This book describes the history of peasants in Catalonia, the wealthiest and politically dominant part of the medieval Kingdom of Aragon, between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. It focuses on the period from 1000 to 1300, when free peasants who had held property under favourable frontier conditions were progressively subjugated by their lords. Between 1462 and 1486 Catalan peasants mounted the most successful peasants’ war of the Middle Ages, and achieved the formal abolition of servitude. Professor Freedman seeks to explain both the process by which servitude was strengthened over the centuries, and its eventual weakening before a direct moral and military challenge. He addresses both the causes of enserfment and the limitations on its effectiveness. The book integrates archival evidence with the theories of society elaborated by medieval jurists. Comparisons are drawn between Catalonia and other regions, and its experience is situated within a spectrum of different social and economic conditions.

From the author of Ten Restaurants That Changed America, an exploration of food's cultural importance and its crucial role throughout human history "A rich and fascinating narrative that reaches deep into the historical and cultural larder of societal experience, powerfully illustrating the myriad ways that food matters as an essential condiment for humanity."-Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and Shake Shack Why does food matter? Historically, food has not always been considered a serious subject on par with, for instance, a performance art like opera or a humanities discipline like philosophy. Necessity, ubiquity, and repetition contribute to the apparent banality of food, but these attributes don't capture food's emotional and cultural range, from the quotidian to the exquisite. In this short, passionate book, Paul Freedman makes the case for food's vital importance, stressing its crucial role in the evolution of human identity and human civilizations. Freedman presents a highly readable and illuminating account of food's unique role in our lives. It is a way to express community and celebration, but it can also be divisive. This wide-ranging book is a must-read for food lovers and all those interested in how cultures and identities are formed and maintained.

From the author of Ten Restaurants That Changed America, an exploration of food’s cultural importance and its crucial role throughout human history “A rich and fascinating narrative that reaches deep into the historical and cultural larder of societal experience, powerfully illustrating the myriad ways that food matters as an essential condiment for humanity.�—Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and Shake Shack Why does food matter? Historically, food has not always been considered a serious subject on par with, for instance, a performance art like opera or a humanities discipline like philosophy. Necessity, ubiquity, and repetition contribute to the apparent banality of food, but these attributes don’t capture food’s emotional and cultural range, from the quotidian to the exquisite.   In this short, passionate book, Paul Freedman makes the case for food’s vital importance, stressing its crucial role in the evolution of human identity and human civilizations. Freedman presents a highly readable and illuminating account of food’s unique role in our lives. It is a way to express community and celebration, but it can also be divisive. This wide-ranging book is a must-read for food lovers and all those interested in how cultures and identities are formed and maintained.

For decades, many have doubted the existence of American cuisine, believing that hamburgers, hot dogs and pizza define the nation's palate. Not so, says leading food historian Paul Freedman. Freedman traces the twentieth-century rise of processed food, standardisation and fast-food restaurants. With the farm-to-table movement, a culinary revolution has transformed the way Americans eat. Whether analysing how businesses and advertisers used seduction and guilt to dictate women's food-shopping habits, exploring how class determines what Americans eat or documenting the contributions provided by immigrants, Freedman reveals an astonishing history.

This 1991 book describes the history of peasants in Catalonia, the wealthiest and politically dominant part of the medieval Kingdom of Aragon, between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. It focuses on the period from 1000 to 1300, when free peasants who had held property under favourable frontier conditions were progressively subjugated by their lords. Between 1462 and 1486 Catalan peasants mounted the most successful peasants' war of the Middle Ages, and achieved the formal abolition of servitude. Professor Freedman seeks to explain both the process by which servitude was strengthened over the centuries, and its eventual weakening before a direct moral and military challenge. He addresses both the causes of enserfment and the limitations on its effectiveness. The book integrates archival evidence with the theories of society elaborated by medieval jurists. Comparisons are drawn between Catalonia and other regions, and its experience is situated within a spectrum of different social and economic conditions.

The Splendor and Opulence of the Past traces the career of Jaume Caresmar (1717–1791), a church historian and a key figure of the Catalan Enlightenment who transcribed tens of thousands of parchments to preserve and glorify Catalonia's medieval past in the face of its diminishing autonomy. As Paul Freedman shows, Caresmar's books, essays, and transcriptions—some only recently discovered—provide fresh insights into the Middle Ages as remembered in modern Catalonia and illustrate how a nation's past glories and humiliations can inform contemporary politics and culture. From the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, Catalonia was a thriving, independent set of principalities within what would become modern Spain. In the wake of the dismantling of its autonomy by the eighteenth-century Spanish state, Catalan scholars looked to the region's medieval independence and wealth as a means of maintaining a distinct Catalan identity and resisting Castilian hegemony. Through their writings and archival investigations, Caresmar and the canons at Santa Maria de Bellpuig de les Avellanes, where Caresmar was abbot, laid the foundations for not only the scholarly exploration of the Middle Ages but also the development of Catalan national sentiment. Although the eighteenth century is often regarded as a low point for the Catalan language and culture, The Splendor and Opulence of the Past emphasizes the importance of this period's antiquarians to Catalan projects of modernization and economic progress and links their historiography of the Middle Ages to struggles over Catalonia's relationship to the Spanish state over two centuries.

The medieval clergy, aristocracy, and commercial classes tended to regard peasants as objects of contempt and derision. In religious writings, satires, sermons, chronicles, and artistic representations peasants often appeared as dirty, foolish, dishonest, even as subhuman or bestial. Their lowliness was commonly regarded as a natural corollary of the drudgery of their agricultural toil.
Yet, at the same time, the peasantry was not viewed as "other" in the manner of other condemned groups, such as Jews, lepers, Muslims, or the imagined "monstrous races" of the East. Several crucial characteristics of the peasantry rendered it less clearly alien from the elite perspective: peasants were not a minority, their work in the fields nourished all other social orders, and, most important, they were Christians. In other respects, peasants could be regarded as meritorious by virtue of their simple life, productive work, and unjust suffering at the hands of their exploitive social superiors. Their unrewarded sacrifice and piety were also sometimes thought to place them closest to God and more likely to win salvation.
This book examines these conflicting images of peasants from the post-Carolingian period to the German Peasants' War. It relates the representation of peasants to debates about how society should be organized (specifically, to how human equality at Creation led to subordination), how slavery and serfdom could be assailed or defended, and how peasants themselves structured and justified their demands.
Though it was argued that peasants were legitimately subjugated by reason of nature or some primordial curse (such as that of Noah against his son Ham), there was also considerable unease about how the exploitation of those who were not completely alien--who were, after all, Christians--could be explained. Laments over peasant suffering as expressed in the literature might have a stylized quality, but this book shows how they were appropriated and shaped by peasants themselves, especially in the large-scale rebellions that characterized the late Middle Ages.

Food and cuisine are important subjects for historians across many areas of study. Food is after all one of the most basic human needs and a foundational part of social and cultural histories. Such topics as famines, food supply, nutrition, and public health are addressed by historians throughout every era and spanning every nation.
"Food in Time and Place" delivers an unprecedented review of the state of historical research on food, endorsed by the American Historical Association, providing readers with geographically, chronologically, and topically broad understanding of food cultures--from ancient Mediterranean and medieval societies to France and its domination of haute cuisine. Teachers, students, and scholars in food history will appreciate coverage of different thematic concerns, such as transfers of crops, conquest, colonization, immigration, and modern forms of globalization.

The most up-to-date research in the period from the Anglo-Saxons to Angevins. This volume of the Haskins Society Journal continues its tradition of publishing the best historical and interdisciplinary research on the early and central middle ages in the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Angevin worlds. The topics of the essays range from legal influences on Alfred's Mosaic Prologue, judicial processes in tenth-century Iberia, and the ecclesiology of the Norman Anonymous to the nature and implications of comital authority in the eleventh- and twelfth-century Anglo-Norman realm and conceptions of servitude in legal thinking in thirteenth-century Catalonia. The volume also embraces art history, with contributions on the medieval object as subject; the banquet scene in the Bayeux Tapestry; and there is a synoptic archeological exploration of early medieval Britain. Finally, an edition and translation of the De Abbatibus of Mont Saint-Michel makes available in complete and reliable form an important witness to this Norman monastery's medieval past. Contributors: Thomas Bisson, Charlotte Cartwright, Martin Carver, Kerrith Davies, Wendy Davies, Paul Freedman, James Ginther, Stefan Jurasinski, Elizabeth Carson Pastan.

How medieval Europe's infatuation with expensive, fragrant, and exotic spices led to an era of colonial expansion and the discovery of new worlds The demand for spices in medieval Europe was extravagant and was reflected in the pursuit of fashion, the formation of taste, and the growth of luxury trade. It inspired geographical and commercial exploration ,as traders pursued such common spices as pepper and cinnamon and rarer aromatic products, including ambergris and musk. Ultimately, the spice quest led to imperial missions that were to change world history. This engaging book explores the demand for spices: why were they so popular, and why so expensive? Paul Freedman surveys the history, geography, economics, and culinary tastes of the Middle Ages to uncover the surprisingly varied ways that spices were put to use--in elaborate medieval cuisine, in the treatment of disease, for the promotion of well-being, and to perfume important ceremonies of the Church. Spices became symbols of beauty, affluence, taste, and grace, Freedman shows, and their expense and fragrance drove the engines of commerce and conquest at the dawn of the modern era.

Last Things Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages Edited by Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman ""Last Things" will repay the serious attention of readers concerned with any aspect of medieval religion."--"Speculum" When the medievals spoke of "last things" they were sometimes referring to events, such as the millennium or the appearance of the Antichrist, that would come to all of humanity or at the end of time. But they also meant the last things that would come to each individual separately--not just the place, Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, to which their souls would go but also the accounting, the calling to reckoning, that would come at the end of life. At different periods in the Middle Ages one or the other of these sorts of "last things" tended to be dominant, but both coexisted throughout. In "Last Things," Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman bring together eleven essays that focus on the competing eschatologies of the Middle Ages and on the ways in which they expose different sensibilities, different theories of the human person, and very different understandings of the body, of time, of the end. Exploring such themes as the significance of dying and the afterlife, apocalyptic time, and the eschatological imagination, each essay in the volume enriches our understanding of the eschatological awarenesses of the European Middle Ages. Caroline Walker Bynum is Professor of Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including "The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336," "Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women," and "Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond," winner of the Award for Excellence in the Historical Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion. Paul Freedman is Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of various articles and books, including "Images of the Medieval Peasant" and "The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia." The Middle Ages Series 1999 376 pages 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 17 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-1702-5 Paper $29.95s 19.50 World Rights History, Religion Short copy: Eleven essays that focus on the competing eschatologies of the Middle Ages.

Food and cuisine are important subjects for historians across many areas of study. Food is after all one of the most basic human needs and a foundational part of social and cultural histories. Such topics as famines, food supply, nutrition, and public health are addressed by historians throughout every era and spanning every nation.
"Food in Time and Place" delivers an unprecedented review of the state of historical research on food, endorsed by the American Historical Association, providing readers with geographically, chronologically, and topically broad understanding of food cultures--from ancient Mediterranean and medieval societies to France and its domination of haute cuisine. Teachers, students, and scholars in food history will appreciate coverage of different thematic concerns, such as transfers of crops, conquest, colonization, immigration, and modern forms of globalization.

The medieval clergy, aristocracy, and commercial classes tended to regard peasants as objects of contempt and derision. In religious writings, satires, sermons, chronicles, and artistic representations peasants often appeared as dirty, foolish, dishonest, even as subhuman or bestial. Their lowliness was commonly regarded as a natural corollary of the drudgery of their agricultural toil.
Yet, at the same time, the peasantry was not viewed as "other" in the manner of other condemned groups, such as Jews, lepers, Muslims, or the imagined "monstrous races" of the East. Several crucial characteristics of the peasantry rendered it less clearly alien from the elite perspective: peasants were not a minority, their work in the fields nourished all other social orders, and, most important, they were Christians. In other respects, peasants could be regarded as meritorious by virtue of their simple life, productive work, and unjust suffering at the hands of their exploitive social superiors. Their unrewarded sacrifice and piety were also sometimes thought to place them closest to God and more likely to win salvation.
This book examines these conflicting images of peasants from the post-Carolingian period to the German Peasants' War. It relates the representation of peasants to debates about how society should be organized (specifically, to how human equality at Creation led to subordination), how slavery and serfdom could be assailed or defended, and how peasants themselves structured and justified their demands.
Though it was argued that peasants were legitimately subjugated by reason of nature or some primordial curse (such as that of Noah against his son Ham), there was also considerable unease about how the exploitation of those who were not completely alien--who were, after all, Christians--could be explained. Laments over peasant suffering as expressed in the literature might have a stylized quality, but this book shows how they were appropriated and shaped by peasants themselves, especially in the large-scale rebellions that characterized the late Middle Ages.

Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardbound volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, science, law, economics, and philosophy. Volume thirty-one in the new series contains six original and refereed articles that represent a reengagement with history. They focus on a variety of topics, ranging from reception theory in Andreas Capellanus and the ideal sovereign in Christine de Pizan to peasant rebel leaders in late-medieval and early-modern Europe. Don Monson's article makes good usage of Jauss's reception theory and analyzes the third Dialogue of Book I, Chapter 6 of De Amore in a thorough and intelligent way. Important aspects of the relationship between "scientific" Latin treaties and Provencal courtly poetry are neatly demonstrated. Karen Gross examines structural and thematic resemblances between the Aeneid and De Casibus, arguing that Anchises' "pageant of future Roman worthies" (Aen. VI) is connected to the frame structure of De casibus. The author is interested in "global similarities, not local verbal echoes," and believes that the "structure resonances" have implications for "how Boccaccio understood the interaction between history and poetry, between the living and the dead." Especially thought-provoking and original are the discussion of the motif of father/son piety and commemoration and the contrast of Virgil's fortuna in Roman history and Boccaccio's in world history. Daisy Delogu's article on Christine de Pizan is a timely one, and also represents reengagement with history th

A fascinating study that will appeal to both culinarians and readers interested in the intersecting histories of food, Sephardic Jewish culture, and the Mediterranean world of Iberia and northern Africa. In the absence of any Jewish cookbook from the pre-1492 era, it requires arduous research and a creative but disciplined imagination to reconstruct Sephardic tastes from the past and their survival and transmission in communities around the Mediterranean in the early modern period, followed by the even more extensive diaspora in the New World. In this intricate and absorbing study, Helene Jawhara Piner presents readers with the dishes, ingredients, techniques, and aesthetic principles that make up a sophisticated and attractive cuisine, one that has had a mostly unremarked influence on modern Spanish and Portuguese recipes.

In the nineteenth and early-twentieth century it was assumed that nearly all agricultural labourers in medieval Europe were serfs. Serfdom was distinct from slavery in that serfs were recognized as something more than chattels. They could contract legitimate marriages, hold personal property and they could not be moved around at will. The fact that serfs were in many regions a minority of the peasant population, and the increasing importance given to social and economic circumstances over legal definitions led historians to move away from examining servile condition and its implications during much of the late twentieth century. Attention has instead focused on the seigneurial regime and village society with little regard for the influence of status. In the Middle Ages and indeed in all pre-industrial societies, the vast majority of the population tilled the land. We are still not in a good position to evaluate how noble and ecclesiastical landlords received revenues from lands they were only indirectly engaged in farming, thus there are important gaps in our knowledge of the basic factors that governed medieval society. What kind of agricultural system provided the impetus for economic growth that so dramatically increased the number of cities and volume of trade? There is no modern, synthetic book on medieval serfdom that compares regions or draws general conclusions about it. This work attempts such a synthesis and also shows avenues of future research, but most importantly it is intended to reorient attention to the importance of serfdom in the structure of medieval society.

Far more than simply a discussion of food, chefs and recipes, in Ten Restaurants That Changed America Paul Freedman creates a social history, examining how restaurants came to reflect class, gender, assimilation, mass consumption and culture in America. Ranging from the 1830s and the New York Steak House Delmonico's-which Freedman identifies as the first real American restaurant-to the current flowering of avant-garde cuisine, each chapter looks at fashions for different types of food from turtle soup to Caesar Salad. Ten Restaurants That Changed America is a must read for serious foodies.

This book is the first to apply the discoveries of the new generation of food historians worldwide to the unashamedly romantic appeal of the subject: to the culinary accomplishments of diverse civilizations, past and present, and to the pleasures of dining. The result is truly a history of taste: our most elevated, elegant and pleasurable thoughts about food - ingredients, preparation, presentation - since prehistory. From beginning to end this is an enthralling and richly illustrated story of one of the most vital clues not just to what keeps us alive, but to what makes us feel alive.