This course introduces the key concepts, debates, and methods used to understand the relationship between individuals and the communities that shaped life in medieval Europe, emphasising how belonging to different social, economic, political, and religious groups structured identity, opportunity, authority, and survival. Through close analysis of primary sources and engagement with modern historical interpretations, we will investigate how communities were formed, governed, and maintained; how they managed conflict, enforced norms, defended themselves, and exercised power over their members; and the tensions between cooperation and coercion that defined communal life. The course examines a wide range of social settings—including urban neighbourhoods and villages, systems of lordship and feudal obligation, religious houses such as monasteries and convents, parish congregations, craft and merchant guilds, confraternities, and marginalised or minority groups, including non-Christians, in order to reveal how mechanisms of hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, discipline, and expulsion operated across medieval society. By comparing these different forms of association, students consider how individuals navigated overlapping communal structures, negotiated authority, built networks of support, and at times resisted or challenged collective control, ultimately gaining a deeper understanding of how community served both as a source of protection and belonging and as a powerful instrument of regulation and inequality in the medieval world.
- Nauczyciel: Emilia Jamroziak