Strategies of Sanity and Survival: Religious Responses to Natural Disasters in the Middle Ages

Covering spiritual responses and survival strategies of medieval man when faced with natural disasters, this book asks what the medieval man's means were to deal with natural disasters, phenomena he could not scientifically understand. How did he try to prevent them? What were his feelings and actions during the situation? How did he manage to carry on with his life afterwards? Based on original sources, the book crosses boundaries between different fields of learning and traditionally accepted time periods of history. Although it is essentially a book on medieval man, it stretches far beyond the Middle Ages as conventionally understood. The final chapter traces the slow disappearance of the medieval mentality until the early nineteenth century.