Masculinity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviors considered masculine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent masculinity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is distinct from the definition of the biological male sex, as anyone can exhibit masculine traits. Standards of masculinity vary across different cultures and historical periods.
The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, commonly called the Katz Center, is a postdoctoral research center devoted to the study of Jewish history and civilization.
Slavery in medieval Europe was widespread. Europe and North Africa were part of a highly interconnected trade network across the Mediterranean Sea, and this included slave trading. During the medieval period (500–1500), wartime captives were commonly forced into slavery. As European kingdoms transitioned to feudal societies, a different legal category of unfree persons—serfdom—began to replace slavery as the main economic and agricultural engine. Throughout medieval Europe, the perspectives and societal roles of enslaved peoples differed greatly, from some being restricted to agricultural labor to others being positioned as trusted political advisors.
John Rykener, also known as Eleanor, was a 14th-century sex worker arrested in December 1394 for performing a sex act with John Britby, a man who was a former chaplain of the St Margaret Pattens church, in London's Cheapside while wearing female attire. Although historians tentatively link Rykener, who was male, to a prisoner of the same name, the only known facts of the sex worker's life come from an interrogation made by the mayor of London. Rykener was questioned on two offences: prostitution and sodomy. Prostitutes were not usually arrested in London during this period, while sodomy was an offence against morality rather than common law, and so pursued in ecclesiastical courts. There is no evidence that Rykener was prosecuted for either crime.
Friedelehe meaning "lover marriage" is a term for a postulated form of Germanic marriage said to have existed during the Early Middle Ages. The concept was introduced into mediaeval historiography in the 1920s by Herbert Meyer. There is some controversy as to whether such a marriage form, a quasi-marriage, existed but historians who have identified it agree that it was not accepted by the Church.
Women in the Middle Ages in Europe occupied a number of different social roles. Women held the positions of wife, mother, peasant, artisan, and nun, as well as some important leadership roles, such as abbess or queen regnant. The very concept of women changed in a number of ways during the Middle Ages, and several forces influenced women's roles during this period, while also expanding upon their traditional roles in society and the economy. Whether or not they were powerful or stayed back to take care of their homes, they still played an important role in society whether they were saints, nobles, peasants, or nuns. Due to context from recent years leading to the reconceptualization of women during this time period, many of their roles were overshadowed by the work of men. Although it is prevalent that women participated in church and helping at home, they did much more to influence the Middle Ages.
The Haskins Medal is an annual medal awarded by the Medieval Academy of America. It is awarded for the production of a distinguished book in the field of medieval studies.
The Lecky Professorship of History, previously the Lecky Professorship of Modern History is a chair at Trinity College Dublin.
Patrick J. Geary is an American medievalist. He is a professor emeritus of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. From 2004 to 2011, he also held the title of Distinguished Professor of Medieval History Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In medieval Europe, attitudes toward homosexuality varied from region to region, determined by religious culture; the Catholic Church, which dominated the religious landscape, considered, and still considers, sodomy as a mortal sin and a "crime against nature". By the 11th century, "sodomy" was increasingly viewed as a serious moral crime and punishable by mutilation or death. Medieval records reflect this growing concern. The emergence of heretical groups, such as the Cathars and Waldensians, witnesses a rise in allegations of unnatural sexual conduct against such heretics as part of the war against heresy in Christendom. Accusations of sodomy and "unnatural acts" were levelled against the Order of the Knights Templar in 1307 as part of Philip IV of France's attempt to suppress the order. These allegations have been dismissed by some scholars.
Carolyn Dinshaw is an American academic and author, who has specialised in issues of gender and sexuality in the medieval context.
The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS) is an academic organization which "promotes the study of the Patristic Age, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern era from the perspective of gender studies, women's studies, and feminist studies". Its development followed the rise of the study of medieval women in the 1970s and 1980s, and sought to increase the number of and sponsor papers about medieval women, and feminist theory driven scholarship, at the largest international medieval studies conferences, International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo and Leeds IMC.
Medieval female sexuality is the collection of sexual and sensual characteristics identified in a woman from the Middle Ages. Like a modern woman, a medieval woman's sexuality included many different aspects. Sexuality does not only refer to a woman's sexual activity, as sexual lives were as social, cultural, legal, and religious as they were personal.
Monica H. Green is an author and a historian who was a professor of history at Arizona State University. She is an expert in the history of women's health care in premodern Europe, medicine and gender, and she specialises in the history of infectious diseases in the pre-modern period.
During the Middle Ages in Europe, lifelong spinsters came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, though elite women were less likely to be single than peasants or townswomen. The category of single women does not include widows or divorcees, which are terms used to describe women who were married at one point in their lives.
Marital debt is a spouse's sexual commitment to one another. The concept stems from descriptions found in canon law of medieval Europe.
Alastair J. Minnis is a Northern Irish literary critic and historian of ideas who has written extensively about medieval literature, and contributed substantially to the study of late-medieval theology and philosophy. Having gained a first-class B.A. degree at the Queen's University of Belfast, he matriculated at Keble College, Oxford as a visiting graduate student, where he completed work on his Belfast Ph.D., having been mentored by M.B. Parkes and Beryl Smalley. Following appointments at the Queen's University of Belfast and Bristol University, he was appointed Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of York; also Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies and later Head of English & Related Literature. From 2003 to 2006, he was a Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University, Columbus, from where he moved to Yale University. In 2008, he was named Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale.
Love service is a ritualized form of male love-devotion toward women, especially noble women, that was popularized in the Middle Ages.
Elisheva Baumgarten is the Yitzchak Becker Professor of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is an expert on the social and religious history of the Jews of medieval northern Europe (1000-1400). Her research includes those who did not write the sources that have been transmitted, focusing particularly on women and gender hierarchies.
Jacqueline Murray is a Canadian medieval historian and professor emeritus of history at the University of Guelph. Her research focuses on sexuality and gender in medieval Europe, with a specific focus on masculinity and male sexuality. She has also studied marriage and the family in the Middles Ages.
