Documents of Practice Series

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About the Documents of Practice Series . . . .

The Documents of Practice Series consists of volumes that contain translations of selected primary documents that illustrate various aspects of the life experience of medieval women and men. By making some of the matter of historical generalization available to students, it is hoped that the series will enliven efforts to understand what medieval peoples thought and felt as they moved through the major passages of their lives.

MEDIEVAL NOTARIES AND THEIR ACTS:
The 1327-1328 Register of Jean Holanie
introduced, edited, and translated
by Kathryn L. Reyerson and Debra A. Salata

The book explores the beginnings of the continental European notarial tradition, acquainting readers with the format of notarial documents, the books containing notarial acts, and with the variety of notarial acts. Sample documents have been selected for their interest and their illustration of specific types of contracts. All are from the 1327-1328 notarial registry of Jean Holanie, the royal public notary of Montpellier.

REGULAR LIFE: Monastic, Canonical, and Mendicant Rules
(Second Edition)
selected and introduced
by Daniel Marcel La Corte and Douglas J. McMillan

This volume offers readers a revised and considerably expanded version of the first Regular Life, edited by McMillan and Kathryn Smith Fladenmuller in 1997. As the editors note in their introduction, "The purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to the Rules of life of the major religious orders within the monastic, canonical, and mendicant traditions." Included are admonitions on and examples of the various forms of regular life by Antony, Syncletica, Pachomius, Basil, Cassian, Augustine, Caesarius of Arles, Benedict of Nursia, Columbanus, and Benedict of Aniane, plus selections from Rules for Cluniacs, Carthusians, Cistercians, the Knights Templar, the Hospitallers, and the followers of Saints Francis, Clare, and Dominic

WOMEN AND MONASTICISM
IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE:
Sisters and Patrons of the Cistercian Reform
selected, translated, and with an introduction
by Constance H. Berman

A selection of documents, translated primarily from medieval Latin but occasionally from Old French, that show how religious women and their patrons managed resources to make monastic communities—particularly a variety of Cistercian communities—work. The records help us reconstruct how nuns and abbesses of Cistercian communities in the thirteenth century organized and kept records, managed their properties, responded to attempts at usurpation, and balanced their lives between devotional practices, which were part of their cloistered world, and family and social responsibilities beyond the convent walls.

REGULAR LIFE: Monastic, Canonical,
and Mendicant Rules
selected and introduced by Douglas J. McMillan
and Kathryn Smith Fladenmuller

"The purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to the Rules of life of the major religious orders within the monastic, canonical, and mendicant traditions. We present the most important Rules of religious life, mainly as developed in western Europe, and we offer selections from these Rules to illustrate the ideal established for the members of the various orders."—from the Preface

A SLICE OF LIFE: Selected Documents
of Medieval English Peasant Experience
edited, translated, and with an introduction
by Edwin Brezette DeWindt

"Since the audience for this text is assumed to be primarily students of medieval history, nothing from a specifically literary text has been included. Further, since archaeology deals in artifacts and other physical remains, it is impractical to supply material from that discipline. Therefore, only material from record sources is provided. . . . [T]hese are the only written materials that permit some measure of personalized contact with specific men and women from the past, so this gives them a special importance."—from the Introduction

SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE
IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
selected, introduced, and translated by Carole Rawcliffe

"The material contained [here] derives from a wide variety of printed and manuscript sources, chosen to give some idea of the rich diversity of evidence available to the historian of English medicine and its place in society during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries. Latin and French have been translated into modern English, while vernacular texts have been slightly modified, and obsolete or difficult words explained. Middle English has otherwise been retained to give the past an authentic voice and to emphasize the similarities as well as the differences between the experience of modern readers and that of the inhabitants of late medieval England."—from the Introduction

LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN
LATE MEDIEVAL LONDON
selected, translated and introduced by Shannon McSheffrey

"This pamphlet presents translations from a little-used source that sheds light on the nature of late medieval matrimony. Depositions (or testimony) in marriage cases brought before fifteenth-century English church courts reveal the attitudes and feelings of medieval people towards the marital bond. They illuminate such issues as the factors considered by a man and woman in making a marriage choice, the participation and influence of family members and others in pre-nuptial negotiations, and gender differences in parts played in the initiation and maintenance of the marriage tie. As disputes about marriage were one of the most common reasons ordinary people used the ecclesiastical court system, depositions also elucidate popular attitudes towards law and the Church."—from the Introduction

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URL: http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/mip/