基本説明
New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 1999. In Volume I of his trilogy, Alexander Murray rediscovers the suicides which took place; in Volumes II and III, he will go on to explore attitudes to suicide amongst the living.
Full Description
`Suicide' and `the Middle Ages' sounds like a contradiction. Was life not too short anyway, and the Church too disapproving, to admit suicide? And how is the historian supposed to find out?
In this first volume of his trilogy, Alexander Murray takes the methodological question first, as a key to the testing of all other assumptions. After answering it, he shows that there were indeed suicides, of types and configurations astonishingly modern, if not in numbers per capita. 'The violent against themselves' included rich and poor, townsmen and peasants, men and women, married and unmarried, their motives all too familiar: physical and mental illness, chronic or sudden poverty, arrest, disgrace, heartbreak in love, even what modern doctors might call depression. Following the sources as close to the events as they will lead, the author calls on these fugitives to give an account of themselves. In doing so, they also shed new light on features of their world we thought we all understood.
Contents
Preface ; 1. Introduction ; 2. The Secrecy of the Act ; How to Find Out. I: Chronicles ; 3. The Reticence of Chronicles ; 4. The Probing of Disgrace ; 5. The Reticence Broken. The Preoccupations of Local and House Chronicles ; How to Find Out. II: Legal Sources ; 6. Suicide and Judicial Records ; 7. Portraits from English Courts: Criminals, Debtors, and the Sick ; 8. Portraits from English Courts: 'Insanity' and Some Optical Illusions ; 9. Portraits from French Courts ; 10. Portraits from Lettres de Remission ; 11. Portraits from Courts in the Empire ; How to Find Out. III: Religious Sources ; 12. Man, Woman, and Child ; 13. The Enemy of Society ; 14. The Sick and Melancholy ; Towards Statistics ; 15. Towards Statistics: Absolute Numbers ; 16. Towards Statistics: The Person and the Act ; Appendix: A Register of Recorded Suicidal Incidents - I. Chronicles; II. Legal Sources; III. Religious Sources ; A Bibliography of Legal Sources Used in the Register ; Select Bibliography to Part I
