Richard Kaeuper Headshot

Richard W. Kaeuper

  • Franklin W. & Gladys I. Clark Professor Emeritus of History

PhD, Princeton University, 1967

Office Location
441 Rush Rhees Library
Telephone
(585) 275-7878

Office Hours: By appointment

Research Overview

My teaching and research interests concentrate on Western Europe between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries and more specifically focus on both sides of the Channel. My work regularly crosses the line between institutional and cultural history snd addresses topical rather than geographical subjects. I began with issues of royal credit finance in England (Bankers to the Crown).An early and continuing line of inquiry focuses on justice and public order (War, Justice and Public Order, and the multi-authored Law, Governance and Justice ). More recently I have studied chivalry  (The Book of Chivalry, A Knight's Own Book of Chivalry -both with Elspeth Kennedy- Chivalry and Violence, Holy Warrior, and Medieval Chivalry). My collected shorter studies on all of these topics appear in Kings, Knights, and Bankers. A Festschrift in honor of my work has appeared ( Prowess, Piety and Public Order in Medieval Society). Currently I am Medieval European editor for a forthcoming multi-volume Cambridge History of World Violence.

Courses Offered (subject to change)

  • HIST 127:  Foundations of Medieval France, Syllabus
  • HIST 230:  History from Myth: King Arthur and Robin Hood, Syllabus
  • HIST 234W:  Knights, Criminals, and the Crown: Research in Medieval England, Syllabus
  • HIST 331W/431:  Europe in 1215, Syllabus
  • HIST 320/420:  Medieval Chivalry, Syllabus

Selected Publication Covers

Medieval Chivalry book cover.
The Holy Warrior: Knighthood and Religion Book Cover
Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe Book Cover
The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny Book Cover
War, Justice and Public Order Book Cover

Selected Publications

  • Medieval Chivalry (commissioned by Cambridge University Press, 2016)
  • Kings, Knights, and Bankers: the collected articles of Richard Kaeuper (Brill, 2016), ed. Christopher Guyol
  • "Social Ideals and Social Disruption," Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Culture, 2011
  • Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
  • "The Tension Between Vengeance and Mercy in Chivalric Mentalite" forthcoming in David Rollason, ed., Peace and Reconciliation (Durham Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies).
  • "Social Ideals and Social Disruption," Cambridge Companion to Post-Conquest England(forthcoming).
  • "Chivalry and War," Blackwell Companion to Medieval Literature and Culture (2007) written with Monte Bohna.
  • A Knight's Own Book of Chivalry (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) written with Elspeth Kennedy. (A new book based on the Charny text, for which I wrote a new historical study as introduction to this text).
  • "Chivalric Violence and Religious Valorization." Courtiers and Warriors (Kyoto, 2003; published in both Japanese and English).
  • "The King and the Fox: Reactions to Kingship in Tales of Reynard the Fox," Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages (Boydell & Brewer, 2001).
  • Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Clarendon, Oxford, 1999, paperback 2001).
  • Violence in Medieval Society (edited, with introduction; Boydell and Brewer, 2000).
  • "The Social Meaning of Chivalry in Romance," Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance(Cambridge University Press, 2000).
  • "Chivalry: Fantasy and Fear," Writing & Fantasy (Longman, London, 1999) eds., B. White and C. Sullivan.
  • The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context and Translation (written with Elspeth Kennedy), (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).
  • War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Clarendon, Oxford, 1988); translated as Guerre, justice et ordre publique (Editions Aubier Paris, 1994).
  • "Text and Context: Chaucer's 'Friar's Tale,'" with T.G. Hahn, Studies in the Age of Chaucer(1983).
  • "An Historian's Reading of the Tale of Gamelyn," Medium Aevum LII (1983), 51-62.
  • "Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England: the Evidence of Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer," Speculum (1979).
  • Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton University Press, 1973).
  • "The Frescobaldi of Florence and the English Crown," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 10 (1973), 41-95.