Hidden in archives accumulating over centuries, in famous cities and obscure towns, are the lives, thoughts, and feelings of ordinary people lost to history. Lost, until a curious researcher unearths them, often by chance when they are looking for something else. Out from the dusty scrolls, the bundled letters, voluminous trial transcripts, dry tax records and inventories, come the voices of people long forgotten.
This is my favorite kind of history book, pioneered in the twentieth century by the French Annales school. Instead of great leaders, politics, diplomacy, and battles they focused on the common people. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie was the first to explore mentalities, how the people of the past viewed the world around them. His 1975 book Montaillou is a landmark work, considered a classic of both history and anthropology. I include it in this list as one of the most memorable books in my lifetime of reading.
The Burdens of Sister Margaret by Craig Harline
Harline was researching a seventeenth century bishop of Leuven in Flanders when he came upon a cache of letters that told an extraordinary story about life in a Franciscan Grey Sisters convent. The letters reveal the story of Margaret Smulders, a nun who accused a chaplain of sexually harassing her and in turn was accused of being possessed by demons. She spent years exiled to a room above the convent gatehouse writing voluminous letters to the bishop pleading her case and spreading gossip about her fellow nuns. Among Sister Margaret’s complaints was that the nuns spent too much time cooking waffles to give to the influential people of the town instead of praying. The bishop also received letters from the other nuns detailing their complaints against Margaret. From this stew of gossip and innuendo Harline reveals an intimate portrait of the daily life and trials of one convent.
The Burgermeister’s Daughter by Steven Ozment
The sixteenth century archives in the German city of Schwabisch Hall are stuffed with records of a thirty year legal battle between Anna Buschler and her father, a prominent local official. From these and surviving love letters Ozment brings to life a feisty woman who defied the social and gender expectations of her time. Beautiful and flirtatious, young Anna shocked her father and neighbors by carrying on simultaneous love affairs, one with a member of royalty. When her father threw her out she sued him for abandonment. He responded by capturing her and keeping her chained to a table for six months. She escaped and added an accusation of abuse to her legal challenge. Maturity did not calm her down; she led a life of romantic drama and bitter legal struggle to claim her inheritance. This is a story of one woman that reveals a whole world.
