Bookish

One of the few Facebook groups/feeds I follow is called “Medieval Updates.” Not updates as in LARPing all the hot news from 1264, but as in updates on Medieval studies. Basically, they post links to new books and journals coming out. None of which I can afford to buy or have access to, but I keep building the list, waiting until they become available on Interlibrary loan. I went through the past few months and here’s what I came up with that interested me, at least. (these are all English-language titles. They post titles in all languages, many of which seem very interesting, too.)

And no, this is not a coy affiliate-link ruse – as in, someone says, “Hey, I’m sharing this list of my favorite kitchen tools cuz I love you guys” – but it’s actually all Amazon affiliate links, and what you might not realize is if you clink on an affiliate link, choose not to purchase that item, but keep on shopping on the same browsing session – the affiliate gets a cut of everything you buy during that session. Which may be a feature, rather than a bug, to you – but I thought you might want to know.

Anyway, this is not that. All links go to the publishers.

And why? Why am I interested in this hodgepodge and why do I share? Well, I’m interested because I’m hungry to understand life on earth, especially human life on earth, and observing people is my way into that understanding – observing them in the present and the past. I am also absolutely convinced that the only sane, just and holistic way to approach present-day issues is with a good understanding of the past.

Everything was different, yet everything is also the same.

I also like to share titles and articles about topics like this because I think it’s always helpful to remember the shifting sands of knowledge. As long-time readers know, I am always one for the shattered myths and the upended narratives and even gentle reminders to look again, rethink, and consider the source.

And perhaps you’ll find something here yourself.

(By the way, when I get one of these books, I don’t sit and closely read each one with a notebook at hand. I pick what interests me and what seems essential to understanding.)

Disabled Clerics in the Middle Ages

The petitions received and the letters sent by the Papal Chancery during the Late Middle Ages attest to the recognition of disability at the highest levels of the medieval Church. These documents acknowledge the existence of physical and/or mental impairments, with the papacy issuing dispensations allowing some supplicants to adapt their clerical missions according to their abilities. A disease, impairment, or old age could prevent both secular and regular clerics from fulfilling the duties of their divine office. Such conditions can, thus, be understood as forms of disability. In these cases, the Papal Chancery bore the responsibility for determining if disabled people were suitable to serve as clerics, with all the rights and duties of divine services. Whilst some petitioners were allowed to enter the clergy, or – in the case of currently serving churchmen – to stay more or less active in their work, others were compelled to resign their position and leave the clergy entirely. Petitions and papal letters lie at intersection of authorized, institutional policy and practical sources chronicling the lived experiences of disabled people in the Middle Ages. 

Lateran IV: Theology and Care of Souls

Lateran IV: Theology and Care of Souls assesses the pastoral and theological legacies of the Council. The volume brings together scholars of high theology, as well as those whose work engages with the practices of clerical governance in the thirteenth century.

Monastic Iceland

Blending the evidence from material remains and written documents, Monastic Iceland highlights the realities of everyday life in the male and female monasteries operated in Iceland. The book describes the incorporation of monasticism into the Icelandic society, the alleged land of the Vikings, and thus how the monasteries coexisted with the natural and social environments on the island while keeping their general aims and objectives. The book shows that large social systems, such as monasticism, can cross social and natural borders without necessitating fundamental changes apart from those triggered by the constant coexistence of nature and culture inside the environment they exist within. The evidence provided debunks the myth that Icelandic monasteries, male or female, were isolated, silent places or simple cells functioning principally as retirement homes for aristocrats. To be a member of an ecclesiastical institution did not mean a quiet, secluded life without any outside interaction, but rather active participation in the surrounding community.

The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet

Comparing Beowulf with its medieval German and Scandinavian analogues, The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet argues that the poem’s uniqueness reflects one poet’s coherent plan for the moral renovation of an amoral heroic tradition. In Beowulf, Neidorf discerns the presence of a singular mind at work in the combination and modification of heroic, folkloric, hagiographical, and historical materials. Rather than perceive Beowulf as an impersonally generated object, Neidorf argues that it should be read as the considered result of one poet’s ambition to produce a morally edifying, theologically palatable, and historically plausible epic out of material that could not independently constitute such a poem.

No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe

Drawing on unpublished archival evidence ranging from fiscal ledgers and legal opinions to sermons and student notebooks, Rowan Dorin traces how an association between usury and expulsion entrenched itself in Latin Christendom from the twelfth century onward. Showing how ideas and practices of expulsion were imitated and repurposed in different contexts, he offers a provocative reconsideration of the dynamics of persecution in late medieval society.

Uncovering the protean and contagious nature of expulsion, No Return is a panoramic work of history that offers new perspectives on Jewish-Christian relations, the circulation of norms and ideas in the age before print, and the intersection of law, religion, and economic life in premodern Europe.

Living I Was Your Plague: Martin Luther’s World and Legacy

Martin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portrayed in his own times and ours, painting a unique portrait of the man who set in motion a revolution that sundered Western Christendom.

Renowned Luther biographer Lyndal Roper examines how the painter Lucas Cranach produced images that made the reformer an instantly recognizable character whose biography became part of Lutheran devotional culture. She reveals what Luther’s dreams have to say about his relationships and discusses how his masculinity was on the line in his devastatingly crude and often funny polemical attacks. Roper shows how Luther’s hostility to the papacy was unshaken to the day he died, how his deep-rooted anti-Semitism infused his theology, and how his memorialization has given rise to a remarkable flood of kitsch, from “Here I Stand” socks to Playmobil Luther.

The author of this book, Lyndal Roper, is also the author of a book called The Holy Household – a study of how the Reformation changed gender relations that was very eye-opening to me and I relied on for writing this article on women and the Reformation, published in Catholic World Report some years ago

Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple

How did the apple, unmentioned by the Bible, become the dominant symbol of temptation, sin, and the Fall? Temptation Transformed pursues this mystery across art and religious history, uncovering where, when, and why the forbidden fruit became an apple.

Azzan Yadin-Israel reveals that Eden’s fruit, once thought to be a fig or a grape, first appears as an apple in twelfth-century French art. He then traces this image back to its source in medieval storytelling. Though scholars often blame theologians for the apple, accounts of the Fall written in commonly spoken languages—French, German, and English—influenced a broader audience than cloistered Latin commentators. Azzan Yadin-Israel shows that, over time, the words for “fruit” in these languages narrowed until an apple in the Garden became self-evident.

The Care of the Brain in Early Christianity

Cerebral subjectivity—the identification of the individual self with the brain—is a belief that has become firmly entrenched in modern science and popular culture. In The Care of the Brain in Early Christianity, Jessica Wright traces its roots to tensions within early Christianity over the brain’s role in self-governance and its inherent vulnerability. Examining how early Christians appropriated medical ideas, Wright tracks how they used these ideas for teaching ascetic practices, developing therapeutics for the soul, and finding a path to salvation. Bringing a medical lens to religious discourse, this text demonstrates that rather than rejecting medical traditions, early Christianity developed by creatively integrating them.

Negotiation and Resistance: Peasant Agency in High Medieval France

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.

Natural Light in Medieval Churches

Inside Christian churches, natural light has long been harnessed to underscore theological, symbolic, and ideological statements. In this volume, twenty-four international scholars with various specialties explore how the study of sunlight can reveal essential aspects of the design, decoration, and function of medieval sacred spaces.