Lives, Identities and Histories in the Central Middle Ages

Offers a new take on the identities and life histories of medieval people, in their multi-layered and sometimes contradictory dimensions.

Julie Barrau (Edited by), David Bates (Edited by)

9781107160804, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 October 2021

320 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.65 kg

'In this volume a galaxy of leading historians illuminates a wide range of topics and themes. Our understanding of post-Conquest England, Normandy, Flanders, medieval memory and historiography, ideas of gender and the study of the bible is enriched through analysis of charters, chronicles, legal treatises, glosses, hagiography and vernacular texts. Yet the chapters have a unity, fanning out as they do from the oeuvre of the beneficently influential historian whom the volume honours.' David D'Avray, University College London

How did medieval people define themselves? And how did they balance their identities as individuals with the demands of their communities? Lives, Identities and Histories in the Central Middle Ages intertwines the study of identities with current scholarship to reveal their multi-layered, sometimes contradictory dimensions. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from legal texts to hagiographies and biblical exegesis, and diverse cultural and social approaches, this volume enriches our understanding of medieval people's identities - as defined by themselves and by others, as individuals and as members of groups and communities. It adopts a complex and wide-ranging understanding of what constituted 'identities' beyond family and regional or national belonging, such as social status, gender, age, literacy levels, and displacement. New figures and new concepts of 'identities' thus emerge from the dialogue between the chapters, through an approach based on life-histories, lived experience, ethnogenesis, theories of diaspora, cultural memory and generational change.

Introduction Julie Barrau and David Bates
Part I. Entwined Lives and Multiple Identities
1. Mother and Motherhood in the Vita et passio Willelmi Norwicensis Miri Rubin
2. Prayer for the Dead: Women, Death, and Salvation Fiona J. Griffiths
3. Authority over Men and the Distribution of Property: Two Readings of William of Malmesbury Mathieu Arnoux
4. Flemish Settlement and Maritime Traffic in the South-West Peninsula of Britain, c.1050–1250 Julia Crick
5. Cistercians and the Laity in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Upper Normandy Elma Brenner
6. Memory and Trauma: the Strange Case of Walchelin the Priest Patricia Skinner
7. New Charters of the Empress Matilda, with Particular Reference to her Reception at Gloucester in 1139 Nicholas Vincent
8. Female Identity before 1250: the Preudefemme David Crouch
Part II. Historians, Lawyers and Exegetes: Writing Lives and Identities 9. Ademar of Chabannes and the Normans: An Outline of a New Reading Pierre Bauduin
10. Lives, Identities, and the Historians of the Normans David Bates
11. Ruth in the Twelfth Century: Medieval Takes on the Multiple Identities of a Foreign Converted Widow from Scripture Julie Barrau
12. Jacob and Esau and the Interplay of Jewish and Christian Identities in the Middle Ages Anna Sapir Abulafia
13. Identity, Gender and History in Wace's Roman de Rou and Roman de Brut Leonie Hicks
14. Glanvill: Language, Law, and Identity John Hudson
15. Dunstan, Edgar, and the History of Not-So-Recent Events George Garnett.

Subject Areas: Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]