Background
Freedman, Paul Harris was born on September 15, 1949 in New York City. Son of Alfred M. and Marcia (Kohl) Freedman.
(This 1991 book describes the history of peasants in Catal...)
This 1991 book describes the history of peasants in Catalonia, the wealthiest and politically dominant part of the medieval Kingdom of Aragon, between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. It focuses on the period from 1000 to 1300, when free peasants who had held property under favourable frontier conditions were progressively subjugated by their lords. Between 1462 and 1486 Catalan peasants mounted the most successful peasants' war of the Middle Ages, and achieved the formal abolition of servitude. Professor Freedman seeks to explain both the process by which servitude was strengthened over the centuries, and its eventual weakening before a direct moral and military challenge. He addresses both the causes of enserfment and the limitations on its effectiveness. The book integrates archival evidence with the theories of society elaborated by medieval jurists. Comparisons are drawn between Catalonia and other regions, and its experience is situated within a spectrum of different social and economic conditions.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521548055/?tag=2022091-20
( The medieval clergy, aristocracy, and commercial classe...)
The medieval clergy, aristocracy, and commercial classes tended to regard peasants as objects of contempt and derision. In religious writings, satires, sermons, chronicles, and artistic representations peasants often appeared as dirty, foolish, dishonest, even as subhuman or bestial. Their lowliness was commonly regarded as a natural corollary of the drudgery of their agricultural toil. Yet, at the same time, the peasantry was not viewed as other” in the manner of other condemned groups, such as Jews, lepers, Muslims, or the imagined monstrous races” of the East. Several crucial characteristics of the peasantry rendered it less clearly alien from the elite perspective: peasants were not a minority, their work in the fields nourished all other social orders, and, most important, they were Christians. In other respects, peasants could be regarded as meritorious by virtue of their simple life, productive work, and unjust suffering at the hands of their exploitive social superiors. Their unrewarded sacrifice and piety were also sometimes thought to place them closest to God and more likely to win salvation. This book examines these conflicting images of peasants from the post-Carolingian period to the German Peasants’ War. It relates the representation of peasants to debates about how society should be organized (specifically, to how human equality at Creation led to subordination), how slavery and serfdom could be assailed or defended, and how peasants themselves structured and justified their demands. Though it was argued that peasants were legitimately subjugated by reason of nature or some primordial curse (such as that of Noah against his son Ham), there was also considerable unease about how the exploitation of those who were not completely alienwho were, after all, Christianscould be explained. Laments over peasant suffering as expressed in the literature might have a stylized quality, but this book shows how they were appropriated and shaped by peasants themselves, especially in the large-scale rebellions that characterized the late Middle Ages.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804733732/?tag=2022091-20
Freedman, Paul Harris was born on September 15, 1949 in New York City. Son of Alfred M. and Marcia (Kohl) Freedman.
Bachelor, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1971; Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley, 1978.
Assistant professor to professor history Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 1979-1997. Professor history Yale University, New Haven, 1997—2004, chair department history, 2004—2007.
(This 1991 book describes the history of peasants in Catal...)
( The medieval clergy, aristocracy, and commercial classe...)
(Book by Freedman, Paul H.)
Fellow Medieval Academy American, Institute Catalan Studies (correspondent), Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona (correspondent).
Married Bonnie Jean Roe, August 15, 1982.