Thomas N. Bisson

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Thomas N. Bisson
NationalityAmerican
Education Haverford College (BA)
Princeton University (MA, PhD)
Occupation(s) Historian, medievalist, academic and author
Employer Harvard University
Awards Haskins Medal (1987)
Creu de Sant Jordi, Generalitat de Catalunya (2001)

Thomas Noel Bisson is an American historian, medievalist, academic and author. He is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History Emeritus at Harvard University. [1]

Contents

Bisson's research centers on the political, institutional, and intellectual history of medieval Europe, with a specific emphasis on the French kingdom, southern France, and Catalonia. He has authored and co-authored research articles (21 of which were collected in Medieval France and her Pyrenean neighbors, plus two substantial editions: Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early count-kings (1151-1213) 2 vols., and The Chronography of Robert of Torigni, 2 vols.) and books, including The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History, Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140-1200, and The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government. His early work was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship (1964), [2] with fellowships from NEH (1975) and ACLS (1979), leading to work on Catalonia that was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1991 [3] and the Creu de Sant Jordi from the Generalitat de Catalunya (2001). [4]

Bisson was elected Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1975), [5] Member of the American Philosophical Society (1977), [6] and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992). [7] He is a Corresponding Member of the Institute for Catalan Studies and the Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona, [8] and is Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. [9]

Education and career

Bisson earned a Bachelor of Arts in History and English from Haverford College in 1953. From 1955 to 1957, he studied in Princeton University as a Charlotte Elizabeth Proctor Fellow and obtained his PhD from Princeton in 1958. [10] He began his academic career as an Instructor in History at Amherst College from 1957 to 1960. He then held positions as an Assistant Professor at Brown University from 1960 to 1965, followed by an appointment as an Associate Professor at Swarthmore College from 1965 to 1967. In 1967, he was appointed Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Professor of History from 1969 to 1987. He joined Harvard University as a Visiting Professor in 1986, was appointed Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History at Harvard in 1988, and has been the Emeritus Lea Professor of Medieval History since 2005. [1]

Bisson was President of The Medieval Academy of America (1994–95) and served as Chairman of the Department of History from 1991 to 1995 at Harvard University. [11]

Research and publications

Bisson's research lies in the fields of history and medieval studies with its focus on the cultural history of power in medieval Europe, particularly France and Catalonia, in the post-Carolingian period (A.D. 950 - 1250). [12] In addition to articles, his publications include books, among them Conservation of Coinage: Monetary Exploitation and its Restraint in France, Catalonia, and Aragon (c.A.D.1000-c.1225); The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History, a survey of medieval Catalonia during the centuries when it was ruled by kings of Aragon; an edited collection of studies by other historians entitled Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe. His course in Harvard's Core program, offered in 1988, 1990, 1993, 2001, 2003, became a book entitled The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government. In a review for the New York Review of Books, Robert Bartlett contended that this was a book about government, after all, [13] but in his rebuttal, Bisson insisted on his own distinction, rooted in the sources, between power and government. [14] His edition of the Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia, led to his book Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140–1200, which explored peasants' voices from Catalan villagers revealing their grievances against the Count of Barcelona's agents, shedding light on ambitions to power amongst non-nobles in castles, as Margaretta S. Handhe stated, "Using excellent prose and interpretive skill, Bisson has rescued these peasants from anonymity and given their sufferings a life beyond their mortal existence." [15] Of his latest book, The Chronography of Robert of Torigni, 2 vols., Sean McGlynn wrote, "Bisson's masterful new edition is clearly to be considered as the new gold standard." [16]

Bisson's article "The 'Feudal Revolution" defended Marc Bloch and Georges Duby, French historians who had demonstrated a massive societal transformation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when lords, fiefs, and vassals multiplied. [17] In his presidential address to the Medieval Academy of America (1995), he pointed out that lords and lordships had multiplied exponentially after about 990. This entailed a breakdown of public order, the rise of new lordships amongst the men of castles in the quest of nobility, the loss of civic or official identities, and while he had first studied precedents for parliamentary representation in the thirteenth century, his later books and teaching stressed the importance of public interest as a new and debatable concept essential to government, however minimal, and first perceptible in Catalonia and England in the years from about 1180 to 1215. As he first argued in The Crisis of the Twelfth Century, there were notable precedents for official order, with new forms of accountability arising in France, the Low Countries, and England even as accountable agents, such as sheriffs continued to behave like lords in quest of noble status. In another study Pouvoir et consuls à Toulouse (1150-1205), he showed that elected consuls themselves were striving for lordly status. [18]

Awards and honors

Bibliography

Selected books

Selected articles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Catalonia</span>

The recorded history of the lands of what today is known as Catalonia begins with the development of the Iberian peoples while several Greek colonies were established on the coast before the Roman conquest. It was the first area of Hispania conquered by the Romans. It then came under Visigothic rule after the collapse of the western part of the Roman Empire. In 718, the area was occupied by the Umayyad Caliphate and became a part of Muslim ruled al-Andalus. The Frankish Empire conquered northern half of the area from the Muslims, ending with the conquest of Barcelona in 801, as part of the creation of a larger buffer zone of Christian counties against Islamic rule historiographically known as the Marca Hispanica. In the 10th century the County of Barcelona became progressively independent from Frankish rule.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfonso II of Aragon</span> King of Aragon from 1164 to 1196

Alfonso II, called the Chaste or the Troubadour, was the King of Aragon and, as Alfons I, the Count of Barcelona from 1164 until his death. The eldest son of Count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona and Queen Petronilla of Aragon, he was the first King of Aragon who was also Count of Barcelona. He was also Count of Provence, which he secured from Douce II and her would-be father-in-law Raymond V, Count of Toulouse, from 1166 until 1173, when he ceded it to his brother, Ramon Berenguer III. His reign has been characterised by nationalistic and nostalgic Catalan historians as l'engrandiment occitànic or "the Pyrenean unity": a great scheme to unite various lands on both sides of the Pyrenees under the rule of the House of Barcelona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John I of Aragon</span> King of Aragon from 1387 to 1396

John I, called by posterity the Hunter or the Lover of Elegance, or the Abandoned in his lifetime, was the King of Aragon from 1387 until his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petronilla of Aragon</span> Queen of Aragon from 1137 to 1164

Petronilla, whose name is also spelled Petronila or Petronella, was Queen of Aragon (1137–1164) from the abdication of her father, Ramiro II, in 1137 until her own abdication in 1164. After her abdication she acted as regent during the minority of her son Alfonso II of Aragon (1164–1173). She was the last ruling member of the Jiménez dynasty in Aragon, and by marriage brought the throne to the House of Barcelona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spanish March</span> Counties in Southern border of the Frankish Kingdom

The Spanish March or Hispanic March was a military buffer zone established c.795 by Charlemagne in the eastern Pyrenees and nearby areas, to protect the new territories of the Christian Carolingian Empire - the Duchy of Gascony, the Duchy of Aquitaine, and Septimania - from the Muslim Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in al-Andalus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crown of Aragon</span> Composite monarchy (1164–1707/1715)

The Crown of Aragon was a composite monarchy ruled by one king, originated by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona and ended as a consequence of the War of the Spanish Succession. At the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon was a thalassocracy controlling a large portion of present-day eastern Spain, parts of what is now southern France, and a Mediterranean empire which included the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Southern Italy, and parts of Greece.

Robert d'Aguiló, also known as Robert Bordet, was a Norman knight who moved from Normandy to Catalonia in the early 12th century. He was a native of Cullei, as reported by Orderic Vitalis, and his name d'Aguiló is a catalanized form of "d'Aculley" or "de Culley" that he adopted after marrying the daughter of a Catalan noble.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Principality of Catalonia</span> Principality in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula between the 12th century and 1714

The Principality of Catalonia was a medieval and early modern state in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. During most of its history it was in dynastic union with the Kingdom of Aragon, constituting together the Crown of Aragon. Between the 13th and the 18th centuries, it was bordered by the Kingdom of Aragon to the west, the Kingdom of Valencia to the south, the Kingdom of France and the feudal lordship of Andorra to the north and by the Mediterranean Sea to the east. The term Principality of Catalonia was official until the 1830s, when the Spanish government implemented the centralized provincial division, but remained in popular and informal contexts. Today, the term Principat (Principality) is used primarily to refer to the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain, as distinct from the other Catalan Countries, and usually including the historical region of Roussillon in Southern France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">County of Barcelona</span> Medieval Catalan county

The County of Barcelona was a polity in northeastern Iberian Peninsula, originally located in the southern frontier region of the Carolingian Empire. In the 10th century, the Counts of Barcelona progressively achieved independence from Frankish rule, becoming hereditary rulers in constant warfare with the Islamic Caliphate of Córdoba and its successor states. The counts, through marriage, alliances and treaties, acquired or vassalized the other Catalan counties and extended their influence over Occitania. In 1164, the County of Barcelona entered a personal union with the Kingdom of Aragon. Thenceforward, the history of the county is subsumed within that of the Crown of Aragon, but the city of Barcelona remained preeminent within it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sancho, Count of Provence</span> Count of Provence

Sancho, also spelled Sanç or Sanche, was a Catalano-Aragonese nobleman and statesman, the youngest son of Queen Petronilla of Aragon and Count Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona. He was at different times the count of Cerdanya (c.1175–1188), Provence (1181–1185), Gévaudan, Rodez and Carlat (1183–1185), and Roussillon (1208–1212). He served as the regent of Provence from 1209 until 1218 during the minority of Count Raymond Berengar IV, and as regent of Aragon from 1214 until 1218, during the minority of King James I.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douce I, Countess of Provence</span> 12th-century French noblewoman

Douce I was the daughter of Gilbert I of Gévaudan and Gerberga of Provence and wife of Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona. In 1112, she inherited the county of Provence through her mother. She married Ramon Berenguer at Arles on 3 February that year.

The County of Pallars or Pallás was a de facto independent petty state, nominally within the Carolingian Empire and then West Francia during the ninth and tenth centuries, perhaps one of the Catalan counties, originally part of the Marca Hispanica in the ninth century. It was coterminous with the upper Noguera Pallaresa valley from the crest of the Pyrenees to the village of Tremp, comprising the Vall d'Àneu, Vall de Cardós, Vall Ferrera, the right bank of the Noguera Ribagorçana, and the valley of the Flamicell. It roughly corresponded with the historic region of Catalonia called Pallars. Its chief city was Sort.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">County of Pallars Jussà</span>

The County of Pallars Jussà or Lower Pallars was a county in the Hispanic March during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, long after the march had ceased to be effectively administered by the Kings of France. It was a division of the County of Pallars, which had been de facto, and possible de jure, independent since the late ninth century. It roughly corresponded with the modern Catalan comarca of Pallars Jussà.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olegarius</span>

Olegarius Bonestruga was the Bishop of Barcelona from 1116 and Archbishop of Tarragona from 1118 until his death. He was an intimate of Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, and often accompanied the count on military ventures.

The Catalan Civil War, also called the Catalonian Civil War or the War against John II, was a civil war in the Principality of Catalonia, then part of the Crown of Aragon, between 1462 and 1472. The two factions, the royalists who supported John II of Aragon and the Catalan constitutionalists, disputed the extent of royal rights in Catalonia. The French entered the war at times on the side on John II and at times with the Catalans. The Catalans, who at first rallied around John's son Charles of Viana, set up several pretenders in opposition to John during the course of the conflict. Barcelona remained their stronghold to the end: with its surrender the war came to a close. John, victorious, re-established the status quo ante bellum.

<i>Liber feudorum maior</i> Twelfth-century cartulary

The Liber feudorum maior, originally called the Liber domini regis, is a late twelfth-century illuminated cartulary of the Crown of Aragon. It was compiled by the royal archivist Ramon de Caldes with the help of Guillem de Bassa for Alfonso II, beginning in 1192. It contained 902 documents dating as far back as the tenth century. It is profusely illustrated in a Romanesque style, a rarity for utilitarian documents. The LFM is an indispensable source for the institutional history of the emerging Principality of Catalonia. It is preserved as a file in the Arxiu de la Corona d'Aragó (ACA), Cancelleria reial, Registres no. 1, in Barcelona.

The Liber instrumentorum vicecomitalium, sometimes called the Trencavel Cartulary (CT) or Cartulaire de Foix, is a high medieval cartulary commissioned by the Trencavel family. It preserves either 585 or 616–7 charters, the earliest of which dates to 1028 and the latest to 1214. The charters preserve a record of important feudal customs relating to the lands of the Trencavel, namely Albi, Agde, Béziers, Carcassonne, Nîmes, and Razès, all of which—save Carcassonne, which was a county—were viscounties, hence the cartulary's name. It is preserved in a twelfth-century manuscript, now kept with the Société Archéologique de Montpellier, where it is MS 10.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catalan Courts</span> Historic legislature of Catalonia

The Catalan Courts or General Court of Catalonia were the policymaking and parliamentary body of the Principality of Catalonia from the 13th to the 18th century.

Berenguer de Vilademuls was the Archbishop of Tarragona from 1174 until his assassination. He was the sixth bishop after the re-founding of the diocese in 1118. His predecessor, Hug de Cervelló, had been assassinated in 1171. Tarragona was in an internationally ambiguous position in Berenguer's time, between the Kingdom of France on the one side, the traditional suzerain of the Catalan counties, and the Crown of Aragon on the other, which had acquired the Catalan counties in the 12th century. In 1180 a council was convened in Tarragona that declared that thenceforth documents should be dated by the year of the Incarnation rather than in the traditional way, by the regnal year of the French kings.

John Hine Mundy was a British-American medievalist. He was professor of history emeritus at Columbia University, where he taught for more than forty years.

References

  1. 1 2 "Thomas N. Bisson". history.fas.harvard.edu.
  2. 1 2 "Thomas N. Bisson". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation...
  3. 1 2 "Thomas N. Bisson - Honoris - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona - UAB Barcelona". www.uab.cat.
  4. 1 2 "Newsmakers". Harvard Gazette. January 24, 2002.
  5. 1 2 "Fellows - The Medieval Academy of America". www.medievalacademy.org.
  6. 1 2 "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org.
  7. 1 2 "Thomas Noel Bisson | American Academy of Arts and Sciences". www.amacad.org. April 2, 2024.
  8. ↑ "Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres". www.boneslletres.cat.
  9. 1 2 "Professor Thomas Bisson FBA". The British Academy.
  10. ↑ "Bisson, Thomas Noel, 1958 - Finding Aids". findingaids.princeton.edu.
  11. ↑ "Standing Committees for 2000-01 - Faculty of Arts and Sciences". Harvard Gazette. February 8, 2001.
  12. ↑ "Thomas N. Bisson". medieval.fas.harvard.edu.
  13. ↑ Bartlett, Robert (June 24, 2010). "Lords of 'Pride and Plunder'" – via www.nybooks.com.
  14. ↑ Bisson, Thomas N. (November 11, 2010). "Knights, Castles, and Power" – via www.nybooks.com.
  15. ↑ Handhe, Margaretta S. (January 3, 1999). "Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140–1200: Bisson, Thomas N.: Cambridge: Harvard University Press 224 pp., Publication Date: August 1998". History: Reviews of New Books. 27 (2): 78–79. doi:10.1080/03612759.1999.10528329 – via CrossRef.
  16. ↑ McGlynn, Sean (October 1, 2022). "Thomas N. Bisson, ed. and trans., The Chronography of Robert of Torigni . Vol. 1, The Chronicle, A.D. 1100–1186 . Vol. 2, Related Historical Texts . (Oxford Medieval Texts.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. cxii, 393; xl, 455; black-and-white figures. $230. ISBN: 978-0-1996-8212-6". Speculum. 97 (4): 1161–1162. doi:10.1086/721891 – via CrossRef.
  17. ↑ Bisson, T. N. (1994). "The "Feudal Revolution"". Past & Present. pp. 6–42 – via JSTOR.
  18. ↑ "Pouvoir et consuls à Toulouse (1150-1205) | WorldCat.org". search.worldcat.org.
  19. ↑ "Haskins Medal Recipients - The Medieval Academy of America". www.medievalacademy.org.
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