Living With The Dead In The Middle Ages
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the flickering candlelight of medieval Europe, the boundary between the living and the dead was not a wall but a permeable membrane — and Patrick J. Geary's Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages maps that uncanny territory with scholarly brilliance. This landmark work chronicles how medieval communities actively maintained relationships with their deceased, weaving the dead into the social, legal, economic, and spiritual fabric of everyday life. Geary argues that the dead were not passive subjects of mourning but dynamic agents — present in relics, wills, liturgical commemoration, and even in legal disputes — shaping the world of the living in profound and often surprising ways. Drawing on a rich array of primary sources across centuries of European history, he presents a deeply textured portrait of a civilization that refused to let death sever the bonds of community. Geary's interdisciplinary methodology — bridging history, anthropology, and religious studies — lends Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages an intellectual authority that has made it essential reading since its publication. His prose is precise yet evocative, transforming dense archival material into a compelling narrative that illuminates how medieval people constructed meaning, identity, and social order through their ongoing communion with the departed. Scholars and general readers alike will find themselves questioning the very assumptions that modernity has placed between the living and the dead — and wondering what, exactly, has been lost in the forgetting.
Author: Patrick J. Geary
Format: Paperback
Genre: European history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the flickering candlelight of medieval Europe, the boundary between the living and the dead was not a wall but a permeable membrane — and Patrick J. Geary's Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages maps that uncanny territory with scholarly brilliance. This landmark work chronicles how medieval communities actively maintained relationships with their deceased, weaving the dead into the social, legal, economic, and spiritual fabric of everyday life. Geary argues that the dead were not passive subjects of mourning but dynamic agents — present in relics, wills, liturgical commemoration, and even in legal disputes — shaping the world of the living in profound and often surprising ways. Drawing on a rich array of primary sources across centuries of European history, he presents a deeply textured portrait of a civilization that refused to let death sever the bonds of community. Geary's interdisciplinary methodology — bridging history, anthropology, and religious studies — lends Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages an intellectual authority that has made it essential reading since its publication. His prose is precise yet evocative, transforming dense archival material into a compelling narrative that illuminates how medieval people constructed meaning, identity, and social order through their ongoing communion with the departed. Scholars and general readers alike will find themselves questioning the very assumptions that modernity has placed between the living and the dead — and wondering what, exactly, has been lost in the forgetting.