One of the pressing concerns of the fifteenth century was monastic reform, and reformers of the Observant movement rose to meet the challenge by attempting to return monastic houses to stricter observance of their earliest rules and governing documents. In this dissertation, I examine how Dominican nuns in German-speaking parts...
In the late Middle Ages, the Italian word fama had a wide semantic range that encompassed such vitally important topics as reputation, honor, community memory, and trustworthiness. In this dissertation, I examine how fama manifested within sodomy prosecutions in late medieval Italy and what insights such prosecutions can give into...
“Los Grans Mals: Disasters and Civic Life in the Late Medieval Midi” examines the many catastrophes that struck the cities of Marseille and Montpellier during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. During this era, southern Europe witnessed increasingly frequent episodes of natural disasters due in part to the Little Ice...
This dissertation argues that royal nomadism, the custom whereby medieval rulers moved between many castles in a predetermined cycle, fundamentally affected the floorplan, use, and adornment of courtly built environments. This argument is a new departure for the study of castles. Scholars of medieval castles acknowledge that rulers passed through...
Religious buildings have always faced the threat of fire, but an unusual number of church fires occurred in northern France during the 12th century. Despite this prevalence, a sustained study on medieval church fires -- including how and why they started, how people responded when they occurred, theological reckonings with...
