John W. Baldwin (1929-2015) was the Charles Homer Haskins Professor of History Emeritus at Johns Hopkins University. He was the author of numerous books including The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages, Aristocratic Life in Medieval France: The Romances of Jean Renart and Gerbert de Montreuil, 1190-1230, and Paris, 1200. He was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected...
Modern historians have generally approached the study of medieval society through chronicles, charters, and other documents composed in Latin by members of the clergy. Although these records may be satisfactory for studying the affairs of ecclesiastics, kings, and high barons, they are inadequate for assessing the major preoccupations of the aristocracy -- living extravagantly, fighting, making love, entertaining, eating and dressing ostentati...
This innovative study by a premier scholar of the Middle Ages brings together widely divergent discourses to fashion an unusually provocative, comprehensive picture of sexual language and attitudes at a particular time and place in the medieval world. John Baldwin introduces five representative voices from the turn of the twelfth century in northern France: Pierre the Chanter speaks for the theological doctrine of Augustine, the Prose Salernit...
