Human Agency in Medieval Society, 1100-1450

"Of fundamental importance for any discipline dealing with past societies and cultures. One of the most wide-ranging, sophisticated and imaginative books on medieval history that I have read in a very long time. The way in which the author defines, traces and analyses agency is stunningly original. It will make an immensely important contribution to our understanding of high and late medieval Europe". Professor Bjorn Weiler, University of Aberystwyth. What did it mean to be an autonomous agent in medieval society? The question has rarely been posed, and almost exclusively for magnates and leading intellectuals. This book aims to answer that question, via a mosaic of case studies drawn from the European literate urban middle strata and the lower and middle-rank aristocracy from across Europe. The analysis begins by looking at patterns of strategic action, networks, and the social imaginary that informs individual conduct. The individuals' sense of effectiveness in the world is reconstructed from "ego-documents", a broad category that includes first-person charters, autobiographical insertions in chronicles, and account books and memoirs; among other works chaptesr cover French livres de raison , Italian ricordanze , the writings of Galbert of Bruges, and Le Ménagier de Paris . The book's larger aim is to historicise the autonomous moral agent. Neither belief in divine intervention nor feudal relations inhibited individuals' social agency. The emphasis on hierarchy and order in medieval normative texts is shown in a different light, as part of the effort to restrain social subalterns, whose potential for agency caused anxiety. Whereas power is often structural, an effect of institutions which, however, were only just developing, the book argues that agency is a more apposite construct for capturing the salient medieval concerns with the possibilities and effects of individual and collective action. IONUT EPURESCU-PASCOVICI received his PhD in medieval studies from Cornell University. He is a researcher in the Humanities Division of the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest.