FEATURED AUTHOR

Sara Margaret Butler

Gregory F. Curtin, S.J., Distinguished Professor
Loyola University New Orleans

Sara M. Butler is Gregory F. Curtin, S.J., Distinguished Professor in the History Department at Loyola University New Orleans. She has written on the subjects of marital violence, suicide, abortion, divorce, and the coroner's inquest in medieval England. In 2007, she was awarded the Sutherland Prize by the American Society for Legal History.

Subjects: History

Biography

After receiving her Ph.D. in Medieval History, from Dalhousie University in 2001, and then completing a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at Saint Mary's University, Sara Butler joined the Department of History at Loyola University New Orleans in 2004.  Her research interests focus primarily on the social history of the law, specifically marriage as a power relationship and the role of the jury in the criminal courts of medieval England. Her publications include:

        -The Language of Abuse: Marital Violence in Later Medieval England  (Brill, 2007)
        -Divorce in Medieval England: From One to Two Persons at Law (Routledge, 2013),
        -Medicine and the Law in the Middle Ages, with Wendy Turner, eds., (Brill, 2014)
        -Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England (Routledge, 2014).

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Personal Interests

Websites

Books

Divorce in Medieval England Pbdirect - 1st Edition book cover

Featured Title

Articles

Sacred People, Sacred Spaces: Evidence of Parish Respect and Contempt toward th

Published: Jun 11, 2012 by Canadian Journal of History 47.1 (2012)
Authors: Sara M. Butler
Subjects: History

Conflicts between parish clergy and parishioners in late medieval England have been described as acts of both anticlericalism and proclericalism (that is, an attempt to compel clergy into living up to the parishioners' increasingly high expectations of them). This paper hopes to expand our knowledge of parish conflict by turning to an oft-neglected source.

Medicine on Trial: Regulating the Health Professions in Later Medieval England

Published: Jun 11, 2011 by Florilegium 28 (2011)
Authors: Sara M. Butler
Subjects: History

Fears of being accused of malpractice have plagued the field of medicine since its inception. Despite the longevity of the concerns, English law was slow to catch up and only did so eventually because of the pressure exerted from below by users of medicine rather than the practitioners themselves.

Abortion Medieval Style? Assaults on Pregnant Women in Later Medieval England

Published: Jun 11, 2011 by Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 40.6 (2011)
Authors: Sara M. Butler
Subjects: History

A discussion of abortion by assault and its place in later medieval England.

A Case of Indifference? Child Murder in Later Medieval England

Published: Jun 11, 2007 by Journal of Women's History 19.4 (2007)
Authors: Sara M. Butler

Employing a sampling of 131 instances of child murder (including 144 victims), drawn from royal and ecclesiastical courts from the late thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, the current investigation asks us to rethink these early conclusions. Infanticide was a felony in the Middle Ages and neither jurors nor royal officials treated child murder with indifference.

Cultures of Suicide? Suicide Verdicts and the "Community" in Thirteenth- and Fou

Published: Jun 11, 2007 by The Historian 69.3 (2007)
Authors: Sara M. Butler
Subjects: History

An examination of popular attitudes towards suicide in medieval England.

Runaway Wives: Husband Desertion in Medieval England

Published: Jun 11, 2006 by Journal of Social History 40.2 (2006)
Authors: Sara M. Butler
Subjects: History

Using marriage litigation, bishops' registers, ecclesiastical actbooks, manorial courts, chancery records, and assize rolls, this paper will attempt to discern the risks involved in husband desertion to both the wife and her "rescuers," common features of wife desertion, as well as contemporary attitudes held by both wives and society in general.

Women, Suicide, and the Jury in Medieval England

Published: Jun 11, 2006 by Signs 32.1 (2006)
Authors: Sara M. Butler
Subjects: History

A discussion of the prevalence of suicide among singlewomen in later medieval England.