The People Of Curial Avignon

This work cross-references the persons mentioned in each document with other biographical resources, offering a critical analysis. The examination challenges many of Bernard Guillemain's conclusions regarding the documents' dates and purposes, and these challenges can only enhance our understanding of the Avignonese population during the late fourteenth century. These documents which include the names, places of origin, and sometimes the occupations of those listed offer a window into the population of the late medieval capital of Christendom. To keep the work within a reasonable scope, the author limited the cross-referencing endnotes to the location of the information. Interested readers should be able to compile individual biographies from these endnotes rather easily. The author has made every effort to identify not only leading persons, but also the commoners who have left clear traces. Though the information in the three documents is scant, a display of individuals' names, occupations, and places of origin can create a better appreciation for the Avignonese population than could mere numbers in a column.

With the arrival of Clement V in 1309, seven popes ruled the Western Church from Avignon until 1378. Joëlle Rollo-Koster traces the compelling story of the transplanted papacy in Avignon, the city the popes transformed into their capital. Through an engaging blend of political and social history, she argues that we should think more positively about the Avignon papacy, with its effective governance, intellectual creativity, and dynamism. It is a remarkable tale of an institution growing and defending its prerogatives, of people both high and low who produced and served its needs, and of the city they built together. As the author reconsiders the Avignon papacy (1309–1378) and the Great Western Schism (1378–1417) within the social setting of late medieval Avignon, she also recovers the city’s urban texture, the stamp of its streets, the noise of its crowds and celebrations, and its people’s joys and pains. Each chapter focuses on the popes, their rules, the crises they faced, and their administration but also on the history of the city, considering the recent historiography to link the life of the administration with that of the city and its people. The story of Avignon and its inhabitants is crucial for our understanding of the institutional history of the papacy in the later Middle Ages. The author argues that the Avignon papacy and the Schism encouraged fundamental institutional changes in the governance of early modern Europe—effective centralization linked to fiscal policy, efficient bureaucratic governance, court society (société de cour), and conciliarism. This fascinating history of a misunderstood era will bring to life what it was like to live in the fourteenth-century capital of Christianity.

Publisher Description

This volume provides case studies of the growth of urban and rural communities and their institutions in Languedoc and Provence in the Middle Ages. The importance of a Roman law tradition and the new institutions of the notary and his records are observed in both urban and rural contexts, and interactions between town and country are featured.

A new history of the Great Western Schism, focusing on social drama and the performance of legitimacy and papacy.

This volume introduces a unique comparative perspective to the complexities of gender relations in Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities by examining women's property rights in different societies across the entire medieval and early modern Mediterranean.

Some manuscripts have been produced for the personal use of their scribe only; whereas a number of them are valued as autographs, most have been ephemeral and were discarded. Personal manuscripts were not written for a patron, commissioner, or client. They are personal copies, anthologies, florilegia, personal notes, excerpts, drafts and notebooks, as well as family books, accountancy notebooks and many others; these forms often being mixed with one another. This volume introduces a number of such manuscripts in a comparative perspective, from Japan to Europe through the Middle East, with a focus on the Near and Middle East. The main concern is the possibility of identifying typical features of such manuscripts in terms of materials, visual organization and content. In attempting this, both the conditions of production and traces of the manuscripts' use are taken into consideration, with particular attention to their material aspects.