Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris

by Farmer, Sharon

• ISBN13: 9780801472695
• ISBN10: 0801472695
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-12-21
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

This book about poor men and women in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Paris reveals the other side of the "age of cathedrals" in the very place where gothic architecture and scholastic theology were born. In Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, Sharon Farmer extends and deepens the understanding of urban poverty in the High Middle Ages. She explores the ways in which cultural elites thought about the poor, and shows that their conceptions of poor men and women derived from the roles assigned to men and women in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis-men are associated with productive labor, or labor within the public realm, and women with reproductive labor, or labor within the private realm. Farmer proceeds to complicate this picture, showing that elite society's attitude toward an individual's social role and moral capacity depended not only on gender but also on the person's social status. Such perceptions in turn influenced the kinds of care extended or denied to the poor by charitable organizations and the informal self-help networks that arose among the poor themselves. Of particular interest are Farmer's discussions of society's responses to men and women who were disabled to the point of being incapable of any work at all.

Author Biography

Sharon Farmer is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Table of Contents

Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Abbreviations	xiii
Introduction	1	(10)
Chapter 1 Wealth, Migration, and Poverty	11	(28)
Chapter 2 Adam's Curse	39	(35)
Chapter 3 Men in Need	74	(31)
Chapter 4 Eve's Curse	105	(31)
Chapter 5 Women in Need	136	(29)
Conclusion	165	(6)
Appendix Parisian Wills, 1200-1348	171	(2)
Bibliography	173	(20)
Index	193