In this Book
- The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages
- Book
- 2019
- Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Funder: Mellon/NEH / Hopkins Open Publishing: Encore Editions
- Program:
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

summary
Originally published in 1966. The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages, based on three guest lectures given at Johns Hopkins University in 1965, explores the place of the individual in medieval European society. Looking at legal sources and political ideology of the era, Ullmann concludes that, for most of the Middle Ages, the individual was defined as a subject rather than a citizen, but the modern concept of citizenship gradually supplanted the subject model from the late Middle Ages onward. Ullmann lays out the theological basis of the political theory that cast the medieval individual as an inferior, abstract subject. The individual citizen who emerged during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, by contrast, was an autonomous participant in affairs of state. Several intellectual trends made this humanistic conception of the individual possible, among them the rehabilitation of vernacular writing during the thirteenth century and the growing interest in nature, natural philosophy, and natural law. However, Ullmann points to feudalism as the single most important medieval institution that laid the groundwork for the emergence of the modern citizen.
Table of Contents


- Half Title
- p. i
- Frontmatter
- p. ii
- Title Page
- p. iii
- Dedication
- p. v
- Half Title 1
- p. xv
- Lecture I: The Abstract Thesis
- pp. 2-50
- Lecture II: The Practical Thesis
- pp. 52-98
- Lecture III: The Humanistic Thesis
- pp. 100-151
Additional Information
ISBN
9781421433998
Related ISBN(s)
9780801806438, 9781421433974, 9781421433981
MARC Record
OCLC
1122458716
Pages
178
Launched on MUSE
2019-10-07
Language
English
Open Access
Yes
Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC-ND