"We are All Servants”: The Diversity of Service in Premodern Europe (1000-1700)

From the publisher's website:

Service permeated premodern Europe and was a key concept for defining relationships. Unlike earlier volumes on service, “We Are All Servants” explores simultaneously the medieval and early modern periods, and considers service and servants through multiple discourses and in a wide variety of contexts, from courts to anchorholds, and including monastic and hospital settings throughout western Europe. The volume brings together an interdisciplinary and international team of scholars who study a highly diverse group of servants: male and female, young and old, lay and religious, of both high and low status, with few or great expectations for their future.

Isabelle Cochelin is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto. She recently co-edited with Alison I. Beach the Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West (2020) and is also one of the main investigators of new research groups on non-cloistered religious women from 1100 to 1800 (including The Other Sister).

Diane Wolfthal is David and Caroline Minter Chair Emerita in the Humanities at Rice University. Her books include The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting (1989), Images of Rape (1999), Picturing Yiddish (2004), In and Out of the Marital Bed (2010), and Household Servants and Slaves (2022). She was one of the Founding Editors of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

632 pp., 67 ill.