische Regierung --- Königliche Italienische Regierung --- Laško --- Lýðveldið Ítalía --- Olasz Köztársaság --- Olaszország --- Regno d'Italia --- Repubblica italiana --- Republiḳah ha-Iṭalḳit --- Włochy --- Yidali --- Yidali Gongheguo --- Italy --- Medieval History --- HISTORY / Europe / Medieval --- European history: medieval period, middle ages --- charity administration. --- charity distribution. --- church officials. --- foundational charters. --- hospital bureaucratization. --- hospital consolidation. --- hospital functions. --- hospital services. --- jurisdictional disputes. --- needy people. --- northern Italy. --- organized society. --- pious people. --- social services. --- state control. --- urban community.