Illustration

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Illustration xi
4. Acknowledgments xiii
5. Introduction: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person 1
6. Part I. Saints, visionaries, and the making of holy persons
7. 1. Forgetting Hathumoda: Th e Afterlife of the First Abbess of Gandersheim 15
8. 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 25
9. 3. Th e Pope’s Shrunken Head: Th e Apocalyptic Visions of Robert of Uzès 36
10. 4. Thomas of Cantimpré and Female Sanctity 45
11. 5. Th e Changing Fortunes of Angela of Foligno, Daughter, Mother, and Wife 56
12. 6. “A Particular Light of Understanding”: Margaret of Cortona, the Franciscans, and a Cortonese Cleric 68
13. Part 2. Community, cultus, and society
14. 7. Fragments of Devotion: Charters and Canons in Aquitaine, 876– 1050 81
15. 8. Naming Names: Th e Nomenclature of Heresy in the Early Eleventh Century 91
16. 9. Economic Development and Demotic Religiosity 101
17. 10. Back- Biting and Self- Promotion: Th e Work of Merchants of the Cairo Geniza 117
18. 11. John of Salisbury and the Civic Utility of Religion 128
19. Part III. Cognition, composition, and contagion
20. 12. Understanding Contagion: Th e Contaminating Effect of Another’s Sin 145
21. 13. Calvin’s Smile 158
22. 14. Why All the Fuss About the Mind? A Medievalist’s Perspective on Cognitive Theory 170
23. 15. Aspects of Blood Piety in a Late- Medieval English Manuscript: London, British Library MS Additional 37049 182
24. 16. Machiavelli, Trauma, and the Scandal of Th e Prince: An Essay in Speculative History 192
25. Part 4. The matter of person
26. 17. Low Country Ascetics and Oriental Luxury: Jacques de Vitry, Marie of Oignies, and the Treasures of Oignies 205
27. 18. Crystalline Wombs and Pregnant Hearts: Th e Exuberant Bodies of the Katharinenthal Visitation Group 223
28. 19. Gluttony and the Anthropology of Pain in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio 238
29. 20. “Human Heaven”: John of Rupescissa’s Alchemy at the End of the World 251
30. 21. Magic, Bodies, University Masters, and the Invention of the Late Medieval Witch 262
31. Afterword: History in the Comic Mode 279
32. Notes 293
33. Contributors 373
34. Index 377