Many Netherlandish towns and cities in the fifteenth century had to deal with recurring public he... more Many Netherlandish towns and cities in the fifteenth century had to deal with recurring public health crises. Struck by outbreaks of the plague and famine, this strongly urbanised region – at the time over a third of the population in Flanders, Brabant and Holland lived in cities – faced significant challenges. Sint-Truiden, a relatively small, yet significant market town situated in today’s Belgian Limburg and the site of a large Benedictine abbey since the seventh century, fared little better. Three types of health-related crises struck its community between 1417 and 1490, at the time numbering between 4.000-6.000 inhabitants: famine, plague and financial hardship as a result of falling population numbers. How did the city handle these exigencies? This chapter will argue that, in response, the city pursued vital politics by maintaining porous boundaries. It modulated the intake and output of food, persons, matter, and, by extension, money, to uphold balance and motility in the circulation of goods, energy and waste. In this way the weekly bylaws issued by the city magistrates actively anticipated and responded to the biopolitical challenges of managing the urban body politic on a population level, to ensure its vitality. In doing so, they built on existing practices, infrastructure and knowledge as well as adopting new policies.
Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 2020
Engaging the concepts of flow, circulation
and blockage can help us to understand the trajecto... more Engaging the concepts of flow, circulation
and blockage can help us to understand the trajectories of
pandemics and the social responses to them. Central to the
analysis is the concept of obligatory passage points through
which networks must pass. Attempts by various actors to
control the movement through them, be they government
authorities, health experts and caregivers, economic
producers or consumers, can create social tensions.
Such tensions were duly recognised during the recurring
outbreaks of the plague in the Second Plague Pandemic
between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries.
Analysing historical plague ordinances allows us to expose
the power mechanisms impacting networks as they move
through spaces, and to remain critical of how circulation
is controlled and moralised. We argue that historians can
contribute to reviewing these mechanisms behind the
spread of epidemics and the responses to them from the
perspective of movement and blockage.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2021
Public health historians have repeatedly shown that the theory, policy, and practice of group pro... more Public health historians have repeatedly shown that the theory, policy, and practice of group prophylactics far predate their alleged birth in industrial modernity, and regularly draw on Galenic principles. While the revision overall has been successful, its main focus on European cities entails a major risk, since city dwellers were a minority even in Europe’s most urbanised regions. At the same time, cities continue to be perceived and presented as typically European, which stymies transregional and comparative studies based at least in part on non- or extra-urban groups. Thus, any plan to both offer an accurate picture of public health’s deeper past and fundamentally challenge a narrative of civilizational progress wedded to Euro-American modernity (“stagism”) would benefit from looking beyond cities and their unique health challenges. The present article begins to do so by focusing on two ubiquitous groups, often operating outside cities and facing specific risks: miners and shi...
Latin and vernacular urban panegyrics, describing the ideal city and its residents, mushroomed in... more Latin and vernacular urban panegyrics, describing the ideal city and its residents, mushroomed in the twelfth century. Painting a utopian view of the city that mirrors the heavenly Jerusalem, they rhetorically conveyed ideals of urbanity for aspiring members of the body politic to emulate. This chapter explores the ways in which the cityscape constructed in these texts, and residents’ behaviour (as influenced by conduct manuals and regimes of health), appear embedded in a natural environment reflected through the lens of Galenic medicine. Evoking the benefits of cleanliness and beauty, these concepts of health and hygiene accorded closely with issues of social status. The disciplined quest for moderation and balance offered spiritual and physical health, as well as enhanced personal repute.
As urban communities in Western Europe mushroomed from the twelfth century onward, authorities pr... more As urban communities in Western Europe mushroomed from the twelfth century onward, authorities promptly responded with a plethora of regulations to facilitate, at least in theory, the orderly cohabitation of dwellers within the city walls. Many of these rules concerned public health matters, such as the disposal of waste, the protection of water supplies, and the sale of wholesome foodstuffs. In some cases, sanitary regulations drew from Ancient Greek and especially Galenic medical theory, which stressed the importance of a hygienic environment in safeguarding the urban body from disease. The effective execution of such measures relied in part on the active engagement and compliance of the population. Shared assumptions regarding physical and spiritual well-being, social cohesion, neighbourliness, and economic prosperity, as well as the pursuit of ideals of urbanity, fed into communal efforts to police the environment, the behaviour of others, and the conduct of the self. Nonetheles...
In his groundbreaking Imagined Communities, first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson argued tha... more In his groundbreaking Imagined Communities, first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson argued that members of a community experience a "deep, horizontal camaraderie." Despite being strangers, members feel connected in a web of imagined experiences.
Yet while Anderson’s insights have been hugely influential, they remain abstract: it is difficult to imagine imagined communities. How do they evolve and how is membership constructed cognitively, socially and culturally? How do individuals and communities contribute to group formation through the act of imagining? And what is the glue that holds communities together?
Imagining Communities examines actual processes of experiencing the imagined community, exploring its emotive force in a number of case studies. Communal bonding is analysed, offering concrete insights on where and by whom the nation (or social group) is imagined and the role of individuals therein. Offering eleven empirical case studies, ranging from the premodern to the modern age, this volume looks at and beyond the nation and includes regional as well as transnational communities as well. +
Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the English drunkards, the Germ... more Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the English drunkards, the Germans madmen and the French as arrogant. On crusade, army recruits from different ethnic backgrounds taunted each other's military skills. Men producing ethnography in monasteries and at court drafted derogatory descriptions of peoples dwelling in territories under colonisation, questioning their work ethic, social organisation, religious devotion and humanness. Monks listed and ruminated on the alleged traits of Jews, Saracens, Greeks, Saxons and Britons and their acceptance or rejection of Christianity. In this radical new approach to representations of nationhood in medieval western Europe, the author argues that ethnic stereotypes were constructed and wielded rhetorically to justify property claims, flaunt military strength and assert moral and cultural ascendance over others. The gendered images of ethnicity in circulation reflect a negotiation over self-representations of discipline, rationality and strength, juxtaposed with the alleged chaos and weakness of racialised others. Interpreting nationhood through a religious lens, monks and schoolmen explained it as scientifically informed by environmental medicine, an ancient theory that held that location and climate influenced the physical and mental traits of peoples. Drawing on lists of ethnic character traits, school textbooks, medical treatises, proverbs, poetry and chronicles, this book shows that ethnic stereotypes served as rhetorical tools of power, crafting relationships within communities and towards others.
Tapping into a combination of court documents, urban statutes, material artefacts, health guides ... more Tapping into a combination of court documents, urban statutes, material artefacts, health guides and treatises, Policing the Urban Environment in Premodern Europe offers a unique perspective on how premodern public authorities tried to create a clean, healthy environment. Overturning many preconceptions about medieval dirt and squalor, it presents the most outstanding recent scholarship on how public health norms were enforced in the judicial, religious and socio-cultural sphere before the advent of modern medicine and the nation-state, crossing geographical and linguistic boundaries and engaging with factors such as spiritual purity, civic pride and good neighbourliness.
Many Netherlandish towns and cities in the fifteenth century had to deal with recurring public he... more Many Netherlandish towns and cities in the fifteenth century had to deal with recurring public health crises. Struck by outbreaks of the plague and famine, this strongly urbanised region – at the time over a third of the population in Flanders, Brabant and Holland lived in cities – faced significant challenges. Sint-Truiden, a relatively small, yet significant market town situated in today’s Belgian Limburg and the site of a large Benedictine abbey since the seventh century, fared little better. Three types of health-related crises struck its community between 1417 and 1490, at the time numbering between 4.000-6.000 inhabitants: famine, plague and financial hardship as a result of falling population numbers. How did the city handle these exigencies? This chapter will argue that, in response, the city pursued vital politics by maintaining porous boundaries. It modulated the intake and output of food, persons, matter, and, by extension, money, to uphold balance and motility in the circulation of goods, energy and waste. In this way the weekly bylaws issued by the city magistrates actively anticipated and responded to the biopolitical challenges of managing the urban body politic on a population level, to ensure its vitality. In doing so, they built on existing practices, infrastructure and knowledge as well as adopting new policies.
Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 2020
Engaging the concepts of flow, circulation
and blockage can help us to understand the trajecto... more Engaging the concepts of flow, circulation
and blockage can help us to understand the trajectories of
pandemics and the social responses to them. Central to the
analysis is the concept of obligatory passage points through
which networks must pass. Attempts by various actors to
control the movement through them, be they government
authorities, health experts and caregivers, economic
producers or consumers, can create social tensions.
Such tensions were duly recognised during the recurring
outbreaks of the plague in the Second Plague Pandemic
between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries.
Analysing historical plague ordinances allows us to expose
the power mechanisms impacting networks as they move
through spaces, and to remain critical of how circulation
is controlled and moralised. We argue that historians can
contribute to reviewing these mechanisms behind the
spread of epidemics and the responses to them from the
perspective of movement and blockage.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2021
Public health historians have repeatedly shown that the theory, policy, and practice of group pro... more Public health historians have repeatedly shown that the theory, policy, and practice of group prophylactics far predate their alleged birth in industrial modernity, and regularly draw on Galenic principles. While the revision overall has been successful, its main focus on European cities entails a major risk, since city dwellers were a minority even in Europe’s most urbanised regions. At the same time, cities continue to be perceived and presented as typically European, which stymies transregional and comparative studies based at least in part on non- or extra-urban groups. Thus, any plan to both offer an accurate picture of public health’s deeper past and fundamentally challenge a narrative of civilizational progress wedded to Euro-American modernity (“stagism”) would benefit from looking beyond cities and their unique health challenges. The present article begins to do so by focusing on two ubiquitous groups, often operating outside cities and facing specific risks: miners and shi...
Latin and vernacular urban panegyrics, describing the ideal city and its residents, mushroomed in... more Latin and vernacular urban panegyrics, describing the ideal city and its residents, mushroomed in the twelfth century. Painting a utopian view of the city that mirrors the heavenly Jerusalem, they rhetorically conveyed ideals of urbanity for aspiring members of the body politic to emulate. This chapter explores the ways in which the cityscape constructed in these texts, and residents’ behaviour (as influenced by conduct manuals and regimes of health), appear embedded in a natural environment reflected through the lens of Galenic medicine. Evoking the benefits of cleanliness and beauty, these concepts of health and hygiene accorded closely with issues of social status. The disciplined quest for moderation and balance offered spiritual and physical health, as well as enhanced personal repute.
As urban communities in Western Europe mushroomed from the twelfth century onward, authorities pr... more As urban communities in Western Europe mushroomed from the twelfth century onward, authorities promptly responded with a plethora of regulations to facilitate, at least in theory, the orderly cohabitation of dwellers within the city walls. Many of these rules concerned public health matters, such as the disposal of waste, the protection of water supplies, and the sale of wholesome foodstuffs. In some cases, sanitary regulations drew from Ancient Greek and especially Galenic medical theory, which stressed the importance of a hygienic environment in safeguarding the urban body from disease. The effective execution of such measures relied in part on the active engagement and compliance of the population. Shared assumptions regarding physical and spiritual well-being, social cohesion, neighbourliness, and economic prosperity, as well as the pursuit of ideals of urbanity, fed into communal efforts to police the environment, the behaviour of others, and the conduct of the self. Nonetheles...
In his groundbreaking Imagined Communities, first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson argued tha... more In his groundbreaking Imagined Communities, first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson argued that members of a community experience a "deep, horizontal camaraderie." Despite being strangers, members feel connected in a web of imagined experiences.
Yet while Anderson’s insights have been hugely influential, they remain abstract: it is difficult to imagine imagined communities. How do they evolve and how is membership constructed cognitively, socially and culturally? How do individuals and communities contribute to group formation through the act of imagining? And what is the glue that holds communities together?
Imagining Communities examines actual processes of experiencing the imagined community, exploring its emotive force in a number of case studies. Communal bonding is analysed, offering concrete insights on where and by whom the nation (or social group) is imagined and the role of individuals therein. Offering eleven empirical case studies, ranging from the premodern to the modern age, this volume looks at and beyond the nation and includes regional as well as transnational communities as well. +
Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the English drunkards, the Germ... more Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the English drunkards, the Germans madmen and the French as arrogant. On crusade, army recruits from different ethnic backgrounds taunted each other's military skills. Men producing ethnography in monasteries and at court drafted derogatory descriptions of peoples dwelling in territories under colonisation, questioning their work ethic, social organisation, religious devotion and humanness. Monks listed and ruminated on the alleged traits of Jews, Saracens, Greeks, Saxons and Britons and their acceptance or rejection of Christianity. In this radical new approach to representations of nationhood in medieval western Europe, the author argues that ethnic stereotypes were constructed and wielded rhetorically to justify property claims, flaunt military strength and assert moral and cultural ascendance over others. The gendered images of ethnicity in circulation reflect a negotiation over self-representations of discipline, rationality and strength, juxtaposed with the alleged chaos and weakness of racialised others. Interpreting nationhood through a religious lens, monks and schoolmen explained it as scientifically informed by environmental medicine, an ancient theory that held that location and climate influenced the physical and mental traits of peoples. Drawing on lists of ethnic character traits, school textbooks, medical treatises, proverbs, poetry and chronicles, this book shows that ethnic stereotypes served as rhetorical tools of power, crafting relationships within communities and towards others.
Tapping into a combination of court documents, urban statutes, material artefacts, health guides ... more Tapping into a combination of court documents, urban statutes, material artefacts, health guides and treatises, Policing the Urban Environment in Premodern Europe offers a unique perspective on how premodern public authorities tried to create a clean, healthy environment. Overturning many preconceptions about medieval dirt and squalor, it presents the most outstanding recent scholarship on how public health norms were enforced in the judicial, religious and socio-cultural sphere before the advent of modern medicine and the nation-state, crossing geographical and linguistic boundaries and engaging with factors such as spiritual purity, civic pride and good neighbourliness.
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Papers by Claire Weeda
a large Benedictine abbey since the seventh century, fared little better. Three types of health-related crises struck its community between 1417 and 1490, at the time numbering between 4.000-6.000 inhabitants: famine, plague and financial hardship as a result of falling population numbers. How did the city handle these exigencies? This chapter will argue that, in response, the city pursued vital politics by maintaining porous boundaries. It modulated the intake and output of food, persons, matter, and, by extension, money, to uphold balance and motility in the circulation of goods, energy and waste. In this way the weekly bylaws issued by the city magistrates actively anticipated and responded to the biopolitical challenges of managing the urban body politic on a population level, to ensure its vitality. In doing so, they built on existing practices, infrastructure and knowledge as well as adopting new policies.
and blockage can help us to understand the trajectories of
pandemics and the social responses to them. Central to the
analysis is the concept of obligatory passage points through
which networks must pass. Attempts by various actors to
control the movement through them, be they government
authorities, health experts and caregivers, economic
producers or consumers, can create social tensions.
Such tensions were duly recognised during the recurring
outbreaks of the plague in the Second Plague Pandemic
between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries.
Analysing historical plague ordinances allows us to expose
the power mechanisms impacting networks as they move
through spaces, and to remain critical of how circulation
is controlled and moralised. We argue that historians can
contribute to reviewing these mechanisms behind the
spread of epidemics and the responses to them from the
perspective of movement and blockage.
Books by Claire Weeda
Yet while Anderson’s insights have been hugely influential, they remain abstract: it is difficult to imagine imagined communities. How do they evolve and how is membership constructed cognitively, socially and culturally? How do individuals and communities contribute to group formation through the act of imagining? And what is the glue that holds communities together?
Imagining Communities examines actual processes of experiencing the imagined community, exploring its emotive force in a number of case studies. Communal bonding is analysed, offering concrete insights on where and by whom the nation (or social group) is imagined and the role of individuals therein. Offering eleven empirical case studies, ranging from the premodern to the modern age, this volume looks at and beyond the nation and includes regional as well as transnational communities as well.
+
In this radical new approach to representations of nationhood in medieval western Europe, the author argues that ethnic stereotypes were constructed and wielded rhetorically to justify property claims, flaunt military strength and assert moral and cultural ascendance over others. The gendered images of ethnicity in circulation reflect a negotiation over self-representations of discipline, rationality and strength, juxtaposed with the alleged chaos and weakness of racialised others. Interpreting nationhood through a religious lens, monks and schoolmen explained it as scientifically informed by environmental medicine, an ancient theory that held that location and climate influenced the physical and mental traits of peoples. Drawing on lists of ethnic character traits, school textbooks, medical treatises, proverbs, poetry and chronicles, this book shows that ethnic stereotypes served as rhetorical tools of power, crafting relationships within communities and towards others.
a large Benedictine abbey since the seventh century, fared little better. Three types of health-related crises struck its community between 1417 and 1490, at the time numbering between 4.000-6.000 inhabitants: famine, plague and financial hardship as a result of falling population numbers. How did the city handle these exigencies? This chapter will argue that, in response, the city pursued vital politics by maintaining porous boundaries. It modulated the intake and output of food, persons, matter, and, by extension, money, to uphold balance and motility in the circulation of goods, energy and waste. In this way the weekly bylaws issued by the city magistrates actively anticipated and responded to the biopolitical challenges of managing the urban body politic on a population level, to ensure its vitality. In doing so, they built on existing practices, infrastructure and knowledge as well as adopting new policies.
and blockage can help us to understand the trajectories of
pandemics and the social responses to them. Central to the
analysis is the concept of obligatory passage points through
which networks must pass. Attempts by various actors to
control the movement through them, be they government
authorities, health experts and caregivers, economic
producers or consumers, can create social tensions.
Such tensions were duly recognised during the recurring
outbreaks of the plague in the Second Plague Pandemic
between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries.
Analysing historical plague ordinances allows us to expose
the power mechanisms impacting networks as they move
through spaces, and to remain critical of how circulation
is controlled and moralised. We argue that historians can
contribute to reviewing these mechanisms behind the
spread of epidemics and the responses to them from the
perspective of movement and blockage.
Yet while Anderson’s insights have been hugely influential, they remain abstract: it is difficult to imagine imagined communities. How do they evolve and how is membership constructed cognitively, socially and culturally? How do individuals and communities contribute to group formation through the act of imagining? And what is the glue that holds communities together?
Imagining Communities examines actual processes of experiencing the imagined community, exploring its emotive force in a number of case studies. Communal bonding is analysed, offering concrete insights on where and by whom the nation (or social group) is imagined and the role of individuals therein. Offering eleven empirical case studies, ranging from the premodern to the modern age, this volume looks at and beyond the nation and includes regional as well as transnational communities as well.
+
In this radical new approach to representations of nationhood in medieval western Europe, the author argues that ethnic stereotypes were constructed and wielded rhetorically to justify property claims, flaunt military strength and assert moral and cultural ascendance over others. The gendered images of ethnicity in circulation reflect a negotiation over self-representations of discipline, rationality and strength, juxtaposed with the alleged chaos and weakness of racialised others. Interpreting nationhood through a religious lens, monks and schoolmen explained it as scientifically informed by environmental medicine, an ancient theory that held that location and climate influenced the physical and mental traits of peoples. Drawing on lists of ethnic character traits, school textbooks, medical treatises, proverbs, poetry and chronicles, this book shows that ethnic stereotypes served as rhetorical tools of power, crafting relationships within communities and towards others.