Laura Stokes: "Wealth Admired; Wealth Hated: Managing Money and Power in Fifteenth-Century Basel"

Date
Thursday March 7th 2013, 5:15 - 6:45PM
Event Sponsor
Humanities Center, Center for Ethics in Society, Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford, Department of Religious Studies
Location
Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center
 Laura Stokes: "Wealth Admired; Wealth Hated: Managing Money and Power in Fifteenth-Century Basel"

Abstract:

When Uly Mörnach was found murdered on a cold November morning in 1502, no one was surprised. He had been the most hated member of the butchers' guild, and the other guildsmen had conspired to kill him. The most powerful member of that conspiracy was Caspar David. David and Mörnach were cousins, both wealthy butchers of roughly equal standing. While Mörnach died a violent death, and his family disappeared from the city within a generation thereafter, David escaped any blame for the murder, and his family rose in the ruling elite of the city. This intense contrast between their fates derived from their very different stances on the ethics of personal liberty and wealth.

Bio:

Laura Stokes, Stanford University

Laura Stokes completed her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia in 2006. Her first book, Demons of Urban Reform, examines the origins of witchcraft prosecution in fifteenth-century Europe against the backdrop of a general rise in the prosecution of crime and other measures of social control. Her current research is an examination of quotidian economic culture during the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. This project, under the working title A Social History of Greed in the Age of the Reformation, is based largely on the examination of court depositions from the city of Basel. Its first fruit will be a microhistory on The Murder of Uly Mörnach, currently in process.