Policing the Urban Environment in Premodern Europe

Carole Rawcliffe is Professor Emerita of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia, and is the author of many books and articles on health, medicine and disease in the Middle Ages, especially in an urban context. Claire Weeda works as an assistant professor at the History Department of Leiden University. She is specialized in ethnic identity, medicine, and community formation in the period 1100-1500.

"This excellent collection of essays addresses the enforcement of urban public health measures and sanitary regulations in premodern Europe. [...] In scope, the chapters cover much of Latin Christendom--Italy, France, the Low Countries, England, and the Holy Roman Empire--and focus primarily on the period from the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. This breadth of coverage serves to illuminate the many commonalities in sanitary measures, while individual case studies showcase local or regional particularities. The essays themselves are in English, but the bibliographies provide a valuable guide to primary sources and urban environmental scholarship across a variety of languages."- Roberta Magnusson, The Medieval Review, 21.05.11 (2021) "This interesting collection considers how urban polities across Europe in the premodern era managed concerns with urban hygiene, public health, and environmental protections. As the title suggests, legislative measures that were encoded in statute legislation in some cities from as early as the twelfth century showed significant concern for maintenance of the built environment, enforced through the appointment of officials whose remit became more specialized over time. A close relationship is revealed between statute rules that appear to have a primary function in the beautification or improvement of the urban fabric but do so through measures that improved sanitation and sought to reduce the transmission of disease."- Fabrizio Nevola, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. LXXIV, No. 4 (2021) "This collection of essays not only provides new insights but also provokes important questions. In addition, the rich bibliographies following each chapter and the useful index will undoubtedly help to advance our knowledge of this much-neglected but, not surprisingly, very 'live' topic of research."- Marc Boone, Speculum, Vol. 97, No. 3 (2022)

• Introduction Carole Rawcliffe and Claire Weeda 1 Cleanliness, Civility, and the City in Medieval Ideals and Scripts Claire Weeda 2 The View from the Street: The Records of Hundred and Leet Courts as a Source for Sanitary Policing in Late Medieval English Towns Carole Rawcliffe 3 Urban Viarii and the Prosecution of Public Health Offenders in Late Medieval Italy G. Geltner 4 Food Offenders: Public Health and the Marketplace in the Late Medieval Low Countries Janna Coomans 5 Policing the Environment of Late Medieval Dordrecht Patrick Naaktgeboren 6 Muddy Waters in Medieval Montpellier Catherine Dubé and Geneviève Dumas 7 Regulating Water Sources in the Towns and Cities of Late Medieval Normandy Elma Brenner 8 Policing the Environment in Premodern Imperial Cities and Towns: A Preliminary Approach Annemarie Kinzelbach 9 Official Objectives of the Visitatio Leprosorum: Ambiguity, Ambivalence, and Variance Luke Demaitre Index