Adam J. Davis

A historian of medieval Europe, Davis has wide-ranging interests in medieval ecclesiastical reform and religious life, medieval attitudes toward commerce, wealth, and poverty, and the history of charity and charitable institutions. His new book, "The Medieval Economy of Salvation: Charity, Commerce, and the Rise of the Hospital" (Cornell UP, 2019), explores the connection between the emergence of the medieval commercial economy and the rise of hospitals as new charitable institutions in the Latin West. It casts new light on the nature of Christian charity during Europe’s first great age of commerce. His first book, "The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy" (Cornell UP), brought together the intellectual and theological world of the University of Paris with the administrative and moral challenges a Franciscan archbishop faced while trying to reform the French clergy and laity.