Table Of ContentRethinking Medieval Margins and
Marginality
Marginality assumes a variety of forms in current discussions of the Middle Ages.
Modern scholars have considered a seemingly innumerable list of people to have been
marginalized in the European Middle Ages: the poor, criminals, unorthodox religious,
the disabled, the mentally ill, women, so-called infidels, and the list goes on. If so many
inhabitants of medieval Europe can be qualified as “marginal,” it is important to interro
gate where the margins lay and what it means that the majority of people occupied them.
In addition, we scholars need to reexamine our use of a term that seems to have such
broad applicability to ensure that we avoid imposing marginality on groups in the Middle
Ages that the era itself may not have considered as such. In the medieval era, when
belonging to a community was vitally important, people who lived on the margins of
society could be particularly vulnerable. And yet, as scholars have shown, we ought not
forget that this heightened vulnerability sometimes prompted so-called marginals to form
their own communities, as a way of redefining the center and placing themselves within it.
The present volume explores the concept of marginality, to whom the moniker has been
applied, to whom it might usefully be applied, and how we might more meaningfully
define marginality based on historical sources rather than modern assumptions. Although
the volume’s geographic focus is Europe, the chapters look further afieldtoNorth Africa,
the Sahara, and the Levant acknowledging that at no time, and certainly not in the
Middle Ages, was Europe cut off from other parts of the globe.
Ann E. Zimo is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of New Hamp
shire. Her research focuses on cultural interaction in the Eastern Mediterranean at
the time of the crusades.
Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher has published articles on priests, women, and ecclesiastical
regulation in Speculum, Journal of Medieval History, and Bulletin of the History of
Medicine. She is currently an independent scholar as well as project manager at Beu
tler Ink, a digital marketing agency.
Kathryn Reyerson is Distinguished University Teaching Professor of History at the
University of Minnesota and founding director of the Center for Medieval Studies.
She has published widely on merchants and trade, and on women and gender. Her
current research focuses on medieval Mediterranean piracy.
Debra Blumenthal is Associate Professor of History at the University of California at
Santa Barbara. Her publications explore the history of slavery and race, as well as
gender and cross-cultural relations in the medieval Mediterranean.
Studies in Medieval History and Culture
Recent titles include
The Charisma of Distant Places
Travel and Religion in the Early Middle Ages
Courtney Luckhardt
The Death Penalty in Late Medieval Catalonia
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Flocel Sabaté
Church, Society and University
The Paris Condemnation of 1241/4
Deborah Grice
The Sense of Smell in the Middle Ages
A Source of Certainty
Katelynn Robinson
Travel, Pilgrimage and Social Interaction from Antiquity to the
Middle Ages
Edited by Jenni Kuuliala and Jussi Rantala
Rethinking Medieval Margins and Marginality
Edited by Ann E. Zimo, Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher,
Kathryn Reyerson and Debra Blumenthal
Rethinking Medieval Margins
and Marginality
ff
Edited by Ann E. Zimo, Ti any D. Vann
Sprecher, Kathryn Reyerson and Debra
Blumenthal
First published 2020
by Routledge
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© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Ann E. Zimo, Tiffany D. Vann
Sprecher, Kathryn Reyerson, Debra Blumenthal; individual chapters, the
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zimo, Ann E., editor.
Title: Rethinking medieval margins and marginality / edited by Ann E.
Zimo, Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher, Kathryn Reyerson and Debra
Blumenthal.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Studies in medieval history and culture | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019049125 (print) | LCCN 2019049126 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367439569 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003006725 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Marginality, Social–Europe–History–To 1500. |
Europe–Social conditions–To 1492. | Europe–History–To 1492.
Classification: LCC HN380.M26 R48 2020 (print) | LCC HN380.M26
(ebook) | DDC 306.0940902–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049125
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049126
ISBN: 978-0-367-43956-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-00672-5 (ebk)
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by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.
Contents
List of figures and tables viii
Acknowledgments ix
List of contributors x
Introduction 1
ANN E. ZIMO, TIFFANY D. VANN SPRECHER, KATHRYN REYERSON,
AND DEBRA BLUMENTHAL
PART 1
Race 9
1 The space between Borno and Palermo: Slavery and its
boundaries in the late medieval Saharan-Mediterranean
region 11
LORI DE LUCIA
2 Race and vulnerability: Mongols in thirteenth-century
ethnographic travel writing 27
SIERRA LOMUTO
PART 2
Geography 43
3 Anglo-Saxons, evangelization, and cultural anxiety: The
impact of conversion on the margins of Europe 45
JEREMY DEANGELO
4 Malory’s Sandwich: Marginalized Arthurian geography and
the Global Middle Ages 57
MEG ROLAND
vi Contents
5 The past and future margins of Catalonia: Language politics
and Catalan imperial ambitions in Guillem de Torroella’s La
Faula 70
NAHIR I. OTAÑO GRACIA
6 Why kings? 91
LISA WOLVERTON
PART 3
Gender 109
7 Measuring the margins: Women, slavery, and the notarial
process in late fourteenth-century Mallorca 111
KEVIN MUMMEY
8 The marginality of clerics’ concubines in the Middle
Ages: A reappraisal 129
ROISIN COSSAR
9 Reviled and revered: The importance of marginality in the
pastoral care of beguines 146
TANYA STABLER MILLER
PART 4
Law 165
10 How marginal is marginal? Muslims in the Latin East 167
ANN E. ZIMO
11 Pirates as marginals in the medieval Mediterranean world 186
KATHRYN REYERSON
PART 5
Body 205
12 Marginality and community at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit
in late medieval Marseille 207
CALEY MCCARTHY
Contents vii
13 Disabled devotion: Original sin and universal disability in the
Prik of Conscience 226
SAMANTHA KATZ SEAL
Select bibliography 243
Index 251
Figures and tables
Figure
12.1 Patient counts at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit, 1449–1450 214
Table
12.1 Places of origin 212
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank the reviewers who kindly read and commented
on individual chapters, as well as the anonymous reviewers of our proposal for
their invaluable suggestions. We would also like to thank Joëlle Rollo-Koster
for providing the idea of putting the volume together in the first place. Of
course, none of this would be possible without the authors themselves and the
editors and staff at Routledge and Integra.
