The dichotomous topics, 'poverty and prosperity', 'rich and poor', continue to interest scholars, politicians, and philosophers while also appealing to a wide general audience, and are particularly of interest today. In this volume, the authors raise and try to answer questions about the ways in which individuals, families, ethnic and religious groups and nations 500, 1000, or even 1500, years ago approached the idea of economic status and personal worth. The interdisciplinary nature of this volume provides an analysis of poverty and prosperity from a multitude of perspectives and within a host of secular and religious literature: historical treatises, scholastic works, art, travellers' and political accounts. Through its breadth, depth, and interdisciplinary focus, the present volume makes a full contribution to the topic for anyone interested in how people in the past have experienced these states.

"In this stimulating and important book Lester Little advances the original thesis that, paradoxically, it was the leading practitioners of voluntary poverty, Franciscan and Dominican friars, who finally formulated a Christian ethic which justified the activities of merchants, moneylenders, and other urban professionals, and created a Christian spirituality suitable for townsmen. Little has synthesized a vast body of specialized literature in Italian, German, French, and English to write an interpretive essay which provides a new perspective on the interaction between economic and social forces and the religious movements advocating the apostolic ideal of voluntary poverty...Little's book is a major contribution, not only to the history of the religious movement of voluntary poverty, but also to the interdisciplinary study of the middle ages." --Journal of Social History

Ever since the time of Francis of Assisi, a commitment to voluntary poverty has been a controversial aspect of religious life. This volume explores the interaction between poverty and religious devotion in the mendicant orders between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. While poverty has often been perceived more as a Franciscan than as a Dominican emphasis, this volume considers its role within a broader movement of evangelical renewal associated with the mendicant transformation of religious life. At a time of increased economic prosperity, reformers within the Church sought new ways of encouraging identification with the person of Christ. This volume considers the paradoxical tension between voluntary poverty as a way of emulating Christ and involuntary poverty as situation demanding a response from those with the means to help the poor. Drawing on history, literature and visual arts, it explores how the mendicant orders continued to transform religious life into the time of the renaissance. The papers in this volume are organised under three headings, prefaced with an introductory essay by the editors: Poverty and the Rule of Francis, exploring the interpretation of poverty in the Franciscan Order; Devotional Cultures, considering aspects of devotional life fostered by mendicant religious communities, Franciscan, Augustinian and Dominican; Preaching Poverty, on the way poverty was promoted and practiced within the Dominican Order in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In The Medieval Economy of Salvation, Adam J. Davis shows how the burgeoning commercial economy of western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, alongside an emerging culture of Christian charity, led to the establishment of hundreds of hospitals and leper houses. Focusing on the county of Champagne, he looks at the ways in which charitable organizations and individuals—townspeople, merchants, aristocrats, and ecclesiastics—saw in these new institutions a means of infusing charitable giving and service with new social significance and heightened expectations of spiritual rewards. In tracing the rise of the medieval hospital during a period of intense urbanization and the transition from a gift economy to a commercial one, Davis makes clear how embedded this charitable institution was in the wider social, cultural, religious, and economic fabric of medieval life.

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths' Very Short Introduction to Medieval Britain covers the establishment of the Anglo-Norman monarchy in the early Middle Ages, through to England's failure to dominate the British Isles and France in the later Middle Ages. Out of the turbulence came stronger senses of identity in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Yet this was an age, too, of growing definition of Englishness and of a distinctive English cultural tradition. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.