We live in emotional times, where people constantly trump truth and enlightenment with sentiments. The question explored in this book deals with how people in The Middle Ages managed their emotions to achieve power and positions. 

Managing Emotions in the Middle Ages
Ed. by Flocel Sabaté
Brill Publishing, February 2025

ABSTRACT

The life experiences of men and women take on meaning through the emotionality they entail, and the intensity of these experiences builds specific memories which link the individuals within a society. The present book argues that examining the management of emotions in late medieval society will allow us to understand it better. By discussing theoretical frameworks for the historical study of emotions and presenting a range of case studies from the Middle Ages, the authors of this book illustrate how the management of emotions reflects and sheds light on the code of values and behaviour that guided this society. 

CONTENTS:

Preface by Flocel Sabaté

Part 1 Historiographical Thoughts

Human Beings as Emotional Subjects: The Study of Their Experiences in the Middle Ages by Flocel Sabaté

The Bodily Turn: New Directions in the History of Emotions by Barbara H. Rosenwein and Riccardo Cristiani

Part 2 How to Deal with Emotions

Feelings and the Saving of Souls: Penance and Prayer by Carla Casagrande

Emotions and Orthodoxy in Medieval Latin Devotional Writing by William Marx

The Art of Courtly Love as an Art of Government of Self and Others by Josep Maria Ruiz Simon

Part 3 Emotional Portraits

Emotions, Spirituality and Artistic Promotion of a King’s Daughter The Will of Blanche of Aragon and Anjou (ca. 1302–1348), Prioress of the Monastery of Sigena by Alberto Velasco

An Emotional Portrait of Queen Violant of Bar through Her Letters byEduard Juncosa Bonet

The Abbot and the Poet. Emotions in a Medieval Welsh Monastery by Karen Stöber

Part 4 Emotional Collective Experiences

O cur iubes canere? Composition, Performance, and the Projection of Emotions in a Medieval Latin Song by Mauricio Molina

Experience and Its Emotional Relation to the Visual. An Epigraphic View by  Vincent Debiais

The Portrayal of Emotions in the Medieval Orient. From Adab to Oriental Epic and Historical Narrative from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries by Anna Caiozzo

Part 5 Expressing or Using Emotions on Trial

Emotions in the Middle Ages as Reflected in Legal Sources. Shame, Anger, Male Identity and Female Adultery — Iñaki Bazán Díaz

Tears, Weeping and lacrimae. The Truth of the Eyes? Emotions and Gestures of Female Jewish Converts in Aragon on Trial under the Spanish Inquisition in the Middle Ages by Jonas Holst

and Miguel Ángel Motis

Part 6 Emotional Travellers

Facing Hard Times. Emotion and the Expression of Self in the Autobiographical Accounts by al-Qalaṣādī and al-Ḥağarī by Maravillas Aguiar Aguilar

Emotional Pilgrims in Jacques Le Saige’s Travel Narrative (ca. 1520–1523) by Alexandra Velissariou

Emotions and Marriage Negotiations. Irish Marriages in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain by Andrea Knox