Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustration -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person -- Part I. Saints, visionaries, and the making of holy persons -- 1. Forgetting Hathumoda: Th e Afterlife of the First Abbess of Gandersheim -- 2. "If one member glories . . .": Community Between the Living and the Saintly Dead in Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons for the Feast of All Saints -- 3. Th e Pope's Shrunken Head: Th e Apocalyptic Visions of Robert of Uzès -- 4. Thomas of Cantimpré and Female Sanctity -- 5. Th e Changing Fortunes of Angela of Foligno, Daughter, Mother, and Wife -- 6. "A Particular Light of Understanding": Margaret of Cortona, the Franciscans, and a Cortonese Cleric -- Part 2. Community, cultus, and society -- 7. Fragments of Devotion: Charters and Canons in Aquitaine, 876- 1050 -- 8. Naming Names: Th e Nomenclature of Heresy in the Early Eleventh Century -- 9. Economic Development and Demotic Religiosity -- 10. Back- Biting and Self- Promotion: Th e Work of Merchants of the Cairo Geniza -- 11. John of Salisbury and the Civic Utility of Religion -- Part III. Cognition, composition, and contagion -- 12. Understanding Contagion: Th e Contaminating Effect of Another's Sin -- 13. Calvin's Smile -- 14. Why All the Fuss About the Mind? A Medievalist's Perspective on Cognitive Theory -- 15. Aspects of Blood Piety in a Late- Medieval English Manuscript: London, British Library MS Additional 37049 -- 16. Machiavelli, Trauma, and the Scandal of Th e Prince: An Essay in Speculative History -- Part 4. The matter of person -- 17. Low Country Ascetics and Oriental Luxury: Jacques de Vitry, Marie of Oignies, and the Treasures of Oignies -- 18. Crystalline Wombs and Pregnant Hearts: Th e Exuberant Bodies of the Katharinenthal Visitation Group -- 19. Gluttony and the Anthropology of Pain in Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio -- 20. "Human Heaven": John of Rupescissa's Alchemy at the End of the World -- 21. Magic, Bodies, University Masters, and the Invention of the Late Medieval Witch -- Afterword: History in the Comic Mode -- Notes -- Contributors -- Index

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In this groundbreaking collection, twenty-one prominent medievalists discuss continuity and change in ideas of personhood and community and argue for the viability of the comic mode in the study and recovery of history. These scholars approach their sources not from a particular ideological viewpoint but with an understanding that all topics, questions, and explanations are viable. They draw on a variety of sources in Latin, Arabic, French, German, Middle English, and more, and employ a range of theories and methodologies, always keeping in mind that environments are inseparable from the making of the people who inhabit them and that these people are in part constituted by and understood in terms of their communities. Essays feature close readings of both familiar and lesser known materials, offering provocative interpretations of John of Rupescissa's alchemy; the relationship between the living and the saintly dead in Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons; the nomenclature of heresy in the early eleventh century; the apocalyptic visions of Robert of Uzès; Machiavelli's De principatibus; the role of "demotic religiosity" in economic development; and the visions of Elizabeth of Schönau. Contributors write as historians of religion, art, literature, culture, and society, approaching their subjects through the particular and the singular rather than through the thematic and the theoretical. Playing with the wild possibilities of the historical fragments at their disposal, the scholars in this collection advance a new and exciting approach to writing medieval history.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)